Electrical and Computer Engineering

This research consists of the design of a low-power, low-cost, nanosatellite computer system solution. The proposed system solution, and design and implementation of a multiple-bus master FPGA and health monitoring space computer subsystem are described.In the fall of 1998, the US Air Force (USAF) funded Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech), The University of Washington (UW), and Utah State University (USU) with $100,000 each to pursue a formation-flying sate...

Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise

Twenty untrained men (18-25 y) were assigned to consume either a milk supplement (MILK) or a carbohydrate-electrolyte supplement (CHO) immediately following each resistance workout during a 10 wk resistance training program. Subjects trained 3 d/wk beginning with an intensity of 55% 1-RM and progressing to 97% 1-RM by wk 10. Muscle strength (1-RM), body composition (DEXA) and resting, fasted serum concentrations of total and free testosterone and IGF-1 were measured pre- and post-training. CHO t...

Industrial and Systems Engineering

The development of a "Next Generation Manufacturing System" is currently an active area of research worldwide. The research described in this dissertation addresses one sub-element within this research area; namely, the demonstration of a decentralized, automated production architecture. The goal of the work is to increase the ability of a manufacturing enterprise to respond to rapid technological and market change in the post-2000 global economy. The research is comprised of three obj...

Veterinary Medical Sciences

It is well documented that the incidence of renal disease, and therefore renal dysfunction, increases with age in many species of mammals. Such alterations in renal structure and function may significantly affect long-term toxicology studies. The purpose of this study was to assess the temporal evolution of glomerulosclerosis, an important renal lesion, in laboratory housed dogs, an important model system in chronic toxicological studies. We histopathologically examined representative sections o...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

The purpose of this study was to examine the key factors associated with sustaining an effective educational program. The primary research question was: How did the Bright Beginnings: Fantastic Follow Through program sustain itself for more than 25 years? The secondary research questions asked in this study were: (a) what role did the school context play in sustaining the program; (b) what role did leadership play in sustaining the program; (c) how did the school culture affect sustaining the pr...

Architecture

Things are changing, but nothing changes, and still there are changes.The rise of science and technology facilitate the means to an end. As it seem, many undeveloped countries are rapidly competing to be apart of a modern civilization. Through these rapid revolutions, civilization becomes perplex that also carries the hidden destruction of its pastordinary civilization and valuable culture. They replaced many historical building with high tech building. They build wider freeways that alters the ...

Human Development

Teaching for Freedom: A Case in GhanaHelen BondABSTRACTThe United Nations declared the years 1995 to 2004 as the Decade for Human Rights Education. The principles of human rights education promote dignity, tolerance, and peace by educating individuals and groups to respect, defend, and advocate for their rights. These rights are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948 making human rights a global responsibility. During this decade nations are called upon...

Mining and Minerals Engineering

Coal preparation is widely regarded as a cost effective method for reducing the amounts of potentially hazardous air pollutant precursors (HAPPs) that occur as trace elements in the run-of-mine coals. Unfortunately, many existing coal preparation plants are inefficient in removing trace elements because of poor circuit design and inadequate liberation of coal and mineral matter. These problems are often difficult to correct in the absence of characterization data regarding the mineralogical asso...

Electrical and Computer Engineering

In this dissertation we introduce a new class of pursuit-evasion games; the herding problem. Unlike regular pursuit evasion games where the pursuer aims to hunt the evader the objective of the pursuer in this game is to drive the evader to a certain location on the x-y grid. The dissertation deals with this problem using two different methodologies. In the first, the roblem is introduced in the continuous-time, continuous-space domain. The continuous time model of the problem is proposed, analyz...

Computer Science

With the continuing growth of the Internet and network protocols, there is a need for Protocol Development Environments. Simulation environments like ns and OPNET require protocol code to be rewritten in a discrete event model. Direct Code Execution Environments (DCEE) solve the Verification and Validation problems by supporting the execution of unmodified protocol code in a controlled environment. Open Network Emulator (ONE) is a system supporting Direct Code Execution in a parallel environment...

Political Science

The concept of civil society has gained popularity among development organizations since the end of the cold war. Having a strong civil society is said to be an important foundation for democracy and even a necessity for an effective and prospering economy. This has resulted in large sums of money being funneled into programs meant to build civil society in developing countries and societies described as being in transition. Some scholars have argued that money intended to build civil society is...

Animal and Poultry Sciences

This group of experiments focused on relationships between diet, somatotropic axis, and growth. Growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) are factors in the somatotropic axis, and important to development of growth cartilage in the young animal. The entire study was divided into four main experiments. Characteristics of growth in 113 Thoroughbred foals born over a five year period were described with a series of empirical and physiological equations. Glycemic and insulinemic r...

