A political history of higher education in East Africa: The rise and fall of the University of East Africa, 1937--1970 (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya)

Mngomezulu, Bhekithemba Richard Rice University 2004 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

From the 1920s Britain started formulating educational policies for its African colonies as part of the overall imperial policy, and in response to African agitation for higher education. In 1937, the publication of the De la Warr Commission Report set in motion a long drawn-out process of establishing the federal University of East Africa. Subsequently, territorial and inter-territorial tensions regarding the nature and function of the envisaged regional University emerged and continued up to independence. After independence, the spirit of nationalism and the divergent policies followed by East African nation-states exacerbated the tensions regarding the anticipated University. When the University was inaugurated in June 1963, these tensions made it inevitable that the University would split. In a sense, the University of East Africa was a stillborn entity. This study explores the tensions within the history of the University of East Africa with the view to establishing why it was established and why it disintegrated in 1970. The study analyzes these tensions at four levels: (i) the tensions which emerged between the British authorities and East African constituencies when the idea of a regional University was conceived during the colonial period; (ii) the tensions obtaining between the British government and its Governors and Directors of Education in East Africa during the 1920s and 1930s; (iii) inter-territorial tensions in East Africa before and after independence; and (iv) sustained tensions within each territory.

Telescoping MATLAB for DSP applications

Chauhan, Arun Rice University 2004 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

This dissertation designs and implements a prototype MATLAB compiler for Digital Signal Processing (DSP) libraries, based on a novel approach called telescoping languages for compiling high-level languages. The thesis of this work is that it is possible to effectively and efficiently compile DSP libraries written in MATLAB using the telescoping languages approach that aims to automatically develop domain-specific application development environments based on component libraries for high performance computing. Initial studies on DSP applications demonstrated that the approach was promising. During this study two new techniques, procedure strength reduction and procedure vectorization, were developed. In a joint work, a new approach to MATLAB type inference was developed. The inferred type information can be used to specialize MATLAB libraries and generate code in C or Fortran. A new technique to engineer the optimizing compiler emerged during the course of the compiler development. This technique allows the optimizations of interest to be expressed in an XML-based language and the optimizer in the compiler to be a light-weight specialization engine. The type inference engine and type-based specialization were evaluated on a set of DSP procedures that constitute an informal library used by researchers in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Rice. The evaluation validated the effectiveness of the library generation strategy driven by specialization.

METHANE EMISSION FROM IRRIGATED RICE CULTIVATION: QUANTITIES, MODELS AND PRACTICE (TEXAS, ITALY, CHINA, INDONESIA, PHILIPPINES)

c, YAO RICE UNIVERSITY 1997 국내박사

Ground based impact testing of Orbiter thermal protection system materials in support of the Columbia accident investigation

Kerr, Justin Hamilton Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

On January 16, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102) was launched for a nominal 16-day mission of microgravity research. Fifteen days and 20 hours after launch, and just 16 minutes before its scheduled landing, the OV-102 vehicle disintegrated during its descent. The entire crew was lost. Film and video cameras located around the launch complex captured images of the vehicle during its ascent. Of note were data that showed a piece of debris strike the port wing at approximately 82 sec after lift-off (T+82). As resulting analysis would show, the source of the debris was the left bipod ramp of the Shuttle external tank. This foam debris struck the Orbiter leading edge at sufficient velocity to breech the thermal protection system (TPS). During reentry at the end of the mission, the hot plasma impinged inside the Orbiter wing and aerodynamic forces ultimately failed the wing structure. This thesis documents the activities conducted to evaluate the effects of foam impact on Orbiter TPS. These efforts were focused on, to the greatest extent practical, replicating the impact event during the STS-107 mission ascent. This thesis fully documents the test program development, methodology, results, analysis, and conclusions to the degree that future investigators can reproduce the tests and understand the basis for decisions made during the development of the tests.

