Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Educational Studies

Word recognition is a key part of reading development and a fundamental component of elementary reading curricula. However, students with learning disabilities (LD) often encounter difficulties with reading skills and exhibit deficits in word recognition, increasing the need for interventions that enhance their reading achievement. Incremental rehearsal (IR), one of the most commonly used flashcard interventions supported by previous literature, has shown its effectiveness in different skills, such as word recognition. IR offers opportunities for repeated practices to help struggling students improve their outcomes. Despite the growing number of students with LD in Saudi Arabia, there is a lack of research examining the efficacy of interventions designed to improve reading outcomes, specifically word recognition, in students with LD in elementary schools. Thus, conducting an empirical study to teach Arabic word recognition to elementary students with LD in Saudi Arabia is crucial. Utilizing a single-subject multiple-probe experimental design across word sets, this study aimed to examine the effect of the IR intervention on Arabic word recognition in three fourth-grade male students with LD in Saudi Arabia. Maintenance and generalization of word recognition were also examined to investigate the sustainability of the IR intervention and to provide more precise conclusions regarding its efficacy. Results indicated that the IR intervention was effective for all three participants. All participants showed an increased number of words read correctly, accurate responses on retention measures, and maintenance and generalization of word recognition. Limitations, recommendations for future research, and implications for practice are discussed.

Committee: Peter Paul (Advisor); Sheila Alber-Morgan (Committee Member); Moira Konrad (Committee Member); Laurice Joseph (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Special Education

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The ongoing housing crisis poses a challenge to urban areas around the world. Whereas in developed countries this crisis has to do with a shortage of housing, in developing countries the addition of poor urban and architectural conditions makes the problem worse. In a developing country like Peru, the creation of informal squatter settlements on the fringes of the cities are not only eroding the urban fabric, but also becoming a threat to the safety of the people living in these areas. This means that there is the potential for the physical, and therefore social, collapse of the built environment in the event of an earthquake event. The city of Cusco in Peru has seen a sharp urban growth over the past decades. The increasingly difficult farming conditions, due to climate change, and the promising economic growth due to tourism incentivizes people living in the rural areas to move to the city. However, when these people arrive in the city, their hopes and dreams are confronted with a harsh reality. The price of the land in the city is very expensive and the cost to build a house that follows the regulations is even higher. Thus, they are pushed to the outskirts, where the price of the land is cheaper, and they can build their house through informal means. An added difficulty is the challenging topography given that the fringes of the city are usually located on the hillsides. By considering the topographical and cultural challenges of these areas, this thesis proposes an urban and architectural solution that deals with the problems posed by urban sprawl and informal construction. The literature review studies two key characteristics of the informal housing in Peru: self-help construction and incremental growth. The theoretical aspects of these characteristics are complemented by the study of precedents located in sites with similar social and cultural conditions. Then a thorough study of the evolution of the single-family housing unit in Cusco from Inca to con (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vincent Sansalone M.Arch. (Committee Member); Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

After twelve years of conflict, Syria remains home to one of the world's largest refugee crises in recent history. More than 13 million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes since 2011. 6.7 million people remain internally displaced. Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution years ago, the world has largely turned a blind eye towards the devastation, finding little profit or stake in the future of the nation. The crisis only caught the attention of the world in 2015 after the body of two-year-old Syrian refugee Alan reached the shore of Turkey floating, face down. Ever since, the international community's contribution to the Syrian crisis has been limited to containing the influx of refugees, leaving Syrians feeling all the more betrayed. They thought the world would not leave them alone to face such horrific tyranny by themselves, but they were mistaken. And now they are trapped. They took to the streets to reclaim their natural rights to democracy and dignified life. Now, they are stuck in refugee camps inside and outside of Syria in the most inhumane conditions present in the 21st century. This paper examines the different attempts to resettle internally displaced Syrian refugees within the Northern half of the country, including the challenges faced and the potential solutions. The objective of this thesis is to study how to deal with the influx of refugees when there is no infrastructure in place to accommodate their basic needs. In particular, the proposal will apply principles such as incremental urban growth, adaptive development, and participatory design to transform temporary camps that were created out of necessity into permanent communities. When time is of the essence, organizations need to know the most economical way to respond to the ever-growing and urgent need for housing, all while remaining within their limited resources.

