Digital Commons Network^™

Cultural Landscapes, Historic Preservation, And Cattle Ranches: A New Protocol For Documenting And Preserving Historic Working Cattle Ranches In Texas. Featuring A Case Study At The Dudley Brothers Ranch In Comanche, Texas Using Tx-Clevr (Texas Cultural Landscape Evaluation For Ranches), Bonnie Blocker

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

The Texas cattle ranch is a vernacular landscape of historic significance, threatened by population-driven land use change and unsustainable exurban development (Kjelland, 2007). A vast majority of Texas cattle ranches have not been recognized by any official designation program (THC, 2020), and have no formal recognition as cultural landscapes (Ramirez, 2018). This research explores the cultural landscape of cattle ranching in Texas, a specific landscape typology with very little documented study, in order to promote identification, preservation, and maintenance of these valuable landscapes within the field of landscape architecture. As the standard pathway to designation and documentation of cultural landscapes, …

Cultivating A Sense Of Place Through Experiential Landscapes: The Redesign Of Downtown Prosper, Texas, Nicole Palmer Simonini

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Many rural Texas towns are being enveloped by urban sprawl. Former small, rural towns with tightly-knit communities and storied historic places are being replaced by mass residential and retail developments. These enveloped communities are often besieged by an uninviting appearance of monotony; their unique identities are often lost in the expansion. Their rich, shared community experiences are diminished (Andres & Plater-Zyberk, 1992). This master’s design thesis explores the concept of sense of place through the lens of experiential landscapes. This study seeks to identify design attributes that contribute to the creation of experiential landscapes (Thwaites & Simkins, 2007) in Texas. …

Improving The Livability And Therapeutic Properties Of Hospital Campuses In North Texas By Integrating Artful Rain Design And Heat Island Mitigation, Reza Mabadi

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Despite these efforts and signs of progress, such design and planning efforts have failed to thoroughly integrate restorative design principles and sustainable strategies into the landscape architecture of healthcare facilities. The case studies presented in this research illustrate this phenomenon. Currently, sustainable approaches to evidence-based research on health and well-being necessitate a reexamination and reinvention of design methods and recommendations for hospital landscapes to improve their therapeutic properties. The main goal of this research is to investigate strategies to improve the livability and therapeutic values of the constructed landscape of Clements University Hospital through an evidence-based approach and to examine …

Transforming A Typical Flea Market Into A More Vital Third Place Through Expressions Of Cultural Diversity, Nusrat Jahan Nipu

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

"Flea markets are significant in North America because of their cultural, socio-economic, functional values, and the opportunities they provide for social interaction and public gathering" (Riveira, A.N., 2013). They can be transformed from typical commercial marketplaces into vital third places by expressing various cultural themes through design. In 1989, "third place" was termed by Ray Oldenburg, an urban sociologist who espoused that one’s home is the first place, workspace or office is the second place, and the area where people meet informally to enjoy the company of others is the third place (Oldenburg, R., 2008). The use of cultural themes …

Rubberband Man Enters The Virtual Still Life, Ari O. Norris

Student Projects

No abstract provided.

Justice For The Fallen Woman, Terri Weaver

English Theses

By analyzing the experiences of four different incidents of shaming women—Dallas police officers photographing partially nude prostitutes during booking, Anita Hill, Monica Lewinksky, and Christine Blasey-Ford—in contemporary American History in the same way as one would analyze literature, there becomes similarities between the archetype of the fallen woman and the treatment of the women. Each situation is paired with literary texts including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. This pairing helps to reveal that the archetype of the fallen woman may influence social praxis, …

Reopening The Temple School: Reforming Contemporary Education With The Transcendentalists, Richard Evan Miller

English Theses

A conversation surrounding reform in American education has been in play for two centuries. In 1834, Bronson Alcott’s Temple School challenged traditional modes of education with his conversational approach in the classroom. His methods encouraged students to self-reflect on their relationship to nature, rather than conform to a standardized knowledge system common in public schools. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, his Transcendentalist contemporary and teaching assistant, published her Record of a School in 1835 to record Alcott’s interactions with students and display to the public the effectiveness of their reformed approach to education. Fast-forward to the current climate in America, and one …

Decentering White Space In The Two-Year College English Classroom: A Perspective Through Crt, Tribalcrit, And Latcrit, Kassandra Angela Ramirez Buck

English Dissertations

White space in the educational system is an attitude, environment, ideology dominated by the white dominant voice and creed. This white space intimidates and oppresses Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) students, not only physically but mentally and emotionally. This research provides solutions to help instructors decenter white space. In order to begin to decenter white space, instructors need to modify their curriculum and classroom policies, presence and environment, and execution. Using Latina/o Critical Theory, Tribal Critical Race Theory, and Critical Race Theory in Education, this research addresses structural facets of systemic racism BIPOC students in the two-year college English …

