Digital Commons Network^™

Rock Strength: A Main Control Of Yosemite's Topography?, Alex Jon Hutcherson

Master's Theses

Although contrasts in rock strength correlate to variations in topography, the role of rock strength in shaping the landscape of Yosemite National Park is uncertain. Magmatic processes may create variations in mineralogy within a single plutonic unit, while tectonic processes may result in contrasts in joint density and foliation, all of which may lead to variations in rock strength. For this study, the relationship between differences in mineralogy, joint density, and foliation in Yosemite National Park is analyzed to determine the role of rock strength in shaping Yosemite’s topography. Modal mineral abundance and grain size are determined by analyzing cut …

Predicting Spatial Distributions Of Demersal Fishes Off Central California, Anne Catherine Tagini

Master's Theses

Seafloor maps are often used in species distribution modeling (SDM), where maps are paired with fish observations to create models predicting habitat suitability, species density, or species biomass. Problems with the current use of SDM include limited understanding of species relationships with benthic morphology, lack of practical model testing, and deficiency of information on the effects of map resolution on population estimates. A drop camera was used to gather observations of fishes along Central California and paired with remotely sensed bathymetry to create predictive models and maps of species density and biomass. I found that relationships with remotely sensed habitat …

Hes1 Notch Response Elements And Their Roles In Rbpj-K Binding, Michael Majid Khayat

Master's Theses

The Notch signaling pathway is a one of few fundamentally conserved signal transduction pathways critical for metazoan cellular development. Upon ligand activation, the Notch intracellular domain (NICD) translocates to the nucleus and forms a transcription complex with C-binding promoter factor-1 (RBPJ-k/CBF-1/Suppressor of Hairless) and Mastermind-like protein (MAM). The DNA-binding factor, RBPJ-k, binds to a response element containing a consensus sequence of RTGRGAR (where R is G or A). When RBPJ-k interacts with the NICD and MAM, Notch target genes are activated. The most well-characterized gene for Notch is Hes1. Hes1 contains four Notch response elements (NREs), labeled NRE 1-4. Of …

Assessment Of Peregrine Falcon (Falco Peregrinus Anatum) Nesting Habitat In The San Francisco Bay Area, Prabha Venu

Master's Theses

Human encroachment into natural environments fragments and degrades the habitat for many species and raptors such as the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) have adapted to the urban environment, co-existing with humans and other wildlife. The habitat preference of the American peregrine falcon subpopulation, F. p. anatum was investigated in the densely urbanized San Francisco Bay Area. In this research, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications to evaluate ten environmental attributes and their influence on 47 nesting sites were used. Distances from peregrine falcon nesting sites to two federally listed prey species the California least tern (Sterna antillarum browni) and the western …

College Students Experiencing Food Insecurity At San Jose State University, Elizabeth Agramont-Justiniano

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research was twofold: to learn more about how students at San Jose State University experience food insecurity and to learn how food insecurity is addressed by this public university given the rise and prevalence of neoliberalism in higher education. Three focus groups were conducted gauging how 16 students defined food insecurity and what their experiences with food insecurity at college were like. A total of eight individual interviews took place after the focus groups, delving further into how it feels to experience food insecurity at SJSU and the students’ recommendations for improvement. The overwhelming majority of …

The Whiteness Of The Elephant In The Room: How White Guilt, White Fragility, And Colorblind Racial Ideology Shape Environmental And Social Justice Activism In Santa Cruz County, Robert Michael Foran

Master's Theses

Using frameworks from critical race theory, social movement theory, and community-based activism, this thesis explores the phenomena of white fragility, white guilt, and colorblind racial ideology and how they impact the ways predominantly white-identified social and environmental justice organizations approach, build, and maintain solidarity with communities of color in Santa Cruz County, California. A qualitative approach was employed to investigate the experiences of white-identified activists and how they attempt to engage in this constantly challenging process. Using twenty-two semi-structured interviews and eight group observations, I explored how white-identified individuals negotiate the transformation from ‘moral passivity’ to meaningful, personal relationships with …

