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Maasdorp, C., and S. M. Holtzhausen. "Bridging the gap towards postgraduate studies at the Central University of Technology, Free State." Interim : Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 10 , Issue 1: Central University of Technology Free State Bloemfontein, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/11462/334.
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Published ArticleA worldwide concern are focusing on the quality of postgraduate training in higher education institutions, the length of time it takes postgraduate students to complete their studies, and the high percentage of postgraduate students who terminate there studies. Furthermore the involvement in research is making increasing quality demands on higher education institutions in terms of sustaining high-level research capability and involvement on an efficient and effective basis. It is clear that the postgraduate environment will have certain expectations as well as obstacles for the students and therefore if the undergraduate students are prepared beforehand for the postgraduate environment, they will be able to bridge the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate studies more successfully.
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Graves, Kristi Rae. "A Mixed Method Analysis of The Ohio State University Mathematics Coaching Program Site Visits." Ashland University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ashland1334796584.
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Chang, Yao. "Framing China how U.S. media reported eight U.S. state visits by top Chinese leaders /." [Ames, Iowa : Iowa State University], 2008.
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Mirll, Molly McLeod. "Vigorous Cold War handshakes : reviewing Nixon's 1972 China trip /." Read thesis online, 2007. http://library.uco.edu/UCOthesis/MirllMM2007.pdf.
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Glass, Katherine Elizabeth. "Patient Perceptions of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in Outpatient Healthcare Visits: A Survey of the State of Ohio." The Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1337784101.
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Caiado, André João Galo. "A utilidade das visitas oficiais: a percepção dos empresários que integram as comitivas oficiais." Master's thesis, Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10216/10800.
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Economia e Gestão InternacionalMaster in International Economics and Management
A participação de empresários em visitas oficiais realizadas por Chefes de Estado ou de Governo é uma forma das entidades oficiais promoverem a internacionalização e as exportações das empresas. Existe um vasto corpo de literatura sobre estudos que se debruçaram sobre a promoção das exportações e sobre a avaliação de programas de promoção das exportações. Contudo, até à data, parece não ter sido avaliada a utilidade das visitas oficiais como meio de promoção das exportações. Nesse sentido, este estudo é um contributo para a literatura teórica e empírica. É apresentada uma base teórica para fundamentar a utilidade das visitas oficiais, elaborada a partir da literatura existente sobre a promoção das exportações, programas de promoção das exportações e missões comerciais. A nível empírico, este estudo aferiu a percepção dos empresários portugueses acerca da utilidade das visitas oficiais, através da realização de um inquérito aos empresários que participaram em 12 visitas oficiais organizadas pelos Chefes de Estado e de Governo, entre 2005 e 2008. Adicionalmente, o estudo propõe um modelo multivariável que analisa em que medida as características estruturais das empresas, e, as características associadas à visita oficial, podem afectar o modo como os empresários avaliam a utilidade das visitas oficiais para a concretização de determinados objectivos. Os resultados sugerem que a qualidade dos contactos e das informações obtidas durante a visita é um factor estatisticamente significativo e contribui positivamente para todos os objectivos avaliados. Os resultados revelam ainda, que factores como a dimensão, o capital estrangeiro, a intensidade exportadora, a intensidade de inovação, a experiência exportadora no mercado visitado, a existência de contactos ou negócios prévios, ou o facto de ser a primeira vez que a empresa visita o mercado, tendem a afectar o modo como as empresas avaliam a utilidade das visitas oficiais para a realização de determinados objectivos.
The participation of businessmen in official visits done by Heads of State or Government is a way found by official authorities to promote exports and the internationalization of the firms. There is a large body of literature about export promotion and the evaluation of export promotion programs. However, to date, it seems has not been evaluated the usefulness of official visits as a way to promote firms exports. This study provides a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature. The study presents a theoretical basis to substantiate the usefulness of official visits found in the literature about export promotion, export promotion programs and trade missions. A survey was done questioning Portuguese businessmen who had participated in 12 official visits to evaluate the usefulness of those visits. Additionally, the study proposes a multivariable model to examine how firm and visit caractheristics do affect, or not, the firms evaluation about official visits. The estimated results suggest that the quality of contacts and information gained during the visit positively affect the impact over a set of objectives. The results also reveal that factors such as firm s size, foreign ownership, export intensity, R&D intensity, experience in the market, the existence of previous contacts or business, or first visit to the market affect the firms evaluation about some objectives of official visits.
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Caiado, André João Galo. "A utilidade das visitas oficiais: a percepção dos empresários que integram as comitivas oficiais." Dissertação, Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10216/10800.
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Economia e Gestão InternacionalMaster in International Economics and Management
A participação de empresários em visitas oficiais realizadas por Chefes de Estado ou de Governo é uma forma das entidades oficiais promoverem a internacionalização e as exportações das empresas. Existe um vasto corpo de literatura sobre estudos que se debruçaram sobre a promoção das exportações e sobre a avaliação de programas de promoção das exportações. Contudo, até à data, parece não ter sido avaliada a utilidade das visitas oficiais como meio de promoção das exportações. Nesse sentido, este estudo é um contributo para a literatura teórica e empírica. É apresentada uma base teórica para fundamentar a utilidade das visitas oficiais, elaborada a partir da literatura existente sobre a promoção das exportações, programas de promoção das exportações e missões comerciais. A nível empírico, este estudo aferiu a percepção dos empresários portugueses acerca da utilidade das visitas oficiais, através da realização de um inquérito aos empresários que participaram em 12 visitas oficiais organizadas pelos Chefes de Estado e de Governo, entre 2005 e 2008. Adicionalmente, o estudo propõe um modelo multivariável que analisa em que medida as características estruturais das empresas, e, as características associadas à visita oficial, podem afectar o modo como os empresários avaliam a utilidade das visitas oficiais para a concretização de determinados objectivos. Os resultados sugerem que a qualidade dos contactos e das informações obtidas durante a visita é um factor estatisticamente significativo e contribui positivamente para todos os objectivos avaliados. Os resultados revelam ainda, que factores como a dimensão, o capital estrangeiro, a intensidade exportadora, a intensidade de inovação, a experiência exportadora no mercado visitado, a existência de contactos ou negócios prévios, ou o facto de ser a primeira vez que a empresa visita o mercado, tendem a afectar o modo como as empresas avaliam a utilidade das visitas oficiais para a realização de determinados objectivos.
