Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Politics Of Decentralizing Criminal Justice Systems In Postconflict Societies: Insights From Liberia (2011-2017), Samuel Opoku-Agyakwa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

After the end of Liberia’s brutal 14 year civil war, the process of rebuilding Liberia has focused on a number of interventions including reforming the criminal justice system. In the current study, institutional, policy, legal reform, and infrastructure development were the approaches used to decentralize Liberia’s Criminal Justice System. Thirty experts were interviewed, and their responses coded using NVivo 12.0. Seven themes and 25 subthemes emerged from the data. It was that found that a top down internationally led approach with minimal involvement of local communities and the neglect of the traditional justice system characterized the decentralization process. Results also …

A Tale Of Two Systems: One Library’S Experience Migrating To A New System And Back, Art Gutierrez

Kansas Library Association College and University Libraries Section Proceedings

The decision to migrate to a new library system is generally a long-term decision. The integrated library system, which some now call library platforms, impact many if not all facets of the library experience. Making a transition to a new system impacts all staff and our patrons on some level. In addition to the traditional services included in a library system we are increasingly seeing new services pop-up including electronic resource management systems, discovery layers, and program management systems, as part of the new library platforms. According to Marshall Breeding’s, Library Perceptions 2017 Survey, a little more than 28% of …

Mn Food (In)Security: Are Anti-Hunger Interventions In The Twin Cities Perpetuating Food Insecurity And Poverty?, Emma Kiley

Departmental Honors Projects

While anti-hunger organizations across the nation have been doing important work to address this issue, we have yet to see a significant decrease in food insecurity or poverty. This project uses a literature review and interviews with Twin Cities anti-hunger organizations to answer the following questions: How are anti-hunger interventions and the root causes of food insecurity mismatched? And what would it look like if anti-hunger organizations who are heavily engaged in the ‘feeding movement’ shifted their understanding to see food insecurity as a symptom of poverty, rather than an isolated issue? Working through themes of food charity models, privatized …

Understanding Collaborative Teacher Teams As Open Systems For Professional Development, Kylie Lipscombe, Kellie A. Buckley-Walker, Peter Mcnamara

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Teacher collaboration continues to be deeply grounded within effective professional development. Teacher teams, where small groups of teachers work together in teaching and learning, have become progressively more popular and are considered one of the most effective approaches to improvement and growth. However, teacher teams are situated within a school system where interrelated sets of elements, such as resources and priorities, interact and impact on their work. These interactions can both enable and constrain the necessary conditions of members working effectively together but also their capabilities in producing a meaningful impact on the school organization. As such, paying attention to …

Analog Least Mean Square Loop For Self-Interference Cancellation In In-Band Full-Duplex Systems, Anh Tuyen Le, Le Chung Tran, Xiaojing Huang, Y. Jay Guo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Analog Least Mean Square (ALMS) loop is a promising method to cancel self-interference (SI) in in-band full-duplex (IBFD) systems. In this talk, the steady state analyses of the residual SI powers in both analog and digital domains are derived in frequency domain. It is proved that the ALMS loop amplifies the frequency components of the residual SI at the edges of the signal spectrum in the analog domain, but the matched filter in the receiver chain reduces this effect. This results in a significant improvement of the interference suppression ratio in the digital domain before information data detection. The lower …

Beam-Based Analog Self-Interference Cancellation With Auxiliary Transmit Chains In Full-Duplex Mimo Systems, Anh Tuyen Le, Le Chung Tran, Xiaojing Huang, Y J. Guo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Analog domain cancellation has been considered as the most important step to mitigate self-interference (SI) in fullduplex (FD) radios. However, in FD multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) systems, this method faces a critical issue of complexity since the number of cancellation circuits increases quadratically with the number of antennas. In this paper, we propose a beam-based radio frequency SI cancellation architecture which uses adaptive filters to significantly reduce the complexity. Data symbols for all the beams are up-converted by auxiliary transmit chains to provide reference signals for all adaptive filters. Hence, the number of cancellation circuits becomes proportional to the number of …

