Bachelor-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2004.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-77). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-82). Also available in electronic version.

This thesis examines the effects of secondary tasks and click trains upon temporal judgement in the context of a Pacemaker-Gate-Counter (PGC) model. All the timing experiments reported employ a paradigm in which subjects are first trained to reliably reproduce a 2.5 s target interval, and are then required to perform time production with a concurrent secondary task. Previous research with digit memory loads has shown that varying memory load had no impact upon concurrent time production (Fortin & Breton, 1995; Fortin & Masse, 1999). Here, it is shown that increasing pitch memory load lengthens time production, but that this is not the case for a colour memory task, or a timbre memory task. The effect obtained with pitch is replicated, and it is demonstrated that the effect is directly due to the processing requirements of retaining pitch information. Furthermore, the pitch effect is not due to a difference in attentional requirements between retaining pitch and retaining digits. Finally, it is shown that the lengthening of time production also occurs when a concurrent duration memory load is increased. In confirmation of previous research (e.g. Fortin, Rousseau, Bourque, & Kirouac 1993), it is shown that when memory-search is performed concurrently with time production, increasing the number of items to be searched causes a lengthening of time production. A novel finding is that the increase in mean time produced is not accompanied by an increase in standard deviation. Furthermore, it is shown that the shortening of mean time production caused by concurrent click trains does not interact with the increase caused by concurrent memory search, and is accompanied by a reduction in standard deviation. These findings are taken to support the separation made in the PGC model between the Pacemaker and Gate components. Overall, the data presented in this thesis provide a number of constraints upon future theorising within the framework of the PGC model and other similar models.

While the benefits of academic testing and feedback have been well documented in the literature for more than a century; the optimal timing for providing feedback has yet to be determined. The number of studies that focus on when to deliver feedback following an assessment is limited. According to Brosvic and colleagues (2005), it is the length of time that the learner should retain the test material that best determines when feedback should be delivered. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of immediate versus delayed informative feedback on subsequent test performance of registered nursing (RN) students. The participants of this study included 300 RN students from ten different nursing programs in the United States. The study included two test administrations. Following each test administration, informative feedback was provided according to a pre-determined delivery schedule. The immediate feedback was displayed on screen when the examinee clicked to submit the exam for scoring. There were two groups of delayed feedback. One group received an informative feedback report via email 24 hours post the submission of their exams. The second group received the same feedback 72 hours post exam submission. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS, version 24.0) was used to perform a one-way Analyses of Variance (ANOVA), comparing the mean of the test scores with the three independent groups. No statistically significant differences were found for Mean Scores [F(2, 297) = 1.771, p = .172] at the 95% confidence level. Therefore, the null hypothesis was not rejected. A retrospective power analysis showed 618 participants would be needed to achieve a statistically significant difference. Although the two tests were developed from the same test blueprint, the tests did assess differing learning objectives. Test 1 (Comprehensive Nursing Practice Test) assessed nursing concepts with questions that were more theoretical. Test 2 (EPE) assessed application of skills and abilities and the questions were more clinical in nature. Generally speaking, the participants performed higher on the theoretical Test 1 (Comprehensive Nursing Practice Test). Most RN students do not have clinical experience until the end of their academic program which coincided with the timing for this study. It is plausible that differences in curricula and faculty at each of the independent programs contributed to the differences in the test scores. Especially since the students had limited clinical exposure prior to Test 2.

Abstract The main focus of this work concerned with the development of integrated electronic and optoelectronic circuits and devices for pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinding is on the construction of the receiver channel, system level integration aimed at realisation of the laser radar module and in integration of all the receiver functions of laser radar on one chip. Since the timing discriminator is a very important part of a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder, two timing discrimination methods are presented and verified by means of circuit implementations, a leading edge discriminator and a high-pass timing discriminator. The walk error of the high-pass timing discriminator is ±4 mm in a dynamic range of 1:620 and the uncompensatable walk error of the leading edge discriminator is ±30 mm in a dynamic range of 1:4000. Additionally a new way of combining the timing discriminator with time interval measurement is presented which achieves a walk error of ±0.5 mm in a dynamic range of 1:21. The usability of the receiver channel chip is verified by constructing three prototypes of pulsed TOF laser radar module. The laser radar achieves mm-level accuracy in a measurement range from 4 m to 34 m with non-cooperative targets. This performance is similar to that of earlier realisations using discrete components or even better and has markedly reduced power consumption and size. The integration level has been increased further by implementing a photodetector on the same chip as the rest of the receiver electronics. The responsivity of the photodetector is about 0.3 A/W at 850 nm wavelength and the noise of the receiver is reduced by a factor of about two relative to realisations using an external photodetector, because of the absence of parasitic capacitances and inductances caused by packages, PCB wiring, bond wires and ESD and I/O cell structures. The functionality of a multi-channel pulsed TOF laser radar chip is demonstrated using the photodiode structure investigated here. The chip includes four photodetectors with receiver channels and a three-channel time-to-digital converter. The chip together with external optics and a laser pulse transmitter enables distances to be measured in three directions with a single optical pulse, thus showing the feasibility of implementing all the receiver functions of a pulsed time-of-flight imager on a single chip using a current semiconductor process.