Reproductive Performance, Foraging Effort, And Diet Of An Apex Predator, The Common Murre, At One Of The Largest Nesting Colonies In The California Current System, Stephanie Rianne Schneider

Master's Theses

Common Murre (Uria aalge) are the most abundant avian apex predator nesting in the California Current System (CCS) and nesting is the most energetically demanding phase of their lifecycle. The preyscape within flight distance of their nesting colony determines whether murres produce young, how hard they must work to do so, and what prey types are available to them. This study characterized the reproductive performance, foraging effort, and prey composition of murres nesting at a previously unstudied and large nesting colony in the CCS, Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge, over an 11-year period (2007 - 2017) intended to capture a …

Diversity Training Outcomes: Assessing Impact Of Diversity Training On Attitudes Towards Societal Diversity And Cognitive Empathy, Iris Lenette Smith

Master's Theses

Understanding the perspectives of others and appreciating their differences are important due to diversity increasing in society. However, research on diversity has seldom examined the ineffectiveness of diversity training on attitudes towards societal diversity and cognitive empathy. The present study was conducted to examine how diversity training affects one’s attitudes toward societal diversity and cognitive empathy. It was hypothesized that attitudes towards societal diversity and cognitive empathy would improve as a result of diversity training. Gender and ethnicity were also hypothesized to interact with diversity training such that women and ethnic minorities would show more positive attitudes towards societal diversity …

Current Feedback-Based High Load Current Low Drop-Out Voltage Regulator In 65-Nm Cmos Technology, Melody Teoh

Master's Theses

The motivation for this paper was to design a current feedback-based high load current, low drop-out (LDO) voltage regulator. A bandgap voltage reference (BGR) was also designed in conjunction with the LDO to simulate realistic environments. The schematic was designed with Cadence Virtuoso Schematic XL, using the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 65-nm CMOS library, used for Internet of Things (IoT) System on Chip (SoC) applications. The proposed capacitor-less LDO with BGR provided an average temperature coefficient (TC) of 13.34 ppm/℃ within the range of -40 to 125 ℃. This was in accordance with military standards to gain a higher …

Psychological Presence In Immersive Virtual Environments, Steven L. Wu

Master's Theses

Immersive virtual environments are simulated locations that attempt to create a sense of presence, or the psychological feeling that an individual is acting within the simulated environment rather than their physical one. When interfacing with an interactive virtual environment, evidence suggests that aspects of psychological presence are affected, such as time perception and situation awareness. As such, this study hypothesized presence as the construct by which immersive virtual environment usage influences time perception and situation awareness. Two levels of presence were manipulated using a monitor and Oculus Rift. Forty-one participants were tasked with a scavenger hunt in both monitor and …

The Mere Presence Effect: Attentional Bias Promoted By Smartphone Presence, Maria Del Pilar Bianchi Bosch

Master's Theses

Smartphones have become an essential part of modern life, offering access to entertainment, information, and social connections from anywhere, at any time. However, research has associated interactions with these devices with maladaptive behaviors and cognitive impairments. Furthermore, recent research has suggested that the mere presence of a smartphone can deplete cognitive resources. We sought to test the hypothesis that the perceptual salience of smartphones would negatively impact perceptual processes. Using a sample of college-aged students (N = 71), we tested whether the mere presence of a smartphone might affect reaction time and accuracy in a lateralized spatial configuration visual search …

Different Methods Of Embodied Cognition In Pedagogy And Its Effectiveness In Student Learning, Cassandra Durkee

Master's Theses

The Mathematical Ideas Analysis hypothesizes that abstract mathematical reasoning is unconsciously organized and integrated with sensory-motor experience. Basic research testing movement, language, and perception during math problem solving supports this hypothesis. Applied research primarily measures students’ performance on math tests after they engage in analogous sensory-motor tasks, but findings show mixed results. Sensory-motor tasks are dependent on several moderators (e.g., instructional guidance, developmental stage) known to help students learn, and studies vary in how each moderator is implemented. There is little research on the effectiveness of sensory-motor tasks without these moderators. This study compares different approaches to working with an …

