Digital Commons Network^™

Three Essays On Contingent Valuation, Samuel Zapata Raudales

All Dissertations

Contingent valuation (CV), a survey-based method, is widely used by researchers and government agencies to assess the value of those goods or services whose market price is not well defined. This dissertation comprises three essays analyzing and extending the theoretical foundations, estimation methods and empirical applications of the CV method. The first and second essay focuses on producers' willingness to pay for novel inputs or technologies. The first essay analyzes the theoretical underpinnings of producer WTP for new inputs. In addition to conceptualizing the producer WTP function, I derived its comparative statics and show how these properties can be used …

Essays On Product Recall Strategies And Effectiveness In The Fda-Regulated Food Sector, Tracy Johnson-Hall

All Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two complementary essays that investigate current product recall strategies in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated food sector. These studies address operations and supply chain factors that influence recall effectiveness with two theoretically-based, empirical approaches.
The first essay examines recall effectiveness as measured by time to recall, a proxy for potential consumer exposure to hazardous products (Hora, Bapuji and Roth, 2011) using duration analysis techniques. The unit of analysis is a recall event as documented by the product recall press release. Essay 1 addresses the following question: how do supply chain competencies related to integration …

The Power Of Thermonuclear Supernovae After One Year, Ginger Bryngelson

All Dissertations

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf, shape our understanding of the expansion of the universe with the use of their uniformity in distance determinations. Powered by radioactivity synthesized in the explosion, they fade slowly over hundreds of days. Sometime after 200 days, the continually expanding ejecta allows γ-rays from 56 Ni and 56 Co decays to escape, and soon any radioactive power contributing to lighting up the SN comes from positrons formed in 19% of 56 Co
decays.
While at first it seemed that positrons escaped through the thinning ejecta, it has become apparent …

Essays On Service Improvisation Competence: Empirical Evidence From The Hospitality Industry, Enrico Secchi

All Dissertations

This dissertation explores the service design antecedents and the performance outcomes of Service Improvisation Competence (Serv-IC) the ability of service employees to deviate from established processes and routines in order to timely respond to unexpected events, using available resources. Service operations and strategy research have strongly highlighted the importance of possessing flexibility in order to face the uncertainty derived from the interaction with the external environment (Tansik and Chase 1988, Eisenhardt and Tabrizi 1995, Brown and Eisenhardt 1998, Frei et al. 1999, Menor et al. 2001, Frei 2006). An important component of the ability of service rms to adapt to …

Sparsity Regularization In Diffuse Optical Tomography, John Cooper

All Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to improve image reconstruction in Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT), a high contrast imaging modality that uses a near infrared light source. Because the scattering and absorption of a tumor varies significantly from healthy tissue, a reconstructed spatial representation of these parameters serves as tomographic image of a medium. However, the high scatter and absorption of the optical source also causes the inverse problem to be severely ill posed, and currently only low resolution reconstructions are possible, particularly when using an unmodulated direct current (DC) source.
In this work, the well posedness of the forward …

Ecology And Phylogeny Of The Biting-Midge Genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae), Dustin Swanson

All Dissertations

Flies of the genus Culicoides are small, biting midges in the family Ceratopogonidae. These flies are of medical, veterinary, and economic importance because their blood-feeding behavior can cause stress to hosts and transmit disease agents. Despite the importance of these flies, little is known about their biology, especially the ecology of the immature stages and the phylogenetic relationships among taxa. The objectives of my study were to address these two areas of Culicoides biology.
Larval Culicoides were collected from aquatic habitats in four ecoregions of South Carolina, USA. Eleven ecological variables were recorded for each sample. Larvae were identified by …

Prediction Of The Wear & Evolution Of Cutting Tools In A Carbide / Ti-6al-4v Machining Tribosystem By Volumetric Tool Wear Characterization & Modeling, Mathew Kuttolamadom

All Dissertations

The objective of this research work is to create a comprehensive microstructural wear mechanism-based predictive model of tool wear in the tungsten carbide / Ti-6Al-4V machining tribosystem, and to develop a new topology characterization method for worn cutting tools in order to validate the model predictions. This is accomplished by blending first principle wear mechanism models using a weighting scheme derived from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis of tools worn under different operational conditions. In addition, the topology of worn tools is characterized through scanning by white light interferometry (WLI), and then application …

