ABSTRACT FIRST YEAR COLLEGE ADJUSTMENT: THE ROLE OF COPING, EGO-RESILIENCY, OPTIMISM AND GENDER Yalim, Desen M. S. Department of Educational Sciences Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Oya Yerin G&uuml / neri June 2007, 68 pages This study investigated the relationship between ways of coping, ego-resiliency, optimism, gender and adjustment of first year students. Participants of the study were 420 Department of Basic English students (173 female, 247 male) from Middle East Technical University in Ankara. The results of multiple regression analysis for the total sample indicated that all the predictor variables (ways of coping, ego resiliency and optimism) were found to be significant predictors of college adjustment. The study found that participants who reported high resilience, optimism and fatalistic and helplessness/self blaming coping scores had better adjustment to college. In addition, the results of the multiple regression analyses conducted for female and male students showed that whereas ego resiliency, optimism, and seeking social support coping, helplessness/self-blaming coping predicted adjustment of female students / ego resiliency, problem solving coping, seeking social support coping, fatalistic coping and helplessness/self-blaming coping were significant predictors of male students&rsquo / college adjustment.

In the spring of 2004, a synergistic team of professors, practitioners, and graduate students coalesced in a graduate planning studio at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the greatest of ambitions: to craft a “Plan for America,” through the year 2050. Their work led to a megaregional revival, weaving the work of Jean Gottman, old regionalists like Benton MacKaye, and New Regionalists like Peter Calthrope into a new perspective on regional planning. In the brief period that followed, a flurry of megaregional research was produced by scholars at Penn, Georgia Tech, the University of Texas at Austin, the Regional Plan Association, and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. But nearly a decade into this megaregional revival, old questions about the concept continue to simmer while many new questions emerge, which begs the question: what exactly has this flurry of megaregional research settled? How exactly are megaregions defined and delineated? Do they even have fixed boundaries? Assuming a consensus emerged on how to define and delineate the space, how could such a large and unwieldy scale be governed? Are megaregions functional economic units or merely a product of poorly regulated sprawl development over vast expanses? If they are indeed functional units, how are they interacting or competing with one another for growth, development, and finite public resources? The answers to these questions have been, well, elusive. This thesis begins to remedy this glaring gap in the literature by conducting semi-structured interviews with the key informants credited with leading the conception and evolution of megaregional thought in the U.S. With their aid, this thesis begins to contextualize the provenance, the evolution, the barriers to progress, and the potential future trajectories of the megaregional construct. One of these potential future trajectories – megaregional economic development – is explored between the nation’s only physically linked pair of megaregions: the Texas Triangle and Gulf Coast. In the final chapter of this thesis, recommendations drawn from these analyses are made for the research, the pedagogy, and the practice of planning for megaregions. Together, this triptych of recommendations outlines a path towards a megaregional future. / text

Bullying is a complex behavior that can cause academic and social problems for students and can contribute to a negative school climate. Students who feel isolated or do not feel connected to their school may experience similar risks to those who are victimized by peers. Recent school violence incidents have led to an increase in bullying behavior research. The importance of the school climate is also emerging in educational discourse prompting a growth of research in school connectedness and positive relationships. However, research on the impact that relationships and school connectedness may have on bullying victimization at school is limited. This is a secondary analysis of a national data set from the 2005 administration of the National Crime Victimization Survey School Crime Supplement. The study focused on the relationship between school connectedness and bullying victimization and whether gender, race, grade level, and academic achievement moderate the relationship. The role of relationships in bullying victimization was considered. Weighted regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between bullying behaviors and school connectedness and to identify the combination of factors that may influence the relationship. Components of school connectedness identified through factor analysis were statistically significant predictors of occurrence and frequency of bullying victimization, but accounted for a very small amount of variance in the outcome. Adding demographic variables of race, gender, grade level, and academic achievement produced a slight increase in the proportion of variance accounted for. Race did not have a statistically significant impact on occurrence of bullying victimization; neither race nor gender was statistically significant in variance of frequency of bullying victimization. Peer relationships proved to be statistically significant in bullying victimization frequency but neither adult-student nor peer relationships were statistically related to bullying victimization occurrence. Overall, school connectedness predicted a very small proportion of variance in occurrence and frequency of bullying victimization, suggesting that bullying prevention efforts should include strategies beyond those to improve a student's sense of connectedness to school. A comprehensive approach is needed to address bullying in schools effectively.