The participation of businessmen in official visits done by Heads of State or Government is a way found by official authorities to promote exports and the internationalization of the firms. There is a large body of literature about export promotion and the evaluation of export promotion programs. However, to date, it seems has not been evaluated the usefulness of official visits as a way to promote firms exports. This study provides a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature. The study presents a theoretical basis to substantiate the usefulness of official visits found in the literature about export promotion, export promotion programs and trade missions. A survey was done questioning Portuguese businessmen who had participated in 12 official visits to evaluate the usefulness of those visits. Additionally, the study proposes a multivariable model to examine how firm and visit caractheristics do affect, or not, the firms evaluation about official visits. The estimated results suggest that the quality of contacts and information gained during the visit positively affect the impact over a set of objectives. The results also reveal that factors such as firm s size, foreign ownership, export intensity, R&D intensity, experience in the market, the existence of previous contacts or business, or first visit to the market affect the firms evaluation about some objectives of official visits.
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Schmitt, Thorsten. "Vision-based probabilistic state estimation for cooperating autonomous robots." [S.l. : s.n.], 2004. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=97442997X.
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Al-Takrouri, Saleh Othman Saleh Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications Faculty of Engineering UNSW. "Robust state estimation and model validation techniques in computer vision." Publisher:University of New South Wales. Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications, 2008. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/41002.
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The main objective of this thesis is to apply ideas and techniques from modern control theory, especially from robust state estimation and model validation, to various important problems in computer vision. Robust model validation is used in texture recognition where new approaches for classifying texture samples and segmenting textured images are developed. Also, a new model validation approach to motion primitive recognition is demonstrated by considering the motion segmentation problem for a mobile wheeled robot. A new approach to image inpainting based on robust state estimation is proposed where the implementation presented here concerns with recovering corrupted frames in video sequences. Another application addressed in this thesis based on robust state estimation is video-based tracking. A new tracking system is proposed to follow connected regions in video frames representing the objects in consideration. The system accommodates tracking multiple objects and is designed to be robust towards occlusions. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed solutions, examples are provided where the developed methods are applied to various gray-scale images, colored images, gray-scale videos and colored videos. In addition, a new algorithm is introduced for motion estimation via inverse polynomial interpolation. Motion estimation plays a primary role within the video-based tracking system proposed in this thesis. The proposed motion estimation algorithm is also applied to medical image sequences. Motion estimation results presented in this thesis include pairs of images from a echocardiography video and a robot-assisted surgery video.
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Mashner, Michael. "Multirate machine vision based Kalman filtering and state feedback control." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/16082.
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Wassenberg, Katherine Elizabeth. "Mount San Jacinto State Park Visitor Attributes, Preferences, and Perceptions." DigitalCommons@CalPoly, 2009. https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/91.
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The purpose of the study was to assess Mount San Jacinto State Park visitor attributes, visit attributes, preferences, and perceptions. Visitor surveys were conducted at two predetermined points within Mount San Jacinto State Park Wilderness Area, the entrance to Long Valley and adjacent to the Long Valley Ranger Station, during summer 2008. Three hundred and seventy-eight subjects completed one of the two visitor surveys (97.68% response rate), 256 (67.7%) completed the Long Valley Survey and 122 (32.3%) completed the Wilderness Survey. The subjects were mostly male, married, from California, and White or Latino/Hispanic. The average age was 45 years old with some college education and relatively high levels of income (42.4% reported annual household incomes above $100,000). The mean number of previous park visits was 15 and the subjects visited the park an average of 3.74 times in 2008. The amount of time spent in the wilderness was an average of 4.68 hours. Most visitors participated in photography, wildlife viewing, shopping at the gift shop, bird watching, visiting the visitor center, eating at the snack bar, and hiking. The subjects agreed that conditions in the park are safe and that there are adequate ranger patrols. Wilderness visitors had significantly higher agreement scores for adequate ranger patrols, too many people at Mountain Station, and that they prefer to see fewer people in the park. The overall crowding mean score was slightly below “somewhat crowded” with Wilderness visitors reporting significantly higher levels of crowding than Long Valley visitors. Visitor perceptions of problems in the park were rated “not a problem” for all items; however, Wilderness visitors perceived encounters of large groups on a trail and restrooms needing cleaning to be more of a problem than was perceived by Long Valley visitors. Worn trails, side trails, and erosion along trails were the conditions most noticed by the subjects. Significantly more Wilderness visitors than Long Valley visitors noticed erosion along trails and tree root exposure on trails.
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Rocharungsat, Pimrawee. "A study of travel counselor training programs of state traveler information centers." Online version, 1998. http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/1998/1998rocharungsatp.pdf.
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Hatch, Alison Sara. "Khruschev's visit to the United States, September 15-27, 1959 /." Title page, contents and introduction only, 1994. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09arh361.pdf.
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Claire-Woldt, Lynnette. "Business success : entrepreneurial visions from the early stage /." view abstract or download file of text, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3181093.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-183). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Mohammad, Robina. "The state. governance and visions of womanhood : Spain's voyage to the centre." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.401685.
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Caddell, Martha. "'Outward looking eyes' : visions of schooling, development and the state in Nepal." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23286.
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This study explores the relationship between global discourses of education and development, how those ideas are taken up and utilised in the context of national programme development and implementation, and their further reinterpretation by groups at the district and school level. I engage in an examination of development as a socio-political process in order to critically explore the tensions and paradoxes evident in the promotion of schooling in contemporary Nepal. In doing so, I challenge the depoliticised vision of schooling which underpins dominant donor discourses of education reform and highlight the political and contested nature of education administration and the everyday activities in school. I take as my starting point Nepal's Basic and Primary Education Project (BPEP), a multi-donor initiative aiming to improve access to schooling, the quality of education provision and the efficiency of education administration. Developed in line with the goals of the World Conference on Education for All, the initiative starts from the assumption that the various parties involved - donors, central government officials, district education office staff, teachers and parents - share a common interest in and commitment to the promotion of schooling. As such, schooling is considered a clear development 'good' and the state viewed as a single entity, acting as a benign provider of this service. Through an exploration of the context into which this programme is inserted, the limitations of this dominant consensus based model are considered. Particular focus is given to the multiple interests played out in the arena of education reform challenging the assumption of shared interests in expanding schooling opportunities. The study traverses from debates between the various donor and central government officials in Kathmandu, through the implementation of the process of District Education Planning, to an examination of the everyday practices of school life and the direct, and often violent, challenges made to the state through schools. At each level, the conflicts of interest and multiple views of the relationship between schooling, development and the state in Nepal are highlighted, challenging the idea that a consensus exists around the content and purpose of schooling.