Full-Duplex Ofdm Relaying Systems With Energy Harvesting In Multipath Fading Channels, Jiaman Li, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In this paper, the performance of in-band fullduplex OFDM relaying systems with energy-harvesting and selfinterference cancellation in the polarization domain is analyzed. Specifically, we use the time switching-based relaying protocol to implement energy harvesting. The harvested energy is used by the relay to forward the transmitted information from the source. To cancel the self-interference, the polarization-enabled digital self-interference cancellation scheme is deployed at the relay. Our simulation results show that the full-duplex OFDM energy harvesting relaying system almost doubles the throughput, while maintaining the same bit error performance by a modest increase in the signal-to-noise ratio compared to the half-duplex …

Ftn Signaling-Aided Space-Time Multi-Mode Index Modulation Systems With A Gmp-Based Receiver, Shaoang Li, Nan Wu, Qiaolin Shi, Qinghua Guo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In this paper, we propose a faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling-aided space-time multi-mode index modulation (IM) scheme with a low-complexity Gaussian message passing (GMP) based receiver. The advantages of spatial domain IM, time-domain IM relying on multiple modes and FTN signaling are explored. Specifically, multi-mode IM is employed in time domain by activating all time slots, hence the spectral efficiency is improved substantially compared to its single-mode counterpart. Meanwhile, the transmission rate is further increased by utilizing FTN signaling. At the receiver, based on the state-space model of IM symbols, a two-layer Forney style factor graph (FG) representation for the system is …

To Be, Or Not To Be (Like My Sibling), That Is The Question: Examining Modeling And Differentiation Behaviors Among Siblings In Organized Youth Sport, Keith Vakafutu Osai

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Sibling relationships are typically the most enduring relationship in the family unit. A large body of research documents how sibling relationships occur in the context of the immediate family, how they impact behaviors such as risk-taking, how different cultures view siblings, and how similarities and differences among siblings can be attributed to genetics as well as shared and non-shared experiences. However, one relatively common family context in which sibling dynamics are less understood is organized youth sport. The present dissertation was designed to address multiplegaps in the present literature. This dissertation is comprised of two complementary studies. Study 1, guided …

Tracking The 10be-26al Source-Area Signal In Sediment-Routing Systems Of Arid Central Australia, Martin Struck, John D. Jansen, Toshiyuki Fujioka, Alexandru Tiberiu Codilean, David Fink, Reka H. Fulop, Klaus M. Wilcken, David M. Price, Steven Kotevski, L Keith Fifield, John Chappell

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Sediment-routing systems continuously transfer information and mass from eroding source areas to depositional sinks. Understanding how these systems alter environmental signals is critical when it comes to inferring source-area properties from the sedimentary record. We measure cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al along three large sediment-routing systems ( ∼  100 000 km2) in central Australia with the aim of tracking downstream variations in 10Be-26Al inventories and identifying the factors responsible for these variations. By comparing 56 new cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al measurements in stream sediments with matching data (n =  55) from source areas, we show that 10Be-26Al inventories in hillslope bedrock …

Health Behind Bars: Can Exploring The History Of Prison Health Systems Impact Future Policy?, Kathryn M. Weston, Louella R. Mccarthy, Isobelle Barrett Meyering, Stephen Hampton, Tobias Mackinnon

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral … it prepares us to live more humanely in the present, and to meet rather than to foretell, the future - Carl Becker. Becker's quote reminds us of the importance of revealing and understanding historical practices in order to influence actions in the future. There are compelling reasons for uncovering this history, in particular to better inform government policy makers and health advocates, and to address the impacts of growing community expectations to 'make the punishment fit the crime'.

