Digital Commons Network^™

Sensitivity Of Stormwater Management Solutions To Spatial Scale, Jeffrey Michael Barich

Master's Theses

Urbanization has considerably altered natural hydrology of urban watersheds by increasing runoff volume, producing higher and faster peak flows, and reducing water quality. Efforts to minimize or avoid these impacts, for example by implementing low impact development (LID) practices, are gaining momentum. Designing effective and economical stormwater management practices at a watershed scale is challenging; LIDs are commonly designed at site scales, considering local hydrologic conditions (i.e., one LID at a time). A number of empirical studies have documented hydrologic and water quality improvements achieved by LIDs. However, watershed scale effectiveness of LIDs has not been well studied. Considering cost, …

Tspoons: Tracking Salience Profiles Of Online News Stories, Kimberly Laurel Paterson

Master's Theses

News space is a relatively nebulous term that describes the general discourse concerning events that affect the populace. Past research has focused on qualitatively analyzing news space in an attempt to answer big questions about how the populace relates to the news and how they respond to it. We want to ask when do stories begin? What stories stand out among the noise? In order to answer the big questions about news space, we need to track the course of individual stories in the news. By analyzing the specific articles that comprise stories, we can synthesize the information gained from …

Coffee: Context Observer For Fast Enthralling Entertainment, Anthony M. Lenz

Master's Theses

Desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and the Kinect, oh my! With so many devices available to the average consumer, the limitations and pitfalls of each interface are becoming more apparent. Swimming in devices, users often have to stop and think about how to interact with each device to accomplish the current tasks at hand. The goal of this thesis is to minimize user cognitive effort in handling multiple devices by creating a context aware hybrid interface. The context aware system will be explored through the hybridization of gesture and touch interfaces using a multi-touch coffee table and the next-generation Microsoft Kinect. …

Laser Speckle Imaging: A Quantitative Tool For Flow Analysis, Taylor A. Hinsdale

Master's Theses

Laser speckle imaging, often referred to as laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA), has been sought after as a quasi-real-time, full-field, flow visualization method. It has been proven to be a valid and reliable qualitative method, but there has yet to be any definitive consensus on its ability to be used as a quantitative tool. The biggest impediment to the process of quantifying speckle measurements is the introduction of additional non dynamic speckle patterns from the surroundings. The dynamic speckle pattern under investigation is often obscured by noise caused by background static speckle patterns. One proposed solution to this problem is …

Creating A Testing Framework And Workflow For Developers New To Web Application Engineering, Tag G. Ashby

Master's Theses

Web applications are quickly replacing standalone applications for everyday tasks.

These web applications need to be tested to ensure proper functionality and

reliability. There have been substantial efforts to create tools that assist with the

testing of web applications, but there is no standard set of tools or a recommended

workflow to ensure speed of development and strength of application.

We have used and outlined the merits of a number of existing testing tools

and brought together the best among them to create what we believe is a fully- featured, easy to use, testing framework and workflow for web application …

Predicting Music Genre Preferences Based On Online Comments, Andrew J. Sinclair

Master's Theses

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) states that individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors. This adaptation is called “convergence.” In this work we explore the convergence of writing styles of users of the online music distribution plat- form SoundCloud.com. In order to evaluate our system we created a corpus of over 38,000 comments retrieved from SoundCloud in April 2014. The corpus represents comments from 8 distinct musical genres: Classical, Electronic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Country, Metal, Folk, and World. Our corpus contains: short comments, frequent misspellings, little sentence struc- ture, hashtags, emoticons, and URLs. We adapt techniques used by researchers analyzing other …

A Proof Of Concept For Crowdsourcing Color Perception Experiments, Ryan Nathaniel Mcleod

Master's Theses

Accurately quantifying the human perception of color is an unsolved prob- lem. There are dozens of numerical systems for quantifying colors and how we as humans perceive them, but as a whole, they are far from perfect. The ability to accurately measure color for reproduction and verification is critical to indus- tries that work with textiles, paints, food and beverages, displays, and media compression algorithms. Because the science of color deals with the body, mind, and the subjective study of perception, building models of color requires largely empirical data over pure analytical science. Much of this data is extremely dated, …

Studies And Research Regarding Sound Reduction Materials With The Purpose Of Reducing Sound Pollution, Timothy G. Hawkins

Master's Theses

Noise can be defined as unwanted sound. There are many cases and applications that reducing noise level is of great importance. Loss of hearing is only one of the effects of continuous exposure to excessive noise levels. Noise can interfere with sleep and speech, and cause discomfort and other non-auditory effects. High level noise and vibration lead to structural failures as well as reduction in life span. The importance of noise issue could be well understood by looking at regulations that have been passed by governments to restrict noise production in society. Industrial machinery, air/surface transportation and construction activities are …

Perceptions Of The Communications Studies Major: Is There A Female Stereotype?, Kyle Petersen, Karina Almaguer

Communication Studies

This paper investigates whether there is or is not a correlation between feminine perceptions of Communications and the relevance of the major. One Hundred Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students were asked to complete a survey that included basic student demographics as well as if they have taken courses within the major or know anyone within it, their perceived relevance of the major, and whether they believed it to be for males or females. The test between the two variables was shown as approaching statistical significance. After analyzing these results, using feminine perceptions as the independent variable and the relevance …

