Digital Commons Network^™

Who Really Said What? Mobile Historical Situated Documentary As Liminal Learning Space, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article explores the complexities and affordances of historical representation that arose in the process of designing a mobile augmented reality video game for teaching history. The process suggests opportunities to push the historical documentary form in new ways. Specifically, the article addresses the shifting liminal space between historical fiction narrative, and historical interactive documentary narrative. What happens when primary sources, available for examination are placed inside of a historically inspired narrative, one that hews closely to the events, but creates drama through dialogues between player and historical figure? In this relatively new field of interactive historical situated documentary, how …

Effects Of Transportation Hazards On High Barrier Flexible Packaging Films, Kyle Dunno

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Two flexible food packaging barrier material film structures were employed for this research study to evaluate the effects of over-the-road truck transport. The films containing different barrier materials, ethylene-vinyl alcohol (EVOH) or aluminum oxide (AlOx), were selected based on their abundant use within the flexible food packaging arena. Pouches were formed and filled with tomato paste before being thermally processed then palletized for shipment. Pouches were shipped over-the-road via truck transport a distance of 2,500 miles. After transport, the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) of the pouches located on the bottom and top layers of the palletized loads were obtained and …

Interpreting Typical Profi Le Of Transition Leaders – Case Croatia, Jasminka Samardzija

Presentations and other scholarship

The main goal of this empirical research was to define those crucial leadership characteristics and behaviours of experienced individuals that confirmed them as leaders in the Croatian transition economy, based on success of their entrepreneurial or social affirmations. The basic research question was: What is the empirical base for classifying leaders into homogeneous groups? Results of the general characteristics cluster analysis singled out three clusters Moderates, Internalists and Globalists. Inductive approach and supporting intermediate cluster analysis based on subjective dimension “career development expectations” aligned leaders from the sample in two homogenous groups: Leaders who seek self-actualisation and Leaders who seek …

Schemes And Sense: Teaching Creative Writing With Design In Mind, Ben Gunsberg

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This essay proposes a theoretical conception of design particularly suited for the creative writing classroom and suggests teaching strategies that enhance what I refer to as students’ design sense. Drawing upon the work of Francis Christensen, I highlight instructional approaches that reposition and reformat texts on the page such that the functional relationships between sentence elements are made more concrete and thus more comprehensible to students. I argue that by helping students see the subtle part-to-part and part-to-whole dynamics within sentences, creative writing teachers inspire students to move beyond their usual stylistic and syntactical tendencies.

What’S Creative About Creative Writing? Critical Pedagogy And Transversal Creativity, Erick Piller

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

As creative writing studies emerges as a field, scholars should interrogate the meanings and possibilities of creativity in the educational contexts of creative writing. This article draws from the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to propose the concept of transversal creativity, which emphasizes agency and self-invention through a realized meshing of discourses and identities—ways of speaking, writing, thinking, and being that cut across and run between established discourses and subject positions. Conceived in this light, creativity can bring critical pedagogy into the creative writing course.

Short-Term Retention Of Location-Identity Bindings For Complex Objects, Alexander Nalbandian

Theses

Knowing what is where is an essential and complex component of human perception. This ability refers to the concept of Situation Awareness (SA). The underlying mechanisms for this ability show parallels to the tracking of a set of identical objects moving on a screen, a theory known as Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) (Pylyshyn & Storm, 1988). This theory was useful for investigating the fundamental factors of visual tracking, but lacked a connection to real-world scenarios. In an attempt to bridge that gap, Oksama and Hyönä (2008) created the Model of Multiple Identity Tracking (MOMIT), which includes unique identities for each …

A Proposed Imaging System To Spatially And Temporally Monitor Unburned Hydrocarbons In Jet Engine Exhaust, Emily E. Berkson

Theses

The local air quality surrounding airports is significantly impacted by ground-based airplane operations, such as landing, taxiing, idling, and takeoff. In recent years, studies performed across the country revealed that people living near major airports suffer from increased cancer risks and higher likelihoods of developing respiratory issues. Jet engine emissions have been monitored extensively by direct probing of the exhaust, but there are currently no inexpensive, portable, and unobtrusive methods with which to study exhaust plume dynamics. This study assesses the feasibility of designing a multispectral imaging system to track the spatial-temporal nature of a jet engine plume. Ideally, the …

