Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Fearless Friday: Kirsten Crear, Kirsten Crear

SURGE

Even in her last semester here at Gettysburg, Kirsten Crear ’14 is fearlessly working to make changes for the future of the campus community. This semester, Kirsten introduced a STEMinists club on campus that will give female students who are STEM (an acronym for Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) majors the opportunity to come together and create a community, share and discuss the difficulties they face as women in their fields of study, and support and mentor each other as they prepare to enter their fields.

Kirsten is passionate, driven, and determined, taking the initiative to bring this group of women together on campus …

State Of The U.S. Ocean And Coastal Economies 2014, Judith T. Kildow, Charles S. Colgan, Jason D. Scorse, Pat Johnston, Matt Nichols

Publications

The nation's coasts and oceans contribute much to the United States economy. For the past 14 years, the National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP), now a program of the Center for the Blue Economy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, has compiled time-series data that track economic activities, demographics, ports and cargo volume and value, natural resource production and value, non-market values, and federal expenditures in the U.S. coastal zone both on land and in the water. A report on the ocean and coastal economies of the United States was released by NOEP in 2009 covering data through 2005. The …

Coastal And Ocean Economic Summaries Of The Coastal States 2014, Pat Johnston

Publications

The following summaries of the ocean and coastal economies were prepared by the National Ocean Economics Program as a companion the State of the U.S. Ocean and Coastal Economies 2014. The U.S. report, its appendices, and these state summary reports are available on the NOEP website at www.OceanEconomics.org/download.

The Relationship Between Selected Standardized Test Scores And Performance In Advanced Placement Math And Science Exams: Analyzing The Differential Effectiveness Of Scores For Course Identification And Placement, Josue N. Urbina

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a national need to increase the STEM-related workforce. Among factors leading towards STEM careers include the number of advanced high school mathematics and science courses students complete. Florida’s enrollment patterns in STEM-related Advanced Placement (AP) courses, however, reveal that only a small percentage of students enroll into these classes. Therefore, screening tools are needed to find more students for these courses, who are academically ready, yet have not been identified.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which scores from a national standardized test, Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test/ National Merit Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), in …

Does Access To Information Technology Make People Happier? Insights From Well-Being Surveys From Around The World, Carol Graham, Milena Nikolova

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

This lecture summarizes new research on the relationship between access to cell phones, TV, and the internet and subjective well-being worldwide. Technology access is positive for well-being in general, but with diminishing marginal returns for those who already have much access. It is also associated with increased stress and anger among cohorts for whom access to the technologies is new. The increased financial inclusion in very poor countries that comes with cell phones and mobile banking also has effects on well-being. Well-being levels are higher in the countries with higher levels of access to mobile banking, but so are stress …

Ion Radiography As A Tool For Patient Set-Up & Image Guided Particle Therapy: A Monte Carlo Study, Nicolas Depauw, Marta F. Dias, Anatoly B. Rosenfeld, Joao C. Seco

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This study investigate the use of ion radiography as a tool for patient set-up and tumor tracking capabilities for image guided particle therapy (IGPT) using Monte Carlo simulations. One pediatric, two lung and one liver cancer patients were considered in this study. For each patient, 230 and 330 MeV proton, and 500 MeV/nucleon carbon ion pencil beams were simulated through their computed tomography (CT) data set using GEANT4.9.0. Energy, position and direction cosines of each particle were recorded in front and behind the patient. Ion radiographs were subsequently reconstructed using a dedicated in-house software. The image quality was assessed by …

Comparative Trust Management With Applications: Bayesian Approaches Emphasis, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Pramod Anantharam, Cory Andrew Henson, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Trust relationships occur naturally in many diverse contexts such as collaborative systems, e-commerce, interpersonal interactions, social networks, and semantic sensor web. As agents providing content and services become increasingly removed from the agents that consume them, the issue of robust trust inference and update becomes critical. There is a need to find online substitutes for traditional (direct or face-to-face) cues to derive measures of trust, and create efficient and robust systems for managing trust in order to support decision-making. Unfortunately, there is neither a universal notion of trust that is applicable to all domains nor a clear explication of its …

Cursing In English On Twitter, Wenbo Wang, Lu Chen, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Cursing is not uncommon during conversations in the physical world: 0.5% to 0.7% of all the words we speak are curse words, given that 1% of all the words are first-person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us, our). On social media, people can instantly chat with friends without face-to-face interaction, usually in a more public fashion and broadly disseminated through highly connected social network. Will these distinctive features of social media lead to a change in people's cursing behavior? In this paper, we examine the characteristics of cursing activity on a popular social media platform - Twitter, involving the analysis of …

Emerge, Tammi M. Owens

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Lightning talk presented at the 2014 LITA Forum. This inspire talk was for my early-career colleagues with titles like "Emerging Technologies Librarian," especially those who are at smaller institutions. Created on the fly on the iPad Mini with Haiku Deck.