Committee: Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Member); Edward Mitchell M.Arch (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2021, Mechanical Engineering

Recent advances in metal tube forming processes, motivated by a heightened interest in mass customization of lightweight tubular metallic structures, have led to significant improvements in their accuracy. Against this backdrop, Incremental Profile Forming (IPF) was invented in 2013 at the Technical University of Dortmund (TUD), Germany, to manufacture tubular structures with high geometric complexity. IPF holds considerable advantages over conventional forming techniques in its capability to meet the demands of process flexibility and product complexity. In IPF, the desired geometry is generated by a set of tools placed circumferentially around the tube and programmed to execute superposed radial, axial and circumferential motions to change local cross-sectional geometry. To promote tighter product property and geometric control in IPF, the tool motion must be precise, and must also account for material springback upon unloading and non-uniform distribution of plastic strain in the forming region. This requires an understanding of the process mechanics, and integration of that knowledge into the control strategy and implementation. This thesis presents quantitative models, results from limited experiments, and extensive numerical FEM results to enable an improved understanding of the process mechanics in IPF. Particularly, two analytical models are developed to describe radial indentation, which is a component of many IPF processes. The first model, called the three-circle model, is based on regression analysis and geometric insights from studying the plastic collapse of tubular structures under lateral loads. It draws upon numerical FEM simulations of radial indentation. Making use of moving and stationary plastic hinges to impose or remove curvature at material points on the tube, the model reconstructs the deformed cross-section at any axial location for a given set of problem parameters. The feasibility of the three-circle model is validated by comparing wi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Satyanarayana Seetharaman (Advisor); Krishnaswamy Srinivasan (Advisor); Erman Tekkaya (Committee Member) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

Rankings represent the process of evaluating a subject's preference over different objects. It is used from user reporting to user recommendations. Dynamically updating rankings by adding new objects results in storage and computational constraints. Machine learning including deep learning algorithms have been widely implemented and used in a scale previously thought impossible. This is due to the increase of computing power and storage space available to users. This study explores the idea of allowing rankings to be updated using less computational and storage resources than generally required using machine learning. Using machine learning techniques such as Linear Regression and Support Vector Machine, this study explores models that can be used to overcome the computational and storage intensive problem of incrementally updating rankings.

Committee: Anca Ralescu Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Kenneth Berman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dan Ralescu Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, EECS - Electrical Engineering

In this work, design and development of photoplethysmogram (PPG) readout systems are presented for implantable blood pressure (BP) monitoring as a foundational block of the next-generation networked neuroprosthesis (NNP) systems. A miniaturized Gen-I PPG readout system is developed for recording of PPG signal subcutaneously from muscle groups in minimally invasive fashion as a step toward chronic implantation. The Parylene–C-coated sensor boards were implanted subcutaneously on the quadriceps muscle group of an anesthetized laboratory rat, yielding PPG recordings. These devices are also adopted in a human trial test for studying indirect, cuff-less BP estimation based on pulse arrival time algorithms showing motivating results. Following that, to improve performance of the PPG readout system, two PPG readout integrated circuits (ROICs) are developed as Gen-II and Gen-III systems. A 10-bit light-to-digital converter (LDC) is proposed that uniquely employs a 1st-order, continuous-time, incremental delta-sigma modulator (I–ΔΣM) as an ultralow-power PPG recording front-end along with an on-chip 2-channel light-emitting diode (LED) driver. The LDC digitizes photodiode (PD) light-induced current in a single-stage manner that in addition to supported duty-cycled operation allows for huge power saving. Moreover, the I–ΔΣM uniquely allows for operation in intermittent conversion phases that enables a priori direct measurement of dc and ambient light-induced components of the PD current for signal-aware on-the-fly dc subtraction and ambient light removal before digitization facilitating high-quality measurement of small PPG signal. Fabricated in 0.18μm 1P/6M CMOS, the PPG ROIC features a high dynamic range (DR) of 92.7dB, dissipates 8.1μW and 1.95mW in the recording front-end and the LED (with its driver), respectively, with ~10% duty cycling at pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 100Hz. Following that, the Gen-III system is developed as a complete PPG ROIC using 13-bit LD (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pedram Mohseni (Advisor); Kevin Kilgore (Committee Member); Hossein Miri Lavasani (Committee Member); Francis Merat (Committee Member) Subjects: Biomedical Engineering; Biomedical Research; Electrical Engineering; Health Care

