Although most research on bipolar I disorder has focused on biological models, recent investigation has elucidated the importance of psychosocial predictors of the course of illness. Theories of the Behavioral Activation System?s role in affect have helped unify biological and environmental explanations of the disorder. Along these lines, researchers have proposed that goal striving and attainment predict manic symptoms. In the current study, experience-sampling methodology was used to assess the relationship between fluctuations in goal striving and affect among 12 persons with bipolar I disorder and 12 without a history of mood disorder (control group). Participants completed measures of goal striving and affect three times each day for a period of three weeks. It was hypothesized that moving more quickly than expected toward a given goal would result in decreased subsequent effort toward that goal (coasting) for the control group, and increased subsequent effort (anti-coasting) for those with bipolar I disorder, with positive affect mediating the relationship in both cases. Results indicated that those in the bipolar I disorder group were significantly more likely to anti-coast than those in the control group. This finding, however, was explained primarily by gender, as men in the bipolar I disorder group showed no evidence of anti-coasting. In addition, there was no evidence of the mediating role of positive affect in these phenomena. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

User interface design is becoming more reliant on user emotional states to improve usability, adapt to the users state, and allow greater expressiveness. Historically, usability has relied on performance metrics for evaluation, but user experience, with an emphasis on aesthetics and emotions, has become recognized as important for improving user interfaces. Research is ongoing into systems that automatically adapt to users states such as expertise or physical impairments and emotions are the next frontier for adaptive user interfaces. Improving the emotional expressiveness of computers adds a missing element that exists in human face-to-face interactions. The first step of incorporating users emotions into usability evaluation, adaptive interfaces, and expressive interfaces is to sense and gather the users emotional responses. Affective computing research has used predictive modeling to determine user emotional states, but studies are usually performed in controlled laboratory settings and lack realism. Field studies can be conducted to improve realism, but there are a number of logistical challenges with field studies: user activity data is difficult to gather, emotional state ground truth is difficult to collect, and relating the two is difficult. In this thesis, we describe a software solution that addresses the logistical issues of conducting affective computing field studies and we also describe an evaluation of the software using a field study. Based on the results of our study, we found that a software solution can reduce the logistical issues of conducting an affective computing field study and we provide some suggestions for future affective computing field studies.

The purpose of the study was to explore the overall perceptions that resource room teachers had of the required SMART goals, rubric outcome sampling, and the collaborative effort of Personal Program Planning team. This study included a descriptive, embedded single-case study having three sub-units. Each subunit consisted of one resource room teacher who was teaching in a central Saskatchewan urban school division at the elementary level. Each resource room teacher was asked to select one student with a cognitive, behavioural, or multiple disability and a previous PPP document written for him or her (i.e., this is not the students first year of meeting the criteria for Intensive Supports) by that particular resource room teacher. Each resource room teacher participated in three separate focus open-ended interviews designed to explore their perceptions of SMART goals, rubric outcome sampling, and the collaborative nature of the PPP process.<p> Pattern-matching and exploration building were the two analytic techniques used in this study. Numerous themes were identified in the data. The themes present in data collected from at least two of the participants included: the need to be flexible with parents; resource room teachers have large workloads; concern over EAs not being able to attend PPP meetings; the need for rubrics to be discussed within the context of a PPP meeting; the effect of having different knowledge bases and levels of expertise represented in a PPP team; the use of visual aides during the PPP meeting; and working with the dual role of resource room teacher and vice principal.