Toward A Formalism Of Modeling And Simulation Using Model Theory, Saikou Y. Diallo, Jose Padilla, Ross Gore, Heber Herencia-Zapana, Andreas Tolk

VMASC Publications

This article proposes a Modeling and Simulation (M&S) formalism using Model Theory. The article departs from the premise that M&S is the science that studies the nature of truth using models and simulations. Truth in models and simulations is relative as they seek to answer specific modeling questions. Consequently, truth in M&S is relative because every model is a purposeful abstraction of reality. We use Model Theory to express the proposed formalism because it is built from the premise that truth is relative. The proposed formalism allows us to: (1) deduce formal definitions and explanations of areas of study in …

Agriculture And Natural Resource Scientists' Biodiversity Information Needs: Barriers And Facilitators To Use And Access In The Us Southeast, Miriam Davis, Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard

DataONE Sociocultural and Usability & Assessment Working Groups

In a study funded by the United States Geological Survey, a leading provider of biodiversity information, the University of Tennessee Center for Information and Communication Studies assessed the biodiversity information needs of south eastern US agriculture, natural resource management and other life scientists. Results reveal that 30% of agriculture and resource management scientists describe finding the biodiversity information they need as difficult. In addition, while agriculture and resource management scientists are better than other life scientists at searching for, finding and knowing where to find the biodiversity information they need to do their work, they experience significantly greater difficulty accessing …

Location Prediction Of Twitter Users Using Wikipedia, Revathy Krishnamurthy, Pavan Kapanipathi, Amit P. Sheth, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Kno.e.sis Publications

The mining of user generated content in social media has proven very effective in domains ranging from personalization and recommendation systems to crisis management. The knowledge of online users locations makes their tweets more informative and adds another dimension to their analysis. Existing approaches to predict the location of Twitter users are purely data-driven and require large training data sets of geo-tagged tweets. The collection and modelling process of tweets can be time intensive. To overcome this drawback, we propose a novel knowledge based approach that does not require any training data. Our approach uses information in Wikipedia, about cities …

Model For Acid-Mediated Tumour Invasion With Chemotherapy Intervention I: Spatially Homogeneous Populations, Andrew Brett Holder, Marianito R. Rodrigo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The acid-mediation hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that acid produced by tumours, as a result of aerobic glycolysis, provides a mechanism for invasion, has so far been considered as a relatively closed system. The focus has mainly been on the dynamics of the tumour, normal-tissue, acid and possibly some other bodily components, without considering the effect of an external intervention such as a cytotoxic treatment. This article aims to examine the effect that a cytotoxic treatment has on a tumour growing under the acid-mediation hypothesis by using a simple set of ordinary differential equations that consider the interaction between normal-tissue, …

Commons At The Intersection Of Peer Production, Citizen Science, And Big Data: Galaxy Zoo, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

The knowledge commons research framework is applied to a case of commons governance grounded in research in modern astronomy. The case, Galaxy Zoo, is a leading example of at least three different contemporary phenomena. In the first place Galaxy Zoo is a global citizen science project, in which volunteer non-scientists have been recruited to participate in large-scale data analysis via the Internet. In the second place Galaxy Zoo is a highly successful example of peer production, sometimes known colloquially as crowdsourcing, by which data are gathered, supplied, and/or analyzed by very large numbers of anonymous and pseudonymous contributors to an …

Governing Knowledge Commons -- Introduction & Chapter 1, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, Katherine J. Strandburg

Book Chapters

“Knowledge commons” describes the institutionalized community governance of the sharing and, in some cases, creation, of information, science, knowledge, data, and other types of intellectual and cultural resources. It is the subject of enormous recent interest and enthusiasm with respect to policymaking about innovation, creative production, and intellectual property. Taking that enthusiasm as its starting point, Governing Knowledge Commons argues that policymaking should be based on evidence and a deeper understanding of what makes commons institutions work. It offers a systematic way to study knowledge commons, borrowing and building on Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning research on natural resource commons. It …

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us: Defining The Line Between Personal And Professional Context On Social Media, 35 Pace L. Rev. 398 (2014), Raizel Liebler, Keidra Chaney

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow individuals and companies to connect directly and regularly with an audience of peers or with the public at large. These websites combine the audience-building platforms of mass media with the personal data and relationships of in-person social networks. Due to a combination of evolving user activity and frequent updates to functionality and user features, social media tools blur the line of whether a speaker is perceived as speaking to a specific and presumed private audience, a public expression of one’s own personal views, or a representative viewpoint of an entire …

Java City: Developing A Successful Cultural Center, Jack G. Montgomery Jr.