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Fleet, Allison E. "Visions for peace, American educationists, the State Department and the creations of UNESCO." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0016/MQ54618.pdf.
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Visser, Reidar. "The failed gulf state : competing visions for the future of Basra, 1921-1929." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270571.
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Zell, Stacy Kay. "Characterizing the Conversation: A Historical Re-view of Maria Montessori's Visits to the United States 1913-1918." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/30319.
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This historical re-view of the events and interactions of Maria Montessori's visit to the United States between the years 1913 and 1918 begins by examining Montessori's personal history, with an emphasis on her educational background leading up to her becoming the first female physician in Italy. After discussing her scientific background briefly, the document specifically addresses several of Montessori's educational concepts. Next, this study examines specific nuances of organization, power and intent found in the educational system of the United States at the time of her visits. Particular emphasis is placed on the implications of industrialization, increasing immigration and the response of the educational establishment to these issues. Interactions and events from her visits in the United States follow. Montessori's influences on and experiences with prominent figures in the U.S. at that time are accentuated through the events that highlight her travels. After detailing each visit in the historical context in which it occurred, the piece continues with the author's discussion of how the dissertation applies to teaching history in the foundations. The piece concludes with conceptual suggestions of ways to increase diverse social awareness and encourage community-based responses of pre-service and in-service public school educators.Ph. D.
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Wright-Rios, Edward. "Piety and progress : vision, shrine, and society in Oaxaca, 1887-1934 /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3130409.
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Sigal, Leonid. "Continuous-state graphical models for object localization, pose estimation and tracking." View abstract/electronic edition; access limited to Brown University users, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3318361.
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Hoke, Joni Lea. "Homegrown rhetoric rhetorical vision in states' marketing of local foods /." Connect to this title online, 2009. http://etd.lib.clemson.edu/documents/1247508821/.
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Wimelius, Malin. "On Islamism and modernity : Analysing Islamist ideas on and visions of the Islamic state." Doctoral thesis, Umeå universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2003. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-15166.
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This dissertation is a study of Islamist ideas on and visions of the Islamic state. It begins with the observation that although a growing amount of research explores Islamism; few studies closely investigate Islamist ideas. The aim of this dissertation is to empirically and theoretically contribute to the understanding and interpretation of contemporary Islamism and its intellectual origins. Sayyid Qutb, Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi and Ruhollah Khomeini are generally considered as sources of inspiration to Islamists currently active. Their ideas are analysed and compared to those of two Islamist parties; the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in Pakistan and the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) in Algeria. Islamism is part of a global religious resurgence that has taken many politicai and other social scientists by surprise. According to modernization and secularisation theories, such a resurgence was not to be expected. The focus in this study is therefore on the relationship between visions of the Islamic state and modernity. In this respect, two theoretical positions are critically assessed; one stating that we should understand Islamism in terms of a rejection of modernity and the other that Islamism can be understood and interpreted as an expression of there being multiple or alternative modernities. A key issue in this regard revolves around the question of how modernity is alternative and what that means. A content-oriented analysis of ideas — based on a social constructivist approach and anchored in practical hermeneutics - is utilized in the reconstruction and analysis of Islamist texts. A framework for analysis is developed in which dimensions of modernity are constructed. Islamist ideas on and visions of the Islamic state are analysed in terms of what is rejected, accepted or possibly added to these dimensions. The empirical contribution to research on Islamism is the content-oriented analysis of Islamist ideas. This analysis also helps to explore similarities and differences between the ideas of Qutb, Mawdudi and Khomeini and those of the JI and the FIS. The comparisons show that Islamist ideas are under evolution; there are important differences between the two contemporary parties and their sources of inspiration. Moreover, the content-oriented analysis reveals the complexity of the relationship between modernity and visions of the Islamic state. The theoretical contribution involves both theory-testing and theory-development. It is concluded that theories of multiple or alternative modernities, with some reservations, can be applied to Islamist ideas on and visions of the Islamic state.digitalisering@umu
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Gow, Michael. "Professing hegemony : academia and the state vision for higher education in 21st century China." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.601181.
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Utilizing a theoretical framework drawing on Gramsci's theory of hegemony; Jonathan Joseph's critical realist 'duality of hegemony'. and Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field, this thesis aims to promote an understanding of Chinese HE reform and development within the wider context of China's teleological modernization project. It aims to understand how agential hegemonic projects and the corresponding HE reform policies and initiatives are mediated through the Chinese HE context; how deeply-rooted structurally hegemonic conventions and practices impact upon this process of mediation; how competition over resources strategically deployed by the state mobilizes individual actors in the field of Chinese HE and directs their efforts to accumulate various forms of capital, and how such mass action results in the propulsion of the Chinese HE sector on a trajectory which contributes to the achievement of national development objectives. Methodologically, the thesis adopts Burawoy's extended case method, incorporating critical discourse analysis of policy documents, interview data, and ethnographic participant observation to facilitate a theoretically informed analysis of the reform and development of Chinese HE. This reflexive approach has the overarching objective of reconstructing Gramsci's theory of hegemony to take into account the particularities of the Chinese case. The thesis ultimately characterises the Chinese HE sector as a robust social institution in service of the integral Chinese state and which combines elements of consensus building and dissent negation to contribute to a limited, as opposed to expansive, hegemony. The constraining effect of cultural structures, practices and conventions effect the negation of dissent and reduce the requirement for explicit coercive interventions, while consensus is actively negotiated around ideas that centre on national solidarity and the provision of opportunities for the accumulation of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. This capacity for dissent negation without recourse to explicitly coercive means is viewed as arising from the distinctly differentiated modes of association prevalent in Chinese society, rooted in Confucian norms and values, and which characterize social relations in the field of Chinese HE and in wider Chinese society.
