The aims of this study were to examine the relations among social capital, human capital, economic capital, and children’s socioemotional well-being during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence and to test an ecological-transactional model of children’s social capital. This work was informed by sociological and economic theory on social capital, human capital, and economic capital (e.g., Becker, 1993; Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Foster, 2002) and two principal frameworks in developmental psychology: ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998) and the transactional model of child development (Sameroff, 2009). Social capital was conceptualized as both a family-level and a community-level phenomenon, distinguishing between family social capital and community social capital. A major hypothesis was that family social capital and community social capital, alongside family-level human capital and economic capital, are associated with low levels of socioemotional problems. Family-level variables were considered to be nested within the more distal ecological context of community social capital, and the indirect relation of community social capital to socioemotional well-being through family social capital was also considered. Another postulation was that children’s socioemotional well-being and the social capital that inheres in family relationships (i.e., family social capital) are mutually influential, changing over time in a transactional manner. In this vein, children were regarded as agents of social capital, both “creating” and utilizing it to their developmental benefit (or detriment as the case may be). These family-level transactional processes were nested within the context of community social capital. Results indicated that community social capital had little association with family social capital and children’s socioemotional well-being as indexed by internalizing and externalizing problems. However, caregivers’ human capital and economic capital were significant predictors of family social capital. In turn, family social capital was strongly related to socioemotional problems. Notably, harsh parenting behavior, a measure indicative of the health of the caregiver-child relation and thus the potential for social capital to be realized in their interactions, was the strongest predictor of socioemotional well-being. / text

This dissertation presents the concurrent programming language Ora, an extension of the Orc orchestration language with the capability to execute transactions. A new formal definition of transactions is given, in terms of two complementary properties: atomicity and coatomicity. These properties are described in terms of a partial order of events, rather than as properties of a totally ordered program trace. Atomicity and coatomicity are ensured in Ora programs by a novel algorithm for multiversion concurrency control. / text

The study sought to advance knowledge between leadership style and teacher's use of technology. This quantitative research study investigated the relationship between principal leadership style determined by the MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1989) and the perceived Role Messages (Katz & Kahn, 1978) teachers' receive about the use of technology in English and Mathematics. The Role Messages teachers receive from the principal influence the teachers' use of technology. A qualitative instrument, The Role Message Perception Interview for Administrator (RMPI-A) was used to confirm principal's leadership style in the transformation, transactional, and passive/avoidant areas.A transformational leader builds trust, inspires teachers, acts with integrity, encourages innovative thinking, and coaches people to move the teachers to a higher level of commitment. A transactional leader is more concerned with monitoring for mistakes and rewarding achievement. A passive/avoidant leader chooses to use his time dealing with crises and avoids involvement (Bass & Avolio, 1994). Sixty-three teachers of Mathematics and English at each of the five urban high schools responded to the Perceived Role Message Survey for Teachers (RMPS-T), a 56-question survey about the use of technology. The principal's leadership style was compared to their teachers' perception among the five high schools. The responses by teachers on the RMPS-T for the transformational sub-section showed significant differences among teacher responses on school culture (p = 0.0159), there were no other significant differences among transformational sub-sections. On the transactional sub-section showed significant differences among teacher responses on evaluator monitors (p = 0.122), and differences among the my principal rewards me sub-section, but not significant (p = 0.009). On the passive/avoidant the sub-section there were no significant differences.The study sought to show connection between teachers' gender, age, subject taught, the number of college credits earned, and the number of hours of professional development when compared to the number of uses of technology. The findings showed a difference among teacher responses based on gender, but not significant. There were no other significant differences. The results will assist high school principals in understanding how leadership style can impact the use of technology.

Transactional workloads have storage request streams consisting of many small, independent, random requests. Flash memory is well suited to these types of access patterns, but is not always cost-effective. This thesis presents a novel storage architecture called the SD Storage Array (SDSA), which adopts a many-device approach. It utilizes many flash storage devices in the form of an array of Secure Digital (SD) cards. This approach leverages the commodity status of SD cards to pursue a cost-effective means of providing the high throughput that transactional workloads require. Characterization of a prototype revealed that when the request stream was 512B randomly addressed reads, the SDSA provided 1.5 times the I/O operations per second (IOPS) of a top-of-the-line solid state drive, provided there were at least eight requests in-flight. A scale-out simulation showed the IOPS should scale with the size of the array, provided there are no upstream bottlenecks.

Transactional workloads have storage request streams consisting of many small, independent, random requests. Flash memory is well suited to these types of access patterns, but is not always cost-effective. This thesis presents a novel storage architecture called the SD Storage Array (SDSA), which adopts a many-device approach. It utilizes many flash storage devices in the form of an array of Secure Digital (SD) cards. This approach leverages the commodity status of SD cards to pursue a cost-effective means of providing the high throughput that transactional workloads require. Characterization of a prototype revealed that when the request stream was 512B randomly addressed reads, the SDSA provided 1.5 times the I/O operations per second (IOPS) of a top-of-the-line solid state drive, provided there were at least eight requests in-flight. A scale-out simulation showed the IOPS should scale with the size of the array, provided there are no upstream bottlenecks.