Gender Representation In Sports Communication, Michelle R. Stiller

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Blogging In The Fashion Industry: A Descriptive Study Of The Use Of The Two-Step Flow Communications Theory By Professional And Citizen Bloggers To Become Opinion Leaders, Mia Alexandra Mendola

Journalism

This study analyzes the differences between professional and citizen bloggers in the fashion industry, and their use of the two-step flow communications theory and certain tactics to become opinion leaders in the industry. With the rise of blogging as a popular medium for consumption of fashion news, thousands of bloggers have begun blogs hoping to become part of the fashion industry. With this rise comes bloggers with different levels of expertise and experience. With this comes a blurring of lines between a professional blogger with credible knowledge of the fashion industry, and a citizen blogger with no formal training or …

How Not To Get Lost In The Shuffle: Producing The Most Effective And Eye-Catching Press Release, Erica Derrico

Journalism

The following study investigates how to produce the most effective and eye-catching press release on a national level for Summit Outdoor Supply (S.O.S). Winter quarter of 2014, my partner and I worked on a local campaign for S.O.S., using traditional text-based press releases to get media coverage. Although we did see some success with the traditional press release, there were often times our releases would get lost in the shuffle of the many releases that media outlets received each day. My goal with this project is to learn how to produce a press release that will get noticed out of …

Manufacturing News: Exploring How Public Relations Content Is Presented As News From An Agenda-Setting Perspective, Katharine R. Gore

Journalism

This study, conducted in San Luis Obispo, California, analyzes and investigates the relationship between public relations professionals and journalists, the role of public relations in news and how often content developed by the public relations industry is later portrayed as news.

Public relations-developed content has a growing presence in news. This is due, in part to the fact that more people work in the public relations industry than do in journalism fields. There is also a symbiotic relationship between the two industries, which is confirmed by existing studies and scholarly texts.

An effort was made by the author to track …

The Role Of Social Media In The Fashion Industry: How Fashion Blogging Encourages Two-Way Symmetrical Communication, Leila Durmaz

Journalism

Over the past few years, social media and digital media have drastically changed how people consume content, especially in the fashion industry. People are no longer picking up magazines as often as they have in the past. Today, content is consumed online and people are not only reading content, but they are offering their feedback through comments and social media. Multiple types of fashion blogs managed by everyday people are giving consumers an inside look into what used to be an exclusive, fashion-experts-only industry. This study looks at fashion blogging and social media within the fashion industry and how it …

How To Protect A Literary Character Through Copyright And Trademark, Annie Provenzano

Journalism

This paper is about finding the best practices in which to protect a literary character as an individual and help authors keep the rights to their characters when the characters are taken out of the original work. It focuses on the basic copyright and trademark laws, how they apply to a literary character, what is afforded to the character for protection, and the lack of protection by the courts. The research helps facilitate ideas and advice on how to better protect a literary character before and after the process of copyrighting or trademarking the work.

May 29, 2014 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

May 21, 2014 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Twill: A Hybrid Microcontroller-Fpga Framework For Parallelizing Single-Threaded C Programs, Douglas S. Gallatin, Aaron Keen, Chris Lupo, John Y. Oliver

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Increasingly System-On-A-Chip platforms which incorporate both microprocessors and re-programmable logic are being utilized across several fields ranging from the automotive industry to network infrastructure. Unfortunately, the development tools accompanying these products leave much to be desired, requiring knowledge of both traditional embedded systems languages like C and hardware description languages like Verilog. We propose to bridge this gap with Twill, a truly automatic hybrid compiler that can take advantage of the parallelism inherent in these platforms. Twill can extract long-running threads from single threaded C code and distribute these threads across the hardware and software domains to more fully utilize …

Event Advisory: Cal Poly’S Annual Polyhouse Renovation, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

May 14, 2014 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Executive Committee - Agenda 5/13/14, Continuation Of 5/6/14, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Cal Poly Student Ensemble To Stage ‘Vox Balaena’ Concert June 3, 5, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Cal Poly's ‘Take It Slo’ To Perform Twice June 1, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Nationally Known Commentator On Lgbt Athletics To Speak At Cal Poly May 14, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

May 7, 2014 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Cal Poly Power And Energy Conference To Be Held May 9, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Executive Committee - Agenda, 5/6/14, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Cal Poly Learn By Doing On Display At Second Annual Slo Mini Maker May 10 Inmission Plaza, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Project Proposal And Development Plan For A New Almond Orchard Including The New Variety Of Supareil, Ellen "Rosebud" Brumley

Agricultural Education and Communication

No abstract provided.

Brock Center For Agricultural Communication Program Of Work, Megan A. Silcott

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

The Brock Center for Agricultural Communication Program of Work is based on three years of maintaining and developing programs, research studies, events and activities at the Center. The candidate examined and investigated the program. The Program of Work is the result of the program analysis and culminated in sample work to continue the mission and carry out the goals of the Center. It includes supporting documents that explain the opportunities for participation and program of instruction. Providing hands-on learning laboratory experiences to students involved with the Agricultural Communication major and minor programs are integral to the classroom instruction required to …