The purposes of this study were to determine the predominant career paths of superintendents within the State of Texas and to determine the most important professional positions and areas of professional development as perceived by superintendents and educational experts. The study also compares actual experience and professional development of superintendents with those perceived as most important.

Master of Science / Department of Hospitality Management and Dietetics / Kevin Sauer / Registered Dietitians (RDs) attribute the success of their careers to a variety of factors, including formal education, influential mentors, specific skill sets, flexibility, and even having a supportive spouse. RDs with strong management skills are increasingly in demand in order to coordinate nutrition care and services in a cost effective manner. Clinical Nutrition Managers (CNMs) specifically coordinate medical nutrition therapy across the continuum of patient care. To aid in the career development of CNMs, research is necessary to determine the factors that have positive and negative effects on their career paths. This study examined intrinsic and extrinsic factors that impact the career paths of CNMs in addition to perceived career satisfaction. A five-part online survey was disseminated to members of the Clinical Nutrition Management Dietetic Practice Group (CNM DPG). CNMs were also defined as RDs who coordinate medical nutrition therapy and who manage personnel, finances, or both. Results (n=146) of both quantitative and qualitative analyses identified key intrinsic factors that demonstrated a positive effect on CNMs’ career paths including self-motivation, communication skills, teamwork, and leadership skills. The study also examined CNMs’ perceptions about the extrinsic factors on their career paths. Support from upper-level management and administration was identified as a crucial factor in career advancement. Having support from family was shown to be a positive influence, while many CNMs also reported that family needs and expectations, unforeseen life circumstances, and the economic climate had limited their career paths. Social service motivation had a slightly positive influence on career paths. Perceptions about career satisfaction indicated that CNMs were moderately satisfied with overall career success but less satisfied with income and career ladders. This study serves as an important precursor to future research which could explore CNMs’ perceptions regarding pay equity as well as the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are more critical at various junctures in their career paths. Results from the study also help to fill an existing gap in the dietetics and career path literature and will also assist the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and others in developing strategies to foster the career development of CNMs.

In this paper we present a simple combinatorial approach for the derivation of zero avoiding transition probabilities in a Markovian r- node series Jackson network. The method we propose offers two advantages: first, it is conceptually simple because it is based on transition counts between the nodes and does not require a tensor representation of the network. Second, the method provides us with a very efficient technique for numerical computation of zero avoiding transition probabilities. / Series: Forschungsberichte / Institut für Statistik

Counting lattice paths where the number of occurrences of a given pattern is monitored requires a careful analysis of the pattern. Not the length, but the characteristics of the pattern are responsible for the difficulties in finding explicit solutions. Certain features, like overlap and difference in number of ! and " steps determine the recursion formula. In the case of ballot paths, that is paths the stay weakly above the line y = x, the solutions to the recursions are typically polynomial sequences. The objects of Finite Operator Calculus are polynomial sequences, thus the theory can be used to solve the recursions. The theory of Finite Operator Calculus is strengthened and extended to the multivariate setting in order to obtain solutions, and to prepare for future applications. / by Shaun Sullivan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Os principais objetos de estudo neste trabalho são os números de Ramsey para circuitos e o lema da regularidade de Szemerédi. Dados grafos $L_1, \\ldots, L_k$, o número de Ramsey $R(L_1,\\ldots,L_k)$ é o menor inteiro $N$ tal que, para qualquer coloração com $k$ cores das arestas do grafo completo com $N$ vértices, existe uma cor $i$ para a qual a classe de cor correspondente contém $L_i$ como um subgrafo. Estaremos especialmente interessados no caso em que os grafos $L_i$ são circuitos. Obtemos um resultado original solucionando o caso em que $k=3$ e $L_i$ são circuitos pares de mesmo tamanho. / The main objects of interest in this work are the Ramsey numbers for cycles and the Szemerédi regularity lemma. For graphs $L_1, \\ldots, L_k$, the Ramsey number $R(L_1, \\ldots,L_k)$ is the minimum integer $N$ such that for any edge-coloring of the complete graph with~$N$ vertices by $k$ colors there exists a color $i$ for which the corresponding color class contains~$L_i$ as a subgraph. We are specially interested in the case where the graphs $L_i$ are cycles. We obtained an original result solving the case where $k=3$ and $L_i$ are even cycles of the same length.