Empirical research on parents’ decision making process and parents’ actual criteria when considering preschool is critical when considering its relationship to early educational experiences and subsequent outcomes for children. Research has consistently demonstrated that the type and quality of preschool program children attend has implications for future academic success. A review of past research suggests parents often have difficulty assessing quality and include a wide range of considerations that include both practical and educational features of care. The current study utilized a transactional ecological framework to examine parent considerations and related family, child and cultural factors. A series of focus groups and interviews were conducted with parents to identify parent considerations and inform creation of a survey measure designed to assess these considerations. Surveys were then completed by 203 parents from varying socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds who had a child that qualified for state-funded preschool the following year. Parents were recruited from 20 centers including Head Start programs, private-for profit programs, religiously affiliated programs and one YMCA center. Exploratory factor analysis identified two highly correlated categories of considerations: 1) characteristics that designate several types of quality indicators and 2) characteristics that designate a program’s practical features. A series of hierarchical regressions indicated a combination of cultural, family and child factors are important when assessing parents’ considerations for pre-kindergarten. In particular, socioeconomic status, parents’ beliefs about childrearing and involvement and children’s prosocial skills and family structure were uniquely related to parental endorsement of quality and practical considerations. These findings have important implications for policymakers and practitioners.

Progressing sustainability requires a more networked approach to governance—an approach that connects otherwise segmented policy areas and fosters greater communication among governments, stakeholders and citizens. Of particular importance is the development of discursive spaces in which diverse actors are able to explore the differing knowledge, perspectives and values raised by the challenge of sustainability. This thesis develops the notion of transactional space to bring into focus the processes of reflection, dialogue and mutual learning that effective sustainability discourse involves. In the first part of the thesis I review literature on the theory and practice of participation, deliberation and collaboration, giving particular attention to the ways in which these processes have potential to create space for a depth of exchange and enable participants to engage with the tensions inherent in complex policy issues. While many authors point to the importance of negotiating difference in these processes, the literature reveals that, in practice, this type of exchange tends to be overlooked or underdeveloped. I therefore argue in this thesis that critical, reflective dialogue plays a key role in generating greater understanding among participants, more comprehensive understanding of policy issues, and more integrative and shared approaches, and for these reasons must be actively developed. The case study in the second part of the thesis explores this concern for developing reflective exchange in practice. The formation of the Western Australian Collaboration in 2002—a partnership of non-government organizations from a range of social and environmental perspectives committed to ‘a just and sustainable Western Australia’—represented an opportunity to examine the development of participatory and collaborative processes for sustainability. The thesis presents a case study of the WA Collaboration’s development over 2002-2006 to illustrate the potential such networks and open forums offer for transformative exchange around sustainability. It describes the intensive process conducted with the Steering Committee to cultivate a culture of reflection and learning in the organization, and the practical initiatives the process helped to generate. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the lessons learnt and key principles and practical considerations relevant to fostering transactional space. The WA Collaboration experience and the review of literature reveal a tendency in practice to privilege action and outcomes over reflection and learning. Furthermore, despite the necessity for a depth of engagement with complex policy issues, funding systems and policy environments often fail to allow the time and resources needed to support genuine dialogue and collaborative work. The thesis provides the concept and principles of transactional space as a means of helping to address this imbalance. They are designed to encourage practitioners to create opportunities for critical, reflective dialogue in a range of deliberative settings.

abstract: Theoretical models support conceptualizing parent-child relationships as reciprocal and transactional with each person exerting influence on the other’s behaviors and the overall quality and valence of the relationship across time. The goals of this study were twofold: 1) determine whether there were reciprocal relations in maternal hostility and child negativity across early and middle childhood, and 2) investigate whether individual characteristics (i.e., child temperamental anger and frustration and maternal neuroticism) moderated relations found in goal one. Data were from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Empirical support was found for conceptualizing mother-child interactions as reciprocal. Maternal hostility was related to a decrease in the probability children would exhibit negative behaviors during mother-child interactions measured approximately two years later. Child negativity was also associated with a significant decrease in the probability mothers would display future hostility. Child temperamental anger and frustration was found to moderate reciprocal relations across all three parent-to-child cross-lagged paths. Children scoring high on a dispositional proclivity to react with anger and frustration were more likely to avoid maternal hostility, via a significant decrease in negativity, across time. Moderation was also supported in two of three child-to-parent lagged paths. Finally, maternal neuroticism moderated the reciprocal effects during early childhood, such that more neurotic mothers were more likely to demonstrate a decrease in the probability of hostility relative to mothers scoring lower on neuroticism. This affect was attenuated in middle childhood, with patterns becoming similar between mothers scoring high and low on neuroticism. Moreover, children of less neurotic mothers were more likely to demonstrate a decrease in the probability of exhibiting negativity from 36 to 54 months compared to children of more neurotic mothers. This effect also attenuated with patterns becoming negative at the grade 1 to grade 3 lag. Overall, the results from this study supported a transactional model of parent-child relationships, were consistent with the motivation literature, did not support a coercive process of interaction when the sample and measurement paradigm were low-risk, and generally suggested parents and children have an equal influence on the relational processes investigated from early to middle childhood. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Family and Human Development 2016