Avian Phenology, Climate, And Land-Use Conservation Assessed At Broad Spatial And Temporal Scales Using Interdisciplinary Approaches And Citizen Science, Jason Courter

All Dissertations

Current natural resource challenges include global alteration of land cover, loss of biodiversity, impacts from increasing demands for agricultural products, and climate change. Birds are often used to assess the effects of ecological stressors because they are sensitive to environmental changes, ubiquitous and charismatic, and long-term monitoring programs have been in place for more than a century. I demonstrate the effects of climate change on avian migration and nesting dates and the potential value of using interdisciplinary approaches and citizen science to address contemporary ecological challenges. I examine Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) migration in the eastern United States from 1880-2010 …

Prognostic And Health-Management Oriented Fuel Cell Modeling And On-Line Supervisory System Development, Xian Zhang

All Dissertations

Of the fuel cells being studied, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is viewed as the most promising for transportation. Yet until today, the commercialization of the PEMFC has not been widespread in spite of its large expectation. Poor long term performances or durability, and high production and maintenance costs are the main reasons. For the final commercialization of fuel cells in the transportation field, durability issues must be addressed, while costs should be further brought down. At the same time, health-monitoring and prognosis techniques are of great significance in terms of scheduling condition-based maintenance (CBM) to minimize repair …

Invisible Woman? Narratives Of Black Women Leaders In Southeastern Two-Year Colleges, Shelia Counts

All Dissertations

This narrative research study explored the experiences of two Black women executive-level leaders who started their careers within higher education, including two-year technical colleges located in the Southeast during the pivotal sociopolitical moments that occurred during the1960s to the1980s. The stories of these women revealed their perceptions of the barriers they faced as well as the opportunities they received for career advancement as their careers evolved parallel to the development of the technical college system itself. Qualitative procedures, including semi-structured interviews and a combined narrative analysis and analysis of narratives interpretative framework (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Creswell, 2009; Kramp, 2004; …

Does Practice Make Perfect? Effects Of Practice And Coaching On Interview Performance, Katherine Williams

All Dissertations

This study examined the incremental effectiveness of interview practice and feedback on candidates' interview performance. In addition, interviewee anxiety, impression management behaviors, and core self-evaluation were considered as intervening variables between the training manipulations and interview performance. In this experimental design, participants were assigned to one of three groups: the control group, the interview practice group, and the coaching group that received practice plus feedback from a counselor. Employer representatives evaluated subsequent interview performance within a final mock interview.
Hypotheses predicting differential effects of interview training on interview performance ratings were partially supported and relationships were discovered among additional variables. …

Laboratory Characterization And Theoretical Analysis Of Contaminant Mass Transfer, Xiaoling Liu

All Dissertations

Chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs) in fractured, low permeability material can be a long-term source of groundwater contaminants and they are among the most difficult remediation challenges. Thermal methods are a possible remediation option, where heat is used to boil water and the volatile compounds are stripped out by partitioning into the resulting water vapor. Theoretical analysis indicates that only a small fraction of pore water removal may lead to a significant geometric reduction in the dissolved concentration [(Udell(, 1998]. Previous modeling studies [(Falta and Murdoch(, 2011; (Pruess(, 1983] suggest that a lower permeability limit exists for effective mass transfer …

Democratic Orientations Among Adolescents In Aspiring And Established Democracies, Natallia Sianko

All Dissertations

Democratic citizen orientation - support for democratic principles and values - appears an important ingredient in making democracies work. However, there is no agreement as to what attitudes and behaviors make up a democratic citizen orientation. The main goals of this dissertation are to: (1) identify and describe factors that characterize adolescents' democratic orientation, (2) explore cross-cultural variation in democratic orientations among adolescents in established and aspiring democracies, (3) investigate the relationship between adolescents' democratic orientations and historical legacies of their countries, (4) investigate the relationship between adolescents' democratic orientations and the current quality of democratic institutions, and (5) analyze …

On Simulation And Modeling Of Turbulent Non-Premixed Reacting Shear Flames At Low And High Pressure, Justin Foster

