Digital Commons Network^™

Effect Of Thermal Annealing And Carbon Implantation On The Functional Properties Of Nanocomposite Tisin Coatings On Steel, Mohammad Shoeb Ahmed

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This PhD research contributes to the part of advanced materials technology. The machining industry currently faces tremendous pressures with the need for durable cutting tools suitable for eco-friendly high speed machining operations becoming acute. In this thesis innovative design and synthesis strategies are explored to tailor the properties of nanocomposite coatings. Advanced characterisation techniques are applied to identify the mechanisms that control the mechanical, tribological, and corrosion behaviours of these coatings. Cutting tools protected by these coatings are anticipated to exhibit a unique combination of superior toughness and greater resistance to wear and corrosion, providing significant economic and environmental benefits. …

The Making Of Disgrace Kelly: Dragging The Diva Through Cabarets, Pubs And Into The Recital Hall, Caitlin Cassidy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research project investigates the synthesis of cabaret and recital performance as a way to re-invigorate the recital as a performance platform. As a curious classical singer with a passion for cabaret, I have explored cabaret in my own creative practice as a classically trained opera singer through the employment of practice-led research methodologies. This project includes research manifested in rehearsals, performance and exegetical writing, including a unique self-reflexive voice in the writing style, to encompass a practice-led research methodology. The culmination of these approaches was a final performance program entitled Diva Bites the Dust. A study of the diva …

Key Stakeholders’ Experiences Of International Education At One Australian University, Sophia A. Harryba

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Aim: This study aimed to explore the experiences which influenced the perceptions of three key groups of stakeholders: academic and support staff, international students, and their domestic peers, when engaging in International Education at one Australian university. The original research questions for this study were:

1. What experiences influence staff members’ perceptions of International Education at one Australian university?

2. What experiences influence international students’ perception of their education at one Australian university? As directed by theoretical sampling, the views of domestic students were then also sought, to shed light on the following research question:

3. What experiences influence domestic …

The Waldenses: Historical Perspectives From The Writings Of Ellen White, Ellen G. White, Kathleen Demsky

All Books

Featuring chapters and images from The Great Controversy and Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

A Semiotic Interpretation Of Sense-Making In Information Seeking, Zao Liu

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Sense-making in information seeking process is one of the major information seeking models. Questions have been raised about information seekers’ ambiguous needs and focus-shifting tendency relative to sense-making. This paper tackles this problem by reviewing two related approaches and suggesting an alternative interpretation from the semiotic point of view. The author argues that information seeking is often interactive, dynamic, and infinite just as the relationships between sign, object and interpretant posited in Peirce’s semiotics. The implication of this paper is to alert information seekers about this potential endless information seeking process and come to terms with their search results which …

Can A Financial Conditions Index Guide Monetary Policy? The Case Of Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this study, we explore the issue of whether a financial conditions index can serve as a useful guide to monetary policy in the context of Singapore. To this end, we construct an index that comprises not only the usual monetary variables like interest rates, exchange rates and credit expansions but also asset prices such as stock prices and house prices. The choice of these constituent series is motivated by the role they play in the monetary transmission mechanism with consideration given to the key role leverage plays in modern business cycles and the risk-taking channel magnified by the prolonged …

Uncertain Congestion Games With Assorted Human Agent Populations , Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Asrar Ahmed, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Congestion games model a wide variety of real-world resource congestion problems, such as selfish network routing, traffic route guidance in congested areas, taxi fleet optimization and crowd movement in busy areas. However, existing research in congestion games assumes: (a) deterministic movement of agents between resources; and (b) perfect rationality (i.e. maximizing their own expected value) of all agents. Such assumptions are not reasonable in dynamic domains where decision support has to be provided to humans. For instance, in optimizing the performance of a taxi fleet serving a city, movement of taxis can be involuntary or nondeterministic (decided by the specific …

The European Union's Potential Contribution To Enhanced Governance Of Arctic Shipping, Nengye Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article focuses on the European Union (EU)’s potential contribution to an enhanced legal regime of the Arctic offshore oil and gas operations. It first briefly describes existing international law for the regulation of offshore oil and gas operations in the Arctic. The article then discusses the development of EU’s Arctic policy and the EU’s competence to regulate Arctic offshore oil and gas activities. Subsequently, it analyzes potential actions and initiatives that could be taken by the EU to promote high safety standards for offshore oil and gas operations in the Arctic.

