This qualitative case study examines the impact of a character education program, Rachel's Challenge, in a high school to determine if the implementation of the program promotes resiliency, improves school culture, and supports an increased sense of community within the school. I examine, in rich detail, a suburban high school which implemented Rachel's Challenge and the research thoroughly formulates a description of the school prior to the implementation of the program and following the implementation of the program to determine the impact of the character education initiative on the school's culture, the resilience development of the school community members, and the sense of community within the institution. I collected the data in a suburban high school located in a Mid-Atlantic state. Limiting my study to one school provided me the necessary and advantageous opportunity to gain a rich description of the possible impacts of the program while also allowing me to deeply immerse myself into the realities of the participants. In-depth interviews were carried out with students, parents, counselors, administrators, and teachers to gain a rich understanding of any need for and value of the program and of any impacts of the program on the school's culture, the development of resilience, and a sense of connection and community. Constructs of Turbulence Theory are used to dissect the value of the character education program; I examined what need induced the implementation of the program in the school community and any positive impacts of the program on the school culture, resilience development, and sense of connection and community. Constructs of Resilience Theory are used, as it has been applied to individuals and organizations, to analyze the possible impact of the character education program on the resilience levels within the school community. Interviews were carried out with the various key-players within the high school who offered a wide interpretation of the effects of the character education program on the overall school culture and the level of resilience within the school community. A thorough document review was also carried out to further explore any impacts of the program on school culture, resilience development, and sense of community to clarify and further add to the interviews. The data provide educational leaders with a practical understanding of the impact of character education, namely the Rachel's Challenge program, on school culture and the development of resilience within a school community to help leaders formulate a value of its implementation in their schools. The research provides evidence that the Rachel's Challenge program did improve school culture in this particular school by encouraging a community built on acceptance, inclusion, kindness, respect, and compassion. The program encouraged pro-social behavioral changes within the school as well as promoted an anti-bullying message to the members of the school community. The research also provides evidence that the Rachel's Challenge program did promote the development of individual and community resilience at this particular school as demonstrated by an enhanced ability to stand up against peer pressure as well as the promotion of strength in the face of adversity and a sense of connection and unity within the school community. / Educational Leadership

Novice principals leading rural schools experience unique challenges that define their leadership practices. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how novice principals interpret and understand the challenges they experience as developing leaders within a rural school setting in Virginia. The research question for the study was, what challenges do novice principals situated in a rural setting in Virginia experience as leaders of their schools? This study adds to the existing body of research on the challenges novice principals face as leaders of schools situated within a rural community. For this study, six novice principals working in Rural-Remote (Code 43) schools (as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics) in Virginia participated in a 45-minute, one-on-one interview. The findings revealed that the novice rural principals experienced unique challenges with hiring staff, managing limited budgets, wearing multiple hats, distributed leadership, meeting their community's expectations for accessibility and visibility, readily available collaboration opportunities with professionals in similar roles, and intense feelings of ultimate responsibility. Participants hired with previous administrative experience within the district reported smooth transitions to the principalship. Although the participants reported limited activities from their districts to assist with understanding the rural setting, they expressed satisfaction with the overall support provided by their school district. The implications could help school districts, policymakers, and principal preparation programs effectively manage rural principal successions by establishing mentorship programs; providing field experience to aspiring principals; creating robust principal induction programs; and finding creative solutions to attract, hire, and retain rural school staff. / Doctor of Education / Novice principals leading rural schools experience unique challenges that define their leadership practices. This research focused on how novice principals interpret and understand the challenges they experience as developing leaders within a rural school setting in Virginia. The research question for the study was, what challenges do novice principals situated in a rural setting in Virginia experience as leaders of their schools? For this study, six novice principals working in Rural-Remote (Code 43) schools (as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics) in Virginia participated in a 45-minute, one-on-one interview. The implications could help school districts, policymakers, and principal preparation programs effectively manage rural principal successions by establishing mentorship programs; providing field experience to aspiring principals; creating robust principal induction programs; and finding creative solutions to attract, hire, and retain rural school staff.

