The primary purpose of this study was to examine a married person's distal religious (private religious practices, organizational religiousness, and religious intensity) and proximal spiritual variable (daily spiritual experiences, positive religious/spiritual coping, and forgiveness) associations to self-reported marital happiness. A secondary purpose was to examine these variable associations by gender. Three hundred forty-five married persons participated in the study. The findings showed that a married person's race and only organizational religiousness were significantly associated with self-reported marital happiness before considering proximal spiritual variables. After considering the latter, daily spiritual experiences, forgiveness, religious intensity, and race were significantly associated with marital happiness. Socio-cultural, distal and proximal variable associations to marital happiness differed in significance by gender. Symbolic interaction theory offered a conceptual foundation for interpretation. Implications for research and practice were discussed. / A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Family and Child Sciences in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / April 27, 2009. / Marital Happiness, Spirituality, Religiousness / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert E. Lee, Professor Directing Dissertation; Gary Peterson, Outside Committee Member; Kay Pasley, Committee Member; Ann Mullis, Committee Member.

Research has firmly established that children of divorce tend to divorce at a higher rate than the general population. The mechanism driving the intergenerational transmission of divorce, however, has not been firmly established. The two most promising theories to be advanced by previous research are the "good enough marriage" hypothesis and the modeling of relationship skills hypothesis. The present study employs structural equations modeling to examine the viability of these hypotheses and represents the first direct examination of the attitudinal portions of the "good enough marriage" hypothesis. In a sample of 225 young adults, evidence for an association was observed between perceptions of the parental marriage prior to divorce and both interpersonal tactics and prodivorce attitudes; however, the present study failed to document a reliable association between perceptions of the parental marriage prior to divorce and attitudes about commitment as predicted by the "good enough marriage" hypothesis. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2007. / August 3, 2007. / Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce / Includes bibliographical references. / Thomas E. Joiner, Jr., Professor Directing Thesis; Frank D. Fincham, Outside Committee Member; Richard K. Wagner, Committee Member.

In the contemporary industry, companies need to make investments to grow their business volume. However each investment comes with its own risk. Cost of an equipment does not only consist of the initial payment but also covers the future costs related to the operations, maintenance, quality of production and many other associated issues. Therefore, economical analysis of an asset should be done by considering the whole life cycle. Life-Cycle Costing (LCC) can be used as an engineering tool in order to assess the future business risks and prevent the unexpected costs and losses due to failures and downtime before they occur. When first proposed as a proactive effort, LCC came into the industry with several advantages to be provided. However it could not keep pace with the modern industrial IT development.Automated machine tools constitute a crucial part of modern manufacturing activities. As an asset within the production layout, life-cycle of machine tools consists of several periods which are basically early design, purchase, installation, operation and disposal stages. Unfortunately, lack of a detailed cost analysis method drives most of the manufacturers to follow minimum adequate design (MAD) principle. As described above, decision process of investing in new equipments brings along the old famous debate: “Short-term spending or long-term benefits?”Recent studies have proven the fact that interruptions in production due to failures and maintenance account for a considerable part of not only production profit losses but also overhead costs. Regarding this problem, several new concepts in maintenance such as Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Condition Based Monitoring (CBM) have been developed. Main goal of these methods is to anticipate the failures which are likely to occur and keep the continuity of production. However, usage of these methods is still at very limited level since industry lacks a dynamic costing method that can justify the initial investment in production equipment assisted by such maintenance techniques. Although they are effective to some extent in calculating direct costs, traditional cost analysis methods usually fail in providing an accurate view on the indirect, consequential and overhead costs. On the other hand, by its2different point of view in handling indirect costs and their future impacts, LCC method can be a possible solution for this investment analysis problem.The objective of this study is to develop an LCC model that can assist the decision making process during the early stages of an investment. A dynamic LCC model which considers the maintenance aspect will be proposed and, as a specific case, this model will be used for estimating and optimizing the life-cycle costs of a CNC machining center based on its real-time technical data history.

The popularity of smart phones has risen throughout the years since first introduced. With the popularity of the devices growing so too has the number of malicious applications flooding the devices’ marketplaces. With more usage there becomes a larger target for malware and exploitation creation. As threats to these devices continue to grow there is a constant need for security to safeguard against these threats. Some attempts to protect smart phones involve building software to analyze applications running on the devices. This attempt has cut back on the amount of malicious software on the marketplace. These attempts however only catch malicious applications after they have been running. This dissertation presents the Secure Android Development Model. The goal of this model is to contribute to security of these devices by having a development model that implicitly builds security into applications. The model ensures a minimal amount of open permissions thus limiting the number of attack vectors that malicious software can make on the devices. By following the model, developers will have all information available during development to make appropriate security decisions in their applications.

