Thesis (S.T.M.)--Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-174).

No description available.

Time-based reform proposals are founded on the assumption that more time in school will produce great learning outcomes. Research shows that when schools adopt time-based reform initiatives, there are certain considerations that they should make and methods they should follow to ensure the change produces the outcomes intended. This was not the case in a local Archdiocese where a calendar extension was adopted by several elementary schools. This qualitative case study focused on the adoption of a calendar extension at one Catholic elementary school. The researcher gathered data from the pastor, principal, teachers, parents, and students to determine how these stakeholders envisioned the outcomes of this change, how they perceived the time was being used for curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular purposes, and the challenges and opportunities that they felt existed after three years of implementation. Data collected over a four-month period included classroom observations, stakeholder interviews, focus group meetings, and document analysis. An inductive analysis of the data collected was used to determine emergent themes and domains within the school. The seven themes that emerged include: decision making, planning and implementation, advantages, financial motivations, the culture of teaching, leadership, challenges and complications of the extended calendar. Recommendations include the need for school leaders to familiarize themselves with change management techniques including setting a shared vision, establishing a collaborative implementation plan, and developing a system of assessment prior to embarking on school reform.

The company Ehandelslösningar works within web development, primarily with e-commerce where they have both individuals and companies as their customers. Some of these companies offer services of their own and as a result, these companies have their own customers whom they have to meet and interact with on a daily basis. This led to Ehandelslösningar wanting their own calendar system, so that these companies could then use it to set up appointments. The requirement was that the developed calendar system had to be user-friendly, contain necessary functionality, and that it had to be implemented as a WordPress plugin. The project was therefore divided into two parts, the first centering on how to design a calendar system, and the second being the development and implementation of the calendar system as a WordPress plugin. The project began with a literary study of the different aspects that make up this project, such as calendars and WordPress, as well as user-friendly design and plugin security. Existing WordPress calendar plugins and other online calendar systems were chosen for analysis. The analysis was done in order to identify strengths and flaws in the design of calendar systems, which in turn would help the development of the WordPress plugin. Based on the analysis, features were selected and then implemented into the developed WordPress plugin, which is named EHLCalendar. The admin of a WordPress website can create time slots, practitioners and services once they have activated EHLCalendar. Visitors select a service, the practitioner they want, and a date in order to see the available time slots and book an appointment. / Företaget Ehandelslösningar arbetar inom webbutveckling, främst med e-handel där de har både privatpersoner och företag som sina kunder. Vissa av dessa företag erbjuder tjänster, vilket innebär att företagen möter och interagerar med sina egna kunder dagligen. På grund av detta så vill Ehandelslösningar ha sitt eget kalendersystem som dessa företag kan använda för att hantera tidsbokningar med sina kunder. Kraven var att kalendersystemet som utvecklas ska vara användarvänligt, innehålla nödvändig funktionalitet samt vara implementerad som ett plugin för WordPress. Projektet är därför uppdelat i två delar. Det första gäller designen av ett kalendersystem, och det andra gäller utvecklingen och implementationen av kalendersystemet som ett WordPress plugin. Projektet började med en literaturstudie av de olika aspekterna som projektet består av, så som kalender och WordPress, samt användarvänligt design och plugin säkerhet. Existerande kalender plugin för WordPress och andra online kalendersystem blev valda för analys. Analysen utfördes för att kunna identifiera styrkor och svagheter i designen av ett kalendersystem. Kunskapen från analysen hjälper sedan utvecklingen av WordPress pluginet. Efter analysen valdes funktioner som sedan blev implementerade i den utvecklade WordPress pluginet, nämd EHLCalendar. Genom att aktivera EHLCalendar så kan en administratör skapa tillgängliga tider, praktiker och tjänster i sin WordPress webbsida. En användare som besöker sidan behöver sedan välja en tjänst, den praktiker de vill ha, och ett datum för att se dem tillgängliga tiderna som kan bokas.

