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2013 Summary Report On Institutional Effectiveness, Clemson University

Institutional Effectiveness Reports

No abstract provided.

Environmental Agency In Read-Alouds, Alandeom W. Oliveira, Patterson Rogers, Cassie F. Quigley, Denis Samburskiy, Kimberly Barss, Seema Rivera

Publications

Despite growing interest in helping students become agents of environmental change who can, through informed decision-making and action-taking, transform environmentally detrimental forms of human activity, science educators have reduced agency to rationality by overlooking sociocultural influences such as norms and values. We tackle this issue by examining how elementary teachers and students negotiate and attribute responsibility, credit, or blame for environmental events during three environmental read-alouds. Our verbal analysis and visual representation of meta-agentive discourse revealed varied patterns of agential attribution. First, humans were simultaneously attributed negative agentive roles (agents of endangerment and imbalance) and positive agentive roles (agents of …

Multitemporal Floristic And Phenological (Flowering) Analysis Of The Shores Of Lake Issaqueena, South Carolina, Ryerson Pamplin

All Theses

The floristic and phenological (flowering) study of Lake Issaqueena in Pickens
County, SC, conducted by William Pamplin in 1970-1971 was reinvestigated in 2011-
2012 using the Carolina Vegetative Survey (CVS) natural community sampling methods
and photo documentation using a GPS-enabled camera to determine floristic and
phenological changes for this site during the forty years separating these two studies.
Phenological events (flowering) were recorded via photographs taken by a GPS-enabled
camera on a monthly basis. Photographs were downloaded and organized by sampling
date in Picasa 3 web albums and stored in a project Google website. Plants were
identified using expert knowledge, …

Moving Domain Computational Fluid Dynamics To Interface With An Embryonic Model Of Cardiac Morphogenesis, Juhyun Lee, Mahdi Esmaily Moghadam, Ethan Kung, Hung Cao, Tyler Beebe, Yury Miller, Beth L. Roman, Ching-Ling Lien, Neil C. Chi, Alison L. Marsden, Tzung K. Hsiai

Publications

Peristaltic contraction of the embryonic heart tube produces time- and spatial-varying wall shear stress (WSS) and pressure gradients (∇P) across the atrioventricular (AV) canal. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a genetically tractable system to investigate cardiac morphogenesis. The use of Tg(fli1a:EGFP)y1 transgenic embryos allowed for delineation and two-dimensional reconstruction of the endocardium. This time-varying wall motion was then prescribed in a two-dimensional moving domain computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, providing new insights into spatial and temporal variations in WSS and ∇P during cardiac development. The CFD simulations were validated with particle image …

Individual Behavioral Variation Of Juvenile Spiny Lobster (Panulirus Argus) Denning Behaviors And The Role It Plays In Shelter Competition During Habitat Loss, Katherine Heldt

All Theses

Variation in juvenile spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) aggressive and gregarious behaviors may play an important role in structuring population level interactions. Since aggressive and gregarious behaviors were not repeatable and were found to be highly correlated with size, these behaviors were found to be largely driven by a combination of behavioral plasticity and ontogeny. Although larger individuals were found to be the most aggressive and least gregarious individuals, often occupying crevice shelters by themselves, they did not exclude smaller, less aggressive lobsters from crevice shelters. Surprisingly, in shelter limited situations, small, less aggressive individuals were more likely to use dens …

Occlusion-Aware Multi-View Reconstruction Of Articulated Objects For Manipulation, Xiaoxia Huang

All Dissertations

The goal of this research is to develop algorithms using multiple views to automatically recover complete 3D models of articulated objects in unstructured environments and thereby enable a robotic system to facilitate further manipulation of those objects. First, an algorithm called Procrustes-Lo-RANSAC (PLR) is presented. Structure-from-motion techniques are used to capture 3D point cloud models of an articulated object in two different configurations. Procrustes analysis, combined with a locally optimized RANSAC sampling strategy, facilitates a straightforward geometric approach to recovering the joint axes, as well as classifying them automatically as either revolute or prismatic. The algorithm does not require prior …

