Digital Commons Network^™

Zaytouna: Rooted Histories In Uprooted Memories, Naima M. Almajdobah

Theses and Dissertations

Palestinians, whether living under occupation or—like myself—in the diaspora, experience a complex journey of displacement and dispossession stemming from the Nakba of 1948. This reality shapes our collective identity, rooted in our connection to our homeland.

Zaytouna explores an under-researched topic: the relationship between the olive tree and uprooted Palestinians. It reveals a rich tapestry of narratives that encompass the quintessential and everlasting relationship between a land and its people. The resulting interactive archival installation consists of two parts: audio recordings from Palestinians in the diaspora, which capture their memories and voices; and visuals, which represent the storytellers’ places of …

Morphological Network: Network With Morphological Neurons., Ranjan Mondal Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Image processing with traditional approaches mainly use the tools of linear systems. However, linear approaches are not well suited and may even fail to solve problems involving geometrical aspects of the image. Thus, nonlinear geometric approaches like morphological operations are very popular in those cases. Morphological operations are nonlinear operations based on a set and lattice-theoretic methodology for image analysis that are capable of describing the geometrical structure of image objects quantitatively. It is suitable for various problems in image processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition. While solving problems with morphology, a particular structuring element is defined. Structuring elements have …

Geographies Of Resistance: Interpreting Blank Spaces And Locating Marronage On Imperial Maps Of Colonial Jamaica, Patrick J. Nichols

History Dissertations

European imperialism in the Americas was predicated on violent regimes of indigenous genocide, transatlantic enslavement, and environmental exploitation. Conquest of pre-contact indigenous societies in the New World intended to secure possession of valuable reserves of natural resources, like the gold and silver mines of colonial Mexico and Peru. European empires commissioned maps of these territories to generate and shape knowledge. Maps are the product of specific social and political frameworks and are informed by the priorities and preoccupations of empires. What they represent or omit reveals much about the colonial regimes that were imposed on the landscapes of the Americas. …

Assistive Technologies For Independent Navigation For People With Blindness, Howard Kaplan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The necessity for individuals to navigate from location to location is essential to daily life. The majority of humans use sight as the main source for determining how to move through their environment. However, there is a large population of people who are either blind or living with low vision. Based on a 2017 National Health Survey there are around 27 million adult Americans that have experienced vision loss (National Center for Health Statistics, 2017). According to the Eye Diseases Prevalence Research Group there are 3.4 million Americans 40 years and older that are legally blind or visually impaired (EDPRG, …

Centripetal, Hannah Rugh Nichols

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Born and raised in Seattle Washington in the Pacific Northwest, I have always had a deep appreciation for the outdoors. This love of the natural landscape has been cultivated and encouraged by my family over the years as I have grown up and explored further and further away from home.

My 35mm black and white photographic work explores distance and intimacy, both physical and emotional. I am drawn to the vastness of the Colorado mountains, the light on the back of my sister’s hair, small faraway figures hidden in the Paris landscape, and the tiny hairs on a cactus plant. …

Silencing Taíno Voices: Narrating Colonial And Imperial Occupations Of Quisqueya Through Mapping, Genesis Medina

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Some Topics In Leavitt Path Algebras And Their Generalizations., Mohan R. Dr.

Doctoral Theses

The purpose of this section is to motivate the historical development of Leavitt algebras, Leavitt path algebras and their various generalizations and thus provide a context for this thesis. There are two historical threads which resulted in the definition of Leavitt path algebras. The first one is about the realization problem for von Neumann regular rings and the second one is about studying algebraic analogs of graph C ∗ -algebras. In what follows we briefly survey these threads and also introduce important concepts and terminology which will recur throughout.

Quantum Markov Maps: Structureand Asymptotics., Vijaya Kumar U. Dr.

Doctoral Theses

No abstract provided.

Some Topics Involving Derived Categories Over Noetherian Formal Schemes., Saurabh Singh Dr.

