This thesis reports on a study undertaken at the Dixson Library, University of New England. The purpose of the study was to develop an understanding of users of online public access catalogues (OPACs). The understanding gained from the study will assist in the development of improvements to the Library's OPAC, and increase user ability to access information from the OPAC. The study replicated the user questionnaire of the Online Patron Access Project, sponsored by the Council on Library Resources (CLR) in 1981/83. The questionnaire was modified slightly to suit conditions at the Dixson Library. The study addressed nine research questions relating to the users, their reactions, attitudes, experiences and problems. The user task and their suggestions for improvement were also addressed. The study formally tested three propositions between the variables user task, success and attitudes in relation to OPAC users. The findings show the analysis of the responses for the population as a whole, and, where relevant, for eight groups of student respondents based on their academic affiliation. The student population was of particular importance because of the preponderance of external students at the University of New England. The differences in the findings between the groups of students were discussed, and where possible, explained. The three formal propositions were tested by carrying out Chi square tests for the values of each variable. Nine significant relationships were found. Comparisons were made between the Dixson Library findings and those of the CLR study. Recommendations and conclusions were drawn from the study, including areas for further research.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research study is to determine if the rate of unintentional injury death in selected medical districts differs significantly among citizen and non-citizen males ages 20-65 living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A profile of unintentional injury deaths was generated by specific cause for the six medical districts of Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ra’s al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Qaiwain managed for the UAE Ministry of Health for the years 2006-2008. During this time period the six medical districts reported a total of 14,101 deaths. Males were found to represent 73.9 per cent of the deaths reported by the six medical districts managed by the UAE Ministry of health for the years 2006-2008. Non –citizen males represented 74.8 per cent of the male fatalities reported by the six medical districts managed by the UAE Ministry of health for the years 2006-2008. Fatality rates for males ages 20-65 were generated and analyzed by citizen status and season of the year. This age group represented 6,141 deaths. In the two medical districts with the highest population (Dubai & Sharjah) unintentional injury deaths represented 77.1% of the total unintentional deaths reported by all the six medical districts managed by the UAE Ministry of Health for the years 2006-2008. A Chi-Square found the rate of fatalities among 20-65 years old male citizens and non-citizens in the six medical districts managed by the UAE Ministry of Health for the years 2006-2008 differed significantly by cause of unintentional injury death. The observed rate of death from accidental falls for non-citizen 20-65 males was found to be higher than expected for male citizens in the same age group. The observed unintentional injury death rate for males ages 20-65 caused by motor vehicle & traffic accidents and for accidental poisoning found the death rate for UAE citizens to be higher than the rate for non-citizens living in the UAE. The results of this study demonstrate the need for the reporting and analysis of unintentional deaths at the medical district level in the UAE by subgroups such as citizen status and age group.

The test of homogeneity for intraclass correlation coefficients has been one of the active topics in statistical research. Several chi-square tests have been proposed to test the homogeneity of intraclass correlations in the past few decades. The big concern for them is that these methods are seriously biased when sample sizes are not large. In this thesis, data driven approaches are proposed to testing the homogeneity of intraclass correlation coefficients of several populations. Through simulation study, data driven methods have been proved to be less biased and accurate than some commonly used chi-square tests.

Purpose/aim The purpose of the research is to analyze the relationship between water pollution (WP) and the economic development in China. We found a vicious cycle that at the same time as China’s economy has developed; the WP has become the focus of attention, and has also caused huge economic losses. Faced with this situation, this topic is really worth to study. Design/methodology/approach The research adopted a quantitative methodology for the exploration, and conducted a survey through questionnaires which were answered by different people. These respondents come from four areas in China. After having conducted the survey, we selected three typical provinces as representative for each area, and surveyed the basic information about these places. The sample information was calculated by the Chi-square test. The results will be analyzed together with the findings below. Findings The findings indicated that through an analysis of GDP, population, the economic development level and the degree of WP, there is relationship between economic development and WP. When people ignore the problem of WP, and just focus on the economy, the relationship shows that the more developing of economy, the more serious the WP becomes. Originality/value The original idea in our dissertation is to discuss the relationship between economic development and WP in China. The water problem and economic development form a vicious circle. And it seriously affects the whole China. The study has a value for the improvement of the environmental awareness of all the people in China, and advocates the government to develop the economy, and at the same time protect the water sources.

During 2012, the employer of this essay carried out a telephone survey with 18000 participants and a web panel survey with 708 participants. Those who partook in the telephone survey were given a choice to join the web panel. The purpose of this work is to study the participants of the telephone survey and see if they reflect the Swedish population with regards to several socio-demographic factors. Also, we intend to investigate if the propensity to join the web panel differs for participants of the telephone survey with regards to various socio-demographic affiliations. It is also of interest to study if the response pattern is different for participants of the telephone survey that would like to join the web panel and those who reject. A comparison of response pattern between the telephone survey and web panel survey has also been done, to see if there exist any differences for these two groups of surveys. The statistical methods used in this essay are descriptive statistics, multiple logistic regression and decision trees. Conclusions to be drawn with result from these methods are that the participants from the telephone survey do reflect the Swedish population regarding certain socio-demographic factors and that there is a slight difference in propensity to join the web panel for people which have dissimilar socio-demographic affiliation. It has also been found that there is a slight difference in response pattern for participants who would or would not like to join the web panel, as well as differences in response pattern also exist between the telephone survey and the web panel survey.

Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-41).

