TITLE: The Impact of Institutions on Economic Growth.MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Wanki Moon. Based on the cross-sectional data, my thesis examined the relationship between the Economic Freedom Indices and per capita GDP. This thesis demonstrates that the rule of law category, which includes the property right variable, is the category that most affects per capita GDP which demonstrates the importance of the institution. Data from 184 countries published by Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal were used. I analyzed the data using the OLS regression model to explore the relationship between Economic Freedom index and per capita GDP. The first model I analyzed is simple regression which regress economic freedom indices on per capita GDP. The result of the regression showed that all variables are significant, except the Tax Burden and Fiscal Health variables which were insignificant. The Government Spending and Tax Burden are the only variables have a negative effect on per capita GDP. The second model I analyzed was multiple regression for each category’s components, then I repeated the model four times, since there are four different categories with three components each. It is important to analyze each category by itself to explore what the relationship is between the component in each category and per capita GDP. The results of regression on each category including the three different components show that government integrity (from the rule of law category), government spending and fiscal health (from government size category), business freedom (from regulatory efficiency category), trade freedom and financial freedom (from open market category) are significant variables and affected per capita GDP positively except for government spending which has a negative effect on per capita GDP. On the other hand, the variables which are insignificant like property right from the rule of law category, monetary freedom from regulatory efficiency category have a positive effect on per capita GDP. But the Judicial Efficiency from the rule of law category, tax burden from government size, labor freedom from regulatory efficiency category and investment freedom from open markets are insignificant and have a negative effect on per capita GDP. However, when we look to the category as a group, we find that all four grouped index freedom is significant at 99% significant level. R-square is highest for rule of law category (68%) and very low for government size (16.7%). The third model I used includes four categories by computing the average of each category’s components, we found, by looking at R-square, that 65.4% of per capita GDP is explained by these four categories. Surprisingly, I found that the rule of law category is the only significant variable with positive effect on GDP per capita. On the other hand, Government Size, and Regulatory Efficiency are insignificant variables and have a negative effect on per capita GDP. Open Market category is insignificant variable and has a positive effect on per capita GDP.

Work-life balance goes hand-in-hand with the quality of life and the quality of working life and the level of satisfaction with thereof. Recent survey that took place in the Czech Republic in 2018 attempted at measuring the quality using the index of the quality of life and the index of the working life quality. The questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization and the set of questions proposed by Vinopal aiming at measuring the subjectively perceived quality of working life. The aim of this work is firstly to test the functionality of the two indices, the quality of life index and the quality of working life index, and then examine the existence and potential strength of the relationship between them within the selected subgroups of population. The work builds up on two basic pillows. The first pillow deals with the defitions of the explored phenomena. The concept of quality of life is explored at different levels: philosophical, sociological, subjective and objective. Then the rationale for developing a tool that measures the quality of life is described, including the variations of the Czech adaptation of the questionnaire. In the following chapters, the phenomenon of the quality of working life is introduced with special focus on the explanation of the dual nature of the concept and...

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Introduction Obesity is a risk factor for abnormal metabolic conditions including hypertension, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes (T2D). The varying prevalence patterns of these metabolic conditions stratified by body mass index (BMI) among individuals lacking awareness of their disease status is poorly explored. Methods The study data was from the U.S. CDC 2013-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and included participants aged ≥20 years who had completed examinations for blood pressure and BMI, laboratory tests for blood sugar and cholesterol, and interviews for demographics and other related health issues. Individuals lacking a formal diagnosis from a health professional were referred to as undiagnosed. The weighted prevalence and its 95% confidence interval (CI) for total T2D, hypertension, and high cholesterol and total abnormal metabolic items by BMI within each subgroup were calculated. Similar calculations were also applied to undiagnosed participants. By treating BMI < 25 as the reference, the proportional test was used to identify if significant prevalence existed in two comparisons:overweight vs. BMI < 25 and obese vs. BMI < 25. A p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant Results and Conclusions The overall weighted prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and overall abnormal metabolic conditions were 16.1%, 60.3%, 57.5% and 76.3%, respectively while the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and abnormal metabolic condition are 8.8%, 11.3%, 16.8% and 30.2%, respectively. A higher prevalence of T2D existed in individuals with BMI25≤BMI≤30 among black adults (18.4% vs. 16.2%). Similar differences were also observed among undiagnosed black participants with BMI < 25 (12.1% vs. 7.5%). The prevalence of total and undiagnosed hypertension increased with BMI although prevalence was lower in the undiagnosed population. Our study findings reveal that while a higher proportion of obese individuals have chronic conditions, a large proportion of normal weight individuals are similarly burdened. The prevalence estimates of individuals with at least one undiagnosed abnormal metabolic condition indicates a need for expanded screening campaigns. Additionally, the higher prevalence of T2D among normal weight warrants further research to identify potential drivers. Although efforts to manage and control these conditions must continue to have a heightened focus on obese individuals, it must also broaden its scope to target normal weight individuals and develop strategies to decrease the proportion of U.S adults without awareness of their disease status.

