Browsing by Author "Novak, David C."
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- Meeting state waste stream reduction mandates through recycling: examining residential waste disposal behavior in rural VirginiaNovak, David C. (Virginia Tech, 1995)Solid waste management has become an increasingly costly issue for localities throughout Virginia. The Commonwealth has established a state-mandated recycling rate of 25 percent to be achieved by July 31, 1995. The mandate, however, may not adequately consider the diversity of individual localities throughout the state. Some localities may have financial, technical, or physical difficulty in complying with the mandate. Rural localities in particular may have trouble complying with mandated rates of recycling, due to the high costs and physical difficulty of collecting, separating, transporting, and marketing recyclable waste products. The focus of local recycling efforts has typically been on minimizing recycling program costs. Little attention has been given to the household costs associated with various recycling tasks or programs, and how implicit household costs associated with recycling might affect residential participation levels. Local governments often set recycling goals or implement programs with little insight into the household costs of recycling. The household’s perception of the time, effort, inconvenience, and mess involved with recycling may influence participation levels, recovery rates, and the overall effectiveness of a program. This study examines and discusses the factors that influence the recycling behavior of rural residents. It also provides an indication as to the household perception of the implicit costs associated with various recycling tasks. Three separate recycling programs are examined to determine if household recycling behavior differs between counties, depending on the type of waste disposal and recycling system used in the county.
- A Methodology for Characterization and Performance Analysis of Connection-Based Network Access TechnologiesNovak, David C. (Virginia Tech, 2001-04-18)Network administration has become more difficult as the number of Internet users has grown and customer usage patterns have changed over time. Rapidly increasing subscriber bases, data intensive applications (such as streaming audio and video), heavy Web browsing, and large file downloads require significant resources and may tax existing network bandwidth. Reliability and quality of service are becoming serious issues for service providers across the country. Due to the dynamic nature of the information technology (IT) sector in general, it is difficult to predict future network usage patterns or what types of applications may be available, and how these applications may be used over time. This research presents a methodology to facilitate capacity planning and to improve the evaluation of network performance for connection-based networks using the Virginia Tech modem pool as a test bed. The abstract research question is can innovative business strategies be employed in lieu of, or in addition to, traditional management practices such as adding capacity in order to improve the performance of a dialup network? Examples of such strategies or business rules may include limiting the duration of an online session or limiting the number of times a given customer can dial into the pool in a specified time period. A complete network traffic characterization is conducted based on service time and interarrival time variables. A longitudinal analysis is performed to examine how traffic patterns have changed over time. Finally, a simulation model is utilized to examine how imposing different business rules during peak-periods of operation can reduce the blocking probability and improve the overall level-of-service. The potential contribution of this research appears to be significant based on the lack of existing literature.
- Recycling programs : attitudes, costs, and designsNovak, David C.; Alwang, Jeffrey R.; Shabman, Leonard A. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 1996)