This dissertation explores the use of an index based contingent claims mechanism against earthquake risk in Indonesia. It focuses on time critical financing needs of international humanitarian relief organizations, and on efforts to improve the resiliency of geographically constrained financial institutions whose clientele are exposed to disaster risk. The approach uses measures of ground motion intensity as the basis for the index. The humanitarian response mechanism provides a new way for private sector partners to participate and gain visibility in their support of principled humanitarian funding. Index based contingent claims for local banks are shown to enhance their ability to recover and continue lending to the community after an event. Financial risk management may also substitute for a portion of the lender's precautionary capital buffer, enabling greater financial inclusion. Wholesale lenders with local bank networks having earthquake exposure can enhance these effects by offering group policies.

This dissertation examines the resiliency, efficiency, and environmental impact of barge shipments within the upper Ohio River basin, contrasting findings relevant to this region with assumptions and findings of broader national studies and providing alternative assessment methods. The unique attributes of this region’s inland waterways infrastructure and usage patterns are dominated by the shipment of coal; mines and powerplants with heavy and inflexible dependence on barge shipments; and the constrictions of the waterway infrastructure. Acknowledging these attributes allows for a more accurate assessment in the future of risks due to infrastructure failure and opportunities for efficiency gains. Research goals were set in three major areas: assessing the impact of an extended loss of commercial river navigation due to catastrophic infrastructure failure; assessing current and potential new efficiency metrics for inland waterways freight movement, both in terms of vessel movements and the infrastructure itself; and quantifying and assessing air emissions from regional commercial river traffic. The first research goal was to assess the impact of an extended loss of commercial river navigation due to catastrophic infrastructure failure. The objectives of this research goal were to develop a failure scenario; to develop methodologies to identify at-risk commodity shipments, feasible alternate modes of transportation, supply chain options, and shipping costs; and to develop a methodology to assess the potential closure of facilities impacted by infrastructure failure. A hypothetical failure scenario was assessed for a year-long closure of the Monongahela River between Charleroi and Elizabeth in 2010. For this scenario, the potentially displaced volume of coal shipments from mines to powerplants for a hypothetical river shutdown in 2010 was estimated at 7.0 million tons. The resilience of the impacted facilities, the feasibility of their shipping alternatives, and their ability to re-organize into new markets were assessed, showing heavy predicted impacts for facilities within the hypothetical failure zone, minimal impacts on facilities located below the failure zone, and mixed impacts above the failure zone that depend on facility-specific shipping mode alternatives. Lost revenues were estimated for facilities that close due to an inability to adapt, as well as the replacement cost of towboats and barges trapped by a catastrophic and sudden failure. The aggregate costs to these facilities as a result of a year-long closure in 2010 were estimated at $0.56-1.7 billion. The second research goal was to assess commonly used and potential new efficiency metrics for the inland waterways. Objectives of this goal included the development of methodologies to identify, characterize, and differentiate between vessel and commodity trips; to assess efficiency metrics currently used by USACE and develop improved metrics; and to conduct stochastic time studies of commodity trips to quantify efficiency gains from infrastructure improvements. The vessel and commodity trip analyses provide a unique assessment of the inefficiencies created by the infrastructure bottlenecks within the region. Data from USACE’s Lock Performance Monitoring System and the Energy Information Administration’s Survey 923 were used to characterize and rank the vessel and commodity trips made in 2010 in terms of frequency, tonnage, and ton-miles. Such rankings can be used to prioritize optimization projects and to assess usage patterns. The analyses of various efficiency measures commonly used for the inland waterways were conducted in light of the particular constraints of operation within the upper Ohio River basin. These upriver locks differ in size, requiring vessel operators to optimize the type and configuration of barges used within the region, and causing the regional profile to differ from fleet and flotilla profiles generated at a national level or for other regions. Consideration of these differences allows for more accurate analysis of usage patterns, with implications for efficiency considerations of time and fuel consumption. Stochastic modeling of historical usage patterns allows for the comparison of time requirements with different flotilla configurations and with different infrastructure configurations. A scenario analysis on a typical regional shipment between a coal mine and powerplant was used to demonstrate the method. Results show that completion of a long delayed lock reconstruction project will reduce the time required, and thus the cost and fuel, to move commodities across the region. The savings for a 15-jumbo barge tow moving 200 miles across the study area was estimated to be 17% as a result of completion of the Lower Mon Project. The third research goal was to quantify and assess the regional impact of commercial river traffic on air quality. The specific objectives of this goal were to develop a methodology for calculating emission loadings; and to develop a methodology to assess the impact of vessel emissions on regional air monitors. An estimation of particulate emissions from the vessels’ diesel engines is presented, showing total releases of PM2.5 to be about 360 tons in 2010 across 600 river miles of the upper Ohio River basin, on the same order of magnitude as the major point source releases reported in Allegheny County, and about 25% of releases from a typical 1,700 MW regional powerplant. A screening analysis estimates PM2.5 concentrations attributable from towboats passing through the Liberty-Clairton non-attainment region, predicting that these emission levels would be orders of magnitude below the detection limits of the region’s air monitors, and would be dwarfed by the point source impacting those monitors.