Criminal Liability For Vessel-Source Pollution In China: Law And Practice, Nengye Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article addresses criminal liability for vessel-source pollution in China. It describes relevant Chinese legislation regarding criminal liability for vessel-source pollution, analyses why a criminal case pertaining to vessel-source pollution has yet to be brought in Chinese courts and presents suggestions on how to improve the current regime.

The Impact Of Smartphone Adoption On Consumers’ Switching Behavior In Broadband And Cable Tv Services, Gwangjae Jung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The emergence of smartphones has brought a technology disruption to the telecom business. Due to the various services offered in association with smartphones, people can surf the web or watch TV. This research is related to telecom services overall, and has the goal of finding the impact of smartphone adoption to consumers’ switching behavior in broadband and cable TV services. This research adopts a quasi-experimental design and investigates the causal effect of smartphone service adoption on broadband and cable TV service choices. The data collection involves five years of consumer service subscriptions in a Singaporean telecommunications company. I tested for …

Technology Investment Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: The Case Of Mobile Payment Systems, Robert J. Kauffman, Jun Liu, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The recent launch of Google Wallet has brought the issue of technology solutions in mobile payments (m-payments) to the forefront. In deciding whether and when to adopt m-payments, senior managers in banks are concerned about uncertainties regarding future market conditions, technology standards, and consumer and merchant responses, especially their willingness to adopt. This study applies economic theory and modeling for decision-making under uncertainty to bank investments in m-payment systems technology. We assess the projected benefits and costs of investment as a continuous-time stochastic process to determine optimal investment timing. We find that the value of waiting to adopt jumps when …

Business Intelligence And Analytics: Research Directions, Ee Peng Lim, Hsinchun Chen, Guoqing Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Business intelligence and analytics (BIA) is about the development of technologies, systems, practices, and applications to analyze critical business data so as to gain new insights about business and markets. The new insights can be used for improving products and services, achieving better operational efficiency, and fostering customer relationships. In this article, we will categorize BIA research activities into three broad research directions: (a) big data analytics, (b) text analytics, and (c) network analytics. The article aims to review the state-of-the-art techniques and models and to summarize their use in BIA applications. For each research direction, we will also determine …

Guardian: Hypervisor As Security Foothold For Personal Computers, Yueqiang Cheng, Xuhua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Personal computers lack of a security foothold to allow the end-users to protect their systems or to mitigate the damage. Existing candidates either rely on a large Trusted Computing Base (TCB) or are too costly to widely deploy for commodity use. To fill this gap, we propose a hypervisor-based security foothold, named as Guardian, for commodity personal computers. We innovate a bootup and shutdown mechanism to achieve both integrity and availability of Guardian. We also propose two security utilities based on Guardian. One is a device monitor which detects malicious manipulation on camera and network adaptors. The other is hyper-firewall …

Accountable Trapdoor Sanitizable Signatures, Junzuo Lai, Xuhua Ding, Yongdong Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sanitizable signature (SS) allows a signer to partly delegate signing rights to a predetermined party, called sanitizer, who can later modify certain designated parts of a message originally signed by the signer and generate a new signature on the sanitized message without interacting with the signer. One of the important security requirements of sanitizable signatures is accountability, which allows the signer to prove, in case of dispute, to a third party that a message was modified by the sanitizer. Trapdoor sanitizable signature (TSS) enables a signer of a message to delegate the power of sanitization to any parties at anytime …

Verifiable And Private Top-K Monitoring, Xuhua Ding, Hwee Hwa Pang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a data streaming model, records or documents are pushed from a data owner, via untrusted third-party servers, to a large number of users with matching interests. The match in interest is calculated from the correlation between each pair of document and user query. For scalability and availability reasons, this calculation is delegated to the servers, which gives rise to the need to protect the privacy of the documents and user queries. In addition, the users need to guard against the eventuality of a server distorting the correlation score of the documents to manipulate which documents are highlighted to certain …