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Mechanical Engineering

Tremendous amount of research attention has been paid to the lithium-ion battery as it becomes the technology of choice for powertrain electrification due to its increasing power and energy densities as well as decreasing cost. Despite recent progress, however, battery aging still remains as the key challenge that prevents its wider applications in energy storage. While research in battery aging has been dominated by improving modeling precision and increasing estimation algorithm efficiency, the importance of data implemented for aging assessment has long been overlooked. In other words, there has been no definite answers to which is the favorable (both sensitive and practically existing) data profile for battery aging assessment and how much data from such profile is sufficient to assess battery degradation. Additionally, presently reported research has mostly focused on a certain battery operating condition without taking into account the impacts from various different usage patterns in practical electric vehicles, thus losing credibility in adapting to varying operating scenarios. To address these two critical issues, this study is proposed to identify the favorable data profile for lithium-ion battery aging assessment with consideration of usage patterns in electric vehicles. Both model-based and in-situ experimental approaches have been employed to identify the favorable data profile for aging assessment. For the model-based approach, the electrolyte enhanced single particle model (ESPM) which has been simplified from the porous model while still retain parameters with physical meanings has been selected and parameterized at the beginning of life. The 1C CCCV charging with sufficiently wide SOC range is determined as the favorable data profile through open-loop identification based on aging characterization. Improved EKF for full state estimation of both electrodes is designed to perform the close-loop identification of favorable data profile for aging asses (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mrinal Kumar (Advisor); Ann Co (Committee Member); Lei Cao (Committee Member); Ran Dai (Committee Member) Subjects: Automotive Engineering; Mechanical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Psychology/Industrial-Organizational

Personality constructs are often used in organizational psychology as predictors of job performance, job satisfaction, and other important outcomes. Alexithymia is a personality trait which has received very little attention in the organizational literature, but may also be a useful predictor of these outcomes. Alexithymia describes the relative inability to think about, identify, and express emotions. This trait is integrated with Affective Events Theory in order to explore whether it affects emotions and other outcomes. Through two studies from distinct samples, the role of alexithymia as a moderating variable is tested. In addition, the incremental predictive validity of alexithymia above and beyond the five-factor model of personality is examined. The results indicate that alexithymia may act as a moderator of some emotional experiences at work, but primarily seems to affect outcomes for college students. Alexithymia significantly incrementally predicts variance in several outcomes for students and employees and may be especially useful for predicting contextual performance. Implications for future research and practice involving alexithymia are discussed.

Committee: Margaret Brooks Ph.D. (Advisor); George Bullerjahn Ph.D. (Other); William O'Brien Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Zickar Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Occupational Psychology; Psychology

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Houses are one of the most paradoxical structures; they are conceived as unchangeable but are often changed. This is done because houses are expected to meet our needs as homeowners and consumers. But houses are often underutilized, and their primary function as a utility for living has been altered drastically so that they have become status symbols, glorified storage units, and symbols of what we want to be. Through an understanding of the way houses are utilized and an analysis of prototypical houses, this thesis seeks to define a new way of living and building a house. It seeks to understand the way people live in and use their homes. In an effort to combat continuously changing demands and expectations for ever more and better in homes, it seeks to define an approach to building a house incrementally, through construction, changes in the way we live, or modification. This creates a home that becomes adaptable, accessible, and economically and socially responsible. This thesis proposes a strategy for building houses incrementally and develops two narratives for how this could unfold. These narratives are exercises in behavioral architecture; they are not the ideal home but they respond to the habits and pitfalls of their users.

