Despite the prominent role played by open tubular columns in gas chromatography, they have enjoyed comparatively little success as supports for open tubular liquid chromatography (OTLC), owing to impractical channel diameters (3-5 μm) required to facilitate retention in the liquid phase. In an effort to circumvent the technical issues associated with such narrow diameters, columns with multiple parallel channels have been suggested as alternatives – to this end, micro-structured fibres (MSFs) have been proposed as supports for OTLC. Much research has been conducted using MSFs for chromatography in the Oleschuk group, and although some success has been achieved, performance has been continuously hindered by flow velocity variation among the channels stemming from differences in channel sizes (or channel variance) as well as differences in stationary phase coverage, which serve to degrade column efficiency. Recent efforts have focused on devising a novel method for assessing the channel variance of MSFs. This method seeks to determine hole tolerance through evaluation of the extent of band broadening that occurs when performing chromatography in the absence of a retentive mechanism. Using this method, a linear correlation between the relative standard deviation of the channel diameters and the amount of broadening was revealed. To supplement the results, computational fluid dynamics was employed to simulate fluid flow through multi-channel columns. The results of these simulations again provided a linear correlation between the RSD of the channel diameters and the extent of flow velocity variation among the channels. / Thesis (Master, Chemistry) -- Queen's University, 2012-08-15 11:57:28.915

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Since the concept of open innovation was put forward by Chesbrough (2003), many researchers focus on open innovation in large enterprises. There is a research gap in how open innovation is implemented in SMEs, specially in Chinese companies. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the motives and challenges of manufacturing SMEs in China to implement onpen innovation. The study is based on analysis of scientific literature and four case studies of manufacturing SMEs. The empirical data were collected by semi-structure interviews and a survey. Overall, collsboration with external partners was found to be good for improving innovation performances in the studies companies. And also, four motives were found, which were forming innovation networks, cooperating with external innovation sources, importing advanced technologies, and driving and motivating innvation processes. Meanwhile, four main challenges were found lack of trust in collaboration, disability for transforming external knowledge to internal knowledge, low support from government, and barriers to overcom intellectual property disputes. At last, the authors suggest that manufacturing SMEs in China could collaborate with each other more, and improve the knowledge of intellectual property as well.

This creative project was written to provide learning materials that would facilitate student use of open physics laboratories in modular scheduled schools or schools operating under the open concept.The writer identified the needs and interests in physics for both the science and nonscience student. Using these topics of interest, nine open physics laboratory acttivities for science and nonscience students were written. Each activity was designed to offer a "hands-on" activity supplimented with pictures, diagrams, and a minimal of written material.An attempt was made to divide each activity into two parts or phases with each phase being more difficult (i. e., using more advanced scientific terms and/or mathematics). This structure was chosen so as to interest and motivate the nonscience student or low ability science student and not bore the ambitious science student.

Statement of the ProblemThe purpose of the study was to determine if traditional patterns of instruction have been altered as a result of open design in the construction of elementary school facilities. Answers to the following questions were sought through investigation. Do open design elementary buildings guarantee changes? Do open design elementary buildings actually contribute to a lesser degree of flexibility? Do open plan programs provide continuous growth and open endedness in instructional activities?Procedure UsedTen open designed elementary schools were selected as project schools for the study. The criteria for selection included a minimum of two months of operation for the program, uniqueness of building with respect to design and flexibility and uniqueness of program with respect to grouping and instruction. Data were gathered from literature, research and in the field. Persons interviewed included principals, teachers, custodians, guidance counselors, cafeteria personnel and school secretaries. A separate two section presentation of data was made for each sample school. A brief introduction for the sample schools was followed by an equipment description and concluded with general observations.FindingsFurniture and equipment play a major role in promoting the movement of students and working toward individualizing instruction. Carpeting was the floor covering chosen in nine of the ten schools. Carpeting appeared to be imperative in order to provide for a more informal climate of learning.Grouping across age and grade levels allowed for a more homogenic group. Open designed buildings provided the impetus for experimentation as gleaned from the study as every school in the sampling was involved in some type of experimental program. Media centers played a major role in grouping for instruction as personnel and students must have multi-grade level materials for grouping to be successful. Professional and non-professional personnel must work together toward facilitating learning and not just dispensing learning.ConclusionsOpen designed elementary buildings for northern and central Indiana school districts do not guarantee changes in program from the self-contained classroom arrangement. However, the buildings and programs studied provided evidence to support the position that experimentation with different types of student grouping is facilitated by open designed elementary buildings.Open design elementary buildings contribute to a greater degree of flexibility than the self-contained classroom arrangement. Nine of the ten schools in the study were carpeted, which encouraged teachers with groups of students or with individual students to organize learning activities almost anywhere in the facility. In buildings using the tote tray arrangement, students were allowed more freedom because the materials were readily movable. Evidence provided by observation in the study revealed that choice of equipment and materials are important contributions to instructional flexibility.Open plan programs can provide continuous growth and open-endedness in instructional activities. Observations conducted in the study provided the students with a multi-media center. Although maximum utilization was not observed in all cases, generally, the multi-media centers included a large variety of materials which could foster continuous growth and open-endedness in the instructional program. All nine schools with multi-media centers also provided the students with wet carrels, including filmstrip viewers, which contributed further to the opportunity for providing open-endedness and continuous growth in the instructional program.

