Thesis (M. Comm. (Hons.))--University of New South Wales, 2004. / Also available online.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This research explores downtown redevelopment in Tucson, Arizona to investigate who is imagined as the constituent for the redeveloped spaces of downtown Tucson. Drawing from various cases (primarily between 2010-2013), this study resonates with significant contributions of urban geographers to understand the ways that various forms of urban governance, placed subjectivities and political economy help to produce U.S. cities. This research provides a trialectic understanding of forces shaping downtown redevelopment, powers of: social memory; city policies and mechanisms; and economic investment. These forces constantly appear throughout the remaining pages and are informed by each other at times in reactive ways while in other moments in conciliatory ways. Each of these forces--social memory, city policies and mechanisms, and economic development--circulate within a complex of social relations and each, in varying ways (re)produces administrative and institutional norms and juridical regulations.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Köln, 2003.

The growing number of applications of composite materials in aerospace and naval structures along with advancements in manufacturing technologies demand continuous innovations in the design of composite structures. In the traditional design of composite laminates, fiber orientation angles are constant for each layer and are usually limited to 0, 90, and ±45 degrees. To fully benefit from the directional properties of composite laminates, such limitations have to be removed. The concept of variable-stiffness laminates allows the stiffness properties to vary spatially over the laminate. Through tailoring of fiber orientations and laminate thickness spatially in an optimal fashion, mechanical properties of a part can be improved. In this thesis, the optimal design of variable-stiffness fiber-reinforced composite laminates is studied using an emerging numerical engineering optimization scheme based on the cellular automata paradigm. A cellular automaton (CA) based design scheme uses local update rules for both field variables (displacements) and design variables (lay-up configuration and laminate density measure) in an iterative fashion to convergence to an optimal design. In the present work, the displacements are updated based on the principle of local equilibrium and the design variables are updated according to the optimality criteria for minimum compliance design. A closed form displacement update rule for constant thickness isotropic continua is derived, while for the general anisotropic continua with variable thickness a numeric update rule is used. Combined lay-up and topology design of variable-stiffness flat laminates is performed under the action of in-plane loads and bending loads. An optimality criteria based formulation is used to obtain local design rules for minimum compliance design subject to a volume constraint. It is shown that the design rule splits into a two step application. In the first step an optimal lay-up configuration is computed and in the second step the density measure is obtained. The spatial lay-up design problem is formulated using both fiber angles and lamination parameters as design variables. A weighted average formulation is used to handle multiple load case designs. Numerical studies investigate the performance of the proposed design methodology. The optimal lay-up configuration is independent of the lattice density with more details emerging as the density is increased. Moreover, combined topology and lay-up designs are free of checkerboard patterns. The lay-up design problem is also solved using lamination parameters instead of the fiber orientation angles. The use of lamination parameters has two key features: first, the convexity of the minimization problem guarantees a global minimum; second, for both in-plane and bending problems it limits the number of design variables to four regardless of the actual number of layers, thereby simplifying the optimization task. Moreover, it improves the convergence rate of the iterative design scheme as compared to using fiber angles as design variables. Design parametrization using lamination parameters provides a theoretically better design, however, manufacturability of the designs is not certain. The cases of general, balanced symmetric, and balanced symmetric with equal thickness layers are studied separately. The feasible domain for laminates with equal thickness layers is presented for an increasing number of layers. A restricted problem is proposed that maintains the convexity of the design space for laminates with equal thickness layers. A recursive formulation for computing fiber angles for this case is also presented. On the computational side of the effort, a parallel version of the present CA formulation is implemented on message passing multiprocessor clusters. A standard parallel implementation does not converge for an increased number of processors. Detailed analysis revealed that the convergence problem is due to a Jacobi type iteration scheme, and a pure Gauss-Seidel type iteration through a pipeline implementation completely resolved the convergence problem. Timing results giving the speedup for the pipeline implementation were obtained for up to 260 processors. This work was supported by Grant NAG-1-01105 from NASA Langley Research Center. Special thanks to our project monitor Dr. Damodar R. Ambur for his technical guidance. / Ph. D.

Syftet med den här studien var att ta reda hur familjehemsföräldrar upplever sitt uppdrag och det ansvar som uppdraget medför, vad som ger familjehemsföräldrar drivkraften att fortsätta med uppdragen, samt vilken känslomässig relation familjehemsföräldrar upplever att de får till de placerade barnen. Studien består av sex intervjuer med olika typer av familjehem, varav fem enskilda intervjuer och en parintervju. Det insamlade materialet analyserades med innehållsanalys. Tre teman framträdde i resultatet vilka var: Uppdraget som familjehem, varför familjehem och vardag som familjehem. Resultatet analyserades sedan utifrån tidigare forskning samt Antonovskys begrepp känsla av sammanhang, KASAM, och Bowlbys anknytningsteori. Resultatet visade att familjehemmen har olika synsätt beroende på hur länge de har varit familjehem, vilken typ av placeringar de haft och har, men framförallt av vilken anledning familjehemmet blev familjehem från början. / The purpose of this study was to figure out how foster parents view their task and the responsibilities that the task entails, what gives foster parents motivation to continue with the mission, as well as what kind of emotional attachment the foster parents experience they get to the placed children. This study consists of six interviews, of which five of them were individual and one pair interview. The gathered material was analyzed from content analysis. Three themes emerged in the results which were: The mission as a foster family, why foster family and the everyday of foster families. The results were then analyzed through previous research along with Antonovskys concept sense of coherence, SOC and Bowlbys attachment theory. The results showed that foster families have different views depending on how long they have been foster families, what kind of children they’ve had but above all, what motivated them to start a foster family.

