Digital Commons Network^™

E-Lit Choose Your Own Adventure, Sydney L. Vlach

The Hugemanities Project Big Contest

This Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Type of Electronic Literature was made with the application Twine, and it throws the reader into a life/death zombie apocalypse after a couple of tamer choices in the beginning of the story. It includes about 30 "choices", which can lead the "player" down a different path-- only one of which results in a "win".

Promoting Community Identity Through Repurposing Vacant Land: City Park Design In Downtown Arlington, Dasom Phoebe Mun

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

As urbanization progressed rapidly in the mid-nineteenth century, people moved to cities for many reasons, and as a consequence, the volume of green spaces in the cities was reduced. Lands have been developed or redeveloped as urbanization developed. In this process, leftover spaces and vacant lands have been created. Urban vacant lands could be a problem for many cities. They might have aesthetic issues such as disordered or cluttered appearances, safety issues due to lack of maintenance, economic issues for it being wasted and so on (Kim et al., 2023). However, vacant lands in urban areas have become suitable assets …

Longitudinal Prospective Relations Between Cannabis Use And Substance-Free Activities In A Diverse Community Sample Of Emerging Adult Heavy Drinkers, Andrew T. Voss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

National drinking and drug use trends suggest emerging adulthood (ages 18-25) is the developmental apex of harmful co-use of alcohol and drugs, with notable recent increases in cannabis use among emerging adults. Many emerging adults naturally begin to reduce harmful alcohol or drug use into their late 20s and 30s, however, a significant subgroup report a developmentally persistent pattern of frequent alcohol and cannabis use. There is evidence that limited access to alternative substance-free reinforcement (SFR) is a risk factor for chronic alcohol and drug misuse, there is a need for longitudinal research that examines changes in patterns of SFR …

Determinants And Predictors Of Smoking-Related Weight Concern In Smokers Participating In A Community-Based Cessation Program, Cheri Kilmurray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Concern about weight gain is a barrier to smoking cessation, but determinants of post-cessation weight concern have not been adequately evaluated in the context of community-based cessation programs. Methods: Baseline data were analyzed from a cessation trial of 392 adults randomized to physical activity (PA) or general wellness counseling as adjunctive treatment for cigarette smoking. Outcomes were 1) Use of smoking to control weight (“control”) and 2) Willingness to tolerate weight gain without returning to smoking (“intolerance”) using validated instruments. Independent variables were self-reported PA and perceptions, socio-demographics, psycho-social measures, smoking behavior and perceptions, diet, and body mass index …

Landscape Interventions For Pedestrian Safety Around Urban Parks: Learning From City Of Dallas, Texas, Ann Mariya Thuruthy

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Urban parks and their immediate surroundings provide access to nature in urbanized areas. However, they can also be crime hotspots if not properly kept or monitored or provide a safe environment for positive activities (Jones & Robinson, 2008). The local community respects a safe and secure neighborhood urban park as proximity to green spaces (McCormack et al., 2010), which enhances living quality (Iqbal & Ceccato, 2015). Nevertheless, a neighborhood urban park and its context have a negative impact on the quality of life if they cater to criminal activity. Crime rates have increased in urban public parks and buffer zones …

Rebranding Lauren Hope Photography, Lauren H. Toomey

Graphic Communication

Lauren Toomey has been building her business, Lauren Hope Photography, for the past six years. During this time, she has developed a website as well as a social media presence, but has yet to establish a clear brand identity. This project served as motivation for Lauren to define her brand identity, which allowed her to create branding guidelines that could then be implemented across print and digital media.

Moondoggie's Ad, Mia Horvath

Graphic Communication

I created a 2 minute ad for Moondoggies that defines the brands “attitude” as well as establishes its demographic, highlights the products they sell, and showcases the natural beauty of the region Moondoggies was founded in.

Branding And Designing A Website Mockup For A New Curly Hair Brand, Sophie Isabelle Shif

Graphic Communication

For this project I created a fictitious curly hair brand named Twirl. Twirl’s mission is to make curly hair care fun and easy. I started by making a logo and creating branding guidelines. Next I designed some labels and put them on packaging mockups. I wanted this project to have a UX/UI element so I made a landing page wireframe and then converted it into a mockup that incorporated the branding guidelines and packaging mockup. Throughout the design process I kept the brand’s mission in mind, and prioritized the user’s experience with the products and website.