Social Recommendation Systems, Avni Gulati

Master's Theses

In recent years, with the rise of online social networks, personalized recommendations that leverage the aspect of social connections have become a very intriguing domain for researchers. In this work, we explore how influence propagation and the decay in the cascading effect of influence from influential users can be leveraged to generate social graph-based recommendations. Understanding how influence propagates within a social network is itself a challenging problem. In this research, we model the decay in influence propagation in directed graphs, utilizing the structural properties of the social graph to measure the propagated influence beyond one-hop. This social network information …

The Impact Of Gangs On Community Life In Trinidad, Ericka Adams, Patrice Morris, Edward Maguire

Faculty Publications

Trinidad and Tobago has more than 100 criminal gangs, some of which engage in high levels of homicide and violence. Recent research has shown that gang members in Trinidad and Tobago are more likely than nongang members to be arrested for violent, property, and drug crimes. As gangs continue to proliferate throughout the Caribbean, there is a pressing need to understand the nature of these gangs and their impact on the communities in which they are entrenched. Using data from interviews with community members, police officials, and gang members, as well as ethnographic observations from 10 high crime, predominantly Black …

Review: Bury What We Cannot Take By Kirstin Chen, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Review: The Incendiaries By R.O. Kwon, Jessie Fussell

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A book review of R.O. Kwon's 2018 debut novel, The Incendiaries.

Introduction To Volume Nine: Homecoming, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Making (Non)Sense: On Ruth Ozeki's A Tale For The Time Being, Yana Ya-Chu Chang

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay investigates the knowledge produced around Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being through a discussion of its marketing processes and its reception, as well as through textual analysis. I first draw upon Sau-ling Wong’s observations about the problem of a US-centric referential framework in the internationalization of Asian American studies to examine a Western-centric framing in the marketing strategies of the US/Canada and the UK editions of Ozeki’s novel. Next, I turn to an examination of how reviews and selected readers’ responses to Ozeki’s novel show an at-times incoherent process of making sense of this …

Mobilizing The Vietnamese Body: Dance Theory, Critical Refugee Studies, And The Aftermaths Of War In Andrew X. Pham’S Catfish And Mandala, Quynh Nhu Le, Ying Zhu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Mobilizing the Vietnamese Body: Dance Theory, Critical Refugee Studies, and the Aftermaths of War in Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala

Through analysis of Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, this collaboration between a literary scholar and dance scholar joins methodologies from their respective fields to explore the politicized dimensions of the Vietnamese body-in-motion. Published in 1999, Pham's memoir documents his journey, as a Vietnamese refugee living in the U.S., as he travels throughout Vietnam on a bicycle. We argue that through the literal and theoretical mobilization of his …

Integration Of Local Poetic Voices: An Interview With Lawson Fusao Inada, Alma Rosa Alvarez, John Rafael Almaguer

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

An interview with Lawson Fusoa Inada

Management And Security Of Iot Systems Using Microservices, Tharun Theja Kammara

Master's Projects

Devices that assist the user with some task or help them to make an informed decision are called smart devices. A network of such devices connected to internet are collectively called as Internet of Things (IoT). The applications of IoT are expanding exponentially and are becoming a part of our day to day lives. The rise of IoT led to new security and management issues. In this project, we propose a solution for some major problems faced by the IoT devices, including the problem of complexity due to heterogeneous platforms and the lack of IoT device monitoring for security and …

Proposing An Optimized Algorithm For Consolidating Electric-Powered Shared Scooters Into Hubs For Efficiently Managing Their Charging And Maintenance Operations, Ojen Goshtasb

Master's Projects

The use of vehicles other than ones containing combustion engines have been adopted significantly over the past few years and the direction it’s taking seems to be the future of urban transportation. The hottest vehicle of choice currently is the electric scooter. They are small and portable, fast, and less costly compared to getting in a cab from Lyft or Uber to get around town. The goal of this paper is to make a proposal to drive the creation of a safe, efficient system for these scooters’ management. This must be beneficial to all parties involved; the rider, non-riders, and …

