Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) involves having to enter and explore partially collapsed buildings in search for victims trapped by the collapse. There are many hazards in doing this, because of the possibility of additional collapses, explosions, fires, or flooding of the area being searched. The use of robots for USAR would increase the safety of the operation for the humans involved, and make the operation faster, because the robots could penetrate areas inaccessible to human beings. Teleoperated robots have been deployed in USAR situations to explore confined spaces in the collapsed buildings and send back images of the interior to rescuers. These deployments have resulted in the identification of several problems found during the operation of these robots. This thesis addresses a problem that has been encountered repeatedly in these robots: the determination of the scale of unrecognizable objects in the camera views from the robot. A procedure that would allow the extraction of size using a laser pointer mounted on the robot's camera is described, and an experimental setup and results that verify this procedure have been shown. Finally, ways to extend the procedure have been explored

The inclusion of all students in large-scale assessment mandated by the No Child Left Behind (2003) requires that these large-scale assessments be developed to allow all students to show what they know, and that the results are comparable and equitable across diverse cultural and linguistic populations. This study examined the validity of the 5th grade 2009 Science Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) for diverse cultural and linguistic groups. The student groups considered for this study were selected based on all the possible combinations of three variables: ethnicity--White and Hispanic, test language--English and Spanish, and Limited English Proficiency (LEP) classification. Validity was assessed at the item and construct levels, and was analyzed from a psychometric, cultural and linguistic stance. At the item level, Differential Item Function (DIF) was conducted using the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. The presence of biased items was revealed for all pairwise group comparisons; with a high number of DIF items between groups which differed in English proficiency (approximately 50% of the test items), and a low number of DIF items between groups which only differ in ethnicity (approximately 15% of the test items). However, an analysis of the Item Characteristic Curves (ICCs), revealed that items classified by the Mantel-Haenszel procedure as advantaging the LEP groups, did so for students at low proficiency levels; while the advantage at high proficiency levels was for non-LEP groups. At the construct level, the structure of the English version of the TAKS was compared across three student groups using Confirmatory Factor Analysis with Multiple Groups. The hypothesized structure based on the TAKS blueprint, was rejected for the Group conformed by White, non-LEP students (MLM[subscript x]²[subscript(734)] = 1042.110; CFI= 0.845; RMSEA= 0.020); but, it was a good fit for Hispanic, non-LEP (MLM[subscript x]²[subscript(734)] = 819.356; CFI= 0.980; RMSEA= 0.011) and LEP (MLM[subscript x]²[subscript(734)] = 805.124; CFI= 0.985; RMSEA= 0.010) Groups. The results obtained from this study call to reinterpret the achievement gap observed in TAKS scores between the populations considered, and highlight the need for further development of guidelines that can better help to develop fair large-scale tests for all students. / text

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) are used to obtain precision measurements of cosmological parameters from large-scale surveys. While robust against most systematics, there are certain theoretical uncertainties that can affect BAO and galaxy clustering measurements. In this thesis I use data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to measure cosmological parameters and use N-body and smoothed-particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations to measure the effect of theoretical uncertainties by using halo occupation distributions (HODs). I investigate the effect of galaxy bias on BAO measurements by creating mock galaxy catalogs from large N -body simulations at z = 1. I find that there is no additional shift in the acoustic scale (0.10% ± 0.10%) for the less biased HODs (b < 3) and a mild shift (0.79% ± 0.31%) for the highly biased HODs (b > 3). I present the methodology and implementation of the simple one-step reconstruction technique introduced by Eisenstein et al. (2007) to biased tracers in N-body simulation. Reconstruction reduces the errorbars on the acoustic scale measurement by a factor of 1.5 - 2, and removes any additional shift due to galaxy bias for all HODs (0.07% ± 0.15%). Padmanabhan et al. (2012) and Xu et al. (2012) use this reconstruction technique in the SDSS DR7 data to measure Dᵥ(z = 0.35)(rᶠⁱᵈs/rs) = 1356 ± 25 Mpc. Here I use this measurement in combination with measurements from the cosmic microwave background and the supernovae legacy survey to measure various cosmological parameters. I find the data consistent with the ΛCDM Universe with a flat geometry. In particular, I measure H₀ = 69.8 ± 1.2 km/s/Mpc, w = 0.97 ± 0.17, Ωk = -0.004 ± 0.005 in the ΛCDM, wCDM, and oCDM models respectively. Next, I measure the effect of large-scale (5 Mpc) halo environment density on the HOD by using an SPH simulation at z = 0, 0.35, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0. I do not find any significant dependence of the HOD on the halo environment density for different galaxy mass thresholds, red and blue galaxies, and at different redshifts. I use the MultiDark N-body simualtion to measure the possible effect of environment density on the galaxy correlation function ℰ(r). I find that environment density enhances ℰ(r) by ∽ 3% at scales of 1 – 20h⁻¹Mpc at z = 0 and up to ∽ 12% at 0.3h⁻¹Mpc and ∽ 8% at 1 - 4h⁻¹Mpc for z = 1.

The advent of structural adjustment reforms in the early 1990s in the coffee sector saw the decline of government involvement in Kenya’s Coffee Cooperatives. The withdrawal of the state in the agricultural cooperative sector witnessed major coffee cooperatives struggle with the production of premium coffee. The production of coffee by cooperatives has greatly declined over the years, which has negatively affected the lives of thousands of small-scale farmers that belong to coffee cooperatives. A decline in cooperative coffee production has led to a decline in the number of coffee farmers witnessed attending cooperative meetings. This situation has further weakened the organizational capacity of the coffee cooperative as a key institution for small-scale coffee production. This thesis attempts to unearth those barriers that restrict cooperative members from attending meetings. A mixed methods approach is used to investigate participation levels at New Gatanga Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society. Understanding the fundamental issues behind the boycott by small-scale coffee producers in rural Kenya will provide a platform for constructing positive policies that will be used to improve the livelihoods of coffee cooperative members. / An investigation of the New Gatanga Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society to understand the fundamental issues behind the boycott by small-scale coffee producers in rural Kenya in order to provide a platform for constructing positive policies that will be used to improve the livelihoods of coffee cooperative members.

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The need for an employee-specific measure of resilience has directed the development of the Employee Resilience Scale (EmpRes). The conceptualisation of employee resilience in the present study describes an employee capacity that organisations can help develop through the provision of enabling factors. The EmpRes Scale was developed and tested in three samples, and was found to have adequate measurement properties. Findings from two organisational samples also revealed that employee resilience is significantly associated with learning culture, empowering leadership, job engagement, job satisfaction and intentions to turnover, and unrelated to employee participation and corporate communication. The research indicated that employee resilience has a mediating effect on the relationships between learning culture and job engagement and job satisfaction, and empowering leadership and job engagement, job satisfaction and intentions to turnover. The findings suggest that organisations enable their employees to be more resilient by creating a learning oriented culture and building empowering leadership, which in turn leads to better organisational outcomes. Although future research is required, the present study shows preliminary support for the psychometric properties of the scale as well as the conceptual model.