Digital Commons Network^™

From Text To Context: Literacy Practices Of Native Speakers Of Arabic In Arabic And English, Ghada Gherwash

Open Access Dissertations

Previous studies that looked at the written product of native speakers of Arabic in their second language (L2), English, have identified traces of Arabic rhetoric (L1), mainly Classical Arabic, in their writing (e.g., Atari, 1983; Kaplan, 1966; Ostler, 1987). These studies focused primarily on the L2-written texts, where the written product is used to make inferences about the rhetorical structures of the writers’ L1. The results from these studies portrayed the native-Arab writer’s text as highly influenced by Classical Arabic. This was evidenced by “foreign” rhetorical structures that Arab writers employ when producing texts in their L2 that are considered …

Design Of Elastic Metamaterials, Yu-Chi Su

Open Access Dissertations

This study focused on the design and fabrication of a double negativity and three broadband single negativity elastic metamaterials using a 3D printer. We investigated dispersion curves and dynamic material properties of the metamaterials. Negative phase velocity in the double negativity metamaterial was also demonstrated.

For metamaterials with single negativity, three types of broadband metamaterials were designed from parametric studies. A comparison showed that using frame bending/stretching mode is more effective than applying beam bending mode to broaden bandgap. Furthermore, it is found that adding internal resonant components could enlarge the bandgap. The single negativity metamaterials were validated by numerical …

Structural And Functional Studies Of The Papain-Like Protease 2 From Mouse Hepatitis Virus, Yafang Chen

Open Access Dissertations

Our goal is to establish a system to investigate how the deubiquitinating (DUB) and deISGylating activities of coronavirus (CoV) papain-like protease domains (PLPs) are involved in virus immune evasion. To this end, we chose PLP2 from mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) as our target of study because MHV has historically served as a model system for the study of CoVs, and it has undeniable advantage of ease in culturing in comparison to human coronaviruses.

It is reported here the expression and purification of a region of MHV nsp3 that contains the catalytic core of the PLP2 domain and its neighboring domains. …

Generalized Techniques For Using System Execution Traces To Support Software Performance Analysis, Thelge Manjula Peiris

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes generalized techniques to support software performance analysis using system execution traces in the absence of software development artifacts such as source code. The proposed techniques do not require modifications to the source code, or to the software binaries, for the purpose of software analysis (non-intrusive). The proposed techniques are also not tightly coupled to the architecture specific details of the system being analyzed. This dissertation extends the current techniques of using system execution traces to evaluate software performance properties, such as response times, service times. The dissertation also proposes a novel technique to auto-construct a dataflow model …

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on developing/calibrating remote sensing algorithms for water quality retrieval in Midwestern rivers and lakes. In the first part of this study, the spectral measurements collected using a hand-held spectrometer as well as water quality observations for the Wabash River and its tributary the Tippecanoe River in Indiana were used to develop empirical models for the retrieval of chlorophyll (chl) and total suspended solids (TSS). A method for removing sky and sun glint from field spectra for turbid inland waters was developed and tested. Empirical models were then developed using a subset of the field measurements with the …

Exploring The Role Of Feedback And Its Impact Within A Digital Badge System From Multiple Perspectives: A Case Study Of Preservice Teachers, Erin D. Besser

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the role feedback plays within the instructional process, and how students are using feedback to inform their course work within Digital Badge contexts. Educators are looking toward Digital Badges as a way to increase student engagement (Abramovich et al., 2013; Glover & Latif, 2013), develop mastery with critical concepts (Mehta et al., 2013), and reduce gaps in student knowledge (Bowen & Thomas, 2014; Guskey, 2007). Feedback is emphasized as a critical component (Bloom, 1968, 1976; Guskey, 2007; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Slavin & Karweit, 1984). Instructors need to be able …

A Consensus On The Definition And Knowledge Base For Computer Graphics, Michael Alden Roller

Open Access Dissertations

Despite several decades of historical innovation, measurable impacts, and multiple specializations the existing knowledge base for Computer Graphics (CG) lacks consensus, and numerous definitions for it have been published based on distinct contexts. Disagreement among post-secondary academics has divided CG programs into three contextual areas that emphasize different topics. This division has resulted in the decontextualization of CG education, and CG programs now face several challenges in meeting the needs of industry. Employing the Delphi Method, this investigation explored the perceptions among post-secondary educators and industry professionals about the definition of CG and how it is identified in terms of …

Optimal "Big Data" Aggregation Systems - From Theory To Practical Application, William J. Culhane Iv

Open Access Dissertations

The integration of computers into many facets of our lives has made the collection and storage of staggering amounts of data feasible. However, the data on its own is not so useful to us as the analysis and manipulation which allows manageable descriptive information to be extracted. New tools to extract this information from ever growing repositories of data are required.

