Digital Commons Network^™

Changing Gender: Gender Role, Class And The Experience Of Chinese Female Immigrants, Doris Cheung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes gender role identity development in Chinese female immigrants from diverse work and education backgrounds. This study focuses on Chinese female immigrants, bakery salesladies and social workers, to addresses a gap in the existing literature, which has previously emphasized factory workers and students, on gender role identity development at the interface of social context and activity system dynamics. To understand further the Chinese female immigration experience, this research investigates how gender role identity is manifested across different social contexts and institutions. I administered questionnaires and conducted interviews with Chinese female immigrants residing in New York City. The sample …

Data-Driven Synthesis Of Animations Of Spatially Inflected American Sign Language Verbs Using Human Data, Pengfei Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Techniques for producing realistic and understandable animations of American Sign Language (ASL) have accessibility benefits for signers with lower levels of written language literacy. Previous research in sign language animation didn’t address the specific linguistic issue of space use and verb inflection, due to a lack of sufficiently detailed and linguistically annotated ASL corpora, which is necessary for modern data-driven approaches. In this dissertation, a high-quality ASL motion capture corpus with ASL-specific linguistic structures is collected, annotated, and evaluated using carefully designed protocols and well-calibrated motion capture equipment. In addition, ASL animations are modeled, synthesized, and evaluated based on samples …

Suburban Heat Islands: The Influence Of Residential Minimum Lot Size Zoning On Surface Heat Islands In Somerset County, New Jersey, Jennifer Renee Cox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The process of suburbanization blurs regional bounds, forms mega-regions and fosters the expansion of multifaceted environmental problems, such as the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Defined by differences in air- and surface- temperature between rural and urban areas, UHI is the result of the characteristics of urbanization which modify the land surface condition, urban geometry, thermal properties of construction materials, anthropogenic heat and air pollution, which increase storage and re-radiation of heat to the atmosphere. Climate change is predicted to worsen the UHI effect. Hence, the objective of this research to characterize the UHI effect as it pertains to suburban …

Phylogenetic Trees And Their Analysis, Eric Ford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Determining the best possible evolutionary history, the lowest-cost phylogenetic tree, to fit a given set of taxa and character sequences using maximum parsimony is an active area of research due to its underlying importance in understanding biological processes. As several steps in this process are NP-Hard when using popular, biologically-motivated optimality criteria, significant amounts of resources are dedicated to both both heuristics and to making exact methods more computationally tractable. We examine both phylogenetic data and the structure of the search space in order to suggest methods to reduce the number of possible trees that must be examined to find …

I Hope I Don't See You Tomorrow: A Phenomenological Ethnography Of The Passages Academy School Program, Lee Adam Gabay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines Passages Academy, a school program that offers educational services for court-involved youth in New York City. Looking specifically at the Department of Education teachers who work in facilities run by the Department of Juvenile Justice, this research focuses on the beliefs and behaviors that inform the teaching experience within these facilities. The critical question of how these educators negotiate the learning spaces within this school community is also examined.

The question that informs much of this study is: how are the philosophies of the various stake-holding agencies enacted daily in real classroom settings? This leads to a …

Fabrication And Assembly Of Patchy Particles With Uniform Patches, Zhenping He

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patchy colloidal particles have been widely studied as the self-assembly building blocks to illustrate their potential for forming complex structures. The parameters affecting the final assembly structures include (i) patch size, shape, and number per particle, (ii) their relative positions, and (iii) the surface properties of the patch material. Recent computational studies have highlighted the impact of patch shape on assembly structure; however, there are only a limited number of methods that can provide control over patch shape and size. In this thesis, a template is introduced to the Glancing Angle Vapor Deposition method (GLAD) to create surface anisotropy on …

Using Otoacoustic Emissions To Evaluate Efferent Auditory Function In Humans, Simon Henin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The auditory system continually adapts to changes in the acoustic environment over short periods of time. This fine-tuning of its dynamics is mediated in part by the medial olivocochlear (MOC) bundle, a neural feedback loop which aids in the regulation of cochlear micro-mechanics. The ability to measure the response of the MOC system in humans may provide significant insight into unique cochlear functions, such as its sharp frequency selectivity and wide dynamic range. In humans the efferent system can be investigated non-invasively using otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). However, how OAEs can best be used to evaluate efferent function, the pitfalls associated …

An Ethnobotanical, Ecological And Lc-Ms-Based Chemometric Investigation Of Phaleria Nisidai, A Traditional Adaptogen Containing Diterpene Esters From Palau, Micronesia, Daniel Kulakowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An ethnobotanical, ecological and LC-MS-based chemometric investigation of Phaleria nisidai, a traditional adaptogen containing diterpene esters from Palau, Micronesia

Palau is a country with a rich heritage of traditional medicine still being practiced. One of the most popular and respected remedies in Palau is a tea made from fresh leaves of Phaleria nisidai Kaneh. (Thymelaeaceae). Interviews conducted to determine the use of this plant revealed that it is employed non-specifically to treat a variety of general health concerns. Its use as a prophylactic to keep away sickness, as a 'system cleaner', as well as for strength and energy indicate …