All Dissertations

A database of simulations of fundamental turbulent H2/O2 and H2/Air shear layer flames has been developed using the direct numerical simulation technique in which all length and time scales of a flow are fully resolved without resort to turbulence modeling. The formulation includes the fully-compressible form of the governing equations, a pressure dependent detailed chemical kinetics scheme (9 species, 19 steps), a cubic real gas equation of state, realistic property models, and generalized heat and mass diffusion models. Simulations were conducted for a temporally developing shear layer geometry and cover a wide range of initial pressures (1 atm < P < 125 atm) and flame Reynolds numbers (850 < Re < 4500). These supercomputing simulations are the largest yet performed for high pressure conditions to the author's knowledge. Computational requirements for the largest simulations included mesh sizes of ~3/4 billion grid points and ~2.2 million CPU-hrs conducted on nearly 4,000 CPU cores on Clemson's Palmetto cluster.

The database …

Propagation Of Uncertainty In Light-Frame Wood Buildings, Seyed Masood Hassanzadehshirazi

All Dissertations

Light-frame wood construction is the most common form of construction for residential and low-rise commercial buildings (e.g. hotels and motels) in North America. In these buildings, shearwalls are the primary systems resisting lateral loads induced by earthquakes and winds. Past earthquake events have revealed that the structural performance of nominally identical light-frame wood buildings varied significantly. Although much research has been conducted investigating the uncertainty in the performance of wood shearwalls and buildings under earthquake loading, the focus of many of these studies was on the uncertainty due to the earthquake motions, referred as earthquake-to-earthquake uncertainty, the influences of variability …

Purdue University's Foundations Of Excellence Final Report: A Roadmap For Excellent Beginnings, Office Of The Provost, Purdue University

Office of the Provost Publications and Reports

This report lays the groundwork for a new campus culture focused on excellent, intentional, and integrated curricular and co-curricular efforts for all students, according to their specific needs, so that they can achieve academic and personal success. In addition, it provides a blueprint for coordinating assessment and dissemination of findings to foster continuous improvement among the University’s overall student success efforts.

A Study Of Best Practices For The Recruitment And Retention Of Resident Directors, Patricia L. Cendana

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A resident director is an entry-level, student affairs professional staff member that resides within a college or university residence hall. The resident director provides developmental experiences for students who live in on-campus housing. The resident director interacts with students around the clock throughout the semester. Unlike other entry-level professional staff, who return to the sanctity of their home at the end of the work day, the resident director's responsibilities for the welfare of their students do not end until the semester is over and the students have moved out. Resident directors assume responsibility for insuring that all residential needs, in …

Analysis Of Fiber Bragg Gratings For Ultrasonic Detection, Tongqing Liu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Fiber optic sensors became an emerging technique to detect ultrasonic emissions in the last decade. Their light weight, immunity to electromagnetic interference and capacity of being multiplexed make them defeat their electronic counterparts in various applications. In this thesis we presented a novel fiber optic ultrasonic sensor based on pi phase shift fiber Bragg gratings. Numerical simulations were performed to study the characteristics of pi phase shift fiber Bragg gratings impinged by ultrasonic waves. The coupling theory was introduced to analyze the change of fiber Bragg gratings when impinged by ultrasonic waves, and the transfer matrix method was utilized to …

Routing Over The Interplanetary Internet, Joyeeta Mukherjee

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Future space exploration demands a Space Network that will be able to connect spacecrafts with one another and in turn with Earth's terrestrial Internet and hence efficiently transfer data back and forth. The feasibility of this technology would enable common people to directly access telemetric data from distant planets and satellites. The concept of an Interplanetary Internet (IPN) is only in its incubation stage and considerable amount of common standards and research is required before widespread deployment can occur to make IPN feasible.

We provide a comprehensive survey that presents a picture of the current space networking technologies and architectures. …

Statistical Software Properties: Definition, Inference And Monitoring, Javier A. Darsie

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Software properties define how software systems should operate. Specifying correct properties, however, can be difficult and expensive as it requires deep knowledge of the system's expected behavior and the environment in which it operates. Automated analysis techniques to infer properties from code or code executions can mitigate that cost, but are still unable to go beyond state properties and the simplest patterns of temporal properties. This limitation renders properties that sacrifice fault detection power.