Control charts are designed to monitor population parameters. Selection of a control chart sampling plan involves determination of the frequency of samples, size of each sample, and critical values to determine when the system is sending an out-of-control signal. Since the main use of control charts is in industry, a widely accepted measure of a good sampling plan is one that minimizes the total cost of operating the system per unit time. Methods for selection of control chart sampling plans for economically optimal X charts are well established. These plans focus on single stage sampling at each sampling period. However, some populations naturally call for two stage sampling. Here, the cost of operating a system per unit time is redefined in terms of two stage sampling plans, and computer search techniques are developed to determine the control chart parameters. First the sample sizes and critical values are fixed, and Newton's method is used to determine the optimal time between samples. Then, a Hooke - Jeeves search is used to simultaneously determine the optimal critical value, sample sizes and time between samples. Adjustment to the latter is required whenever any of the other three parameters change. Alternative methods are also discussed. Information from a single sample is usually used to control shifts in both the process mean and variance. With two stage sampling, this means two additional control charts are used, one for each variance component. The computer algorithm developed for selection of parameters for X charts is adapted by expanding the Hooke Jeeves search region to a six dimensional space, now over three critical values, sample sizes for both stages of sampling, and the time between samples. These methods are applied to a real data set that requires two stage sampling. A representative analysis of the sensitivity of the optimal sampling scheme to the input parameters completes the paper. / Graduation date: 1990

Ball State University LibrariesLibrary services and resources for knowledge buildingMasters ThesesThere is no abstract available for this thesis.

Föroreningar av metaller är ett problem längs med kusterna, vilket har en negativ inverkan på vattenlevande organismer och miljön. Orsaken till detta beror till stor del på pågående utsläpp från tätorter, hamnar, industrier och på ”gamla synder (då det inte fanns några detaljerade miljölagar som reglerade spridningen av föroreningar från exempelvis industriprocesser)”. Utsläpp av föroreningar behöver inte bara komma lokalt utan kan också transporteras via avrinningsområdena och via atmosfäriskt nedfall. Idag arbetar länsstyrelsen med att invertera och sanera förorenade områden, men för att kunna ta reda på hur det ligger till med kusterna och hamnarna är sedimentprovtagningar ett måste. Att analysera data från sedimentprover kan vara speciellt utmanande eftersom det finns många olika faktorer som kan ha betydelse när data skall analyseras. Det kan vara faktorer som bottentyper, utspädning, kornstorlekar mm i en miljö som är speciellt utsatt för omrörningar. Syftet med detta arbete är att identifiera åtgärder som kan bidra till att förbättra analysen av föroreningar från sedimentundersökningar då det finns faktorer som kan påverka föroreningssignalen. Till detta arbete har data från Sveriges Geologiska Undersökning (SGU) använts. Provtagningarna genomfördes längs med kusten i Kalmarsund under åren 1998, 2003 och 2008. Dessa data har tidigare studerats med fokus på metallkoncentrationer. I detta arbete ligger fokus istället på att göra fördjupande jämförelser genom att studera morän, organiskt material, samt tillämpningen av normaliseringar och elementförhållanden. Även data från Structor Miljö Göteborg AB som tagit prover i Oskarshamns hamn under 2011 med hjälp av sedimentfällor har använts. Syftet är att göra en jämförelse med SGU:s provtagningar, samt att undersöka miljögiftsbelastningen och sedimentationshastigheten i Oskarshamns hamn och ytterområde. Resultatet visar att spridningen av metaller kan förbättras genom att studera koncentrationerna tillsammans med organiskt material, normalisering mot organiskt material och naturliga utsläpp av metaller ifrån morän. Resultatet visar också att sedimentfällor är ett utmärkt komplement till vanliga sedimentprovtagare.

Although complete understanding of the mechanisms of rare genetic variants in disease continues to elude us, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has facilitated significant gene discoveries across the disease spectrum. However, the cost of NGS hinders its use for identifying rare variants in common diseases that require large samples. To circumvent the need for larger samples, designing efficient sampling studies is crucial in order to detect potential associations. This research therefore evaluates sampling designs for rare variant - quantitative trait association studies and assesses the effect on power that freely available public cohort data can have in the design. Performing simulations and evaluating common and unconventional sampling schemes results in several noteworthy findings. Specifically, the extreme-trait design is the most powerful design for analyzing quantitative traits. This research also shows that sampling more individuals from the extreme of clinical interest does not increase power. Variant filtering has served as a "proof-of-concept" approach for the discovery of disease-causing genes in Mendelian traits and formal statistical methods have been lacking in this area. However, combining variant filtering schemes with existing rare variant association tests is a practical alternative. Thus, this thesis also compares the robustness of six burden-based rare variant association tests for Mendelian traits after a variant filtering step in the presence of genetic heterogeneity and genotyping errors. This research shows that with low locus heterogeneity, these tests are powerful for testing association. With the exception of the weighted sum statistic (WSS), the remaining tests were very conservative in preserving the type I error when the number of affected and unaffected individuals was unequal. The WSS, on the other hand, had inflated type I error as the number of unaffected individuals increased. The framework presented can serve as a catalyst to improve sampling design and to develop robust statistical methods for association testing.