This study of Henry Fielding's Amelia was undertaken in an attempt to discern what Fielding was doing in this last novel, how he was setting about to achieve his purpose, why he felt that this purpose was important, and how successful he had been in achieving his goals. The unrevised first edition published by A. Millar (1752) was utilized because the original purpose of the novel and not the response to criticism was the concern of the study.The study first places Amelia within the period and events of its literary genesis and considers the reception and rejection of the novel 1) in light of the personal feuds between Richardson: and Johnson on the one hand and Fielding on the other, and 2) in light of the later generations of literary criticism.Amelia is considered within the context of the development of the Fielding canon to establish that Henry Fielding maintained essentially the same style, the same intention, and the same point of view in this last novel that he had presented in his more famous earlier novels as well as inhis drama and prose works. The qualities are found to differ from work to work only in degree of emphasis.The study shows through a careful examination of style, structure, and characters that the purpose in Amelia is to set forth the Art of Life as Fielding had previously set forth the Art of the Novel. Amelia Booth is a well-controlled character who mirrors acceptable emotional reaction of the wives of her day. As Captain Booth's alter-ego, she is the locus from which the circles of Life radiate; however, it is Captain William Booth who is the central character through whom the reader experiences the lessons in Virtue--wisdom and prudence--that make possible the eventual perception of the Art of Life. Booth emerges as the last in the succession of Fielding's heroes--a human, fallible, middle-class gentleman who is the prototype of the twentieth-century unhero. He is good-hearted but imprudent and naively myopic.Amelia, upon close examination, emerges as a tight, complex, and well-written novel. It is the product of a mature, vital, and creative artist whose first concern throughout his entire career was the Art of Life, which he felt was best perceived through observing the people, the circumstances, to hopes, and the problems of his time. Amelia emerges as a credible work of remarkable depth and cultural sophistication.

Extensive research has been conducted to determine the degree of satisfaction among workers in various categories of the working force. Educational researchers have become increasingly interested in determining not only the degree of job satisfaction among teachers, but also the sources of teacher job satisfaction and dissatisfaction.One of the most controversial issues in contemporary education is the increased tendency to construct schools with open-space designs. Of great concern to many people are the effects that architectural changes and resulting conditions have on teachers. Heretofore, studies involving open-space schools have been largely interested in the effects on pupil self concept, personality, and achievement. Few systematic and analytic attempts have been made to assess evaluations by teachers concerning the impact of open-space design on job satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to determine the degree of job satisfaction of teachers in two dissimilar elementary school settings, the open-space and the self-contained.The experimental design involved dissemination of The Purdue Teacher Opinionaire to 76 elementary classroom teachers from four predominantly open-space schools and 85 teachers from four predominantly traditional schools. Each of the eight schools is located in Delaware County, Indiana. Teacher participation was strictly voluntary. Those wishing to participate in the study were given five full school days in which to respond to-the opinionaire.There were two major hypotheses tested. Hypothesis I proposed that there would be no significant difference between the proportion of teachers responding from open-space schools and traditional schools. A formula by Glass and Stanley was used to test the equality of group proportions.Hypothesis II and all of its sub-hypotheses proposed that there would be no significant difference between teachers in open-space and traditional schools regarding the degree of job satisfaction as measured by The Purdue Teacher Opinionaire. Data for these hypotheses were analyzed by means of a One-Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (Manova).No significant difference was found in the proportion of teachers responding from open-space and traditional schools. The null hypothesis of no significant difference between teachers regarding degree of job satisfaction as measured by The Purdue Teacher Opinionaire was rejected. The only variable contributing to this rejection was that of "Rapport Among Teachers." Data analysis revealed that teachers from traditional schools responded more positively to this variable than did teachers from open-space schools. Although no significant difference was found to exist between the two groups of teachers regarding either of the remaining five factors analyzed, teachers from traditional schools responded more positively to four of the five factors than did teachers from open-space schools. Suggestions for further research include consideration of whether or not teachers are teaching in a school by choice or by chance; consideration of data pertaining to factors such as sex, age, years of teaching experience, and number of years teaching in a particular type of school structure; and a similar study involving a greater number of subjects from a wider geographic area.