Sermonic Fugues Evaluated In A Thematic Collection Of African-American Homiletical Responses To The 9/11 Tragedy Using Distant Reading Analytics, Terrance Andrew Ford

English Dissertations

This dissertation project introduces and evaluates the coined rhetorical/homiletical concept of the sermonic fugue. The term is an expanded adaptation of the musico-literary fugue principally in the context of thematic collections and homiletical analytics. It defines recurring—common or contrasting—rhetorical patterns presenting themselves particularly within multiple sermons. This research critiques the sermonic fugue against a select collection of African-American homiletical responses to the 9/11 tragedy. The evaluation is further conducted using distant reading and topic modeling analytics to identify the presence and notable patterns of sermonic fugues within the collection. The methodology of the research is performed in phases which involved …

Race And Social Injustice: The Representations In Children's Picture Books, 2016-2020, Brittany Boisvert

English Theses

This project is an examination of race and representations of social injustice in children’s picture books from 2016-2020 and is informed by black feminist theory and children’s literary criticism. The objective is to examine through a critical race theory lens how these texts reflect concerns related to race and racism that surfaced during the Trump Administration, specifically police brutality. As these texts form and inform an accurate portrayal of the human experience (childhood to adulthood), the analysis will examine why there is a dearth of these kinds of representations in the Obama era, and the sudden influx of picture books …

Perceptions And Content Of Traditional And Online News: An Analysis Of Bias In Indian Media, Sangya Tyagi

Communication Theses

The primary objective of this study was to compare and analyse two different points of view on media polarization: one, from the public’s perspective through a survey (analysis of their perceptions on news received from their preferred news sources) and the other, analysis of media published by the media content providers. Another research contribution of this study was that it included an analysis of the mode of media consumption, i.e., how the news was consumed--via traditional media or through online media. This project ties in a variety of aspects in the field of communication -- media, mode of news consumption, …

Language Archive Records: Interoperability Of Referencing Practices And Metadata Models, Hugh J. Paterson Iii

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of the digital language archive and the plethora of referenceable content, a critical question arises: “How easy is it for authors to use existing tools to cite the content they are referencing?” This is especially important as people use archived materials as evidence within published language descriptions.

Archived resource metadata is well discussed in language documentation circles; however, bibliographic metadata and its accessibility are less discussed. Discoverability metadata, a subset of archived resource metadata, serves aggregators like OLAC by declaring a resource exists. In contrast, bibliographic metadata functions within documents by declaring where to find a resource …

Vistas: Vocational Immersive Storytelling Training And Support Framework For Augmenting Work Performance, Sanika Doolani

Civil Engineering Theses

Training and assessment of novice workers are the most vital part of any vocational industry. Innovations in science and technology have led to the creation of new industries and occupations, enhanced productivity and quality of work-life, and increased the potential for more people to participate in the workforce. However, these come at the risk and disadvantage of an increased cost of training and lack of proper training in industries, such as manufacturing. Recently, the use of Extended Reality (XR) systems has been on the rise to tackle various domains such as training, education, safety, etc. With the recent advances in …

Characterization Of Msw And Plastic Waste Volume Estimation During Covid-19 Pandemic, Sehneela Sara Aurpa

Civil Engineering Theses

COVID-19 has appeared and shook all aspects of our life. Starting from panic buying prior lockdown to the availability of vaccine, the whole world has gone through a pandemic situation which bounded people to live a life that never seemed normal before. Lockdown and risk of spreading disease forced people to stay at home and generate more waste, especially plastic waste. The effect on municipal solid waste characteristics due to this shift in the way of living is assessed in this study. In this study, municipal solid waste was collected from the working face of Irving Hunter Ferrell landfill. Waste …

Using Sentiment And Emotion Analysis Of News Articles To Analyze The Effects Of Leader’S Statements On Covid-19 Spread, Poojitha Thota

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Leaders generally include government officials, politicians, etc. Their statements can highly affect people’s decisions in many ways. Currently, in the pandemic situation, many statements were being passed every hour and day, which showed an impact on the spread of corona virus cases at certain location. So, this paper proposes a supervised model to analyze the variations of COVID-19 data based upon the leader’s statements passed at certain time and location. The proposed methodology consists of sentiment and emotion analysis for the leader’s statements to determine the true intentions of the leader. The leader’s statements are a collection of data obtained …

Human Factors Analysis And Monitoring To Enhance Human-Robot Collaboration, Akilesh Rajavenkatanarayanan

