Doctoral Recital

List of performers and performances

Contextual influences on moral functioning of college basketball players

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of moral atmosphere and perceived performance motivational climate on moral functioning of college basketball players and to determine the relationship between moral atmosphere and perceived performance motivational climate. A total of 199 athletes participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the interrelationships among the variables of interest. Athletes’ perceptions of the moral atmosphere of their team had a significant effect on moral functioning, while the effect of performance motivational climate on moral functioning was not significant. Perceptions of a performance motivational climate were positively associated with the moral atmosphere of the team. Implications of the findings for eliminating unsportspersonlike conduct in the sport realm are discussed

Implementing a Basic Package of Health Services in post-conflict Liberia: perceptions of key stakeholders.

Recovery of the health sector in post-conflict countries is increasingly initiated through a Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) approach. The country government and partners, including international donors, typically contract international and local NGOs to deliver the BPHS. Evidence from routine data suggests that a BPHS approach results in rapid increases in service coverage, coordination, equity, and efficiency. However, studies also show progress may then slow down, the cause of which is not immediately obvious from routine data. Qualitative research can provide insight into possible barriers in the implementation process, particularly the role of health workers delivering the BPHS services. The aim of this study was to explore perceptions of health service providers and policy makers on the implementation of the BPHS in post-conflict Liberia, using SRH services as a tracer and Lipsky's work on "street-level bureaucrats" as a theoretical framework. In July-October 2010, 63 interviews were conducted with midwives, officers-in-charge, and supervisors in two counties of Liberia, and with policy makers in Monrovia. The findings suggest health workers had a limited understanding of the BPHS and associated it with low salaries, difficult working conditions, and limited support from policy makers. Health workers responded by sub-optimal delivery of certain services (such as facility-based deliveries), parallel private services, and leaving their posts. These responses risk distorting and undermining the BPHS implementation. There were also clear differences in the perspectives of health workers and policy makers on the BPHS implementation. The findings suggest the need for greater dialogue between policy makers and health workers to improve understanding of the BPHS and recognition of the working conditions in order to help achieve the potential benefits of the BPHS in Liberia

Getting routers out of the core: Building an optical wide area network with "multipaths"

We propose an all-optical networking solution for a wide area network (WAN) based on the notion of multipoint-to-multipoint lightpaths that, for short, we call "multipaths". A multipath concentrates the traffic of a group of source nodes on a wavelength channel using an adapted MAC protocol and multicasts this traffic to a group of destination nodes that extract their own data from the confluent stream. The proposed network can be built using existing components and appears less complex and more efficient in terms of energy consumption than alternatives like OPS and OBS. The paper presents the multipath architecture and compares its energy consumption to that of a classical router-based ISP network. A flow-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm is proposed and shown to have excellent performance in terms of throughput and delay

The Responsibility of American Women to Citizenship

Anyone who has received the benefits of a college education owes a big debt to society; in no other nation in the world is it possible in equal degree for any citizen, man or woman, rich or poor, high or low, to have education at public expense from the kindergarten thru the college, and consequently in no country is so much due in consciencious, unselfish citizenship

Factors Contributing to Coalition Maintenance

Organizations are building advocacy coalitions as a way of strengthening their survival skills. This article reports on a case study of the factors associated with maintaining an advocacy coalition. The survival of a coalition appears to depend on whether it can insure its member organizations of the payoffs from committing their resources for advocacy purposes

A Report on Sickle Cell in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is thought to be one of the West African countries most affected by sickle cell disorders. Estimates state that one in four people carry the gene for sickle cell and between 1 to 2% of births are of children with the condition. Despite this, there has been a general public health and social neglect of the condition, so that prevalence is poorly understood and policy non-existent. This participatory qualitative research project, conducted in 2018 in two districts in the country, sought to understand both women’s experiences caring for children with the condition, as well as what the needs were of women who had the condition. The findings illustrated that a historical memory of the condition and its effects exists in the intergenerational memories and practices of people. This is important to learn from to combat stigmatisation of women and people who have the condition. However, past expertise and medical knowledge currently co-exist in isolation from each other, with access to proper healthcare unavailable in most parts of the country. This has led to an inability to get a correct medical diagnosis, no advice about how to live with the condition and an inability to access specialized medical and rehabilitative services. These failures in care have led to early deaths and disablement, with the result that the general public fear the condition. A neglect of reproductive justice and the relational implications for women with the condition was also apparent in the high number of deaths of women and infants with sickle cell. Lastly, due to the work of the voluntary and medical sector, there is increasing awareness in parents, schools and communities of how the total environment is crucial for holistic management of sickle cell conditions in a low- income country. However, it is women who are still mostly responsible for ensuring that their children access a better quality of life and women who still incur moral blame and shame for their ill-health and that of their children

