This work is inspired by Lipsitz (1998) and Allport (1954) because both authors connect micro level processes to social macro level patterns. Allport’s Nature of Prejudice sought to understand patterns of anti-Semitism as connected to a larger social context. From this work, Allport developed the contact hypothesis which is premised on the idea that diversity helps alleviate racial tensions. Lipsitz’ Possessive Investment in Whiteness connects White racial privilege to a history of racial social inequality. In conintuum, I develop the nuances on prejudice formation as it leads to the denial of racial privilege or to the conflation of privileges as oppression. While I focus on White racial privilege, the theoretical contribution of my research develops the framework for individual privilege formation. I then draw upon Bonilla-Silva’s (2013) racial colorblind theory to emphasize the connection between privilege and larger patterns of racial attitudes. The macro level contribution of this dissertation focuses on patterns of overt and colorblind attitudes as affected by racial segregation, social inequality, and respondent characteristics. Data was gathered from the 2000 General Social Survey, 2010 GSS, and U.S. Census county data and applied to a hierarchical linear model. Due to sample selection, this research focuses on racial Whites’ attitudes about the racial Black population. I use measures of racial segregation as proxies for racial contact. I find patterns of racial tolerance through a ‘separate but equal’ storyline among White-Black segregation. When using, social demographics with all minorities included, I find that Whites’ attitudes about racial Blacks are attenuated. This finding supports the literature that non-Black racial minorities act as buffers for White-Black racial relations. Racial diversity is one element in helping alleviate negative racial sentiments, but patterns of segregation and social inequality impact the benefits of this racial diversity.

Formal long-term athlete development programmes emerged at the turn of the century and, despite some fierce criticisms, have evolved significantly since their inception. The first generation of athletes to grow up with these systems are now coming of age. The purpose of this thesis was to track a population of adolescent school-level swimmers between the ages of 12 and 18 years over an 8-year period so as to assess their performance progression as they matured under these athlete development programmes. The first study aimed to track the performances of the sub-elite athletes at an annual international school championship and to compare their progression with those of both junior elite and elite-level swimmers. In addition to narrowing the gender gap, the records of the sub-elite swimmers have continued to improve. In contrast, both of these factors remained relatively stable for junior elite and elite-level swimmers over the same period. Swimming affords athletes the possibility of within-sport specialisation. This almost unique aspect of swimming led to the two investigations of the second study. Firstly, the paired stroke combinations preferred by swimmers were determined using Cohen’s Kappa tests in a cross-sectional design. Secondly, the stability in the event selection of each swimmer during their adolescent years was explored longitudinally. Both males (33.9±5.8%) and females (36.9±6.5%) preferred to swim the 50 and 100 m freestyle events together over any other paired stroke combination. The majority of swimmers preferred to specialise in specific stroke techniques over distance specialisms with breaststroke being the only stroke in which swimmers of both sexes chose to specialise early. Most notable was that females specialised earlier than males. Studies three (males, n = 446) and four (females, n = 514) utilised mixed linear modelling to determine the quadratic functions of the performance progressions of adolescent swimmers (between the ages of 12 and 19 y) in seven individual competition events. Males progressed at more than twice the rate of females (3.5 and 1.7% per year, respectively) in all strokes over this age range. This was likely due to the fact that females reach puberty before males. Thresholds of peak performance occurred between the ages of 18.5±0.1 y (50 m freestyle and the 200 m individual medley) and 19.8±0.1 y (100 m butterfly) for males, but between the wider range of 16.8±0.2 y (200 m individual medley) and 20.6±0.1 y (100 m butterfly) for females. Using an independent sample of Dutch Junior national swimmers (n = 13), the fifth and final study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the models developed in studies three and four as both target setting and talent identification tools. This was achieved through a mixed-methods approach where quantitative and qualitative data confirmed the applicability of the models for adolescent swimmers of any skill level. This thesis demonstrates that sub-elite swimmers have probably benefitted from first generation athlete development models. Longitudinal modelling of their data provides a valuable platform from which all adolescent swimmers can be compared and used to inform the next generation of bespoke swimming-specific youth development programmes.

Abstract In time delay estimation the correlator or, equivalently, matched filter estimator is widely used. Examples of its usage can be found in the global positioning system (GPS), radars and code division multiple access (CDMA) communication systems. Although widely used its performance is not studied in general case until recently. Partially this study is done in this thesis. If interfering signals like multipath or multiple access signals exist in addition to additive white Gaussian noise, as in GPS and CDMA, the correlator is not a maximum likelihood (ML) estimator. However, it is known that the correlator produces consistent estimates in the existence of multipath interference if the delay separation is larger than the correlation time of the signal (in direct sequence spread spectrum applications such as GPS and CDMA, the correlation time approximately equals the chip duration of the spreading code). It also performs well in the existence of multiple access interference (MAI), if the powers of the MAI signals are equal to the power of the desired signal. In this thesis the asymptotic distribution of the correlator estimator is derived in multisignal environments. Using the result, it can be analytically shown, that in these benign interference cases the exact ML estimator and the correlator estimators perform equally well in the sense that their asymptotic covariance matrices are equal. The thesis also verifies the well known result that if the signals are orthogonal, then the correlator and ML estimators perform equally. In addition, the correlator's asymptotic performance is investigated also in the inconsistent case by slightly extending the earlier results found in the literature. Also the resolution of the correlator estimator is investigated. It is numerically shown that the correlator estimator can produce consistent estimators even if the delay separation is less that the chip duration, which is commonly believed to be the resolution limit of the correlator. This can happen in fading channels where the multipath amplitudes are uncorrelated or just slightly correlated. This result seems to be fairly unknown. In addition to the classical ML estimator, where all the unknowns are assumed to be deterministic, also an improved ML estimator is investigated. This other ML estimator is obtained by assuming that the amplitudes are Gaussian distributed. It is an improved estimator in the sense that its asymptotic covariance, say CML, is less positive definite than that of the classical ML estimator CCML, i.e., CCML-CML is positive semidefinite. More importantly, this result is valid independent of the fact are the amplitudes really deterministic or Gaussian. This well known result is shown in this thesis to be valid also if the signals contain more than one unknown parameter, which occurs, for example, in direction-of-arrival estimation when two angles per arrival are to be estimated.