DLTS Faculty Publications

Introduction:

Western Kentucky University Library had a large two-level, but largely unused lobby that had once been the library’s entrance but had been closed as a new entrance was created. By 2002, it sat empty and all but devoid of human traffic just outside our Reference area. Also, in 2002, Reference statistics were down, as was Circulation and library usage in general. Dean Binder believed that with the renovation and development of this former lobby, the library would realize an increase in campus visibility and library usage would increase.

Aperiodicity And Primitive Ideals Of Row-Finite K-Graphs, Sooran Kang, David Pask

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We describe the primitive ideal space of the C*-algebra of a row-finite k-graph with no sources when every ideal is gauge invariant. We characterize which spectral spaces can occur, and compute the primitive ideal space of two examples. In order to do this we prove some new results on aperiodicity. Our computations indicate that when every ideal is gauge invariant, the primitive ideal space only depends on the 1-skeleton of the k-graph in question. 2014 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Ozonation Of N-Nitrosamines In The Reverse Osmosis Concentrate From Water Recycling Applications, Takahiro Fujioka, Stuart Khan, James Mcdonald, Long Nghiem

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This study aims to evaluate the performance of ozone treatment for removing N-nitrosamines from reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate in water recycling applications. In the absence of any N-nitrosamine precursors, the destruction efficiency of N-nitrosamines was dependent on their molecular weight or the length of the alkyl chain in their molecular structure. Experiments conducted with RO concentrate showed that ozonation could lead to the formation of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA), resulting in an increase in concentrations of these N-nitrosamines. Nevertheless, ozonation was effective for destruction of N-nitrosamines with molecular weight greater than that of NDEA (102 g/mol). 2014 Copyright 2014 …

Identity-Based Secure Distributed Data Storage Schemes, Jinguang Han, Willy Susilo, Yi Mu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Secure distributed data storage can shift the burden of maintaining a large number of files from the owner to proxy servers. Proxy servers can convert encrypted files for the owner to encrypted files for the receiver without the necessity of knowing the content of the original files. In practice, the original files will be removed by the owner for the sake of space efficiency. Hence, the issues on confidentiality and integrity of the outsourced data must be addressed carefully. In this paper, we propose two identity-based secure distributed data storage (IBSDDS) schemes. Our schemes can capture the following properties: (1) …

Mri Distortion: Considerations For Mri Based Radiotherapy Treatment Planning, Amy Walker, Gary P. Liney, Peter E. Metcalfe, Lois Holloway

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Distortion in magnetic resonance images needs to be taken into account for the purposes of radiotherapy treatment planning (RTP). A commercial MRI grid phantom was scanned on 4 different MRI scanners with multiple sequences to assess variations in the geometric distortion. The distortions present across the field of view were then determined. The effect of varying bandwidth on image distortion and signal to noise was also investigated. Distortion maps were created and these were compared to the location of patient anatomy within the scanner bore to estimate the magnitude and distribution of distortions located within specific clinical regions. Distortion magnitude …

Performance Enhancement Of Bridges And Other Structures Through The Use Of Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (Frp) Composites: Some Recent Hong Kong Research, J G. Teng, S S. Zhang, Q G. Xiao, D Fernando, B Zhang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Due to their various advantages including excellent corrosion resistance and high strength-toweight ratios, fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have been widely used as strengthening materials to enhance the performance of existing structures including bridges. In addition, FRP composites have attracted increasing attention for use in the construction of high-performance bridges and other structures. This paper presents a summary of some recent research undertaken atThe HongKong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in both areas. The paper covers the following topics of significant current interest examined in four recent PhD projects under the supervision of the first author: (1) strengthening of reinforced concrete (RC) beams …

