A distortion of time is often reported under the presence of stress or threatening stimuli, for instance motor vehicle accidents or near-death experiences. There is a lack of research on the complexity of time distortion under stress; thus, the present study aimed to explore the relationship between stress and time perception. Given the challenges associated with producing a stress response in a laboratory setting, difficult tasks have been previously used to produce a stress response, such as anagram tasks. However, it remains unknown whether experiencing time pressure while completing a stressful task can also influence time distortion. To investigate this, participants completed either an easy or difficult anagram task and received either an unspecified time limit or no time limit to complete the task. It was hypothesized that participants would experience the greatest distortion of time when the task was difficult, and they were provided an unspecified time limit. Contrary to the hypothesis, we failed to find differences in task performance or time perception across the various conditions, which may be explained by the inability to produce a stress state. While stress manipulation was unsuccessful, the findings suggest utilizing multiple tasks may be more effective at replicating a physiological or psychological stress state. Thus, the results of this study warrant further investigation to examine the relationship between stress, time pressure, and time distortion.

Distributed real-time applications require support from the underlying middleware to meet the strict requirements for jitter, latency, and bandwidth. While most existing middleware standards such as MPI do not support Quality of Service (QoS), the MPI/RT standard supports QoS in addition to striving for high performance. This thesis presents HARE, the first known implementation of a subset of the MPI/RT 1.1 standard with time-driven QoS support. This thesis proves the following hypothesis: It is possible to achieve zero-sided communication (a model of communication characterized by the absence of any explicit per-message transfer calls by any of the participating sides) in a real-time environment using a QoS contract between an application and message-passing middleware. Furthermore, it is shown that the performance and predictability of a time-driven task using zero-sided communication is better than that of a best-effort task. The hypothesis is validated through compact MPI/RT application programs that achieve zero-sided communication.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a statistically significant difference in quality of instruction as delivered by full-time and part-time adjunct faculty in community colleges by utilizing data obtained from the Kentucky Community and Technical College (KCTCS) student evaluation of instruction instrument at Southeast Kentucky and Hazard community and technical colleges. The evaluation instrument is used to rate the instructor in the following areas: (a) clarity of course goals; (b) clarity of attendance policy; (c) examinations being a fair measure of progress; (d) clear standards of grading; (e) presentation of course material; (f) clear and to the point explanations of concepts; (g) instructor?s enthusiasm towards subject material; (h) instructor?s concern for student progress in the course; (i) instructor availability before and after class; (j) the instructor?s teaching methods promote interest in the subject area; (k) how much the course has taught the student about the subject; (l) syllabus detailing course requirements and policies was provided and explained; (m) class starts on time and as scheduled; (n) instructor meets the class for the full-time scheduled. SPSS version 14.0 was used in this project. Cross tabulations were performed for each question in the evaluation. Group statistics were computed for the data providing the means, standard deviation, and standard error of the mean for each question. Independent sample tests were also performed, including Levene?s test for equality of variances and T tests for equality of means. The findings of the study indicate that there was no statistically significant difference in student satisfaction in classes taught by adjunct (part-time) instructors and full-time instructors. Discussion of the findings and theoretical and policy implications were offered.

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This study addressed the broader issue of the negative impact of the community college practice of hiring large numbers of part-time faculty on graduation rates. Prior research has determined that higher ratios of full-time faculty correlate significantly and positively with community college graduation rates. This study extended the research of institutional models affecting community college graduation rates and investigated the nature of regional accreditation for the adequacy of full-time faculty as a determinate of graduation rates. This study included all public 2-year institutions in the United States. A correlational research design was implemented using data available through the National Center for Education Statistics and the nation’s six regional accrediting agencies for community colleges. Among the major findings in the study, graduation rates were found to be significantly correlated among schools belonging to different regional accreditation agencies. The study also determined that ratios of full-time faculty, institution size, instructional spending, and ratios of full-time students correlated significantly with increased graduation rates. When comparing community colleges among regional accreditors that had no standards for regulating the adequacy of full-time faculty with those who do, graduation rates did not correlate significantly. These results contribute to the body of knowledge for institutional effects on graduation rates and also have important implications for regional accreditors. The results suggest that regional accrediting standards for the adequacy of full-time faculty may need to be more prescriptive in nature to provide a direct impact on graduation rates.