The construction of a substitution box (S-box) with high nonlinearity and high resiliency is an important research area in cryptography. In this thesis, t-resilient nxm S-box construction methods depending on linear block codes presented in &quot / A Construction of Resilient Functions with High Nonlinearity&quot / by T. Johansson and E. Pasalic in 2000, and two years later in &quot / Linear Codes in Generalized Construction of Resilient Functions with Very High Nonlinearity&quot / by E. Pasalic and S. Maitra are compared and the former one is observed to be more promising in terms of nonlinearity. The first construction method uses a set of nonintersecting [n-d,m,t+1] linear block codes in deriving t-resilient S-boxes of nonlinearity 2^(n-1)-2^(n-d-1),where d is a parameter to be maximized for high nonlinearity. For some cases, we have found better results than the results of Johansson and Pasalic, using their construction. As a distinguished reference for nxn S-box construction methods, we study the paper &quot / Differentially Uniform Mappings for Cryptography&quot / presented by K.Nyberg in Eurocrypt 1993. One of the two constructions of this paper, i.e., the inversion mapping described by Nyberg but first noticed in 1957 by L. Carlitz and S. Uchiyama, is used in the S-box of Rijndael, which is chosen as the Advanced Encryption Standard. We complete the details of some theorem and proposition proofs given by Nyberg.

abstract: This research addresses the ability for neighborhoods to assess resiliency as it applies to their respective local areas. Two demographically and economically contrasting neighborhoods in Glendale, Arizona were studied to understand what residents' value and how those values link to key principles of resiliency. Through this exploratory research, a community-focused process was created to use these values in order to link them to key principles of resiliency and potential measureable indicators. A literature review was conducted to first assess definitions and key principles of resiliency. Second, it explored cases of neighborhoods or communities that faced a pressure or disaster and responded resiliently based on these general principles. Each case study demonstrated that resiliency at the neighborhood level was important to its ability to survive its respective pressure and emerge stronger. The Heart of Glendale and Thunderbird Palms were the two neighborhoods chosen to test the ability to operationalize neighborhood resiliency in the form of indicators. First, an in-depth interview was conducted with a neighborhood expert to understand each area's strengths and weaknesses and get a context for the neighborhood and how it has developed. Second, a visioning session was conducted with each neighborhood consisting of seven participants to discuss its values and how they relate to key principles of resiliency. The values were analyzed and used to shape locally relevant indicators. The results of this study found that the process of identifying participants' values and linking them to key principles of resiliency is a viable methodology for measuring neighborhood resiliency. It also found that indicators and values differed between the Heart of Glendale, a more economically vulnerable yet ethnically diverse area, than Thunderbird Palms, a more racially homogenous, middle income neighborhood. The Heart of Glendale valued the development of social capital more than Thunderbird Palms which placed a higher value on the condition of the built environment as a vehicle for stimulating vibrancy and resiliency in the neighborhood. However, both neighborhoods highly valued public education and providing opportunities for children to be future leaders in their local communities. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.U.E.P. Urban and Environmental Planning 2011

