Over nine million children 6-17 years old are overweight in the United States. They may face the highest risk ever for overweight, obesity, and associated health problems as adults. This study’s purpose was to evaluate adiposity measurement methods in children by comparing accuracy, cost effectiveness, ease of use, and practicality. IRB approval, parental consent and student assent were obtained. Data were collected by trained employees at six elementary schools on 789 subjects for boys (n= 391) and girls (n=398) 5-11 years old African American children. Hip and waist circumferences, height, and weight were collected. BMI, Waist to Hip Ratio (WHR), and Waist to Height Ratio (WHTR) were calculated. Upon analysis, weight and hip circumference were correlated (r = .94135) and waist circumference was correlated to BMI (r = .92396). The measures of adiposity were highly correlated indicating that a variety of anthropometric measurements can be used for measuring children.

This dissertation research uses the No Child Left Behind Act to assess two essential performance measure issues, measure development and the use of performance measures to enhance effectiveness. The study specifically explores what impact political party unity, the percentage of certified teachers, the percentage of state NEA members, past performance, per capita income, the percentage of minority students, and spending per pupil have on the level of challenge associated with performance measure development as well as the change in outcome. The level of challenge associated with performance measures is captured in a 6 point performance index. The change in outcome is defined as the change in 8th grade NAEP math and reading results during the life span of the act. The results reveal that the level of difficulty associated with performance measures was significantly related to variables in the model. The change in outcome was also influenced by strength of state performance measures as well as other variables included in the model.

In the current literature and practice, no systematic and user-oriented performance measures are available to evaluate intermodal transportation and facilitate mode-choice decision-making. Most existing transportation measures are defined for one specific mode and are not consistent with each other. This research establishes a systematic and user-oriented performance measurement system for intermodal transportation. Five major categories of performance measures are identified: mobility and reliability, safety, environmental impact, long term transportation cost efficiency, and economic impact. For each category, several quantitative measures are given to capture the features of the system and evaluate how well transportation systems can meet the needs of their users, who are investors (including government agents and stakeholders), individuals, industries, and the society (or the public). The proposed measures are scalable so that they can be used to compare systems with different sizes. Since none of them is mode specific, no matter how many modes and what kinds of modes are involved, a transportation system can be evaluated by the measure set. This research tries to avoid any overlap or omission among the measures and distinguish performance measures from factors. A transportation system can be improved through changing some factors, like capacity, but project priority should be decided based on measures rather than factors. The proposed measures are also verified by a survey conducted by this research and some industrial practices. In the thesis, a case study on the State of Mississippi is conducted based on the identified performance measures. The measures with the case study can help to promote transportation intermodalism in the U.S. and quantitatively demonstrate the benefits of intermodal transportation. The proposed measures differ in many aspects from traditional measures. The proposed set of performance measurement system can have a significant impact on development of U.S. transportation system.

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This thesis, "A Hypothetical Model for System Safety in Air Transportation," is addressed to an individual having a basic technical background and some familiarity with the air transportation system in the United States. The thesis identifies the need for the benefits to be obtained from a system-side program of safety activities. The organizational framework for implementation of a system safety program is presented as well as techniques of safety analysis.

Outcomes measurement is an important component of routine hemophilia care, clinical trials and economic evaluations. Assessing outcomes in patients living with hemophilia is challenging due to a lack of validated outcome measures. Conventional clinical outcomes, for instance, bleeding rate, structural changes of joints or functional joint scores may be less relevant for the decision-making process. Patient reported outcomes measures has been increasingly interested in routine medical care and clinical research. However, the available validated patients reported outcome measures for patients with hemophilia are not generally implemented in routine care or clinical trials. The Patent Reported Outcomes, Burdens, and Experiences (PROBE) study aims to develop a validated patient reported outcome measure for patients living with hemophilia. The PROBE questionnaire is organized in 4 sections, comprising 29 questions. Section I contains questions pertaining to demographic data. Section II contains questions pertaining to patient reported outcomes. Section III contains questions pertaining to hemophilia specific problems and treatments. Section IV contains the EuroQol five dimension 5-level instrument (EQ-5D-5L). The psychometric analysis of revealed that the PROBE questionnaire has a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient=0.84). PROBE items showed moderate to strong correlations with corresponding EQ-5D-5L domains. The PROBE Score has a known group validity among known groups. The psychometric properties of the PROBE questionnaire demonstrated the validity of the instrument in both patients living with hemophilia and control population (participants without bleeding disorder). The test-retest reliability analysis demonstrated that the PROBE questionnaire has a substantial agreement when the questionnaire was repeatedly administrated. There were acceptable reliability properties between the paper-based and web-based questionnaires. The reliability properties of the PROBE questionnaire were established in both patients living with hemophilia and control population. The PROBE questionnaire was cross-cultural implemented in 21 countries. The results showed that the regions of participant contributed a trivial variability of the PROBE score, indicating that the PROBE questionnaire is valid for assessing the health status among hemophilia patients and participants without bleeding disorder across regions. Sexual health of patients living with hemophilia was evaluated using the PROBE questionnaire. The results showed that sexual difficulty was more prevalent in patients with hemophilia and associated with markers of disease severity. This finding warrants the sexual health assessment in routine hemophilia care. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis "System Safety in Rail Transportation," is addressed to an individual having a basic technical background but little or no experience in this field. The thesis discusses the need for and the benefits to be obtained by using system safety techniques and principles in the railroad industry. Examples of typical railroad accidents are reviewed, and it is pointed out that analysis of the hazards in the railroad industry prior to the accidents would have identified problems which eventually resulted in the accidents. The system safety approach, which was developed for use in the aerospace and aviation fields, has proved to be extremely effective and is now being adapted to many other areas. The surface modes of transportation have the greatest need for these techniques. The techniques covered in this thesis include Hazard Analysis, Fault or Logic Tree Analysis, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, and Probabilistic Cost Analysis. The thesis also describes a hypothetical model for organizing and implementing system safety approaches in an existing railroad company.