Reexamining The Functions Of Urban Bridges With Nature And People In Mind: A Vision For North Main Street Bridge Fort Worth, Texas, Amanda Hinton

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

How can nature be incorporated into infrastructure bridges to promote connections in urban landscapes? The Paddock Viaduct, known today as the North Main Street Bridge in Fort Worth, Texas was formally opened on July 3, 1914. Designed by Brenneke and Fay to improve transportation to the North Fort Worth district, the bridge was the first reinforced concrete arch bridge in the nation to use self-supporting reinforcing steel and ball and socket joints (Paddock Viaduct - Main - Historic Fort Worth, 2017). Fort Worth in the mid-1900s, like many growing cities, was experiencing the repercussions of heavy flooding issues that come …

Cultivating Charismatic Landscapes: Designing For Preservation And Resilience Of Texas’S Natural Swimming Holes, Jessie Hitchcock

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

The swimming hole landscape provides a unique, immersive interface between humans and the natural world within a riparian corridor. Distinct characteristics of local watersheds and regional ecological systems result in an expression of the natural environment specific to each Texas swimming hole. These environmental components, along with human culture and settlement patterns, are all interrelated, underscoring the importance of health and harmony within and between each one. Overuse, urban expansion, watershed management, and climatic factors have negatively impacted the environmental quality and user experience of these landscapes. The purpose of this study is to better understand the cultural and environmental …

Designing Transit-Oriented District Station Areas For Pedestrian Activity: Learning From Dallas, Tx, Oren Mandelbaum

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) and Transit-Oriented Districts (TODt) are planning and development strategies that look to leverage close access to public transit to create places or districts that are dense, walkable and diverse (NCTCOG, 2021; Stojanovski. 2019; Ozdil et.al., 2012). While TOD and TODt are becoming more prevalent within Dallas, TX, and around the United States, (DART, 2019), there is limited literature as to how landscape architecture and urban design can be utilized to reach the goals set out by TOD, and especially TODt (Ozdil et.al., 2012). In addition, while station areas have the potential to act as the hubs of …

Addressing Obsolescence In Fort Worth Public Pools: Enhancing Forest Park Public City Pool, Juan A. Fuentes

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

The city of Fort Worth, Texas has strived to ensure high-quality recreational water activities, which resulted in the closure or demolitions of several demolished aquatic parks in 2009. With many parks exceeding their lifespan, depicting functional and physical obsoleteness, and presenting health and safety risk to swimmers; the city, following the audit report, demolished famous aquatic parks, such as: Sycamore Pool, Hillside Park Lake, Como Park, Sylvania Park, Marine Creek Park, and Kellis Park, etc. In July 2008, Counsilman-Hunsaker conducted a city-wide Aquatic Master Plan to determine the future of the city's aquatic parks (Counsilman-Hunsaker, Inc.,2012). Implementation strategies included replacing …

Enhancing The Entry Experience At Phap Quang Temple, Grand Prairie, Tx, Violet Lam

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

This design thesis explores the design principles of traditional Chinese Buddhist temple gardens and their significance in creating successful entry sequences. The study focuses on Vietnamese Buddhist temples in a suburban context in North Texas and investigates the role of design elements such as architecture, water features, planting design, and rocks in creating a spiritually enriching and culturally significant environment. The research method includes a literature review, comparison analysis, site inventory, user survey, interview with a member of the board of advisors, design testing, and design proposal. The proposed design aims to enhance the accessibility, wayfinding, and sense of place …

Procedural Level Generation For A Top-Down Roguelike Game, Kieran Ahn, Tyler Edmiston

Honors Thesis

In this file, I present a sequence of algorithms that handle procedural level generation for the game Fragment, a game designed for CMSI 4071 and CMSI 4071 in collaboration with students from the LMU Animation department. I use algorithms inspired by graph theory and implementing best practices to the best of my ability. The full level generation sequence is comprised of four algorithms: the terrain generation, boss room placement, player spawn point selection, and enemy population. The terrain generation algorithm takes advantage of tree traversal methods to create a connected graph of walkable tiles. The boss room placement algorithm randomly …

Mfa Master Project, Owen Pierce

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I am a storyteller.

I just happen to paint, draw and sculpt my stories more often than I write them. Thematically, I gravitate towards stories that speak about ecological and humanitarian concerns. Fantasy illustration is where I can create with the greatest freedom and indulge my love of crafting stories, and also as a form of escapism. As the author

Ursula K. Le Guin quotes, “If the direction of escape is towards freedom, what then is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?” Long running series of programs, films and books attest to this desire to be engaged at a deeper, more meaningful …

Modeling Oyster Growth Dynamics In Flupsy Systems To Develop A Decision Support Tool For Seed Management, Gretchen Clauss