This dissertation includes three essays in applied microeconomics. The first two chapters focus on gender and female labor force participation. The third chapter examines the strategic behavior in politics. The first chapter examines the impact of male casualties due to World War II on fertility and female employment in the United States. We rely on the number of casualties at the county-level and use a differences-in-differences strategy. While most counties in the U.S. experienced a Baby Boom following the war, we find that the increase in fertility was lower in high casualty rate counties than in low casualty rate counties. Analyzing the channels through which male casualties could have decreased fertility, we provide evidence that county male casualties are positively related to 1950s female employment and household income. The second chapter examines the impact of gender focused labor legislation on women's labor force participation and economic empowerment. We rely on historical acts passed by state legislatures and exploit whether or not states passed regulatory laws regulating overall and industry specific employment and work conditions for women, night work laws and labor laws requiring provision of seats for working women. We exploit the fact that not all states enacted these laws as well as the variation in the timing of enactment of such laws. Our results show that women in comparison to men in treated states are more likely to be in the labor force after the introduction of seating and night work laws relative to control states. We also document the effect of industry-specific labor policies on women's likelihood to be employed in the affected industry and in higher-wage occupations within the industry of interest. Policy implications of our findings endorse the adoption of labor laws in favor of women to further their empowerment through a higher involvement in the labor market and financial independence. The third chapter examines strategic timing in the appearance of scandals about elected officials in the United States. In order to minimize negative publicity, politicians may strategically manipulate the timing of uncovering their own unpopular actions to coincide with other important events that are crowding the media and distracting the public. I start by developing a simple voting model to better understand the different mechanisms behind the timing of scandals' appearance. A forward-looking strategy implies that predictable news events may be used by politicians to distort public opinion. Using a novel data set of misconduct episodes from 1970 to 2020 and an instrumental variable strategy, I show that scandals are more likely to appear simultaneously with other foreseeable newsworthy events. I also examine the heterogeneity of different types of scandals and potentially different behavior across political parties. My findings suggest that Republican politicians are behaving especially strategically in timing the revelation of sexual and political misconducts.

Bluetooth and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are two technologies which are used in lots of contexts today, for example Bluetooth is used for communication between devices and RFID as identification of items at storehouses. This work contains a comparison between those two technologies in a time tracking environment for sports events. To compare the two technologies, a Bluetooth time tracking prototype based on Raspberry Pi 3 and Android Sony Xperia M5 were developed to be compared with a preexisting RFID timing system. The work has been done at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona. An agile project form has been used in the work containing a prestudy, development, verification, experimentation and survey phase. The survey focused on smartphones for timing, and the experiments were qualitative. Three of the questions that have been answered during the work are, if Bluetooth could be used in a timing context, what are the difference in reading performance at different speeds and distances. In both unobstructed and blocked Bluetooth can be read at longer distances. Both systems can read tags at 30 kilometers an hour close to the readers. / Bluetooth och Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) är två vanliga teknologier som användsi stor utsträckning idag, till exempel Bluetooth används för bland annat kommunikation mellan enheter, medans RFID används bland anatt för identifiering av objekt i lagerlokaler. Detta arbetet jämför teknologierna utifrån ett tidtagnings perspektiv för olika idrottslopp. För jämförelsen mellan teknologierna utvecklades en Bluetooth tidtagnings prototyp baserat på en Raspberry Pi 3 och en smartphone applikation, och för RFID användes ett redan utvecklat tidtagningssystem. Arbetet har utförts på Blekinge Tekniska Högskola i Karlskrona. Ett iterativt arbetssätt hara nvänts under arbetes gång innefattande en förstudie, utveckling, verifikation, experiment ochen enkätfas. Enkäten fokuserade på smartphones för tidtagning och experimenten som utfördes var av kvalitativ karaktär. Två av forskningsfrågorna som blivit besvarade under arbetet är om Bluetooth kan användas för tidtagning och om det går, vad är skillnaden på prestandan i låga respektive höga hastigheter på olika avstånd? Några av resultaten från arbetet är att i fri sikt kan Bluetooth bli läst på längre avstånd än RFID. Båda systemen kan läsa av taggar upp till 30 kilometer i timmen nära läsaren.

There are differences within the timing literature regarding the effects of distracter stimulus presentation within timing tasks. Whereas some researchers have found underestimation (changes in the degree of temporal stimulus control), others have found generalized disruption of timing responses. The purpose of this thesis was to determine the importance of food availability on responses within a time estimation task, using pigeons as subjects. Specifically, it was hypothesized that presenting food access following timing responses after a distracter task would produce underestimation of the target interval, relative to control conditions. Using a 2-parameter function fit to "proportion long" data from the interval bisection task, data revealed a generalized disruption effect of the distracter on timing behavior. Further analysis revealed that presentation of the food following timing responses after the distracter task reduced stimulus control within the timing task, revealing underestimation of the target interval. These findings suggest that the causes of the differences within the timing literature may be based upon differences in procedure.

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