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) can be defined as a way for us to communicate with machines through user interfaces. User interfaces have evolved from complicated punch cards and levers in the first analog computers to a more natural way of interaction using speech or gestures in today's digital assistants. Technological advancements in computing devices have paved the way for smart, powerful computers to be part of our everyday lives. There is also an increasing trend of using smart computing devices and robots in manufacturing lines, medical procedures, rehabilitation, and personal care. The umbrella of HMI typically covers several areas like Human-Robot …

Effect Of Sludge Content On Different Types Of Food Waste Degradation In Anaerobic Digester, Mumtahina Binte Latif

Civil Engineering Theses

Food waste (FW) is the second-largest component in landfills which impacts environments adversely by generating excessive leachate and greenhouse gas. Generally, conventional anaerobic digester and composting can be used for FW disposal. However, the former is highly expensive while the latter is energy inefficient. In contrast, household or community level underground anaerobic digester offers a cost-efficient solution as well as retrieves valuable energy from FW. The addition of nutrients such as sludge to organic waste especially FW accelerates the production of energy by limiting volatile fatty acid (VFA) accumulation. The objective of the current study is to find out the …

Low-Dose Ct Image Denoising Using Deep Learning Methods, Zeheng Li

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has raised highly attention since the counterpart, full-dose computed tomography (FDCT), brings potential ionizing radiation influence to patients. However, LDCT still suffers from several issues such as relatively higher noise level, which limits its uses in practical applications. To improve LDCT image quality, conventional denoising methods, such as KSVD and BM3D, are first introduced to suppress noise in low-dose images. These methods, however, works under assumptions that are not robust to various data. In this paper, we conduct an extensive research on deep learning based denoising method in LDCT images. We mainly base on Generative-Adversarial Network …

Photomodulatory Effects On Insulin Secreting Beta Cells, Sheccid Alejandra Loya

Bioengineering Theses

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disease characterized by increased blood glucose levels and affects more than 8% of people worldwide (Rutter et. al, 2015). Typically, diabetes is divided into two large subcategories: type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). T1D is an autoimmune disorder caused by the attack of insulin secreting cells by t-cell mediated inflammatory response (Khrraoubi & Darwish, 2015). Currently, islet transplants offer a clinical treatment for restoration of glucose control. However, the current procedure may not be optimal as many transplanted islets do not survive because of the stresses induced during the process (Miki …

Effect Of Modified Moisture Barrier In Mitigating Pavement Distresses Due To Expansive Subgrade, Pratibha Pandey

Civil Engineering Dissertations

Surficial distresses in roadways of Texas are very common due to presence of high plastic clayey soil in the subgrade. Increased sensitivity of high plastic clay towards seasonal moisture change results in repeated swelling and shrinkage, and ultimately the development of pavement cracks. Annual expenses of such distresses impose huge financial liability to maintenance authorities. Studies have indicated rainwater intrusion into underlying expansive subgrade soil coupled with inadequate drainage as the main cause of pavement damage in semi-arid regions. The inability of drainage layer to laterally drain the excess moisture may lead to moisture accumulation within the base layer which …

Learning Hierarchical Traversability Representation For Efficient Multi-Resolution Path Planning, Reza Etemadi Idgahi

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Path finding on grid-based obstacle maps is an important and much studied problem with applications in robotics and autonomy. Traditionally, in the AI community, heuristic search methods (e.g. based on Dijkstra and A*, or based on random trees) are used to solve this problem. This search, however incurs significant computational cost that grows with the size and resolution of the obstacle grid and has to be mitigated with effective heuristics in order to allow path finding in real time. In this work we introduce a learning framework using deep neural networks with a stackable convolution kernel to establish a hierarchy …

Extend The Sensing Boundary Of Mobile Systems: Security And New Applications, Wenqiang Jin

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

The exploding growth of mobile devices like smartphones and wearables has envisioned various applications, which are developed to collect a wide spectrum of data using on-board device sensors and process them to serve peoples' life in all kinds of scenarios. Noticing the sensing capabilities of current mobile device are limited to its on-board sensors' default functionalities. We study the mechanism designs that extend the mobile device's sensing capabilities to perform new sensing tasks other than its defaults. In this thesis, we investigate the mobile systems' security issues and develop new applications by exploring the device's sensing capabilities. Our contributions are …

Evaluation And Retrofitting Of Prestressed Concrete Girder Bridge With Excessive Vibration, Ikram Hasan Efaz

Civil Engineering Dissertations

Vibration of a highway bridges is a serviceability issue according to American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). Though vibration is one of the primary reasons of bridge deck cracking, AASHTO only has a deflection limit to counterpart vibration which is not adequate according to many researchers. For instance, SH-75 SB Bridge over Wilson Creek in McKinney, Texas was observed to have excessive vibration and cracking on the concrete deck. To evaluate the condition of the bridge, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Impact Echo (IE) were used on the deck as Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) methods. A diagnostic load …

