College completion agendas necessarily presume year-to-year student persistence. Institutional efforts to retain admitted students has emerged for a variety of reasons, some intrinsic and others extrinsic. Some of these reasons include (1) financial exigency as institutions strive to retain tuition-paying students or meet prescribed enrollment and retention criteria currently used in performance funding strategies; (2) reputation enhancement as institutions attempt to ascend annual publications such as the U.S. News & World Report which rely on retention rates as one of several indicators used to measure institutional quality; (3) gaining a perceived advantage in admissions, marketing, and fundraising as persistence rates have, for better or worse, become a de facto measure of quality undergraduate programs; and (4) mission fulfillment as institutions, especially public institutions, are tasked with contributing towards broadly cast social goals such as access to education, economic competitiveness, and community development. Knowledge about forces that impact student attrition is critical to the development of preventative strategies that seek to improve student persistence rates. One such environmental force that has an impact on student persistence is financial aid and a student’s ability to pay for their college education. While research examining the impact of financial aid on student persistence has accumulated over the years, little is known about how the loss of certain types of aid, specifically, state-based merit aid, affects students once they enroll in an institution. The majority of studies about financial aid’s impact on student persistence were conducted prior to the establishment of many state-wide merit scholarship programs. Tinto’s (1975, 1986, 1993) interactional theory of student departure serves as the theoretical framework employed in this study. Tinto (1975) states that entering college students bring with them specific background characteristics and initial commitments that influence the student’s social and academic integration at the institution that, in turn, impact subsequent institutional and goal commitments and, ultimately, persistence. This study intends to examine pre- and post-matriculation data gathered through the admissions and financial aid processes to develop predictive models useful in calculating the probabilities associated with Bright Futures scholarship retention, institutional persistence after losing a Bright Futures scholarship award at the conclusion of a student’s first year of enrollment, and a student’s eligibility to recapture a Bright Futures scholarship award in their third year of enrollment. Data was collected passively from institutional databases on 2,418 students meeting the study criteria for inclusion in the model building process. Findings indicate that the models developed throughout the course of this study hold potential for informing institutional retention initiatives among Bright Futures scholarship award recipients.

這是一個結合音樂創作專輯和現場展演（火車音樂會）的作品，探討城市之間旅途的往返和時空的轉換，創作過程同時也是尋找「自我」的過程。 專輯發想於我多年來在揚州、北京和台北三地之間往返的移動經歷。十四首曲目通過「出發」「海島」「都市」「歸家」這樣的線索串連，其中也將收錄城市不同角落的聲景，期盼透過作品，讓聽眾思考心目中城市的樣貌，也藉由出發找到自我。展演的部分的是由火車音樂會構成，將音樂表演安排在區間車車廂內舉行，試圖將聽眾們帶回我最初創作歌曲的場景，更好地感受我的音樂創作。 本創作論述提供創作的背景與動機，關於城市、空間、民謠的歷史的文獻探討和其他作品討論，以及專輯和火車音樂會的創作內容說明，觀眾回饋。最後附上結論與參考文獻，構成共五章的創作論述。 / Between Cities is a comprehensive work which combines music album and live show(train concert). It intends to discuss the journeys between cities and time-space transposition. Also, the process of creation is a process of finding myself. Inspired by the travel experience among Yangzhou, Beijing and Taipei over the years, the music album contains 14 tracks through a clue of “Departures” “The island” “Cities” and  “Homecoming”. It also records soundscapes of different cities’ corners. I hope these songs can let the audience think about the appearance of their imaginative cities and find themselves by starting from somewhere. Consisting of music performance which is arranged in train cabin, the train concert intends to bring the audience back to my original scene of songwriting and make them learn my songs more deeply. The thesis declares my motives and songwriting background of this creation in the first part. It then reviews the literary writings about cities, space, folk history and other songwriters’ artworks. In the third and fourth part, I explain all the treatment of my album and train concert, including the audience feedback. Adding on the conclusion and reference, working records above become a five-chapter thesis in the end.

This master’s thesis is focused on the continuous descent approach procedure and its impact on the airspace capacity. The first part is devoted to the theoretical description of the procedure and the assessment of the current situation in implementation of continuous descent approach at the European airports. The impact on the airspace capacity is demonstrated by a detailed analysis of the procedure application at Praha – Ruzyně airport. The aim of the analysis is to define critical areas that have to be solved before permanent application of the procedure. In the following chapters there are presented possible solutions of conflict spots in the current operational environment and in the future after implementation of 4D trajectory concept as well. The last part is focused on the application of continuous descent approach at Praha – Ruzyně airport after the construction of a parallel runway.

<div>Driving safety is a very important topic in vehicle development. One of the biggest threat of driving safety is road departure. Many vehicle active safety technologies have been developed to warn and mitigate road departure in recent years. In order to evaluate the performance of road departure warning and mitigation technologies, the standard testing environment need to be developed. The testing environment shall be standardized to provide consistent and repeatable features in various locations worldwide and in various seasons. The testing environment should also be safe to the vehicle under test in case the safety features do not function well. Therefore, soft, durable and reusable surrogates of roadside objects need to be used. Meanwhile, all surrogates should have the same representative characteristics of real roadside objects to different automotive sensors (e.g. radar, LIDAR and camera). This thesis describes the study on identifying the radar characteristics of common roadside objects, metal guardrail, grass, and concrete divider, and the development of the required radar characteristics of surrogate objects. The whole process is divided into two steps. The first step is to find the proper methods to measure the radar properties of those three roadside objects. The measurement result of each roadside object will be used as the requirement for making its surrogate. The second step is to create the material for developing the surrogate of each roadside object. In the experimental results demonstrate that all three surrogates satisfy their radar characteristics requirements.</div>