Managers' distribution of developmental experiences in the workplace

Kazama, Stephanie M Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

The current research investigates the amount and quality of the developmental work experiences engaged in by male and female managers. Managers reported the extent to which they had participated in ten quantitative work experiences in the last five years, as well as how challenging these experiences were and how much feedback and support they received during these experiences. Results indicated that while male and female managers do report participating in similar amounts of developmental experiences, male managers report engaging in more qualitatively challenging experiences than female managers. This finding suggests there may be subtle differences in the distribution of developmental work experiences. Further exploratory analyses indicate that female managers report having more supervisor influence in the choice of their developmental work experiences than do male managers, and receive less negative feedback than do male managers. Theoretical and practical considerations of these findings will be addressed.

Effect of top tensioned risers (TTR) on the spar responses: Time domain and frequency domain approaches

Ghosh, Rupak Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

The effect of top tension risers on the spar marine structure responses is studied by using time domain as well as frequency domain approaches. A simplified model of the combined dynamic system consisting of a spar, a mooring line system, and top tension risers is established. The top tension of a riser is provided by a buoyancy-can that is laterally supported by a preloaded compliant guide. The overall system is nonlinear due to the mooring line restoring force, the friction between the buoyancy-can and the compliant guides, and the friction between the risers and guides at the spar keel. The friction between the spar and riser system is represented via a continuous Coulomb model. The simplified model is numerically integrated using input time histories of force and moment that are compatible with a random representation (Jonswap spectrum) of a typical extreme environmental loading in the Gulf of Mexico. For validation, the dynamic responses of the simplified system are compared with the related responses of the combined system. The effect of the top tensioned risers on the spar responses is studied by using nonlinear time domain analysis. The responses of the simplified model are also determined by using a frequency domain approach based on the statistical linearization technique. Several parametric studies are conducted to investigate the sensitivity of the spar responses to different design parameters.

Ultra-sensitive tunable laser absorption spectroscopy: Applications and performance assessment

Roller, Chad B Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

Methodologies using tunable laser absorption spectroscopy (TLAS) for quantifying carbon dioxide stable isotopes (13/12CO 2), measuring atmospheric formaldehyde (CH2O), and analyzing exhaled carbonyl sulfide (COS) in human breath are covered. Fundamental spectroscopic aspects that limit achievable precisions of 13/12CO2 isotopic ratio TLAS measurements have been investigated and include affects of temperature and pressure instabilities, differences in relative humidity between reference standards and sample gases, and the effect of gas heating from optical absorption. Experimental studies were designed and carried out to determine the best possible system configuration and analytical routines for ratiometric measurements. Direct absorption was found to be advantageous over 2nd harmonic detection in regards to precision measurements. Airborne spectral measurements of CH2O using a TLAS based instrument equipped with a lead-salt diode laser onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft taken during the INTEX-NA 2004 mission was analyzed to assess instrument performance and reliability using standard and newly proposed statistical measures. An improvement in system performance after stabilization of optical components has been unambiguously shown. A retrospective analysis of stored spectral data has shown that methanol (CH3OH) concentrations can also be deduced along with CH2O concentrations using a least-squares singular-value decomposition regression routine. A TLAS instrument equipped with a thermo-electrically cooled pulsed quantum cascade (QC) laser was used to perform absorption measurements of carbonyl sulfide (COS) with detection limits near ∼3-ppbv. This instrument was fully characterized prior to conducting a small clinical study to perform offline measurements of COS in the exhaled breath of lung transplant patients to determine the utility of such measurements in diagnosing acute rejection (AR) of lung allografts. COS at ∼8-ppb was observed in one patient suffering from bronchiolitis.

An empirical study of feature selection in binary classification with DNA microarray data

Lecocke, Michael Louis Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

Motivation. Binary classification is a common problem in many types of research including clinical applications of gene expression microarrays. This research is comprised of a large-scale empirical study that involves a rigorous and systematic comparison of classifiers, in terms of supervised learning methods and both univariate and multivariate feature selection approaches. Other principle areas of investigation involve the use of cross-validation (CV) and how to guard against the effects of optimism and selection bias when assessing candidate classifiers via CV. This is taken into account by ensuring that the feature selection is performed during training of the classification rule at each stage of a CV process ("external CV"), which to date has not been the traditional approach to performing cross-validation. Results. A large-scale empirical comparison study is presented, in which a 10-fold CV procedure is applied internally and externally to a univariate as well as two genetic algorithm-(GA-) based feature selection processes. These procedures are used in conjunction with six supervised learning algorithms across six published two-class clinical microarray datasets. It was found that external CV generally provided more realistic and honest misclassification error rates than those from using internal CV. Also, although the more sophisticated multivariate FSS approaches were able to select gene subsets that went undetected via the combination of genes from even the top 100 univariately ranked gene list, neither of the two GA-based methods led to significantly better 10-fold internal nor external CV error rates. Considering all the selection bias estimates together across all subset sizes, learning algorithms, and datasets, the average bias estimates from each of the GA-based methods were roughly 2.5 times that of the univariate-based method. Ultimately, this research has put to test the more traditional implementations of the statistical learning aspects of cross-validation and feature selection and has provided a solid foundation on which these issues can and should be further investigated when performing limited-sample classification studies using high-dimensional gene expression data.

Human UP1 as a model for understanding purine recognition in the family of proteins containing the RNA recognition motif (RRM)

Myers, Jeffrey C Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

Heterogeneous ribonucleoprotein A1 (hnRNP A1) is a prototype for the family of eukaryotic RNA processing proteins containing the common RNA recognition motif (RRM). The region consisting of residues 1--195 of hnRNP Al is referred to as UP1. This region has two RRMs and has a high affinity for both single-stranded RNA and the human telomeric repeat sequence d(TTAGGG)n. We have used UP1's novel DNA binding to investigate how RRMs bind nucleic acid bases through their highly conserved RNP consensus sequences. Nine complexes of UP1 bound to modified telomeric repeats were investigated using equilibrium fluorescence binding and X-ray crystallography. In two of the complexes, alteration of a guanine to either 2-aminopurine or nebularine resulted in an increase in Kd from 70 nM to 160 and 280 nM, respectively. The loss of orienting interactions between UP1 and the substituted base allows it to flip between syn and anti conformations. Substitution of the same base with 7-deaza-guanine preserves the O6/N1 contacts but still increases the Kd to 250 nM, a result suggesting that it is not simply the loss of affinity that gives rise to base mobility but also the stereochemistry of the specific contact to O6. Although these studies provide details of UP1 interactions to nucleic acids, three general observations about RRMs are also evident: (1) as suggested by informatic studies, main chain to base hydrogen bonding make up an important aspect of ligand recognition; (2) steric clashes generated by modification of a hydrogen bond donor-acceptor pair to a donor-donor pair are poorly tolerated; and (3) a conserved lysine position proximal to RNP-2 (K106-IFVGGI) orients the purine to allow stereochemical discrimination between adenine and guanine based on the 6-position. This single interaction is well-conserved in known RRM structures and appears to be a broad indicator for purine preference in the larger family of RRM proteins.

Software use in the workplace: A study of efficiency

Peres, S. Camille Rice University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

Although existing laboratory research shows that software is often used inefficiently, relatively little is known about (a) how efficiently software is used in a real work environment and (b) the factors that influence the efficiency of individual users. The present research consists of an ethnographic investigation of software use in an office setting. The study occurred over a four-week period and consisted of observations, in-depth interviews, and an online survey of employees at a large energy company in Houston, Texas. Employees frequently used their software inefficiently and when they were efficient, were not consistent with their efficient use of software. They tended to approach using and learning software programs differently depending on whether the program was associated with their area of expertise. For those programs associated with their expertise, they were more likely to seek out learning new and more efficient methods of using the software for doing their job. However, for other software they would learn as little about it as possible, even if they spent most of their working day on the latter type of software. Furthermore, employees consistently reported that, regardless of the complexity of the program, they primarily learned to use programs by exploring the interface. Through this exploration, they would learn enough about the program (or would reach a sufficient level of knowledge) to do their job. Any knowledge of alternative features or efficient methods of using these features would subsequently be learned through peers.