Environmental evidence shows that 10,000 years ago North China was primarily a lush deciduous forest. Like many other regions of the planet, this landscape has been dramatically transformed by human activity, yet unusually this mostly occurred long ago under pre-industrial conditions. Fortunately China has a long recorded history of human activity. Complementary environmental evidence helps to extend this record into prehistory, for even prehistoric Chinese substantially altered their environment. The first half of this study examines historical and physical evidence in order to better explain how North China's forests disappeared. Only recently have there been regional scale activities focused on reversing this tragic trend. Despite many claims of successes in afforestation, there are serious shortcomings in the collection of government statistics and known limitations to area-based forest assessments, so it is difficult to say with much confidence what is happening with North China's forests today. Phenological measurements from space-based instruments have been effectively used to characterize vegetation trends. In the second half of this study, MODIS sensor observations for 2000-2009 are collected for five study sites and are used to characterize vegetation change over the past decade, independent of government statistics and area-based estimates. Forests provide tangible benefits to environmental and human well-being. Forest health and growth are critical to addressing global climate change. Much attention has been focused on China's efforts to combat deforestation. A better understanding of North China's forest trends — both past and present — may offer valuable lessons for our environmental future. / Master of Science

This thesis addresses two important aspects of automatic assembly viz., assembly sequence planning and assembly path planning. These issues are addressed separately starting with sequence planning followed by assembly path planning. For efficient assembly without feedback systems (or, passive assembly), an assembler should know the ideal orientation of each component and the order in which to put the parts together (or, assembly sequence). A heuristic is presented to find the optimal assembly sequence and prescribe the orientation of the components for a minimum set of grippers = ideally one. The heuristic utilizes an index of difficulty (ID) that quantifies assembly. The ID for each task in the assembly process is computed on the basis of a number of geometrical and operational properties. The objective of the optimization problem here is to minimize the assembly ID and categorize parts/subassemblies based on their preferred direction of assembly while allowing re-orientation of the base part. It is assumed that the preferred direction of assembly is vertically downward, consistent with manual as well as most automatic assembly protocols. Our attempt is to minimize the number of degrees of freedom required in a re-orienting fixture and derive the requirements for such a fixture. The assembly of a small engine is used as an example in this study due to the variety of ideally rigid parts involved. In high precision assembly tasks, contact motion is common and often desirable. This entails a careful study of contact states of the parts being assembled. Recognition of contact states is crucial in planning and executing contact motion plans due to inevitable uncertainties. Dr. Jing Xiao of UNCC introduced the concept of principal contacts (PC) and contact formation (CF) for contact state recognition. The concept of using CFs (as sets of PCs) has the inherent advantage that a change of CF is often coincident with a discontinuity of the general contact force (force and torque). Previous work in contact motion planning has shown that contact information at the level of PCs along with the sensed location and force information is often sufficient for planning high precision assembly operations. In this thesis, we present results from experiments involving planned contact motions to validate the notion of PCs and CFs -- an abrupt change in general contact force often accompanies a change between CFs. We are only concerned with solving the 2D peg-in-corner problem. / Master of Science

The Memphis, Tennessee National Weather Service (NWS) currently has issues with their atmospheric dispersion index (LVORI), and is looking for a new index that better represents smoke dispersion in their County Warning Area (CWA). Forecast soundings at hour 00 and hour 48 from the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model were collected at various locations in the southeastern United States. Using the data collected, a new index equation was developed. A bootstrapping analysis was performed to determine if the mean index number corresponding to low visibility was statistically significantly different and greater than the mean index number corresponding to high visibility for forecast hour 00 and hour 48. Based on the results of this study, the mean index number was greater for low visibility, but was not statistically significantly different for forecast hour 00. For forecast hour 48, the mean index number was greater and statistically significantly different for low visibility.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the nonlinear refractive index of carbon disulfide vapors as opposed to its liquid form. With CS[sub2] vapors, the vapors are less dense so they will rotate longer than liquid CS[sub2] because there are less intermolecular interactions. The electric field of the beam causes the molecules to align with the electric field and applies a torque to the molecules. After this excitation, the molecules continue rotating. The rotations change the index of refraction of the material. Continuous rotation of the molecules causes the index of refraction to be periodic which means the molecules are going through multiple revivals. I will analyze this periodic nonlinear index of refraction. However, some problems occurred while the experiment was being done as well as some issues of measuring CS[sub2] because of white light continuum generation in the cell walls. To avoid these issues we measured the air in the lab and were able to observe the periodic change of index of refraction for O[sub2] and N[sub2].

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