Yes / Product reviews are posted online by the hundreds and thousands for popular products. Handling such a large volume of continuously generated online content is a challenging task for buyers, sellers and researchers. The purpose of this study is to rank the overwhelming number of reviews using their predicted helpfulness scores. The helpfulness score is predicted using features extracted from review text, product description, and customer question-answer data of a product using the random-forest classifier and gradient boosting regressor. The system classifies reviews into low or high quality with the random-forest classifier. The helpfulness scores of the high-quality reviews are only predicted using the gradient boosting regressor. The helpfulness scores of the low-quality reviews are not calculated because they are never going to be in the top k reviews. They are just added at the end of the review list to the review-listing website. The proposed system provides fair review placement on review listing pages and makes all high-quality reviews visible to customers on the top. The experimental results on data from two popular Indian e-commerce websites validate our claim, as 3–4 newer high-quality reviews are placed in the top ten reviews along with 5–6 older reviews based on review helpfulness. Our findings indicate that inclusion of features from product description data and customer question-answer data improves the prediction accuracy of the helpfulness score. / Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India for financial support during research work through “Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme for Electronics and IT”.

The Food Safety Modernization Act has enforced the importance of research in preventative and control measures for known hazards. Experiment 1 applies existing statistical models, Linear and Weibull, to Escherichia coli thermal inactivation in broiler mash feed in a lab-based circulating water bath to simulate conditioning. Linear and Weibull models were determined to be suitable for modeling the thermal inactivation of E. coli in broiler feed. In Experiment 2, a Salmonella challenge model for broilers raised in floor pens in the updated Animal Biosafety Level-2 facility was evaluated over a 42-day grow-out period. Broiler performance and recovery of Salmonella from liver, spleen, ceca, and external bird rinses were measured for Salmonella challenged and unchallenged groups of Ross 708 male broilers in five different rooms. The five different rooms utilized in the study performed similarly to each other and can be used as replicate blocks in future experiments.

Allergic diseases are chronic inflammatory conditions, characterised by eosinophil inflammation systemically and in target organs, where cytotoxic granule proteins are responsible for tissue injury. Allergic rhinitis is known to be a risk factor for the development of asthma, yet not all with rhinitis develop asthma. The overall aim was to investigate the involvement of eosinophils in allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma in vivo and in experimental settings, with a focus on differences between rhinitis and asthma. Birch pollen allergy was used as a model and patients were studied during pollen season and after nasal and bronchial allergen challenge. During pollen season and at baseline, allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma had the same degree of systemic eosinophil inflammation. Despite this, impairment in lung function during season and increased bronchial responsiveness at baseline were more common in the asthmatics. Systemic inflammation was more pronounced after seasonal exposure than after experimental challenge. Allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma had the same degree of eosinophil airway inflammation after bronchial challenge, but only the asthmatics had increased bronchial responsiveness measured as PD20 for birch allergen. Allergen primed eosinophils were investigated in vitro for C3b-induced degranulation after seasonal and experimental challenge. The released amount of eosinophil granule proteins was within the same range for all three allergen challenge models with just minor differences in propensity for degranulation between rhinitics and asthmatics. Signalling through PI3K for degranulation was studied with the specific inhibitor Wortmannin. PI3K signalling for eosinophil degranulation was clearly involved in allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma irrespective of the model for allergen exposure. Asthmatics demonstrated less inhibition of degranulation through PI3K during pollen season, indicating that other pathways contribute to eosinophil degranulation in allergic asthmatics. Conclusion: Allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma present with the same degree of systemic and local eosinophil inflammation. The eosinophils are primed for degranulation equally and follow the same pathway through PI3K for degranulation. Our data indicates that eosinophil inflammation per se is not sufficient for the development of asthma.

This thesis describes the initial development of the Texas A&M Autonomous Ground Vehicle test platform and waypoint following software, including the associated controller design. The original goal of the team responsible for the development of the vehicle was to enter the DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005. A 2004 Ford F150 4x4 pickup was chosen as the vehicle platform and was modified with a 6” suspension lift and 35” tires, as well as a commercial drive-by-wire system. The waypoint following software, the design of which is described in this thesis, is written in C and successfully drives the vehicle on a course defined by GPS waypoints at speeds up to 50 mph. It uses various heuristics to determine desired speeds and headings and uses control feedback to guide the vehicle towards these desired states. A vehicle dynamics simulator was also developed for software testing. Ultimately, this software will accept commands from advanced obstacle avoidance software so that the vehicle can navigate in true off-road terrain.

No description available.

