New Releases by Ryan W

Over time, the delivery of services has become increasingly co-productive (customers participate materially in the production of service outcomes) and inseparable from customer view. As a result, a distinctive aspect of service operations is that they feature production processes in which the experience of production influences customer behavior. In particular, operational choices intended to maximize firm profits may backfire if they diminish customer experiences and, in the process, alter whether and how customers choose to perform their role in the firm''s operating system. In three studies, my dissertation empirically explores how two specific operational choices - 1) whether and how a firm automates service, and 2) the level of service quality a firm chooses to provide relative to its competitors - affect the experiences and behaviors of its customers, and in turn, the firm''s performance

A collection of quirks, and homages, Bradley''s debut offers 18 short punches to the gut. The stories will surprise and humor you, maybe even make you gasp a little. They are stories not for the faint of heart... or loins.

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most widespread infectious diseases in the world, infecting an average of 9 million people annually. Although TB is curable, close to 2 million TB-related deaths occur each year. Due in part to a growing global response to TB, progress has been made in combating the disease. Globally, new TB infection rates have begun to slowly decline and TB mortality rates have decreased significantly since 1990. At the same time, absolute numbers of people infected with TB, particularly in Asia and Africa, continue to rise. Congress has recognised TB as an important humanitarian issue and increasingly as a potential threat to global security. This book examines the U.S. responses to the global threat of tuberculosis and the international efforts and issues for Congress.

Written beneath the dark and sunless skies of Manic-Depression and Borderline Psychosis, speaking between the lines and with every word, the shadows and the skeletons of a faulty society are revealed in a flurry of angst and loathing. The boundaries of controversy are crossed and the barriers of a societal censorship are cast away in disregard with the figurative "blind eyes and deaf ears" of Ryan W. McClellan, who debuted his career as a published Novelist at the peak (but never "tender") age of Eighteen. 3 years older now, this 3-stories-in-1 piece is one piece of art and self-expression that cannot go unrecognized. It is an epic exaggeration of governmental despotism, worldwide conspiracy, communal brainwashing and the grounds upon which a revolution is bred. . . and within this madness, McClellan entwines a series of (unrelated) short stories and tirades of both the Vehement and the Misunderstood. Also contained is "Wolves Amongst Sheep," based on a fictional story through the eyes of a criminal (and you will be surprised at what you encounter). Finally: "May God Hath Mercy" dedicates itself to the tragic genocide taking place across the Atlantic within the struggling lands of Darfur from a first-person perspective of both sides: the enemy and the innocent.

This thesis presents the development of and the findings from the design and evaluation of a hidden semi- Markov model (HSMM)-based operator state monitoring display. This operator state monitoring display is designed to function as a decision support tool (DST) for the supervisor of a small team of operators (between 2 and 4 team members) that are each monitoring and controlling multiple highly autonomous heterogeneous unmanned vehicles (UVs). Such displays are important in real-time, mission-critical complex systems because both operator and vehicle state monitoring are difficult, and failure to appropriately handle emerging situations could have life or mission-critical consequences. Recent research has shown that HSMM-based models can be used to model the time-sensitive behavior of operators controlling multiple heterogeneous UVs. Because this method requires substantial knowledge in probability theory to understand, the difficulty lies in the accurate, useful display of the HSMM information to a team commander in the field. It must be assumed that the team commander generally does not have the required background in stochastic processes to understand the method and may be biased in interpreting probabilistic functions. This further increases the difficulty of the proposed method. In this thesis, a cognitive task analysis (CTA) was performed to determine the functional and information requirements of the DST, and a human systems engineering design process was used to develop a prototype display. A human subject experiment was then conducted to test the effectiveness of the DST. The DST was shown to improve team supervisor performance in terms of increased decision accuracy, decreased incorrect interventions, and decreased response times in single alert scenarios. The DST was also shown to decrease the number of incorrect interventions, while having no affect on decision accuracy and total response time scenarios when the supervisor faced multiple simultaneous alerts. Additionally, the DST was not shown to increase operator mental workload, as measured by a secondary task, for any of the scenarios. Overall, the results suggest that HSMM-based operator state modeling can be effectively utilized in a real-time DST for team supervisors. While this research was focused on a team supervisor of multiple operators each independently controlling multiple heterogeneous UVs, the results are generalizable, and any research in time-critical team HSC domains may benefit from this work.