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Previtali, Giuseppe (ORCID:0000-0001-5856-718X). "Morte in diretta. Spettacolarizzazione e uso politico di un tabù visivo." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Bergamo, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10446/128619.
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Il presente lavoro si propone di indagare il fenomeno visivo della morte filmata indagandone le sue funzioni, a cavallo fra spettacolarizzazione del decesso e suo uso politico, attraverso l’esplorazione di tre casi di studio. Ciascuna di queste prospettive sul tema si premurerà tanto di ricostruire le coordinate storico-culturali del proprio oggetto di attenzione quanto di connetterlo ad una rete di riflessioni situate a cavallo fra teoria del cinema e studi sulla cultura visuale. In un primo momento si considererà il fenomeno dei mondo movies, finti documentari prodotti in Italia per almeno tre decenni come momento di elaborazione problematica del rapporto fra immagine e referente, in relazione alla fondazione di un progetto spettatoriale nuovo per l’epoca. Successivamente l’attenzione si focalizzerà sulla mitologia culturale dello snuff movie, oggetto osceno per eccellenza e sorta di grande rimosso della cultura visiva contemporanea. A completamento di queste riflessioni sulla resa spettacolare della morte filmata, l’analisi condotta sui video prodotti dallo Stato islamico mostrerà come, nel contesto più strettamente contemporaneo, questo topos visuale abbia progressivamente assunto il nuovo ruolo di gesto performativo dotato di una precisa valenza politica.The object of this study is the visual phenomenon of filmed death, that is explored in its cultural relevance and functions through three specific case studies, between spectacularization and political use. Every single perspective on the topic will first of all specify the historical and cultural premises of its object, that will also be theoretically connected to some crucial reflections elaborated in the paradigm of visual culture studies. The first chapter will be devoted to the phenomenon of mondo movies, Italian pseudo-documentaries completely neglected by the national critics and produced between the late ‘50s and the late ‘80s. They will be considered as a peculiar example of how the connection between image and reality can be complexified by specific genres. In the second chapter the main focus will be the cultural mythology of the snuff movie, a kind of great taboo of contemporary visual culture. In the third and final chapter, the analysis of the Islamic State’s video production will show how in the last year the theme of filmed death started to assume a new protagonism as a political (and performative) gesture.
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Brose, Angela B. "A vision for public place in America." Virtual Press, 1998. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1116355.
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The importance of public place in the United States of America as an environment for communication, the transmission of cultural values and for the enhancement of society and community, using a comprehensive notion of entertainment as a catalyst.creative projectThis project intends to develop a catalogue of design implications for the design of a public place that successfully serves the community enhancement and the cultural transmission. This catalogue of design implications will be the result of the extensive research on the American culture, on the elements of cultural expression with emphasis on the use of entertainment as a catalyst, on the elements of urban history and the urban environment as well as on the social and commercial success of public place.contextThe context of this research is the number of issues American urban environments are facing. Most of the problems in their combination are the source of numerous urban issues. Some of the key issues that have developed on this basis are e.g. the loss of human scale or e.g. the need for a collective vision, community and cultural identity. These issues are strongly interrelated with another.issueThese are some of the deficiencies that lead to the key issue of this project: the loss of community manifested by urban isolation and fragmentation and problems relating to the humane environments and settings. Nevertheless community and cultural enhancement can help to create a greater awareness for the prerequisites for a healthy living environment. Community and cultural enhancement help to stimulate greater self-sufficiency helping to address the previously mentioned issues at their sources. The premise is that community is an essential ingredient in cohesive urban and suburban neighborhoods and is part of the positive image of a well designed and maintained city fabric.positionThe focus of this work is the community, the public place and the cultural expression with emphasis on entertainment. In the same order they represent the issue, the place and the catalyst. This work claims that entertainment can be used to design an environment enhancing community and communication. The assumption related with entertainment is that social interaction and collective well being are essential parts of community structure and therefore activities related to entertainment help to foster a collective vision.methodThe first step to prove this position is to identify the issues concerning urban settlements in the United States of America. The urban context has to be defined. The second step is to define the cultural context and to analyze the notion of entertainment as a means of cultural expression and its potential to serve as a catalyst. The third step is to identify the elements of social and commercial success of a public environment using at least two models defining those elements. Each of the three steps concludes in a set of architectural values and design elements. The fourth step is to deduce a catalogue of design implications from the information collected. This last step proposes the practical application of this research. The anticipated results of this project should be regarded as a suggestion for the practical application of this research based on the observation of and reflections on the research results, hopefully resulting in the identification of additional questions for further research.Department of Architecture
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Loftin, Adam. "Pennies for parks the effect of social norm theory on donation behavior in Arkansas state parks /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/4981.
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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007.The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 31, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.
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Zielinski, Nicholas C., and Grant Skrepek. "Mortality and Cost Outcomes of Emergency Department Visits Associated with Primary or Disseminated Liver Cancer in the United States; 2009." The University of Arizona, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/614537.
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Class of 2012 AbstractSpecific Aims: To evaluate associations between hospital and patient characteristics and mortality and economic outcomes. Included records were of adult patients age 18 years or older with a diagnosis of primary or disseminated liver cancer. Methods: This study was a retrospective cohort design that utilized emergency department discharge records from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) National Emergency Department Sample (NEDS). Generalized linear models were used for analyses to assess outcomes of mortality and total charges. Logistic regression was utilized for mortality; gamma regression with log-link was utilized for charges. Main Results: Overall, 239,895 adult records were included in the study with diagnoses of ICD-9 155.x or 197.7. Total charges for all records were over $8.23 billion in 2009. The average age of the case was 65.07 (±13.8) years with 48.7% being female. Mortality (either in the ED or hospital) was 11.1% (n=26,701). The mean length of stay was 6.47 (±6.05) days. Charges for each record were $42,874.50 (±53,956.34). Increased mortality was associated the most with hospital teaching status and primary payer. Increased charges were associated with hospitals located in the Western region. Conclusions: The differences in clinical outcomes were primarily from different payers and economical outcomes differed greatly by the Western region hospital location. Data taken from the nationally-representative investigation reveals that primary and disseminated liver cancer still remains a clinical high burden-of-illness with an 11.1% mortality rate and total charges approaching $10.3 billion dollars.