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been identified as a good candidate to provide high-resolution soil moisture information over extended areas. SAR data could be used as observations within a global Data Assimilation (DA) approach to benefit applications such as hydrology and agriculture. Prior to developing an operational DA system, one must tackle the following challenges of soil moisture estimation with SAR: (1) the dependency of the measured radar signal on both soil moisture and soil surface roughness which leads to an ill-conditioned inverse problem, and (2) the difficulty in characterizing spatially/temporally surface roughness of natural soils and its scattering contribution. The objectives of this project are (1) to develop a roughness measurement method to improve the spatial/temporal characterization of soil surface roughness, and (2) to investigate to what extent the inverse problem can be solved by combining multipolarization, multi-incidence, and/or multi-frequency radar measurements. The first objective is achieved with a measurement method based on Structure from Motion (SfM). It is tailored to monitor natural surface roughness changes which have often been assumed negligible although without evidence. The measurement method is flexible, a.ordable, straightforward and generates Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) for a SAR-pixel-size plot with mm accuracy. A new processing method based on band-filtering of the DEM and its 2D Power Spectral Density (PSD) is proposed to compute the classical roughness parameters. Time series of DEMs show that non-negligible changes in surface roughness can happen within two months at scales relevant for microwave scattering. The second objective is achieved using maximum likelihood fitting of the Oh backscattering model to (1) full-polarimetric Radarsat-2 data and (2) simulated multi-polarization / multi-incidence / multi-frequency radar data. Model fitting with the Radarsat-2 images leads to poor soil moisture retrieval which is related to inaccuracy of the Oh model. Model fitting with the simulated data quantifies the amount of multilooking for di.erent combinations of measurements needed to mitigate the critical e.ect of speckle on soil moisture uncertainty. Results also suggest that dual-polarization measurements at L- and C-bands are a promising combination to achieve the observation requirements of soil moisture. In conclusion, the SfM method along with the recommended processing techniques are good candidates to improve the characterization of surface roughness. A combination of multi-polarization and multi-frequency radar measurements appears to be a robust basis for a future Data Assimilation system for global soil moisture monitoring.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore whether rehabilitation counselor/consumer racial similarity is related to rehabilitation services provided and employment outcomes achieved. This research contributes additional information to the research base on how to educate and train practicing vocational rehabilitation counselors to support culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) consumers more effectively. Information regarding racial dyads may help to articulate whether CLD counselors are more effective with CLD consumers. Utilizing the RSA-911 data file submitted by California for fiscal year 2006 as well as 189 Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI) surveys collected on practicing vocational rehabilitation counselors, ANOVA, MANOVA, ANCOVA and chi-square analysis were used to measure relationships among counselor and consumer dyads that were either similar or dissimilar in ethnicity and case service variables and outcome variables. Additional analysis focused on the influence of high versus low cultural competency of rehabilitation counselors and the same consumer case service and outcome variables. Study results revealed statistically significant differences on MCI total scores between counselor ethnic groups, with Hispanic counselors demonstrating the highest mean scores overall on the MCI. In addition, significant differences existed between counselor ethnic groups on MCI total scores, as well as all four subscale scores. Chi-square was used to investigate the effect of counselor ethnicity and cultural competency scores on the case service variables of job search, rehabilitation technology, maintenance and college training, as well as outcome variables of competitive employment. MANOVA and ANCOVA were used for the continuous outcome variables of cost of services, wages at closure and weekly earnings at closure. Significant chi-square results were found for some of the service and outcome variables for both the matched counselor/consumer dyads and the counselor competency score groups. More significant findings existed in the ANCOVA analysis for cultural competency scores than for matched ethnicity groups. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed. / text

The main goal in analyzing microarray data is to determine the genes that are differentially expressed across two types of tissue samples or samples obtained under two experimental conditions. In this dissertation we proposed two methods to determine differentially expressed genes. For the penalized normal mixture model (PMMM) to determine genes that are differentially expressed, we penalized both the variance and the mixing proportion parameters simultaneously. The variance parameter was penalized so that the log-likelihood will be bounded, while the mixing proportion parameter was penalized so that its estimates are not on the boundary of its parametric space. The null distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistic (LRTS) was simulated so that we could perform a hypothesis test for the number of components of the penalized normal mixture model. In addition to simulating the null distribution of the LRTS for the penalized normal mixture model, we showed that the maximum likelihood estimates were asymptotically normal, which is a first step that is necessary to prove the asymptotic null distribution of the LRTS. This result is a significant contribution to field of normal mixture model. The modified p-value approach for detecting differentially expressed genes was also discussed in this dissertation. The modified p-value approach was implemented so that a hypothesis test for the number of components can be conducted by using the modified likelihood ratio test. In the modified p-value approach we penalized the mixing proportion so that the estimates of the mixing proportion are not on the boundary of its parametric space. The null distribution of the (LRTS) was simulated so that the number of components of the uniform beta mixture model can be determined. Finally, for both modified methods, the penalized normal mixture model and the modified p-value approach were applied to simulated and real data.

The goal of the present thesis is to ascertain the impact of different drugs, intended for the infarction treatment; investigation of the other factors, which may stipulate bleeding in the course of the operation and within the post-operation period. The investigation was carried out in two stages. During the first stage the data was accumulated for processing (investigation of the sample homogeneity and normality); the second stage implied solution of the statistical tasks (solution of the tasks, which correspond to the goals of the thesis). The methods of data analysis and the models of binary logistic and linear logistic regression were applied. 89 patients, who survived the myocarditis infarction, were investigated and it was ascertained that there is no huge difference in between the tranexamic acid and aprotinin. The bleeding complications may be caused by aspirin, which has been used before the operation. One of the complications, i.e. the drainage, may be predicted, judging from the amount of haemoglobin, haematocrit in the blood as well as creatinin. The model of the binary logistic regression assisted us in drawing the conclusion that smoking, hypothermia, euroscore and other factors produce an impact upon the bleeding complications.