Committee: Vincent Sansalone M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Ed Mitchell M.Arch (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Psychology/Industrial-Organizational

This dissertation addressed two key areas within the creativity literature: how we conceptualize and subsequently measure creativity and how creativity is (or is not) sustained over time. Data was collected at three time points from 394 full-time employees using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Results indicated that incremental creativity and radical creativity are two distinct constructs and can both be sustained over time. Specifically, intrinsic motivation was found to have a reciprocal positive relationship with both incremental and radical creativity over time. Results also indicated that employees who participate in incremental creativity may experience creativity fatigue, however creativity fatigue is not related to a reduction in incremental creativity in the future. These results provide support for measuring creativity from a more specific lens, and provide a foundation for researchers to continue to explore the contextual and individual factors that affect creativity over time. Future research directions and practical implications are discussed.

Committee: Russell Matthews PhD (Advisor); Dawn Anderson PhD (Committee Member); Clare Barratt PhD (Committee Member); Carolyn Tompsett PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Cities with manufacturing roots still contain physical evidence of their once booming industries. Entire neighborhoods were built up around industrial facilities that now stand vacant and underused, often located near highways and railroads that make them very accessible, but undesirable. Midwest cities in particular have been forced to reevaluate the existing building stock and in many cases repurpose their structures and urban spaces for an ever-changing population with renewed interest in moving back to the city center. The size, structure, and location of industrial buildings present an opportunity to introduce housing to industrial neighborhoods at a larger scale. This thesis studies the previous home of the American Products Company, a 7-story building built in 1925 in the Camp Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati. The goal of the research was to develop a prototype for the reuse of industrial buildings throughout the Midwest. The design proposes the use of flexible elements in the residential portion of the building in the spirit of Alejando Aravena's incremental housing. Prefabricated spatial dividers can be moved and expanded to allow increased flexibility and customizability for all residents. The proposal also argues for the inclusion of a commercial element at the ground floor to engage with the surrounding community and bring residents closer to necessary resources. By focusing the design language around incremental and movable elements, the spaces retain as much flexibility as possible and allow each user to customize their space. This strategy returns control to the user, inherently resulting in greater feelings of ownership and satisfaction with one's home. This method for approaching mixed-use, mixed income development is designed to be applicable in previously industrial neighborhoods across the Midwest.

Committee: Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jeffrey Tilman Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2016, Computer Science and Engineering

PageRank is an important measure to evaluate the relative importance of a node within a graph. Traditional linear algebraic methods to compute PageRank scores of nodes in a graph include the power method, which involves an iterative series of Sparse Matrix Vector multiplication (SpMV) operations. As graphs dynamically change over time, it becomes important to keep the PageRank scores updated in an efficient manner. Through the work done in this thesis, we try and solve this problem of efficiently updating PageRank scores by devising an algorithm that formulates the power method computation on the updated graph as a series of Sparse Matrix Sparse Vector (SpMSpV) multiplication operations - a method that improves upon the naive technique of recomputing PageRank scores from scratch. We present a rigorous mathematical proof for this. We also include several optimizations in our design and implementation of the algorithm based on theoretical and heuristic observations of the SpMSpV routine and our mathematical formulation of incremental PageRank. In addition to these optimizations, we implement a smart threshold-based technique during the SpMSpV routine to calculate a high quality approximation of PageRank scores, while improving efficiency significantly. Many of these optimization and approximation techniques were extended in the multicore and GPU implementations of our algorithm. We show promising empirical results for a wide variety of scale-free graphs.