Honors Projects

As the Gulf of Maine warms and lobsters move north to colder waters, Maine’s working water front has begun to diversify. There is a thriving new ecosystem of aquaculturists looking to keep Maine’s waterfront traditions alive in a lasting, sustainable way. One of the most popular aquaculture industries is oyster farming. With an increasing number of oyster farms developing in Midcoast Maine each year, we seek to develop a decision support tool to aid farmers in seed management. Oyster farmers can choose weather or not to use an upweller on their farm, and our goal is to provide guidance on …

Functional Redundancy Of A Non-Native Foundation Species (Eelgrass, Zostera Japonica) Across Intertidal Stress Gradients, S. Maria Garcia

Honors Projects

Non-native species foundation species can alter ecosystems in both positive and negative ways. The creation of habitat can be beneficial to native species when they provide a limiting resource or in a stressful environment. Yet this creation of habitat can also be detrimental by replacing native species and/or facilitating the presence of more non-native species. In Willapa Bay, WA, a non-native foundation species, Zostera japonica, co-exists with the native foundation species Zostera marina. Zostera japonica persists at the higher intertidal in monocultures, the two species overlap in the mid intertidal, and Z. marina persists in monocultures in the low intertidal. …

Positive Feeding Practices, Total Fruit Intake, Total Vegetable Intake, And Overall Diet Quality In Children Of Ethnically And Racially Diverse Families, Jordan E. Young

Open Access Master's Theses

Objectives: To investigate the relationship between child involvement in meal preparation, responsiveness to child’s fullness cues, and regular meal and snack times with total vegetable intake, total fruit intake, and overall diet quality in 2-5-year-old children of low-income, ethnically and racially diverse families.

Design: This study is a cross sectional secondary data analysis of the Strong Families Start at Home study.

Participants: Participants are parents and 2-5-year-old children of low-income, ethnically and racially diverse families of Rhode Island that participated in the Strong Families Start at Home study.

Methods: The Strong Families Start at Home study …

Direct Parameter Fitting Of Action Potentials In Skeletal Muscle Cells Which Include Longitudinal Segments, Tyme Suda

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Excitation of skeletal muscle cells triggers a large voltage spike known as an action potential (AP), leading to muscle contraction. Modeling of an AP is typically done using the method developed by scientists Hodgkin and Huxley (HH). In the HH method, voltage and time gated Na+ and K+ ionic currents are simulated, along with a positive “Leak” ionic current and capacitive current. Due to the complexity and the computational time required for simulation, direct fitting of HH parameters to experimental APs has rarely been attempted. A previous thesis at Wright State performed direct fitting for the case of a single …

Strong Little Minds: A Children's Introduction To Mental Illness, Teresa Irene Vick

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Designing For Best Use Of The Downtown I-345 Corridor In Dallas, Tx: Stakeholder Perspectives, Matthew Thornton

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

What is a city? It’s more than a location where many people live and work. It is a conglomeration of shared experience over generations. One generation informs the next, which informs how each subsequent generation adds to the development of their shared home. This is what gives each city its own unique form, character, and identity. But what happens if a city repeatedly outgrows itself, disconnects its communities, and demolishes the physical memory of its own cultural history? Dallas, Texas is one such city confronting these issues and is perceived as one without significant place memory or culture (if not …

A Strong-Qcd Regime Measurement Of The Proton’S Spin Structure, David Ruth

Doctoral Dissertations

The theory of the strong force, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) remains one of the mostimportant ways to understand the fundamental properties of ordinary matter. However, at low momentum transfer Q2, in the regime where the strong force becomes extremely strong, our understanding of QCD for ordinary nucleons becomes hazy. Several cutting edge theories such as Chiral Perturbation Theory (χPT) and Lattice QCD have provided valuable predictions in this regime, but Lattice QCD has not yet extended predictions of many important quantities to this kinematic region, and Chiral Perturbation Theory has faced several important disagreements with experimental data for the neutron over …

‘Unapologetically Vernacular’: A Study Of The Composing Process Of Youth Writing And Performing Slam And Spoken Word Poetry, Dennis Magliozzi

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the creative process and cultural resources youth poets use to generate poetry and inspire their own written material. This study is guided by the following two central research questions: In what ways do youth create their own poetry? In what ways do youth use cultural resources to inspire and develop their poetic work? This is a qualitative study that relies on three focal participants and utilizes Arts Based Educational Research (ABER) as a research strategy. After reviewing the data from participants, the following predominant themes present themselves for discussion: First, Process is …

Multi-Level Characterization Of Plasticity, Fracture, And Phase Transformation In Metals With Hexagonal Close-Packed Structure, Evgenii Vasilev