Economics

<p>This study uses a random coefficient estimation procedure to test the hypothesis that much of the volatility in the U.S./Canada real exchange rate over the time period 1971 through 1999 is due to the relative price of non-traded goods to traded goods. The model specification used in this study provides estimates of the sensitivity of movements in the U.S./Canada real exchange rate to movements in both the relative price of traded goods and the relative price of non-traded goods ...

Communication Studies

Between the years of 1919 and 1933, the Weimar Republic was a world leader in art and entertainment. However, it was also torn apart by severe economic depressions and political violence. This intense atmosphere provided a powerful context for the art and films of the period. As the political and economic tides shifted, the style of painting and filmmaking changed, as well. The idealistic Expressionist art of the years immediately following the optimistic revolution subsided as a sober realism e...

Economics

This dissertation attempts to construct a theory which states that forms of enterprise are determined to a large extent by potential market failure. In the four independent, but closely interrelated chapters, I derive this hypothesis through theoretical reasoning, and suppose it by referring to empirical observations.Chapter 1, Forms of enterprise as a response to market failure, proposes the main idea that forms of enterprise are determined by market failure. I take three representative types o...

Teaching and Learning

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Veterinary Medical Sciences

MICROVASCULAR FREE TISSUE TRANSFER OF THE RECTUS ABDOMINIS MUSCLE IN DOGSbyEarl F. Calfee III(ABSTRACT)Objective - To assess donor site morbidity and survival of the rectus abdominis muscle with an overlying skin graft after free tissue transfer to a medial femorotibial defect in dogs.Study Design - Experimental studySample Population Phase one - six canine cadavers / Phase two - seven adult mixed breed dogsMethods Phase one - The rectus abdominis muscle was removed from cadavers, muscular and v...

Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science

The introduction of herbicide resistant crops offers producers many more options for weed control systems. These crops allow environmentally safe, non-selective herbicides to be used as selective herbicides, broadening the spectrum of weeds controlled, while not harming the crop. As these crops are very new on the market, investigation of their performance under various environmental conditions as well as in various weed control programs is needed. Liberty-link ® soybeans are resi...

Forestry

Diameter distributions of juvenile loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) with different planting densities were characterized utilizing a two-parameter Weibull distribution. Trend analysis was employed to describe the effects of planting density, age, relative spacing, and rectangularity on the estimated diameter distributions for juvenile loblolly pine. A reparameterization of the two-parameter Weibull distribution was sought to reduce the dispersion of the estimated shape parameter.Methods that quant...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

College administrators have been in the business of employing students as RAs or an equivalent position for many years. Over those many years, the students and the type of students hired for this position changed. Once again, it is time for a generational change. Gen Y students are currently entering at least their second year of college and are now eligible to apply for RA positions.The present study operated on the assumption that student motivations to seek the RA position may have changed ov...

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

Limited information is available on carbon(C)sequestered in frigid Appalachian forest soils.However,the cool moist forests of the high elevationsprobably hold more C than any other mineral soils in Virginia.The objectives of the study were to determine the amount and variabilityof soil C across aspect and slope classes in a frigidtemperature regime area of Tazewell County, VA.Soils were sampled to characterize two aspect classes, N(340-90º) and S (160-270º),and three slope clas...

Industrial and Systems Engineering

The general practice in performance and production efficiency measurement has been to ignore additional products of most transformation processes that can be classified as undesirable outputs which are a subset of the output set. Without the inclusion of these factors, the efficiency evaluation becomes a purely technical measure of the system alone, and does not account for the interaction of the system with the surrounding environment and the impact of policy decisions on the system. In additio...

Chemical Engineering

A series of iron, cobalt and nickel transition metal phosphides was synthesized by means of temperature-programmed reduction (TPR) of the corresponding phosphates. The same materials, Fe2P, CoP and Ni2P, were also prepared on a silica (SiO2) support. The phase purity of these catalysts was established by x-ray diffraction (XRD), and the surface properties were determined by N2 BET specific surface area (Sg) measurements and CO chemisorption. The activities of the silica-supported catalysts were ...

Psychology

This quasi-experimental field study examined the efficacy of an intervention to decrease alcohol abuse by college students. The harm reduction approach states that the ultimate goal when dealing with an unsafe behavior should be abstinence, but any change in behavior in the direction of less harm is supported. This approach was used as the basis of the current research, in combination with differential reinforcement in order to reduce alcohol consumption and its behavioral outcome, blood alcohol...

