With the increased dependency on the Internet and computers, the software industry continues to grow. However, just as new software is being developed, older software is still in existence and must be maintained. This tends to be a difficult task, as the developers charged with maintaining the software are not always the developers who designed it. Reverse engineering is the study of an application's code and behavior, in order to better understand the system and its design. There are many existing tools that will assist the developer with this undertaking, such as Rational Rose®, jGRASP®, and Eclipse®. However, all the tools generate high level abstractions of the system in question, like the class diagram. It would be more beneficial to developers to have illustrations with more detailed information, such as the method level dependencies in the source code. In order to accomplish this task, a new framework has been developed that will allow the user to view both high level and lower level code detail. As users attempt to perform code maintenance, they will run the code through an existing tool, such as Rational Rose®, and then through the Method Level Dependency Generator component, to show the method level dependencies. These tools used together provide the software maintainer with more useful information, assisting with the software development process, including code design, implementation, and testing.

Visual Programming Languages and Visual Programming Tools incorporate non-procedural coding mechanisms that may duplicate, or perhaps even conflict with, the analysis and design mechanisms promulgated by the mainstream Software Engineering methodologies. By better understanding such duplication and conflict, software engineers can take proactive measures to accommodate and, ideally, eliminate them. Better still, there may be opportunities for synergy that can be exploited if one is looking for them. This research explored, documented and classified the interactions and interdependencies, both positive (synergies) and negative (conflicts), between two closely related and rapidly evolving Computer Science subdisciplines: software engineering and visual programming. A literature search was conducted to surface, evaluate, and build upon (where appropriate) recent and ongoing research in this area. A mechanism was created to capture observations of conflicts and synergies. This capture mechanism was applied to an experimentation test bed that was established to provide concrete examples of gaps, overlaps, conflicts, and synergies. In this regard, two relatively simple applications, one data-base oriented and one algorithm oriented, were designed and implemented using multiple software engineering methods and multiple visual tools/languages. A software prototype, which bridges one of the gaps discovered during the research, was built to underscore the importance of eventually merging Computer Aided Software Engineering and visual development tools. The overall results as well as anticipated trends and developments in the area of software engineering and visual programming were summarized. The synergy/conflict observations, in conjunction with the literature search results, were used to develop strategies and guidelines for successfully using visual programming languages and tools in concert with sound software engineering methods.

One problem that exists in today's document management arena is the issue of retrieving information from electronic documents such as images, Microsoft Office documents, and e-mail. Specific data entities must be extracted from these documents so that the data can be searched and queried. This study presents a unique approach to extracting these entities: using Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to match patterns in text. Because XSLT is processed at run time, new XSLT templates can be created and used without having to recompile and redeploy the application. The specific implementation addressed in this project extracts entities from an image file. The data in the image file is converted to Extensible Markup Language (XML) text via optical character recognition (OCR), and then this XML text is transformed into an organized, well-formed XML output file using an XSLT template. We show this approach can accurately retrieve the correct data and this method can be extended to other electronic document sources.

Fundulus heteroclitus and the closely related F. grondis are mainly distributed along the Atlantic coast of the U.S from Maine to Northeast Florida and from the East coast of Florida throughout the Gulf of Mexico, respectively. Both are resident salt marsh fishes whose range is thought to overlap in Northeast Florida, making them an ideal study system to examine resource partitioning between two closely related species. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of temperature and elevation on potential habitat partitioning of these two species. It is hypothesized that the northern species, F. heteroclitus, would have a lower thermal tolerance than F. grandis and would be found in lower marsh elevations, which are thought to be slightly cooler. Fundulus heteroclitus larval and juvenile distribution was examined and elevation was found to be significant (p the distribution with smaller fish utilizing higher elevation areas. Temperature was not found to differ between elevation sites, thus could not account for elevational differences. To further determine the role of temperature in Fundulus distribution, both species were hatched in the laboratory, and larvae were used for critical thermal maxima trials. F. heteroclitus from one population bad significantly higher mean loss of equilibrium (LOE) temperatures (pF. grandis populations. Due to population differences results could not be pooled by species. Critical thermal maximum temperatures show that both species can tolerate roughly the same extreme high temperatures and, based on temperature alone, should be able to live in the same habitat. Temperature tolerance of both species was higher than the actual measured field temperatures and is therefore not a likely factor in determining both species' range. A combination of other abiotic factors and biotic interactions such as competition may play a greater role in determining the observed range of each species than previously thought.

Since the results of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study were published in 2002, millions of women and their healthcare practitioners have had to re-examine decisions about the use of hormone replacement therapy. This level one descriptive study explored the characteristics of menopausal women who could not tolerate estrogen withdrawal and continued taking hormone replacement therapy despite findings of risk published in the Women's Health Initiative. The sample included the medical records of 1,195 patients in a single-physician OB-GYN practice in northeast Florida. All records of women with a birth date in 1954 or prior and a visit to the practice for gynecological care between July 2002 and March 1, 2004 were reviewed to collect data about demographics, past medical history, and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) use. A significant portion of women (77.2%) had discontinued HRT. Of the women remaining on HRT, 54.7% changed either the dose or type of hormones taken. Only 59.5% of these women remained on the same estrogen dose both before and after the WHI results were published in 2002. Interestingly, there were 29 women (4%) who initiated HR T use after July 2002. The women who remained on HR T after WHI were more likely to be younger, Caucasian (72. 7% ), non-smokers (82.3% ), and taking medication for other conditions (68.5%). The older the woman, the less likely she was to have continued HRT. Younger women were more likely to have changed HRT drug and/or dose post-WHI.