The Effects Of Political Culture Of Fear On Student Perceptions Of Leadership In Student-Faculty Relationships, Amin Mohamed

All Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of a political culture of fear and power distance on student perceptions regarding the leader-member exchange theory (LMX) relationship with faculty, and their perceptions of nature of leadership in Libyan business schools. 650 Faculty members and students from business school in seven Libyan Universities were invited to participate in this study. The final number of participants that were accepted was 314. A survey was used to measure the relationship between faculty members and students, leadership style, culture of fear, and power distance. Different kinds of analysis were used to answer …

Implantable Biosensors For Physiologic Status Monitoring During Hemorrhage, Christian Kotanen

All Dissertations

Trauma diagnostics and management are major aims of research for implantable amperometric enzyme biosensor technology. Biosensors are capable of monitoring metabolic variables in a minimally invasive manner and have great potential to augment current wireless vital sign monitoring technologies in order to make a more robust physiologic status monitoring platform. The dual responsive Electrochemical Cell-on-a-Chip Microdisc Electrode Array (ECC MDEA 5037) is a recently developed electrochemical transducer for use in a wireless, implantable biosensor system for the continuous measurement of interstitial glucose and lactate. Hyperglycemia arising from insulin resistance and hyperlactatemia arising from anaerobic metabolism both occur following trauma and …

Demographic Changes In Developed And Developing Countries, Sarah Sax

All Theses

I will be observing demographic changes across both developed and developing countries and noting whether or not some developing countries follow the same trends as developed countries. This information can provide insight as to why some countries are so poor and help determine where to focus their attention in order to improve their standards of living. I will be performing a regional and country-specific analysis in order to determine which trends each developing country follows in accordance with the developed countries. I will suggest some policy solutions, which impoverished countries can use in order to improve their circumstances.

Analyses Of Multivitamins In Nutraceuticals By Reverse Phase Hplc With Dad, Elsd And Ms, Hsiang-Chi Huang

All Theses

ABSTRACT
Vitamins are essential to human beings and support long-term healthy lifestyle. They exist widely in food, but in small amount. Hence, dietary supplements and fortified food products are more and more popular in the nutritional markets. According to the Infant Formula Act of 1980, the range of each of the nutrients should fall within a specific range or above the required minimum, so there is an increasing interest of accurate measurement of vitamins, particularly the B-group vitamins. However, traditional methods for vitamin B analyses are time-consuming and often in poor accuracy. As a result, rapid and reliable analytical methods …

Recreating And Simulating Digital Costumes From A Stage Production Of Medea, Anuradha Pinisetty

All Theses

This thesis investigates a technique to effectively construct and simulate costumes from a stage production Medea, in a dynamic cloth simulation application like Maya's nDynamics. This was done by using data collected from real-world fabric tests and costume construction in the theatre's costume studio. Fabric tests were conducted and recorded, by testing costume fabrics for drape and behavior with two collision objects. These tests were recreated digitally in Maya to derive appropriate parameters for the digital fabric, by comparing with the original reference. Basic mannequin models were created using the actors' measurements and skeleton-rigged to enable animation. The costumes were …

3d Fractal Flame Wisps, Yujie Shu

All Theses

This thesis presents a method for integrating two algorithms, fractal flames and wisps, to create visually rich and interesting patterns with 3D volumetric structure. Twenty-one single 3D flame variations are described and specified. These patterns were used to produce an aesthetically designed animation, inspired by both Hubble Telescope photographs and data from a simulation of a predicted collision between the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies. The thesis also describes Python tools and a Houdini pre-visualization pipeline that were developed to facilitate the animation design and production.