Avalanche paths are unique ecosystems that represent a significant portion of the landscape in the northern Rocky Mountains. Frequent avalanche disturbance results in vegetative cover that is unlike the adjacent coniferous forest. These high relief environments have the potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere at rates differing from those of the surrounding forest, and to regulate matter and/or energy fluxes to downslope ecosystems. This thesis attempts to estimate organic carbon on south-facing avalanche paths in the southern portion of Glacier National Park, Montana. I am specifically interested in total organic carbon density, compartmental carbon density, and change in organic carbon over time as a function of shrub and tree diameter. Using an integrated sampling method, estimates of total organic carbon on avalanche paths appear to be different than those of the adjacent forest and similar to those of other shrub formation types in the area. However, the potentially moveable litter compartment is consistently larger. Organic carbon from shrub and trees growing on paths appears to be increasing at a continuous rate leading up to disturbance, while a typical individual's rate of increase appears to be slowing. The organic material temporarily stored on avalanche paths could serve as an important outside carbon source for near and distant aquatic ecosystems.

In 2005, Alon, et al. proved that tournaments arising from majority voting scenarios have minimum dominating sets that are bounded by a constant that depends only on the notion of what is meant by a majority. Moreover, they proved that when a majority means that Candidate A beats Candidate B when Candidate A is ranked above Candidate B by at least two out of three voters, the tournament used to model this voting scenario has a minimum dominating set of size at most three. This result gives 2-majority tournaments some significance among all tournaments and motivates us to investigate when a given tournament can be considered a 2-majority tournament. In this thesis, we prove, among other things, that the presence of an upset path in a tournament allows us to conclude the tournament is realizable as a 2-majority tournament.

This thesis was done in the professional project format. It was completed as a deliverable to the City of Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was developed in accordance with the State of Louisiana Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. A bicycle and pedestrian master plan is a document meant to serve as a guide to staff and decision-makers on how to best develop future bicycle and pedestrian improvements. It is a comprehensive document that identifies and prioritizes new projects for sidewalks, bicycle facilities, and off-street paths. It accomplishes this by following these steps: 1. Identify existing bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. 2. Provide a “on the ground” survey of conditions of existing infrastructure. 3. Conduct public input sessions to gather information regarding necessary projects. 4. Apply four criteria (Attractors, Generators, Connectivity, and Affordability) to rank the priority of each project. 5. Identify likely funding sources for each project. 6. Suggest steps for plan implementation and next steps. 7. Present findings to public and elected officials. Following these steps, a complete bicycle and pedestrian master plan was developed. A total of 149 sidewalk projects, 40 bicycle network projects, and five off-street multi-use paths were identified and prioritized. The identification of these projects will serve to assist in their inclusion to the City’s and regional planning bodies transportation improvement plan (TIP).

We study a specialized version of network design problems that arise in telecommunication, transportation and other industries. The problem, a generalization of the shortest path problem, is defined on an undirected network consisting of a set of arcs on which we can install (load), at a cost, a choice of up to three types of capacitated facilities. Our objective is to determine the configuration of facilities to load on each arc that will satisfy the demand of a single commodity at the lowest possible cost. Our results (i) demonstrate that the single-facility loading problem and certain "common breakeven point" versions of the two-facility and three-facility loading problems are polynomially solvable as a shortest path problem; (ii) show that versions of the twofacility loading problem are strongly NP-hard, but that a shortest path solution provides an asymptotically "good" heuristic; and (iii) characterize the optimal solution (that is, specify a linear programming formulation with integer solutions) of the common breakeven point versions of the two-facility and three-facility loading problems. In this development, we introduce two new families of facets, give geometric interpretations of our results, and demonstrate the usefulness of partitioning the space of the problem parameters to establish polyhedral integrality properties. Generalizations of our results apply to (i) multicommodity applications and (ii) situations with more than three facilities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 36).