Doctoral Theses

There are two parts to this thesis and both the parts involve working with derived categories over noetherian formal schemes. Beyond this there is no overlap between them and we discuss them separately.The first part concerns Grothendieck duality on noetherian formal schemes.Grothendieck duality is a vast generalisation of Serreduality in algebraic geometry. The main statements in this theory are expressed in the language of derived categories. We begin with an important special case.Let f : X → Y be a proper map of noetherian schemes which is smooth of relative dimension n. For any G ∈ D+ qc(Y ) (where …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Preventable Hospitalization Among Type 2 Diabetes Patients In Kentucky Before And After Medicaid Expansion 2010-2017., Turky Jamil Arbaein

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objectives: 1) Analyze county level variation in T2DM-PH rates in Kentucky before ACA (2010-2013) and after the ACA (2014-2017). 2) Analyze the relationship between county level socioeconomic factors (income per capita, percentage of uninsured people, percent of urban population, primary care and general preventive offices, population aged 65 and above, median age, household income, percentage in poverty, and unemployment rate ) and county level T2DM-PH rates before (2010-2013) and after (2014-2017) ACA implementation in Kentucky. Method: This research was conducted in two phases: Phase one of this study estimated the county-level PH variation among T2DM patients across eight years (2010-2017), …

Higher Chow Cycles On The Jacobian Of Curves., Subham Sarkar Dr.

Doctoral Theses

The following formula, usually called Beilinson’s formula — though independently due to Deligne as well — describes the motivic cohomology group of a smooth projective variety X over a number field as the group of extensions in a conjectured abelian category of mixed motives, MMQ.The aim of this thesis is to describe this construction in the case of the motivic cohomology group of the Jacobian of a curve. The first work in this direction is due to Harris [Har83] and Pulte [Pul88], [Hai87]. They showed that the Abel-Jacobi image of the modified diagonal cycle on the triple product of a …

An Open Bag, Matilde Benmayor

Theses and Dissertations

What do we take with us? How much space should we leave in the bag for what we might find? This paper is a journey from under the rug and onto the pavement. Sowing spiderweb maps I try to make a new city my own.

Use Of Gis Spatial Analysis, Remote Sensing, And Unmanned Aerial Systems In Determining The Susceptibility To Wildfires In Barber County, Kansas, Kara Sill

Master's Theses

Wildfires are becoming more frequent each year not only in the United States, but throughout the world. Barber County, Kansas experienced a devastating wildfire in March 2016, and continues to be at risk of wildfires during the fire season months. This study involved creating a functional GIS Database with layers corresponding to communication, transportation, and infrastructure throughout the county. This will allow responders and officials to have one unified reference space, which will facilitate communication and navigation. Within the ArcGIS environment, route maps can be created to show potential routes and quickest drive time to the scene of the emergency. …

Merecemos Saber/ We Deserve To Know, Erika Arreola

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Safe Ag Safe Schools, a coalition of 50-plus organizations works with the community to reduce pesticide exposure in Monterey County. Although pesticides are used to kill and repel pests, pesticides put human health at risk. Despite the efforts addressing pesticides issues, Spanish speaking individuals are unaware of what those issues are. Merecemos Saber/ We Deserve to Know is an educational intervention aimed to increase Spanish speaking individuals’ knowledge and awareness about pesticide issues. This project included an educational intervention, mapping of expected pesticide applications near Greenfield schools, and a presentation conducted at the Community Forum on Pesticides in Greenfield City …

Learning The Spatial Layout Of A New Real-World Environment, Delaney Spencer

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Cognitive maps are mental representations of the configuration of landmarks from an environment (Tolman, 1948; O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978). Broad individual differences in the accuracy of cognitive maps exist, however, it is not yet clear what underlies these differences (Weisberg et al., 2013). In the current study, participants first completed a spatial perceptive-taking task called the Spatial Orientation Test (SOT; Hegarty & Waller, 2004). They then were taken on a guided walking tour of an unfamiliar area of campus where they were asked to remember the names and locations of eight target landmarks. Participants’ ability to create a cognitive map …

Relational Aesthetics: Creativity In The Inter-Human Sphere, Carl Patow

Theses and Dissertations

RELATIONAL AESTHETICS: CREATIVITY IN THE INTER-HUMAN SPHERE

By Carl Patow, MD, MPH, MBA

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Fine Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019.

