Digital Commons Network^™

Heterogeneous Catalyst Design For Biomass Conversion, Dia Sahsah

Theses and Dissertations

Catalytic upgrading of bio-based feedstocks to commodity chemicals and fuels is pivotal to a more sustainable, renewable, and environmentally benign chemical economy. However, due to the high oxygen content, high water solubility, excessive reactivity, and thermal instability, typical and well-developed catalytic material and reactor processes reliably utilized in conventional petrochemical industry are, in general, not suitable for the processing of biomass feedstocks. Therefore, the development of novel heterogeneous catalysts is necessary in order to design new high-performance catalytic reactor systems. However, rational catalyst design is a multifaceted problem, and a myriad of factors influencing the catalytic performance at the reactor …

An Evaluation Of Ireland’S Sustainable Freight Transport Policy, Xu Zhang, Eoin Plant, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos

Articles

Background: The Irish government has put forth sustainable transport policy measures, yet the emphasis is mainly on the active travel and sustainable mobility for passenger transport. Contrariwise, freight transport has not received equal consideration in policy measures, regulatory frameworks, and support schemes towards the low-carbon transition. This study seeks to address this imbalance. Methods: The paper proposes an adaptation of the ASI framework for freight transport and assesses the applicability of a number of international sustainable transport measures based on their potential sustainability impact if adopted in Ireland. The research applied a Policy Delphi Method to a heterogeneous …

Our Streets: Increasing Equity In Active Transportation Planning Through Community Outreach, Jordan Hoy

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT Significant research has demonstrated that active transportation infrastructure is essential for the growth and livability of San Francisco: it increases access to economic opportunities, promotes overall improved public health, encourages mobility without contributing to roadway congestion, prevents traffic injuries and fatalities, and supports the sustainability goals of the city. Despite the fact that communities of color will benefit the most from active transportation infrastructure development, historical disenfranchisement in tandem with a lack of diverse representation within public participation contributes to an inequitable distribution of walking and biking investments throughout the city of San Francisco. While research shows that Black …

Live Access Control Policy Error Detection Through Hardware, Bryce Mendenhall

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Access Control (AC) is a widely used security measure designed to protect resources and infrastructure in an information system. The integrity of the AC policy is crucial to the protection of the system. Errors within an AC policy may cause many vulnerabilities such as information leaks, information loss, and malicious activities. Thus, such errors must be detected and promptly fixed. However, current AC error detection models do not allow for real-time error detection, nor do they provide the source of errors. This thesis presents a live error detection model called LogicDetect which utilizes emulated Boolean digital logic circuits to provide …

A Systems Approach For Solving Inter-Policy Gaps In Dynamic Spectrum Access-Based Wireless Rural Broadband Networks, Pawel Kryszkiewicz, Casey I. Canfield, Shamsnaz Virani Bhada, Alexander M. Wyglinski

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we articulate the challenge of multiple intersecting policies for the realization of rural broadband networks employing dynamic spectrum access (DSA). Broadband connectivity has been identified as a critical component of economic development, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and rural communities have been significantly (and negatively) affected by the lack of this important resource. Although technologies exist that can deliver broadband connectivity, such as 4G LTE and 5G cellular networks, the challenges associated with efficiently deploying this infrastructure within a rural environment are multi-dimensional in terms of the different dependent policy decisions that need to be considered. To …

The Influence Of Policy Implementation In The Midwest: How A Sstem Program Broadens Participation And Enhances Engineering Identity For Community College Students, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Maria L. Espino, Brian D. Le, Kelly J. Cunniham

Faculty Publications

This qualitative research study describes how a Midwest community college’s implementation of an Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (SSTEM) program influences engineering identity development for its students with financial need. Using a phenomenological approach, the study finds that the program enables community college students to have greater financial freedom and an ability to focus on engineering identity. In addition, the SSTEM program enhances student connections with STEM faculty, program staff, and peers. The study highlights the need for creating spaces for engineering identity development, developing connections between faculty, staff, and students, and enhancing transfer connections through different experiences. …

Integrating Ethics Across The Engineering Curriculum Through Sustainability And Legislative Topics, Diana Adela Martin, Eddie Conlon, Brian Bowe

