Engineering Commons^™

Nonprofit Leader Experiences In Sector-Bending After Lean Six Sigma Training: Tension, Concepts, And Changed Behaviors, Beverly Codallos

Dissertations

Government, business, and nonprofit represent three distinct types of organizations governed by different legal frameworks designed to facilitate collective action (DiMaggio & Anheier, 1990). The emergence of hybrid forms and increasing isomorphic pressures in the nonprofit sector (Bromley & Meyer, 2017; McCambridge, 2014) have challenged the traditional separation of organizational forms. This study explored the phenomenon popularized as sector-bending, “a wide variety of approaches, activities, and relationships that are blurring the distinctions between nonprofit and for-profit organizations, either because they are behaving more similarly, operating in the same realms, or both” (Dees & Anderson, 2003, pg. 16). This qualitative study …

Development Of An Explainability Scale To Evaluate Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Xai) Methods, Stephen Mccarthy

Dissertations

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is an area of research that develops methods and techniques to make the results of artificial intelligence understood by humans. In recent years, there has been an increased demand for XAI methods to be developed due to model architectures getting more complicated and government regulations requiring transparency in machine learning models. With this increased demand has come an increased need for instruments to evaluate XAI methods. However, there are few, if none, valid and reliable instruments that take into account human opinion and cover all aspects of explainability. Therefore, this study developed an objective, human-centred questionnaire …

Using Fnirs As An Objective Measure Of Susceptibility To Informational Masking, Min Zhang

Dissertations

Resolving complicated auditory scenes is crucial for daily communication where background sound is often present. However, most hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implant (CI) users have difficulties understanding speech when competing sound sources are present, resulting in reduced job opportunities and increased risk for social isolation. Perceptual interference from background sound is called auditory masking. At least two distinct masking phenomena exist, called energetic and informational masking (EM and IM).

In the first masking phenomenon, EM, target and masker energies coincide at the same time and frequency. Computational and physiological models of cochlear auditory processing can reliably predict listeners' performances …

Neurobiological Markers For Remission And Persistence Of Childhood Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Yuyang Luo

Dissertations

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders in children. Symptoms of childhood ADHD persist into adulthood in around 65% of patients, which elevates the risk for a number of adverse outcomes, resulting in substantial individual and societal burden. A neurodevelopmental double dissociation model is proposed based on existing studies in which the early onset of childhood ADHD is suggested to associate with dysfunctional subcortical structures that remain static throughout the lifetime; while diminution of symptoms over development could link to optimal development of prefrontal cortex. Current existing studies only assess basic measures including regional brain activation …

Multi-Sensory Emotion Recognition With Speech And Facial Expression, Qingmei Yao

Dissertations

Emotion plays an important role in human beings’ daily lives. Understanding emotions and recognizing how to react to others’ feelings are fundamental to engaging in successful social interactions. Currently, emotion recognition is not only significant in human beings’ daily lives, but also a hot topic in academic research, as new techniques such as emotion recognition from speech context inspires us as to how emotions are related to the content we are uttering.

The demand and importance of emotion recognition have highly increased in many applications in recent years, such as video games, human computer interaction, cognitive computing, and affective computing. …

Psychophysically Derived Work Frequencies Associated With Roof Shingling Operations Involving Change In Grade, Sang Dae Choi

Dissertations

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of roof slope on psychophysical roof shingling frequency. Twelve healthy males (21-30 years old) were used as participants. Experiment one was designed to determine Maximum Acceptable Roof Shingling Frequency (MARSF) for a workday period using psychophysical methodology. Results indicate that 198 shingles/hr is an acceptable roof shingling frequency for a workday. Furthermore, 2 hours is an acceptable testing period (equivalent to the workday). Postural sway and physiological variables support these findings. Experiment two was designed to study the effect of slope (18°, 26°, and 34°) on MARSF. Experiment two indicates …