Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

With an ever-growing economy, China has poised as an important and potentially huge market for many exporters of food products in the world. China's access into the World Trade Organization (WTO) is further accelerating its integration into the world market, with its slow-nurturing agricultural sector not left behind. The future of food production, consumption, and supply in the rural sectors and the related welfare issues for farmers and consumers in China, and in other parts of the world alike, have been heatedly debated. This study sets out to gain a credible knowledge of food consumption behavior in rural China, by estimating a consistent complete food demand system from recent rural household survey (RHS) data provided by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), under the framework of agricultural household models. First, we develop a micro-theoretical framework for a typical Chinese rural household as a producer as well as consumer facing markets with failures. Secondly, utility maximizing behavior and comparative statics are analyzed to derive guidelines for empirical demand analyses as well as detailed methodology. Finally, the RHS data for Jiangsu, Heilongjiang, and Henan provinces in 1995 and 2001 are used to estimate the proposed quadratic almost ideal demand system (QAIDS). We find the use of effective prices takes into account the dual role of a rural household as a producer and a consumer and helps reduce the problem of positive own price elasticities in demand estimation. We also find that transaction costs play important roles in deciding consumption patterns. For a rural household facing lower transaction costs, its consumptions on food products are found to be much more responsive to exogenous price and income changes. Using a simplified approach of demand analysis under our conceptual framework, we find from QAIDS estimation that food products consumed at home, and clothing and bedding are necessities, while food away from home, durable goods, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wen Chern (Advisor) Subjects:

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Leadership and Change

Numerous researchers have investigated thinking that drifts away from what the individual was doing, thinking that is known as mind wandering. Their inquiries were often conducted in university lab settings with student participants. To learn about mind wandering in the daily life of working adults, this experience sampling study investigated intentional and unintentional mind wandering episodes as reported by working adults, ages 25–50, living across the United States. In this age frame, work and family responsibilities have increased in complexity and overlap. Using a smartphone app, participants were randomly notified to answer experience sampling surveys six times a day for up to five days. Eight questions concerned frequency, intentionality, and the descriptive characteristics of thought type, thought content, temporality, context, context demand, and emotion. Based upon 7,947 notification responses and 4,294 reported mind wandering episodes, the research findings showed that mind wandering is a common thinking experience in working adult daily life and is differentiated by intentionality, parent status, and gender. Parents reported more frequent mind wandering and intentional mind wandering episodes than nonparents. Episode thought type was most often indicated as practical thought. Episodes were more often reported as having the content related to context although out of context mind wandering episodes were also highly reported. Context demand and emotion at the time of the notification were related to mind wandering episode frequency and were further differentiated by intentionality, parent status, and gender. Working parents reported mind wandering episodes during higher demand, particularly male parents, than nonparents. By generating new knowledge about the thinking life of working adults, this study's results and methodology contribute to the fields of leadership and change, thought research, intrapersonal and interpersonal psychology, work and family st (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Donna Ladkin Ph. D. (Committee Chair); Carol Baron Ph. D. (Committee Member); Claire Zedelius Ph. D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Academic Guidance Counseling; Adult Education; Counseling Education; Counseling Psychology; Education; Families and Family Life; Mental Health; Neurosciences; Occupational Psychology; Organizational Behavior; Personal Relationships; Psychology; School Counseling; Social Psychology; Womens Studies

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2017, Industrial and Systems Engineering (Engineering and Technology)

