Since the development of the correlation consistent composite approach (ccCA) in 2006, ccCA has been shown to be applicable across the periodic table, producing, on average, energetic properties (e.g., ionization potentials, electron affinities, enthalpies of formation, bond dissociation energies) within 1 kcal/mol for main group compounds. This dissertation utilizes ccCA in the investigation of several chemical systems including nitrogen-containing compounds, sulfur-containing compounds, and carbon dioxide complexes. The prediction and calculation of energetic properties (e.g., enthalpies of formation and interaction energies) of the chemical systems investigated within this dissertation has led to suggestions of novel insensitive highly energetic nitrogen-containing compounds, defined reaction mechanisms for sulfur compounds allowing for increased accuracy compared to experimental enthalpies of formation, and a quantitative structure activity relationship for altering the affinity of CO2 with substituted amine compounds. Additionally, a study is presented on the convergence of correlation energy and optimal domain criteria for local Møller–Plesset theory (LMP2).

"The approach of the paper is: to explore and identify several problems common to secondary school programs throughout our country, with particular attention to Florida; to present several practices that are common to the Cooperative Education Clubs of Florida; and to suggest their application in other areas of the total school program to meet needs of students enrolled in any curriculum in a better manner"--Introduction. / "August, 1962." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Marian W. Black, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-51).

The Coexistence Approach was established by Mosbrugger and Utescher (1997) as a plant-based method to reconstruct palaeoclimate by considering recent climatic distribution ranges of the nearest living relatives of each fossil taxon. During its existence for over more than 15. years, its basics have been tested and reviewed in comparison with other terrestrial and marine climate reconstruction techniques and climate modelling data. However, some controversies remain about its underlying data or its applicability in general.In view of these controversies this paper discusses the power and limitations of the Coexistence Approach by summarising past results and new developments. We give insights into the details and problems of each step of the application from the assignment of the fossil plant to the most suitable nearest living relative, the crucial consideration of the usefulness of specific taxa towards their climatic values and the correct interpretation of the software-based suggested palaeoclimatic intervals. Furthermore, we reflect on the fundamental data integrated in the Coexistence Approach by explaining different concepts and usages of plant distribution information and the advantages and disadvantages of modern climatic maps. Additionally, we elaborate on the importance of continually updating the information incorporated in the database due to new findings in e.g., (palaeo-)botany, meteorology and computer technology.Finally, for a transparent and appropriate use, we give certain guidelines for future applications and emphasize to users how to carefully consider and discuss their results. We show the Coexistence Approach to be an adaptive method capable of yielding palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental information through time and space.

Conventional drug discovery focuses on single protein targets and follows a “sequence, structure, and function” paradigm for selecting best protein targets to screen lead chemical compounds. This established paradigm simply avoids addressing directly the challenge of evaluating chemical toxicity and side effects until a later stage of drug discovery, resulting in inefficiencies and increased time and cost. We developed a new “network biology” perspective to assess proteins as potential drug targets using emerging biomolecular network data sets. To do so, we integrated several types of biological data for current drug targets from DrugBank, protein interaction data from the HAPPI and HPRD databases, literature co-citation data from PubMed, and side effects data from FDA-approved drug usage warnings. We used the Bayes factor and Positive Predictive Values to examine the use of certain network properties, such as network node degrees and essentiality, to predict candidate drug targets. We also developed a metric to evaluate a protein target’s overall side effects by taking into account aggregated side effect scores of all FDA-approved drugs targeting the protein. We discovered that non-essential protein with lower-to-medium network node degree could better serve as drug targets when combined with conventional protein function information. Integrated biomolecular associations, instead of physical interactions, are better sources for predicting drug targets with network biology methods. Our network biology framework presents exciting promises in developing better drug targets that lower the side-effects at later stages of drug development and help establish the field of “network pharmacology.”

This study aims to analyze the emotions aroused by tropical Andean music—popularly known as chicha—present in the advertising of a well-known beverage brand in university students. The power music exerts in advertising is already commonly known as well as how it can intensify the effect of the message and trigger an emotional reaction in the consumer. This Peruvian musical genre is usually closely related to Peruvian identity and attributes of its population such as racial and cultural intermixing, creativity and self-improvement. In recent years, this sound resource has been established in the commercial communication of Peruvian brands aimed at the modern neo-Limenian; many of them descendants of migrants, proud of their origin and culture. This study is qualitative with a phenomenological approach. Through 16 interviews, the study shows how the presence of this musical genre can arouse positive emotions in the sample. In addition, the choice of music has to be coherent with the narrative structure of the advertising message to ensure optimal emotions.