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

Double cropping soybean after small grain harvest does not always allow sufficient canopy growth to maximize photosynthesis and seed yield. This is due to a shorter growing season and moisture deficits common to the Mid-Atlantic USA. Leaf area index (LAI) is the ratio of unit leaf area of a crop to unit ground area and is a reliable indicator of leaf area development and crop biomass. An LAI of 3.5 to 4.0 by flowering is required to maximize yield potential. Soybean LAI will vary within and betw...

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Ensuring inspection performance is not a trivial design problem, because inspection is a complex and difficult task that tends to be error-prone, whether performed by human or by automated machines. Due to economical or technological reasons, human inspectors are responsible for inspection functions in many cases. Humans, however, are rarely perfect. A system of manual inspection was found to be approximately 80-90% effective, thus allowing non-confirming parts to be processed (Harris & ...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

This paper provides a historical analysis of the desegregation of George Washington High School and Langston High School in Danville, Virginia in 1970. The author focuses on the related desegregation litigation on a national, state, and local level as well as the historical context for desegregation in the Commonwealth of Virginia.In August of 1970, Danville, Virginia embarked on a new era in education as its schools would be totally desegregated. It would no longer operate under the freedom of ...

Teaching and Learning

A large number of individuals who are identified as having learning disabilities have deficits in written expression. Existing theory and research indicate that for those individuals oral expression not only precedes, but also exceeds their written expression capabilities. As a result, dictation has been investigated as an accommodation for these individuals. Research in this area indicates that dictation does tend to increase quality, length, and rate of production of written expression. This m...

Teaching and Learning

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Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

The cross-case analysis described in this study explores the patterns of practice that support the induction needs of Alternatively Certified Teachers (ACTs) in the high school educational environment of a large suburban school district. Bronfenbrenner s (1976) systemic model of the educational environment that envisions a series of nested, interacting sub-systems is utilized as a roadmap for exploration. Data were collected beginning in the macro-system and continuing through the exo-system, me...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

This study investigated teachers perceptions of the influences of action research on their thinking about instructional practices and the impact of this thinking on teaching practices. The four specific areas of investigation were teachers perceptions about (a) the overall teacher role, (b) teachers knowledge about teaching, (c) teaching practices, and (d) reflective practices. The data were collected from interviews with teacher researchers, informal classroom observations, and collection of te...

Science and Technology Studies

This dissertation presents a case study the Learning in Networked Communities (LiNC) project. The focus of the study is on the social processes involved in the development and deployment of technologies associated with the LiNC project. These processes involved the work of university investigators, software developers, teachers and other researchers. The technologies that were developed and deployed were collaborative computer network-based software tools for use in several local high school and...

Chemical Engineering

The motivation for the determination of the viscosity of polymer solutions in dense fluids at the critical polymer concentration stems from the need to understand the factors that influence the time scale of phase separation in systems that undergo spinodal decomposition upon a pressure quench. In a recent investigation of PDMS + CO2 and PE + n-pentane where molecular weights of the polymers and the critical polymer concentrations were comparable, significant differences were observed in the tim...

Marketing

Despite the fact that most firms are late entrants in any product market, research on how to achieve a late-mover advantage is limited and lags behind the theoretical work on first-mover advantage. The strategic choice a late mover can utilize to compete against the pioneer is largely underdeveloped. Further, extant studies provide contradictory arguments and predictions regarding the efficacy of two basic late entry strategies: an enhancing strategy (providing a late entrant with enhanced featu...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

<html><head><title>S. Constantino Abstract</title><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">A review of research concludes that a high proportion of high school students are disengaged from their learning and that the adolescent peer culture demeans academic success. Parents are just a...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

The grounded theory presented in this study describes practices elementary principals utilize in influencing new teachers to remain in education. Eleven teachers and three elementary principals from one school division in Virginia participated in this study. Interview data were collected, elementary principals were shadowed, and documents were analyzed. Thematic categories and sub categories were formed through data analysis. The grounded theory that resulted from this study is: principals who c...

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) is a partnership among various organizations including NASA, the FAA, US aviation industry, state and local aviation officials, and universities. The program objectives are intend to reduce travel times by providing high-speed, safe travel alternatives by making use of small aircraft and underused small airports throughout the nation. A major component of the SATS program is the Smart Landing Facility (SLF). The SLF is a small airport that has been...

Agricultural and Applied Economics

Concerns about the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, human health, and wildlife have led to research and promotion of integrated pest management (IPM) strategies. Recently, an IPM program was introduced in the Albanian olive sector through the USAID-funded global IPM-CRSP project to develop improved olive IPM technologies. This study develops and applies a protocol for integrated economic impact assessment of olive pest management strategies designed by the IPM-CRSP project in Al...

