Digital Commons Network^™

Design Of An Aquaponics System, Jesse Birsinger

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This Senior Project discusses the design, cost analysis, and evaluation of an aquaponics system. The system incorporates aquaculture and hydroponics to create a source of fish protein and various crops. The system was sized based off a minimum requirement of pounds of fish available per week. The system designed is capable of generating 2080 pounds of catfish, and 16,000 pounds of produce annually. The first year of operation the system will operate at a loss due to the significant cost of the components of the system, however, the project is projected to generate a minimum stream of revenue of $10,600 …

Crop Selection, Cost Analysis, And Irrigation System Design For The Replanting Of A Nut Orchard, Maximilian Bricker

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This report was made to help the landowner of Bricker Farms make decisions regarding the replanting of his orchard. The decisions that need to be made in this process include: which crop to plant, how to plant it, and how to improve the distribution uniformity of irrigation water on the orchard. The report does not give definitive final decisions, but presents viable options that the landowner can utilize when deciding. In addition to the options that are presented, the report offers suggestions to the landowner so that the replanting process is done properly in a timely and economically-friendly manner.

Case Study: An Effective Model For Green Roofs In San Diego County, Charles Andrews Iii

Construction Management

Green roofs provide a myriad of environmental and financial benefits to a building and its owner. They can provide a pleasing outdoor aesthetic in an urban environment, as well as provide stormwater management and energy savings in an arid climate. California State University San Marcos completed a new University Student Union in 2014 that included a 2,540 square foot Live Roof system on its upper terrace. Supplier, contractor, and facilities team members were interviewed to analyze the success of the project from several viewpoints. The green roof was found to meet the University’s goals on aesthetic design, energy, and stormwater …

A Multi-Carrier Collaborative Solution To Minimize Connectivity-Loss, Michael Wong

Master's Theses

Nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smart phone, and 19% of Americans rely on their smartphone for either accessing valuable information or staying connected with their friends and family across the globe [15]. Staying always-on and always-connected to the Internet is one of the most important and useful features of a smartphone. This connection is used by almost every single application on the device including web browsers, email clients, messaging applications, etc. Unfortunately, the cellular networks on our smartphones are not perfect and do not always have cellular signal. Our devices often lose Internet connection when users are on the …

Empirical Validation Of An In Silico Model Predicting The Fluid Dynamics Of An Iliac Artery Aneurysm, Rachel E. Willis

Master's Theses

Iliac artery aneurysms are considered rare and difficult to detect and treat. Prompt diagnosis and timely intervention are essential, because the incidence of rupture is as high as 50%. The reported mortality rate for patients who undergo surgery for ruptured iliac artery aneurysm ranges from 50% to 70%. This study developed an in-vitro mechanical model of an iliac artery aneurysm to verify the accuracy of computer simulation software. Both the in vitro model and the in silico model can be used for further research to develop better treatment technology. This study also looks at the different types of iliac artery …

Exploring Travel Time Reliability Using Bluetooth Data Collection: A Case Study In San Luis Obispo, California, Krista Purser

Master's Theses

Bluetooth technology applications have improved travel time data collection efforts and allowed for collection of large data sets at a low cost per data unit. Mean travel times between pairs of points are available, but the primary value of this technique is the availability of the entire distribution of travel times throughout multiple days and time periods, allowing for a greater understanding of travel time variations and reliability. The use of these data for transportation planning, engineering and operations continues to expand. Previous applications of similar data sources have included travel demand and simulation model validation, work zone traffic patterns, …

After The Paris Agreement: How India Can Use Climate Financing To Implement A Sustainable Clean Cookstove Program, Hannah Kornfeld

Master's Theses

The burning of biomass for cooking purposes without proper ventilation and filters poses a massive health and climate risk. Health implications from exposure to household air pollution from this type of fuel impacts women and children in many developing countries, who spend many hours a day cooking and gathering fuel. Climate implications from burning solid biomass results in increased carbon dioxide and black carbon emissions, which contribute to global climate change. This thesis aims to explore the issues associated with biomass cookstoves in terms of both health and climate, and seeks to understand how a new national clean cookstove program …

The Effects Of Quorum Sensing And Temperature On The Soluble Proteome Of Vibrio Salmonicida, Christopher L. Massey

Master's Theses

Vibrio salmonicida causes cold-water vibriosis in salmon populations around the world and causes financial damage to fisheries designed to farm these salmon. Very little is known about the physiology of how V. salmonicida causes disease and measures to contain vibriosis are restricted to either vaccinating individual fish against disease or administering antibiotics when an outbreak is detected. These procedures are costly and increase the risk for selection of antibiotic-resistant V. salmonicida strains. A recent reoccurrence of outbreaks in Norwegian fisheries provided incentive to better understand the virulence mechanisms of V. salmonicida. In this thesis, a proteomic approach was used to …