A Disturbance Observer-Based Robust Controller Design For Systems With Right Half Plane Zeros And Poles, Emre Sariyildiz, Ilhan Mutlu, Rahim Mutlu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper analytically derives the bandwidth limitations of Disturbance Observer (DOB) when plants have Right Half Plane (RHP) zero(s) and pole(s). If the plant is non-minimum phase, then the bandwidth of DOB should be set at a lower value than its upper bound to improve the robust stability and performance. If the plant is unstable, then the bandwidth of DOB should be set at a higher value than its lower bound to achieve the robust stability. The upper and lower bounds are analytically derived by using Poisson integral formula. It is shown that the bandwidth limitation of DOB is directly …

Solar-Assisted Hvac Systems With Integrated Phase Change Materials, Zhenjun Ma, Haoshan Ren, Wenye Lin, Shugang Wang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Solar-assisted heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are receiving increasing attention. This chapter presents the development of HVAC systems with integrated solar photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) collectors and phase change materials (PCMs) to reduce building energy consumption while providing satisfactory indoor thermal comfort. PVT collectors, which can generate both thermal energy and electricity simultaneously, are a promising technology for developing high-performance buildings. As solar energy is intermittent, the integration of phase change materials (PCMs) with PVTdriven HVAC systems can provide an opportunity to effectively utilise solar energy and maximise the performance of HVAC systems. The results showed that the coefficient of performance …

Joint Transmission Power Control And Relay Cooperation For Wban Systems, Hongyun Zhang, Farzad Safaei, Le Chung Tran

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Improving transmission reliability is a crucial challenge for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) because of the instability of channel conditions and the stringent Packet Loss Ratio (PLR) requirement for many WBANs applications. On the other hand, limited by the size of WBAN nodes, the energy consumption of WBAN nodes should be minimized. In this paper, we jointly consider transmission power control, dynamic slot scheduling and two-hop cooperative mechanism and propose an Autocorrelation-based Adaptive Transmission (AAT) scheme that achieves a better trade-off between transmission reliability and energy consumption for WBAN systems. The new scheme is designed to be compatible with IEEE …

Economic Operation Optimization Of Battery Energy Storage Systems In A Solar Rich Microgrid, Herath Pathiranage Asanga Priyankara Jayawardana, Massimo Fiorentini, Duane A. Robinson, Ashish P. Agalgaonkar

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The increasing trend of connecting local distributed generation units to the grid has unlocked new economic opportunities for owners. This is supported by the ongoing development of energy storage technologies, especially battery based systems. In practice, battery storage systems typically operate based on control algorithms where tariff structures and future generation and load profiles are not taken into account. This paper investigates the results of a case study for a microgrid using a proposed optimization model which minimizes cost by considering an import/export tariff structure. The effect of changing time resolution related to variations in demand and generation is examined, …

A Neighborhood-Based Family Center Redesign Process: Taking A Systems Perspective, Patricia Bowie, Richard Sussman

The Foundation Review

This article describes how the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, with a subset of its grantees and their program recipients, teamed with the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities to redesign its evaluation process.

The foundation’s shift from traditional program evaluation to a more participatory, learning-focused approach resulted in new tools to assess variables that had been previously unexamined but were critical to program success.

This article examines the redesign process and those new tools – the data from which are being used to improve employee engagement and front-line practice as part of a cross-agency learning network – …

Establishing Sustainable Community Garden Interventions With Aid From Health Promotion Organizations, Rachel Joann Buenemann

Theses and Dissertations

Community garden interventions provide policy, system and environmental change at the community level to establish health behaviors, which act in contest to obesity risk factors. Limited research examines factors, which influence the sustainability of community garden interventions. Therefore, in this study, a sample of 10 Midwestern community gardens associated through funding from a health promotion organization in 2013, collected data through the interviewing and surveying of 10 garden administrators and surveying of 12 garden volunteers. The study identified garden benefits perceived by garden administrators and volunteers to include contributions to social justice, continued education, enhanced social cohesion, increased access to …

Threat Models For Analyzing Plausible Deniability Of Deniable File Systems, Michal Kedziora, Yang-Wai Chow, Willy Susilo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Plausible deniability is a property of Deniable File System (DFS), which are encrypted using a Plausibly Deniable Encryption (PDE) scheme, where one cannot prove the existence of a hidden file system within it. This paper investigates widely used security models that are commonly employed for analyzing DFSs. We contend that these models are no longer adequate considering the changing technological landscape that now encompass platforms like mobile and cloud computing as a part of everyday life. This necessitates a shift in digital forensic analysis paradigms, as new forensic models are required to detect and analyze DFSs. As such, it is …