To address this problem, we introduce a new type of software properties called \textit{statistical properties}, which characterize significant statistical relationships among the values of variables across …

The Remarkable Life Of Sanak, Roly Russell, Nancy J. Huntly, Spencer Wood, Bruce Finney, Dieta Hanson

Biology Faculty Publications

Life on Sanak is remarkable—from the brilliant orange of lichens clinging to life high on wave-beaten and barren rocks to the raspy bark of an introduced arctic fox or a vole's abstract bouquet of drying tundra flowers. In this chapter we will explore a limited selection of the diverse cast of characters that inhabit the Sanak Islands, ranging from the tiny and cryptic to the large and charismatic.

The Ecological Interactions Of Sanak, Nancy Huntly, Spencer Wood, Roly Russell

Biology Faculty Publications

Ecology is not only about the interesting biology of organisms, as described for Sanak Island in the last chapter, but also about interactions: interactions between animals (including people), plants, microbes, the habitats that they live in, and the environments that surround them. The ecology of Sanak Island today reflects not only today's conditions, but also shows the imprint of the distant history of interactions of the island, especially, as we will see below, the imprint of the Aleut people that have made this island their home.

How Sanak Aleut Fit Into The Intertidal Food Web, Jennifer A. Dunne, Spencer Wood, Roly Russell, Nancy Huntly, Matthew Betts, Herbert Maschner

Biology Faculty Publications

Almost everyone learns about the concept of ecological "food chains" in grade school. An example of a marine food chain is shown on the left-hand side of the chart to the left: phytoplankton are eaten by mussels, which are eaten by octopus, which are eaten by sea otters, which are eaten by humans. These feeding interactions can be abstractly represented as five "nodes" connected in a single chain by four links, as shown on the right-hand side of the diagram to the left. The food chain shown is one of the thousands of interlinked food chains that make up the …

Internal Medicine Tenure Criteria, Department Of Internal Medicine, East Tennessee State University

Tenure and Promotion Criteria

No abstract provided.

Internal Medicine Promotion Criteria, Department Of Internal Medicine, East Tennessee State University

Tenure and Promotion Criteria

No abstract provided.

Compulsory Vaccination Laws: Searching For A Policy-Making Process Immune To Bias, Natalie A. Dana

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Board Of Editors - Vol. 37, No. 1 2012

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Loss Of A 20s Proteasome Activator In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Downregulates Genes Important For Genomic Integrity, Increases Dna Damage, And Selectively Sensitizes Cells To Agents With Diverse Mechanisms Of Action, Kevin M. Doherty, Leah D. Pride, James Lukose, Brian E. Snydsman, Ronald Charles, Ajay Pramanik, Eric G. Muller, David Botstein, Carol Wood Moore

Publications and Research

Cytoprotective functions of a 20S proteasome activator were investigated. Saccharomyces cerevisiae Blm10 and human 20S proteasome activator 200 (PA200) are homologs. Comparative genome-wide analyses of untreated diploid cells lacking Blm10 and growing at steady state at defined growth rates revealed downregulation of numerous genes required for accurate chromosome structure, assembly and repair, and upregulation of a specific subset of genes encoding protein-folding chaperones. Blm10 loss or truncation of the Ubp3/Blm3 deubiquitinating enzyme caused massive chromosomal damage and cell death in homozygous diploids after phleomycin treatments, indicating that Blm10 and Ubp3/Blm3 function to stabilize the genome and protect against cell death. …

At West Lake, Morning Postcard, After Visiting Tiantai Mountain, Alan Soldofsky

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Resource Allocation: Practices In Urban Elementary Schools, Elizabeth Mascitti-Miller

Education Doctoral

Existing research indicates that improved student achievement in urban schools may be impacted by the strategic identification of school finances. Thus, the allocation of discretionary funds and the effectiveness of their use remains a critical element in school finance. This quantitative study examined practices that exist in the allocation of discretionary funds made by urban elementary principals. The study used a matched sampling methodology to provide an analysis of resource allocation in four schools in Good Standing and four schools not in Good Standing. The study found that principals in Good Standing primarily use their discretionary spending in the strategy …