Digital Commons Network^™

Barriers To Initiation Of Open Source Software Projects In Research Libraries, Jason Curtis Thacker

Theses and Dissertations

Libraries share a number of core values with the Open Source Software (OSS) movement, suggesting there should be a natural tendency toward library participation in OSS projects. However, Dale Askey's 2008 Code4Lib column entitled We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can't Have Our Code, claims that while libraries are strong proponents of OSS, they are unlikely to actually contribute to OSS projects. He identifies, but does not empirically substantiate, six barriers that he believes contribute to this apparent inconsistency. The goal of this thesis is to empirically investigate not only Askey's central claim but also the six barriers he …

Intelligent Pen: A Least Cost Search Approach To Stroke Extraction In Historical Documents, Kevin L. Bauer

Theses and Dissertations

Extracting strokes from handwriting in historical documents provides high-level features for the challenging problem of handwriting recognition. Such handwriting often contains noise, faint or incomplete strokes, strokes with gaps, overlapping ascenders and descenders and competing lines when embedded in a table or form, making it unsuitable for local line following algorithms or associated binarization schemes. We introduce Intelligent Pen for piece-wise optimal stroke extraction. Extracted strokes are stitched together to provide a complete trace of the handwriting. Intelligent Pen formulates stroke extraction as a set of piece-wise optimal paths, extracted and assembled in cost order. As such, Intelligent Pen is …

An Analyzer For Message Passing Programs, Yu Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Asynchronous message passing systems are fast becoming a common means for communication between devices. Two problems existing in message passing programs are difficult to solve. The first problem, intended or otherwise, is message-race where a receive may match with more than one send in the runtime system. This non-determinism often leads to intermittent and unexpected behavior depending on the resolution of the race. Another problem is deadlock, which is a situation in that each member process of the group is waiting for some member process to communicate with it, but no member is attempting to communicate with it. Detecting if …

Graphical Narrative Interfaces: Representing Spatiotemporal Information For A Human-Robot Team With A Highly Autonomous Robot, Hiroaki Nakano

Theses and Dissertations

Having a well-developed Graphical User Interface (GUI) is often necessary for a human-robot team, especially when the human and the robot are not in close proximity to each other or when the human does not interact with the robot in real time. Most current GUIs process and display information in real time, but the time to interact with these systems does not scale well when the complexity of the displayed information increases or when information must be fused to support decision-making. We propose a new interface concept, a Graphical Narrative Interface (GNI), which presents story-based summaries driven by accumulated data. …

A Multiple-Cutoff Regression-Discontinuity Analysis Of The Effects Of Tier 2 Reading Interventions In A Title I Elementary School, Eli A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Reading failure in elementary school is highly correlated with future academic and social problems. Schools commonly use Tier 2 reading interventions in Response to Intervention (RtI) frameworks to help close the gap between at-risk readers and their peers who read on grade-level. This dissertation presents the findings of a quasi-experimental research study of the effects of three Tier 2 reading interventions in an urban Title I elementary school's RtI framework. A regression discontinuity design (RDD) with two cutoff points was used to assign 320 students in grades 1-6 to two types of Tier 2 reading interventions administered by paraeducators: direct …

Error Propagation Dynamics Of Piv-Based Pressure Field Calculation, Zhao Pan

Theses and Dissertations

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) based pressure field calculation is becoming increasingly popular in experimental fluid dynamics due to its non-intrusive nature. Errors propagated from PIV results to pressure field calculations are unavoidable, and in most cases, non-negligible. However, the specific dynamics of this error propagation process have not been unveiled. This dissertation examines both why and how errors in the experimental data are propagated to the pressure field by direct analysis of the pressure Poisson equation. Error in the pressure calculations are bounded with the error level of the experimental data. The error bounds quantitatively explain why and how many …

Placental ‘€˜Omics’€™ Study To Understand The Pathogenesis Of Preeclampsia, Komal Kedia

Theses and Dissertations

Preeclampsia (PE) is a potentially fatal complication of pregnancy characterized by an increase in blood pressure (>140/90 mmHg) and proteinuria (>300 mg/24 hrs), often accompanied by edema. Symptoms of PE start after 20 weeks of gestation. If PE remains untreated, it can lead to eclampsia, grand-mal seizures responsible for most fatalities. PE is believed to affect 2-10% of pregnancies worldwide, and claims the lives of over 75,000 mothers and 500,000 newborns yearly. No therapeutic agents have been developed to prevent or cure PE. Part of the reason for this is the absence of a complete understanding of the …

Ultra Short Mr Relaxometry And Histological Image Processing For Validation Of Diffusion Mri, Amin Nazaran

Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is an imaging modality that acquires an image with little to no damage to the tissue. MRI does not introduce foreign particles or high energy radiation into the body, making it one of the least invasive medical imaging modalities. MRI can achieve excellent soft tissue contrast and is therefore useful for diagnosis of a wide variety of diseases. While there are a wide variety of available techniques for generating contrast in MRI, there are still many open areas for research. For example, many tissues in the human body exhibit such rapid signal decay that they are …

Confirm: Clustering Of Noisy Form Images Using Robust Matching, Christopher Alan Tensmeyer

Theses and Dissertations

Identifying the type of a scanned form greatly facilitates processing, including automated field segmentation and field recognition. Contrary to the majority of existing techniques, we focus on unsupervised type identification, where the set of form types are not known apriori, and on noisy collections that contain very similar document types. This work presents a novel algorithm: CONFIRM (Clustering Of Noisy Form Images using Robust Matching), which simultaneously discovers the types in a collection of forms and assigns each form to a type. CONFIRM matches type-set text and rule lines between forms to create domain specific features, which we show outperform …

Isomorphisms Of Landau-Ginzburg B-Models, Nathan James Cordner

Theses and Dissertations

Landau-Ginzburg mirror symmetry predicts isomorphisms between graded Frobenius algebras (denoted A and B) that are constructed from a nondegenerate quasihomogeneous polynomial W and a related group of symmetries G. In 2013, Tay proved that given two polynomials W1, W2 with the same quasihomogeneous weights and same group G, the corresponding A-models built with (W1, G) and (W2, G) are isomorphic. An analogous theorem for isomorphisms between orbifolded B-models remains to be found. This thesis investigates isomorphisms between B-models using polynomials in two variables in search of such a theorem. In particular, several examples are given showing the relationship between continuous …

Computing Research In Academia: Classifications, Keywords, Perceptions, And Connections, Sung Han Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) recognizes five computing disciplines: Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), Information Technology (IT), Information Systems (IS), and Software Engineering (SE). Founded in 1947 the ACM is the world's largest society for computing educators, researchers, and professionals. While Computer Science has been a degree program since 1962, the other four are relatively new. This research focuses on understanding the graduate research in four of the five ACM disciplines (CS, CE, IT, and IS) using a large body of thesis and dissertation metadata. SE is not found in the metadata and graduate work in SE is …

Between, Kendal Nisson Bryan

Theses and Dissertations

I feel uncertain about my place in the world and it is necessary for me to discover how I am perceived by myself and by the world by exploring interior spaces. Interior spaces are both spaces of comfort, security, and permanence as well as vulnerability, uncertainty, and transcendence. My childhood home is an important drive in my work. It has caused me to think more about space and how the places we inhabit become more than just places we live in. They are places that hide our secrets, make their mark on us, and continue to live on with us …

Prime Of My Life, Roxanne Harmon

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

A creative reflection on mathematics and body image.

Mitigating Transients And Azeotropes During Natural Gas Processing, Edris Ebrahimzadeh

Theses and Dissertations

Cryogenic carbon capture process can be used to efficiently eliminate CO2 emissions from fossil-fueled power plants. The energy-storing embodiment of cryogenic carbon capture (ES-CCC) integrates energy storage with cryogenic carbon capture and uses natural gas as a refrigerant. ES-CCC captures CO2 from slowly varying or steady-state sources even as it absorbs and replaces large amounts of energy on the grid for energy storage. These large transients occur in the LNG generation as the process moves through energy storing to energy recovery operations. Additionally, raw natural gas often includes CO2 that forms an azeotrope with ethane. Breaking this azeotrope and separating …

Assessing User Expectations Of Undo In A Multi-User Cad Environment, Jeffrey Eric Nuss

Theses and Dissertations

Undo is a command that users rely on in most software applications. Its importance in multi-user CAD is no different. However, due to its unique nature, users may have different expectations regarding how undo should behave. This research seeks to better understand users' expectations regarding undo in multi-user CAD by having users participate in collaborative design exercises and then asking them how they would expect undo to behave. In addition, users participated in a survey in which they watched 8 videos showing users interacting within multi-user CAD and were then asked about how they would want undo to behave. Based …

Droplet Impingement On Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Cristian Esteban Clavijo Angeles

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the physics of droplet impingement on superhydrophobic surfaces. The research is divided in three categories. First, the effect of a slip boundary condition on droplet spreading/retracting is considered. A model is developed based on energy conservation to evaluate spreading rates on surfaces exhibiting isotropic and anisotropic slip. The results show that larger slip causes the droplet to spread out farther owing to reduced friction at the interface for both slip scenarios. Furthermore, effects of slip become magnified for large Weber numbers due to the larger solid-liquid contact area during the process. On surfaces with anisotropic slip, droplets …

Byu Undergraduates Explore The Flipped Classroom In Search Of The Best Pedagogy For Introductory Biology, Jamie Jensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This report will outline how effectively we met our academic and mentoring objectives.I have listed below both the academic and mentoring objectives put forth in the original proposal and have outlined how they were met or modified over the course of the past two years.

