The primary purpose of this research was to determine whether terminal objectives of the associate degree program in nursing at Anderson College were being met by the first class of graduates--those who graduated in June, 1975. The study was done to determine if a difference existed between the ratings of competency by the graduate and by his/her supervisor. If there were areas of difference, what were the differences and what were the degrees of difference?The data were collected utilizing two rating scales consisting of fifteen statements of competencies for a beginning nurse practitioner graduate of Anderson College, Anderson, Indiana. Two questionnaires were used, one for the graduate and one for the supervisor, with identical rating scales. The rating scales were devised from a list of terminal objectives set up by the faculty of the department of nursing during the formative stages of the nursing program. These questionnaires were validated by two separate juries of nursing experts.The jury concerned with the questionnaire being sent to the graduate was made up of eight members of the department of nursing at Anderson College. Twenty head nurses from St. Johns Hospital, Anderson, Indiana, composed the jury that validated the questionnaire being sent to the employer. The employer was requested to have the graduate's immediate supervisor return the completed form to the department of nursing, Anderson College.A sample of seventy-five graduates of the first class of nursing students of the associate degree program, Anderson College and forty-three employers of various nursing services were used for the study population. Each graduate nurse was mailed a questionnaire with a request for permission to contact his/her employer. Of the seventy-five questionnaires sent to the graduate nurses, forty-five (sixty percent) of the forms were returned. Two graduates who responded would not give permission to contact their employers. The return of the questionnaires from the supervisors was ninety-nine percent. Of the forty-three forms sent out to the supervisors, only one form was not returned.The graduates responding to the questionnaire included forty-two females and three males, members of the first graduating class of the associate degree program in nursing, Anderson College, June, 1975.Results of the rating scale were evaluated by utilizing the t-test. Since the graduates rated themselves and were also rated by their supervisors, the groups were matched. Consequently, the results were analyzed with a t-test of matched samples.

The purpose of this study was to narrate the continuous development of events in the Roman Catholic Church that led to the present Lafayette diocese in Indiana, 1677 to 1977. This diocese, created out of the Fort Wayne diocese on December 19, 1944, comprises the parishes in Indiana counties of Benton, Blackford, Boone, Carroll, Cass, Clinton, Delaware, Fountain, Fulton, Grant, Hamilton, Howard, Jasper, Jay, Madison, Miami, Montgomery, Newton, Pulaski, Randolph, Tippecanoe, Tipton, Warren, and White.Primary sources on this topic are here organized for the first time. Use of Canadian and American civil and ecclesiastical records identifies the Catholic missions around Fort Ouiatenon (near present Lafayette, Indiana) beginning 1677. From lists, charts, and maps derived primarily from parish registers at Sainte Anne de Detroit, St. Francis Xavier at Vincennes, official Catholie directories, the Lafayette and the amalgamation of the Potawatomi and Miami with the Canadians that became Indiana's first Americans.The American organization and growth of the Catholic Church in Indiana is told. Continuity with early settlers, namely, Yankee, Pennsylvania Dutch, and European Germans; analyses of Indiantreaties transferring land into annuities and business investments, and present involvement and statistics of church membership is described.This history's first part is in two sections. The first section covers 1677 to 1818, concentrating on French-British settlement among the Potawatomi and Miami under the Quebec diocese and the Canadian transition to American organization around Fort Ouiatenon. The second section from 1818 to 1858 narrates the early Church organization of Indiana under the Bardstown and Vincennes dioceses.The next part, from 1858 to 1908, is the narration of creation and growth of Fort Wayne diocese's parishes in the districts of northern Indiana that became the present Lafayette diocese. Personalities, rise of parochial schools and religious congregations are emphasized. The latter occurred in the episcopacies of Bishops John H. Luers, 1858-1871, Joseph G. Dwenger, 1872-1893, and Joseph J. Rademacher, 1893-1900.The fourth part of the study concerns the period from 1908 to 1977 in two sections. The first section from 1908 to 1944 shows Indiana's transition from agrarian to industrial economy and accompanying development of the Catholic Church from original missions of the Wabash River Valley. The effects of industrialization transforming farmers