Isolation Of Pharmaceutical-Degrading Bacteria From Lake Sediments Associated With Wastewater Effluents, Noreen Anne Gallagher

Theses

Many wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are not properly equipped for the removal of various compounds, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), analgesics, and hormones. These compounds are continually discharged into surface waters, which has become an emerging issue for environmental and public health. Microorganisms in the natural environment may play a crucial role in ecosystem self-purification processes such as contaminant degradation. The aim of this research was to determine if there were microorganisms from water and sediment samples located near wastewater effluent outfalls in Central and Western New York capable of degrading ibuprofen, naproxen, acetaminophen, and 17β-estradiol, and if the degradation …

Harvesting A Sustainable Energy Future: Examining The Effect Of Chemical Composition On The Electromechanical Properties Of Polymer Gel Beads, Kaushik Kudtarkar

Theses

Clean energy is required to ensure global prosperity and economic growth. Increased industrialization is expected to increase energy demand by 50% by 2035. This will result in increased air pollution. Carbon dioxide emissions have been linked to global warming and other pollution related problems. These emissions can be reduced by recapturing the waste energy in the form of heat, vibration, and friction.

Common applications like transportation can lose as much as 78% of the energy they generate. Energy harvesters can be used to recapture energy lost through vibration, heat, etc. This recaptured energy will be reused and hence, we don’t …

Implementing Partial Blind Estimation Of Alamouti Space-Time Coding In Software-Defined Radios, Sai Gautham Peesapati

Theses

The aim of this thesis is to develop and study the performance of an algorithm to perform blind estimation of Alamouti space-time coding (STC) on Zedboard’s ARM core and FPGA, and propose improvements based on the collected data. In the first part, previous methods to accomplish blind estimation of Alamouti STC are presented, and a new method that is simple enough for hardware implementation is proposed. The system of linear equations in the final step of the proposed method is not mathematically solvable. Hence, in the next part, the thesis proposes a method to accomplish partial blind estimation of Alamouti …

Engineered Emitters For Improved Silicon Photovoltaics, Ronak A. Kamat

Theses

In 2014, installation of 5.3GW of new Photovoltaic (PV) systems occurred in the United States, raising the total installed capacity to 16.36GW. Strong growth is predicted for the domestic PV market with analysts reporting goals of 696GW by 2020. Conventional single crystalline silicon cells are the technology of choice, accounting for 90% of the installations in the global commercial market. Cells made of GaAs offer higher efficiencies, but at a substantially higher cost. Thin film technologies such as CIGS and CdTe compete favorably with multi-crystalline Si (u-Si), but at 20% efficiency, still lag the c-Si cell in performance.

The c-Si …

Implementation Of An Object-Oriented Life Cycle Assessment Framework Using Functional Analysis And Systems Engineering Principles, Shantanu Avinash Gadre

Theses

There has been a growing awareness about the environmental impacts of producing and consuming goods and services. Among the various tools that have been developed to better understand these impacts, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most commonly used tools to estimate the environmental effects of products and services. Given that a significant percentage of a product’s impacts are defined during the design and development, it is necessary to effectively integrate LCA into these early phases of the product lifecycle. However, the lack of standardized practices, complex modelling approaches, data and time requirements, special training requirements for designers, …

Survival Of Various Pathogenic Microorganisms In Surface Waters And Sediments In Western New York, Lorne Farovitch

Theses

In 2005-2006, 87% of all reported cases of disease outbreak in the United States related to recreational water use was caused by bacterial infections of the gastrointestinal tract. Several locations featuring recreational bodies of water in Western New York include: Durand Eastman Beach, Charlotte Beach, the Genesee River, Black Creek, Irondequoit Bay and Oatka Creek. Adequate monitoring of water quality is necessary due to contamination with pathogenic strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and enteric pathogens such as Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella typhimurium, and Shigella sonnei that can threaten the safety of swimming in these recreational waters. Except for P. aeruginosa, which …

Beyond The Surface: An Analysis On The Journalistic Reporting Of Native American Issues, Nicole Dorothy Irene Scott

Theses

This study analyzes the reporting of four issues that have impacted the Native American community. The research begins by addressing historical events that transformed Native American identity and have shaped the media’s representation of Native identity. Framing theory, muted group theory, and tribal critical race theory support this study, with framing theory focusing on examining the news discourse. This study seeks to identify how Native American issues are framed differently in Indian Country Today Media Network and the New York Times, and seeks to identify if the Native voice can be heard in articles written by Native journalists. The results …