No description available.

Signal-integrity degradation from such factors as supply and substrate noise and cross talk between interconnects restricts the performance advances in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). To avoid this and to keep the signal-integrity, accurate measurements of the on-chip signal must be performed to get an insight in how the physical phenomenon affects the signals. High-speed digital signals can be taken off chip, through buffers that add delay. Propagating a signal through buffers restores the signal, which can be good if only information is wanted. But if the waveform is of importance, or if an analog signal should be measured the restoration is unwanted. Analog buffers can be used but they are limited to some hundred MHz. Even if the high-speed signal is taken off chip, the bandwidth of on-chip signals is getting very high, making the use of an external oscilloscope impossible for reliable measurement. Therefore other alternatives must be used. In this work, an on-chip measuring circuit is designed, which makes use of the principle of a sampling oscilloscope. Only one sample is taken each period, resulting in an output frequency much lower than the input frequency. A slower signal is easier to take off-chip and it can easily be processed with an ordinary oscilloscope.

Spectral geometry is the field of mathematics which concerns relationships between geometric structures of manifolds and the spectra of canonical differential operators. Inverse Spectral Geometry in particular concerns the geometric information that can be recovered from the knowledge of such spectra. A deep link between inverse spectral geometry and sampling theory has recently been proposed. Specifically, it has been shown that the very shape of a Riemannian manifold can be discretely sampled and then reconstructed up to a cutoff scale. In the context of Quantum Gravity, this means that, in the presence of a physically motivated ultraviolet cuttoff, spacetime could be regarded as simultaneously continuous and discrete, in the sense that information can. In this thesis, we look into the properties of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a compact Riemannian manifold with no boundary. We discuss the behaviour of its spectrum regarding a perturbation of the Riemannian structure. Specifically, we concern ourselves with infinitesimal inverse spectral geometry, the inverse spectral problem of locally determining the shape of a Riemannian manifold. We discuss the recenSpectral geometry is the field of mathematics which concerns relationships between geometric structures of manifolds and the spectra of canonical differential operators. Inverse Spectral Geometry in particular concerns the geometric information that can be recovered from the knowledge of such spectra. A deep link between inverse spectral geometry and sampling theory has recently been proposed. Specifically, it has been shown that the very shape of a Riemannian manifold can be discretely sampled and then reconstructed up to a cutoff scale. In the context of Quantum Gravity, this means that, in the presence of a physically motivated ultraviolet cuttoff, spacetime could be regarded as simultaneously continuous and discrete, in the sense that information can. In this thesis, we look into the properties of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a compact Riemannian manifold with no boundary. We discuss the behaviour of its spectrum regarding a perturbation of the Riemannian structure. Specifically, we concern ourselves with infinitesimal inverse spectral geometry, the inverse spectral problem of locally determining the shape of a Riemannian manifold. We discuss the recently presented idea that, in the presence of a cutoff, a perturbation of a Riemannian manifold could be uniquely determined by the knowledge of the spectra of natural differential operators. We apply this idea to the specific problem of determining perturbations of the two dimensional flat torus through the knowledge of the spectrum of the Laplace-Beltrami operator.tly presented idea that, in the presence of a cutoff, a perturbation of a Riemannian manifold could be uniquely determined by the knowledge of the spectra of natural differential operators. We apply this idea to the specific problem of determining perturbations of the two dimensional flat torus through the knowledge of the spectrum of the Laplace-Beltrami operator.