Distribution of red deepsea crab (Chaceon quinquedens) by size and sex in the Gulf of Mexico

The red deepsea crab (Chaceon quinquedens (Smith, 1879)) has supported a commercial fishery off the coast of New England since the 1970s (Wigley et al., 1975) and has had annual harvests from 400 metric tons (t) (1996) to 4000 t (2001) (NEFMC, 2002). In 2002, a fishery management plan for the northeast fishery on the Atlantic coast was implemented and total allowable catch was reduced to approximately 2500 t (NEFMC, 2002). Although there are management plans for the golden crab (C. fenneri) and the red deep sea crab for Atlantic coast regions, there is no fishery management plan for red deepsea crabs in the Gulf of Mexico. Successful management for sustainable harvests should be based on a knowledge of the life history of the species, but C. quinquedens has been a difficult species for which to obtain life history and abundance information because of its deep distribution

Industrial Practices and Perceptions of Management Toward Training/Education with Implications for a Regional University

The problem of this study was to determine the difference between industrial practices and perceptions of management toward training and education programs in selected manufacturing industries. The survey was conducted within a 50-mile radius of a regional university to determine how academic institutions could better assist industries with training and education programs. Data were collected through the use of a two-part instrument sent to 426 industries in North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. Part I collected data on the perceptions of industrial management. The perceptions were grouped into five categories: (1) employee assistance, (2) employee participation, (3) responsibility assignment, (4) employee benefits, and (5) program planning. Five null hypotheses for these categories were formulated to be tested at .05 level of significance. Part II identified the practices of industrial management toward training and education. Ten research questions were formulated to report the practices. The analysis of variance was used to determine significant differences between manufacturing industries by SIC classification and size in each perception. If a significant difference was revealed, the Newman-Keuls Multiple Range Test was conducted to determine which industry groups were significantly different. The testing of the null hypotheses revealed that no significant differences existed in the perceptions under employee participation; eight significant differences existed in the perceptions under the other four categories. Thus, null hypotheses 2, 3, 4, and 5 were rejected and the research hypotheses were accepted for employee assistance, responsibility assignment, employee benefits, and program planning. Major conclusions from the study revealed that manufacturing industries were strongly involved in training and education in 1980. The most utilized methods were in-house activities and outside conferences. The principal needs indicated by manufacturing industries were supervisory, management, technical, and skills training. There was little or no agreement between the perceptions of management toward training and education and the actual practices in the firms. Recommendations included suggestions for university and industry collaboration and future research in training and education

MS

thesisThe purpose of the present investigation was to determine the kinds of communication barriers most frequently mentioned by a sample of nurses and if nurses with varied backgrounds of preparation identified the same barriers. A questionnaire compiled of 37 items considered barriers to communication with patients was given to 61 registered nurses. These nurses were employed in two different hospitals, one being privately owed and the other a governmental institution. The participants represented four kinds of professional nursing preparation: the associate degree, diploma program, baccalaureate, and post baccalaureate education. Each nurse was asked to check each item according to the percentage of time she believed the item was a barrier to her communicating with patients. The participants were placed into eight groups according to educational preparation, where employed, and their perception of the author as a nurse or non-nurse. Mean total communication barrier scores were computed for each group. T tests were used to determine if there were significant differences in total communication barrier scores between the two hospitals, the four educational levels, and those nurses who perceived the author as a nurse and those who perceived the author as a non-nurse. The t ratio was not statistically significant at the .05 level for any of these comparisons. Therefore there were no reliable differences in mean communication barrier scores. A correlation of .08 between the length of employment and total communication barrier score indicated no relationship between length of employment and degree of communication difficulty. An item analysis was made to determine which barriers to communication were the most important to the total group and to the individual sub groups. The four items ranked as the most important barriers by mean score for the total group were (a) the patient was very demanding, (b) my work load kept me to busy, (c) talking with patients kept me away from my other duties, and (d) the patient seemed indifferent. There were no major differences in the items selected by any of the different groups. Each group selected essentially the same items, but not always in the same order of importance