Metabolic And Electrophysiological Effects Of Transcranial Photobiomodulation (Pbm) And Multi-Wavelength Pbm, Tyrell Byrom Pruitt

Bioengineering Dissertations

Photobiomodulation (PBM) with near infrared light may become a non-invasive, effective clinical tool after it is understood well for its mechanism of action. In my dissertation research, I have addressed three research questions as three aims to achieve. Aim 1 was to investigate and demonstrate the reproducibility of the effects of transcranial PBM (tPBM) with 1064-nm laser delivered on the right forehead of separate groups of healthy humans measured using different experiment setups in separate sites and years. In Chapter 2, I reported sham-controlled, tPBM-induced concentration increases in oxygenated hemoglobin (∆[HbO]) and oxidized cytochrome c oxidase (∆[oxi-CCO]) in both young …

A Comprehensive Framework To Mitigate Surficial Slope Failures, Burak Boluk

Civil Engineering Dissertations

Each year, numerous highway and dam slopes that are built with high plasticity clays experience shallow slope failures. Besides the high maintenance and repair costs, these failures negatively impact the public life by interrupting the traffic flow and causing serious safety hazards. The development of desiccation cracks due to weathering cycles deteriorates hydro-mechanical properties of soil, increases water infiltration, and ultimately results in surficial slope failure. Several slope rehabilitation methods have been developed to stabilize clayey soil slope sections affected by surficial failures. Lime stabilization is an effective treatment method that generally reduces the swell-shrink potential of expansive soil and …

Non-Invasive Profiling Of Molecular Markers In Brain Gliomas Using Deep Learning And Magnetic Resonance Images, Chandan Ganesh Bangalore Yogananda

Bioengineering Dissertations

Gliomas account for the most common malignant primary brain tumors in both pediatric and adult populations. They arise from glial cells and are divided into low grade and high-grade gliomas with significant differences in patient survival. Patients with aggressive high-grade gliomas have life expectancies of less than 2 years. Glioblastoma (GBM) are aggressive brain tumors classified by the world health organization (WHO) as stage IV brain cancer. The overall survival for GBM patients is poor and is in the range of 12 to 15 months. These tumors are typically treated by surgery, followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Gliomas often consist …

Pavement Temperature Response To Cold Fronts: A Model Column Study In A Freezer Box, Taryn Dilorenzo

Civil Engineering Theses

The correlation of meteorological data and pavement conditions is crucial for winter pavement maintenance, this is the main reason that it is so important to understand in what ways pavement responds to cold fronts as well as when the formation of ice on a pavement surface can be expected. The pavement surface and its underlying subsurface layers combine to create a system with the behavior of the surface being influenced by both the air temperature above it, as well as the temperature and thermodynamic processes occurring in the sublayers below it. Both the pavement surface as well as the sublayers …

Numerical Simulation Of Anchor Group Effects On Concrete Breakout Strength Within Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete, Harjasdeep Singh Chauhan

Civil Engineering Theses

This study aims to investigate numerically, the effect of anchor groups on concrete breakout strength using nonlinear finite element analysis. Steel headed studs were cast in place within concrete of different amounts of steel fibers. Different proportions of steel fibers (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%) were utilized within steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) for the numerical simulation. The physical properties of SFRC were modelled with respect to its composite compressive and tensile strength obtained from the experiments. The analysis was conducted on the concrete breakout strength of anchor bolts within SFRC. A good agreement was achieved between the numerical and the …

Biomechanical Studies Of Developing Zebrafish Heart In-Vivo, Nabid Salehin

Bioengineering Dissertations

The heart is an electrically controlled mechanical pump that provides the cardiac output required by the body to function properly and flexibly adapts to changing demand and working conditions. In vertebrate embryos, the heart is the first organ that starts functioning and the function is initiated well before structural organogenesis is complete, with its early mechanical function affecting its own development. During development, the heart transforms from a valveless linear peristaltic tube into a multi-chambered pulsatile pump with blood flow regulating valves while continuing to serve the metabolic needs of the embryo. The zebrafish has emerged as a popular model …

Kopos: A Framework To Study And Detect Physical And Cognitive Fatigue Concurrently, Varun Ajay Kanal

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Fatigue is one of the most prevalent phenomena in human beings, and yet its detection is highly subjective and poorly understood. The phenomenon of fatigue has a huge impact on performance, the ability to execute tasks safely and correctly, and the ability to retain or secure a job. Fatigue can be classified into two types: physical and cognitive fatigue. Physical fatigue may occur due to excessive physical exertion, while cognitive fatigue may occur due to excessive mental exertion. Historically, these two types of fatigue have been studied independently. However, in the real world, although these often occur at the same …