abstract: Nowadays there is a pronounced interest in the need for sustainable and reliable infrastructure systems to address the challenges of the future infrastructure development. This dissertation presents the research associated with understanding various sustainable and reliable design alternatives for water distribution systems. Although design of water distribution networks (WDN) is a thoroughly studied area, most researchers seem to focus on developing algorithms to solve the non-linear hard kind of optimization problems associated with WDN design. Cost has been the objective in most of the previous studies with few models considering reliability as a constraint, and even fewer models accounting for the environmental impact of WDN. The research presented in this dissertation combines all these important objectives into a multi-objective optimization framework. The model used in this research is an integration of a genetic algorithm optimization tool with a water network solver, EPANET. The objectives considered for the optimization are Life Cycle Costs (LCC) and Life Cycle Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions (LCE) whereby the system reliability is made a constraint. Three popularly used resilience metrics were investigated in this research for their efficiency in aiding the design of WDNs that are able to handle external natural and man-made shocks. The best performing resilience metric is incorporated into the optimization model as an additional objective. Various scenarios were developed for the design analysis in order to understand the trade-offs between different critical parameters considered in this research. An approach is proposed and illustrated to identify the most sustainable and resilient design alternatives from the solution set obtained by the model employed in this research. The model is demonstrated by using various benchmark networks that were studied previously. The size of the networks ranges from a simple 8-pipe system to a relatively large 2467-pipe one. The results from this research indicate that LCE can be reduced at a reasonable cost when a better design is chosen. Similarly, resilience could also be improved at an additional cost. The model used in this research is more suitable for water distribution networks. However, the methodology could be adapted to other infrastructure systems as well. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Construction 2012

Submitted by Edileide Reis (leyde-landy@hotmail.com) on 2013-05-09T13:32:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria das Gracas Machado.pdf: 486044 bytes, checksum: 8f4149e963d83c49c498bfc963abdec9 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Meirelles(rodrigomei@ufba.br) on 2013-05-11T15:19:11Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria das Gracas Machado.pdf: 486044 bytes, checksum: 8f4149e963d83c49c498bfc963abdec9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-11T15:19:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria das Gracas Machado.pdf: 486044 bytes, checksum: 8f4149e963d83c49c498bfc963abdec9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Esta pesquisa tem como foco relacionar a vivência do brincar como recurso para promover o aprendizado da resiliência de crianças e adolescentes em processo de tratamento crônico. Buscou-se, ainda, interligar condutas multidisciplinares preventivas e curativas no campo da humanização da assistência à saúde. Entende-se que o brincar é qualquer atividade que manifeste o uso da palavra, do movimento e da arte, e que tenha conotação lúdica para a criança. A resiliência, por sua vez, definida como capacidade que permite lidar de forma a prevenir, minimizar ou superar os efeitos das adversidades, foi usada na perspectiva de uma educação que favoreça atuações criativas, autônomas e empoderadas, promovendo o enfrentamento positivo de eventos adversos. Essas situações refletem em mudanças de vida, como as intermitentes alterações de domicílio e escola, bem como de sua vivência do tratamento, decorrentes do diagnóstico de câncer infanto-juvenil. Trata-se de um estudo de caráter interativo, abordado de forma qualitativa, tendo como instrumentos a entrevista semidirigida e a observação, e como estratégia de pesquisa o estudo de caso. Foram acompanhados, como participantes da pesquisa, um adolescente de dezoito anos e outra de doze anos, e duas crianças, uma de sete anos e outra de oito anos, hospedados no Grupo de Apoio à Criança com Câncer (GAAC-Ba), em parte dos anos de 2009 e de 2010. A análise foi realizada a partir de oito categorias, organizadas em três eixos temáticos. Para o tema referente ao manejo das adversidades, através da ludicidade, utilizaram-se características relacionadas ao aprendizado da resiliência. Os participantes destacaram, através de relatos e de observações, que a experiência lúdica põe em prática a criatividade, o senso de humor e a resolução de problemas, por exemplo, os quais são características relacionadas à saúde mental e emocional, bem como ao bem-estar e à qualidade de vida, metas da resiliência. / Salvador