Bond Strength Model For Interfaces Between Near-Surface Mounted (Nsm) Cfrp Strips And Concrete, S S. Zhang, J G. Teng, T Yu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper presents an accurate bond strength model for carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips near-surface mounted (NSM) to concrete where debonding failure happens in the concrete layer adjacent to the interface between FRP and concrete. Both bonded joints with a sufficient bond length and those with an insufficient bond length are covered by the proposed model. The bond strength model was developed on the basis of an existing analytical solution as well as a recently proposed bond-slip model for such bonded joints. Numerical comparisons between the proposed bond strength model and 51 test specimens collected from the existing experimental studies as …

Towards Energy-Aware Optimisation Of Business Processes, Beatriz Lopez, Aditya Ghose, Tony Savarimuthu, Mariusz Nowostawski, Michael Winikoff, Stephen Cranefield

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Time dependent energy tariffs are a matter of concern to managers in organisations, who need to rethink how to allocate resources to business processes so that they take into account energy costs. However, due to the time-dependent costs, the resource optimisation problem needs to be redesigned. In this paper we formalise the energy-aware resource allocation problem, including time-dependent variable costs; and present a case study in which an auction mechanism is used to find a solution. Our results show how the choice of cost (energy, monetary, or duration) affects the schedules obtained.

A Systematic Review Of Bio-Inspired Service Concretization, Lijuan Wang, Jun Shen

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In service oriented computing, Web service selection is an important part of Web service composition. The Web service composition is achieved by solving the Web service concretization problem. The literature presents two types of Web service concretization approaches: local optimization approaches and global optimization approaches. There are three types of algorithmic methods in the global optimization approaches: optimal methods, sub-optimal methods, and soft constraints-based methods. The bio-inspired algorithms are sub-optimal methods. This paper will firstly present a hierarchical taxonomy of Web service concretization approaches. Then we conduct a systematic review on the current research of Web service concretization based on …

Intelligent Approaches To Complex Systems, P K. S Prakash, Nagesh Shukla

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Availability of large amount and variety of information and decision making problems in various complex systems ranging from transportation, supply chain, energy to logistics; have placed the need for the development & successful application of advanced intelligent approaches. It is argued that intelligent approaches such as analytics and optimisation techniques drive smarter decisions, faster actions and optimise outcomes in this era. However, there are no single best analytical or optimisation technique to deal with the challenges in various complex systems. It is due to the fact that a technique/approach may show a better performance for a given problem instance; but, …

A Coastal Groundwater Management Model With Indian Case Study, Sudip Basack, Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya, Prabir Maity

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The complexity of the hydrogeological setup in coastal areas calls for the adoption of scientific groundwater management techniques. Excessive withdrawal of groundwater in coastal zones will lead to depression of the water table, with associated hazards such as putting the well out of use, rendering abstraction uneconomic with increased lift. A sustained regional groundwater drawdown below sea level runs the risk of saline water intrusion, even for confined coastal aquifers. Uncontrolled groundwater development may lead to reversal of the freshwater gradient, thereby resulting in saline water ingress into coastal aquifers. There are, however, several established methodologies to control and minimise …

Data Scientists As Game Changers In Big Data Environments, Akemi T. Chatfield, Vivian N. Shlemoon, Wilbur Redublado, Faizur Rahman

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The potential power of big data to generate insights and create new forms of value in the ways which transform organizations and society has been observed by big data-driven organizations and big data experts. Despite the recent sensational declaration of a data scientist as "the sexiest job of the 21st century", however, there has been the lack of rigorous studies of what a data scientist is, and what job skill requirements this hottest job title may need. In order to address this gap, we systematically examine relevant source material to extract definitions and categorize them with a classification scheme developed …

Roles Of Social Media In Open Data Environments: A Case Study Of The 2014 Indonesian Presidential Election Voting Results, Uuf Brajawidagda, Akemi T. Chatfield

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Open data initiatives are critical to open government policies which promote transparency, citizen engagement and collaboration. However, they face challenges in realizing their potential benefits through citizens' active engagement. Despite the sharp rise of social media use by governments or quasi-governmental organizations to engage citizens in transforming public service quality and offers, very little has been written on enabling roles of social media in influencing the outcome of open data initiatives. This research examines the potential enabling roles of social media in motivating and having citizens' engagement easier in open data environments. Specifically, we present social media use in supporting …

Government Interactions With Citizens On Youtube To Solve Government Transparency Problems, Akemi T. Chatfield, Christopher Reddick

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Abstract of a presentation.