to factory workers and the newer immigration to northern Indiana's parishes are told in the administrations of Fort Wayne's Bishops Herman J. Alerding, 1900-1924, and John F. Noll, 1924-1957.The final section of this study completes the second section of part four of the dissertation. It shows how the early Catholic settlers of Indiana have survived and continue in today's organization of parishes. From 1944 to 1977 the actual episcopacy of Lafayette diocese's first three bishops is told; this period covers the work of Bishops John G. Bennett, 1945-1957; John J. Carberry, 1957-1965; and the first ten years of the incumbant Raymond J. Gallagher, 1.965-1975. Contemporary progress is also described.This history concludes that the American tradition to which the Canadian Catholics at Vincennes pledged the Catholic Church in Indiana has deep roots. The conclusion calls attention to the renewed recognition of Indiana's original settlers through the 1966 Roll of the Miami Nation stemming from the 1895 government roll based on this whole history. For three hundred years Catholicism in Indiana has developed from its oldest settlement around Fort Ouiatenon in 1717 until 1977 shows signs of continued vitality. The study concludes on a note' of continuity with the Roman Catholic Church as it has entered the American tradition as Indiana's oldest organized religion.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The purpose of the study was to determine if a significant relationship existed between selected demographic data and attitudes of freshmen entering Taylor University in the fall of 1973.The population of the study consisted of freshmen entering Taylor University in the fall of 1973.A review of related literature revealed that with unrest and dissatisfaction so prevalent on college campuses during the 1960's, researchers had turned to study of students. Studies were conducted relative to student attitudes, opinions and value structures.The instrument used in the study was a thirty-six item questionnaire developed after reviewing related literature and consulting with a committee of experts at Ball State University and Taylor University. Three hundred eighty-two from a total of three hundred ninety-one students returned completed questionnaires.Six null hypotheses were tested through use of the t test in an item analysis and by using the difference between uncorrelated proportions in a factor analysis. Both tests were used to determine whether a significant difference existed between student attitudes and selected demographic data.The following findings were based on analysis of data obtained from 382 questionnaires:1. One hundred eighty-six, 48.7 per cent, respondents were male.2. One hundred ninety-six, 51.3 per cent, respondents were female .3. Three hundred seventy-three, 97.6 per cent, respondents were caucasian.4. Nine, 2.4 per cent, respondents were from all races other than caucasian.5. Three hundred seventy-nine, 99.2 per cent, respondents were single.6. Three, 0.8 per cent, respondents were married or divorced.7. One hundred sixty-six, 43.5 per cent, respondents' fathers had a maximum of a high school education.8. Two hundred sixteen, 56.5 per cent, respondents! fathers had at least some college training.9. One hundred ninety-eight, 51.8 per cent, respondents had finished high school in the top quartile.10. One hundred eighty-four, 48.2 per cent, respondents had finished high school in the lower three quartiles.11. One hundred s~even,'28.0 per cent, respondents expressed no concern for financing a college education.12. Two hundred seventy-five, 72.0 per cent, respondents expressed concern for financing college.13. None of the null hypotheses of the study were rejected by determining the differences between uncorrelated proportions nor through use of the t test.The following conclusions resulted from testing the null hypotheses through use of uncorrelated proportions and the t test:1. There is no significant difference in the responses relating to attitudes held on entering college between the male and female members of the population.2. No conclusion could be made in determining if a significant difference existed in the responses relating to attitudes held on entering college between caucasian students and those of other races due to lack of sufficient data.3. No conclusion could be made in determining if a significant difference existed in the responses relating to attitudes held on entering college between single students and other students due to the lack of sufficient data.4. There was no significant difference in the responses relating to the attitude held on entering college as determined by the level of formal education of the father.5. There is no significant difference in the responses relating to the attitudes held on entering college as determined by high school rank. 6. There is no significant difference in the responses relating to the attitudes held on entering college relating to the level of concern for the ability to finance a college education.