Development Of Mesoporous Silicas, Responsive Polymer Microgels, And Related Nanocomposites, Yingyu Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation covers research on polymer-templated nanoporous materials and functional soft materials, and it consists of four major parts. The first part is on introduction. The next part (Chapters 2-3) describes the research work on the synthesis of silicas with spherical mesopores. Chapter 2 is focused on the synthesis of large-pore FDU-12 silicas at room temperature by using surfactants with large hydrophilic blocks and relatively small hydrophobic blocks (such as Pluronic F108 (EO132PO50EO132)) as the template. Chapter 3 discusses an interesting mesopore structure, which is the hollow silica nanosphere (HSN). The single-micelle-templating strategy provides a general approach for the synthesis …

Gauge/ Gravity Correspondence, Bulk Locality And Quantum Black Holes, Debajyoti Sarkar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this dissertation is threefold. We begin by the study of two parallel ideal cosmic strings in the presence of non-minimal scalar fields and spin- 1 gauge fields. We show that the contributions of the non-minimal term on the interaction energy between the strings are similar to that of the gauge field for a particular value of non-minimal coupling parameter. In this context we clarify some of the issues that arise when comparing the renormalization of black hole entropy and entanglement entropy using the replica trick.

In the second part of the dissertation we study the process of …

Intelligent Nano/Microgels For Cell Scaffold And Drug Delivery System, Jing Shen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Stimulus-responsive polymer microgels swell and shrink reversibly upon exposure to various environmental stimuli such as change in pH, temperature, ionic strength or magnetic fields. Therefore, they become ideal candidates for biomaterial applications. For this work, we focus on the several intelligent microgels and their application on two areas: the cell scaffold and the drug delivery system.

As for the cell scaffold, it can be realized by colloidal supra-structure microgels, which constructed by the thermo-driven gelation of the colloidal dispersion of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylamide) poly(NIPAM-co-AAm) microgels (Chapter 3). Such microgels exhibit a reversible and continuous volume transition in water with volume phase transition …

Lean, Green, And Lifetime Maximizing Sensor Deployment On A Barrier, Peter Michael Terlecky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mobile sensors are located on a barrier represented by a line segment, and each sensor has a single energy source that can be used for both moving and sensing. Sensors may move once to their desired destinations and then coverage/communication is commenced. The sensors are collectively required to cover the barrier or in the communication scenario set up a chain of communication from endpoint to endpoint. A sensor consumes energy in movement in proportion to distance traveled, and it expends energy per time unit for sensing in direct proportion to its radius raised to a constant exponent.

The first focus …

Affective Language And Attitudes Toward Public Policy, Rachel A. Wolitzky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation project focused on affective and unconscious processes involved in the evaluation of public policy. It follows recent scholarship in political psychology showing how the response to political messages depends greatly on what values and emotions are evoked. Of particular focus has been the notable discrepancy between the conscious way people construe their political judgments and the unconscious operations that more truly account for their views and actions. Motivated by a neuroscientific and psychoanalytic model of the mind and brain that recognizes both the pre-eminence of unconscious (implicit) processing and the primacy of affect in mind (brain) activity, this …

Cyclic Phosphonium Ionic Liquids, Sharon I. Lall-Ramnarine, Joshua A. Mukhlall, James F. Wishart, Robert R. Engel, Alicia R. Romeo, Masao Gohdo, Sharon Ramati, Marc B. Berman, Sophia N. Suarez

Publications and Research

Ionic liquids (ILs) incorporating cyclic phosphonium cations are a novel category of materials. We report here on the synthesis and characterization of four new cyclic phosphonium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide ILs with aliphatic and aromatic pendant groups. In addition to the syntheses of these novel materials, we report on a comparison of their properties with their ammonium congeners. These exemplars are slightly less conductive and have slightly smaller self-diffusion coefficients than their cyclic ammonium congeners.

Quality-Space Theory In Olfaction, Benjamin D. Young, Andreas Keller, David Rosenthal

Publications and Research

Quality-space theory (QST) explains the nature of the mental qualities distinctive of perceptual states by appeal to their role in perceiving. QST is typically described in terms of the mental qualities that pertain to color. Here we apply QST to the olfactory modalities. Olfaction is in various respects more complex than vision, and so provides a useful test case for QST. To determine whether QST can deal with the challenges olfaction presents, we show how a quality space (QS) could be constructed relying on olfactory perceptible properties and the olfactory mental qualities then defined by appeal to that QS of …

Impacts Of Aerosol Particle Size Distribution And Land Cover Land Use On Precipitation In A Coastal Urban Environment Using A Cloud-Resolving Mesoscale Model, Nathan Hosannah, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

Urban environments influence precipitation formation via response to dynamic effects, while aerosols are intrinsically necessary for rainfall formation; however, the partial contributions of each on urban coastal precipitation are not yet known.Here, the authors use aerosol particle size distributions derived from the NASA aerosol robotic network (AERONET) to estimate submicron cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and supermicron CCN (GCCN) for ingestion in the regional atmospheric modeling system (RAMS). High resolution land data from the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) were assimilated into RAMS to provide modern land cover and land use (LCLU).Thefirst two of eight total simulationswere month long runs for …