Polyfs Visualizer, Paul Martin Fallon

Master's Theses

One of the most important operating system topics, file systems, control how we store and access data and form a key point in a computer scientists understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a computer. However, file systems, with their abstract concepts and lack of concrete learning aids, is a confusing subjects for students. Historically at Cal Poly, the CPE 453 Introduction to Operating Systems has been on of the most failed classes in the computing majors, leading to the need for better teaching and learning tools. Tools allowing students to gain concrete examples of abstract concepts could be used to …

Skewer: Sentiment Knowledge Extraction With Entity Recognition, Christopher James Wu

Master's Theses

The California state legislature introduces approximately 5,000 new bills each legislative session. While the legislative hearings are recorded on video, the recordings are not easily accessible to the public. The lack of official transcripts or summaries also increases the effort required to gain meaningful insight from those recordings. Therefore, the news media and the general population are largely oblivious to what transpires during legislative sessions.

Digital Democracy, a project started by the Cal Poly Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy, is an online platform created to bring transparency to the California legislature. It features a searchable database of state …

The Bottlefly Ios Application For Wine Recommendations, Carson James Carroll

Master's Theses

The use of smartphone applications has taken over the way people interact with the world. The design of an application has become an important aspect in keeping the user engaged [22]. People are looking for applications that are easy to use and will get the job done. This thesis focuses on the design of a mobile application for iOS that recommends wine in various retail locations that match a user’s taste preferences.

The goals of this thesis are to design an iOS application that recommends wine to consumers, improve upon the wine recommendation algorithms by acquiring more customer data, and …

Categorizing Blog Spam, Brandon Bevans

Master's Theses

The internet has matured into the focal point of our era. Its ecosystem is vast, complex, and in many regards unaccounted for. One of the most prevalent aspects of the internet is spam. Similar to the rest of the internet, spam has evolved from simply meaning ‘unwanted emails’ to a blanket term that encompasses any unsolicited or illegitimate content that appears in the wide range of media that exists on the internet.

Many forms of spam permeate the internet, and spam architects continue to develop tools and methods to avoid detection. On the other side, cyber security engineers continue to …

Incorporating Histograms Of Oriented Gradients Into Monte Carlo Localization, Michael K. Norris

Master's Theses

This work presents improvements to Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) for a mobile robot using computer vision. Solutions to the localization problem aim to provide fine resolution on location approximation, and also be resistant to changes in the environment. One such environment change is the kidnapped/teleported robot problem, where a robot is suddenly transported to a new location and must re-localize. The standard method of "Augmented MCL" uses particle filtering combined with addition of random particles under certain conditions to solve the kidnapped robot problem. This solution is robust, but not always fast. This work combines Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) …

Impact Of The Buildertrend Project Management Software On A Small Scale Residential Building Firm, Eric Tri Pham

Construction Management

For a smaller construction firm to maintain viability within the market place, it must adopt effective and more efficient means of promoting sales, managing subcontractors, and meeting increasingly short schedules in order to keep pace with competitors. The intent of this research is to compose a case study on a small-scale general contracting firm that is currently in the process of implementing the management software, BuilderTrend. It aims to conduct a preliminary evaluation of the firm’s standard practices prior to implementation, followed by an analysis of the software’s impact on key performance indicators including sales and project documentation. It will …

Transparency In The Fast-Food Industry: Utilizing Mobile To Capture New Audiences, Mary Dundon

Journalism

No abstract provided.

Prep Advocacy Project: Increasing The Adoption Of Pre-­Exposure Prophylaxis (Prep) In San Luis Obispo County, Leona Rajaee

Journalism

The following study investigates the need for Pre­exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in San Luis Obispo (SLO) County in order to develop an effective health outreach and advocacy program that could increase the adoption of PrEP treatment and in turn decrease new HIV transmissions in the community studied. The sponsor of this study is the Access Support Network (ASN), a non­profit organization that provides supportive services for individuals living with HIV/AIDS. ASN launched this study after observing the effectiveness of PrEP in metropolitan cities. At the same time, ASN also noticed a rise in new HIV transmissions, particularly among injecting drug users …

Gaining Brand Recognition With The Millennial Generation: How Wine Companies Can Market To This Demographic, Nicolette Deluca

Journalism

The following study was conducted in response to a recent interest in the wine industry and its target markets. With millennials making up such a large portion of our population, I wanted to know why they weren't as big of consumers of wine as previous generations of wine drinkers. Although there are over 80 million millennials in the U.S., only 23 million drink wine. I have uncovered three main recommendations to wine companies in order to gain brand recognition with the millennial generation: be authentic in your marketing endeavors, partner with local nonprofit or fitness organizations, and make visually appealing …