The Strength of Equality Oracles in Communication

It is well-known that randomized communication protocols are more powerful than deterministic protocols. In particular the Equality function requires ?(n) deterministic communication complexity but has efficient randomized protocols. Previous work of Chattopadhyay, Lovett and Vinyals shows that randomized communication is strictly stronger than what can be solved by deterministic protocols equipped with an Equality oracle. Despite this separation, we are far from understanding the exact strength of Equality oracles in the context of communication complexity. In this work we focus on nondeterminisic communication equipped with an Equality oracle, which is a subclass of Merlin-Arthur communication. We show that this inclusion is strict by proving that the previously-studied Integer Inner Product function, which can be efficiently computed even with bounded-error randomness, cannot be computed using sublinear communication in the nondeterministic Equality model. To prove this we give a new matrix-theoretic characterization of the nondeterministic Equality model: specifically, there is a tight connection between this model and a covering number based on the blocky matrices of Hambardzumyan, Hatami, and Hatami, as well as a natural variant of the Gamma-2 factorization norm. Similar equivalences are shown for the unambiguous nondeterministic model with Equality oracles. A bonus result arises from these proofs: for the studied communication models, a single Equality oracle call suffices without loss of generality. Our results allow us to prove a separation between deterministic and unambiguous nondeterminism in the presence of Equality oracles. This stands in contrast to the result of Yannakakis which shows that these models are polynomially-related without oracles. We suggest a number of intriguing open questions along this direction of inquiry, as well as others that arise from our work

β-Lactones as Key Building Blocks: Synthetic Applications to Diverse Natural Products

A history and detailed account of the applications of β-lactones towards natural products and bioactive compounds in the last ten years is discussed as these small heterocycles are becoming more widely recognized for their reactivity, numerous methods of construct, and high degree of functionalization. An improvement to the nucleophile catalyzed aldol-β-lactonization of keto-acids is reported employing commodity reagents delivering gram quantities of bicyclic β-lactone. The first total synthesis of caulolactone A is reported employing a highly diastereoselective biscyclization to a key carvone–derived β-lactone. The natural product was completed from chiral pool (R)-carvone in 10 total steps. Towards rapidly generating complex cyclopentanes an organocatalyzed tandem Michael aldol-lactonization process is reported. Subsequently revealing conditions for an enantioselective variant generating two C-C bonds, one C-O bond, two rings, and up to three contiguous stereocenters from simple starting materials

Time-dependent shortest paths in treelike graphs

We present a proof that the number of breakpoints in the arrival function between two terminals in graphs of treewidth ω is n^(O(log²ω) when the edge arrival functions are piecewise linear. This is an improvement on the bound of n^(Θ(log n))by Foschini, Hershberger, and Suri for graphs without any bound on treewidth. We provide an algorithm for calculating this arrival function using star-mesh transformations, a generalization of the wye-delta-wye transformations. Key Words: treewidth, time-dependent shortest paths, star-mesh transformation

On the Structure of Unconditional UC Hybrid Protocols

We study the problem of secure two-party computation in the presence of a trusted setup. If there is an unconditionally UC-secure protocol for $f$ that makes use of calls to an ideal $g$, then we say that $f$ reduces to $g$ (and write $f \sqsubseteq g$). Some $g$ are complete in the sense that all functions reduce to $g$. However, almost nothing is known about the power of an incomplete $g$ in this setting. We shed light on this gap by showing a characterization of $f \sqsubseteq g$ for incomplete $g$. Very roughly speaking, we show that $f$ reduces to $g$ if and only if it does so by the simplest possible protocol: one that makes a single call to ideal $g$ and uses no further communication. Furthermore, such simple protocols can be characterized by a natural combinatorial condition on $f$ and $g$. Looking more closely, our characterization applies only to a very wide class of $f$, and only for protocols that are deterministic or logarithmic-round. However, we give concrete examples showing that both of these limitations are inherent to the characterization itself. Functions not covered by our characterization exhibit qualitatively different properties. Likewise, randomized, superlogarithmic-round protocols are qualitatively more powerful than deterministic or logarithmic-round ones

Inspiring the Next Generation: A Classroom Visit Exploring Marine Ecosystem Invaders

We visited Geneva Elementary School and met with a class of fifteen fifth-grade students to teach them about marine invasive species in Florida. Our goal was to introduce them to a marine environmental issue that would inspire an interest in them for marine conservation. Our team created a presentation and activities for the class to better their understanding of the concept of invasive species. We created an outdoor game for the class, the point being to display how invasive species can outcompete native species using lionfish as an example. Two students were sharks, three students were lionfish, and the rest of the students were reef fish. The objective was to see who could capture the most fish, lionfish, or sharks. The lionfish were given an unfair advantage over the sharks and thus showed the students how lionfish outcompete native predators. We also gave the students a lionfish-themed take-home item, made an invasive species photo frame for photo opportunities, a take-home wanted poster that they could design and write facts on that they learned, and a pre- and post-test to gauge how much the students learned. This experience was invaluable in teaching us how to communicate scientific ideas to a broader audience in an engaging and meaningful way.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2023fall/1036/thumbnail.jp