Genetic And Environmental Determinants In The Evolution Of Alternative Mating Strategies In The Sailfin Molly, Poecilia Latipinna (Poeciliidae: Poecilia: Mollienesia), Elizabeth Lange

All Theses

Understanding the genetic and environmental factors responsible for differences in size, morphology and behavior can aid in determining how alternative male mating strategies evolve in natural populations. One important environmental factor is nutrition, as it underlies growth of both body size and morphological traits that are linked to alternative mating strategies in many animals. In sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna , male size is fixed at maturity, highly variable within populations and correlated with dorsal fin morphology and expression of alternative male mating behaviors. Large males with exaggerated dorsal fins use courtship behavior while small males with reduced dorsal fins use …

Black Bear Encounters In The Wildland-Urban Interface Of Upstate South Carolina, Victoria Luke

All Theses

As humans move into more remote areas wildlife are displaced and there are an increasing number of human-wildlife interactions. Human dimensions research is important in order to understand social components necessary to maintain healthy wildlife populations while also maintaining healthy relationships between wildlife and the local community. In upstate South Carolina, the number of wildlife nuisance calls received by the Department of Natural Resources has increased. More importantly, wildlife populations, particularly the American black bear (Ursus americanus), continue to move into urban areas. The following study explores black bear encounter report calls coming into the SC Department of Natural Resources …

Functional Analysis Of A Glutathione S-Transferase Gene From Reniform Nematode On Soybean, Jing Hou

All Theses

Nematode glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) have been implicated in plant-nematode interactions as effector proteins with an important role in the establishment of feeding sites. Studies with root-knot nematode in Arabidopsis thaliana suggest that GSTs may protect the nematode against oxidative plant defenses and modulate plant responses to parasitism. Our objective was to study the function of a GST from reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis) in soybean. We used a virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) system, utilizing a Bean pod mottle virus (BPMV)-based vector and a partial sequence of gsts-1 from Meloidogyne incognita to silence the putative reniform nematode homolog. The effect of silencing …

Biological Production Of Succinic Acid Using A Cull Peach Medium, Janani Krishnakumar

All Theses

Biological production of succinic acid from a cull peach based medium was studied using Escherichia coli AFP 184 in a dual-phase batch process including an aerobic growth phase and an anaerobic production phase. Experiments were performed to study the effects of corn steep liquor supplement and exogenous hydrogen supply. About one half of the sucrose in the medium was converted to fermentable sugars glucose and fructose during sterilization. The remaining sucrose was hydrolyzed with invertase. The viscosity of the medium was reduced from 350 cP to 50 cP to allow efficient oxygen transfer by a commercial enzyme product. In the …

Imagining A Common Ground: Place, Community, And The Possibility For Place-Based Education Through Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf', Christine Mahoney

All Theses

Through literature, news outlets, media, parents, teachers, and peers, youth are currently being made aware that there are severe problems in the environmental and social realms. However, the imagined but representative stories found in literature also offer opportunities for students to learn how to combat these crises, and instilling the value of place in students through pedagogy will help them become proactive adults. The particular dynamic between community and place is one we see at work in “Greenleaf” by Flannery O'Connor, an author who has been left out of ecopedagogical conversations but can be useful in finding imaginative connections between …

Development Of Hplc Methods For The Determination Of Water-Soluble Vitamins In Pharmaceuticals And Fortified Food Products, Hung Khiem Trang

All Theses

Though many HPLC methods have been developed and reported in literature for vitamin analysis for the past two decades, applying certain methods directly from literature more than often fails to reproduce the results reported due to many variables of liquid chromatography. This issue was targeted in this project through the examination of chromatographic behaviors of water-soluble vitamins in order to help the analysts better modify methods from literature or even develop new methods from scratch to fit their analytical need with the resources available (e.g., columns, detectors, etc.) in their lab.
The first part of the project investigated the chromatographic …

Avian Community Response To Fire-Mediated Regeneration Of Native Pine Stands In The Mountains Of South Carolina, Curtis Walker