Seismic designs of building structures are currently made based on the design criterion of life-safety and this requires that the structures do not collapse to compromise safety of people in the structure, but they can be designed to experience some damage. However, this design approach has allowed large economic losses primarily due to the damage to the nonstructural components at relatively moderate levels of seismic intensities. This led to a new thinking about design approach called performance-based design approach that satisfies the life-safety objective at the same time, reduces the economic loss to an acceptable level. The performance-based design approaches are multi-level design that addresses several different levels of structural performances under different levels of seismic intensities. In this study, we have investigated the use of energy dissipating damping devices to achieve the performance of a building structure in a desirable manner over all levels of seismic intensity. Since the initial motivation of performance-based design was reducing economic loss, the life-cycle cost-based optimization is considered in this study to obtain the optimal designs with different damping devices. For the optimal design, three types of devices are used in this study: fluid viscous dampers, solid visco-elastic dampers, and yielding metallic dampers. The combinations of two different types of dampers are also examined in this study. The genetic algorithm (GA) approach is adopted as an optimizer that searches for the optimal solution in an iterative manner. Numerical results from the application of the optimal design to the selected model building are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the developed approach and to estimate the effectiveness of the obtained optimal design with each device. It is shown in the results that the optimal design with each individual damping devices or the combination of two different types of damping devices are very effective in reducing the expected failure cost as well as the displacement response quantities and fragilities. The results also show that the optimal designs focus relatively more on reducing economic losses for the lower but more frequent excitation intensities as these intensities contribute most to the failure costs. / Ph. D.

A new economic model for the evaluation of integrated Design, Production, and Logistic Support Systems (DPLSSs) is designed and developed in this thesis. The DPLSS model was created after a survey of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) applications revealed that no models for assessing integrated design, production, and logistic support systems were available. The evaluation technique the model is based on is called Life Cycle Value Assessment (LCVA). LCVA differs from LCC in that it emphasizes consideration of life cycle revenues as well as costs. The system addressed by the DPLSS model has a life cycle which includes product design, production capability design and construction, production, product distribution, logistic system support and maintenance, and system disposal. The baseline production capability assumed when developing the DPLSS model involves batch processing, forming the base material into individual units, and performing detailed processing operations. It has also been assumed that items produced are non-repairable. The DPLSS model facilitates the evaluation of new DPLSSs by leading managers through the new LCVA methodology, A Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) which is compatible with the DPLSS life cycle has been developed as a basis for the model. This CBS is used to address DPLSSs descriptively and non-natively during LCVA evaluations. A menu-driven computer program has also been developed to implement the DPLSS model on an IBM PC. This program leads users through the new LCVA-based methodology, performs economic and sensitivity analyses on their inputs, and then allows "what-if?-analyses on varying system configurations to be performed. / Master of Science

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Overall this thesis explores the age pattern of consumption of the Canadian elderly. Theoretical applications of the Life Cycle Hypothesis suggest that these consumption patterns should be constant in real terms as individuals age. However, most empirical work observes a declining pattern of consumption with age and health status. This thesis attempts to resolve this difference. The first chapter uses data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey. Using a comprehensive measure of health status, it finds that poor health explains the reduction in consumption (and its marginal utility), with most of the effect occurring among individuals whose income is above the median. The second chapter uses data from the Canadian Survey of Household Spending to explore the effect on non-healthcare consumption of falling into ill health. It finds that the effect on non-healthcare consumption varies by the level of a household's saving or dissaving. Non-healthcare consumption decreases by roughly 2.25% of after-tax income for those households that dissave 10% of their current year after-tax income or less. As households dissave larger and larger amount, however, the effect first becomes less negative, and then more positive. The third chapter develops a theoretical approach to calculating a life annuity value that produces optimal levels of annual consumption that reflect changes in utility based on health status and age. Relative to an annuity that produces a constant real stream of income for a healthy 65 year old male, the optimal stream of income starts roughly 2% higher and drops by 2% to 3% by age 80 and by a further 2% or so by age 95. This pattern of consumption is roughly equivalent to ignoring 15 to 20 basis points of annual inflation relative to an annuity that is fully indexed to inflation. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The ecological role of chironomids has been described as an abundant and ubiquitous prey item for not only aquatic species, but terrestrial and avian species as well. Global use of pesticides in urban and agricultural applications have introduced a potential threat not only to chironomid populations, but to the individuals that prey on chironomids. Chironomids direct contact with the sediment has resulted in both legacy and current-use pesticides being detected in the individuals throughout their life cycle. The capacity for contaminant uptake and biotransformation among each midge life stage and from larvae to adults, however, is poorly understood. The lipophilic compounds of focus for this thesis include bifenthrin, and p,p’-DDT, along with the biotransformation products, TFP acid, BP alcohol, BP acid, p,p’-DDE and p,p’- DDD. To observe bioaccumulation and biotransformation at each life stage (2nd,3rd,4th, pupae, and adult), month long exposures were run with a subset of individuals being removed at each life stage and processed to quantify total, parent, and biotransformation product concentrations. Exposures at low concentrations (below literature C. dilutus no observable adverse effects concentration) at 25°C produced mean C. dilutus total pesticide concentrations ranging from 36.31 to 896.1 μg/kg dw lipid for bifenthrin and from 41.64 to 877.7 μg/kg dw lipid for DDT through all life stages. The 3rd instar contained the highest parent bifenthrin concentration, though this concentration was not statistically different from the concentration in the pupae. The 3rd instar also contained the highest parent concentration of DDT, though concentrations were not statistically different from concentrations in 2nd to 3rd instar larvae. C. dilutus also displayed subsequent biotransformation of DDT to DDE in each instar. By the 4th instar, 87.10% of the total concentration in the midges was DDE and DDD. The biotransformation of DDT to DDD was also observed to occur in sediments and was likely due to direct reductive dechlorination through chemical processes. Chironomid uptake of DDD increased as the parent DDT was degraded to DDD in the sediments over the testing period. This study provides a greater understanding of the bioaccumulation and biotransformation potential in chironomids at each life stage. Initial spiking concentrations were too low, resulting in low body residues and with no method detection limit or reporting limit defined for the study, so these lower measures have limited certainty. Therefore, the implications of this thesis are limited.

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