Persuasive Systems Design Features In Promoting Medication Management For Consumers, Khin Than Win, Judy Mullan, Sarah Katherine Howard, Harri Oinas-Kukkonen

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Medication safety continues to be a growing concern in the healthcare industry. Providing medication information to consumers and supporting self- management would help to reduce medication errors and to increase medication adherence. This paper reviews the persuasive systems design features used in current medication management applications for consumers. A database search was conducted to identify relevant articles, which were then reviewed using the Persuasive Systems Design model as a framework for analysis. The results highlighted the applicability of these features for the medication management information systems available to consumers. Primary task support and Dialogue support categories were highly cited in …

Editorial: Modelling And Simulation In Health Care Systems, Nagesh Shukla, Pascal Perez, Manoj K. Tiwari, Darek Ceglarek, Joana M. Dias

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Increasingly, changes in population demography, technological and medical advancements, and others, have affected the paradigm of health and social care systems worldwide. These changes have direct effect on organisation and working of health care systems whether they are hospitals, general practitioners or long-term care. An efficient and effective health care system is crucial for high quality of the life in the society. In recent times, major challenges faced by health care systems are accurate diagnosis, operational issues (such as bottlenecks, low throughput, low resource utilisation), hospital redesign, workforce planning and scheduling, streamlining of patient flow, performance management, disease monitoring, and …

Factors Governing Mass Transfer During Membrane Electrodialysis Regeneration Of Licl Solution For Liquid Desiccant Dehumidification Systems, Ali Hussein Al-Jubainawi, Zhenjun Ma, Yi Guo, Long D. Nghiem, Paul Cooper, Weihua Li

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This study investigates the mass transfer mechanisms and the performance of membrane electrodialysis (ED) for regenerating lithium chloride (LiCl) solution commonly used in liquid desiccant dehumidification systems. Experiments were conducted using an ED experimental system while numerical simulation was performed using COMSOL Multiphysics. The results showed that the water flux transfer due to osmosis and electro-osmosis during ED regeneration of LiCl liquid desiccant was significant and could not be ignored. The water flux due to osmosis and electro-osmosis is directly associated with the osmotic gradient and the applied current between the cathode and anode, respectively. The average flux of water …

Thermal Comfort Evaluation Of A Mixed-Mode Ventilated Office Building With Advanced Natural Ventilation And Underfloor Air Distribution Systems, Xiang Deng, Georgios Kokogiannakis, Zhenjun Ma, Paul Cooper

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This study uses field monitoring and post occupancy evaluation (POE) surveys to investigate the indoor thermal comfort of an office building that is located in subtropical zone. The building is special as it combines advanced natural ventilation (ANV) strategies and underfloor air distribution (UFAD) systems. A comparison between a static thermal comfort model and a dynamic thermal comfort model is also conducted. The results show that the thermal comfort conditions in the case study building are satisfactory in summer while in winter there is evidence of thermal discomfort. For the case study building, the static thermal comfort model gives outputs …

Proposed Amendment To Iec/Tr 61000.3.6:2008 For Harmonic Allocation To Loads In Transmission Systems, Tuan Vu, Duane A. Robinson, Victor J. Gosbell, Sarath Perera, Rizah Memisevic

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Ensuring harmonic voltage distortion levels in transmission systems remain below acceptable levels relies on appropriate allocations of emissions to customer loads and bulk supply points. A number of practical issues have been identified with the existing harmonic allocation method for transmission systems in the technical report IEC/TR 61000-3-6:2008, Ed.2: the method to assess the total available power of a busbar, a key component to harmonic allocations, is not intuitive and there is a lack of clarity in the report; the method for sharing planning levels also does not allow unused spare capacity at a busbar to be shared with other …

3d Printing Of Transparent And Conductive Heterogeneous Hydrogel-Elastomer Systems, Kevin Tian, Jinhye Bae, Shannon Bakarich, C H. Yang, Reece Gately, Geoffrey M. Spinks, Marc In Het Panhuis, Zhigang Suo, Joost Vlassak

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

A hydrogel-dielectric elastomer system, polyacrylamide and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), is adapted for extrusion printing for integrated device fabrication. A lithium-chloride-containing hydrogel printing ink is developed and printed onto treated PDMS with no visible signs of delamination and geometrically scaling resistance under moderate uniaxial tension and fatigue. A variety of designs are demonstrated, including a resistive strain gauge and an ionic cable.