FLAMINGO – Fulfilling enhanced location accuracy in the mass-market through initial GalileO services

This paper discusses FLAMINGO, an initiative that will provide a high accuracy positioning service to be used by mass market applications. The status and future for the initiative are discussed, the required accuracies and other location parameters are described, and the target applications are identified. Finally, the currently achieved accuracies from today’s Smartphones are assessed and presented. FLAMINGO (Fulfilling enhanced Location Accuracy in the Mass-market through Initial GalileO services), part funded through the European GNSS Agency, is a collaborative venture comprising NSL (as lead organization), Telespazio France, University of Nottingham, Rokubun, Thales Alenia Space France, VVA, BQ, ECLEXYS and Blue Dot Solutions. The initiative is developing the infrastructure, solutions and services to enable the use of accurate and precise GNSS within the mass-market, thereby operating predominantly in an urban environment. Whilst mass-market receivers are yet to achieve accuracies below one metre for standard positioning, the introduction of Android raw GNSS measurements and the Broadcom dual frequency chipset (BCM47755), has presented the devices such an opportunity. FLAMINGO will enable and demonstrate the future of high accuracy positioning and navigation information on mass-market devices such as smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices by producing a service delivering accuracies of 50cm (at 95%) and better, employing multi-constellation, PPP and RTK mechanisms, power consumption optimisation techniques. Whereas the Galileo High Accuracy Service targets 10cm precision within professional markets, FLAMINGO targets 30-50cm precision in the mass-market consumer markets. By targeting accuracies of a few decimetres, a range of improved and new applications in diverse market sectors are introduced. These sectors include, but are not limited to, mapping and GIS, autonomous vehicles, AR environments, mobile-location based gaming and people tracking. To obtain such high accuracies with mass market devices, FLAMINGO must overcome several challenges which are technical, operational and environmental. This includes the hardware capabilities of most mass-market devices, where components such as antennas and processors are prioritised for other purposes. We demonstrate that, despite these challenges, FLAMINGO has the potential to meet the accuracy required. Tests with the current Smartphones that provide access to multi-constellation raw measurements (the dual frequency Xiaomi Mi 8 and single frequency Samsung S8 and Huawei P10) demonstrate significant improvements to the PVT solution when processing using both RTK and PPP techniques

An analytical approach to the multiply scattered light in the optical images of the extensive air showers of ultra-high energies

One of the methods for studying the highest energy cosmic rays is to measure the fluorescence light emitted by the extensive air showers induced by them. To reconstruct a shower cascade curve from measurements of the number of photons arriving from the subsequent shower track elements it is necessary to take into account the multiple scatterings that photons undergo on their way from the shower to the detector. In contrast to the earlier Monte-Carlo work, we present here an analytical method to treat the Rayleigh and Mie scatterings in the atmosphere. The method consists in considering separately the consecutive 'generations' of the scattered light. Starting with a point light source in a uniform medium, we then examine a source in a real atmosphere and finally - a moving source (shower) in it. We calculate the angular distributions of the scattered light superimposed on the not scattered light registered from a shower at a given time. The analytical solutions (although approximate) show how the exact numerical results should be parametrised what we do for the first two generations (the contribution of the higher ones being small). Not allowing for the considered effect may lead to an overestimation of shower primary energy by ~15% and to an underestimation of the primary particle mass.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures, submited to Astroparticle Physic

Redesigning a Principal Preparation Program: A Continuous Improvement Model

The paper describes a mixed methods approach to the process of redesigning a principal preparation program. A qualitative approach was used to gather data from superintendents within the geographic area using a focused group approach, whereas, quantitative data, were gathered through a survey of program graduates with questions aligned to the three domains of the TExES examination for principal certification. Texas universities that offered principal preparation programs were studied and analyzed as a backdrop to the study. The superintendent responses identified various strengths and weaknesses in the delivery of the program. The graduate survey results indicated low satisfaction ratings in principal preparation in the three domains as the program currently exists. The study proposes a model for redesigning principal preparation programs based on the findings. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.