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Konishi, Michiko. "Visitors and managers : perceptions of management methods to preserve scenic beauty in Mounds State Park." Virtual Press, 2001. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1204202.
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The objective of the study was to determine how visitors perceive park management method alternatives to preserve scenic beauty in Mounds State Park, and how other factors, such asvisitor characteristics and primary purpose for visiting the state park affected their preferences. Additionally, this study has presented a comparison of preferences for park management approaches between park managers and visitors, and a relationship between visitors' perceptions of scenic beauty and other factors. Furthermore, this study explored the contribution of a qualitative analysis. The result showed that visitor preferences for some park management approaches were influenced by sociodemographic characteristics, while visitor preferences for other park management approaches were influenced by the current state of scenic conditions in the park. Differences were observed between park manager's perceptions and visitors' perceptions. Visitors' perceptions of scenic beauty were related to whether or not they had visited the park in the past. Finally, it was clear that qualitative analysis was worthwhile for obtaining information that quantitative data could not provide.Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management
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Ghie, Ahmad H. "A vision of the modern Islamic State : an examination of Muhammad al-Bahiyy's political philosophy." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.301764.
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Wasswa, John Baptist. "The exploration of the impact of state ownership on Uganda's New Vision Newspaper's social role." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002948.
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The global trends of democratisation and privatisation that swept much of the developing world in the 1980s and 1990s led to significant changes in the conceptualisation, organisation and performance of the media. In Africa democratisation attained a new meaning with associated processes of liberalisation of broadcasting to end the monopoly of broadcasting by the state. The private media of the liberalised market is increasingly putting the public media system, both broadcast and print, under serious competition, and forcing them to adjust to changing circumstances. The New Vision newspaper in Uganda is one such public service media organisations that are owned by the state and yet have to compete in the new more democratic and liberalised environment. This study set out to explore the extent to which state-ownership impacts on The New Vision’s social role. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods of date collection, I have established the that although The New Vision is a public service medium for which government remains the major source of news, it does not in most cases give the state more or preferentially prominent coverage at the expense of other interest groups in society. On contrary, basing of the amount of coverage of civil society I established that The New Vision enabled the various groups public sphere to interact. The newspaper to an extent also plays the democratic role of monitoring government although there was little evidence of monitoring of corporate abuse. The nature of The New Vision Statute, and the global trends that have changed the conduct of official and private business, have rendered the theories on the 1980s’ development media theories increasingly inapplicable, forcing The New Vision to develop its own version of development journalism that is socially relevant. The study recommends that whereas much of The New Vision Statute is progressive, sections of it should be removed to protect the newspaper from being manipulated by government functionaries, if the it is to continue enabling the public sphere. The newspaper should also increase its monitoring of corporate abuse, and make internal reforms to improve the coverage of development related issues.
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Srisomyong, Niorn. "A study of park visitors' use of interpretive programs at Lake Wissota State Park, WI." Online version, 2000. http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/2000/2000srisomyongn.pdf.
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Todd, Alexa North. "Mapping Sociocultural Values of Visitors on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington." PDXScholar, 2014. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1637.
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Contested land-management plans make spatial data about values that people attach to the landscape necessary for federal land management. The study area for this project is the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, an area that is divided by a complex mosaic of land jurisdictions, including public lands administered by the National Park Service, National Forest Service, and Washington State, as well as interspersed tribal and private landholdings surrounding the perimeter. During the summer of 2012, I collected map and survey data from visitors at fourteen popular destinations around the Olympic Peninsula, including visitor centers, campgrounds, trail access points, and a ferry. Three research objectives were evaluated in my thesis: 1) determine a general typology of visitors, 2) understand what values and activities visitors associate with places in the peninsula, and 3) compare visitor data with resident data from the Human Ecology Mapping Project (HEM), a collaboration between the US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, the Institute of Culture and Ecology, and Portland State University.
Analysis using ArcGIS included density and density hot spot calculations for a composite of the data as well as subsets based on types of visitors and individual values and activities. A majority of the participants were older males with higher education. Results indicate that visitors with different levels of familiarity spend time in different parts of the Peninsula. Aesthetic, recreation, and wilderness are the values most often included in the survey; hiking, non-cardio recreation, and sociocultural are the activity groups most often included in the survey. Visitors primarily mark places in Olympic National Park. Visitors, including those who live locally, responded in strikingly different ways than residents who participated in HEM. This research produced expected results that not only substantiate knowledge about specific places in the Olympic Peninsula, but also support theories about environmental cognition.
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Oelrich, Jerome A. "Case study of the development of the Target Acquisition Designation/Pilot Night Vision System." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2002. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion-image/02Dec%5FOelrich.pdf.
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Thesis (M.S. in Program Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2002.Thesis advisor(s): David F. Matthews, Richard G. Rhoades. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79). Also available online.
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Turabzadeh, Saeed. "Automatic emotional state detection and analysis on embedded devices." Thesis, Brunel University, 2015. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/12072.
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From the last decade, studies on human facial emotion recognition revealed that computing models based on regression modelling can produce applicable performance. In this study, an automatic facial expression real-time system was built and tested. The method is used in this study has been used widely in different areas such as Local Binary Pattern method, which has been used in many research projects in machine vision, and the K-Nearest Neighbour algorithm is method utilized for regression modelling. In this study, these two techniques has been used and implemented on the FPGA for the first time, on the side and joined together to great the model in such way to display a continues and automatic emotional state detection model on the monitor. To evaluate the effectiveness of the classifier technique for human emotion recognition from video, the model was designed and tested on MATLAB environment and then MATLAB Simulink environment that is capable of recognizing continuous facial expression in real time with a rate of 1 frame per second and implemented on a desktop PC. It has been evaluated in a testing dataset and the experimental results were promising with the accuracy of 51.28%. The datasets and labels used in this study are made from videos which, recorded twice from 5 participants while watching a video. In order to implement it in real-time in faster frame rate, the facial expression recognition system was built on FPGA. The model was built on Atlys™ Spartan-6 FPGA Development Board. It can perform continuously emotional state recognition in real time at a frame rate of 30 with the accuracy of 47.44%. A graphic user interface was designed to display the participant video in real time and also two dimensional predict labels of the emotion at the same time. This is the first time that automatic emotional state detection has been successfully implemented on FPGA by using LBP and K-NN techniques in such way to display a continues and automatic emotional state detection model on the monitor.
