Digital Commons Network^™

Design Recommendation For An Automated Mosquito Enumerator, Monette Monette Vessell

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Au 311.14: Disagreement And Disassociation, William Martin Coffelt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Production Of A Narrative Movie - "One Night Stan", Charlie Jameson Corts

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor In Glutamate-Induced Circadian Phase Advances, Jeffrey Allen Ollis

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Motif-Finding And Other Applications In Bioinformatics, Jon A. Scharff

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Class Ii Molecules Of The Major Histocompatibility Complex, Abbey Elizabeth Jones

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Feasibility Of Using Multiple Samples To Improve The Least Square Deconvolution Approach To Resolving 3-Person Str Dna Mixture Samples, John David White

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Investor Psychology And Market Speculation, Clayton Christopher Williams

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Over-Expression, Purification, And Characterization Of The Human Endotoxin Receptor Cd14 In Escherichia Coli, James Ward Boulie

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Studied Ways To Encourage Agriculture Students To Study Abroad, Kathryn Amanda Brown

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Jaybird Songs: A Memoir, Hampton Andrew Holcomb

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Kch Board Game, Susannah Ruth Finley

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Historic Period Foodways In The Danish West Indies (1718-1917): The Zooarchaeological Evidence From Cinnamon Bay And The East End, St. John, Virgin Islands, Judith A. Sichler

Doctoral Dissertations

This research concerns the faunal remains from two sites on the former Danish island of St. John, now part of the United States Virgin Islands. The first site, Cinnamon Bay, a small-scale cotton plantation that was later incorporated into a larger sugar plantation, was occupied from 1718 to 1917. The East End, a provisioning estate and later free African community, was occupied from 1725 to 1950. Cinnamon Bay and the East End are significant to historic zooarchaeological research in the Caribbean for two reasons. First, the assemblages represent subsistence choices and procurement in two contrasting occupation types in the 18 …

Domesticity And The Modernist Aesthetic: F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, And Gertrude Stein, Allison Elise Carey

Doctoral Dissertations

Literary modernism has been presented, in scholarship and critical histories, as a masculinized movement: a literature largely by men and concerned with issues of literary form rather than with everyday life. This critical tunnel vision has inevitably prevented a full accounting of many key aspects of modernist literature. One issue of modernism that has been persistently overlooked by scholars is the central role of domesticity in many modernist texts and the importance to modernists of reclaiming the domestic as a subject of high art. As this study demonstrates, modernist texts often focused on everyday life, and these modernist treatments of …

Optimization Of Bacterial Luciferase For Expression In Mammalian Cells, Stacey Swiger Patterson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes the optimization of expression of the bacterial luciferase enzyme in mammalian cells. Previous attempts to express this heterodimeric enzyme complex in mammalian cells have been met with only modest success. In this research effort, several vector formats were evaluated to fully determine the optimal format for the expression of these genes. It was determined that the bacterial luciferase enzyme produced optimal bioluminescence in mammalian cells when the genes were cloned and expressed as a bicistronic transcript fused with an internal ribosomal entry site (IRES). To optimize the enzyme expression further, a novel approach to codon optimize the …

Predicting Academic Success: A Re-Examination Of Broad Versus Narrow Personality Traits, Susan D. Ridgell

Doctoral Dissertations

Personality and cognitive variables were examined to determine relative validity in predicting academic performance. This study investigated whether broad personality variables (in this case, the Big Five: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience) predicted academic success better than narrow personality variables (the construct Work Drive); it also explored the utility of operationalizing academic performance via cumulative grade point average (GPA) versus a single course grade. The highest significant correlates of GPA and course grade were Work Drive (r=.42, p<.01; r=.29, p<.01) and general intelligence, the cognitive variable (r=.40, p<.01; r=.35, p<.01). Regression analysis revealed that Work Drive was the stronger predictor of GPA (17.9% unique variance as step 1, compared to general intelligence’s 15.7% unique variance as step 1); while general intelligence was found to be the stronger predictor of course grade (11.8% unique variance as step 1, compared to Work Drive’s 8.6% unique variance as step 1). Two Big Five variables, Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability, correlated significantly with GPA (r=.15, p<.05; and r=.14, p<.05; respectively). Therefore, this study found that the narrow personality trait predicted better than the broader traits. Conflicting evidence was provided concerning whether GPA and course grade might be used interchangeably as valid criteria.

