Digital Commons Network^™

Project: Epiphany-Fluid Motion, A Floatation Video Exploration, Jason Williams Hughs

Theses

Educational videos have the tendency to be sterile, uninteresting productions that fail in their attempts to stimulate knowledge in young minds because they themselves are not stimulating. The focus of this culminating project is the production of an effective educational video for middle and high school science students. This work will also provide a process analysis text discussing the production process and providing statistical evidence supporting the effectiveness of the video production.

Discussing the topic of Archimedes' principle of floatation, this educational science video gives an energetic look at why some things float while other things sink. This topic can …

Design Of An Air Vitiation Heater, Eusebio Samuel

Theses

No abstract provided.

Feasibility Of A Guided Interceptor, Philip Hahn

Theses

This research examines the feasibility of a gun-launched projectile to intercept rocket, artillery and mortar threats. The interceptor is a 40mm, spin-stabilized squib-guided projectile guided by a model predictive controller. The six-degree-of-freedom model and guidance system were developed in C++. The linearized guidance model predicts the interceptor trajectory periodically during flight. The control system utilizes the linearized guidance model and a target prediction model to determine the nearest intercept. A guidance algorithm then sequences the firing of lateral squibs to remove the projected miss distance. Monte Carlo simulations that employed statistical variations in gun launch angle, projectile rotation bias, and …

Expression Of Tumor Suppressor Genes During Breast Cancer Progression In The Rat, Wafa Saqer Rashid Abdullah Aldhaheri

Theses

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United Arab Emirates and all over the world. Although many factors contribute to the high incidence of breast cancer, a considerable number of cases are related to environmental factors. In this study, breast cancer was induced in female rats using a single dose, 80 mg/kg body wt, of the environmental carcinogen 7,12- dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA). The aim was to characterize some of the early cellular and molecular changes that occur during breast cancer development in the DMBA-treated rat model. Mammary gland …

Effects Of Novel Synthetic Nucleosides As Anti-Tumor Agents On Human Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia Cell Line (Hl-60), Salma Awad Merghani Mahmoud

Theses

Nucleosides and their analogs are considered a clinically proven class of therapeutic agents possessing anticancer and antiviral activity. Several trifluoromethyl-substituted pyrazole N-nucleosides (coded NIA, NIIA and NIIA) and their nucleobases were synthesized and tested for the ability to induce apoptosis in acute human promyelocytic cell line (HL-60). The growth and proliferation of HL-60 was more effectively inhibited by NIA, NIIA and their nucleobases compared to NIIIA and its nucleobase. In addition, DNA fragmentation was detected in a concentration-dependent manner as a result of nucleosides treatment. A caspase-3-dependent apoptosis was observed based on the Western blot analysis of poly-ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) …

The Mainstream Press: Then And Now Has The Prominence Of Sensational News Changed In 100 Years?, Kathleen Marchaesi

Theses

The present research explores the levels of sensational news reporting in three distinct periods of journalism history by examining the largest mainstream newspaper in America, The New York Times, during the yellow journalism, jazz journalism and modern eras. The front pages of a representative sample of the newspaper were analyzed to determine the extent to which prominence of sensational news topics in the modern press differs from that of the yellow and jazz eras. The style of sensational reporting was examined to determine if the treatment of news has changed. The results of a content analysis indicate that readers are …

The Effects Of Focused Deterrence On Gang Homicide: An Evaluation Of Rochester's Ceasefire Program, Christopher Delaney

Theses

In the late 1990’s, a problem-oriented policing initiative in Boston, “Operation: Ceasefire”, achieved significant reductions in youth homicide by focusing on gang behavior. The program was driven by a concept known as “Focused Deterrence”. Gang members are typically frequent offenders for whom general deterrence mechanisms have little effect. Additionally, the social norms of gangs often encourage offending behavior, making typical attempts to deter futile. Focused deterrence attempts to modify individual behavior and group norms with a credible and severe threat of collective punishment for an individual offending behavior. In “Operation Ceasefire”, when a gang member committed a homicide, his gang …