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Akano, Obinna Ferdinand. "Vision health disparity and reasons for no access to vision care among United States adults aged 40 and above| Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), 2007- 5 states." Thesis, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1537270.
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Purpose: To examine if disparities exist among US adults aged 40 and above that reported reasons for no access to eye care.
Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted on 14,129 US adults aged 40 and above who responded to the Vision Module of the 2007 BRFSS using cross-tabulations, logistic regression and chi square statistics.
Results: Respondents reporting cost/insurance as the main reason for not accessing an eye doctor was greater among adults with education level < HS than with > HS (p<0.001). The percentage who reported cost/insurance as the main reason was greater among adults with income < $25,000 than with >$50,000 (p<0.001). Similarly, a greater percentage of Black adults reported cost/insurance as the reason for not accessing an eye doctor compared to White adults.
Conclusion: Given that Cost/Insurance was the most frequently cited reason, making eye health/health insurance available to most or all Americans will go a long way in narrowing the gap in vision health disparities.
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Barrett, T. R. "Twisting the tale : reading and writing the 1939 British royal visit to the United States." Thesis, Keele University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249453.
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Hamm, Mathieu Daniel. "Multi-Functional Building Envelopes: Key Properties, State-of-the-Art Technologies and Visions for the Future." Thesis, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Institutt for bygg, anlegg og transport, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-18878.
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A broad and original definition of the building envelope is given as a shelter aiming at controlling various fluxes in the building. This paper reviews the underlying key properties ruling the phenomena enabling the completion of the multiple functions ascribed to the building envelope. The functions of flux control are emphasized. Indeed the thermal conductivity of a material, thermal inertia of buildings, transmittances of a window, solar energy production, sound attenuation or absorption of a concrete wall or moisture permeability of a protection sheet are all key properties ruling the control of fluxes such as heat, sun, sound or moisture and will be explained here. A non-exhaustive review of the principle state-of-the-art multi-functional technologies using these key properties to achieve the different functions is given. Hence the review of building integrated photovoltaic solutions, phase change materials, smart windows, double skin façades, green envelope, aerogels, multi-functional concretes and photocatalytic materials, among other technologies. The focus is put on the technologies explanation and the performances, in the multiple roles they have, are highlighted. Through a definition and a description of the ideal multi-functional building envelope as assuring safety, providing comfort and any other desired functions without any drawbacks this paper aims to orientate technological breakthrough of the future towards multi-functionality and to a total control of all the fluxes. Eventually, based on the association and the understanding of existing technologies, original ones achieving multiples functions are proposed as possible visions for future developments.
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Van, Hyfte Melissa A. O'Neill Martin Anthony. "Defining visitor satisfaction in the context of camping oriented nature-based tourism within Alabama state parks." Auburn, Ala, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10415/1910.
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Fabbri, Alan. "Studio degli effetti della stimolazione transcranica a corrente diretta (tdcs) sui potenziali evocati visivi steady state." Master's thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2014. http://amslaurea.unibo.it/7014/.
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I potenziali evocati visivi steady state (ssVEPs) consistono in una perturbazione dell’attività elettrica cerebrale spontanea e insorgono in presenza di stimoli visivi come luci monocromatiche modulate sinusoidalmente. Nel tracciato EEG si instaurano oscillazioni di piccola ampiezza ad una frequenza pari a quella dello stimolo.
L’analisi nel dominio delle frequenze permette di mettere in evidenza queste oscillazioni che si presentano con un picco ben distinto in corrispondenza della frequenza dello stimolo.
L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di capire se la stimolazione transcranica in corrente continua (tDCS) ha degli effetti a breve e a medio termine sui SSVEPs. Si è studiato gli effetti della stimolazione anodica utilizzando un montaggio di stimolazione extra-cefalico (anodo posizionato su Oz e catodo sul braccio destro).
L’esperimento prevede il flickering a 3 frequenze di interesse (12, 15, 20 Hz) di 3 quadrati colorati (rosso e giallo) su sfondo nero. Sono state quindi messe a confronto 4 condizioni operative: baseline, stimolazione sham, stimolazione anodica, condizione Post Anodica.L’esperimento è stato sottoposto a 6 soggetti di età tra i 21 e i 51 anni. Il segnale è stato acquisito da due canali bipolari localizzati nella regione occipitale (O1-PO7 e O2-PO8). È stato effettuato un filtraggio tra 3-60 Hz e a 50 Hz. Si sono stimate le PSD normalizzate rispetto alla condizione di riposo in baseline e le potenze nell’intorno della frequenze di interesse (12,15,20 Hz). I dati chiaramente artefattuali sono stati scartati mediante un’analisi esplorativa. Da qui è stato deciso di non includere nella statistica la stimolazione anodica. L’analisi statistica considera tre aspetti: effetto stimolazione, effetto frequenza ed effetto colore. In alcune configurazioni la stimolazione post anodica si è rivelata significativamente differente con ranghi medi delle colonne inferiori alle altre stimolazioni. Non ci sono differenze significative tra le frequenze. Il colore giallo è risultato significativamente maggiore al colore rosso.
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Otero, Lydia R. "Conflicting visions: Urban renewal, historical preservation and the politics of saving a Mexican past." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280374.