Conference Papers

The paper explores the inclusion of sustainability and legislation related coverage in Engineering programmes in Ireland in the context of increasing calls for integrating ethics across the curriculum. It is part of a broader study examining engineering ethics education conducted in cooperation with the national accrediting body, Engineers Ireland. The study includes 23 Engineering programmes from 6 institutions in Ireland that underwent accreditation between 2017-2019. Qualitative research methods have been employed, such as documentary analysis of module descriptors and of materials submitted for accreditation, as well as interviews with evaluators serving on accreditation panels and lecturers within the participant programmes. …

Sustainable Communities, Fall/Winter 2010, Issue 21

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Climate Change, Spring/Summer 2007, Issue 16

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

System Simulation Study On Influences Of Oil Price, Policy And Public Opinion On Travel, Yijun Liu, Mengwei Li, Lian Ying

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: With the advancement of urbanization, environmental problems such as traffic congestion and automobile exhaust pollution have received widespread attention, which made it of great significance to rationally adjust and guide people to choose green travel modes to optimize the structure of consumer travel. By constructing agent-based binary and ternary consumer driving state simulation models, three measures that may affect the consumer travel, namely, oil price regulation, policy intervention and public opinion guidance are researched, in order to explore the most influential measures, and how the three measures are more suitable for guiding healthy travel and optimizing urban road conditions, …

In Situ Mutation For Active Things In The Iot Context, Noura Faci, Zakaria Maamar, Thar Baker, Emir Ugljanin, Mohamed Sellami

All Works

Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved This paper discusses mutation as a new way for making things, in the context of Internet-of-Things (IoT), active instead of being passive as reported in the ICT literature. IoT is gaining momentum among ICT practitioners who see a lot of benefits in using things to support users have access to and control over their surroundings. However, things are still confined into the limited role of data suppliers. The approach proposed in this paper advocates for 2 types of mutation, active and passive, along with a set …

Digital Forensics In The Next Five Years, Laoise Luciano, Ibrahim Baggili, Mateusz Topor, Peter Casey, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Cyber forensics has encountered major obstacles over the last decade and is at a crossroads. This paper presents data that was obtained during the National Workshop on Redefining Cyber Forensics (NWRCF) on May 23-24, 2017 supported by the National Science Foundation and organized by the University of New Haven. Qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed from twenty-four cyber forensics expert panel members. This work identified important themes that need to be addressed by the community, focusing on (1) where the domain currently is; (2) where it needs to go and; (3) steps needed to improve it. Furthermore, based on the …

A Model For Sustaining New Technology Based On Government Incentives, Girish Upreti

Doctoral Dissertations

The diffusion of new technology that provides environmental benefits may require government incentives for a duration of time, especially when the technology is expensive. The Center of Systems Research and Education (CASRE) model is developed that analyzes the impact of incentives in sustaining new technologies to allow their social acceptance. The CASRE model includes both demand and supply variables associated with incentive policy to sustain new technology. The key to market dissemination and sustainability is the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) levels provided by the government. The level of ITC is based on the current cost to the customer and the …

Examining The Effects Of Transport Policy On Modal Shift From Private Car To Public Bus, Ahm Mehbub Anwar, Jie Yang

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

Private vehicles have become the most common mode of daily travel. This is one effect of the poor accessibility of public transportation. This paper attempts to use a study based on a survey of commuters in order to devise ways of encouraging the use of public transportation. Two different public transport policies were examined: (i) once-an-hour direct bus service from home to university (policy 1), and (ii) park-and-ride facilities (policy 2). Binary logistics models are proposed with the intention of comparing the utility of travel modes between private cars and public buses. These models are also used to identify the …

Barriers To Predictive Analytics Use For Policy Decision-Making Effectiveness In Turbulent Times: A Case Study Of Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Akemi T. Chatfield, Christopher Reddick

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

No abstract provided.