The main purpose of this thesis is to design a global supply chain network for a pharmaceutical company located in Puerto Rico, which manufactures blood sugar strips products. As a design aspect of supply chain, layered cellular manufacturing systems consist of dedicated, shared and remainder cells are considered. One of the main differences between classical cellular manufacturing systems and layered cellular manufacturing systems is, in layered cellular design, some cells may needed to be utilized by various parts of product families. Depending on the required demand and similarity in essential processes or manufacturing characteristics for each product family, products are grouped together and form a product family. If the product family assigned to one cell and just one product family utilizes that cell, the cell is a dedicated cell. Shared cells and remainder cells are employed by, two families and three or more families, respectively. In the first part of this study, a new heuristic layered-cellular manufacturing design approach is proposed and later in the second part, two mathematical models are proposed. The first one is with the objective of minimizing number of cells and cost of opening cells, and the second one is maximizing Net Present Value considering budget limitations for the whole manufacturing system. In the first step, the required number of cells are determined for a product family to meet an acceptable demand coverage (MADC) percentage. It is assumed that customer demand follows normal distribution with the established parameters mean (µ) and standard deviation (s). An attempt is made to increase the utilization of each cell by combining multiple families (thus creating shared and remainder cells) to increase the utilization of each cell as long as it is economically acceptable. As demand coverage increases, revenue also increases. However, this also increases operational costs. The expected profit is calculated based on the expected cell ut (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gursel Suer (Advisor); Tao Yuan (Committee Member); Diana Schwerha (Committee Member); Ashley Metcalf (Committee Member) Subjects: Industrial Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2016, Civil Engineering

Self-centering concentrically braced frame (SC-CBF) systems have been developed to increase the drift capacity of braced frame systems prior to damage to reduce post-earthquake damages in braced frames. However, due to special details required by the SC-CBF system, the construction cost of an SC-CBF is expected to be higher than that of a conventional CBF. While recent experimental research has shown better seismic performance of SC-CBF system subjected to design basis earthquakes, superior seismic performance of this system needs to be demonstrated for both structural and nonstructural components in all ground motion levels and more building configurations. Moreover, Stakeholders would be attracted to utilize SC-CBF if higher construction cost of this system can be paid back by lower earthquake induced losses during life time of the building. In this study, the seismic performance and economic effectiveness of SC-CBFs are assessed and compared with CBF system in three building configurations. First, probabilistic demand formulations are developed for engineering demand parameters (inter-story drift, residual drift and peak floor acceleration) using results of nonlinear time history analysis of the buildings under suites of ground motions. Then, Seismic fragility curves, engineering demand (inter-story drift, peak floor acceleration and residual drift) hazard curve and annual probabilities of exceeding damage states are used to evaluate and compare seismic performance of two systems. Finally, expected annual loss and life cycle cost of buildings are evaluated for prototype buildings considering both direct and indirect losses and prevailing uncertainties in all levels of loss analysis. These values are used evaluate economic benefit of using SC-CBF system instead of CBF system and pay-off time (time when the higher construction cost of SC-CBF system is paid back by the lower losses in earthquakes) for building configurations. Additionally, parametric study is per (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Qindan Huang Dr. (Advisor); Qindan Huang Dr. (Committee Chair); David Roke Dr. (Committee Member); Craig Menzemer Dr. (Committee Member); Akhilesh Chandra Dr. (Committee Member); Hamid Bahrami Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Civil Engineering; Economics; Engineering; Finance; Mechanical Engineering

Master of Science in Engineering (MSEgr), Wright State University, 2014, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering

Due to an abundance of data and dynamic nature of tasks, challenges with information retrieval in surveillance and target identification tasks have risen in today's Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) community. In this study, two variables, Area of Coverage and Amount of Activity (AOC/ACT), are manipulated to study their effects on the number of Watch Windows an observer can monitor. This research describes the analyst's task model, and explains how the level of AOC/ACT and number of Watch Windows affects the analyst's cognitive load. Results showed a significant difference in performance and physiological indicators of workload between high AOC/ACT conditions and low AOC/ACT conditions. Confidence levels were higher with low AOC/ACT conditions, while NASA-TLX ratings decreased. A linear correlation was exhibited between the number of Watch Windows and the number of fixations. The results show that these variables can be manipulated in tasking to maintain appropriate levels of cognitive workload.