All Theses

To assess the impacts of fire disturbance management on the avian community at Jocassee gorges in the mountains of South Carolina, a total of 1000 10-minute, 50 m radius point counts were conducted in treatment and control plots during the spring breeding seasons of 2011 and 2012. Comparisons of avian communities were made between the burned treatment sites and reference control sites to examine community and priority species response to prescribed fire. Values of species diversity, species richness, and total number of individuals were found to be significantly higher in the burned treatment plots than in the control plots as …

Removal Of Tio2 Nanoparticles By Conventional Water Treatment Processes, Bin Zhang

All Theses

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO₂ NPs) are one of the most common nanomaterials used in nano based products. They are used as antimicrobial, antibiotic, and antifungal agents, ultraviolet (UV) blockers, antiscratch additives, and catalysts, because TiO₂ NPs have high specific surface area and sorption capacity for ionic and nonionic species, and ultraviolet (UV) reflecting capabilities. However, TiO₂ NPs could enter human body through skin, food, inhalation and drinking water, and cause potential adverse effect, including production of oxidation radicals, genotoxic effects, and inflammation and neurotoxic effects.

The main objective of this study was to examine the efficiency of …

Comparison Of Methods To Evaluate Chitosan As An Antimicrobial Against Listeria Spp. Cultures, Scott Hartley

All Theses

The antimicrobial properties of a chitosan-coated vacuum-packaged pouch were tested against Listeria monocytogenes (LM) inoculated on frankfurters. A 1.5% chitosan solution was successfully coated onto a corona-treated poly/nylon based film and then heat-sealed to form a pouch. An initial 5 log CFU/mL population of LM was used to inoculate a frankfurter in the pouch, which was then vacuum-sealed and stored at 4¡ and 13¡ C for a period of 8 weeks, with bacteria enumeration performed on weekly intervals. An uncoated pouch was tested as a control. It was found that the chitosan-coated pouches did not exhibit any antimicrobial properties against …

Factors Influencing The Distribution And Structure Of Tropical Vascular Epiphyte Communities At Multiple Scales, Carrie Woods

All Dissertations

Understanding the factors that determine species distributions is a central question in ecology. Niche-based theories stress the importance of environmental heterogeneity in influencing species distributions while neutral-based theories emphasize the effects of dispersal limitation. The relative importance of these factors in influencing species distributions may depend on spatial scale - deterministic factors may be more important at small spatial scales where fine-scale habitat factors become more relevant and stochastic factors may be more important at larger spatial scales where dispersal limitation becomes more relevant. I examined the influence of deterministic and stochastic factors on the distribution and structure of vascular …

Multi-Scale Defect Engineering And Interface Modifications For Enhancement Of Thermoelectric Properties In Nanostructured Bulk Materials, Pooja Puneet

All Dissertations

Among various static energy conversion technologies, the thermoelectric (TE) energy conversion has gained the considerable interest due to its reliability and ability to directly convert waste heat into electricity. In TE conversion technology, physical properties such as thermopower (α), electrical (σ) and thermal conductivity (κ) are exploited simultaneously to convert waste heat into electricity. The efficiency of such conversion depends upon various factors such as temperature, figure of merit (ZT= α2σ/ κ) etc. An inherent coupling among α, σ and κ limits ZT and thereby constrains one in achieving high efficiency. Many efforts have been carried out in decoupling TE …

Preparing Adults To Work With Youth: An Environmental Scan Of Professional Development, Jennifer Gerdes, Tonia R. Durden, Claudia C. Mincemoyer, Kathleen Lodl

Journal of Youth Development

This feature article shares the results of a national environmental scan conducted to identify professional development programs offered for school age providers across the nation through the Cooperative Extension System. A purposeful sample comprised of representatives from state extension offices throughout the country included 135 respondents from 48 states. Results showed 139 professional development programs for school age providers were offered through the Cooperative Extension System. The majority of programs offered professional development in the areas of health, nutrition, safety, youth development, and quality afterschool environments. This article summarizes the findings of the environmental scan, including number of contact hours, …