Some of these analyses can take the form of a two phase problem which is easily distributed to take advantage of available computing power. The first phase involves computing some descriptive partial result from some subset of the original …

Partition Density Functional Theory, Jonathan R. Nafziger

Open Access Dissertations

Partition density functional theory (PDFT) is a method for dividing a molecular electronic structure calculation into fragment calculations. The molecular density and energy corresponding to Kohn Sham density-functional theory (KS-DFT) may be exactly recovered from these fragments. Each fragment acts as an isolated system except for the influence of a global one-body 'partition' potential which deforms the fragment densities. In this work, the developments of PDFT are put into the context of other fragment-based density functional methods. We developed three numerical implementations of PDFT: One within the NWChem computational chemistry package using basis sets, and the other two developed from …

The Law And The Lady: Consent And Marriage In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Heather Lea Nelson

Open Access Dissertations

While many scholars have written on women and marriage in nineteenth-century British history and fiction, this dissertation, The Law and the Lady: Consent and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, is the first to apply consent theory to those unions. Modern consent theory dictates that for individuals to consent, they must be autonomous, capable, educated, mature, and volunteering, and they must express consent with opportunities to retract those expressions. This dissertation asserts that because nineteenth-century British women usually lacked these components, their marital consent was partial, illegitimate, or absent. Fiction frequently equivocated about this social problem of contemporary female marital consent. …

Wireless Chemical Sensing Schemes Using Environmentally Sensitive Hydrogels, Jun Hyeong Park

Open Access Dissertations

In situ sensing of chemical parameters such as pH, glucose, enzymes, and other analytes is of immense importance in health care and environmental monitoring. There has been considerable research in this area using hydrogels as a chemo-mechanical transducer. Hydrogels are water-swollen polymers containing chemical groups that are sensitive to environmental stimuli. When there is a chemical change, e.g. alkali to acidic pH, hydrogel swells or shrinks. This reversible volume change can be coupled to capacitive, inductive or other sensing mechanisms. Despite many years of research, hydrogel-based sensors have not been of practical utility. This has been due to several reasons …

Freezing-Induced Deformation Of Biomaterials In Cryomedicine, Altug Ozcelikkale

Open Access Dissertations

Cryomedicine utilizes low temperature treatments of biological proteins, cells and tissues for cryopreservation, materials processing and cryotherapy. Lack of proper understanding of cryodamage that occurs during these applications remains to be the primary bottleneck for development of successful tissue cryopreservation and cryosurgery procedures. An engineering approach based on a view of biological systems as functional biomaterials can help identify, predict and control the primary cryodamage mechanisms by developing an understanding of underlying freezing-induced biophysical processes. In particular, freezing constitutes the main structural/mechanical origin of cryodamage and results in significant deformation of biomaterials at multiple length scales. Understanding of these freezing-induced …

Optimizing The Neural Response To Electrical Stimulation And Exploring New Applications Of Neurostimulation, Kurt Yuqin Qing

Open Access Dissertations

Electrical stimulation has been successful in treating patients who suffer from neurologic and neuropsychiatric disorders that are resistant to standard treatments. For deep brain stimulation (DBS), its official approved use has been limited to mainly motor disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and essential tremor. Alcohol use disorder, and addictive disorders in general, is a prevalent condition that is difficult to treat long-term. To determine whether DBS can reduce alcohol drinking in animals, voluntary alcohol consumption of alcohol-preferring rats before, during, and after stimulation of the nucleus accumbens shell were compared. Intake levels in the low stimulus intensity group (n=3, 100&mgr;A …

Foucault, Kant, Deleuze, And The Problem Of Political Agency, Christopher S. Penfield

Open Access Dissertations

Political agency concerns the transformation of the conditions of social organization through collective action. In order to treat the set of necessary conditions for such agency, I develop a detailed reconstruction of Michel Foucault's political philosophy, placed in relation to the work of Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze. I argue that the key to Foucault's political thought is contained in two crucial but neglected concepts, verticality andtransversality, and that the systematic exposition of these concepts yields an account of what must obtain for political agency to be possible, realizable, and sustainable.

Rural Schools: Leveraging Resources Through School District Collaboration, Amy Marie Rauch

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the process of school district collaboration that ensued in four mostly rural school districts in Indiana, following a study conducted by an external university group. The purpose of the study was to explore and present ways that the school districts could work together to share resources. The superintendent and school board members for each participating school district commissioned the study and led the subsequent collaboration process. The university study investigated ways that the four districts could cooperate to better serve students, including considering consolidation if compelling reasons were found indicating that …

The Effect Of Macromolecular Crowding On The Structure Of The Protein Complex Superoxide Dismutase, Ajith Rathnaweera Rajapaksha Mudalige