Submitted by ADEMIR MARQUES JUNIOR null (adejunior_marques@hotmail.com) on 2016-06-01T16:14:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao.pdf: 1570162 bytes, checksum: 62279b5b860975f65c7da1a5dbddaa90 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Paula Grisoto (grisotoana@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-06-02T14:41:35Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 marquesjunior_a_me_sjrp.pdf: 1570162 bytes, checksum: 62279b5b860975f65c7da1a5dbddaa90 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T14:41:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 marquesjunior_a_me_sjrp.pdf: 1570162 bytes, checksum: 62279b5b860975f65c7da1a5dbddaa90 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-28 / O conceito de Memória Transacional foi criado para simplificar a sincronização de dados em memória, necessária para evitar a computação de dados inconsistentes por processadores multinúcleos, que se tornaram padrão devido às limitações encontradas em processadores de um núcleo. Em evolução constante pela busca de desempenho, os escalonadores de transação foram criados como alternativa aos gerenciadores de contenção presentes nos Sistemas de Memória Transacional. O consumo de energia é preocupação crescente, desde os grandes data centers até os disposítivos móveis que dependem de tempo de bateria, sendo também explorado no contexto de sistemas com Memória Transacional. Trabalhos anteriores consideraram, em sua maioria, somente o uso de gerenciadores de contenção, sendo o objetivo deste trabalho uma análise sobre o uso de escalonadores de transação. Desta forma, são exploradas nesta dissertação as técnicas de escalonamento dinâmico de tensão e frequência (DVFS) para a criação de uma heurística para a redução do consumo de energia utilizando o escalonador LUTS como base. Com o uso de aplicações do benchmark STAMP e biblioteca de memória transacional TinySTM, este trabalho faz uma análise sobre a eficiência energética dos escalonadores de referência ATS e LUTS, enquanto propõe uma nova heurística com o objetivo de reduzir o consumo de energia, denominada LUTSDynamic-Serializer, que alterna entre o uso de spinlock e de trava mutex de forma dinâmica. O uso desta heurística reduziu o EDP em até 17% e 61% em valores de EDP (Eenergy-Delay Product), e 4,95% e 15,8% na média geométrica das aplicações estudadas, em comparação aos escalonadores LUTS e ATS respectivamente, quando se utilizou a configuração de 8 threads, que é a limitação física de threads do processador utilizado no ambiente de experimento. / The Transactional Memory concept was created to simplify the synchronization of data in memory, needed to avoid computation of inconsistent data in multicore processors, which became standard due to limitations in single core processors. In constant search for performance, transactional schedulers were created as a alternative to contention managers present in transactional memory systems. The energy consumption is a crescent worry, ranging from big data centers to mobile devices which are dependent on battery life, and also being studied in Transactional Memory systems. Past works only considered the use of contention managers, and therefore this work seeks to analyse the impact of transactional schedulers. The techniques involving Dynamic Frequency-Voltage Scaling (DVFS) were explored with the motivation to create a heuristic to reduce energy consumption using the LUTS scheduler as a start. Utilizing the STAMP benchmark and the TinySTM transactional memory library, this work does an analysis about the energy efficiency of the reference scheduler ATS and LUTS, while proposing a new heuristic, named LUTSDynamic-Serializer, with the aim to reduce energy consumption by making a choice between spin-lock and mutex lock in a dynamic manner. We achieve with our heuristic up to 17% and 61% in EDP (Energy-Delay Product), and 4,95% and 15,8% considering the geometric mean among the applications studied, compared against the schedulers LUTS and ATS respectively, when we used the configuration with 8 threads, which is the physical limit of threads in the processor used in the experiments.

Stress is a problem in today's world and adolescents are not exempt from suffering its ill effects. Currently no stress management courses are offered as part of the formal guidance programme in high schools or in the community. This pilot study is an attempt to construct a stress management course based on the concepts of Transactional Analysis. The course was implemented with a multi-racial, standard eight group of nine boys and girls. The course was evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. The quantitative measures proved to be inappropriate to this study and did not render any useful information. The study found that the scholars expressed that they had changed in their handling of their daily stressors as a result of the course. Personal growth had also taken place. The findings of this research are discussed in terms of the important implications they have for school guidance programmes.