Committee: Ponnuswamy Sadayappan Dr (Advisor); Srinvasan Parthasarathy Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2016, Manufacturing and Technology Management

Understanding the Relationship between Transformational Leadership Styles: Idealized Influence, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, Individualized Consideration and Product Innovation among Manufacturing and Services Firms: The Role of Open System: Given our highly competitive and global market, organizations are constantly seeking continuous improvement of their products and services, and they strive to achieve higher innovation capabilities. Leadership with the ability to create this type of change and innovation is critical for an organization's survival. Most of the leadership literature has defined transformational leadership as a single-factor model. However, this empirical study will investigate the relationship between the individual components of transformational leadership on organizational outcomes. Specifically, the relationships between idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration and product innovation as an outcome are examined. In the absence of such understanding, it is important to conceptualize them separately, for research purposes, as well as for leadership development purposes. Additionally, this study investigates the moderating role of open system as the organizational climate's framework—characterized by flexibility, outward focus, and reflexivity—on the relationship between the individual components of transformational leadership and product innovation. The objectives of the empirical study are: (a) to investigate the roles of the different dimensions of transformational leadership on product innovation. By doing so, the researc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jenell Wittmer (Committee Chair) Subjects: Business Administration

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Engineering and Applied Science: Civil Engineering

Previous earthquakes have revealed seismic performance issues associated with fully-restrained (FR) welded beam-to-column connections in steel moment frames. Past research has indicated that bolted partially-restrained (PR) connections can serve as viable alternatives for beam-to-column connections to resist lateral loads. This paper addresses the seismic behavior of special moment frames (SMFs) incorporating PR connections. A series of archetypical buildings are modeled in OpenSees using varying levels of stiffness, strength, and strain hardening in the PR beam-to-column connections. Incremental dynamic analyses (IDAs) are performed on the PR archetypes and the results are compared to a typical building archetype constructed with conventional FR connections. The models are subjected to incrementally larger time histories until the frames fail. Maximum interstory drifts, maximum total roof drifts and maximum base shears are recorded for each model throughout the analyses. The PR archetypes are designed and constructed to engage all of the frames in each principal direction to act as the seismic force resisting system (SFRS) whereas the FR archetype is constructed to engage only the perimeter frames as the SFRS. The PR archetypes are modelled to represent a global building stiffness equivalent to the global building stiffness of the conventional FR archetype. The PR connections are modeled with trilinear moment-rotation characteristics using rotational springs. The advantages of using PR frames include smaller member sizes and increased redundancy in the SFRS compared to conventional FR framing. Since most PR connections are of the bolted type, they generally cost less and are easier to assemble. The results of this study reveal that buildings constructed with PR connections that meet or exceed minimal levels of stiffness and strength have very similar seismic performance compared to buildings constructed with FR connections. The recommendation is made to accept PR c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Swanson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Thomas M. Burns Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gian Rassati Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Civil Engineering

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2004, Engineering : Mechanical Engineering

The dissertation is to address the need, in contact mechanics, of efficient and effective solutions to certain 3-D contact problems. The solutions developed here are based on underlying analytical solutions to pyramidal loading elements. This feature, along with other characteristics, distinguishes this method from other numerical solutions. The research work is logically divided into three subsequent parts, each of which addresses a particular aspect of the project: (1) Developed analytical solution sets in closed form to pyramidal loading profiles. First, a set of Boussinesq-Curruti equations to linear/bilinear distribution of normal and tangential loading over a triangular area are derived and evaluated. Second, solution sets to normal and tangential surface loading pyramids are constructed. The work provides a solution set to a basic loading element, which is the foundation of the development of effective and efficient semi-analytical solutions to 3-D contact problems with general geometry and loading profile. (2) Developed a semi-analytical approach (non-incremental algorithm) to 3-D normal contact problems with friction. This approach treats normal contact (indentation) phenomenon as a static problem. Based on fully coupled governing equations, the algorithm of contact detecting and stick/slip partitioning is designed as nested iterations, to fulfill contact boundary conditions. The computation shows that it is an efficient algorithm. Numerical examples are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency of the method.(3) Developed a semi-analytical approach (incremental algorithm) to 3-D contact problems with friction. This approach treats contact as a dynamic problem. The general dynamic models are simplified into quasi-static models in many practical cases that inertial force can be ignored. The incremental algorithm is designed to solve the quasi-static problems. The computation shows that the algorithm works very well for cases featuring both similar and di (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. EDWARD BERGER (Advisor) Subjects: Engineering, Mechanical