A Secure Platform For Information Sharing In Epcglobal Network, Jie Shi, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng, Wei He, Eng Wah Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the rapid development of RFID technology, the EPCglobal network has drawn considerable attention from both research and industry communities, which enables supply chain partners to automatically share information and improve the visibility of supply chains. As the information shared in the EPCglobal network is usually sensitive and valuable, security mechanisms should be provided. In this paper, we aim at designing and implementing a secure information sharing platform in the EPCglobal network with a focus on authorization mechanism. We also design and implement a track and trace application based on the proposed secure platform so as to demonstrate its feasibility …

Do Household Cable Tv Viewing Patterns Demonstrate Efficiency And Concentration?, Rae Chang, Pulak Ghosh, Gwangjae Jung, Robert J. Kauffman, Peiran Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Factors Influencing The Incidence Rates Of Injuries And Accidents Among Seafarers And Rig Workers Providing Support To The Wa Offshore Oil And Gas Industry, Tony Martinovich

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study was to identify, discuss and make recommendations regarding causal factors associated with injuries and accidents among seafarers and rig workers providing support to the WA offshore oil and gas industry. These incidents cause significant personal and economic burdens for employees, employers and the community in general.

A sample of 484 participants were recruited from a workforce of 9800 employees (approximately 5%). Participants were stratified into 2 cohorts; those who had suffered injury (286 – study group) and those who had not (198 - controls).

Data from the study group were stratified into oilrig workers and …

Implementing A Reggio Emilia Inspired Approach In A Mainstream Western Australian Context: The Impact On Early Childhood Teachers' Professional Role, Claire Hall

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Reggio Emilia, an approach to early childhood that was developed in a Northern Italian city of the same name, is highly regarded as acknowledged by educators and researchers world-wide (Gandini, 1993). The Reggio Emilia philosophy is distinguished by the presentation of an image of children as being strong, rich and powerful learners (Hendricks, 2004; Millikan, 2003). This approach is marked as being adopted and adapted to suit particular cultural and educational settings. These situation sensitive approaches are noted as being Reggio Emilia inspired.

This qualitative case study investigated how the professional role of four early childhood teachers was impacted by …

Corporate Social Responsibility As Corporate Soft Law: Mainstreaming Ethical And Responsible Conduct In Corporate Governance, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article explores corporate social responsibility ("CSR') as a viable mode of regulation and governance in the corporate arena. A starting premise is that good corporate governance must move resolutely beyond a compliance mindset to one which recognises that effective corporate governance must have an ethical backbone in which the dimensions of responsibility, transparency, and accountability are evident, recognised and supported. Regulatory endeavours and corporate governance reforms in the past decade have increasingly intersected with mainstream CSR motivations. CSR is increasingly inducted and mainstreamed into corporate governance thinking, characterised by the dual perspective ofrisk management and values-driven/principled governance and operations. …

Affirmative Action Plan 2013, Office Of Equal Opportunity, Ethics, & Access

Affirmative Action Plans

Illinois State University Affirmative Action Plan

The Use Of Icts In The Public Lbraries: A Case Study Of Oyo State Library Board, Ibadan, Nigeria, Olanike Oladunni Olaniyi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study attempts to investigate the efforts of the Oyo State Library Board in the use of ICTs among its users and staff. The study appraises the library services in the state to highlight the library services development to the populace of the state. The survey research method was adopted and questionnaire was used to collect data from 110 library users and 20 library staff within the headquarter library. The instrument contained three sections with thirty-five questions. The findings of the study reveal that despite the fact that the level of ICT literacy among the users and staff is relatively …

The Haennig-Nordmann Papers: Two Lawyers In Occupied France, Eric Freedman, Richard H. Weisberg

Articles

No abstract provided.