Abstract Home Health Care (HHC) is a health care service delivered by sending caregivers such as nurses or personal support workers (PSW) to visit patients in their homes. The assignment of patients to nurses as well as the sequencing of patients for each nurse is called the Home Health Care Scheduling and Routing Problem (HHCSRP). This thesis proposes a heuristic approach to solve HHCSRP to which it is hard and even impossible to obtain an optimal solution for relative larger instances in a reasonable amount of computational time by using an exact algorithm as HHCSRP is NP hard. In the approach, this thesis developed and contributed a heuristic partition method to partition patients into a number of single nurse groups. The computational test result shows that the proposed approach can achieve good solutions which remain within 5% of the commercial solver CPLEX’s best solution using an acceptable solution time on all test instances.

Scholars since the 19th century have focused on the provision of care in group homes and have demonstrated that structure (that is, the staff, facilities, and equipment), is critical in the delivery of care. The researchers, however, advocate doing for, rather than doing with the clients the activities that address the clients' welfare. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a client-centered approach would affect the quality of care delivered to the mentally challenged individuals (MCIs) in a group home. The study employed the quality-care framework in which the emphasis is on structure (skills), process (efficiency), and outcome (results). The research questions examined operational values underpinning company sanctioned work processes, how personal values underpin work processes of the direct caregivers, configuration of personal values the caregivers believe should be supported in the group home context, and how critical incidents shaped the value set of direct caregivers in regard to care processes. Using structured questionnaires and observing staff as they delivered care to their clients, data were collected from participants who were direct caregivers (n = 7), a facility administrator, and a nurse. The data were coded, categorized, and analyzed for emergent themes. The results of the analysis indicated that there was discord between staff and the organizational leadership. This discord could be improved through increased interaction between the mentioned stakeholders. The results further depicted that client-centered care may have a positive impact on the health of the MCIs that would enable the MCIs to make notable contributions to social change.

The profession of counseling psychology has, for a long time, realized the need for reevaluating and improving traditional methods of training counselors. The major professional demands have been (1) a science-based approach to the training counselors; and (2) a more experientially oriented approach to the training of counselors. This study represented a developmental effort geared towards the integration of the above two demands. Seven experientially oriented modular instructional units were developed for use in a counselor education program. Units were developed on (1) what counseling and psychotherapy are; (2) history of counseling and psychotherapy; (3) counselor attitudes; (4) interviewing skills (A); (5) interviewing skills (B); (6) critical incidents in counseling and psychotherapy; and (7) counselor values, and ethical and legal responsibilities in counseling and psychotherapy. The Instructional units adopted a format containing (1) specific learning objectives; (2) descriptions of learning activities; and (3) evidence of learning or criteria statements for each learning objective. The seven units were put into training manual form. An instructor's manual was also developed to enable any counselor educator to teach the course by familiarizing himself with the manuals. The modular instructional systems were field tested on a pilot group of nine graduate students in counseling psychology. The pilot group met for six hours of class time each week for ten consecutive weeks. As a result of the field testing, parts of the system were either modified, eliminated, or added. The study concluded that the systems approach to counselor education is a viable alternative to more traditional methods of counselor education. It is a science-based approach characterized by a high level of accountability, and it offers and efficient and effective method for counselor education.

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Over the past few decades, visualization and application researchers have been investigating vortices and have developed several algorithms for detecting vortex-like structures in the flow. These techniques can adequately identify vortices in most computational datasets, each with its own degree of accuracy. However, despite these efforts, there still does not exist an entirely reliable vortex detection method that does not require significant user intervention. The objective of this research is to solve this problem by introducing a novel vortex analysis technique that provides more accurate results by optimizing the threshold for several computationally-efficient, local vortex detectors, before merging them using the Bayesian method into a more robust detector that assimilates global domain knowledge based on labeling performed by an expert. Results show that when choosing the threshold well, combining the methods does not improve accuracy; whereas, if the threshold is chosen poorly, combining the methods produces significant improvement.