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Linguistics

Machine translation (MT) systems attempt to translate texts from one language into another by translating words from a source language and rearranging them into fluent utterances in a target language. When the two languages organize concepts in very different ways, knowledge of their general sentence structure, or syntax, is crucial. The syntax of the target language is particularly useful, because it provides a means of testing whether the reorderings that a system might try are grammatically licensed. This thesis presents two novel syntactic techniques that aid in producing correct and grammatical translations. The first technique controls target language reordering using syntactic categories that span multiple words. The second technique complements the first by assessing the well-formedness of sequences formed by these reorderings using the same syntactic categories. These innovations are implemented in the context of statistical phrase-based machine translation [Zens et al., 2002; Koehn et al., 2003], which is the prevailing modern translation paradigm. The main contribution of this thesis is to use the flexible syntax of Combinatory Categorial Grammar [CCG, Steedman, 2000] as the basis for deriving syntactic constituent labels for target strings in phrase-based systems, providing CCG labels for many target strings that traditional syntactic theories struggle to describe. These CCG labels are used to train novel syntax-based reordering and language models, which efficiently describe translation reordering patterns, as well as assess the grammaticality of target translations. The models are easily incorporated into phrase-based systems with minimal disruption to existing technology and achieve superior automatic metric scores and human evaluation ratings over a strong phrase-based baseline, as well as over syntax-based techniques that do not use CCG.

Committee: William Schuler PhD (Committee Chair); Michael White PhD (Committee Member); Christopher Brew PhD (Committee Member); Eric Fosler-Lussier PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Language; Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, EDU Physical Activity and Educational Services

The ability to spell words correctly is a skill that is necessary for success in school and adult life. Mastery of spelling skills continues to be difficult for a significant number of students. Students with spelling difficulties need to be identified early and receive proper instruction in order to catch up with their peers. The current educational environment, with large class sizes and many curricular demands, results in the need for spelling interventions that are both effective and efficient. Research is needed to identify techniques that aid in the acquisition of spelling skills and that deliver meaningful improvements in an efficient manner. Several studies have revealed that the incremental rehearsal technique within a drill exercise can render positive outcomes and high retention rates of learning. Incremental rehearsal has been effective for helping students improve on word recognition and math facts. There have been no studies that have examined the effects of incremental rehearsal on spelling performance. Moreover, there have not been any studies that examined different topographies of response with the incremental rehearsal procedure. Different topographies of responding, such as a written response versus an oral response, may significantly influence the efficiency of an intervention. The following study aimed to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of two incremental rehearsal spelling interventions, specifically, incremental rehearsal oral intervention and incremental rehearsal written intervention. The study will compare these two types of incremental rehearsal methods on students' acquisition of spelling words and the rate of spelling words. Specifically, the study examined acquisition, rate, delayed recall and generalization. It examines the use of incremental rehearsal for teaching spelling across two response topographies. Results of the study indicated positive effects for both instructional conditions. Both incremental rehearsal proced (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Laurice Joseph (Committee Chair); Moira Konrad (Committee Co-Chair); Sheila Morgan (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, ED Physical Activities and Educational Services

A significant number of children in the United States have difficulty learning basic reading skills. The majority of children referred to school psychologists are referred for reading concerns. Unfortunately, the gap between good and poor readers widens over time as more advanced reading skills are built upon basic reading skills. Children with reading difficulties need to be identified early and receive proper reading interventions in order to catch up with their peers. Due to factors such as curricular demands and large class sizes, teachers have limited time to implement academic interventions in the classroom. Interventions that are both effective and efficient allow teachers to provide the greatest amount of instruction within the least amount of time. Further research is needed to identify instructional techniques that are not only effective but are efficient for helping children achieve desired academic outcomes. The current study examined the instructional effectiveness and efficiency of two word reading interventions on the number of words read accurately and the learning rate of student participants. Specifically, an alternating treatments design was used to compare the effects of the traditional drill and practice technique (presenting only unknown words) and an incremental rehearsal technique (the interspersal of one unknown word between an increasing number of known words). This study extended previous research findings of the positive outcomes of the interventions by holding constant the amount of time allowed for each intervention as opposed to the number of trials provided for each unknown word. Retention, maintenance, generalization, and social validity were also assessed. Results indicated increased word reading for all five students who participated in the study. Specifically, traditional drill and practice was found to be most effective and efficient on measures of retention and maintenance. Incremental rehearsal was found to be most effective (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Laurice Joseph PhD (Advisor); Nancy Neef PhD (Committee Member); Moira Konrad PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Psychology; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1999, Business Administration