International Students At Uni: An Analysis Of Experiences, Kellie Petersen

Honors Program Theses

It is important that people feel welcome in a society. It contributes to the health and comfort of individuals as well as strengthens society as a whole. This is particularly important to immigrants, who are entering a new country and therefore a new society and culture. Due to their immigrant status, they may feel disconnected from this new society and culture. Such a feeling could be intensified if some individuals within the society and culture display xenophobia. This generally refers to intense and irrational dislike or even a fear of people from other countries, but for the purposes of this …

Leading Through Change: A Study Of The Role Of Central Office Leadership In The Process Of Secondary Change, Dirk A. Halupnik

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to more fully understand the actions of district level leaders in a major change effort and their effects on the change process. Furthermore this study aimed to provide additional information about the factors that school district central office administrators confront when making the decision to add another high school and the actions taken by these administrators to lead the district through this process so that other school districts and leaders may learn from this. The methodology for this study was a qualitative case study approach in which central office leaders in a district that …

Postmodern Humanism And The "Exhaustion Of Easy Life", Mason Beets

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The twenty-first century appears to herald a new epoch, one in which religion and other similar belief systems appear to have run their course. However, this should not necessarily mean that other forms of spirituality and interconnectedness must fade away. Within America, there is a humanistic undercurrent that is gaining strength within our postmodern condition, even as we begin to challenge several of the tenets of postmodernity itself. The groundswell of American humanism has a notable and wholly unintended effect: it ideologically rehabilitates modes or vehicles of thought that might otherwise be labeled as defunct, or inapplicable to the changing …

Investigating Blended Learning In The High School Science Classroom, Holly Cassandra Hinkhouse

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Blended learning combines the best practices of online learning with face-to-face learning and some research has shown it to have positive benefits for students at the postsecondary level. However, few studies have reported the use of blended learning in the high school setting. This study used quantitative methods to measure student attitudes and learning of science content in both a treatment and control group consisting of 9th grade Physical Science classes. Students in the treatment group experienced one semester of blended learning by using online science modules to supplement their in-class learning while the control group continued to have only …

Mfa13 (Mfa 2013), Sam Fox School Of Design & Visual Arts, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Buzz Spector, Patricia Olynyk, David Schuman, Lyndon Barrois Jr, Sarah Bernhardt, Hsuan Ying Chen, Serhii Chrucky, Janae Contag, Carrie Debacker, Erin M. Duhigg, José Garza, Eric Gray, Meghan Allynn Johnson, Hoa Le, Christine Eunji Lee, Lavar Munroe, Jon A. Orosco, Michael Powell, Bridget A. Purcell, Malahat Qureshi, Natalie Rodgers, Carla Fisher Schwartz, Zak Smoker, Laurencia Strauss, Lili Yang, Vivian Zapata

Books and Monographs

Catalogue of a culminating student exhibition held at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, May 3-July 29, 2013. Contents include Introduction / Buzz Spector -- The collaborative turn : new models of thinking, making, and learning / Patricia Olynyk -- [Introduction] / David Schuman -- Lyndon Barrois, Jr. / Rickey Laurentiis -- Sarah Bernhardt -- Shifting Shanghais / Hsuan Ying Chen -- Serhii Chrucky / JaNae Contag -- JaNae Contag / Emily Hanson -- Carrie DeBacker / Gabriel Feldman -- Erin M. Duhigg -- José Garza / Serhii Chrucky -- Eric Gray / Ariel Lewis -- Meghan Allynn Johnson : …

The Case Against The Case Against The Death Penalty, Chad W. Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

Despite the continuing belief by a majority of Americans that the death penalty is morally permissible, the death penalty has few academic defenders. This lack of academic defenders is puzzling because of the strong philosophical justification the death penalty finds in traditional theories of punishment. The three major theories of punishment (the deterrent, the retributive, and the rehabilitative), far from showing that the death penalty is not justified, tend to provide good reasons to favor the death penalty. Indeed, every attempt to show that the major theories of punishment rule out the death penalty either involves smuggling in other assumptions …

From Podcasts To Treasure Hunts— Using Technology To Promote Student Engagement, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

Three influential calls for reform in legal education, the MacCrate Report, the Carnegie Report, and most recently the Stuckey Report, have all recommended that professors use teaching methods to provide greater opportunities for students to practice problem solving skills and receive feedback on their performance. Being a lawyer is much more than memorizing rules; students need to be able to understand the big picture and use the details to problem solve. This article details how to use audio and written podcast summaries to help students see the big picture in a subject and how each smaller topic fits together into …