Dissertation Defense Announcements

The motivation of this research is to build systems that precisely control displacement in the presence of external load (both linear and rotation force). To achieve this, two experimental platforms have been created. Those instruments incorporate actuation stages, rotary apparatus, and rotary encoder and displacement sensors. During experiments the temperature of the stage and the environment are recorded. Characterization of these processes necessarily requires generation and monitoring of forces and measurements of displacement, rotation, and environmental temperature. The actuator methods include thermal expansion and piezoelectric (PZT) actuation, and the displacement sensing includes optical knife-edge and capacitive gage sensors, and the rotation sensing includes digital camera and rotary encoder. An automated control strategy comprising PID closed loop control (for heating) and On/Off switching between air and mist control (for cooling) is described for the thermal expansion actuator. The translation stage of this study produces a displacement range of 100 µm and 200 µm (using 240 W and 480 W power sources) in the presence of preloads up to 1 kN. Depending on the power source used, the root mean square (rms) controller error at steady-state is within 15 nm (240 W) and 35 nm (480 W). The PZT actuation stage has a displacement range of 16 μm with a resolution of sub-nanometer, and this is used to generate a penetration force between a sample and a diamond indenter tip and this force passes through, and is measured by the load-cell stage. Numeric experiments have been performed with penetration depths from 200 nm to 2000 nm and with penetration forces between 20 mN to 200 mN.

This dissertation utilizes a three article approach to examine the current status of psychiatric boarding in the emergency department (ED). The number of ED visits for mental health concerns in the United States has been increasing for the past several decades as the number of inpatient psychiatric beds has decreased. This has created a psychiatric boarding crisis where patients are waiting in ED for extended periods of time across the country. This dissertation provides a 360° view of psychiatric boarding in the ED by critically examining the literature surrounding the effects of psychiatric boarding, analyzing the characteristics of patients undergoing psychiatric boarding through a large national dataset, and by analyzing mixed methods data from ED nurses who care for these patients.

The first article presents a systematic review of the status of psychiatric boarding while also addressing the involvement of civil commitment during a psychiatric boarding stay in the ED. Boarding times in the selected 31 articles varied greatly and patients were rarely started on new psychiatric drugs while in the ED. Common diagnoses for patients included suicidal ideations or suicidal behaviors.

The second article presents an analysis of the 2016-2017 combined Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Emergency Department Sample. Patients that had a psychiatric evaluation in the ED were considered at risk for psychiatric boarding. Patients that boarded for longer than one calendar day and had a psychiatric evaluation were compared to patients that had a psychiatric evaluation but it not ultimately board. Patients that boarded had a greater number of billable procedures performed compared to patients that did not board. The two most common diagnoses of patients undergoing psychiatric boarding for greater than one calendar day were obstructive pulmonary disease with major complication or comorbidity and diabetes.

The final article utilizes data gathered from ED nurses about their experience with psychiatric boarding at their hospital. Nurses that had greater positive attitudes toward patients undergoing psychiatric boarding were associated with greater perceived competency for providing care for persons with mental illness, and fewer stigmatizing attitudes of patients with mental illness. Through a mixed method approach, this study found that nurses perceptions of psychiatric boarding as a problem varied greatly as well as the different practices that can occur during a psychiatric boarding stay. Suggestions for improvement centered on improving the physical environment because of the high pressure and chaotic nature of the ED.

Overall, the details about what occurs during psychiatric boarding in the ED are still poorly described. The lack of research on the short-term and long-term effects of spending extended periods of time in the ED is also concerning, given that this dissertation found that 54.55% of nurses believe that psychiatric boarding is currently a problem at their hospital. Future research that focuses on creating a best practices protocol for patients spending more than 24 hours in the ED is greatly needed to improve the experience and safety of psychiatric boarding for both patients and ED staff members.

Organizational change is an initiative to transition from current state to a desired future state, where the initiatives can be either planned or unplanned based on the motivational factors. This study evaluates the impact of organizational characteristics and change management strategies adopted by facility management (FM) professionals to implement planned and unplanned changes due to internal as well as external factors. The implementation of new or innovative workplace strategies (flexible workspace) were considered as planned changes, whereas changes implemented at workplace as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic were considered as unplanned changes (e.g., remote working, safety protocols, etc.). The research team adopted a survey-based methodology to collect information on planned and unplanned change management experiences from FM professionals across the world. Through the help of an FM association, a total of 800+ responses were recorded from 60 different countries. Using machine learning algorithm, the research team was able to identify the impact of key organizational characteristics and change management strategies responsible for the successful planned or unplanned change initiatives. Most of the models were tested on 30% of the randomly selected data and recorded predictive accuracies as high as 85%.

Foreign aid is one of the most powerful tools at a singe state’s disposal. Economically, it can provide much needed support to the poorest of countries or those facing catastrophic conditions. Politically, it can strengthen the current government’s position and provide them with what they deem necessary to keeping their rule of law, whether they be democracies or autocracies. In addition to these effects, a donor state must also balance their own interests, which can sometimes conflict with a recipient. An alternative route that can potentially help a donor avoid such dilemmas is to divert funds through a multilateral organization instead, which can help donors avoid the need to go through another state government. Regardless of the method of disbursement though, the use of financial foreign aid has a tendency to produce effects that go far beyond its initial goal. This tendency is what this study seeks to examine. Within this context, this study seeks to empirically investigate the unintended impact that foreign aid may have on one of the world’s biggest human rights abuse: human trafficking. Human trafficking is a generations-old problem still in search of a solution. In two parts, I use an ordinal logistic regression to examine historical data in a post-Cold War era to determine the extent of foreign aid’s unintended impact on a crime yet undefined. In the first part, total financial foreign aid is examined for general impact. In the second part, financial foreign aid is split into its most common forms, bilateral aid and multilateral aid, to examine specific individualized impacts. Overall, my study reveals that there is indeed an impact on human trafficking, even though it had yet to be clearly defined at the time . In addition to that, bilateral aid experienced more statistical significance as compared to multilateral aid, suggesting that bilateral aid may have had a bigger part to play in the realm of human trafficking. The magnitude and type of relationship that foreign aid has with human trafficking appears to change over time. However, this study does have its limitations, which make the interpretation of the results a cautious act. With these facts in mind, policymakers are faced with a multi-faceted dilemma in need of fine-tuning.