Major Director: Pamela Taylor Turner, Associate Professor, Kinetic Imaging, VCU Arts

Relational Art was first described as an art movement in Nicolas Bourriaud’s catalogue for the exhibition Traffic in 1995, and in an eponymous book in 1998. He observed that contemporary artists were shifting the focus of their work away from creating objects of spectacle to interaction with viewers through dialogue. Examination of a sample …

Mapping Los Angeles: Spatial Representations Of The Margin In Fiction, Anna Barattin

English Dissertations

The geocentric study of literature has often been fixed with canonical western texts. New approaches to spatial literary interpretations, however, invite the incorporation of marginality in the study of fiction, suggesting that the margin is a necessary component of the whole, thus challenging physical and metaphorical notions of centrality. Mapping Los Angeles: Spatial Representations of the Margin in Fiction examines four Los Angeles novels that in different ways establish the social significance of concepts such as place, location, landscape, architecture, environment, home, city, region, territory, and geography. This dissertation argues that a localized understanding of the urban literary model can …

Adaptive Meshfree Methods For Partial Differential Equations, Jaeyoun Oh

Dissertations

There are many types of adaptive methods that have been developed with different algorithm schemes and definitions for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDE). Adaptive methods have been developed in mesh-based methods, and in recent years, they have been extended by using meshfree methods, such as the Radial Basis Function (RBF) collocation method and the Method of Fundamental Solutions (MFS). The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce an adaptive algorithm with a residual type of error estimator which has not been found in the literature for the adaptive MFS. Some modifications have been made in developing the algorithm schemes depending …

Lamps, Maps, Mud-Machines, And Signal Flags: Science, Technology, And Commerce In The Early United States, James Russell Risk

Theses and Dissertations

As the United States looked forward to its future as an independent nation at the end of the eighteenth century, many saw commerce as a way to secure the nation’s future. American commerce, however, was plagued by a number of commercial problems. Solving these commercial problems facilitated an interest in science and the practical arts as engineers, inventors, mechanics, public officials, and everyday tinkerers innovated new apparatuses to preserve, promote, and protect American commerce. Many of America’s commercial problems in the early nineteenth century, however, resulted from the young nation’s varied geography and environments. Combating the environment’s unrelenting forces often …

Gis Mapping For Peace Corps, Jeremy Huey

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

International volunteerism programs, such as the Peace Corps, find interested, educated men and women to live abroad in order to help local communities in need of assistance. The goal of this project is to create maps intended to enhance the training of those volunteers. When volunteers leave training programs and head to their prospective service communities, a certain period of time is needed in order to obtain a full grasp of the terrain, boundaries, weather, climate etc. A more effective training program, which incorporates maps of regional climates, environments, landscapes, cultures and resources, will lead to more effective volunteerism. By …

Mapped: Intersections Of Cartography And Painting, Brian Robert Neils Strigel

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Mapped: Intersections of Cartography and Painting explores the role of representation in art and how we, as people, communicate through visual language. More fundamentally, my paintings ask at what point does an abstract painting become a map, and what structures and conventions do we use in cartography that appear in abstract painting? Is a map a painting or is it a functional object? The map is a fundamentally flat, abstract object to which we assign practical meaning. Details are only considered if they are necessary for travel or displaying …

Claudio Perna, Ca. 1970: The Impossibility Of Wholeness, Silvia Benedetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis identifies two main themes in Claudio Perna’s (1938–1997) work: his use of technology to explore self-representation and his interrogation of mapping as means of knowledge. This study also situates Perna’s conceptual work in relation to his field of human geography, in the specific Venezuelan context.

Euler Class Groups Of Polynomial And Sub Integral Extensions Of A Noetherian Ring., Md. Ali Zinna Dr.

