Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Freiburg, 2001. / Mixed media. Includes bibliographical references and register.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-184) and index.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Logos Evangelical Seminary, 2007. / Vita. Description based on Microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-290).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [225]-235).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains x, 210 p. : ill. (some col.) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Logos Evangelical Seminary, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-290).

Mini Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the M Tech: Business Administration in the FACULTY of BUSINESS at the CAPE PENINSULA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY 2009 / The tourism industry is subject to the perception of the tourist whether the chosen destination is perceived as a safe destination. No tourist wants their planned vacation interrupted by acts of violence, placing his and his family’s lives in danger. The attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001, has changed the way we travelled for ever. The tourism industry realized that no destination, no mater how far removed from the so called “hot spots” (areas of conflict), could be seen as a safe destination. Acts of violence can occur at any destination at any time. This attack also had a significant impact on the way tourist travel and how they plan their vacations. Added security at all international airports were upgraded to ensure passenger safety, but with that came delays and longer check in times. All of these have a negative impact on the airlines. Tourist also opted for the more safer destinations, those that are removed form potential conflict areas. In the months following directly after the attacks, most popular destination experienced a significant decline in tourist numbers. Major airline across the globe also lost out on revenue, with some of them being forced to close their operations. This had an impact on employment figures in the tourism industry. The attacks however had a positive side to it as well. Some destinations benefited in tourism numbers, due to the fact that these destinations were seen a safe areas to spend one’s vacation at. South Africa, and in particular the Western Cape, is one of these areas that benefited with increasing tourism numbers, due to its status as a safe destination.

Mexican migrants living in New York City have not uprooted themselves from their homeland as did migrants from previous generations. These contemporary migrants have engaged themselves in the phenomenon of transnationalism, which is characterized by the building and maintenance of simultaneous linkages in both the migrants' country of settlement and their country of origin. New York City is the destination of a large number of Mexican migrants from different regions of the state of Puebla. Leaders of this Mexican state are increasingly engaging in new practices so that the Poblano (people from Puebla) population abroad remains socially, politically, culturally and economically part of the state from which it originated. This thesis is an ethnography of Casa Puebla, an organization in New York created conjointly by the Poblano migrants and their state government. It explores and describes the practices and activities employed by the leadership of this organization for involving migrants in a transnational experience. It also explores the role of this organization as a venue for the construction of a deterritorialized state of Puebla in New York and an "imagined" Poblano community. By strengthening the migrants' identification with their state of origin, the state can make new claims for their loyalty and sustain political, social and economic relationships between the Poblano migrants and their state of origin despite their living in another country. The creation of transnational organizations sponsored by the state of origin reflects the growing institutionalization of migration orchestrated by the sending regional states and highlights the role of the middle entity--the regional state— in the construction of the transnational experience. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Simulation is a powerful technique to study complex problems and systems. This thesis explores two different problems. Part 1 (Chapters 2 and 3) focuses on the theory and practice of the problem of simulating graphs with a prescribed degree sequence. Part 2 (Chapter 4) focuses on how simulation can be useful to assess policy changes in emergency medical services (EMS) systems. In particular, and partially motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we build a simulation model based on New York City’s EMS system and use it to assess a change in its hospital transport policy. In Chapter 2, we study the problem of sampling uniformly from discrete or continuous product sets subject to linear constraints. This family of problems includes sampling weighted bipartite, directed, and undirected graphs with given degree sequences. We analyze two candidate distributions for sampling from the target set. The first one maximizes entropy subject to satisfying the constraints in expectation. The second one is the distribution from an exponential family that maximizes the minimum probability over the target set. Our main result gives a condition under which the maximum entropy and the max-min distributions coincide. For the discrete case, we also develop a sequential procedure that updates the maximum entropy distribution after some components have been sampled. This procedure sacrifices the uniformity of the samples in exchange for always sampling a valid point in the target set. We show that all points in the target set are sampled with positive probability, and we find a lower bound for that probability. To address the loss of uniformity, we use importance sampling weights. The quality of these weights is affected by the order in which the components are simulated. We propose an adaptive rule for this order to reduce the skewness of the weights of the sequential algorithm. We also present a monotonicity property of the max-min probability. In Chapter 3, we leverage the general results obtained in the previous chapter and apply them to the particular case of simulating bipartite or directed graphs with given degree sequences. This problem is also equivalent to the one of sampling 0–1 matrices with fixed row and column sums. In particular, the structure of the graph problem allows for a simple iterative algorithm to find the maximum entropy distribution. The sequential algorithm described previously also simplifies in this setting, and we use it in an example of an inter-bank network. In additional numerical examples, we confirm that the adaptive rule, proposed in the previous chapter, does improve the importance sampling weights of the sequential algorithm. Finally, in Chapter 4, we build and test an emergency medical services (EMS) simulation model, tailored for New York City’s EMS system. In most EMS systems, patients are transported by ambulance to the closest most appropriate hospital. However, in extreme cases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this policy may lead to hospital overloading, which can have detrimental effects on patients. To address this concern, we propose an optimization-based, data-driven hospital load balancing approach. The approach finds a trade-off between short transport times for patients that are not high acuity while avoiding hospital overloading. To test the new rule, we run the simulation model and use historical EMS incident data from the worst weeks of the pandemic as a model input. Our simulation indicates that 911 patient load balancing is beneficial to hospital occupancy rates and is a reasonable rule for non-critical 911 patient transports. The load balancing rule has been recently implemented in New York City’s EMS system. This work is part of a broader collaboration between Columbia University and New York City’s Fire Department.

This creative nonfiction dissertation is a book of essays that explore the author's life and relationship to Upstate New York. The project also connects this experience to gender and trauma. Though the topics range from local history to cosmetic surgical procedures, the essays are collected by how they illuminate cultural tensions and universal truths. These essays are preceded by a critical preface that examines the differences between essays collections, books of essays, and argues for the recognition of narrative nonfiction as an artistic choice.