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Integrating methods and sources from the study of Mexican Americans, urban history, and historical preservation this dissertation examines the interactions of race and space. In the late 1960's, Arizona's fast urban renewal project, the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project, resulted in building a new civic center and government complex in Tucson. Construction of the new expansive structure required that the city's oldest barrio or neighborhood be destroyed. In an era when the local economy relied heavily on tourists' dollars, city officials and boosters used urban renewal as an opportunity to eradicate the barrio in order to diminish long-held national convictions of Tucson as too "Mexican." In the late nineteenth century, Anglo Americans moving to Tucson had displaced Mexican Americans, who moved to the southern edge of town. This demographic shift resulted in the barrio's creation. As a result of de facto segregation, the barrio grew to serve Mexican Americans' consumer and social needs. It became impossible to hide the city's large Mexican American population since the barrio spilled into the central business district. Boosters had constructed the barrio and its residents as obstacles to "progress," targeting it for destruction since the 1930s. Exemplifying the power of the politics of representation, boosters devised images in their widespread promotional campaigns that they hoped would make Tucson appear more modern and racially homogeneous so that they could attract more tourists. Cultural productions indicate that boosters highlighted the incongruity of a Mexican American space in the city that stood in opposition to the modernity that Anglo American space embodied. City officials avoided updating developmental services in the barrio and refused to enforce housing codes for decades. By the 1960s, the barrio fit federal standards that qualified it as a "slum." Two oppositional historical preservation movements emerged as a result the destruction of older and historic structures. Their failures and successes illustrate the process whereby particular histories are legitimated and disseminated while others are marginalized. Mexican Americans attempted to save sites that commemorated the city's Mexican American past, while Anglo Americans succeeded in preserving an exaggerated version of an Anglo past.
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Stine, Anthony Philip. "Citizenship, Duty and Virtue: A Vision of Jefferson's America." PDXScholar, 2011. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/316.
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In contemporary American political life, concepts such as duty to country and society often play a role in political discourse, but are often forgotten in the lives of average Americans. The life of the average citizen is focused on issues of economic survival, familial matters, and the diversions that occupy persons. Devotion to country is made an at best secondary concern for Americans. The purpose of this work is to examine the concepts of civic virtue that historically have dominated American political thought, using the writings of Thomas Jefferson and his influences as the primary source material for this effort, as well as the writings of modern western political theorists. Through this work, a conflict emerges between the values of western liberal thought and classic republicanism; to this end, a secondary purpose of this work is to reconcile those differences in an American context. Finally, a third purpose of this work is to offer a theoretical plan for re-connecting the average citizen with concepts of civic virtue through a proposal for public service.
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Hotz, Jeffrey. "Divergent visions, contested spaces : the early United States through the lens of travel /." New York : Routledge, 2006. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb409327300.
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Beeston, Alix Mallory. "Composite Visions: Writing and Photography in American Modernism." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13431.
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This dissertation builds on scholarship that apprehends the ways in which modernist writing instantiates the episteme of doubt and contingency that emerges, paradoxically, from the development of photographic technologies. It accounts for an unexplored aspect of the photography effect in modernist writing that is variously composite in form and narrative. Early twentieth century texts by Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald function analogously to photography—and are culturally imbricated with it—inasmuch as they privilege representational ambiguity through their sequenced, fragmentary poetics. I argue that formal interstices of these composite texts, like that of serialized photographic practice, are raised as signposts to the limits of the eye and of visual and discursive objectification itself. Most provocatively, I interpret their gaps and openings as textual sites in which the dominant socio-political order is negotiated and even circumvented. I map the sequenced tissue of modernist narration onto the repeated disappearances and appearances of female bodies that are, like the narratives they populate, constructed as aggregates or assemblages. In so doing, I enrol what I call the woman-in-series within a host of new theoretical figurations of female subjectivity emerging within feminist scholarship that seeks to exceed the hostile relationships between the camera and the female subject that have dominated discussions of photography and cinema. As such, this dissertation works to destabilize gendered and racialized oppositions of power and vulnerability as they relate to encounters between subjects and objects in the visual realm. The gap or interval in the composite visions of American modernism signifies both as a mark of trauma, the wounding of objectifying representation, and as a means for evading or defending against such trauma. The woman-in-series thereby stages the insurrectionary potential of the in/visible subject.
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Dandrow, Edward Michael. "Man, God and state : a re-vision of the medieval vice in late medieval and renaissance drama." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 1992. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/64.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
English
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Lama, Salomon Abraham. "Digital State Models for Infrastructure Condition Assessment and Structural Testing." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/84502.
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This research introduces and applies the concept of digital state models for civil infrastructure condition assessment and structural testing. Digital state models are defined herein as any transient or permanent 3D model of an object (e.g. textured meshes and point clouds) combined with any electromagnetic radiation (e.g., visible light, infrared, X-ray) or other two-dimensional image-like representation. In this study, digital state models are built using visible light and used to document the transient state of a wide variety of structures (ranging from concrete elements to cold-formed steel columns and hot-rolled steel shear-walls) and civil infrastructures (bridges). The accuracy of digital state models was validated in comparison to traditional sensors (e.g., digital caliper, crack microscope, wire potentiometer). Overall, features measured from the 3D point clouds data presented a maximum error of ±0.10 in. (±2.5 mm); and surface features (i.e., crack widths) measured from the texture information in textured polygon meshes had a maximum error of ±0.010 in. (±0.25 mm). Results showed that digital state models have a similar performance between all specimen surface types and between laboratory and field experiments. Also, it is shown that digital state models have great potential for structural assessment by significantly improving data collection, automation, change detection, visualization, and augmented reality, with significant opportunities for commercial development. Algorithms to analyze and extract information from digital state models such as cracks, displacement, and buckling deformation are developed and tested. Finally, the extensive data sets collected in this effort are shared for research development in computer vision-based infrastructure condition assessment, eliminating the major obstacle for advancing in this field, the absence of publicly available data sets.Ph. D.
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Belanger, Diane. "An Examination of the Relationship between Post-9/11 Visa Regulations and International Student Enrollment." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2007. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/BelangerD2007.pdf.
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Chrysochou, Panayiota. "Sight as trauma : the politics of performing and viewing the body on stage." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7830.