Doctoral Theses

ObjectiveThe main objectives of this thesis are the following:(i) To investigate the behaviour of the Euler class groups under integral and subintegral extensions. More precisely, given a subintegral (or integral) extension R+ S of Noetherian rings, we are interested in finding out the relationship between the Euler class group of R and the Euler class group of S.(ii) To develop a theory (namely, an extension of the theory of Euler class group to the Euler class group of R[T) relative to a projective R[T|-module L of rank 1) in order to detect the precise obstruction for a projective R[T]-module P …

Investigating A Cartographic Niche: Drawing Maps For Historians, Kate Blackmer

Masters Theses

Drawing maps for historians involves a number of distinct challenges. The historical cartographer must grapple not only with geological changes over time, but geographical ones, from human-cultural to physical, and from political to spatial. Original manuscripts must be read with close attention toward extracting geographical data, map sources must be vetted, and design challenges must be resolved. Furthermore, many of the antiquarian sources that are used to create current-day maps of historical times have unique scales, projections, and senses of place—all of which present complications that need to be overcome when creating historically based maps for publication. This thesis describes …

Visualizing Population Density Based On Wifi Router Location And Network Usage, Tyler Deitz

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

This research paper introduces a prototype of a feature for Robert E. Kennedy’s maps web application. The feature visualizes population density based off wifi router location and network usage within the building. The significance of the feature is noted by documenting the library’s transition into a hub for student life and campus culture, which increases the space’s occupancy and visitor retention for a longer time. The feature is based off a Voronoi diagram map distribution which strongly affects its technical and visual implementation. The end product is user tested by Cal Poly students and received a 93.5% satisfaction rate.

Generic Constructions Of Different Cryptographic Primitives Over Various Public Key Paradigms., Sumit Kumar Pandey Dr.

Doctoral Theses

In this thesis, we study the generic construction of some cryptographic primitives over various public key paradigms like traditional Public Key Cryptosystems and Identity Based Cryptosystems. It can be broadly divided into two categories1. Generic construction of some highly secure cryptographic primitives from less secure cryptographic primitives, and2. Generic construction of some complex cryptographic primitives from basic cryptographic primitives. Mathematical tools provide a way to achieve cryptographic functionality like confidentiality, authentication, data-integrity, non-repudiation etc., but in the case of complex cryptographic functionality like achieving confidentiality and authentication at the same time or confidentiality, authentication and non-repudiation at the same time …

Some Conjugacy Problems In Algebraic Groups., Anirban Bose Dr.

Doctoral Theses

In this thesis we address two problems related to the study of algebraic groups and Lie groups. The first one deals with computation of an invariant called the genus number of a connected reductive algebraic group over an algebraically closed field and that of a compact connected Lie group. The second problem is about characterisation of real elements in exceptional groups of type F4 defined over an arbitrary field. Let G be a connected reductive algebraic group over an algebraically closed field or a compact connected Lie group. Let ZG(x) denote the centralizer of x ∈ G. Define the genus …

K-Theory Of Quadratic Modules: A Study Of Roy's Elementary Orthogonal Group., A. A. Ambily Dr.

Doctoral Theses

This thesis discusses the K-theory of quadratic modules by studying Roys elementary orthogonal group of the quadratic space Q1H(P) over a commutative ring A. We estab- lish a set of commutator relations among the elementary generators of Roys elementary orthogonal group and use this to prove Quillens local-global principle for this elementary group. We also obtain a result on extendability of quadratic modules. We establish nor- mality of the elementary orthogonal group under certain conditions and prove stability results for the Ki group of this orthogonal group. We also prove that Roys elementary orthogonal group and Petrovs odd hyperbolic unitary …

Bures Distance For Completely Positive Maps And Cp-H-Extendable Maps Between Hilbert C*- Modules., Sumesh K Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Completely positive (CP-) maps are special kinds of positivity preserving maps on C ∗ -algebras. W.F. Stinespring [Sti55] obtained a structure theorem for CP-maps showing that they are closely connected with ∗-homomorphisms. W. Arveson and other operator algebraists quickly realized the importance of these maps. Presently the role of the theory of CP-maps in our understanding of C ∗ -algebras and von Neumann algebras is well recognised. It has been argued by physicists that CPmaps are physically more meaningful than just positive maps due to their stability under ampliations. From quantum probabilistic point of view CP-maps are quantum analogues of …