Most of the prior research in the area of monthly regularities has been based on the Gregorian calendar; by contrast, little attention has been given to other calendars based on different religions or cultures. This thesis examines monthly calendar anomalies in the Pakistani stock market for both the Gregorian calendar and its Islamic counterpart. This is one of the first studies to investigate both calendars for monthly seasonality in one investigation on the same dataset. Empirical studies of the Pakistani stock market that have examined monthly calendar anomalies are relatively sparse when compared with investigations from other emerging markets throughout the world. Even the findings from the small number of Pakistani investigations that have examined for the presence of monthly calendar anomalies have arrived at different conclusions about the predictability of equity returns at different times within a year. Since the conclusions of these findings have been mixed, the current study undertakes further work on this topic to offer some clarity in this area; this thesis arrives at a firm conclusion about the monthly calendar anomaly. For the purpose of this thesis, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. Firstly, 19 face-to-face interviews were conducted with brokers, regulators and individual investors to ascertain their views about share price regularities with regards to monthly calendar anomalies and to gain some insights about the role of investor sentiment in the Pakistani stock markets. Secondly, share returns for a sample of 106 companies listed on the KSE over the 17 year period from 1995 to 2011 were analysed to determine whether Pakistani stock markets are weak-form efficient or whether security price changes can be predicted from knowledge of the month when the return is earned; it also investigates whether there is a change in the risk (volatility) of shares in different months which might explain any pattern in returns. To answer these questions various research methods were employed. The results of the interviews suggest that most respondents believed that share prices exhibit patterns in certain months of the year. The most common pattern highlighted by the interviewees related to the month of January for the Gregorian calendar and Ramadan for the Islamic calendar. Interviewees also argued that volatility declined during the religious month of Ramadan; they attributed these changes to investor sentiment and religious duties. Overall, the results suggested that monthly calendar anomalies may be present in the market and that these are studied by investors in an attempt to earn profit. The results from the quantitative analyses supported the findings from the interviews. Initial analyses suggested that returns varied significantly during certain months which indicate that the market might not be efficient. Further, investigations for seasonality in both the mean and volatility of returns offered conflicting evidence; very little statistical evidence of monthly seasonal anomalies was identified in average returns. However, monthly patterns were present in the variance of equity price changes in Pakistan. Overall, the results confirm that whatever monthly seasonality may be present in the equity prices of Pakistani companies, it is more pronounced in the volatility data than in the mean return numbers. These findings may have useful implications for trading strategies and investment decisions; investors may look to gain from managing the risk of their portfolios due to time varying volatility documented in the findings of this thesis. Further, the results of this thesis have interesting implications for our understanding of the dynamics of equity volatility in the Pakistani stock market.

Population aging is occurring all over the world as fertility declines and life expectancy rises.China, as the developing country with the largest population, is also experiencing thisphenomenon. However, the pension insurance system and health care system for theelderly has not been developed well enough. There is a growing need for the society toaddress the current living situation and needs of the elderly in China.The theoretical framework is design for aging and ritual designs. Sustainable thinking andhuman centered design thinking is used through the whole design process. By applyingcollaborate design methods such as interviews, some important aspects in old people’s lifewere been found out and medicine issues is the one of them. Most elderly have the issue offorgetting to take medicines and taking wrong medicines. These issues may cause greatdangers to the elderly with specific diseases such as high blood pressure.In the end, with the interaction and direct conversation with the Chinese elderly, the designsolution to medicine issues shapes the design proposal: a medicine calendar. The medicinecalendar can help the elderly remember to take their medicine properly and improve theirexperience of taking medicines. It can also draw the attention of the society to take theseniors’ life experience into account.

Le IVe siècle de notre ère représente indéniablement un tournant majeur dans l’histoire de l’Europe occidentale. Le passage du christianisme du statut de culture marginale d’une communauté religieuse à celui de pôle culturel et normatif à l’échelle d’une société constitue une transition caractéristique de l’Antiquité tardive, qui s’est d’abord opérée sur le terrain des systèmes sociaux de référence que sont le temps et l’espace – lieux d’expression identitaire. La richesse documentaire de l’"Vrbs" ajoutée à sa position de capitale historique et de cité de première importance pour le christianisme en font un cadre d’étude singulier. Cette enquête sur le partage du temps et de l’espace, entre la victoire du Pont Milvius (312) et le sac d’Alaric (410), propose une reconstruction des temps de la cité et une exploration des mécanismes de développement de l’organisation calendaire de l’Église et d’insertion au sein de la trame temporelle urbaine (partie 1). Sur la base d’un catalogue qui actualise le "LTVR(S)", elle reconstitue la topographie polythéiste et examine l’inscription de l’ancrage matériel du culte chrétien au sein du territoire romain (partie 2). Au travers de ces analyses transversales et d’études de cas (partie 3), elle tente aussi de comprendre des modes d’interaction, de coexistence religieuse au sein d’une société. La recherche replace le curseur sur la continuité plutôt que la rupture. Elle révèle un modèle prioritairement intégratif et une stratégie de conformité aux dynamiques romaines dans le partage du temps et de l’espace. Elle argumente sur une cohabitation religieuse globalement pacifique portée par un investissement identitaire commun focalisé sur la "Romanitas". / The fourth century AD is admittedly a major turning point in the history of Western Europe. The evolution of Christianity from the status of a marginal culture within a religious group to that of a cultural and normative pole within society constitutes an important transition specific to Late Antiquity. This transition from margin to norm started from the social frameworks of time and space, acting as strong identity markers. The great amount of evidence from the "Vrbs", its position as historical capital, as its recognized status as important city for the development of Christianity, make it a specific research framework. This study, which focuses on the sharing of time and space between the victory of the Milvius Bridge (312) and the sack of Alaric (410), reconstructs the organization of the times in the city and explores the mechanisms behind the development of the calendar structure of the Church within this urban space (part 1). On the basis of a catalogue that brings up to date the "LTVR(S)", this study rebuilds the polytheistic topography and scrutinizes the material inscription of the Christian cult on the Roman territory (part 2). On the basis of these cross-sectional analyses and case studies (part 3), it also attempts at understanding the modes of religious co-existence and interaction within a society. The results point towards a sense of continuity rather than breaking. This dissertation reveals a model that favours integration and conformation strategies to the Roman dynamics in the sharing of time and space. It argues in favour of a religious cohabitation mostly peaceful led by a common identity investment focused on the "Romanitas".