Prediction Interval Estimation Techniques For Empirical Modeling Strategies And Their Applications To Signal Validation Tasks, Brandon Peter Rasmussen

Doctoral Dissertations

The basis of this work was to evaluate both parametric and non-parametric empirical modeling strategies applied to signal validation or on-line monitoring tasks. On-line monitoring methods assess signal channel performance to aid in making instrument calibration decisions, enabling the use of condition-based calibration schedules. The three non-linear empirical modeling strategies studied were: artificial neural networks (ANN), neural network partial least squares (NNPLS), and local polynomial regression (LPR). These three types are the most common nonlinear models for applications to signal validation tasks. Of the class of local polynomials (for LPR), two were studied in this work: zero-order (kernel regression), and …

“A Study Of The Perceptions Of Occupational Therapy Students After Completing Fieldwork Level Ii Clinical Training In The United States On Supervision Characteristics, Victoria L. Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze occupational therapy student perceptions of supervision characteristics during fieldwork level II experiences in the United States. The fieldwork education system for occupational therapy has experienced a great deal of stress due to economic and educational delivery system changes.

The target population for this study was professional level occupational therapy students from accredited bachelors level and master’s level entry programs within the United States that have completed their fieldwork level II clinical education experiences in 1999. The instrument used included 2 sections of the Student Evaluation of Fieldwork Experience (SEFWE).

The research questions …

Analytical Modeling Of High Performance Reconfigurable Computers: Prediction And Analysis Of System Performance., Melissa C. Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

The use of a network of shared, heterogeneous workstations each harboring a Reconfigurable Computing (RC) system offers high performance users an inexpensive platform for a wide range of computationally demanding problems. However, effectively using the full potential of these systems can be challenging without the knowledge of the system’s performance characteristics. While some performance models exist for shared, heterogeneous workstations, none thus far account for the addition of Reconfigurable Computing systems. This dissertation develops and validates an analytic performance modeling methodology for a class of fork-join algorithms executing on a High Performance Reconfigurable Computing (HPRC) platform. The model includes the …

Monte Carlo Simulation Of Neutron Detectors, Andrew Curtis Stephan

Doctoral Dissertations

Neutron detectors are simulated using Monte Carlo methods in order to gain insight into how they work and optimize their performance. Simulated results for a Micromegas neutron beam monitor using a custom computer code are compared with published experimental data to verify the accuracy of the simulation. Different designs (e.g. neutron converter material, gas chamber width, gas pressure) are tested to assess their impact on detector performance. It is determined that a ¹⁰B converter foil and 1 mm drift gap width work best for a neutron beam monitor. The Micromegas neutron beam monitor neutronics are evaluated using the computer …

Numerical Simulation Of Separating Flows Using Computational Models Based On The Vorticity Confinement Method, Lesong Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of the present research is to investigate the recent development of the vorticity confinement method. First, a new formulation of the vorticity confinement term is studied. Advantages of the new formulation over the original one include the ability to conserve the momentum, and the ability to preserve the centroid motion of some flow properties such as the vorticity magnitude. Next, new difference schemes, which are simpler and more efficient than the old schemes, are discussed. At last, two computational models based on the vorticity confinement method are investigated. One of the models is devised to simulate inviscid flows …

Transportation Shortest Path Search Area Model, Hui Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Although many studies on shortest-path algorithms have been conducted in the past, few of them have considered the time and effort required to obtain and update the weight property of the network arcs. For transportation-related problems – due to the size and complexity of the network – preparing, updating, and transmitting the network database on which the shortest-path algorithms perform can be a challenge.

This study designed a Transportation Shortest Path Search Area (TSPSA) model to enhance the database preparation and updating step before any shortest-path search algorithm can start processing. Taking advantage of the characteristics of the transportation networks, …

Thermography Detection On The Fatigue Damage, Bing Yang

Doctoral Dissertations

It has always been a great temptation in finding new methods to in-situ “watch” the material fatigue-damage processes so that in-time reparations will be possible, and failures or losses can be minimized to the maximum extent. Realizing that temperature patterns may serve as fingerprints for stress-strain behaviors of materials, a state-of-art infrared (IR) thermography camera has been used to “watch” the temperature evolutions of both crystalline and amorphous materials “cycle by cycle” during fatigue experiments in the current research.