Considering the effort and funding devoted to a company''s success, understanding Intellectual Property rights patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and licensing is essential. Establishing appropriate internal policies from the outset can prevent companies from learning a costly and painful lesson in the courtroom. With Intellectual Property in the Food Technology Industry, currently the only book of its kind focusing specifically on the food industry, one will learn what to consider throughout the various creative phases of a product''s lifespan from initial research and development initiatives through post-production. Readers will have an understanding of the intellectual property protections afforded to U.S. corporations, methods to pro-actively reduce potential problems, and guidelines for future considerations to reduce legal spending, prevent IP theft, and allow for greater profitability from corporate innovation and inventiveness.

Journey with Will, his brother Jerry & best friend Harry as they travel through time to find their abducted parents, but who abducted them ? The truth finds them caught up in an unpredictable war of the future that man has never concieved before. "Will walked slowly into the vestibule. Nothing looked out of place. Although he smelt smoke and charred wood, there were no signs of a fire. He walked into the back of the house and the family room. His jaw dropped. He could see right out into the backyard. The wall had been surgically cut away."

To educate older generations and engage younger generations in the authentic worship of God, this paper will develop an intentional strategy to create a culture of worship at Grace Baptist Church that is conducive to people at all ages and stages of life. The purpose of this three-part paper is to detail a strategy for introducing a biblically sensitive worship culture into the ministry of Grace Baptist. The goal is to unite those with enduring spiritual heritages and new worshippers who approach God through postmodern senses into a worship community that values diversity. One way to facilitate this is through a worship culture that reflects God''s glory and creatively retells his story. The first part of this discussion investigates the ministry context at Grace Baptist and traces its spiritual identity. Located in Fort Worth, Texas and steeped in Independent Baptist fundamentalism, the church has enjoyed a stable ministry during its over fifty-year existence. As it approaches midlife, however, Grace Baptist must adapt to reach emerging worshippers who have been influenced by changes in the broader culture. Part One will explore these cultural changes and relevant demographic data. The second part will detail the biblical and theological foundation of a worship culture that is sensitive to unbelievers and Christians alike. A brief overview of pertinent Scripture will highlight the creativity of God, his pursuit of those who worship him in spirit and truth, the example of Paul and his preferring others for the sake of the gospel, and the consummation of human relationship with God. A theology of ministry as it pertains to leading change will be included. Stemming from these underpinnings, the final part of the paper will offer a core strategy for creating a culture of worship and implementing worship renewal. Short-term and long-term ministry initiatives for enhancing the worship culture also will be presented. Finally, a tool to provide routine appraisal of the worship environment will be provided.

Natural and anthropogenic factors work together to influence species habitat use. Kings Bay in Crystal River, Florida serves as critical habitat for the Florida manatee, but is also used extensively by humans. This study documented the seasonal dispersion and behavioral patterns of manatees in Kings Bay with regards to natural and anthropogenic factors from May 2005-June 2006. Survey stations were established across the bay and the number of manatees, people in the water, and boats were counted. The behavioral patterns of four major states were recorded using focal animal observations. During the winter, manatees aggregated in areas containing both springs and sanctuaries, where human activity was high and vegetation coverage low. In the non-winter, manatees were most abundant away from springs, where there was higher vegetative coverage and lower human activity. In the winter season, manatee spent most of their time resting in sanctuaries with springs, but when found feeding bouts were longer than in the non-winter season. In the non-winter, variation in behavior was attributed more to the lifestyle roles of different age and sex class manatees than to sub-habitat type. The need for sanctuaries that protect feeding sites during the non-winter season is recommended.