Committee: Mary Fendley Ph.D. (Advisor); Subhashini Ganapathy Ph.D. (Committee Member); Alan Boydstun Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Engineering

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 0, Engineering and Applied Science: Environmental Engineering

In essence, modern drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs) exist to continuously satisfy the demand of their users while complying with water quality regulations. It stands to reason that the tasks of quantifying, estimating, and forecasting water consumption are critical components of resource management, planning and operation in the urban water industry. Yet, due to the complex stochastic nature of water demands, such important tasks are typically performed in an oversimplified deterministic manner which at best produces conservative results. Of critical inter- est, therefore, is the adoption of quantitative methods and technologies for accurately estimating and forecasting water consumption. The concomitant benefits may include the reduction of energy costs, residence times, pressure, and leakage in the DWDS through the optimal operation of pumps, reservoirs, and supply. Computational models of DWDSs have widely been developed by water utilities and researchers and applied mainly in design and offline analyses. It is clear that the industry and research com- munity recognize the usefulness of hydraulic models as tools to analyze the complex interaction among the generally massive number of system's components. Significant efforts are sometimes devoted to the refinement of the models to ensure their parameters reflect reality as close as possi- ble. Curiously, however, the parameters that most greatly influence the model's behavior, i.e., the water demands, are normally overlooked. It is not uncommon to assume a single arbitrary daily pattern for the totality of the nodes in a network model. This research considers that a more valid approach is to combine a reliable hydraulic model of a DWDS with realistic stochastic models of water use developed from fine-resolution consumption data. The intent is to abandon the time-pattern paradigm and take benefit of the opportunity to ac- cess large volumes of automatic meter reading (AMR) data at the level of the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Uber Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Robert Janke M.S. (Committee Member); David Kelton Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dominic Boccelli Ph.D. (Committee Member); Steven Buchberger Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2008, Engineering PhD

The research in this dissertation involves the study of several multi-echelon inventory systems with stochastic capacity and intermediate product demand. Specifically we analyze the behavior of the system which consists of several intermediate product demands. The analysis is primarily three fold i) developed update (relational) equations for all the multi-echelon inventory systems under several inventory allocation policies, ii) develop two simulation optimization approaches 1) OptQuest framework, and 2) IPA (Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis) framework, used to minimize the total cost of the inventory systems that satisfy the desired customer service level, iii) obtain numerical results for all the multi-echelon inventory systems under several scenarios and instances, and an extensive analysis and implications of the results.The research done in this dissertation differ from earlier works, since it considers a complex (combination of serial and assembly systems) multi-period multi-echelon inventory system with several sources of demand (specifically intermediate product demands). We obtain the best found base-stock levels for each node in the system that satisfies the required customer service level. A SIO (Simulation based Inventory Optimization) approach is used to obtain the best found base-stock level for the system under several inventory allocation policies. We consider a system which is closer to the actual world and can be used to solve contemporary issues like, 1) manufacturing firm that produces finished products as well as spare parts, 2) manufacturer-warehouse-distribution center-retail outlets etc. I am not aware of any work that studies the impact of inventory allocation polices for multi-period in a multi-echelon inventory system, and obtains best found base stock level for each node using an IPA framework. Moreover the best found base-stock level for each node is obtained under realistic conditions like stochastic demand, stochastic capacity, and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Frank Ciarallo Ph.D. (Advisor); Raymond Hill Ph.D. (Committee Member); Xinhui Zhang Ph.D. (Committee Member); Vikram Sethi Ph.D. (Committee Member); Uday Rao Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Industrial Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

China, since its economic reform in 1978, has changed significantly as it makes its transition from a centrally-planned to a consumer-oriented economy. This dramatic shift in the economic structure has gradually increased household income and changed consumption patterns in urban China. This study attempts to provide a better understanding of heterogeneous consumer patterns in urban China by developing a multi-stage censored demand system using household data. Specifically, this study attempts to develop an economic model considering heterogeneous consumption patterns across households and commodity groupings and to estimate econometric models of a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QAIDS) using household data. Three methodologies are integrated in this study including constructing a multi-stage demand system, incorporating demographic variables using the ‘ordinary budget share scaling and translation' (OBSSAT), and employing a two-step estimator to deal with zero consumption problems. This study covers three provinces, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong in China and used household data from 1993 to 1998, with 2,000 observations each year, provided by the National Bureau of Statistics in China. Based on the Chinese food guide pyramid, a three-level utility tree is constructed to divide 18 food items into five subgroups. An empirical analysis is conducted by estimating econometric models in a sequence of six steps to examine the impact of the potential factors, e.g., income and demographic variables on food demand. The results show the uniqueness of this study in three dimensions. First, using the OBSSAT helps us to answer the problem of “how to break down the heterogeneous consumption patterns in urban China?” In addition, our findings also show that China should be treated as several markets instead of one. Second, the QAIDS has not been applied to the study of food demand in urban China. Our results show that the QAIDS is superior to the AIDS; however, the degree (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wen Chern (Advisor); Barry Goodwin (Other); Brian Roe (Other) Subjects: Economics, Agricultural

