Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-122). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).

<p> Archaeological education and outreach have become priorities in a discipline that struggles to make its research accessible and relevant to the diverse public. In recent years, researchers have begun to address this issue through the design and implementation of grade school lesson modules on various archaeological topics. Although these lesson modules are readily available, little has been done to assess the efficacy of such public education and outreach agendas. With stimulus and funding from the Blackfeet Tribe and the Montana Department of Transportation, respectively, this thesis addresses this gap by (1) designing archaeological lesson modules for middle school students, and (2) assessing the general efficacy of the lessons. Specifically, the study systematically analyzes four science units for their overall efficacy, general impact, and utility through pre-and-post assessments that measure student understanding and interest. The quantified analyses are then combined to attain an overall percentage of curriculum efficacy. As a public outreach strategy for archaeology, these modules emphasize a pluralistic, multivocal, inclusive, and pragmatic perspective of the past that both connects with a multifaceted, diverse public and avoids educational marginalization of a shared, collective past. Thus, Native perspectives are interwoven with scientific archaeological knowledge to, in essence, pluralize the past. The topical focus of the lessons is bison&mdash;a uniquely North American past and present species with which humans have interacted intimately at a multitude of levels but, also, a species that is not always accepted among contemporary ranchers and land users. The curriculum is aimed at middle school students, recognizing that these students, as the future decision-makers, are a key demographic to target. It is hypothesized that (1) the respectful incorporation of archaeological education in a pluralized, inclusive fashion allows the interdisciplinary potential of archaeology to be more fully realized, and (2) such a strategy allows the significance of bison to be better understood and more widely appreciated.</p>

<p> Employability skills training programs are an essential strategy to improve the skills of the workforce and minimize unemployment in Malaysia. However, there has been a lack of assessment and evaluation studies regarding local employability skills training programs. Existing local studies are focused more on the identification of the skills that allow a person to be employable. Due to the lack of assessment and evaluation studies, stakeholders seem perplexed about the direction of training programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of educators, employers, and recent graduates regarding the role of employability skills training programs in the workforce of Malaysia. The study also identified those factors that facilitate and improve training programs. The theoretical framework for this descriptive study was based on Human Capital Theory (Becker, 1993; Schultz, 1961). All participants for this study were from the central economic region of the west coast of peninsular Malaysia. The first population was engineering, technical, and vocational educators in public higher education institutions. The second population was employers in the manufacturing sector. The third population was recent graduates who were enrolled in employability skills training programs in higher education institutions and training centers. A questionnaire was adapted to gather perceptions from the respondents. The findings of this study revealed the importance of training programs for improving the skills, minimizing unemployment, and developing the workforce of Malaysia. Educators and recent graduates agreed about the positive impact of such programs on trainee skills. However, employers perceived that employability skills training programs neither ensure improvement in the skills, minimize unemployment, nor develop the workforce. The factors that facilitate the involvement of recent graduates in training programs and recommendations were also identified. Additionally, the findings revealed that employability skills training programs are relevant for recent graduates and workers in the labor force. Further, the findings identified the most integral skills that recent graduates should possess to obtain employment in the competitive job market as perceived by educators, employers, and recent graduates, including discipline and integrity, interpersonal skills, and professionalism, creativity and innovation, teamwork, lifelong learning, ability to apply knowledge, and knowledge in specific engineering disciplines.</p>

The future experimental programs both at FNAL and at CERN will have a strong focus on the search for new physics at the intensity frontier. In order to provide beams of unprecedented intensities to the various experiments at these labs, the booster accelerators in which the beams originate must perform far beyond their original design specifications. The optical properties of the booster accelerator lattices will need to be carefully controlled in order to deliver these high-intensity proton beams. This thesis presents the results of linear optics measurements made with unprecedented precision in the FNAL Booster and the CERN PS Booster using LOCO and K-modulation techniques. In the FNAL Booster, corrections to the observed optics distortions were also successfully implemented. The implications of these results for future high-intensity operations are discussed. / text

The recent years have observed a tremendous shift from the technology-centric assessment to the user-centric assessment of network services. Consequently, measurement and modelling of Quality of Experience (QoE) attracted many contributions from researchers and practitioners. Generally, QoE is assessed via active and passive measurements. While the former usually allows QoE assessment on the test traffic, the latter opens avenues for continuous QoE assessment on the real traffic generated by the users. This thesis contributes towards passive assessment of QoE. This thesis document begins with a background on the fundamentals of network management and objective QoE assessment. It extends the discussion further to the QoE-centric monitoring and management of network, complimented by the details about QoE estimator agent developed within the Celtic project QuEEN (Quality of Experience Estimators in Network). The discussion on findings starts with results from subjective tests to understand the relationship between waiting times and user subjective feedback over time. These results strengthen the understanding of timescales on which users react, as well as, the effect of user memory on QoE. The findings show that QoE drops significantly when the user faces recurring waiting times of 0.5 s to 4 s durations in case of video streaming and web browsing services. With recurring network disturbances within every 8 s – 16 s time intervals, the user tolerance to waiting times decreases constantly, showing the sign of user memory of recent disturbances. Subsequently, this document introduces and evaluates a passive wavelet-based QoE monitoring method. The method detects timescales on which transient outages occur frequently. A study presents results from qualitative measurements, showing the ability of wavelet to differentiate on-fly between “Good” and “Bad” traffic streams. In sequel, a quantitative study systematically evaluates wavelet-based metrics. Subsequently, the subjective evaluation and wavelet analysis of 5 – 6 minutes long video streaming sessions on mobile networks show that wavelet-based metrics is indeed useful for passive monitoring of QoE issues. Finally, this thesis investigates a method for passive monitoring of user reactions to degrading network performance. The method is based on the TCP termination flags. With a systematic evaluation in a test environment, the results characterise termination of data transfers in case of different user actions in the web browser.

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