Doctoral Dissertations

In this thesis, contributions to characterization of plasticity, fracture, and phase transformation in metals with hexagonal close-packed structure are presented. First, the structure-properties correlations are established for Mg-1.3Zn-0.4Ca-0.4Mn and Mg-1.5Nd alloys. Next, the role of microstructural features such as gran/twin boundaries in the development of damage and fracture in magnesium is discussed. Then, a structure metric for quantitative assessment of fracture is developed and validated on magnesium and titanium alloys. Experimental studies on plasticity are followed by crystal plasticity modelling of Taylor impact test on zirconium to correlate experimental and predicted evolution of microstructure and shape change. Finally, a phase …

Advanced Electronics And Post-Processing Algorithm For The Sontrac 3d Neutron Spectrometer, George Suarez

Doctoral Dissertations

The second-generation SONTRAC instrument is being designed by UNH and NASA to detect solar neutrons, a game-changing observation for understanding particle acceleration at the Sun. The new instrument targets small satellites with highly constrained size, mass, and power; bringing a new set of challenges to the design of the instrument electronics. SONTRAC uses silicon photomultiplier detectors to image neutron scattered proton tracks in a scintillating fiber bundle. Individual detector readout provides the best performance, but is not achievable within the size, mass and power constrains for a small satellite. To overcome this problem, we explored detectors configured in strips to …

The Layer That Did Not Swim Away: Broadband Acoustic Discrimination And Characterization Of Ocean Stratification, Elizabeth Reed-Weidner

Doctoral Dissertations

Ocean stratification plays a critical role in many oceanographic processes. The magnitude of mixing between stable water masses is regulated, in part, by the intensity of stratification. As such, stratification modulates the vertical transport of heat and many important dissolved constituents in the water column, influencing such processes as ocean ventilation, and ocean heat and carbon uptake. As human induced climate change alters oceanic stratification a thorough understanding of its distribution and variability is critical in the study of the world’s oceans. However, traditional methods are limited in terms of spatial context and rapid, near-synoptic observational methods, such as those …

Disordered Cathode Electrode Materials For Aqueous Zinc Ion Batteries And The Effect Of Conditioned Electrolytes In Cycling Performances, Saewon Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

Electrochemical energy storage is essential to free various electronic devices from electric wiring. Besides the prominent lithium-ion batteries, next-generation batteries using zinc ions as charge carriers in aqueous electrolytes have risen as attractive alternatives due to their superior safety, environmental-friendliness, low cost, and excellent theoretical performance. However, high-performance cathode materials to accommodate the capacity and cyclability of zinc-ion storage have been lacking because of the strong electrostatic interaction between multivalent Zn-ions and host cathode materials. This study suggests a few varieties of vanadium oxide derivatives with large interlayer spaces, excellent structural stability, and finely tuned structural properties. Alkali-intercalated vanadates (MVOs) …

Synthetic Approaches Towards [4]Triangulene., Md Al Faruk

Doctoral Dissertations

The [n]triangulenes (n = number of rings on a side) are a triangle-shaped class of polycyclic aromatic compounds that have been of interest for almost 100 years. Triangulenes are expected to be high-spin species with unusual electronic structures and with potential applications in molecular electronics. The first examples of simple triangulenes have been synthesized very recently by reactions on a surface and were characterized by scanning electron microscopy. Our research group has reported the solution phase synthesis and polymerization of [3]triangulene. This thesis describes approaches toward an efficient scalable synthesis of the little-known [4]triangulene ring system. Our synthetic plan, which …

Elastic Electron Scattering From Mirror Nuclei 3he And 3h., Leiqaa Kurbany

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary aim of my work is the extraction of the elastic cross-sections from data collected in Jefferson Lab Hall A experiment E12-11-112, which measured inclusive elastic scattering from the mirror nuclei 3He and 3H at low momentum transfer. I determined the ratio of the 3He and 3H cross-sections since it cancels many of the systematic uncertainties that enter the absolute cross-section extraction, and it reduced fractional uncertainty to 1.85%. By going to low energy and forward angle, the effect of the magnetic form factor Fm(Q2) can be minimized, which allows for an extraction of the charge form factor Fch(Q2) …

Ionospheric O+ And H+ Outflow During Geomagnetic Storms, Niloufar Nowrouzi

Doctoral Dissertations

A geomagnetic storm begins when solar wind carrying southward IMF Bz impinges upon the Earth’s magnetosphere. There are two major structures that can cause a geomagnetic storm: streaminteraction regions (SIRs) and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The two types of structures differ in the strength of the magnetic field and the time length of southward Bz, and so the effects on the magnetosphere are different. One result of the energy input from the solar wind is ionospheric outflow. Because of solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, ionospheric ions can become a significant source for the magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms. In this thesis, I performed …