The Schroeder's backward integration method is the most used method to extract the decay curve of an acoustic impulse response and to calculate the reverberation time from this curve. In the literature the limits and the possible improvements of this method are widely discussed. In this work a new method is proposed for the evaluation of the energy decay curve. The new method has been implemented in a Matlab toolbox. Its performance has been tested versus the most accredited literature method. The values of EDT and reverberation time extracted from the energy decay curves calculated with both methods have been compared in terms of the values themselves and in terms of their statistical representativeness. The main case study consists of nine Italian historical theatres in which acoustical measurements were performed. The comparison of the two extraction methods has also been applied to a critical case, i.e. the structural impulse responses of some building elements. The comparison underlines that both methods return a comparable value of the T30. Decreasing the range of evaluation, they reveal increasing differences; in particular, the main differences are in the first part of the decay, where the EDT is evaluated. This is a consequence of the fact that the new method returns a “locally" defined energy decay curve, whereas the Schroeder's method accumulates energy from the tail to the beginning of the impulse response. Another characteristic of the new method for the energy decay extraction curve is its independence on the background noise estimation. Finally, a statistical analysis is performed on the T30 and EDT values calculated from the impulse responses measurements in the Italian historical theatres. The aim of this evaluation is to know whether a subset of measurements could be considered representative for a complete characterization of these opera houses.

The subject of the present thesis is about the enhancement of orbiter spacecraft navigation capabilities obtained by the standard radiometric link, taking advantage of an imaging payload and making use of a novel definition of optical measurements. An ESA Mission to Mercury called BepiColombo, was selected as a reference case for this study, and in particular its Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), because of the presence of SIMBIO-SYS, an instrument suite part of the MPO payload, capable of acquiring high resolution images of the surface of Mercury. The use of optical measurements for navigation, can provide complementary informations with respect to Doppler, for enhanced performances or a relaxation of the radio tracking requisites in term of ground station schedule. Classical optical techniques based on centroids, limbs or landmarks, were the base to a novel idea for optical navigation, inspired by concepts of stereoscopic vision. In brief, the relation between two overlapped images acquired by a nadir pointed orbiter spacecraft at different times, was defined, and this information was then formulated into an optical measurement, to be processed by a navigation filter. The formulation of this novel optical observable is presented, moreover the analysis of the possible impact on the mission budget and images scheduling is addressed. Simulations are conducted using an orbit determination software already in use for spacecraft navigation in which the proposed optical measurements were implemented and the final results are given.

The aim of this work is to present various aspects of numerical simulation of particle and radiation transport for industrial and environmental protection applications, to enable the analysis of complex physical processes in a fast, reliable, and efficient way. In the first part we deal with speed-up of numerical simulation of neutron transport for nuclear reactor core analysis. The convergence properties of the source iteration scheme of the Method of Characteristics applied to be heterogeneous structured geometries has been enhanced by means of Boundary Projection Acceleration, enabling the study of 2D and 3D geometries with transport theory without spatial homogenization. The computational performances have been verified with the C5G7 2D and 3D benchmarks, showing a sensible reduction of iterations and CPU time. The second part is devoted to the study of temperature-dependent elastic scattering of neutrons for heavy isotopes near to the thermal zone. A numerical computation of the Doppler convolution of the elastic scattering kernel based on the gas model is presented, for a general energy dependent cross section and scattering law in the center of mass system. The range of integration has been optimized employing a numerical cutoff, allowing a faster numerical evaluation of the convolution integral. Legendre