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Entrepreneurship is of crucial importance in facilitating economic recovery and growth. While research largely focuses on the role of the individual entrepreneur, venture success also depends on the ability for the entrepreneur to attract and retain top employees. This dissertation investigates some of the state-like psychological resources that can predict entrepreneurial employee outcomes. We examine how employee performance (specifically turnover and promotions) within an entrepreneurial venture is influenced by the employee’s written language expresses one's PsychologicalCapital (PsyCap), and how this relationship is moderated by employee gender. This study consists of 174 hired employees from a young digital new venture. All behavioral and demographic data was provided to further the research and understanding of how employee PsyCap measurement can help optimize hiring and retention. Overall, the study's findings offer promise in advancing PsyCap utilization in selection activities, while better understanding if the interaction of gender changes performance. This study makes three unique contributions to the literature. First, this dissertation adds to the minimal stream of research that currently exists at the intersection of human resources and entrepreneurship. Second, this study expands current PsyCap literature by leveraging its usability to understanding entrepreneurial employees. The third contribution comes in expanding the potential use of content text analysis during the hiring process for new ventures. Implications from this study, as well as recommendations for future studies, are also discussed.
Road crashes remain a preventable cause of morbidity and mortality. The rush-hour period represents the time with the highest human and vehicular road densities. This dissertation aims to assess the environmental factors associated with fatal crash injuries during the rush and non-rush hour period, assess the association of substance use and non-fatal crash injuries during the rush and non-rush hour period, and assess the association of crash response time and deaths at crash scenes during the rush and non-rush hour period. To address these aims, nested spatial negative binomial regression, partially proportional ordinal logistic regression, and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed. During the rush-hour period, the median fatality rate per county was 7.30 per 100,000 population. Highways had the highest fatality risk, after adjusting for the interaction effect of intersection, driveway, ramp, and work-zone. Also, after adjusting for confounders, substance use was associated with over two-fold increased odds of critical and emergent injury outcomes as compared to low acuity injuries. Further, a minute increase in the Emergency Medical Service travel time was associated with increased odds of death-at-the-scene. Crash prevention policies may target the rush hour period to reduce fatal and non-fatal crash injuries.
Coming from countries across the world, immigrants have chosen to start a new life in the United States, and become part of the fabric that makes up American society. Today, immigrant children face a unique set of challenges and hardships including trauma, acculturative stress, and poverty. Helping to support their needs is a diverse workforce of helping professionals, providing support in a variety of settings. After-school programming has been utilized as a successful approach to supporting immigrant children, and by extension their families and communities. It is unique for children in after-school programs to be supported by staff that share similar lived experiences and ethnic backgrounds. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the issues facing first-generation and immigrant staff caring for immigrant youth in a supportive after-school program. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 participants via Zoom to facilitate in-depth descriptions of their perspectives. Six participants were interviewed twice over a period of six weeks to explore their experiences and perspectives across a time span during the Covid-19 pandemic. Two participants were interviewed once due to scheduling conflicts. The Pragmatic Qualitative Data Analysis (PQDA) method was utilized to analyze data from the interviews and observational field memos. A total of three major themes emerged from the data that included: (a) Emotional Labor, (b) Identity Development, and (e) Covid-19 Pandemic Impacts. This research found that there was a relationship between the central themes of emotional labor, Covid-19, and identity development. Participants’ experience of emotional labor created the unique space for employees to create and reinforce their own cultural identity, while being open and supportive to the various cultural identities. This sense of support from colleagues added a mediator which helped participants to cope with the stress of emotional labor and the Covid-19 pandemic. Other implications for counselors, organizations, policy and future research investigations are explored.
Abstract: The overrepresentation of African American males at risk for academic challenges and special education services, disciplinary actions, dropout rates, and incarceration is an alarming trend in the United States that has been ongoing for over 40 years. Research has shown correlation exists between a teachers’ cultural competence and a students’ positive academic and behavioral outcomes (Boutte & Hill, 2006; Howard & Terry, 2011; Rychly & Graves, 2012). However, many teachers are inadequately prepared with appropriate content knowledge, experience with culturally relevant practices, and training to address culturally and linguistically diverse students’ learning needs (Sobel et al., 2011). A cultural learning gap between teachers and students, along with, inadequate preparation can limit the choices of effective culturally responsive practices. An educator’s beliefs, attitudes, and expectations can have a major impact on student outcomes. (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Culturally responsive teachers understand the impact culture has on the educational system and place culture at the center as they investigate techniques needed for improving the performance of underachieving students of color (Bonner et al., 2018). The aim of this study was to examine perceptions of high school African American males receiving special education services or at risk for academic challenges related to teacher responsiveness to cultural diversity. This study used a phenomenological qualitative method to gain insight into the lived experiences of African American males. Findings, limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications for practice will be discussed.
A supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton power cycle is considered as one of the promising energy conversion systems for a number of applications such as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants due to its high thermodynamic efficiency and small equipment size. The compact heat exchangers such as Printed Circuit Heat Exchangers (PCHEs) with micro-channel geometry are suitable for coupling different heat sources to a sCO2 Brayton power cycle. The objective of this study is to design and optimize an advanced PCHE micro-channel geometry and topology for a sCO2 Brayton cycle. This work is concerned with the design where both sides of the plate are etched forming a double-etched micro-channel design configuration. In this advanced micro-channel topology, shim plates are needed to construct a PCHE stack using diffusion bonding.