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-02T21:43:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Luis F Torres - Resiliencia.pdf: 859661 bytes, checksum: 4f3c12bcec692c43207b537e99519055 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-09 / Studying resilience is to ask whether the individual is able to handle adversity, overcome it and still become a better individual, the answer should be yes. But the answer in this context is subjective, because the answer will be based on the perception of the subject based on a response in terms of what is sure to respond before a question like this. That said, this study sought to find a group of professionals who were ahs been facing organizational changes and how they should signified this change, if it was perceived as positive or negative how could this phenomenon be appointed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the goal to better approach of resilience phenomenon, since the objective of the research was exploratory, and also few studies have been done in the field of resilience with a focus on positive psychology and, against this background this paper seeks its insertion. To investigate how healthy adults respond to the phenomenon resilience if constructs called protective factors and risk factors may be related to resilience and, if so, how these individuals will respond to these factors. This study was based on theories of resilience and adversity in the fields of Psychology, Administration and Sociology. With the analysis of reports and in light of the findings in the area, aimed to discuss the possible relationship between resilience and protective factors in work in healthy both physically and socially. It rises critical to the study and possible contributions of the findings to management. Finally, envision the possibility of this study was to unfold in the organizational settings, seeking to extend this study to worsen in other fields of organization with a focus on resilience and positive psychology through a subjective analysis. / Estudar resiliência é perguntar se o individuo é capaz de lidar com adversidades, superá-las e ainda se tornar melhor; a resposta é sempre sim. Mas, este contexto é subjetivo, pois a resposta será baseada na percepção do sujeito baseado numa resposta em termos de o que é certo responder frente a uma pergunta como esta. Isto posto, buscou-se pesquisar um grupo de profissionais que se encontravam num universo de mudanças e como estes significavam esta mudança; se como positiva, como isso era percebido, se como negativa como este fenômeno poderia ser nomeado. Foram realizadas entrevistas semi estruturadas objetivando aproximação do fenômeno resiliência, já que o objetivo da pesquisa foi explorar o fenômeno, dado que poucos estudos foram feitos no campo da resiliência com foco na psicologia positiva. É neste cenário que este trabalho insere-se. Investigar como adultos saudáveis reagem ao fenômeno resiliência, se os constructos denominados fatores de proteção e fatores de risco podem ser relacionados à resiliência e, se sim, como estes sujeitos irão responder a estes fatores. Este estudo fundamentou-se em teorias sobre resiliência e adversidades nos campos da Psicologia, da Administração e da Sociologia. Com a análise dos relatos e à luz dos achados da área, buscou-se discutir as possíveis relações entre resiliência e fatores protetores no contexto do trabalho em pessoas saudáveis física e socialmente. Apontam-se críticas ao estudo e possíveis contribuições dos achados para a administração. Por fim, vislumbram-se possibilidades deste estudo desdobrar-se em outros cenários organizacionais buscando aprofundar outros campos da organização sempre focado na resiliência e psicologia positiva por meio de uma analise subjetiva.