The Effect(S) Of Media On The National Football League, Christian J. Bunce

Theses

Exemplification theory states that the sample is applied to the whole. This paper specifically look into how the media’s coverage of certain high-profile National Football League (NFL) cases may have created a negative perception about the NFL. Specifically, this paper will compare exemplars and the effects they have. The media play a large role in how players, leagues, and teams are perceived. However, our results do not support this idea. Both groups were asked the same questions, the questions were designed to gauge subject’s opinions of the NFL. After analysis, there was not a significant statistical difference in the responses …

A Methodology To Quantify Cumulative Damage Function (Cdf) For Integration Into An Object-Oriented Life Cycle Assessment (Lca), Devdatta Deo

Theses

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most widely used tools to determine the environmental impact of products and processes. One of the main concerns with LCA is the limited comparability of the results due to limitations in defining the functional unit. This affects goal and scope definition of the LCA studies. A result, an object-oriented framework for LCA that integrates functional analysis and systems engineering principles was developed. In this research a cumulative damage function (CDF) to quantify the life of components, subsystems and components was defined. However, the development of the methodology and underlying principles to develop …

Investigating Visual Differences Between Japanese And American Animation, Boyao Dai

Theses

This study looked at animation produced in the US and Japan, in order to discover the visual differences between the two. After sampling from four distinct animations of the US and Japan, over 300 screenshots were captured. A visual content analysis of the 300 screenshots was conducted, focusing on differences in character psychological status and environment rendering. Results revealed that Japanese animation contained at least three times more psychological depictions and used more subdued coloring than American animation. Lastly, using semiotic analysis, the findings from the content analysis were interpreted and potential reasons for the differences between the two animations …

Interracial Advertising: A Comparative Analysis On Youtube Comments On A Controversial Interracial Commercial, Jeannine Alsous

Theses

This paper examines online comments to an interracial family portrayed in two online commercials for Cheerios. The study focused on an in-depth review of literature of history, symbolic interaction theory, critical race theory and co-creation of value, followed by comparative content analysis of online comments and intercoder reliability test. Four-hundred total comments were analyzed; 100 positive from each commercial and 100 negative from each. The comments were chosen by a filtering method the social media site YouTube has to select and analyze the top and most popular comments from each. After collection, a comparative content analysis of the comments was …

Framing Of Skill Problems, Kirk M. Winans

Theses

More frequently since the Great Recession, various concerns about a “skills gap” have been raised by industry leaders and organizations, politicians, and some economists. The most basic definition of a “skills gap” is that the workforce does not possess the skills required by employers. The most prominent concerns have been with STEM education and “middle skills” occupations, those that require more than a high school diploma but less than a 4-year degree. However, the various causes and solutions to these issues are widespread. Much of the alarm has been stimulated by reports published by industry and trade organizations asserting specific …

Live-Action And Animated Disney Films: An Analysis Of Themes And Family Structures Over Time, Meghan Moran

Theses

The themes and family structures of Disney’s live-action and animated films have significantly changed over time. This study addressed the following research questions: 1) What are the thematic differences between live-action and animated Disney films? 2) What are the differences in family structure comparing live-action and animated Disney films? and 3) What are the differences between theme and family structure in relation to the film’s release date? A random sample of live-action and animated Disney films was content analyzed by theme and family structure. The results indicate that the majority of the films analyzed demonstrated the theme of growth and …

Putting Your Best Face Forward: A Critical Visual Analysis Of Gay Advertising Images And Self-Branding On Grindr, Gigina A. Giorgi

Theses

Advertising is used to sell a brand by depicting a lifestyle or persona that one aspires to attain. We brand ourselves, or self-brand, in accordance to how we want to be perceived by others and to convey a particular message. This study addresses the following research questions: 1) How are men presented in advertisements in gay orientated magazines? 2) How do gay men portray themselves in online dating profiles? 3) Is there a relationship between the portrayal of the male body in advertisements in Out and self-portrayal on online dating profiles? 4) What messages are gay men portraying on online …

A Small Step Forwards On The Erd˝Os-S´Os Problem Concerning The Ramsey Numbers R(3, K), Rujie Zhu, Xiaodong Xu, Stanislaw Radziszowski