Extraction Of Antioxidants From Animal Blood And Its Potential Application As A Pet Food Preservative, Chengyi Tu

All Theses

Nowadays, more and more people are having pets as members of their family. To the year of 2012, there are 78.2 million dogs and 86.4 million cats owned in the U.S according to the report of the Humane Society of the U.S. The pet food industry as a result has been prosperous, with an estimated market size of $21 billion in the year of 2013. However, there is a common problem for the industry - fat rancidification. Pet foods usually contain relatively high levels of fat, which, if not well protected, are prone to oxidation and generate unfavorable products including …

The Development Of A Rapid Fiber-Based Immunoassay As A Point-Of-Care Or In-Home Diagnostic Test, Christopher Waddell

All Theses

Early diagnosis of conditions allows for physicians to treat patients earlier, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. Two conditions of particular interest for earlier and cheaper diagnosis are the influenza virus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Antiviral treatment administered within the first 48 hours of influenza infection decreases symptom severity, risk of complications, and reduced healthcare costs. Early diagnosis of HIV can decrease the risk of transmission of the virus to HIV negative individuals and allow for earlier administration of highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART), improving patient quality of life and patient outcomes.
Currently, the 'gold standard' for detection of both …

Continuum Robotic Surface: Forward Kinematic Analysis And Implementation, Jessica Merino

All Theses

This thesis presents a new class of biologically inspired robots: continuum robotic surfaces. This work is fueled by the question: can the interaction between robot and environment be advanced with “programmable surfaces in space?” The novelty of continuum robotic surfaces lies in their ability to be actively controlled and reconfigured in what we believe is the current “missing dimension” in robot movements — two–dimensional space. We believe that such surfaces will lend themselves to more complex applications. However, to effectively deploy such surfaces for these complex applications, kinematic models will be necessary to plan and control desired configurations. The forward …

Modeling Benefits Of Implementing Low Impact Development Practices Within Forecasted Growth Scenarios Of The Reedy River Watershed, Stephen Taylor

All Theses

For this research, a previously developed comprehensive watershed water quality model for the Reedy River as developed for South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a total maximum daily load (TMDL) assessment tool was used to assess the benefits of using low impact development (LID) designs in future growth of Greenville County, within the Reedy River watershed. The original intent of this model was to provide SCDHEC with a defensible model that could be used to prepare nutrient TMDLs for an area located at Boyd Millpond and the Reedy River …

Ubiquitous Libidinal Infrastructures Of Urbanism: The Fringing Benefits Of Rhetorics In Architecture, Lauren Mitchell

All Dissertations

Big-box culture - generally thought of as sprawl - is often suppressed or ignored within architectural design curricula. The overwhelming pervasiveness of big-box culture threatens the foundation of our discipline. We turn away, though it generates the context for many lives to happily unfold in this country. We remain only partially engaged with big-box because we do not fully understand its complexity. We argue with it, but at cross-purposes. This trans-disciplinary project brings rhetorical scholarship to bear on big-box culture. Emphasizing pedagogy, it offers architects and urbanists opportunities to design with more awareness about the ubiquitous, what drives it, and …

Biofabrication Of Scaffolds For Intervertebral Disc (Ivd) Tissue Regeneration, Benjamin Whatley

All Dissertations

The ultimate goal of tissue regeneration is to replace damaged or diseased tissue with a cell-based or biomaterial-based tissue that accurately mimics the functionality, biology, mechanics, and cellular and extracellular matrix (ECM) composition of the native tissue. Specifically, the ability to control the architecture of tissue engineered constructs plays a vital role in all of these issues as scaffold architecture has an affect on function, biomechanics, and cellular behavior. Many tissue engineered scaffolds focus on the ability to mimic natural tissue by simulating the ECM due to the fact that in each distinct tissue, the ECM serves as a structural …