In cases involving the rescue of people in need of immediate medical care, it is often thought that the responsibility to save the lives of the imperilled falls to advanced professionals, such as paramedics, doctors, nurses, etc. This tells only part of the story, however, as in many cases the first point of contact for a person under duress is non-professional bystanders – average people with often little to no training in first aid or medicine. If the first point of contact is the bystander, do these bystanders have an obligation to help? Even if we assume that it is good to help people in need, the answer is not immediately obvious. Matters become more complicated when the bystander does have training that would make their intervention efficacious in helping the victim. Are they expected to help because they are trained and could presumably help more? This thesis seeks to examine this question and argue the following two conclusions: first, in terms of rescue cases, trained bystanders, whom I call informed rescuers, are morally required to act because of their training; and second, given the special role of knowledge in rescue, those who do not possess training in first aid can be held morally blameworthy for failing to know how to act in rescue cases. Because of this, everyone ought to learn basic first aid.

This thesis examines the relationship between the provincial Crown and Aboriginal peoples in the particular context of the prairie provinces to determine whether or not it can be described as fiduciary and, if so, what obligations arise from it. <p>While very few judicial decisions have dealt with this specific issue, an analysis of the existing jurisprudence suggests that there are two types of fiduciary relationships in which Aboriginal peoples are involved. The first type is a manifestation of the more traditional fiduciary concept. It is similar to classic fiduciary situations, such as doctor/patient, director/corporation, partner/partner, in which a fiduciary having control over the property or person of another must act in that other person's best interests. In the Aboriginal context, the power of the federal Crown over surrendered Indian reserve lands and over Indian moneys is limited by its fiduciary obligations of this traditional type. The second type is unique to the situation of Aboriginal peoples. It arises out of the constitutional protection provided to Aboriginal and treaty rights and gives rise to obligations that limit the jurisdiction of federal and provincial governments over them. <p> This thesis concludes that the provincial Crown in the prairie provinces possesses no fiduciary obligations arising directly out of its relationship with First Nations peoples, in the classic fiduciary sense, because history and the Constitution have established that that relationship is with the federal Crown. Provincial fiduciary obligations are limited to those arising from the constitutional protection of Aboriginal and treaty rights and thus arise only in respect of constitutionally valid provincial laws that infringe on such rights. In Saskatchewan, the only infringing provincial laws that are possible are those made under the authority provided by paragraph 12 of the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement, 1930, which authorizes Saskatchewan to make limited laws relating to hunting, fishing and trapping applicable to Indians.

Structural motifs for the BC2N superlattices were identified from a systematic search based on a greedy algorithm. Using a tree data structure, we have retrieved seven structural models for c-BC2N 1x1x lattice which were identified previously by Sun et al. [Phys. Rev. B 64, 094108 (2001)]. Furthermore, the atomic structures with the maximum number of C-C bonds for c-BC2N 2x2x2, 3x3x3, and 4x4x4 superlattices were found by imposing the greedy algorithm in the tree data structure. This new structural motif has not been previously proposed in the literature. A total of up to 512 atoms in the c-BC2N superlattice are taken into consideration. The atoms in these superlattices are in diamond-like structural form. Furthermore, the C atoms, as well as B and N atoms, form the octahedral motif separately. The octahedral structure consisting of C is bounded with {111} facets, and each facet is interfaced to a neighboring octahedral structure consisting of B and N atoms. The electronic and mechanical properties of newly identified low energy structures were analyzed.

This study seeks to explain the reasons behind why first-mover advantage is unsustainable in emerging industries. For the purpose of study, four companies in two different industries, namely TFT-LCD backlight module and magnesium alloy enclosure manufactures are categories into two groups based on their entrance position (first-movers and latecomers). Since traditional strategies are much harder to use when analyzing industries undergoing rapid change, thus the concept of fitness landscape is used. The conclusions of this study are presented as follows: 1) Although first-movers advantages exists in mature, stable industry, however, the fast changing nature of emerging industries meant that traditional notions are unfeasible. 2) Four important, inter-related factors determine the possibility of latecomer to overcome first-mover advantages, they are i) the growing market, ii) late entry, iii) revolutionary technology, and iv) focused product strategy. 3) Ever-changing business environment, fitness landscape, meant that static strategies are no longer feasible. The affect of every decision have direct implications for the industry at large, thus changing the landscape. Therefore, constant awareness and mobility are most important to survive in emerging industries.

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Demographic and sociological theories usually do not incorporate biological variable into their explanations. This dissertation addresses this void by examining the influence of age at menarche on age at first birth, the event of a first birth, and the number of children ever born (CEB). I expand on Demographic Transition theory by incorporating biology as one of the effects of modernization that has an effect on reducing fertility. Age at menarche decreases as a society modernizes. I use data from the 1995 Survey of Family Growth, Cycle V for the U.S., and the 1997 China Survey of Population and Reproductive Health. I further stratify the data into five race/ethnic groups: Chinese Han, Chinese minorities, U.S. Non-Hispanic Whites, U.S. Non-Hispanic Blacks, and U.S. Hispanics of Mexican origin. I use four different statistical methods to model my dependent variables: Ordinary Least Squares Regression, Cox Proportional Hazard Analysis, Poisson Regression, and Negative Binominal Regression. My first major finding is that the younger a woman is when reaching menarche, the younger she will be when giving birth to her first child. Second, the younger a woman is when reaching menarche, the longer the duration to a first birth and the less likely she is to experience a first birth. These two results are consistent in all the groups I analyze. Third, the younger a woman when reaching menarche, the fewer children she will produce. The U.S. Mexican-Origin women are an exception in this final outcome. It is well known that as a society modernizes, age at menarche decreases. Analyses in my dissertation indicate that as women’s ages at menarche decrease, their ages at giving birth to the first child also decrease, but their chances of having a first birth also decrease and their waiting time for having the first birth increases. Also, fertility will decline as age at menarche declines.

This study focused on the perceptions students have about the effectiveness of learning communities, a focus of the First-Year Success initiative at Texas A

The first hyperpolarizability £], which is an important factor in the second-order nonlinear optical effect, of the 5-6-5 heterocyclic rigid-rod chromophores-based derivatives has been systematically investigated in this work, applying the first principle based software CASTEP and the semi-empirical software MOPAC There are four factors chosen for this computational analysis, including the effects of (i) various rigid-rod molecules, (ii) auxiliary ability of various five-member rings, (iii) donor ability, and (iv) conjugation length. Results indicate that the benzobisimidazole (BBI)-based derivatives have larger £] values than those of benzobisthiazole (BBT) and benzobisoxazole (BBO)-based derivatives. The auxiliary donor ability of the pyrrole is larger than that of the thiophene and furan. In general, the £] value of various derivatives studied is parallel to the original donor strength and the trend in the donor is -N(CH3)2 > -NH2 > -OH > -CH3. In addition, the greater the conjugation length in the derivatives is, the higher the £] value. Further, from the analyses on the band-resolved £] values and the orbital density figures, it is found that the major contribution to the enhanced £] comes primarily from an efficient charge transfer from the donor side via the intermediate heterocyclic bridge to the acceptor side. Finally, a comparison between CASTEP and MOPAC reveals that CASTEP is more appropriate and accurate in predicting the optical properties of the heterocyclic-ring-based derivatives.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009. / Thesis Advisor: Singh, Gurminder. Second Reader: Das, Arijit. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 26, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: TwiddleNet, Mobile Web Server, cross network information sharing. Includes bibliographical references (p. 51). Also available in print.