moments of the transfer kernel are subsequently obtained by direct quadrature and a numerical analysis of the convergence is presented. In the third part we focus our attention to remote sensing applications of radiative transfer employed to investigate the Earth's cryosphere. The photon transport equation is applied to simulate reflectivity of glaciers varying the age of the layer of snow or ice, its thickness, the presence or not other underlying layers, the degree of dust included in the snow, creating a framework able to decipher spectral signals collected by orbiting detectors. / Questo lavoro si propone di presentare diversi aspetti della simulazione numerica del trasporto di particelle e di radiazione per applicazioni industriali e di protezione ambientale, per consentire l'analisi di processi fisici complessi in modo veloce, affidabile ed efficiente. Nella prima parte è trattata la velocizzazione della simulazione numerica del trasporto di neutroni per l'analisi del nocciolo di un reattore nucleare. Le proprietà di convergenza della source iteration del Metodo delle Caratteristiche applicate a geometrie strutturate eterogenee sono state migliorate per mezzo della Boundary Projection Acceleration, consentendo lo studio di geometrie 2D e 3D con la teoria del trasporto senza omogeneizzazione spaziale. Le prestazioni computazionali sono state verificate tramite il benchmark C5G7 2D e 3D, mostrando una sensibile riduzione del numero di iterazioni e del tempo di calcolo. La seconda parte è dedicata allo studio dello scattering elastico dei neutroni con isotopi pesanti in funzione della temperatura vicino alla zona termica. È presentato il calcolo numerico della convoluzione Doppler del kernel di scattering elastico col modello gas per una generale sezione d'urto dipendente dall'energia e per una generica legge di scattering nel sistema del centro di massa. L'intervallo di integrazione è stata ottimizzato utilizzando un cutoff numerico, consentendo una valutazione numerica più veloce dell'integrale. I momenti di Legendre del kernel di trasferimento sono successivamente ottenuti per quadratura diretta e validati tramite un'analisi numerica della convergenza. La terza parte è focalizzata alle applicazioni di telerilevamento del trasferimento radiativo per indagini sulla criosfera terrestre. L'equazione del trasporto per fotoni è applicata per simulare la riflettività dei ghiacciai a diverse età dello strato di neve o ghiaccio, al suo spessore, alla presenza o meno di altri strati sottostanti, al grado di polvere inclusa nella neve, creando un sistema in grado di decifrare segnali spettrali raccolti dai rivelatori orbitanti.

Polymeric membranes represent a promising technology for gas separation processes, thanks to low costs, reduced energy consumption and limited waste production. The present thesis aims at studying the transport properties of two membrane materials, suitable for CO2 purification applications. In the first part, a polyimide, Matrimid 5218, has been throughout investigated, with particular reference to the effect of thermal treatment, aging and the presence of water vapor in the gas transport process. Permeability measurements showed that thermal history affects relevantly the diffusion of gas molecules across the membrane, influencing also the stability of the separation performances. Subsequently, the effect of water on Matrimid transport properties has been characterized for a wide set of incondensable penetrants. A monotonous reduction of permeability took place at increasing the water concentration within the polymer matrix, affecting the investigated gaseous species to the same extent, despite the different thermodynamic and kinetic features. In this view, a novel empirical model, based on the Free Volume Theory, has been proposed to qualitatively describe the phenomenon. Moreover, according to the accurate representation of the experimental data, the suggested approach has been combined with a more rigorous thermodynamic tool (NELF Model), allowing an exhaustive description of water influence on the single parameters contributing to the gas permeation across the membrane. In the second part, the study has focused on the synthesis and characterization of facilitated transport membranes, able to achieving outstanding separation performances thanks to the chemical enhancement of CO2 permeability. In particular, the transport properties have been investigated for high pressure CO2 separation applications and specific solutions have been proposed to solve stability issues, frequently arising under such severe conditions. Finally, the effect of different process parameters have been investigated, aiming at the identification of the optimal conditions capable to maximize the separation performance.