Emergent Ai, Social Robots And The Law: Security, Privacy And Policy Issues, Ramesh Subramanian

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The rapid growth of AI systems has implications on a wide variety of fields. It can prove to be a boon to disparate fields such as healthcare, education, global logistics and transportation, to name a few. However, these systems will also bring forth far-reaching changes in employment, economy and security. As AI systems gain acceptance and become more commonplace, certain critical questions arise: What are the legal and security ramifications of the use of these new technologies? Who can use them, and under what circumstances? What is the safety of these systems? Should their commercialization be regulated? What are the …

How Engineering Standards Are Interpreted And Translated For Middle School, Eugene Judson, John Ernzen, Stephen Krause, James A. Middleton, Robert J. Culbertson

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

In this exploratory study we examined the alignment of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) middle school engineering design standards with lesson ideas from middle school teachers, science education faculty, and engineering faculty (4–6 members per group). Respondents were prompted to provide plain language interpretations of two middle school Engineering Design performance expectations and to provide examples of how the performance expectations could be applied in middle school classrooms. Participants indicated the challenges and benefits of implementing these performance expectations and indicated personal experiences that helped them to interpret the performance expectations.

Quality of lessons differed depending on the performance expectation …

Resolving The Policy Paradox: The Case Of Biofuel Production In Ireland, Alan Gilmer, Mark J. Mcgarrity, Vivienne Byers

Articles

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the status of policy design and policy implementation in the biofuel sector in Ireland. The focus of the work addresses the overarching operational context of the biofuel sector in Ireland and the role of different actors in shaping and resolving inconsistencies in policy outlook and practice. Design/methodology/approach – This study used a qualitative research approach involving a series of semi-structured interviews with members of the relevant sub-groups concerned. This study sought to address two questions – whether current or proposed policy is likely to affect consumption of indigenous biofuel feedstocks …

Regional Planning And Policy Analysis In Australia Through Integrated Economic Modelling, Ashkan Masouman, Charles Harvie, Pascal Perez

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

Several attempts have been proposed in the literature to relax the restrictive assumptions of a standalone input-output model. Particularly, endogenisation of the household sector, which exhibits the highest constant returns to scale, has been continuously recognised as a key objective of such attempts. This objective increases in importance as we move from national to regional economies. Most of the studies in the literature collapse the intermediate demand information into a solo composite variable. The intermediate demand information serves as a priori data, which represents the inter-sectoral1 relationships within a regional economy. In this paper, estimation of sectoral employment by embedding …

A Novel Queue Management Policy For Delay-Tolerant Networks, Saeid Iranmanesh

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Delay-tolerant networks (DTNs) have attracted increasing attention from governments, academia and industries in recent years. They are designed to provide a communication channel that exploits the inherent mobility of trams, buses and cars. However, the resulting highly dynamic network suffers from frequent disconnections, thereby making node-to-node communications extremely challenging. Researchers have thus proposed many routing/forwarding strategies in order to achieve high delivery ratios and/or low latencies and/or low overheads. Their main idea is to have nodes store and carry information bundles until a forwarding opportunity arises. This, however, creates the following problems. Nodes may have short contacts and/or insufficient buffer …

Developing An Optimum Maintenance Policy By Life Cycle Cost Analysis - A Case Study, Khaled O. El-Akruti, Tieling Zhang, Richard Dwight

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper focuses on developing maintenance policies for critical assets to improve the production performance based on life cycle cost (LCC) analysis. A general approach is adopted for conducting the LCC analysis. The investigation is based on a case study to demonstrate how an optimum maintenance policy is determined. The relevant LCC structure in the case study is defined for the decision process which involves determination of the optimum life, repair limit and selection of materials, and trade-off between repair and replacement. The LCC analysis is based on statistical data modelling which facilitates decision-making on the optimal replacement of an …

The Impact Of Social Media Policy And Use On Value Creation: A Survey Research, Uuf Brajawidagda, Akemi T. Chatfield

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Organizations need to provide effective policies in aligning their social media use with organizational goals to realize the expected benefits of social media. However, while social media use has been studied, social media policy research is lacking. This study aims to examine impacts of social media policy and active use on value creation. Drawing on the Model of IT/Business Value, we assessed the interplay between social media policy and social media use on value creation in a survey research conducted with Indonesia's disaster management agencies. Our analysis results of 124 survey responses show that social media use and social media …

Ciphertext-Policy Attribute Based Encryption Supporting Access Policy Update, Yinhao Jiang, Willy Susilo, Yi Mu, Fuchun Guo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) allows one-to-many encryption with static access control. In many occasions, the access control policy must be updated and the original encryptor might be required to re-encrypt the message, which is impractical, since the encryptor might be unavailable. Unfortunately, to date the work in ABE does not consider this issue yet, and hence this hinders the adoption of ABE in practice. In this work, we consider how to efficiently update access policies in Ciphertext-policy Attribute-based Encryption (CP-ABE) systems without re-encryption. We introduce a new notion of CP-ABE supporting access policy update that captures the functionalities of attribute addition …

