In 2008, Bryan ISD decided to establish a magnet program for gifted middle school students. The program followed the school-within-a-school model and was housed in an existing middle school situated in an area of the district where a high percentage of the student population came from low socio-economic homes. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to gain an understanding of the experience a gifted student goes through in choosing to attend a new gifted magnet program housed in a school away from their home campus. It examines how students arrived at their decision by taking an in-depth look at their thoughts and decision-making processes, the outside influences on their decision, and their expectations of the program. A qualitative case study research method guided this study. The subjects were middle school students in grades 6-8, who were selected for participation based on random sampling for maximum variation. Six students were selected for participation, of which, two were from each of the three grade levels, four were male, two were female, one was African-American, two were Hispanic, and three were Caucasian. Participant interview responses were compared to responses from the entrance applications of the other 123 magnet students at INQUIRE. The responses of the two different groups of students mirrored each other. The results of the study indicated three emergent themes: 1) the desire for challenge overruled the comfort of the familiar, 2) the need to be surrounded by other students who love learning, and 3) the focus was on the future and not the present. The findings of this study indicate that gifted students chose to attend the new magnet program for the academic challenge and the opportunity to learn alongside other gifted students. They had high expectations of what this program would be able to provide them as they strove to reach their goals. The participation of their friends in the new program was not a factor in their decision to attend. INQUIRE Academy was designed to offer something unusual in public education – the opportunity to cluster gifted students together, to provide them the opportunity to be intellectually stimulated and challenged by working with peers of the same ability level, to offer multi-age classes, and to offer acceleration based upon student need. For the students in this study, INQUIRE Academy accomplished these goals.

Many prior distributions are suggested for variance parameters in the hierarchical model. The “Non-informative” interval of the conjugate inverse-gamma prior might cause problems. I consider three priors – conjugate inverse-gamma, log-normal and truncated normal for the variance parameters and do the numerical analysis on Gelman’s 8-schools data. Then with the posterior draws, I compare the Bayesian credible intervals of parameters using the three priors. I use predictive distributions to do predictions and then discuss the differences of the three priors suggested. / text

Social insect workers can vary in terms of body size, space use, division of labor, and reproductive potential. Here, I begin to 'dissect' a social insect colony, using the bumble bee Bombus impatiens, to determine how this variation affects colony organization. I found that workers are spatially organized inside the nest and they remain at a specific distance from the colony center. Bees that feed larvae tend to remain in the center, whereas foragers are more often found on the periphery when not foraging. Smaller workers are more likely to feed larvae and incubate brood, and larger workers are more likely to fan or guard the nest. Still, workers perform multiple tasks throughout their life. The size of this task repertoire does not depend on body size or age. Furthermore, workers that remain further from the queen while inside the nest and avoid energy-expensive tasks during the ergonomic phase are more likely to reproduce by the end of the colony cycle. Inactive bees are not, however, defensive reserves. Although inactive bees increase their speed inside the nest when the nest was disturbed, they were not more likely to leave the nest (presumably to attack the simulated attacker) or switch to guarding behavior. This suggests that inactive bumble bees that remain farther from the queen may be storing fat reserves to later develop reproductive organs. Finally, I examined how within-group variation affects colony performance. I reduced variation in body size or temperature response thresholds by removing individuals from the colony with extreme phenotypes, and compared colony performance to colonies where random bees were removed. Colonies took longer to cool down the nest after bees were removed, but this effect was most striking when variation in temperature thresholds was reduced. Further, although larger bees are better at carrying items and are more likely to fan, the ability of colonies to perform undertaking behavior or thermoregulation was not affected when size variation was reduced. These studies provide evidence that (1) within-group variation affects colony organization and (2) variation among workers in their inherent tendencies to respond to stimuli positively affects colony performance.

The American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) require the use of the statistically based quality assurance (QA) specifications for construction materials. As a result, many of the state highway agencies (SHAs) have implemented the use of a QA specification for highway construction. For these statistically based QA specifications, quality characteristics of most construction materials are assumed normally distributed, however, the normality assumption can be violated in several forms. Distribution of data can be skewed, kurtosis induced, or bimodal. If the process shows evidence of a significant departure from normality, then the quality measures calculated may be erroneous. In this research study, an extended QA data analysis model is proposed which will significantly improve the Type I error and power of the F-test and t-test, and remove bias estimates of Percent within Limit (PWL) based pay factor calculation. For the F-test, three alternative tests are proposed when sampling distribution is non-normal. These are: 1) Levene’s test; 2) Brown and Forsythe’s test; and 3) O’Brien’s test. One alternative method is proposed for the t-test, which is the non-parametric Wilcoxon - Mann – Whitney Sign Rank test. For PWL based pay factor calculation when lot data suffer non-normality, three schemes were investigated, which are: 1) simple transformation methods, 2) The Clements method, and 3) Modified Box-Cox transformation using “Golden Section Search” method. The Monte Carlo simulation study revealed that both Levene’s test and Brown and Forsythe’s test are robust alternative tests of variances when underlying sample population distribution is non-normal. Between the t-test and Wilcoxon test, the t-test was found significantly robust even when sample population distribution was severely non-normal. Among the data transformation for PWL based pay factor, the modified Box-Cox transformation using the golden section search method was found to be the most effective in minimizing or removing pay bias. Field QA data was analyzed to validate the model and a Microsoft® Excel macro based software is developed, which can adjust any pay consequences due to non-normality.

The ideal memory system assumed by most programmers is one which has high capacity, yet allows any word to be accessed instantaneously. To make the hardware approximate this performance, an increasingly complex memory hierarchy, using caches and techniques like automatic prefetch, has evolved. However, as the gap between processor and memory speeds continues to widen, these programmer-visible mechanisms are becoming inadequate. Part of the recent increase in processor performance has been due to the introduction of programmer/compiler-visible SWAR (SIMD Within A Register) parallel processing on increasingly wide DATA LARs (Line Associative Registers) as a way to both improve data access speed and increase efficiency of SWAR processing. Although the base concept of DATA LARs predates this thesis, this thesis presents the first instruction set architecture specification complete enough to allow construction of a detailed prototype hardware design. This design was implemented and tested using a hardware simulator.

As technological advances have improved processor speed, main memory speed has lagged behind. Even with advanced RAM technologies, it has not been possible to close the gap in speeds. Ideally, a CPU can deliver good performance when the right data is made available to it at the right time. Caches and Registers solved the problem to an extent. This thesis takes the approach of trying to create a new memory access model that is more efficient and simple instead of using various add on mechanisms to mask high memory latency. The Line Associative Registers have the functionality of a cache, scalar registers and vector registers built into them. This new model qualitatively changes how the processor accesses memory.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

This project is a creative production that combines image, sound, and narrative. It uses these elements to employ a twist as a device for a paradigm and genre shift in a short film text. My short film introduces a plot that is seemingly linear. Yet, the twist presents a piece of information that reveals the actual non-linear nature of the story, which in turn necessitates the re-interpretation of the plot. The aim of this project is to explore how a twist in a narrative-based short film can alter the cues and perceptions the audience receive from the plot. The project is predominantly practice-based (80%).

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