There is a concern that children with poor, i.e., below grade level reading ability, have trouble in content area subjects. The subjects of social studies, science, and health are often taught in the elementary grades through the use of textbooks. Because these texts prior to 1979 were written with a readability level at or above the grade level for which the book was designed, the poorer reader cannot read, and therefore learn, the subject matter presented.Children need knowledge of these content areas to function in today's society. They also need the ability to read to increase their knowledge and to develop their interest in these areas. Our society also expects that certain aspects of social studies, science, and health will be taught to children. As teachers there is a responsibility to teach these objectives. The children are also graded and evaluated at the end of each school year in these subject areas. They I therefore I must acquire this knowledge to perform well on these tests. However, children with poor reading ability face difficulties acquiring this knowledge through a textbook oriented curriculum.The problem to be dealt with in this project is how to teach social studies to children with poor reading ability. The ojective is to aid these children in obtaining an understanding of specific social studies concepts. Few materials in the content area are available in Duval County for working with the reader who is below grade level.Specifically, this project will develop a curriculum of teaching techniques and materials to use with third-graders in the social studies area of map skills. This area was chosen because it is tested extensively on the third-grade Stanford Achievement Test. These materials will be used with a class of thirty third-grade students at Hyde Grove School in Duval County, Florida. These students are poor readers who read at least one grade level below their current grade in school, as measured by the Stanford Achievement Test reading section. The curriculum will attempt to facilitate map concept attainment for these children.

There has been much concern recently about the lack of basic map and globe skills among America's youth. Map and globe skills are a basic tool of social studies used throughout the rest of students' academic, professional and personal lives. These skills incorporate the development of problem-solving and critical thinking skills. The focus of this project was to develop a map and globe skills curriculum for teaching these skills to sixth-graders in Putnam County, Florida, when they first encounter daily social studies classes.

In this thesis, I shall study and compare various methods for manipulating two- and three-dimensional image data produced with a nuclear magnetic resonance scanner. In particular, I will examine ways of focusing upon specific structures internal to the object under study (segmentation); and will explore means of rendering realistic images of these structures on a computer screen using depth-cueing, shading, and ray-casting techniques.The 3DHEAD volumetric dataset used for this project was created with the Siemens Magnetom and was provided courtesy of Siemens Medical Systems, Inc., Iselin, NJ. This dataset consists of 109 slices of a human head, with each slice stored consecutively as a 256 x 256 array. Each pixel is represented by two consecutive bytes, which make one binary integer. (A similar dataset of a human knee is also available.) The 3DHEAD dataset requires about 14 Mb of disk space uncompressed. The programs which manipulate this data are MS-DOS-based and were written and compiled using Microsoft QuickC version 2.51. The 2-D programs were executed on a CompuAdd 486DXl2-50 with 8 Mb of RAM, running MS-DOS version 6.22; the 3-D programs were executed on a 133 MHz Pentium clone with 48 Mb of RAM, running the DOS shell of Microsoft Windows 95.Our immediate objectives are to produce pleasing and informative 2-D and 3-D pictures of the internal structure of some component of the human head: for example, the brain.We need to remove from the original dataset all of the data which do not represent the brain. Then, for the 3-D images, we need to render the remaining data in such a way that it possesses depth and realism.

The purpose of the project was to determine the effects of journal writing on the thinking skills of high school geometry students. The research supports the idea that writing can enhance a student's metacognitive ability. The results show that the journals served effectively in various capacities. Each student became actively involved in his or her own learning process. Writing forced the students to synthesize information and they became aware of what they did and did not know. They recognized their individual learning style and strengths and began to take advantage of those strengths. The journals served as a diagnostic tool for the instructor and they opened lines of communication between teacher and student and personalized the learning environment. The results of the project suggest that this type of journal keeping would be effective in all disciplines but it is especially recommended that it be implemented throughout a mathematics department.

The purpose of the study was to construct a listening module for tenth grade students who were at least four grade levels behind in reading comprehension. The module was designed to be self-pacing, self-checking, motivating and improve factual recall. The module consisted of fifteen taped lessons, a taped pre test and post test, and was introduced by a motivational and directional statement. The lessons were chosen for their highly motivating nature and were organized in order of difficulty and length; the easier and shorter stories at the beginning and gradually getting more difficult and longer. In the module the students listened to a story and then were directed to complete an activity. They were also given instruction in the skill of factual recall before they began each story. They had a module booklet which contained all the activities and answers to assure independence. The pre test was administered first and when all lessons were completed, the post test was given. The module was integrated into the student1s language arts class and they worked on the module two hours a week for two weeks during the pilot testing. Included in the time devoted to the module was individual conferences with the teacher. Also, the students worked in groups of four to encourage feedback from peers.