In this thesis, I examine implicit measures of empathy towards members of both the racial in-group and racial out-group. In study 1, McMaster students completed the Intergroup Emotional Go/No-Go Task to measure affective empathy towards racial in-group and racial out-group faces. Although, there was a significant effect of emotion, there was no significant effect of racial group suggesting that participants either showed similar levels of affective empathy towards both racial in-group and racial out-group members, or the Intergroup Emotional Go/NoGo task was not sensitive enough to detect the intergroup effect on affective empathy. In study 2, McMaster students completed the Intergroup Empathy Selection Task to measure motivation to engage in cognitive empathy towards both racial in-group and racial out-group faces. White participants were equally likely to empathize with faces that resembled their racial out-group compared to their racial in-group. However, Asian participants were significantly more likely to empathize with faces that resembled their racial in-group than their racial out-group. These findings provide insight into potential implicit measures of both affective and cognitive empathy, as well as reinforce our current understanding of how intergroup dynamics effect empathy. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Research currently measures empathy using self-report methods in which we rely on the participant to accurately judge their ability to empathize. Unfortunately, there are social factors that affect one's own evaluation of themself. For example, one may want to appear socially desirable and therefore, will exaggerate their ability to empathize to appear as a, "good person." Non-self-report measures of empathy are a possible solution, however, such methods require further research to determine if they are accurate measures of empathy. In this thesis, I examine two non-self-report measures of empathy: "The Emotional Go/NoGo Task, and, "The Empathy Selection Task," which are tasks where the participant is required to respond to an emotional face (target). Generally, we have more empathy for those of our own race than for those of another race. One step in determining the accuracy of these non-self-report measures of empathy, is to see if they can measure this difference in empathy based on the race of the target. "The Emotional Go/NoGo Task," did not show this difference, but, "The Empathy Selection Task," did show this difference.

M.Tech. (Information Technology) / Since the introduction of Web 2.0, there has been an increase in the number of applications that promote the use of user-generated content, support social and collaborative interaction on the Web, and provide engaging user interactions. This together with the continuous increase in internet speed gave rise to the formation of interactive online communication channels, such as Social Media (SM). SM moved from just being a purely social platform to being an integral part of many organisations` business practices. Organisations saw an opportunity through SM to market themselves and interact with customers more efficiently and cost effectively, whist reaching a larger number of potential clients online ...

We study the properties of Gibbs measures for functions with d-summable variation defined on a subshift X. Based on Meyerovitch\'s work from 2013, we prove that if X is a subshift of finite type (SFT), then any equilibrium measure is also a Gibbs measure. Although the definition provided by Meyerovitch does not make any mention to conditional expectations, we show that in the case where X is a SFT it is possible to characterize these measures in terms of more familiar notions presented in the literature. / Nós estudamos as propriedades de medidas de Gibbs para funções com variação d-somável definidas em um subshift X. Baseado no trabalho de Meyerovitch de 2013, provamos que se X é um subshift de tipo finito (STF), então qualquer medida de equilíbrio é também uma medida de Gibbs. Embora a definição fornecida por Meyerovitch não faz qualquer menção à esperanças condicionais, mostramos que no caso em que X é um STF, é possível caracterizar estas medidas em termos de noções mais familiares apresentadas na literatura.