Digital Commons Network^™

Bridging The Gap Between Fun And Fitness: Instructional Techniques And Real-World Applications For Full-Body Dance Games, Emiko Charbonneau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Full-body controlled games offer the opportunity for not only entertainment, but education and exercise as well. Refined gameplay mechanics and content can boost intrinsic motivation and keep people playing over a long period of time, which is desirable for individuals who struggle with maintaining a regular exercise program. Within this gameplay genre, dance rhythm games have proven to be popular with game console owners. Yet, while other types of games utilize story mechanics that keep players engaged for dozens of hours, motion-controlled dance games are just beginning to incorporate these elements. In addition, this control scheme is still young, only …

Virtual Interactions With Real-Agents For Sustainable Natural Resource Management, Tyler Pierce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Common pool resource management systems are complex to manage due to the absence of a clear understanding of the effects of users’ behavioral characteristics. Non-cooperative decision making based on individual rationality (as opposed to group rationality) and a tendency to free ride due to lack of trust and information about other users’ behavior creates externalities and can lead to tragedy of the commons without intervention by a regulator. Nevertheless, even regulatory institutions often fail to sustain natural common pool resources in the absence of clear understanding of the responses of multiple heterogeneous decision makers to different regulation schemes. While modeling …

Economic Valuation Of Florida Sea Turtles In Face Of Sea Level Rise, Ahmed Hamed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sea level rise (SLR) is posing a great risk of flooding and inundation to coastal areas in Florida. Some coastal nesting species, including sea turtle species, have experienced diminished habitat from SLR. In an effort to assess the economic and ecosystem service loss to coastal areas with respect to sea turtles Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) and Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) were used. The CVM was used to measure the economic impacts of SLR on sea turtles. Open-ended and dichotomous choice CVM was used to obtain the willingness to pay (WTP) values of Florida residents to implement certain mitigation strategies which …

Mathematical Modeling And Analysis Of Asthma Stability And Severity, Arezoo Hanifi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Asthma is one of the most common chronic conditions in the United States. Asthma affects about one in fifteen people. It affects children more than adults and blacks more than whites. People with asthma experience attacks of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and coughing. Asthma can be fatal and the costs for the disease (direct and indirect) are approximated to be tens of billions of dollars each year.

There is no cure for asthma. However; for most people if asthma is controlled well they can lead normal, active lives. Therefore asthma controllability is a main factor in clinical practice. In order …

Accelerated Life Model With Various Types Of Censored Data, Kathryn Pridemore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Accelerated Life Model is one of the most commonly used tools in the analysis of survival data which are frequently encountered in medical research and reliability studies. In these types of studies we often deal with complicated data sets for which we cannot observe the complete data set in practical situations due to censoring. Such difficulties are particularly apparent by the fact that there is little work in statistical literature on the Accelerated Life Model for complicated types of censored data sets, such as doubly censored data, interval censored data, and partly interval censored data. In this work, we …

Two Methodologies: How Well Can Universities Predict Retention, Tiffany Lynette Gregory

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Student retention has been a long standing focus in higher education research with one of the earliest work dating back to 1937. Many researchers have proposed factors that affect a student's decision to depart from the university without successfully completing a degree. It is important to not only research different attributes and characteristics that affect student departure but it is also important to study different statistical methodologies. With the advancement in technology, new methodologies such as the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) have proven to yield significant results in a variety of research fields. As these new statistical methodologies emerge, …