Open Access Dissertations

Biological environments contain between 7 - 40% macromolecules by volume. This reduces the available volume for macromolecules and elevates the osmotic pressure relative to pure water. Consequently, biological macromolecules in their native environments tend to adopt more compact and dehydrated conformations than those in vitro. This effect is referred to as macromolecular crowding and constitutes an important physical difference between native biological environments and the simple solutions in which biomolecules are usually studied.^ We used small angle scattering (SAS) to measure the effects of macromolecular crowding on the size of a protein complex, superoxide dismutase (SOD). Crowding was induced using …

The Role Of Death-Associated Protein Kinase In Endothelial Apoptosis Under Fluid Shear Stress, Keith R. Rennier

Open Access Dissertations

Endothelial cells are the interface between hemodynamic fluid flow and vascular tissue contact. They actively translate physical and chemical stimuli into intracellular signaling cascades which in turn regulate cell function, and endothelial dysfunction leads to inflammation and diseased conditions. For example, atherosclerosis, a chronic vascular disease, favorably develops in regions of disturbed fluid flow and low shear stress. Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, must be properly regulated to maintain homeostasis in the vascular wall. The loss of apoptosis control, as seen in low shear stress regions, is implicated in various diseases such as atherosclerosis and cancer. Death-associated protein kinase, DAPK …

Overcoming Uncertainty For Within-Network Relational Machine Learning, Joseph J. Pfeiffer

Open Access Dissertations

People increasingly communicate through email and social networks to maintain friendships and conduct business, as well as share online content such as pictures, videos and products. Relational machine learning (RML) utilizes a set of observed attributes and network structure to predict corresponding labels for items; for example, to predict individuals engaged in securities fraud, we can utilize phone calls and workplace information to make joint predictions over the individuals. However, in large scale and partially observed network domains, missing labels and edges can significantly impact standard relational machine learning methods by introducing bias into the learning and inference processes. In …

Ergodic Properties Of Countable Extensions, Samuel Joshua Roth

Open Access Dissertations

First, we study countably piecewise continuous, piecewise monotone interval maps. We establish a necessary and sufficient criterion for the existence of a non-decreasing semiconjugacy to an interval map of constant slope in terms of the existence of an eigenvector of an operator acting on a space of measures. Then we give examples, both Markov and non-Markov, for which the criterion is violated. ^ Next, we establish a criterion for the existence of a constant slope map on the extended real line conjugate to a given countably piecewise monotone interval map. We require the given interval map to be continuous, Markov, …

Effects Of Temperature And Pollinator Availability On Plant Reproductive Success In The Indiana Spring Ephemeral Community, Asya Robertshaw

Open Access Dissertations

Temperature is a key driver of phenology in both plants and insects, and even small changes in temperature can impact the reproductive success of insect-pollinated plants by influencing access to pollinator services. While it is well-established that temperature variation directly impacts the flowering phenology of many plant species, the mechanisms by which it ultimately influences seed production via the pollinator community are not well understood. Climate change has the potential to disrupt the temporal synchrony between plants and their primary pollinators, especially if the two rely on different seasonal cues for the timing of their life history events. If the …

How Do Moroccan Teachers Conceptualize Citizenship?, Tarik Saadi

Open Access Dissertations

Citizenship education plays a critical role in the development of civic attitudes and contributes to the appropriate delivery of a government's policy. However, there is a discrepancy in the literature in defining the meaning and understanding of citizenship concepts. This study is primarily qualitative in nature, using the method of phenomengraphy to investigate teachers' perceptions of citizenship in Morocco. The study recruited six elementary and secondary teachers from Casablanca and Rabat in Morocco to identify their understanding of citizenship. I adapted the three-phase interview approach proposed by Irving Seidman (1998) to frame the interviews with the teachers. The findings demonstrated …

Genetic, Agronomic And Compositional Characterization Of Brown Midrib Sweet Sorghum Lignocellulosic Biomass For Ethanol Production, Luis A. Rivera Burgos

Open Access Dissertations

Sorghum is a promising bioenergy crop due to its unique phenotypic and genotypic attributes. Quality (low lignin and high stem sugar concentration) and quantity (biomass yield, plant height, plant maturity, etc.) biomass traits are key contributors to ethanol yield and production. In this study, a 236 sorghum recombinant inbred line (RIL) population was subjected to genetic, agronomic and compositional characterization for ethanol yield and production. We found that the sweet mutation enhances biomass quantity traits in the RILs which translates to higher ethanol production and biomass quality which improves ethanol yield. The variance components showed from moderate to high heritability …

Architectural Techniques To Extend Multi-Core Performance Scaling, Hamza Bin Sohail

Open Access Dissertations

Multi-cores have successfully delivered performance improvements over the past decade; however, they now face problems on two fronts: power and off-chip memory bandwidth. Dennard's scaling is effectively coming to an end which has lead to a gradual increase in chip power dissipation. In addition, sustaining off-chip memory bandwidth has become harder due to the limited space for pins on the die and greater current needed to drive the increasing load . My thesis focuses on techniques to address the power and off-chip memory bandwidth challenges in order to avoid the premature end of the multi-core era. ^ In the first …