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My thesis aims to partake in the controversial and theoretical debates surrounding sight which can be traced as far back as Plato. It seeks to provide an overview of the cultural history of the gaze in order to set up a triangulated and in-depth schema or triadic relationship between theatre, text and trauma through the lens of psychoanalytical, phenomenological and socio-theoretical frameworks. More specifically, it attempts to explore the various interactions, along the axis of representation, between theatrical metaphors and those of traumatic vision, as well as traumatic representations on stage of viewing and the multi-layered and socio-political implications of various ways of looking (or non-looking), which often trigger traumatic responses. By examining two canonical plays – Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Macbeth – as well as the modern performances of artists such as Orlan and Franko B, I hope to show how visual trauma can transcend time and space and how the stage, as well as dramatic performances, can function as a body or body politic upon which various visuo-spatial and traumatic themes can be inscribed and re(enacted). The shift in emphasis, beginning with Freud and onwards, from physical to psychological trauma has often led to a blurring and obfuscation of the question of sight and the various lines of inquiry related to it. It has unfortunately often been overlooked in trauma theory, together with the issue of how certain sights/sites can often lead to broken, baffled and even traumatic responses when there is a failure to adequately interrogate, interpret and subsequently assimilate various events both on and off-stage. This failure is further compounded by various theoretical strands which view trauma as being non-representable. Thus by bringing trauma and vision to the fore, my research aims to inflect the cultural history of the gaze by showing how it contributes invaluably to a greater understanding of identity formation and hermeneutical activity in particular, as well as theatrical practices and even gender discourse analysis in general. By recourse to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, two canonical plays which draw heavily on notions of sight, blindness and the traumatic implications of viewing certain objects or events, as well as through an interrogation of various responses to the theatrical performances of more modern bodily-based performance artists such as Orlan and Franko B, who cut and refashion their bodies in front of a large audience, this work seeks to bring together various theoretical approaches ranging from psychoanalysis to phenomenology in order to shed light on how sight can lead to trauma both on and off the stage, thus contributing to the ongoing theoretical debates surrounding the body and the theatre.
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Chen, Hao. "Real-time Traffic State Prediction: Modeling and Applications." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/64292.
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Travel-time information is essential in Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATISs) and Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMSs). A key component of these systems is the prediction of the spatiotemporal evolution of roadway traffic state and travel time. From the perspective of travelers, such information can result in better traveler route choice and departure time decisions. From the transportation agency perspective, such data provide enhanced information with which to better manage and control the transportation system to reduce congestion, enhance safety, and reduce the carbon footprint of the transportation system.
The objective of the research presented in this dissertation is to develop a framework that includes three major categories of methodologies to predict the spatiotemporal evolution of the traffic state. The proposed methodologies include macroscopic traffic modeling, computer vision and recursive probabilistic algorithms. Each developed method attempts to predict traffic state, including roadway travel times, for different prediction horizons. In total, the developed multi-tool framework produces traffic state prediction algorithms ranging from short – (0~5 minutes) to medium-term (1~4 hours) considering departure times up to an hour into the future.
The dissertation first develops a particle filter approach for use in short-term traffic state prediction. The flow continuity equation is combined with the Van Aerde fundamental diagram to derive a time series model that can accurately describe the spatiotemporal evolution of traffic state. The developed model is applied within a particle filter approach to provide multi-step traffic state prediction. The testing of the algorithm on a simulated section of I-66 demonstrates that the proposed algorithm can accurately predict the propagation of shockwaves up to five minutes into the future. The developed algorithm is further improved by incorporating on- and off-ramp effects and more realistic boundary conditions. Furthermore, the case study demonstrates that the improved algorithm produces a 50 percent reduction in the prediction error compared to the classic LWR density formulation. Considering the fact that the prediction accuracy deteriorates significantly for longer prediction horizons, historical data are integrated and considered in the measurement update in the developed particle filter approach to extend the prediction horizon up to half an hour into the future.
The dissertation then develops a travel time prediction framework using pattern recognition techniques to match historical data with real-time traffic conditions. The Euclidean distance is initially used as the measure of similarity between current and historical traffic patterns. This method is further improved using a dynamic template matching technique developed as part of this research effort. Unlike previous approaches, which use fixed template sizes, the proposed method uses a dynamic template size that is updated each time interval based on the spatiotemporal shape of the congestion upstream of a bottleneck. In addition, the computational cost is reduced using a Fast Fourier Transform instead of a Euclidean distance measure. Subsequently, the historical candidates that are similar to the current conditions are used to predict the experienced travel times. Test results demonstrate that the proposed dynamic template matching method produces significantly better and more stable prediction results for prediction horizons up to 30 minutes into the future for a two hour trip (prediction horizon of two and a half hours) compared to other state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art methods.
Finally, the dissertation develops recursive probabilistic approaches including particle filtering and agent-based modeling methods to predict travel times further into the future. Given the challenges in defining the particle filter time update process, the proposed particle filtering algorithm selects particles from a historical dataset and propagates particles using data trends of past experiences as opposed to using a state-transition model. A partial resampling strategy is then developed to address the degeneracy problem in the particle filtering process. INRIX probe data along I-64 and I-264 from Richmond to Virginia Beach are used to test the proposed algorithm. The results demonstrate that the particle filtering approach produces less than a 10 percent prediction error for trip departures up to one hour into the future for a two hour trip. Furthermore, the dissertation develops an agent-based modeling approach to predict travel times using real-time and historical spatiotemporal traffic data. At the microscopic level, each agent represents an expert in the decision making system, which predicts the travel time for each time interval according to past experiences from a historical dataset. A set of agent interactions are developed to preserve agents that correspond to traffic patterns similar to the real-time measurements and replace invalid agents or agents with negligible weights with new agents. Consequently, the aggregation of each agent's recommendation (predicted travel time with associated weight) provides a macroscopic level of output – predicted travel time distribution. The case study demonstrated that the agent-based model produces less than a 9 percent prediction error for prediction horizons up to one hour into the future.Ph. D.
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Wiley, Elizabeth Otterson. "Playing the Yankee visitors, natives and the state of Maine in the first half of the twentieth century /." View this thesis online, 2005. http://libraries.maine.edu/gateway/oroauth.asp?file=orono/etheses/37803141.pdf.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--George Washington University, 2005.Title from PDF title page. Available through UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-308) . Also issued in print.