Wave Function For Harmonically Confined Electrons In Time-Dependent Electric And Magnetostatic Fields, Hong-Ming Zhu, Jin-Wang Chen, Xiao-Yin Pan, Viraht Sahni

Publications and Research

We derive via the interaction “representation” the many-body wave function for harmonically confined electrons in the presence of a magnetostatic field and perturbed by a spatially homogeneous time-dependent electric field—the Generalized Kohn Theorem (GKT) wave function. In the absence of the harmonic confinement – the uniform electron gas – the GKT wave function reduces to the Kohn Theorem wave function. Without the magnetostatic field, the GKTwave function is the Harmonic Potential Theorem wave function. We further prove the validity of the connection between the GKT wave function derived and the system in an accelerated frame of reference. Finally, we provide …

Behavioral And Emotional Dynamics Of Two People Struggling To Reach Consensus About A Topic On Which They Disagree, Levent Kurt, Katharina G. Kugler, Peter T. Coleman, Larry S. Liebovitch

Publications and Research

We studied the behavioral and emotional dynamics displayed by two people trying to resolve a conflict. 59 groups of two people were asked to talk for 20 minutes to try to reach a consensus about a topic on which they disagreed. The topics were abortion, affirmative action, death penalty, and euthanasia. Behavior data were determined from audio recordings where each second of the conversation was assessed as proself, neutral, or prosocial. We determined the probability density function of the durations of time spent in each behavioral state. These durations were well fit by a stretched exponential distribution, with an exponent, …

Boosted Top Production: Factorization And Resummation For Single-Particle Inclusive Distributions, Andrea Ferroglia, Simone Marzani, Ben D. Pecjak, Li Lin Yang

Publications and Research

We study single-particle inclusive (1PI) distributions in top-quark pair production at hadron colliders, working in the highly boosted regime where the top-quarkpTis much larger than its mass. In particular, we derive a novel factorization formula validin the small-mass and soft limits of the differential partonic cross section. This providesa framework for the simultaneous resummation of soft gluon corrections and small-mass logarithms, and also an efficient means of obtaining higher-order corrections to the differential cross section in this limit. The result involves five distinct one-scale functions, three of which arise through the subfactorization of soft real radiation in the small-mass limit. …

Course Catalog 2014-2015, Laguardia Community College

Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Bmcc Borough Of Manhattan Community College 2014-2016 Bulletin, Borough Of Manhattan Community College

Archives

This is the official college catalog for 2014-2016. It contains course descriptions as well as information on degree programs, college resources and services, admissions, tuition and fees, financial aid, a profile of the college, and rules and regulations.

Disciplinarity And Trandisciplinarity In The Study Of Knowledge, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Scholarly inquiry about the nature and significance of knowledge has been shaped by disciplinary traditions and priorities that define “knowledge” differently and result in disconnected literatures. In the mid to late twentieth century, library science educator Jesse Shera sought to bridge the conceptual gap between epistemological and sociological approaches to knowledge in proposing a new discipline he called social epistemology. Around the same time, long-term projects by the economist Fritz Machlup and the physical chemist turned philosopher of science Michael Polanyi did not merely combine existing disciplinary approaches but transcended conventional frameworks for conceptualizing knowledge. These scholars can be viewed …

Tr-2014001: Computer-Aided Reasoning About Knowledge And Justifications, Natalia Novak

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Tr-2014002: Proof Complexity And Quantitative Epistemology, Natalia Novak

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Tr-2014006: New Algorithms In The Frobenius Matrix Algebra For Polynomial Root-Finding, Victor Y. Pan, Ai-Long Zheng

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

A Course-Based Research Experience: How Benefits Change With Increased Investment In Instructional Time, Christopher D. Shaffer, Consuelo J. Alvarez, April E. Bednarski, David Dunbar, Anya L. Goodman, Catherine Reinke, Anne G. Rosenwald, Michael J. Wolyniak, Cheryl Bailey, Daron Barnard, Christopher Bazinet, Dale L. Beach, James E. J. Bedard, Satish Bhalla, John Braverman, Martin Burg, Vidya Chandrasekaran, Hui-Min Chung, Kari Clase, Randall J. Dejong, Shubha Govind, Gerard Mcneil, Karim Sharif

Publications and Research

While course-based research in genomics can generate both knowledge gains and a greater appreciation for how science is done, a significant investment of course time is required to enable students to show gains commensurate to a summer research experience. Nonetheless, this is a very cost-effective way to reach larger numbers of students.

Tr-2014008: Supporting Genp And Low-Rank Approximation With Random Multipliers, Victor Y. Pan, Guoliang Qian, Xiaodong Yan

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Tr-2014007: Real Polynomial Root-Finding By Means Of Matrix And Polynomial Iterations, Victor Y. Pan

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Tr-2014010: Intuitionistic Epistemic Logic, Sergei Artemov, Tudor Protopopescu

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Tr-2014011: Real Polynomial Root-Finding: New Advances, Victor Y. Pan

Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.