Virtual Robot Climbing Using Reinforcement Learning, Ujjawal Garg

Master's Projects

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a field of Artificial Intelligence that has gained a lot of attention in recent years. In this project, RL research was used to design and train an agent to climb and navigate through an environment with slopes. We compared and evaluated the performance of two state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms for locomotion related tasks, Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (DDPG) and Trust Region Policy Optimisation (TRPO). We observed that, on an average, training with TRPO was three times faster than DDPG, and also much more stable for the locomotion control tasks that we experimented. We conducted experiments and …

Deep Visual Recommendation System, Raksha Sunil

Master's Projects

Recommendation system is a filtering system that predicts ratings or preferences that a user might have. Recommendation system is an evolved form of our trivial information retrieval systems. In this paper, we present a technique to solve new item cold start problem. New item cold start problem occurs when a new item is added to a shopping website like Amazon.com. There is no metadata for this item, no ratings and no reviews because it’s a new item in the system. Absence of data results in no recommendation or bad recommendations. Our approach to solve new item cold start problem requires …

Pantry: A Macro Library For Python, Derek Pang

Master's Projects

Python lacks a simple way to create custom syntax and constructs that goes outside of its own syntax rules. A paradigm that allows for these possibilities to exist within languages is macros. Macros allow for a shorter set of syntax to expand into a longer set of instructions at compile-time. This gives the capability to evolve the language to fit personal needs.

Pantry, implements a hygienic text-substitution macro system for Python. Pantry achieves this through the introduction of an additional preparsing step that utilizes parsing and lexing of the source code. Pantry proposes a way to simply declare a pattern …

Archeota, Fall 2018, Jennifer Castle, Sarah Thornton, Courtney Hopkins, Anna Belle Rosen, Havilah Steinman, Erin Fussell, Julieta Garcia

Archeota

This is the Fall 2018 issue of Archeota, the official publication of the SJSU SAASC

Gradubique: An Academic Transcript Database Using Blockchain Architecture, Thinh Nguyen

Master's Projects

Blockchain has been widely adopted in the last few years even though it is in its infancy. The first well-known application built on blockchain technology was Bitcoin, which is a decentralized and distributed ledger to record crypto-currency transactions. All of the transactions in Bitcoin are anonymously transferred and validated by participants in the network. Bitcoin protocol and its operations are so reliable that technologists have been inspired to enhance blockchain technologies and deploy it outside of the crypto-currency world. The demand for private and non-crypto-currency solutions have surged among consortiums because of the security and fault tolerant features of blockchain. …

Variations On A Theme: Using Amino Acid Sequences To Generate Music, Aaron Kosmatin

Master's Projects

In this project, we explore using a musical space to represent the properties of amino acids. We consider previous mappings and explore the limitations of these mappings. In this exploration, we will propose a new method of mapping into musical spaces that extends the properties that can be represented. For this work, we will use amino acid sequences as our example mapping. The amino acid properties we will use include mass, charge, structure, and hydrophobicity. Finally, we will show how the different musical properties can be compared for similarity.

Intra-Exchange Cryptocurrency Arbitrage Bot, Eric Han

Master's Projects

Cryptocurrencies are defined as a digital currency in which encryption techniques are utilized to regulate generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, independent of a central governing body such as a bank. Due to the large number of cryptocurrencies currently available, there inherently exists many price discrepancies due to market inefficiencies. Market inefficiencies occur when the price of assets do not reflect their true value. In fact, these types of pricing discrepancies exist in other financial markets, including fiat currency exchanges and stock exchanges. However, these discrepancies are more significant in the cryptocurrency domain due to …

The Relationship Between Polychronicity And Social Networks: A Mixed-Methods Study Of Research And Development Professionals, Fabiola Bertolotti, Elisa Mattarelli, Janet Dukerich

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

How do knowledge workers interact with their colleagues when organizations increasingly ask them to work on multiple activities, projects and working spheres simultaneously? Given the importance of social networks for individual and organizational success, in this study we explore the relationship between individual preferences for engaging in multiple tasks simultaneously (individual polychronicity), the perception of the organization’s demands in terms of engaging in multiple tasks simultaneously (organizational polychronicity), and centrality in instrumental networks. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, we collected data from knowledge professionals in a research and development (R&D) unit. Our results show that both individual and organizational polychronicity were …