Radio frequency identi cation (RFID) is a rapidly emerging technology that enables au- tomatic remote identi cation of objects. Passive and semi-passive RFID systems can be distinguished from other forms of wireless systems, because the RFID tags (transponders) communicate by way of backscatter. In addition, passive tags derive their energy from the RF energy emitted by the reader. RFID technology can provide a fully automated data capture and analysis system. Compared to a passive RFID system, an open platform semi-passive UHF RFID tag can provide identi cation, security, low-power (compared to a wireless sensor net- work(WSN)), medium range and medium processing speed. However, the eld of semi- passive RFID is still under development, and has yet there are no open development platforms available. This thesis develops a prototype of a semi-passive UHF RFID tag that is compatible with the leading UHF RFID standard EPCglobal Gen 2 Class 1. I alsot has the exible I2C and analog digital converter(ADC) interface, which allows the additional of external analog and digital sensors. The sensor data can be read by microcontroller and stored at memory. Standard reader can get sensor data by sending QUERY and READ command to tag. Test results of our open platform semi-passive UHF RFID tag demonstrated that it can achieve a read rate above 50% when an open platform semi-passive UHF RFID tag is placed four meters from the reader antenna and the reader output power is set to 21 dBm. In addition, the proposed semi-passive open platform RFID tag consumes very little power (4.9 mA in 2V with system frequency set to 8MHz).

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De 2006 à 2010, nous avons étudié le cas d’une université québécoise ayant implanté Moodle, une plateforme en ligne d’apprentissage. Celle-ci permet aux enseignants de créer un espace personnalisé sur Internet destiné à diffuser des ressources numériques à leurs étudiants, à interagir avec ceux-ci et à les faire participer à des activités d’apprentissage. Alors que plusieurs études se sont déjà penchées sur le potentiel pédagogique de ce type de technologie, nous l’avons plutôt abordé en tant qu’outil de travail des enseignants, en nous intéressant à l’émergence d’un processus de co-configuration dans un contexte où l’organisation implante et supporte à l’interne une technologie open source. Contrairement aux méthodologies de design participatif ou de développement logiciel itératif qui se préoccupent de l’implication des usagers dans les phases antérieures de la conception, les pratiques de co-configuration que nous décrivons concernent un produit existant qu’on adapte localement après son implantation. L'accessibilité au code source de Moodle ainsi que les échanges mutuels entre les développeurs et les usagers permettent à l'organisation utilisatrice de personnaliser l’outil tout au long de sa durée de vie, et non seulement lors de périodes circonscrites de design et de conception. Les problèmes rencontrés par les enseignants constituent donc le point de départ temporel de leurs interactions avec les développeurs à l’interne. Les usages en contexte réel de travail révèlent à la fois certaines structures organisationnelles difficilement perceptibles aux développeurs avant l’implantation et rendent plus visibles les pratiques hétérogènes des enseignants. En accroissant la capacité d’action des développeurs, l’accès au code source du logiciel crée un contexte plus favorable à la prise en compte des demandes des usagers, puisque les développeurs peuvent « localiser » plus facilement les problèmes rencontrés en allant regarder comment le logiciel a été programmé et comment il pourrait être modifié pour mieux répondre à leurs besoins. Le caractère incrémental des modifications apportées localement à Moodle fait en sorte que les développeurs puissent accommoder certains besoins très spécifiques - voire uniques - tout en s’assurant de répondre aux besoins de la majorité, en plus d’assurer la compatibilité entre la version locale et la version officielle du logiciel. D'un point de vue conceptuel, nous avons mobilisé la théorie de l'activité en tant que cadre d’analyse (Engeström, 1987). La théorie de l’activité considère le changement comme un processus de résolution de contradictions, c’est-à-dire une séquence d’événements autour desquels s’articule la transformation des pratiques. Les différents niveaux de contradiction permettent de mieux saisir les liens entre les nouveaux patterns d’interaction et les pratiques institutionnalisées, de même que les implications des changements pour les systèmes d’activité voisins.