Bacillary Necrosis of Pangasius (BNP) caused by Edwardsiella ictaluri is considered to be the most serious disease occurring in farmed striped catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus) in Vietnam. This disease has had an increasing impact over the last ten years and has been reported to cause 50-90% mortality of stocks during a single outbreak. Data obtained from natural outbreaks of E. ictaluri in striped catfish showed the role of environmental factors in the establishment and progression of this disease. At present, factors affecting the virulence and transmission of E. ictaluri in striped catfish are poorly understood. The central hypothesis of this thesis focuses on the complex picture of the environmental factors and infectivity of E. ictaluri in striped catfish. In this study, 80 isolates of E. ictaluri recovered from natural clinical disease outbreaks occurring in striped catfish farms between 2002 and 2011 located in 4 distinct geographical areas within Vietnam were characterised using a variety of methods. The biochemical profiles showed that E. ictaluri isolates from striped catfish in Vietnam have similar phenotypic characteristics to other E. ictaluri isolates from other infected fish species. These data showed high levels of phenotypic homogeneity between the E. ictaluri isolates investigated. The status of isolates recovered from natural infections over time and from geographically distinct farms was evaluated using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), plasmid profile identification and antibiotic sensitivity tests. The PFGE results showed 6 main groups with a similarity of 82% and the corresponding genotypes of the prevalent isolates illustrated annual differences. Three plasmid groups were identified distributed among the isolates investigated, in which high molecular weight plasmids of approximately 35 and 140 kb were found in two of the groups. Plasmid profiles of the present study did not show any trend of geographical region or year of isolation. The 140 kb plasmid has been considered as a multi-antibiotic resistance plasmid which confers resistance to tetracycline, trimethoprim and sulphonamides. All Vietnamese isolates showed a high level of resistance to Oxolinic acid, Sulfadimethoxine/Ormetoprim (Romet), Oxytetracycline and Amoxicillin. A reproducible bacterial immersion challenge model was developed and the LD60 estimated prior to performing subsequent experimental challenge studies. Fish were exposed to 107 cfu ml-1 of E. ictaluri by immersion for up to 30 seconds, resulting in a cumulative percentage mortality of 63%. Edwardsiella ictaluri was recovered and identified from all the dead and moribund fish during these experiments and affected fish showed similar clinical signs and pathology to those reported from natural E. ictaluri infections. The present study resulted in a successful experimental immersion challenge model for E. ictaluri infection in healthy striped catfish. Cohabitation challenges were also developed and produced 15-40% mortality, typical clinical signs and pathology, and successful recovery of the challenge organism demonstrating horizontal transmission of E. ictaluri in striped catfish. Experimental studies were then conducted to investigate the association between pH or salinity of water and susceptibility to E. ictaluri infection in striped catfish. The first experiments were performed in in vitro conditions in which E. ictaluri isolates were cultured in a variety of pH and salt concentrations. In vivo experiments were then designed where striped catfish were exposed to 107 cfu ml-1 of E. ictaluri for 30 seconds and then held at 4 different water pHs (5.5, 6.5, 7.5 and 8.5) or NaCl concentrations (0, 0.5, 1 and 1.5%). The results of in vitro experiments showed that a pH value between 5.5 to 6.5 and salt concentration between 0-0.5% were optimal for the growth of E. ictaluri. The in vivo experiments demonstrated that the cumulative mortality of striped catfish in water at pH 5 and pH 6 was significantly higher than that of fish maintained in more alkaline water (p<0.05). By contrast, the cumulative mortality of the striped catfish maintained in 0.5% salt concentration was significantly lower than those kept in 0%, 1% and 1.5% salt concentration (p<0.05). Clinical signs, lesions and histopathological changes in the affected fish were consistent with those reported in natural infections. This study highlighted the use of pH 8.5 and salinity of 0.5% NaCl as a means of decreasing the susceptibility of striped catfish to E. ictaluri. In conclusion, this study used a variety of methods in order to enhance the understanding of the biochemical, biophysical characteristics, plasmid profile and antibiotic resistance as well as the relatedness of E. ictaluri isolates recovered from farmed striped catfish in Vietnam. This study provided two reliable and reproducible bacterial challenge models (immersion and cohabitation) and emphasised the link between pH and salinity with the infectivity and pathogenicity of E. ictaluri in striped catfish.