In the last decade processes known as living/controlled radical polymerizations (L/CRP) have been developed which permit the synthesis of high-value specialty polymers. Currently, the three processes that have demonstrated the most potential are: reverse addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT), atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and stable free radical polymerization (SFRP). While each process has their strengths and weaknesses with regard to specific polymers and architecture, the viability of these systems to industrial scale production all lie in the ability to perform the polymerization in a water based system because of process, environmental and economic advantages. The most effective method of controlling the polymerization of vinyl acetate in bulk has been RAFT. We have developed a miniemulsion RAFT polymerization using the xanthate methyl (ethoxycarbonothioyl)sulfanyl acetate. The miniemulsion is stabilized with 3 wt% sodium lauryl sulfate, initiated with the azo-based water-soluble VA-060. The main focus of this research was adapting ATRP to a miniemulsion system. It was determined that ionic surfactants can be successfully employed in emulsion-based ATRP. The cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide provides excellent stability of the latex over a range of surfactant loadings (allowing the particle size to be easily manipulated), at temperatures up to 90 C, for a wide variety of ATRP formulations. A new method of initiation was developed for reverse ATRP, using the redox pair hydrogen peroxide/ascorbic acid. This nearly eliminated the induction period at the start of the polymerization, increased the polymerization rate 5 fold and, surprisingly, enabled the formation of well-controlled polymers with a number-average molecular (Mn) weight approaching 1 million (typically ATRP is limited to ~200 000). The ability to control the particle size and the number of polymer chains (through the target Mn) over a wide range of values allowed us to determine that ATRP is influenced by compartmentalization effects. The knowledge gained from our work in L/CRP was used to develop the surfactant-free SFRP of styrene. A multi-stage approach was adopted starting from dilute styrene/water solutions to favor the formation of the alkoxyamine and short chain SG1-oligomers (stage one) before the addition of the majority of the styrene (stage two).

The size-weight illusion (SWI) occurs when the smaller of equally weighted objects is judged to feel heavier than the larger object. Experiment 1 compared the SWI generated in a natural versus augmented-reality environment while grasping and lifting three differently sized cubes of equal weight. Both environments induced the SWI for all twenty participants. Lift kinematics covaried with cube size in both environments. Experiment 2 investigated the influence of incongruent visual size information on the SWI in an augmented environment. Physical cubes were paired with three graphical representations: a smaller, an equal-sized, and a larger cube. The SWI was influenced by both haptic and visual size information. Kinematics covaried with physical size throughout the experiment. Results suggest that vision significantly impacts the bimodal SWI when haptic and visual size information is not redundant. Results have implications for theories of heaviness perception, multimodal interaction, and perception and action in augmented environments.

The Second Edition of Blueprints Radiology covers the essentials that students need to know on rotations and while preparing for the USMLE. The thoroughly updated and greatly expanded Second Edition features coverage of the most common conditions encountered on the wards. This edition includes new chapters on interventional radiology and nuclear medicine and places greater emphasis on classic radiological findings and pearls. The high-quality images include an increased number of CTs, MRIs, and x-rays. Seventy-five brand new board-format questions, with detailed answer explanations, are included. This edition now includes evidence-based resources.

Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a connection-oriented, reliable, messaged-based, general purpose transport protocol with congestion control similar to that used by TCP, supporting advanced features not available in TCP or UDP, such as multistreaming and multihoming capabilities. To encourage developers and end users to begin adopting SCTP and build momentum for more widespread SCTP deployment, we have developed a shim layer which translates application-level system calls to TCP into corresponding calls to SCTP, allowing legacy TCP applications to communicate using SCTP as the end-to-end transport protocol without any modifications to the applications themselves. This translation occurs transparently, so legacy TCP applications are unaware translation to SCTP is occurring. If the shim detects that translation from TCP to SCTP is not possible for a particular endpoint or service, the shim will fall back to using a normal TCP connection, ensuring backwards compatibility. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).

"This paper will review the literature and outline a curriculum model that emphasizes two key areas of best practices for teaching gifted and talented social studies students: multiple intelligences and critical thinking."--Leaf 13.

ABSTRACT: Uracil is removed from DNA by the highly conserved uracil-DNA glycosylase (UDG), which hydrolyzes the N-glycosidic bond of deoxyuridine (dU), starting the base excision and repair pathway. This specific and powerful catalyst can lower the activation barrier of deoxyuridine (dU) cleavage by almost 16 kcal/mol, yet UDG exhibits no detectable N-glycosidic bond cleavage of other structurally similar bases.

Culled from over three years of writing poetry, this collection intrigues its readers with varying styles and themes. From classical mythology and the stars, to patriotism and the universe these are poems meant to awaken you to the world.