Model-Based Optimization Of Ground Source Heat Pump Systems, Zhenjun Ma, Lei Xia

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper presents the development of an optimization strategy for ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems equipped with variable speed pumps in the ground loop system. The optimization problem is formulated using a model-based approach, in which the component models are used to estimate the system performance under various trial settings and an exhaustive search method is used to identify the optimal settings under the search ranges defined. The variable optimized is the outlet water temperature from the ground heat exchangers, which can be used as a set-point to control the operation of the variable speed pumps in the ground …

Ventilative Cooling Through Automated Window Opening Control Systems To Address Thermal Discomfort Risk During The Summer Period: Framework, Simulation And Parametric Analysis, Theofanis Psomas, Massimo Fiorentini, Georgios Kokogiannakis, Per K. Heiselberg

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Automated window opening control systems with integrated ventilative cooling strategies may significantly diminish the thermal discomfort and overheating risk of dwellings during cooling periods in temperate climates. One of the challenges with demonstrating the benefits of the systems is the lack of building performance simulation (BPS) tools which may represent precisely how actual algorithms are applied.

The study supported herein aims to present a framework of how to simulate an advanced ventilative cooling algorithm of a window system on coupled BPS environments (ESP-r and BCVTB tools). Parametric analysis has been conducted to verify specific operational functions of the system. The …

Predicting The Motions And Forces Of Wearable Robotic Systems Using Optimal Control, Matthew Millard, Manish Sreenivasa, Katja Mombaur

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Wearable robotic systems are being developed to prevent injury to the low back. Designing a wearable robotic system is challenging because it is difficult to predict how the exoskeleton will affect the movement of the wearer. To aid the design of exoskeletons, we formulate and numerically solve an optimal control problem (OCP) to predict the movements and forces of a person as they lift a 15 kg box from the ground both without (human-only OCP) and with (with-exo OCP) the aid of an exoskeleton. We model the human body as a sagittal-plane multibody system that is actuated by agonist and …

Transformative Learning Facilitated Dialogue: As A Tool For Social Change An Autoethnography, Leslie A. Saulsberry

Doctoral Dissertations

It is my goal, through this autoethnography, to take you through a reflective journey and present to you my personal theory of how facilitated dialogue in the context of transformative learning, critical reflection, systems thinking, shared vision, and holarchy can create a paradigm shift in our personal consciousness, decisions, behaviors, practice, and social policies—social change. My objective is to show how each theory is like a stepping-stone in the path towards social change. The purpose of this living work is to offer an alternative way of creating a healthy and whole society by exploring how facilitated dialogue can lead to …

Designing Waste Creating Space: A Critical Examination Into Waste Reduction Through Building Techniques, Architectural Design, And Systems, Courtney M. Carrier

Masters Theses

Can we design waste? This is a question I seek to answer through the research of design and systems. Waste is an ever evolving and growing issue in our world today. Buildings and the spaces we inhabit contribute to the vast destruction and increasing detriment to our natural world. There are many “remedies” in the construction industry that attempt to regulate building waste and inspire sustainability, but are merely ruses for a much deeper rooted problem than sustaining the way we live. Sustainability is not enough, it simply means we are doing less bad while still perpetuating the problem of …

Ecosystemic Effects Of Military Sexual Trauma In Male Service Members And Veterans, Jessica A. Carlile

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

Military sexual trauma (MST) represents a significant, endemic concern in the United States Armed Forces. Although approximately 50% of individuals who experience MST are male, few studies have been published examining the overall experience of males who survived MST, and no known project has recruited a sample unaffiliated with Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Therefore, this study investigated the immediate and enduring ecosystemic effects of MST on male service members and veterans recruited entirely outside the VHA system. To evaluate the depth and richness of human experience, 12 participants—10 veterans and two active duty service members (50% Euro-American, 58% partnered, 75% …