Jönköping University Solar Team deltog år 2015 i tävlingen World Solar Challenge som körs vartannat år i Australien. Team från hela världen deltar i denna tävling där de konstruerar solbilar som de sedan tävlar med i ett race på ca 3000 km från Darwin till Adelaide. En solbil är en elbil som även är utrustad med solpaneler för att ge en teoretiskt oändlig körsträcka så länge bilen har tillgång till solenergi. Jönköping University kom på 15 plats i detta race och ville till nästa race förbättra sin konkurrenskraft. Eftersom det var ett race och varje teams mål var att använda sin bil så effektivt som möjligt behövdes ett system för att övervaka och logga batteridata och presentera det för teamet. Det var även fördelaktigt om teamet kunde få någon form av energiprognos för att kunna bestämma vilken hastighet som solbilen bör hålla. Ett system som loggar och överför denna information från solbilen till en följebil utvecklades och utvärderades. Syftet med denna studie var således: Öka Jönköping University Solar Teams konkurrenskraft genom att förse följebilen med ett beslutsstöd som i realtid övervakar och loggar solbilens batterinivå och energiförbrukning. Design Science Research användes som metod för att genomföra detta syfte, vilket gav möjligheten att utveckla systemet som en artefakt och använda denna för att presentera resultatet. Tre olika experiment utfördes för att konstatera funktionaliten på den trådlösa kommunikationen, hur rättvisande systemet var samt hur väl energiförbrukningen kunde förutsägas. I resultatet beskrivs hela artefakten och tillsammans med experimenten konstaterades att systemet kommer att ge Jönköping University Solar Team en högre konkurrenskraft i nästa race. / Jönköping University Solar Team participated in the 2015 edition of World Solar Challenge, which is held every other year in Australia. Teams from all around the world participates in the competition in which they construct a solar car and competes in a 3000 km long race from Darwin to Adelaide. A solar car is an electric car equipped with solar panels to give it a theoretical infinite mileage as long as the car have access to solar energy. Jönköping University came in 15th place in this race and would like to improve their competitiveness in the next race. Because it is a competition and the goal for every team is to use their car as efficiently as possible a system to log and monitor the battery and present the information to the team was needed. It would also be good to have some kind of energy consumption forecast that would be used to decide the speed the solar car should keep. A system that collect, stores and transmits the information from the solar car to an escort vehicle was developed and evaluated. Thus, the pursues of this studies were: Improve Jönköping University Solar Teams competitiveness by provide a decision support which in real time monitor and log the solar car battery level and energy consumption. Design Science Research was used as a method to realize this purpose, which gave the opportunity to develop the system as an artifact and use this to present the result. Three different experiments were constructed to determine the functionality of the wireless communication, how accurate the system was and how well the energy consumption could be predicted. In the results the artifact is described as a whole and together with the experiments it is found that the system will give Jönköping University Solar Team a higher competitiveness in the next race.

The potential of communities for sustainability learning and governance has generated substantial interest in sustainability discourses, but their specific roles and remits are not always critically examined. This thesis' original contribution to these discourses lies in the analysis of community projects as liminal spaces for pro-sustainable change that are limited in scope within wider political landscapes that do not sufficiently address wider challenges of an unravelling biosphere. The particular manifestation of community projects which emerges in Scotland as a result of Climate Challenge Fund funding made available by the Scottish Government is one example of sustainability governance at a local level. The present study draws upon data from field notes of eleven months of fieldwork, and semi-structured interviews with fifty-two informants, constructing two case studies with references to a third one. A transdisciplinary analysis of findings examines leadership and organisational structures and their implication for governance, and similarities and differences in practices and values identified within the case studies. Community projects are described as liminal spaces which facilitate the learning, practice-based and theoretical knowledge of sustainable practices (such as food growing or energy efficiency), and stimulate thinking on behalf of the group of participants or wider community. Community projects may also build temporary spaces demonstrating sustainable solutions visible to passers-by (such as raised vegetable beds in community gardens, or second-hand clothing in a swap shop). However, the longevity of these solutions is uncertain once the grant funding has come to an end. It is argued that in wider Scottish society, high-carbon lifestyles, inequalities and economic growth are the norm, and sustainable practices, community sustainability governance of tangible assets, and Education for Sustainable Development need to become less marginal and more widely embedded across all social and economic institutions.