Since a young age, I have been interested in bicycling as a form of fun and fanciful recreation, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2011 that a serious shift occurred in my understanding of the bike as more than a mere machine. A spontaneous 700-mile journey redefined my relationship with travel, transcended my notions of transportation, and enabled me to better mediate myself within my environment. In writing about these experiences, I hope to offer some insight into how American culture currently frames transportation and how I hope the construction of a bike positive culture can instill social, environmental, and political change. Concurrently, I created a pin-up style bicycle calendar featuring enthusiasts from the Claremont Colleges to foster a sense of community around bicycling and inspire riders and non-riders alike to further explore their ‘bicyxuality’. Intermingling this nonfiction piece with a thoughtful reflection on the BIKEurious calendar project, this paper serves to explain my creative undertakings and, ultimately, call into question the hierarchy of transportation in America today.

In the past few years, due to the development of the mobile devices and the improvement of database technology, the geometric information has become widely available. Identifying object groups based on spatial-temporal dimension is an emerging research topic. Previous work has incorporating the spatial and temporal information pertaining to moving objects in finding mobile groups. Considering that mobile groups tend to exhibit some calendar-like temporal features, we define a new temporal presentation mechanism called flexible calendar pattern, which allows users to specify the desired calendar patterns at a coarse level. In addition, we developed efficient algorithms for mining mobile groups pertaining some user-specified flexible calendar pattern. The proposed algorithms are evaluated via the synthetic data generated by IBM City Simulator. The results show that our approaches prove to perform more efficiently than other intuitive approaches.

With the rapidly growing volumes of data from various sources, new tools and computational theories are required to extract useful information (knowledge) from large databases. Data mining techniques such as association rules have been proved to be effective in searching hidden knowledge in a large database. However, if we want to extract knowledge from data with temporal components, it becomes necessary to incorporate temporal semantics with the traditional data mining techniques. As mining techniques evolves, mathematical techniques become more involved to help improve the quality and diversity of mining. Fuzzy theory is one that has been adopted for this purpose. Up to now, many approaches have been proposed to discover temporal association rules or fuzzy association rules, respectively. However, no work is contributed on mining fuzzy temporal patterns. We propose in this thesis two data mining systems for discovering fuzzy temporal association rules and fuzzy periodic association rules, respectively. The mined patterns are expressed in fuzzy temporal and periodic association rules which satisfy the temporal requirements specified by the user. Temporal requirements specified by human beings tend to be ill-defined or uncertain. To deal with this kind of uncertainty, a fuzzy calendar algebra is developed to allow users to describe desired temporal requirements in fuzzy calendars easily and naturally. Moreover, the fuzzy calendar algebra helps the construction of desired time intervals in which interesting patterns are discovered and presented in terms of fuzzy temporal and periodic association rules. In our system of mining fuzzy temporal association rules, a border-based mining algorithm is proposed to find association rules incrementally. By keeping useful information of the database in a border, candidate itemsets can be computed in an efficient way. Updating of the discovered knowledge due to addition and deletion of transactions can also be done efficiently. The kept information can be used to help save the work of counting and unnecessary scans over the updated database can be avoided. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed system for mining fuzzy temporal association rules. In our mining system for discovering fuzzy periodic association rules, we develop techniques for discovering patterns with periodicity. Patterns with periodicity are those that occur at regular time intervals, and therefore there are two aspects to the problem: finding the pattern, and determining the periodicity. The difficulty of the task lies in the problem of discovering these regular time intervals, i.e., the periodicity. Periodicites in the database are usually not very precise and have disturbances, and might occur at time intervals in multiple time granularities. To discover the patterns with fuzzy periodicity, we utilize the information of crisp periodic patterns to obtain a lower bound for generating candidate itemsets with fuzzy periodicities. Experimental results have shown that our system is effective in discovering fuzzy periodic association rules.