Framing The Question, "Who Governs The Internet?", Robert J. Domanski

Publications and Research

There remains a widespread perception among both the public and elements of academia that the Internet is “ungovernable”. However, this idea, as well as the notion that the Internet has become some type of cyber-libertarian utopia, is wholly inaccurate. Governments may certainly encounter tremendous difficulty in attempting to regulate the Internet, but numerous types of authority have nevertheless become pervasive. So who, then, governs the Internet? This book will contend that the Internet is, in fact, being governed, that it is being governed by specific and identifiable networks of policy actors, and that an argument can be made as to …

The Impact Of National Science Foundation Investments In Undergraduate Engineering Education Research: A Comparative, Mixed Methods Study, Jeremi Shavonda London

Open Access Dissertations

The U.S. invests billions of taxpayers' dollars in research tied to the national priorities that contribute to its competitiveness in a global economy. As the federal funding agency with an explicit focus on engineering education, the National Science Foundation (NSF) contains a portfolio of projects focused on improving the quantity of engineering graduates and the quality of engineering programs. Within the agency, the Division of Undergraduate Education invests approximately $190 million (FY 2012) annually on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education projects. Although the DUE portfolio includes a suite a projects with different foci supporting national initiatives and Principal …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Assessment Of Policies For Innovative Financing In Infrastructure Systems, Ali Mostafavi, Dulcy Abraham, Charlene Sullivan

Infrastructure System-of-Systems (I-SoS ) Research Group

Infrastructure systems are drivers of the economy in the nation. A dollar spent on infrastructure development yields roughly double the initial spending in ultimate economic output in the short term; and over a twenty-year period, and generalized ‘public investment’ produces an aggregated $3.21 of economic activity per $1.00 spent [1]. Thus, formulation of policies pertaining to infrastructure investment and development is of significance affecting the social and economic wellbeing of the nation. The aim of this policy brief is to evaluate innovative financing in infrastructure systems from two different perspectives: (1) through consideration of the current condition of infrastructure in …

Reduction Of Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions To Mitigate Climate Change Impacts, Mary Snow, Richard Snow

Publications

Weather affects almost all modes of transportation in a modern society, and likewise, transportation has an enormous impact on the weather. Transportation greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) impact climate change, which impacts transportation in return. Reduction of transportation impacts on climate change can mitigate the reverse climate change impacts on transportation. This paper examines the relationship between transportation and climate change and establishes prospective solutions to reduce transportation greenhouse gas emission impacts on climate change and mitigate the reverse climate change impacts on transportation.

The Occurrence, Fate, Environmental Impact, And Management Implications Of Pharmaceutical And Personal Care Products In Wastewater And The Environment, Benjamin Donald Blair

Theses and Dissertations

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are a critical part of modern life. However, there is growing evidence that the levels of PPCPs detected in wastewater effluent and in the environment have the potential to cause damage to aquatic organisms. These pollutants enter the aquatic environment primarily through human use, disposal in the drain or toilet, land application of biosolids, and veterinary sources. Numerous questions remain regarding the occurrence, fate, and impacts of PPCPs in wastewater, along with limited feasible management recommendations that would adequately mitigate the risk from these pollutants. This dissertation will present three advances in the field …

Wetland Issues Affecting Waterfowl Conservation In North America, Heath M. Hagy, Scott C. Yaich, John W. Simpson, Eduardo Carrera, David A. Haukos, W.Carter Johnson, Charles R. Loesch, Fritz A. Reid, Scott E. Stephens, Ralph W. Tiner, Brett A. Werner, Greg S. Yarris

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

This paper summarises discussions by invited speakers during a special session at the 6th North American Duck Symposium on wetland issues that affect waterfowl, highlighting current ecosystem challenges and opportunities for the conservation of waterfowl in North America. Climate change, invasive species, U.S. agricultural policy (which can encourage wetland drainage and the expansion of row-crop agriculture into grasslands), cost and competition for water rights, and wetland management for non-waterfowl species were all considered to pose significant threats to waterfowl populations in the near future. Waterfowl populations were found to be faced with significant threats in several regions, including: the Central …