Articles

Let ∆s = R(K3, Ks) − R(K3, Ks−1), where R(G, H) is the Ramsey number of graphs G and H defined as the smallest n such that any edge coloring of Kn with two colors contains G in the first color or H in the second color. In 1980, Erd˝os and S´os posed some questions about the growth of ∆s. The best known concrete bounds on ∆s are 3 ≤ ∆s ≤ s, and they have not been improved since the stating of the problem. In this paper we present some constructions, which imply in particular that R(K3, Ks) ≥ …

Implementation Of The Meshed Tree Algorithm On A Switched Network, Kuhu Sharma

Theses

Loop avoidance is a critical component of switched networks. Protocols like STP, RSTP, TRILL, etc solve this problem in different ways, but there is room for improvement. The Meshed Tree Protocol aims to improve the performance of switched networks while avoiding loops. In this research, a working model of the Meshed Tree Protocol (MTP) using OPNET was created. The performance of RSTP, the current industry standard, was examined and performance metrics like link failure convergence time and root failure convergence time were documented to create a baseline for further development of MTP.

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Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

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Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities (JSESD)

The Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities is a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal with an international focus on providing information on science education for students with varying types and levels of disabilities. We aspire to publish the best of theoretical research and practical application and we review articles by both special and general educators. Interesting topics have included innovative curricular ideas, instructional adaptations, research-based modifications, best practices, and management issues in science education.

Copyright Statement

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Publication rights to works is granted to Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities, however, full copyright for works published in this journal is retained by the author(s). The author(s) may post their works online in an institutional repository, on their University departmental website, or on their own personal websites

Radiometrically Accurate Thermal Vehicle Targets For Synthetic Video Development, David B. Rhodes

Theses

Collecting large scientific quality thermal infrared image and video data sets is an expensive time consuming endeavor. Thermal infrared imagers cost much more than comparable visible systems and require skilled experienced operators. Also, time and experienced personnel are required to collect quality ground truth. Often it is advantageous to perform computer simulations as an alternative to collecting image and video data with real camera systems. As long as enough physics is incorporated into the models to give accurately comparable results to real imagery, simulated data can be used interchangeably. Generating synthetic images and video has the added benefit of being …

Asset Protection In Escorting Using Multi-Robot Systems, Stephen Powers

Theses

Swarm robotics is a field dedicated to the study of the design and development of certain multi-robot systems. Often times, these groups prove to be more beneficial than a single complex robot as swarms typically provide a more robust and potentially more efficient solution. One such case is the task of escorting a specified target while addressing any potential threats discovered in the environment. In this work, a control algorithm for a high volume, decentralized, homogeneous robot swarm was developed based upon a technique commonly used to model incompressible fluids known as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).

This proposed solution to …

3d Subject-Atlas Image Registration For Micro-Computed Tomography Based Characterization Of Drug Delivery In The Murine Cochlea, Zhenlin Xu

Theses

A wide variety of hearing problems can potentially be treated with local drug delivery systems capable of delivering drugs directly to the cochlea over extended periods of time. Developing and testing such systems requires accurate quantification of drug concentration over time. A variety of techniques have been proposed for both direct and indirect measurement of drug pharmacokinetics; direct techniques are invasive, whereas many indirect techniques are imprecise because they rely on assumptions about the relationship between physiological response and drug concentrations. One indirect technique, however, is capable of quantifying drug pharmacokinetics very precisely: Micro-Computed tomography (micro-CT) can provide a non-invasive …

Design And Construction Of A Multispectral Camera For Spectral And Colorimetric Reproduction, Yixuan Wang

Theses

Multi-spectral imaging and spectral reflectance reconstruction can be used in cultural-heritage institutes to digitalize their collections for documentation purposes. It can be used to simulate artwork under any lighting condition, and to analyze colorants that were used. The basic idea of a multi-spectral imaging system is to sub-sample spectral reflectance factor, producing results similar to a spectrophotometer. The sampled data are used to reconstruct reflectance for the visible spectrum.

In this thesis, a wide band multispectral camera was designed and constructed to achieve high spectral and color accuracy as well as high image quality.

Noise propagation theory was introduced and …

Devops And The Future Of Sysadmin Education, Charles Border

Presentations and other scholarship

My thoughts on the future of education in system administration.