Stability Of Machine Learning Algorithms, Wei Sun

Open Access Dissertations

In the literature, the predictive accuracy is often the primary criterion for evaluating a learning algorithm. In this thesis, I will introduce novel concepts of stability into the machine learning community. A learning algorithm is said to be stable if it produces consistent predictions with respect to small perturbation of training samples. Stability is an important aspect of a learning procedure because unstable predictions can potentially reduce users' trust in the system and also harm the reproducibility of scientific conclusions. As a prototypical example, stability of the classification procedure will be discussed extensively. In particular, I will present two new …

Automated Segmentation, Detection And Fitting Of Piping Elements From Terrestrial Lidar Data, Yun-Ting Su

Open Access Dissertations

Since the invention of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) in the early 1960s, it has been adopted for use in numerous applications, from topographical mapping with airborne LIDAR platforms to surveying of urban sites with terrestrial LIDAR systems. Static terrestrial LIDAR has become an especially effective tool for surveying, in some cases replacing traditional techniques such as electronic total stations and GPS methods. Current state-of-the-art LIDAR scanners have very fine spatial resolution, generating precise 3D point cloud data with millimeter accuracy. Therefore, LIDAR data can provide 3D details of a scene with an unprecedented level of details. However, automated exploitation …

Canvas Politics: Norman Lewis And The Art Of Abstract Resistance, Mindy H.M Tan

Open Access Dissertations

Norman Lewis (1909-1979) is best remembered, perhaps erroneously, as the first African American Abstract Expressionist. In this dissertation, I argue that he is better suited as a Social Abstractionist and an Abstract Allusionist based on the life he lived, the work he produced, and his involvement in both black art and the Abstract Expressionist movement. ^ I begin by presenting a comprehensive overview of Lewis' biography and oeuvre. Painting from the 1930s to the late 1970s, his aesthetic sensibilities can be categorized into three distinct phases: 1) in the 1930s, answering to the call for a new presentation of the …

Understanding How Adults Approach Technological Challenges: A Sequential Mixed Methods Research, Mariana Tafur Arciniegas

Open Access Dissertations

People from all backgrounds engage with technology in their everyday lives. There is, however, a gap in the public's understanding of technology and limited research on how engineers and non-engineers approach technological challenges. Prior studies have focused on the public's understanding of technology but limited research has been conducted on how people deal with technological challenges as part of their everyday lives. Studying how individuals with non-STEM backgrounds engage with technology will contribute a more comprehensive understanding of strategies for closing the technological literacy gap. Taking into account that technology developments rapidly occur, lifelong learning skills are another critical dimension …

Nurturing Transitions: Housewife Organizations In (Colonial) Indonesia, 1900-1972, Liberty P. Sproat

Open Access Dissertations

From 1900-1972, housewife organizations in the Netherlands Indies and Indonesia assisted the population of the archipelago in adapting to the political upheaval that attended Indonesia's national liberation from the Netherlands. Under the Ethical Policy (1900-1942), the Association of Housewives sought to "uplift" indigenous society in the Netherlands Indies through teaching women household management skills including proper sanitation, hygiene, and food preservation methods. Through educational and social welfare initiatives, Dutch housewives maintained the Netherlands' control over the territory while promoting Dutch development efforts. At the same time, the Indonesian women's movement aligned with the Indonesian nationalist movement, as exemplified in the …

Privacy-Preserving Social Network Analysis, Christine Marie Task

Open Access Dissertations

Data privacy in social networks is a growing concern that threatens to limit access to important information contained in these data structures. Analysis of the graph structure of social networks can provide valuable information for revenue generation and social science research, but unfortunately, ensuring this analysis does not violate individual privacy is difficult. Simply removing obvious identifiers from graphs or even releasing only aggregate results of analysis may not provide sufficient protection. Differential privacy is an alternative privacy model, popular in data-mining over tabular data, that uses noise to obscure individuals' contributions to aggregate results and offers a strong mathematical …

The Pathological Role Of Acrolein In Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis And Multiple Sclerosis, Melissa A. Tully

Open Access Dissertations

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune demyelinating neuropathy that affects nearly 2.5 million people worldwide. Despite substantial efforts, few treatments are currently available largely due to limited knowledge of pathogenic mechanisms underlying the disease. The immune-inflammatory nature of the pathology has prompted investigation of the role of oxidative stress in disease development and progression; however targeting reactive oxygen species for neutralization has had marginal success therapeutically, suggesting that an alternate oxidative stress-related target would prove beneficial. Recently, our lab has implicated acrolein, a highly reactive aldehyde that is both a byproduct and catalyst of lipid peroxidation, as a potential therapeutic …