As firms have responded to the increasing pressure to compete on a global basis, the process of incremental expansion has received considerable attention. The incremental approach to international expansion contends that firms build up their operations gradually to reduce uncertainty that stems from their operating in unfamiliar foreign countries. It has intuitive appeal, but empirical tests of the model have yielded mixed results. This dissertation sets out to better understand the process of international expansion by addressing two important questions: (1) Does the level of foreign market uncertainty firms face affect the extent to which they follow the incremental expansion process? And (2) why do firms that face similar foreign market uncertainty vary in their extent of incremental expansion?This study's data set consists of sixty-one Korean firms and covers the forty-three year period from 1954 to 1996. Unlike previous studies, which assumed a relationship between foreign market uncertainty and incremental expansion, this study provides empirical confirmation of the long-standing assumption that foreign market uncertainty increases the extent to which firms undertake incremental international expansion. By taking a contingency approach toward international expansion, this study also finds that firm, industry and host country characteristics moderate the relationship between foreign market uncertainty and incremental expansion. Specifically, when cultural distance is used as a measure of foreign market uncertainty, the results of this dissertation indicate that the effect of foreign market uncertainty on incremental expansion is weaker for firms that 1) have higher levels of organizational slack, 2) are operating in industries in which invested resources are more recoverable, or 3) are operating in foreign countries that offer greater labor-cost advantages. For the second and the third conditions, these results also hold true when firm inexperience is used as a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joseph L.C. Cheng (Advisor); Stephen Mangum (Advisor); Amy Glass (Committee Member); Stephen Hills (Committee Member); Alice Stewart (Committee Member) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Electrical Engineering

In wireless communication networks, performance goals are often conflicting with each other. For example, in point-to-point multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) links, spectrum efficiency and reliability are in a tradeoff relation; in ad-hoc wireless networks, we need to sacrifice throughput to decrease packet delay. In this dissertation, we investigate problems on the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) in cellular wireless communication networks and problems on the throughput-delay tradeoff in ad-hoc wireless networks. We first consider two topics on the DMT in cellular uplinks (or multiple-access channels, MACs): (1) the diversity-multiplexing-delay tradeoff (DMDT) in a random-access scenario and (2) an explicit construction of space-time coding scheme achieving the DMT. For the random-access scenario, we propose an incremental-redundancy automatic repeat request (IR-ARQ) scheme. We prove that our scheme successfully exploits both ARQ diversity and joint-decoding advantage, and achieves a better DMT than other existing protocols, such as Tsatsanis et al.'s network-assisted diversity multiple-access (NDMA) and Gallager tree algorithm. Next, we propose a lattice-space time (LAST) coding/decoding scheme in MACs and prove that it achieves the optimal DMT in MACs. Although our result is established using a random coding argument, it is important to note that the proposed scheme is explicit in a sense that it lends itself to a structured encoder and an efficient decoder which does not require exhaustive search. Next, we formulate and analyze the DMT in delay-constrained cellular downlinks (or broadcast channels, BCs). We show that dirty-paper precoding achieves the optimal DMT in BCs. Furthermore, we analyze the DMTs for a few suboptimal precoding schemes. In particular, we find that vector precoding schemes such as vector perturbation of Peel et al. and LLL lattice reduction achieve the optimal DMT of a type of BCs, in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hesham El Gamal (Committee Chair); Phil. Schniter (Committee Member); Emre Koksal (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering