Understanding First-Generation Hispanic Student Experiences With Community College Campus Resources

Community colleges serve as an essential gateway to higher education for Hispanics. Although first-generation Hispanic (FGHC) students continue to enroll in community colleges, there is limited research to explain their experiences using campus resources. This study’s purpose was to contribute to the existing literature on FGHC students and determine if their use of campus resources helped them succeed. This study used the conceptual framework of academic engagement (Tinto, 1996). Nora’s (2003) and Nora et al’s (2006) student engagement theory as lenses to explain how FGHC students can have pre-college characteristics that can affect their social, academic, and overall goals for success in a college setting. This study examined how seven FGHC students were able to use their pre-characteristics to successfully navigate college life. Five themes emerged after coding interview data; background, challenges, college, resources and support, and lack of role models. These themes answered this study’s three research questions. Participant responses showed a disturbing result: Although the seven participants lacked information on college resources or how to use them, they were able to successfully navigate college life and graduate from college. It is important to note that FGHC students are high in population yet lack the knowledge on college resources and how to access them. It was the goal of this study to help shed some light on the need for more culturally appropriate resources for success in college. This study can help college administrators, staff, educators, and students by shedding light on the needs for more cultural resources like bilingual staff to help FGHC navigate college life

Automatic goal distribution strategies for the execution of committed choice logic languages on distributed memory parallel computers

There has been much research interest in efficient implementations of the Committed Choice Non-Deterministic (CCND) logic languages on parallel computers. To take full advantage of the speed gains of parallel computers, methods need to be found to automatically distribute goals over the machine processors, ideally with as little involvement from the user as possible.In this thesis we explore some automatic goal distribution strategies for the execu¬ tion of the CCND languages on commercially available distributed memory parallel computers.There are two facets to the goal distribution strategies we have chosen to explore:DEMAND DRIVEN: An idle processor requests work from other processors. We describe two strategies in this class: one in which an idle processor asks only neighbouring processors for spare work, the nearest-neighbour strategy; and one where an idle processor may ask any other processor in the machine for spare work, the allprocessors strategy.WEIGHTS: Using a program analysis technique devised by Tick, weights are attached to goals; the weights can be used to order the goals so that they can be executed and distributed out in weighted order, possibly increasing performance.We describe a framework in which to implement and analyse goal distribution strategies, and then go on to describe experiments with demand driven strategies, both with and without weights. The experiments were made using two of our own implementations of Flat Guarded Horn Clauses — an interpreter and a WAM-like system — executing on a MEIKO T800 Transputer Array configured in a 2-D mesh topology.Analysis of the results show that the all-processors strategies are promising (AP-NW), adding weights had little positive effect on performance, and that nearest-neighbours strategies can reduce performance due to bad load balancing.We also describe some preliminary experiments for a variant of the AP-NW strategy: goals which suspend on one variable are sent to the processor that controls that variable, the processes-to-data strategy. And we briefly look at some preliminary results of executing programs on large numbers of processors (> 30)

Stepping Up UMD Group Health Coaching: A Behavioral Intervention

A Plan B Research Project submitted to the Faculty of University of Minnesota by Matthew C. Daly, B.A.S. in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. May 2016. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 126 pages, appendices A-HDangerous health risks due to sedentary lifestyles prove to be a serious issue, especially to those holding traditional desk jobs in the workplace. Upon request of the UMD Health and Wellness Center's Lifestyle Management Health Coach, a behavioral systems analysis of the UMD Group Health Coaching Program was conducted and revealed several opportunities to evaluate and improve its current format. This study sought to evaluate the UMD Group Health Coaching Program during the implementation of a 10- week program offered to a group of 12 UMD employees who indicated interest in increasing stepping behavior. Program evaluation included assessment of: (a) the effectiveness of the UMD Group Health Coaching program to promote increased stepping behavior of participants while using the Fitbit measurement system, (b) the influence of participant access to the Fitbit website and mobile phone app on participants' levels of physical activity, (c) the effects of social competition mediated through the Fitbit system on individuals' participation in the challenges and levels of physical activity while engaged in these challenges, and (d) the UMD Lifestyle Coach's perception of the usefulness of recommendations derived from the BSA approach. Visual analysis of timeseries data revealed an overall decrease in stepping behavior and levels of intensity of physical activity across the 10-week program. Findings are discussed with regard to implications for designing effective intervention components that include setting unique step goals for each individual and incorporating contingent positively reinforcing consequences to increase participants' stepping behavior in relation to their goal.University of Minnesota, Duluth. College of Education and Human Service Professions

E85 Optimized Engine

A 5.0L V8 twin-turbocharged direct injection engine was designed, built, and tested for the purpose of assessing the fuel economy and performance in the F-Series pickup of the Dual Fuel engine concept and of an E85 optimized FFV engine. Additionally, production 3.5L gasoline turbocharged direct injection (GTDI) âEcoBoostâ engines were converted to Dual Fuel capability and used to evaluate the cold start emissions and fuel system robustness of the Dual Fuel engine concept. Project objectives were: to develop a roadmap to demonstrate a minimized fuel economy penalty for an F-Series FFV truck with a highly boosted, high compression ratio spark ignition engine optimized to run with ethanol fuel blends up to E85; to reduce FTP 75 energy consumption by 15% - 20% compared to an equally powered vehicle with a current production gasoline engine; and to meet ULEV emissions, with a stretch target of ULEV II / Tier II Bin 4. All project objectives were met or exceeded

Algorithms and Implementation

In the past few years Tabling has emerged as a powerful logic programming model. The integration of concurrent features into the implementation of Tabling systems is demanded by need to use recently developed tabling applications within distributed systems, where a process has to respond concurrently to several requests. The support for sharing of tables among the concurrent threads of a Tabling process is a desirable feature, to allow one of Tabling’s virtues, the re-use of computations by other threads and to allow efficient usage of available memory. However, the incremental completion of tables which are evaluated concurrently is not a trivial problem. In this dissertation we describe the integration of concurrency mechanisms, by the way of multi-threading, in a state of the art Tabling and Prolog system, XSB. We begin by reviewing the main concepts for a formal description of tabled computations, called SLG resolution and for the implementation of Tabling under the SLG-WAM, the abstract machine supported by XSB. We describe the different scheduling strategies provided by XSB and introduce some new properties of local scheduling, a scheduling strategy for SLG resolution. We proceed to describe our implementation work by describing the process of integrating multi-threading in a Prolog system supporting Tabling, without addressing the problem of shared tables. We describe the trade-offs and implementation decisions involved. We then describe an optimistic algorithm for the concurrent sharing of completed tables, Shared Completed Tables, which allows the sharing of tables without incurring in deadlocks, under local scheduling. This method relies on the execution properties of local scheduling and includes full support for negation. We provide a theoretical framework and discuss the implementation’s correctness and complexity. After that, we describe amethod for the sharing of tables among threads that allows parallelism in the computation of inter-dependent subgoals, which we name Concurrent Completion. We informally argue for the correctness of Concurrent Completion. We give detailed performance measurements of the multi-threaded XSB systems over a variety of machines and operating systems, for both the Shared Completed Tables and the Concurrent Completion implementations. We focus our measurements inthe overhead over the sequential engine and the scalability of the system. We finish with a comparison of XSB with other multi-threaded Prolog systems and we compare our approach to concurrent tabling with parallel and distributed methods for the evaluation of tabling. Finally, we identify future research directions

Observing Short-Term Geomorphic Change in a Human-Modified River Using Terrestrial Repeat Photographs and Traditional Surveys: Uncompahgre River, Colorado, USA

The Uncompahgre River in Ouray, CO, was modified in 1996 from a braided river system to a meandering river channel. Large boulders of riprap were placed along designed meanders to prevent erosion and enable the development of permanent human structures on the flood plain. Deposition of gravel bars in the modified channel occurs annually during the summer. This gravel is "mined" by the City of Ouray; however, the effects of this excavation and the original modification were never assessed. This study provides an assessment by quantifying cross-sectional area change, cumulative grain-size distributions, shear stresses, slopes, and sinuosities using traditional survey methods. In addition, volume change of a gravel bar inside the modified channel was estimated using extreme oblique photographs (>45 degrees from nadir) that were obtained from nearby cliffs. Close-range photogrammetry was used in the natural channel downstream to evaluate photogrammetric methods using different lenses, image sensors, and camera geometries. Both traditional and photogrammetric methods clearly indicated significant deposition in the modified channel, whereas erosion occurred directly downstream from the modified channel, but did not occur at a reach 1.5 km downstream. In the natural channel, no cross-sectional area change occurred, grains were poorly sorted, and the longitudinal slope was ~four times steeper than the modified channel. Shear stress ratios were used as an erosion threshold, which did not correlate with actual cross-sectional area change, but a decrease in shear stress ratios from May 2011 to September 2011 were associated with erosion. Average RMSE values for DEMs created from extremeoblique photographs of a gravel bar in May 2011 and September 2011 were 0.140 m and 0.324 m, respectively. Using a DEM of difference with a t-statistic filter revealed that 115m3 of gravel was deposited. The Uncompahgre River showed similar geomorphic characteristics to other rivers in southwest Colorado, however, the slope of the natural and modified channels were much steeper than other rivers. Extreme-oblique photography and unconventional sensors both yielded reliable results, showing that these atypical techniques can be used in terrestrial photogrammetric applications such as, post-restoration assessments, as long as proper base-to-height ratios are achieved

Observing Short-Term Geomorphic Change in a Human-Modified River Using Terrestrial Repeat Photographs and Traditional Surveys: Uncompahgre River, Colorado, USA

The Uncompahgre River in Ouray, CO, was modified in 1996 from a braided river system to a meandering river channel. Large boulders of riprap were placed along designed meanders to prevent erosion and enable the development of permanent human structures on the flood plain. Deposition of gravel bars in the modified channel occurs annually during the summer. This gravel is "mined" by the City of Ouray; however, the effects of this excavation and the original modification were never assessed. This study provides an assessment by quantifying cross-sectional area change, cumulative grain-size distributions, shear stresses, slopes, and sinuosities using traditional survey methods. In addition, volume change of a gravel bar inside the modified channel was estimated using extreme oblique photographs (>45 degrees from nadir) that were obtained from nearby cliffs. Close-range photogrammetry was used in the natural channel downstream to evaluate photogrammetric methods using different lenses, image sensors, and camera geometries. Both traditional and photogrammetric methods clearly indicated significant deposition in the modified channel, whereas erosion occurred directly downstream from the modified channel, but did not occur at a reach 1.5 km downstream. In the natural channel, no cross-sectional area change occurred, grains were poorly sorted, and the longitudinal slope was ~four times steeper than the modified channel. Shear stress ratios were used as an erosion threshold, which did not correlate with actual cross-sectional area change, but a decrease in shear stress ratios from May 2011 to September 2011 were associated with erosion. Average RMSE values for DEMs created from extremeoblique photographs of a gravel bar in May 2011 and September 2011 were 0.140 m and 0.324 m, respectively. Using a DEM of difference with a t-statistic filter revealed that 115m3 of gravel was deposited. The Uncompahgre River showed similar geomorphic characteristics to other rivers in southwest Colorado, however, the slope of the natural and modified channels were much steeper than other rivers. Extreme-oblique photography and unconventional sensors both yielded reliable results, showing that these atypical techniques can be used in terrestrial photogrammetric applications such as, post-restoration assessments, as long as proper base-to-height ratios are achieved