Horn Formula Minimization, Tom Chang

Theses

Horn formulas make up an important subclass of Boolean formulas that exhibits interesting and useful computational properties. They have been widely studied due to the fact that the satisfiability problem for Horn formulas is solvable in linear time. Also resulting from this, Horn formulas play an important role in the field of artificial intelligence. The minimization problem of Horn formulas is to reduce the size of a given Horn formula to find a shortest equivalent representation. Many knowledge bases in propositional expert systems are represented as Horn formulas. Therefore the minimization of Horn formulas can be used to reduce the …

Efficient Encryption On Limited Devices, Roderic Campbell

Theses

Encryption algorithms have been used since the dawn of time to ensure secure communication over insecure communication channels. Once a secret encryption key is established and as long as the key remains secret, two parties can communicate freely over open channels. The question of how to obtain such a secret key is a large dilemma. Many methods of obtaining such keys have been tried from the most basic form of a one-on-one encounter to more advanced techniques like Diffie-Hellman. This paper compares three versions of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol -- using arithmetic in the field of integers modulo a …

Web Based Monitoring System In Wireless Sensor Networks, Kanishk Panwar

Theses

Goal of the project is to develop a scalable web application to monitor a wireless sensor network. Wireless sensor network, an upcoming technology, is comprised of multiple data sensors that send back packets of information back to the base station. The sensor network runs on a real time operating system called TinyOS and the application is implemented using Moteiv Telos Revision B wireless sensors. The web application collects the reading from the base station and generates graphical representation of the readings for the front end and creates PDF reports when readings are not within defined thresholds. This application incorporates various …

Acoustic Classification Using Independent Component Analysis, James Brock

Theses

This thesis research investigates and demonstrates the feasibility of performing computationally efficient, high-dimensional acoustic classification using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients and independent component analysis for temporal feature extraction. A process was developed to calculate Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients from samples of acoustic data grouped by either musical genre or spoken world language. Then independent component analysis was employed to extract the higher level temporal features of the coefficients in each class. These sets of unique independent features represent themes, or patterns, over time that are the underlying signals in that class of acoustic data. The results obtained from this process clearly show …

Preparation For Radiological Disasters: A Radiation Effects Epidemiological Database, Martha S. Raj

Theses

Not Included

Perspective By Incongruity In Visual Advertising: Applying Kenneth Burke's Theory To The Adbusters Anti-Consumerism Campaign, Elizabeth B. Gorman

Theses

Kenneth Burke developed the theory of "perspective by incongruity" in which he claimed that oddly juxtaposed symbols influence audiences to have new perspectives by challenging their habits of thinking. This study applies Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theory of perspective by incongruity to the Adbusters anti-consumerism campaign. Twenty "spoof ad" postcards created by the Adbusters Media Foundation were analyzed to see how they utilize the technique of incongruous juxtaposition. The analysis concluded that the cards either juxtaposed two incongruous images, two incongruous phrases or words, or a combination of incongruous words and images in order to create new insights about consumer advertising …

Modeling Off-The-Shelf Pan/Tilt Cameras For Active Vision Systems, Yuriy Luzanov

Theses

There are many existing multicamera systems that perform object identification and track ing. Some applications include but are not limited to security surveillance and smart rooms. Yet there is still much work to be done in improving such systems to achieve a high level of automation while obtaining reasonable performance. Thus far design and implementation of these systems has been done using heuristic methods, primarily due to the complexity of the problem. Most importantiy, the performance of these systems is assessed by evaluating subjective quantities. The goal of this work is to take the first step in structured analysis and …

Chemistry At The Cu-Fluoropolymer Interface: Relevance To Adhesion, Daliana Gava Abreu

Theses

The adhesion of sputtered Cu to fluoropolymer surfaces modified by vacuum UV photo-oxidation increased with treatment time for Teflon® PTFE while for Teflon® FEP and PFA there was cohesive failure within FEP and PFA and not at the Cu-fluoropolymer interface. Ar ion etching of the surfaces after cohesive failure showed that the depth of FEP and PFA left on the Cu was ca. 3-10 nm. The chemistry at the interface included the presence of copper fluorides. Control experiments involving Ar ion etching of untreated fluoropolymers showed no evidence for fluoride ions. Thin films of Cu were thermally evaporated and sputter …