Academic Objective: To test two hypotheses about the causal mechanisms behind the flipped classroom.

Examining The Longitudinal Nature Of Information Privacy Perceptions And Behaviors

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to develop and execute improved research methodology for studying how consumer information privacy perceptions and behaviors change over time. This project is unique because most of the behavioral research regarding information privacy (and with mobile devices in particular) had previously been based entirely on surveys and laboratory experiments with low external validity. Therefore, to accomplish our objective, several mobile applications were developed or improved with built-in capabilities for experimental manipulations which were tested in real-life field studies. We found several interesting new findings which have resulted in published conference paper proceedings with student authors …

Handwriting Recognition Through Distance-Based Morphing And Energy Minimization, Dr. William Barrett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During the past year, I have had the opportunity to mentor two undergraduate students as we performed research for improving technologies used for family history. The specific projects each student worked on, the outcomes of the projects, and the mentoring are described below.

Geometric Optimization, Analysis, And Design, Denise Halverson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

1. Evaluation of how well the academic objectives of the proposal were met

The goals for the mentoring environment were reached:

• Academic Development – Each student had the opportunity to work on a cutting edge research problem, as indicated below. Papers are in various stages of completion, a few submitted or accepted for publication, but all have drafted papers.
• Community Development – Several students were able to attend the MAA Math Fest in both 2014 and 2015. Most students gave presentations at the CPMS Student Research Conference. My students have been able to interact with engineering student working on similar …

A Continuous Formulation For Logical Decisions In Differential Algebraic Systems Using Mathematical Programs With Complementarity Constraints, Kody M. Powell, Ammon N. Eaton, John Hedengren, Thomas F. Edgar

Faculty Publications

This work presents a methodology to represent logical decisions in differential algebraic equation simulation and constrained optimization problems using a set of continuous algebraic equations. The formulations may be used when state variables trigger a change in process dynamics, and introduces a pseudo-binary decision variable, which is continuous, but should only have valid solutions at values of either zero or one within a finite time horizon. This formulation enables dynamic optimization problems with logical disjunctions to be solved by simultaneous solution methods without using methods such as mixed integer programming. Several case studies are given to illustrate the value of …

A Continuous Formulation For Logical Decisions In Differential Algebraic Systems Using Mathematical Programs Of Complementarity Constraints, Kody Powell, Ammon N. Eaton, John Hedengren, Thomas F. Edgar

Faculty Publications

This work presents a methodology to represent logical decisions in differential algebraic equation simulation and constrained optimization problems using a set of continuous algebraic equations. The formulations may be used when state variables trigger a change in process dynamics, and introduces a pseudo-binary decision variable, which is continuous, but should only have valid solutions at values of either zero or one within a finite time horizon. This formulation enables dynamic optimization problems with logical disjunctions to be solved by simultaneous solution methods without using methods such as mixed integer programming. Several case studies are given to illustrate the value of …

Full Issue, Children's Book And Play Review

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

Samuel Can't Read: A Call For The Arts In Education, Tracy Twitchell

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

New In Paperback, Jim Jacobs

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Children's Book And Play Review

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

Those Magic Moments, Rachel L. Wadham

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews, Vivian Milius, Pat Birkedahl, Janet O. Francis, Denice Barainca, Gabi Kupitz, Marsha D. Broadway, Camella Talbot, Nancy C. Evensen, Tom Wright, Jan Porter, Rachel L. Wadham, Leon Archibald, Rebecca Gleason, Helen Hoopes, Lanell Reeder, Donna J. Jorgensen, Sandra L. Tidwell

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews, Suzanne Olsen, Jan Staheli, Janet O. Francis, Leon Archibald, Marsha D. Broadway, Tom Wright, Denice Barainca, Donna Jorgensen, Gabi Kupitz, Nancy C. Evensen, Leah Hanson, Helen Hoopes, Vicky M. Turner, Sandra L. Tidwell, Rebecca Gleason

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

An Interview With Mark Graham, A Renaissance Artist And Art Educator, Lillian H. Heil

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.