The thesis describes the implementation of a calibration, format-translation and data conditioning software for radiometric tracking data of deep-space spacecraft. All of the available propagation-media noise rejection techniques available as features in the code are covered in their mathematical formulations, performance and software implementations. Some techniques are retrieved from literature and current state of the art, while other algorithms have been conceived ex novo. All of the three typical deep-space refractive environments (solar plasma, ionosphere, troposphere) are dealt with by employing specific subroutines. Specific attention has been reserved to the GNSS-based tropospheric path delay calibration subroutine, since it is the most bulky module of the software suite, in terms of both the sheer number of lines of code, and development time. The software is currently in its final stage of development and once completed will serve as a pre-processing stage for orbit determination codes. Calibration of transmission-media noise sources in radiometric observables proved to be an essential operation to be performed of radiometric data in order to meet the more and more demanding error budget requirements of modern deep-space missions. A completely autonomous and all-around propagation-media calibration software is a novelty in orbit determination, although standalone codes are currently employed by ESA and NASA. The described S/W is planned to be compatible with the current standards for tropospheric noise calibration used by both these agencies like the AMC, TSAC and ESA IFMS weather data, and it natively works with the Tracking Data Message file format (TDM) adopted by CCSDS as standard aimed to promote and simplify inter-agency collaboration.

Lo scopo di questa tesi è quello di analizzare dapprima l’impatto ambientale di tali impianti e poi analizzare il contributo effettivo che oggi la tecnologia innovativa dei cicli Rankine organici può dare nella valorizzazione elettrica del calore di scarto di processi industriali, focalizzando l’obiettivo principalmente sulle turbine a gas ed eseguendo un caso di studio in un settore ancora poco esplorato da questa tecnologia, quello Oil&Gas. Dopo aver effettuato il censimento degli impianti a fonti fossili e rinnovabili, cogenerativi e non, presenti in Emilia-Romagna, è stato sviluppato un software chiamato MiniBref che permette di simulare il funzionamento di una qualsiasi centrale termoelettrica grazie alla possibilità di combinare la tecnologia dell’impianto con il tipo di combustibile consentendo la valutazione delle emissioni inquinanti ed i potenziali di inquinamento. Successivamente verranno illustrati gli ORC, partendo dalle caratteristiche impiantistiche e termodinamiche fino ad arrivare alla scelta del fluido organico, fondamentale per le performance del ciclo. Dopo aver effettuato una ricognizione dello stato dell’arte delle applicazioni industriali degli ORC nel recupero termico, verranno eseguite simulazioni numeriche per ricostruire gli ORC ed avere una panoramica il più completa ed attendibile delle prestazioni effettive di questi sistemi. In ultimo verranno illustrati i risultati di un caso di studio che vede l’adozione di recupero mediante ciclo organico in un’installazione esistente del settore Oil&Gas. Si effettuerà uno studio delle prestazione dell’impianto al variare delle pressioni massime e minime del ciclo ed al variare del fluido impiegato al fine di mostrare come questi parametri influenzino non solo le performance ma anche le caratteristiche impiantistiche da adottare. A conclusione del lavoro si riporteranno i risultati relativi all’analisi condotte considerando l’impianto ai carichi parziali ed in assetto cogenerativo. / This work presents a study related with off-shore oil & gas production and processing facilities, where required energy, for electric power, mechanical power and process heat, is mostly produced using gas turbines, as the fuel source (natural gas) is available onsite. Since size and weight of all equipment on an offshore facility are critical, it becomes necessary for the facility engineering team to ensure that all equipment are sized and selected appropriately to obtain better return on the investment. Therefore, any approach which could help in utilizing energy resources effectively will influence the bottom-line of the project, namely reduced capital cost and/or increased return on investment. In this work, one such approach of recovering power and thermal energy through the use of Organic Rankine Cycle system is discussed. A detailed thermo-economic analysis, conducted considering a system with four gas turbines operating, shows that power recovery equivalent to one topping gas turbine is achievable with a suitable working fluid. The analysis presented clearly shows that use of the Organic Rankine Cycle system for waste heat recovery is a technically viable and economically attractive solution for the offshore applications.