The goal of this MA thesis lies in mapping the history of the city Cheb after the second world war with the help of narratives and press of those times. Focus is on years 1945-1950 but the thesis also contains information about the city's history until 1945. Another aspect of this thesis is the variety of newspaper specific for this region and the way it changes through the years after war. The most important themes of this thesis include evicion of Germans, changing relationships whith the USA and the Soviet Union, ascent of kommunism and reastructuraion of Cheb - all of these in connection with the city itself and the memories of narrators. These themes are submited within the stories of individual narrators and spulemented by citations from newspaper.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Automotive technology has grown from strength to strength in the recent years. The main focus of research in the near past and the immediate future are autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles range from level 1 to level 5, depending on the percentage of machine intervention while driving. To make a smooth transition from human driving and machine intervention, the prediction of human driving behavior is critical. This thesis is a subset of driving behavior prediction. The objective of this thesis is to predict the possibility of crash and implement an appropriate active safety system to prevent the same. The prediction of crash requires data of transition between lanes, and speed ranges. This is achieved through a variation of hidden Markov model. With the crash prediction and analysis of the Markov models, the required ADAS system is activated. The above concept is divided into sections and an algorithm was developed. The algorithm is then scripted into MATLAB for simulation. The results of the simulation is recorded and analyzed to prove the idea.

The objective of the diploma thesis is to design and check a load-carrying steel structure of departure lounge in Ostrava. The building has a rectangular plan with dimensions of 45x63m. Height of the building at its heightest point is 13m. First variant composes of trussed girders and purlins. Spatial rigidity is achieved by bracings. Second variant is a flat space frame. The design of joints, column anchorage and drawings has been made for variant 2.

This study examined two different aspects of black bear (Ursus americanus) ecology in Utah. First, we determined the post-denning behaviors of female black bears in order to help management agencies protect bears from human disturbances as well as set spring hunts that minimize the taking of females with dependent young. We looked at the timing of den emergence (X = 25 March), the number of days at the den site post emergence (X = 11 days), and departure (X = 8 April) for female black bears in Utah from 2011—2013. We also analyzed the effects of cohort (lone female, female with cubs, and female with yearlings), region of Utah, year, elevation, and weather on emergence, departure, and total number of days at den. Lastly, we describe behaviors observed at the den site. We found that first emergence was significantly correlated with cohort and spring temperature. Departure date was significantly correlated with geographic region, spring temperature during emergence and departure, and temperature the spring and summer before denning. Total number of days at den was significantly correlated with cohort and last frost date from the year before. Bears spent little of the post-denning period outside of the dens (X = 9.8% of total observation time). When outside of dens, bears were often observed walking, lying down, sitting and standing. We also observed unique behaviors, including gathering nest materials, nursing, and ingesting. Dens were frequently visited by other wildlife as well. Second, we analyzed conflict between humans and black bears in Utah. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources initiated a black bear sightings and encounters database in 2003. We upgraded this database by gathering available records and organizing them into a new database for analysis using Microsoft Access®. From 2003—2013 there were 943 records, with 499 bear-human encounters, 33 incidents, 10 attacks, 208 property damages, 187 sightings, and 6 vehicle collisions. Utah county had the highest number of events (n = 115). The majority of events took place at campsites (n = 363). Summer was the most common season for events (n = 715). Time of day was frequently not reported, but when it was, most events occurred at night (n = 173). We found no significant increase in the number of events over the last ten years. We also found no significant relationship between the number of events per year and drought data. The highest number of events involved single bears (n = 843), and over half of events had food or garbage available for the bear (n = 475).

Denna studie syftar till att belysa faktorer som bidrager till att soldater avslutar sin värnplikt i förtid. Det finns faktorer som kan justeras/förfinas redan innan mönstring. Studien visar att soldaten är en komplex helhet.  Rubbas någon av de förutsättningar som beskrivs i studien ökar sannolikheten att soldaten blir en avgång. Felaktig uttagning eller för lågt satta uttagningskriterier ökar sannolikheten för att soldaterna slutar i förtid.  Soldaterna behöver tydlig information om vad som förväntas av dem samt information till anhöriga. Få har genomfört värnplikt under den period som soldaterna har växt upp i och därmed har inte kunskap spridits i tillräcklig mån i samhället om vad värnplikt innebär. De som inte hinner med att göra en mental omställning till den militära kulturen i den takt som krävs, hamnar lätt i utanförskap. Likaså hamnar de individer som varit sjuka eller skadade och därmed varit frånvarande i den militära utbildningen utanför den kollektiva gemenskapen. I militär kultur är gruppen central och den sociala samhörigheten en av de viktigaste krafterna.  Starkt präglade individualister får det svårare att ta sig in gemenskapen. Olyckor, skador och sjukdomar samt oförutsedda händelser i privatlivet kan leda till att soldater slutar i förtid.

There is growing concern that current toxicological test methods are too slow and expensive to evaluate the safety of the thousands of chemicals in the Canadian economy. In this thesis, a novel zebrafish embryo test, with integrated behaviour, energy expenditure and gene transcription assays, was used to assess the hazard of a diverse suite of 29 chemicals. I hypothesized that points of departure (PODs) from the integrated test would be protective of the long-term toxic effects of these chemicals. I found that: 1) integrating alternative test methods enhanced the sensitivity of the zebrafish embryo acute toxicity (FET) test, 2) integrated results provided a holistic understanding of potential mechanisms of action and effects, and 3) transcriptional PODs were protective of PODs from traditional long-term and short-term juvenile and adult fish toxicity tests reported in the literature. This integrated zebrafish embryo test is a sensitive, informative and protective chemical hazard screening tool.