Xpoint: Xml, Css, And Html-Based Presentation Graphics System, Sudhanshu Sood

Theses

Graphical Power Point presentations, when converted to Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) have a defined graphical format, and are not portable to other browsers. Xpoint is an ongoing development work by Dr. Schreiner. It is a simple presentation graphical system [1]. The presentation is specified in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and is converted to well navigable HTML for browsing, appearance is controlled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The presentation can also be converted to Portable Document Format (PDF) format which provides more flexibility. The project will extend the styles and capabilities of the existing Xpoint graphical presentation system. XML presentation …

Cooperative Learning Incorporating Computer-Mediated Communication: Participation, Perceptions, And Learning Outcomes In A Deaf Education Classroom, Michelle Pandian

Theses

Many researchers have documented deaf students' struggles with reading, writing, and communication in the classroom over the last twenty years Fang & Beil, 2005; Antia, et al., 2005; Mallory & Long, 2002; Mallory et al., 2006, Johnson & Johnson, 1986; Karchmer & Mitchell, 2003). With the advent of email and text pagers, students today need to be exposed to the communication technologies of the future (Marschark et al., 2002; Bruce & Levin, 2003); especially deaf students, who will more typically rely on technology in the workplace for communication than hearing people (Wood, 2002). This exploratory research study with deaf undergraduate …

Event Driven Dynamic Web Pages, Kan Yi

Theses

Web technologies are among the most rapid developing areas. They continue to evolve from HTML, DHTML, JavaScript to CGI, ASP, JSP, Servlet. However the life of web developers is still not so easy as traditional GUI programmer. The web developers should very clear about communications between browsers and web servers, which puts a great burden on the web developers. In the project, an Event Driven Model is extended to web servers based on Servlet technology. With this Event Driven Model, the web developers are totally transparent to the communication details. The development of web pages becomes similar as GUI programming, …

Making Presentations Web Ready, Binil Kurian

Theses

Presenting sound along with slides to convey more information about a presentation is not easy. Capturing the sound is easy, but giving the user random access to the sound bytes to match the slide he is viewing is difficult. If the sound bytes are sliced at the appropriate interval, and a menu is provided so that the user can navigate to any slide he wants, the presentation becomes more effective. Doing this would allow distributing the presentation for a wider audience and also for distribution using high capacity optical media. This project tries to solve this problem in a generic …

Object-Oriented Lr(1) Parser Generation, Christopher Luckett

Theses

The LR parser has been around for a long time, and its workings, especially with respect to table compaction and use of the lookahead sets, have puzzled students who are new to the area of study. The aim of this project therefore is to provide an object oriented approach and discoverable algorithm to ease the difficulty of mastering these concepts. This will be accomplished by distributing the table interpreter across objects whose inter-relationships create an analogue to the state table. Hopefully this will provide a greater degree of readability and ease of trace throughout the parser generation process.

A Messaging System To Handle Semantic Dissonance, Ashish Rathod

Theses

Enterprises have been compelled to share their data internally and externally, but creating a consistent view of enterprise data has been challenging. Within a typical enterprise, each division uses its own domain specific data model and schema, and different enterprises obviously use their own data models and schema. Integrating these diverse data models and schemas, which have both syntactic and semantic differences, tends to be complex, slow, and inaccurate. Syntactic differences, i.e., differences in names or layout, have received substantial attention in research. Semantic dissonance simply means that the structure may be similar (or even the same) but the meaning …

Print Process Identification For Forensic Document Examiners, Roxanne Stevens

Theses

The advent of current digital print technology has resulted in a drastic increase in the accessibility of counterfeiting currency and secure documents. In response, organizations such as the CIA, Secret Service and FBI must continually train and educate their employees and staff. To meet the increasing demands of these groups, the Rochester Institute of Technology has developed the Marking Engine Characterization (MEC) target to train and assist forensic document examiners in identifying print processes.

The MEC target's effectiveness in identifying print processes was tested by printing the target on a variety of marking engines and processes. These marking engines included: …