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2008, Computer Engineering

In this paper, I develop Directional Antenna Multi-path Location Aware Routing (DA-MLAR) that is a location aware routing with directional antenna capability. DA-MLAR is a reactive routing protocol that minimizes the protocol overhead of other reactive routing protocols. DA-MLAR also improves the packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay. The long radio transmission range obtained using directional antenna can decrease the number of network partitions there by reducing the number of rebroadcasts. It also reduces the number of routing hops. The directionality further reduces the network interferences by directing the beam only towards the receiving node and involving few intermediate nodes that are in the direction of receiving node. Two extensions of DA-MLAR - DA-MLAR with on demand adjustment of transmission power (DA-MLAR-ODTP) and beam width (DA-MLAR-ODBW) are proposed which further improves the performance metrics of ad hoc networks. In the first phase, the adjustment is made based on the calculated distance between the current sending node and the receiving node in the network. In the second phase, the adjustment also incorporates the effect of random Received Signal Strength (RSS) environment. Multi-objective approach is adopted to assess the network performance of MANET with complex, competing and conflicting objectives – maximizing packet delivery ratio, minimizing protocol overhead, and minimizing energy consumption. The preference of objectives depends on the type of application. In space, energy consumption is given more preference than other objectives. I have used the Normalized Weighted Additive Utility Function (NWAUF) approach to obtain the best alternatives. Through simulations using ns-2, I have demonstrated that DA-MLAR exhibits better network performance. Some performance metrics like packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay have been significantly improved using DA-MLAR-ODTP and DA-MLAR-ODBW with check in protocol overhead and energy consumpt (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Behnam Malakooti (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2013, Mechanical and Systems Engineering (Engineering and Technology)

Strategy denotes actions or patterns of actions intended for the attainment of goals. In an organizational setting, the term strategy covers more than just intended or planned strategy; it also includes the sequence of decisions that exhibit posteriori consistencies in decisional behavior, involving the selection of product markets or industries and the allocation of resources among them. Within the broader purpose of developing a decision making framework for competitive strategy development practices, the thrust of this study is to investigate the impact of environmental uncertainty on corporate strategy, and the influence of corporate strategy on business performance, operational structure and market dynamics. Another incidental purpose of the study is to review, classify, clarify, define, and integrate ideas and concepts from diverse disciplines including Engineering, Economics and Business Administration to consequently establish a strategic decision making framework. The factors influencing the short term and long term standing of companies in a particular market are focused with the objectives of increasing the business capability and profitability as well as improving the market share. The case studied is the global blood sugar monitoring industry. The demand structure of the market is modeled considering four major companies in three regional markets; Asia, Europe, North America. LifeScan Inc., a Johnson & Johnson Company, is selected as the focus of greater discussions. The decision making framework is established for LifeScan Inc. incorporating a layered cellular manufacturing design integrated with different supply chain alternatives. The framework is then employed in a multi-period strategic analysis where competition games are developed and studied in three categories; price competition, quality/reputation competition and product competition. The outcomes of different competition strategies are presented and evaluated in terms of profitability and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gursel Suer (Advisor); Douglas Adie (Advisor); David Koonce (Committee Member); Dusan Sormaz (Committee Member); Namkyu Park (Committee Member); Ana Feger (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Economics; Industrial Engineering