Career & Technical Education

The objective of this experiment was to compare three group decision-making strategies and their effects on the group decision-making process. Two of the strategies, Dialectical Inquiry and Devils Advocacy, were structured while the control condition, Unstructured Consensus Seeking, was non-directed, thus unstructured. The following dependent variables were measured: (a) decision quality, (b) cognitive conflict, (c) affective conflict, and (d) decision commitment. Seventy-two undergraduate parti...

Horticulture

The objective of this work was to determine if summer dormancy of boxwood could be removed either through nutritional or hormonal means. Buxus sempervirens L. Suffruticosa, B. sempervirens Vardar Valley, and B sinica var. insularis (Nakai) Justin Brouwers were used for these studies. In the nutrition study, experiments were conducted to examine the effects of various levels of Osmocote 15-9-12 and liquid 10-4-6 on growth of boxwood. Optimal shoot dry weight was achieved at applications of 12 to ...

Career and Technical Education

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of an expert group of secondary school business teachers regarding whether previously identified competencies for working with students who have disabilities are important for secondary business teachers. The research questions used as a guide to conduct the study were:1. From a list of identified competencies compiled from course objectives and literature, to what extent did the members of the expert panel of secondary school business t...

Teaching and Learning

A portraiture study was conducted with four children enrolled in various grades of a rural Virginia elementary school. . Purposeful sampling was used as a selection tool, and all students were participants of the Title I program, unsuccessfully discontinued from the Reading Recovery program, and were tested as field dependent, a cognitive characteristic, using the Children s Embedded Figures Test created by Witkin, et al (1971).These participants were observed within a classroom setting, a small...

Psychology

The Actively Caring for KIDS Process, a multi-component program that taught retail store sales associates to act as behavior-change agents for child passenger safety, was implemented at a nationwide-chain discount store and evaluated with an interrupted time series design and a similar control site for comparison. Key components of the KIDS Process included a) training of sales associates to act as behavior-change agents at the point-of-purchase, b) the use of in-store awareness and supportive m...

Human Development

<html><head><title>Sue Creech s Abstract</title><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><p>The purpose of this study was to examine factors that influence the experienceof urinary incontinence (UI) as it relates to sexual intimacy for older women.Additionally, I wanted ...

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Determining the best way for evaluating organizational performance is a complex problem as it involves assessment of indicators in multiple dimensions. In the case of nonprofit social service provision this evaluation needs to consider also the outcomes of the service. This research develops a performance measurement system that collects performance indicators, evaluates them and provides concrete performance improvement recommendations to decision-makers in the nonprofit sector. Three dimension...

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The research presented in this dissertation is on the development and application of advanced reduced rank adaptive signal processing techniques for high data rate wireless code division multiple access (CDMA) communications systems. This is an important area of research in the field of wireless communications. Current systems are moving towards the use of multiple simultaneous users in a given channel to increase system capacity as well as spatial and/or temporal diversity for improved performa...

Finance, Insurance, and Business Law

The Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) model represents the latest in powerful arbitrage-free technology for modeling the term structure and managing interest rate risk. Yet risk management strategies in the form of immunization portfolios using duration, convexity, and M-square are still widely used in bond portfolio management today. This study addresses the question of how traditional risk measures and immunization strategies perform when the term structure evolves in the HJM manner. Using Monte Carlo...

Engineering Science and Mechanics

The flow field of a twin jet impinging on ground plane with and without free-stream and at low jet-height-to-diameter ratios was investigated using the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique. Detailed, time-averaged flow field data are obtained via the high-resolution and the high-sampling rate instantaneous velocity field that is made available via the PIV technique.A model of twin jet issuing from 0.245m circular plate, with 0.019m jet exit diameter, and with jet span to diameter ratio of ...

Civil Engineering

Lime-cement columns were constructed to improve soft ground at the I-95/Route 1 Interchange in Alexandria, Virginia. As part of the test embankment program, two different commercial laboratories performed laboratory tests on treated soil, and they produced strikingly different unconfined compression test results. Further, both sets of results are different from test results for similar soils available in the published literature. This situation created uncertainties and a conservative design phi...

Forestry

Planning is the act of determining the steps necessary for an organization to obtain goals in the future. Planning takes on even more importance as competition increases and additional efficiency is needed. In todays competitive business environment, any method that can be utilized to maintain an advantage over an organizations competitors must be investigated.Organizations allocate time and resources dedicated to planning differently. Differences are directly related to the goal that is being p...