Mcv Wines Social Media Marketing Campaign: Successfully Marketing Wine To Millennials, Dillon Payne

Journalism

The following study investigates how to develop a commercial on a social media platform in order to advertise a product to millennials – in this study, wine is the product. The number of consumers is increasing as each year more and more millennials become 21 years old, thus being able to be the next and newest consumer of the wine industry. The campaign’s focus was to create a wine commercial for a tasting room called MCV Wines and market it on social media to see if millennials would be interested in purchasing wine after seeing the commercial. Withscholarly research, the …

Lgbtqia Representation In College Media, Alexis Mccoy-Caso

Journalism

This study and project looks at LGBTQIA representation in college media and how there can be more and better. The purpose is to improve LGBTQIA representation college media outlets. The study includes three interviews with experts as well as a review of literature.

As-814-16 Resolution On Department Name Change For The Recreation, Parks, & Tourism Administration Department, The Recreation, Parks, & Tourism Administration Department

Academic Senate Resolutions

Changes the department’s name to Experience Industry Management Department

Academic Senate - Agenda, 5/24/2016, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Academic Senate - Agenda, 5/3/2016, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

As-813-16 Resolution In Support Of Cal Poly Participation In The Open Educational Resources Adoption Incentive Program Of The College Textbook Affordability Act Of 2015, Open Educational Resources Task Force

Academic Senate Resolutions

Charges the OER task force with the development of a plan to apply for grant

Limestone Flora Of The Simonton Corner Quarry Preserve, Rockport, Maine, Usa, Margaret Stern, Ian D. Medeiros, Luka Negoita, N. Rajakaruna

Biological Sciences

Limestone is a distinctive substrate that has significant effects on soils and plants. The present study characterizes the diversity of vascular plants, bryophytes, and lichens at the Simonton Corner Quarry Preserve, an abandoned limestone quarry in Rockport, Maine, USA, which was in operation in the late 1800s. We document vascular plant diversity and associated edaphic features (i.e., soil pH and elemental chemistry) using 30 535 meter plots spread throughout the site. For vascular plants, 114 species in 96 genera and 50 families were observed; few of these species are known to prefer calcareous environments, and 38% are nonnative. Conversely, the …

Teacher Internship Report - Norco High School, Ross Allen Macy

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

This internship report includes validation documents required for meeting the quality criteria for secondary-level programs of instruction in agriculture. The documents are concurrently used for the Agriculture Incentive Grant review process at Norco High School, which is conducted by representatives of the California Department of Education and the local Agriculture Advisory Committee. The internship included the implementation and designing of the curriculum for an Agriculture and Soil Chemistry course. The internship also included the writing of a specialized grant and purchase of over $20,000 in data collection technology.

Nike Pulls Away: An Analysis Of Nike's "The Jogger" Advertisement And Other Marketing Strategies, Michael Sean Dingilian

Communication Studies

Over the course of the last 3 decades, Nike has been the most dominant sports company in the world. Rival companies like Reebok, Adidas, and Under Armour have all failed to equal to match Nike's popularity amongst athletes and the public. This project is an analysis of how Nike has remained on top for so many years through commercials like "The Jogger" and other marketing strategies.

Irrigation System Design For An Almond Orchard, Dylan Soares

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of The National Alliance Of Mental Illness's Ending The Silence Program, Sarah L. Taniyama

Master's Theses

The National Alliance of Mental Illness’s Ending the Silence (ETS) program focuses on the epidemic of mental illness stigma among school- aged youth. The program is targeted specifically at high school- age youth, and aims to educate, dispel myths about mental illness and instill a message of hope and recovery all while encouraging students to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness. A trained presentation team containing two people, one of whom is a young adult who is living with mental illness or recovered from mental illness, delivers the program. Participants (n=142) completed assessments measuring their thoughts and attitudes towards …

Usb-Powered Turntable "Turn T", Gerardo Sevilla, James Lougaris

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Instructables.Com As A Tool To Improve Student Outcomes And Promote Community Engagement (Work-In-Progress), Andrew Danowitz

Electrical Engineering

Project-based Learning (PBL) has become a popular pedagogical tool in Engineering. Projects force students to put theory learned in lecture into practice, exposes students to some of the nonidealities of real systems (imperfect instruments, uncooperative systems, etc.) that are difficult to convey in lecture or homework, and ideally motivates students by showing how course material is related real-world engineering problems. This work discusses my preliminary and ongoing research into using Instructables.com—a user-content generated website of “Do It Yourself” tutorials—as a tool to help amplify the benefits students derive from PBL. Specifically, I require students to document their projects in an …