Forecasting Election Results in the Czech Republic Kateřina Doskočilová In this thesis, a forecasting model for the 2017 legislative election in the Czech Republic is built. As the Czech Republic has a multi-party system, the outcomes of the model are the expected vote shares for each party. There are two types of forecasts calculated. Firstly, a poll-based forecast using a dynamic linear model and Kalman filter to weigh the information in the polls. Secondly, the prices on betting markets are translated into probabilistic forecasts for the expected vote shares. This is a novel approach as prediction markets were previously used to forecasts only the probabilities of winning an election. Finally, the two types of forecasts are combined into one and weighed by their variance. Comparing the forecasts, we conclude that the betting market is able to predict the exact vote shares the most accurately right before the election.

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The time it takes an athlete to recover from an injury can be highly influenced by training procedures as well as the medical care and physical therapy received. When an injury occurs to the muscles or tendons of an athlete, it is desirable to cool the muscles and tendons within the body to reduce inflammation, thereby reducing the recovery time. Consequently, finding a method of treatment that is effective in reducing tendon temperatures is beneficial to increasing the speed at which the athlete is able to recover. In this project, Bayesian inference with Gaussian processes will be used to model the effect that different treatments have in reducing tendon temperature within the ankle. Gaussian processes provide a powerful methodology for modeling data that exhibit complex characteristics such as nonlinear behavior while retaining mathematical simplicity.

A main objective of Departments of Transportation is to improve the safety of the roadways over which they have jurisdiction. Safety projects, such as cable barriers and raised medians, are utilized to reduce both crash frequency and crash severity. The efficacy of these projects must be evaluated in order to use resources in the best way possible. Five models are proposed for the evaluation of traffic projects: (1) a Bayesian Poisson regression model; (2) a hierarchical Poisson regression model building on model (1) by adding hyperpriors; (3) a similar model correcting for overdispersion; (4) a dynamic linear model; and (5) a traditional before-after study model. Evaluation of these models is discussed using various metrics including DIC. Using the models selected for analysis, it was determined that cable barriers are quite effective at reducing severe crashes and cross-median crashes on Utah highways. Raised medians are also largely effective at reducing severe crashes. The results of before and after analyses are highly valuable to Departments of Transportation in identifying effective projects and in determining which roadway segments will benefit most from their implementation.

Several passive energy dissipation devices have been implemented in practice as the seismic protective systems to mitigate structural damage caused by earthquakes. The solid viscoelastic dampers are among such passive energy dissipation systems. To examine the response reducing effectiveness of these dampers, it is necessary that engineers are able to conduct response analysis of structures installed with added dampers accurately and efficiently. The main objective of this work, therefore, is to develop formulations that can be effectively used with various models of the viscoelastic dampers to calculate the seismic response of a structure-damper system. To incorporate the mechanical effect from VE dampers in the structural dynamic design, it is important to use a proper force-deformation model to correctly describe the frequency dependence of the damper. The fractional derivative model and the general linear model are capable of capturing the frequency dependence of viscoelastic materials accurately. In our research, therefore, we have focused on the development of systematic procedures for calculating the seismic response for these models. For the fractional derivative model, we use the G1 and L1 algorithms to derive various numerical schemes for solving the fractional differential equations for earthquake motions described by acceleration time histories at discrete time points. For linear systems, we also develop a modal superposition method for this model of the damper. This superposition approach can be implemented to obtain the response time history for seismic input defined by the ground acceleration time history. For random ground motion that is described stochastically by the spectral density function, we derive an expression based on random vibration analysis to compute the mean square response of the system. It is noted that the numerical computations involved with the fractional derivative model can be complicated and cumbersome. To alleviate computation difficulty, we explore the use of a general linear model with Kelvin chain analog as a physical representation of the damper properties. The parameters in the model are determined through a curve fitting optimization process. To simplify the analytical work, a self-adjoint system of state equations are formulated by introducing auxiliary displacements for the internal elements in the Kelvin chain. This self-adjoint system can then be solved by using the modal superposition method, which can be extended to develop a response spectrum approach to calculate the seismic design response for the structural system for seismic inputs defined by design ground response spectra. Numerical studies are carried out to demonstrate the applicability of these formulations. Results show that all the proposed approaches provide accurate response values, and the response reduction effects of the viscoelastic dampers can be evaluated to assess their performance using these models and methods. However, the use of a general linear model of the damper is the most efficient. It can capture frequency dependence of the storage and loss moduli as well as the fractional derivative model. The calculation of the response by direct numerical integration of the equations of motion or through the use of the modal superposition approach is significantly simplified, and response spectrum formulation for the calculation of seismic response of design interest can be conveniently formulated. / Ph. D.

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