Thermo-hydraulic performance of semi-circular micro-channel and advanced semi-circular and circular double-etched micro-channel geometries, and maximum stress, were determined. The results obtained for the advanced double-etched microchannel geometry were compared to the “conventional” semi-circular single-etched (single-side etched) micro-channel design for the counter-flow arrangement. Using ANSYS-Workbench, a multi-objective optimization algorithm employing NSGA-II and Response Surface Approximation (RSA) as a surrogate model was used for design and optimization of the advanced double-etched micro-channel PCHE geometry.
Thermal stress has been identified as one of the major failure causes in the power module. It is generated from the mechanical strain by severely varying temperatures at different loci in the power module and the different coefficients of the thermal expansion of materials, where the varying temperatures result from the real-time power loss across the power converter. This thermal stress accelerates the degradation of semiconductor devices, downgrades the system quality and efficiency, and eventually causes catastrophic system breakdowns and extensive economic losses. Therefore, this research is dedicated to investigating both local control level methods and system level strategies to ameliorate the real-time power loss in order to reduce the thermal stress in the power module, thereby extend the component lifetime and enhance the system reliability. A finite-control-set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) is introduced and deductively investigated from the local control level. Its variable switching frequency property is derived through the geometry analysis on the voltage vector space. It realizes the switching frequency variation autonomously by the loading power. By taking advantage of this property, the power loss is leveled in the real-time operation by FCS-MPC, and a more mitigated thermal profile is acquired compared with the one by the conventional controller. Furthermore, a centralized thermal stress oriented dispatch (TSOD) system level strategy is proposed for multiple paralleled distributed energy resource systems, which helps to reduce the thermal stress in the power module of paralleled converters. It is thermal stress oriented and takes effect according to the real-time junction temperature variation, the health condition of the individual converter, and the system operation. Two local control level methods, the switching frequency variation and the reactive power injection, are imported separately as the dispatch algorithm to generate the expected power loss. Dealing with the varying mission profile, the more mitigated thermal profiles are achieved for all converters with the assistance of the proposed TSOD strategy.
This dissertation explores the association between Founder Social Identity and the two leading component measures of market orientation: customer and competitor orientation. Using the typology of entrepreneurial identities developed by Fauchart and Gruber, this study empirically examines how the degree by which individuals are driven by social motivations captured by the darwinian, communitarian, and missionary founder social identity types predicts the degree by which entrepreneurs enact a customer and competitor orientation. To test this, data was collected from 492 entrepreneurs of small to medium size enterprises across all industries. Results suggest that the social motivations captured by the darwinian founder social identity type are positively related to customer and competitor orientation, the social motivations captured by the communitarian founder social identity type are positively related to competitor orientation, and that the degree to which an individual aligns with the missionary founder social identity type is positively related to customer orientation. These findings extend prior literature suggesting that the social motivations that drive entrepreneurship impact business processes and outcomes by demonstrating their link to key marketing activities.
Localization and communication are critical components for functioning autonomous robots. The infrastructure required for these operations commonly includes global positioning system (GPS) and easily recognizable and re-identifiable landmarks. However, these types of infrastructures are not always readily available. This research has developed a deploy-able electronic way-point system dubbed ’BreadCrumbs’. BreadCrumbs function as electronic landmarks that can provide localization and communication capabilities to a robot in environments where such infrastructure is not inherently present. When deployed by a forward moving agent with a set destination, the BreadCrumbs also form a series of way-points which reduce the possible state space an autonomous robot must search through when path planning in an unknown or unmapped environment. The BreadCrumbs are self localizing and have several methods for initial location determination based on the environment they are placed in. GPS is not required for the BreadCrumbs to function and, once established, they can function as landmarks for autonomous robots by providing range data from radio signal strength with a path loss exponent determined through a Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient algorithm.
Human cardiac myosin has two isoforms, α and β, sharing significant sequence similarity, but different in kinetics. Small differences in the sequence are responsible for distinct local inter-residue interactions within α and β isoforms, leading to such a dramatic difference in the rate of ADP release. Our analysis of structural kinetics of α and β isoforms using molecular dynamics simulations revealed distinct dynamics in SH1:SH2 helix region, loop 1 region, and loop I289-D324 region of myosin head. We identified permanent salt bridges in these regions on β-isoform, which are not present in the α-isoform. We hypothesized that the isoform-specific electrostatic interactions play a role in the difference of kinetic properties of myosin isoforms. We prepared R694N, E4Q, I303V:I313V,and D208Q:K450L mutants in the β-isoform background to destabilize electrostatic interactions in the proposed regions of the myosin head. We recombinantly expressed Wild type (WT) and the mutants of the human car- diac myosin head construct (1-843 amino acid residues) in differentiated C2C12 cells. Using the transient kinetics assays, we measured the kinetics of ADP release from actomyosin in the WT and mutant constructs of human cardiac myosin β-isoform. Mutant R694N showed faster rate of ADP release from actomyosin, compared to the wild type and other mutants, thus confirming that electrostatic interactions within the force-generating region of human cardiac myosin regulate ADP release and the duration of the strongly bound state of actomyosin.
Most of the coagulation studies done thus far were either site-specific or focused on only one variable and hence do not apply to real-world conditions. Developing a universal and practical model of coagulation has been a near-impossible task because 1) water is a chemically complex medium that varies spatially and temporally 2) the sheer number of factors and their interactions that determine the performance of the coagulant. The focus of this research is to develop a general model for coagulation with aluminum sulfate that has practical applications. The goal is also to identify the parameters that control optimum coagulation conditions while considering the removal of particulate (e.g., bacteria) and dissolved (e.g., organic matter) contaminants as well as chemical costs.