This thesis investigates the share price response to the announcement of private placements of hybrid securities in Australia. Firstly, the size and direction of the share price response is examined. Secondly, the determinants of the share price response are examined. Where possible, comparisons are made to evidence from international markets. The sample of data tested consists of 43 announcements of convertible debt issues, 39 announcements of preference share issues and 19 announcements of option issues made between 1983 and 2000 by Australian firms. The analysis of the share price impact in response to the announcements is conducted using Maynes and Rumsey (1993) event study methodology that adjusts for thin trading. The determinants of the share price response are examined using model specifications that are derived from the theoretical literature. The analysis of the announcement effect of private placements of hybrid securities finds significant negative abnormal returns for convertible debt issues, insignificant negative abnormal returns for preference share issues and significant positive abnormal returns for option issues. In comparison to international studies, the convertible debt results are similar to public and rights issues, the insignificant preference share results are similar to other findings and the option results are similar to private placements of equity and rights issues of options. The results of the investigation of the determinants of the announcement effect of private placements of hybrid securities finds that convertible debt issues are best explained by information asymmetry - firm and issue characteristics, the information asymmetry - external monitors hypothesis, the information asymmetry - dynamic hypothesis and the agency cost hypothesis. The impact of preference share issues is best explained by information asymmetry - firm and issue characteristics, the information asymmetry - external monitors hypothesis, the agency cost hypothesis and the price pressure hypothesis. The announcement effect of option issues is best explained by information asymmetry - firm and issue characteristics, the information asymmetry -dynamic hypothesis and the optimal capital structure hypothesis.

Outlets for students to develop mathematical ideas and skills to solve real-life problems and applicable situations have been neglected in secondary classrooms (Gainsburg, 2008). Designing curricula that applies real-life situations has been promoted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000), the National Research Council (1998), and the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (2000) and also is an expectation of state standards for student learning (Texas Education Agency, 2009). Contrary, evidence has shown low benefits to classroom real-life examples perceived by students. This study served dual purposes: 1) Determine the relationship between place-based education and mathematics learning, and 2) Investigate teacher conceptions of place-based education opportunities in high school, mathematics curriculum. This study employed two methodologies. A mixed-methods approach was employed for the meta-analysis of place-based programs and the second employed qualitative methods of structured interviewing to determine teachers’ conceptions of place-based pedagogy. Upon completion of the study, I concluded: 1) Place-based pedagogies align toward more foundational mathematic skills (e.g. measurement, number sense) when implemented, and 2) Teachers’ conceive place-based as a general effective tool for student engagement and real-world context of how mathematics functions in society.

Im Genehmigungsverfahren für den Bau hochliegender Schallquellen (z.B. Windenergieanlagen) muss der Nachweis geführt werden, dass von den Anlagen keine schädlichen Umwelteinwirkungen ausgehen. Es ist es daher notwendig, die Schallausbreitung derartiger Quellen grundsätzlich zu untersuchen. Eine Schwierigkeit stellt dabei die gekoppelte Wirkung von Temperatur-, Windgeschwindigkeits- und Windrichtungsprofil in Zusammenhang mit dem Bodeneinfluss auf die Schallausbreitung dar. Dieser zeitlich und räumlich variable Atmosphäreneinfluss wird insbesondere bei Langzeituntersuchungen der Schallimmission bisher nur unzureichend in den operationellen Modellen beschrieben. Das Ziel der Studie besteht deshalb darin, die gekoppelte Wirkung von Atmosphäre- und Boden-Einfluss auf die Schallausbreitung in einem Bereich bis zu 2 km Entfernung von der Schallquelle mit dem Modell SMART (Sound propagation model of the atmosphere using ray-tracing ) zu untersuchen. / The licensing procedure for the construction of high-placed sound sources (e.g. wind power stations) demands to proof that no (significant and) harmful impact on environment is outgoing from these systems. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse the sound propagation of such a kind of sources. In this context one central problem has to be managed: the coupled effect of temperature, wind speed and wind direction profiles combined with the influence of surface on sound propagation. The temporally and spatially variable influence of the atmosphere is only insufficiently described by the operational models, especially in relation to long-time investigations of sound immission. Consequently, the aim of this study was to investigate the coupled effect of atmospheric and surface influence on sound propagation up to distances of 2 km away from the sound source using the model SMART (Sound propagation model of the atmosphere using ray-tracing).