The two-dimensional (2D) thermography technique records the surface-temperature evolutions of materials. Since all plastic deformations are related to heat dissipations, thermography …

Effects Of Environment And Frequency On The Fatigue Behavior Of The Spallation Neutron Source (Sns) Target Container Material - 316 Ln Stainless Steel, Hongbo Tian

Doctoral Dissertations

As the candidate target container material of the new Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) being designed and constructed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), 316 low-carbon nitrogen-added (LN) stainless steel (SS) will operate in an aggressive environment, subjected to intense fluxes of high-energy protons and neutrons while exposed to liquid mercury. The SNS is an accelerator-based neutron source that provides pulsed beams of spallation neutrons by bombarding a mercury target with 1 GeV protons. The function of the SNS is to convert a short pulse (< 1 ms, 60 Hz, 17 kJ/pulse), high-average-power (1 MW), 1-GeV proton beam into 18 lower-energy (< 1eV), short-pulsed (~ tens of ms) neutron beams optimized for use by neutron-scattering instruments.

The current project is oriented toward materials studies regarding the effects of test environment …

The Value-Relevance Of Nonfinancial Information: The Biotechnology Industry, Ya-Wen Yang

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines whether nonfinancial patent information is useful to investors in assessing and valuing biotech firm’s long-term financial performance. The biotech industry requires large R&D investments with uncertain payoffs. Current accounting practice expenses (rather than capitalizes) R&D expenditures. As a result, financial variables are often negative or excessively depressed. Because accounting assets do not reflect biotech firms’ valuable intangible assets, this study examines whether nonfinancial patent information supplement the information content of financial information in market valuation. Using six patent variables measuring both quantity and quality aspects of patents, I found evidence consistent with the idea that nonfinancial patent …

Computational Magnetohydrodynamic Investigation Of Flux Compression And Implosion Dynamics In A Z-Pinch Plasma With An Azimuthally Opposed Magnetic Field Configuration, Kyle John Peterson

Doctoral Dissertations

Magnetic flux compression is a well established technique for the generation of ultrahigh magnetic fields, large currents, and large energy densities. It has been suggested as a means for power density amplification on Z-pinch generators such as Decade Quad, at Arnold Engineering Development Center, and it may be especially suitable as a means for producing higher powers of K-shell radiation from high atomic number loads such as titanium. Although many one-dimensional models of flux compression on Z-pinch generators exist, an improvement in understanding is needed about the physics and implosion dynamics on a two-dimensional level. To this end, a two-dimensional …

Directional Solidification, Microstructures And Mechanical Properties Of Cr-Cr3si Eutectic Alloys, Hongbin Bei

Doctoral Dissertations

Alloys based on intermetallics have been considered for high temperature structural applications. However, many of these alloys suffer from intrinsic brittleness and low fracture toughness at ambient temperature. Therefore, ductile-phase-toughened intermetallic composites are being investigated as a means to improve the fracture toughness. A subset of this class of materials is in-situ composites produced by directional solidification of intermetallic eutectics. In this study, the Cr-Cr₃Si eutectic system is selected as a model system to investigate composites by directional solidification, where the strong, but brittle Cr₃Si is combined with a more ductile Cr-rich solid solution.

A series …

“Compelled To Connect: A Phenomenological Study Of The Experience Of Writing, Shannon D. Collins

Doctoral Dissertations

Writing is frequently referred to as a process. Writing, in fact, is a series of complicated acts involving many processes, most of which take place in the writer’s mind and, thus, remain hidden from the lens of the researcher. The purpose of this research was to describe the first-person experience of writing through use of a phenomenological method involving dialogic interviews and hermeneutic interpretation. In the course of this investigation, 10 practicing writers (6 men and 4 women) were engaged in open-ended dialogue in which they described various personal experiences of writing. The participants were a business owner, a physician, …

The Social Construction Of Tourism In Cuba: A Geographic Analysis Of The Representations Of Gender And Race During The Special Period 1995-1997, Michael W. Cornebise

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to critically examine race and gender as they intersect with tourism development in Cuba during the Special Period in a Time of Peace (Special Period), a government imposed austerity program that followed the loss of important Soviet subsidies in 1989.

I hypothesize that tourism development in Cuba during the Special Period betrays the Revolution in that it reconstitutes discriminatory practices along lines of race and gender and hence does not deliver benefits to average Cubans. Indeed, I argue that tourism as presently constructed may subvert the well being of ordinary Cubans.

I draw from …

The Development And Utilization Of A Survey Instrument To Determine The Acceptance Of National Standards For Technological Literacy, Robert Malcolm Donan

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past six years, practitioners in the field of technology education within the State of Tennessee have been mandated with nearly constant curricular change with the latest being the implementation of a revised set of content standards for technology education, a major change in programs within the curriculum framework, and most recently a new name for the state-wide program. These programmatic changes, other than the name change, although they addressed the majority of the national content standards for technological literacy, were not correlated with either the programs or grade level content explicit in the national standards developed and published …