Digital Commons Network^™

Hybrid Ground Vehicle Thermal Management System Using Heat Pipes—Model And Control, Junkui Huang

All Dissertations

The development of Hybrid Electric and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (HEV and UGV) offer various benefits including improved vehicle performance, compatibility with high level control systems, reduced fuel consumption, and less environmental pollution. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the number of HEVs and EVs is expected to reach 20 million by the year 2020 (Green Car Congress, 2017). Compared with traditional Internal Combustion (IC) engines, hybrid powertrains are more complicated due to additional electronics including the electric motor, battery pack, and control units. However, these additional components introduce new challenges for the powertrain thermal management system design since they …

Design And Evaluation Of Flow Mapping Systems For Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, Jianwei Liu

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Mobile wireless networks are always challenged by growing application demand. The increasing heterogeneity of both mobile device connection capability and wireless network coverage forms a general heterogeneous wireless network (HetNet). This type of HetNet contains sub-networks of different Radio Access Technologies. How to better coordinate the mappings of flows between Access Points (AP) and User Equipment (UE) inside this type of HetNet to improve system and user-level performance is an interesting research problem. The flow mapping systems used by off-the-shelf mobile devices make policy-based decisions from local information. Several global information based flow mapping systems that use Generalized Proportional Fairness …

A Case Of Arts Coordination In A Rural School District: A Distributed Perspective, Anna Shealy Wages

All Dissertations

Though researchers have demonstrated the benefit of prolonged engagement in the arts (Catterall, Dumais, & Hapden-Thompson, 2012) school districts struggle to maintain high quality programs. Rural programs, in particular, are faced with unique challenges to providing arts programs (Donovan & Brown, 2017). Despite these challenges, some rural school districts have succeeded in providing quality programs, which are more in line with more resourced urban districts. Arts researchers (Bodilly, Augustine, & Zakaras, 2008) have found that arts coordination is a strategy to increase access to and the quality of an arts program. Further, districts of quality, even small ones, have arts …

A Parallel Geometric Multigrid Method For Adaptive Finite Elements, Thomas Conrad Clevenger

All Dissertations

Applications in a variety of scientific disciplines use systems of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) to model physical phenomena. Numerical solutions to these models are often found using the Finite Element Method (FEM), where the problem is discretized and the solution of a large linear system is required, containing millions or even billions of unknowns. Often times, the domain of these solves will contain localized features that require very high resolution of the underlying finite element mesh to accurately solve, while a mesh with uniform resolution would require far too much computational time and memory overhead to be feasible on a …

Frontiers In Theory-Predicated Research In Youth Development: A Commentary, Richard Lerner

Journal of Youth Development

The field of youth development sits at the frontier of new opportunities for research and practice. These opportunities are enabled by innovations in theory and in theory-inspired research methods. Framed by relational developmental systems metatheory, dynamic systems models of youth development emphasize that every young person has the potential to change positively by aligning specific individual strengths and contextual resources that, together, can optimize the life paths of a young person. The methods linked to these theoretical models combine to help identify the specific links between an individual and his or her context that may maximize thriving across the adolescent …

Probabilistic Framework For Behavior Characterization Of Traffic Participants Enabling Long Term Prediction, Jasprit Singh Gill

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This research aims at developing new methods that predict the behaviors of the human driven traffic participants to enable safe operation of autonomous vehicles in complex traffic environments. Autonomous vehicles are expected to operate amongst human driven conventional vehicles in the traffic at least for the next few decades. For safe navigation they will need to infer the intents as well as the behaviors of the human traffic participants using extrinsically observable information, so that their trajectories can be predicted for a time horizon long enough to do a predictive risk analysis and gracefully avert any risky situation. This research …

Scaling Up Automated Verification: A Case Study And A Formalization Ide For Building High Integrity Software, Daniel Thomas Welch

All Dissertations

Component-based software verification is a difficult challenge because developers must specify components formally and annotate implementations with suitable assertions that are amenable to automation. This research investigates the intrinsic complexity in this challenge using a component-based case study. Simultaneously, this work also seeks to minimize the extrinsic complexities of this challenge through the development and usage of a formalization integrated development environment (F-IDE) built for specifying, developing, and using verified reusable software components.

The first contribution is an F-IDE built to support formal specification and automated verification of object-based software for the integrated specification and programming language RESOLVE. The F-IDE …

High Dimensional Regression Techniques For Complex Data, Chase Joyner

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This dissertation focuses on developing mixed effects models for large scale and complex data. Our motivating applications involve areas where this data is common, including epidemiological studies, environmental sciences, and genetics. Two key attributes for most of the modeling techniques discussed in this dissertation are that they scale easily to large data and that they achieve full variable selection, which is often a desirable trait in mixed effects models. These attributes are primarily handled in two ways. The first is with carefully constructed latent variables that we introduce to make the posterior distributions more tractable. This allows a Markov chain …

Cavopulmonary Support For Failing Fontan Patients: Computational And In Vitro Assessment, Masoud Farahmand

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Congenital heart defects are responsible for the mortality of approximately 300,000 newborn each year. One study in 2010 estimated that over 2 million patients were living with congenital heart defects in the United States. Congenital heart defects have the highest hospitalization cost among other birth defect categories. The damage on the U.S economy in 2013 was estimated $6.1 billion. The most complex and severe form of these defects results in single ventricle physiology. Fortunately, over the last 50 years, these patients have been able to survive into adulthood as a result of three stages of surgeries culminating with Fontan operation. …

Typhoon Wind Modeling And Flutter Fragility Analysis Of Long-Span Bridges In Coastal Regions Of China, Genshen Fang

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Typhoon or hurricane or tropical cyclone, which is a large-scale air rotating system around a low atmospheric pressure center, frequently causing devastating economic loss and human casualties along coastal regions due to violent winds, heavy rainfall, massive storm surges, flash flooding or even landslides in mountainous areas. The coastal region of China, which is characterized by high population densities and well-developed cities, is always exposed to typhoon threats with 7~8 landfall typhoons every year since Western Pacific Basin is the most active typhoon basin on earth, accounting for almost one-third of global annual storms. With more long-span bridges are being …

Teens In The Somali Diaspora: An Evaluative Program Study, Jennifer Skuza

Journal of Youth Development

Program evaluation is a critical part of program sustainability because evaluation can inform improvements and document impact. Here, 2 Minnesota organizations came together in partnership with the Somali American community to work toward a shared vision, which was to develop a new sustainable program that prepared refugee and immigrant youth for their educational and workforce futures while supporting their cultural way of being. This article shares the evaluative study of this program, which reached teens in the Somali diaspora living in Minnesota. The program team had a long-term interest in developing an evidence-based model to suit this special population; this …

Who Counts As A Writer? Examining Child, Teacher, And Parent Perceptions Of Writing, Anna H. Hall, Kelley M. White, Ying Guo, Andrea Emerson

Publications

The current study used a mixed method design with 245 preschool children, 255 teachers, and 156 parents. Researchers interviewed children and surveyed teachers and parents about their perceptions of preschool children’s writing abilities and developmental writing stages. The results of the study showed that each group defined writing differently and parents were less likely to have positive perceptions about preschool children’s writing abilities than children and teachers. Correlation analysis demonstrated that teacher and parent perceptions of children’s writing abilities were not related to children’s own perceptions of their writing abilities in this study. This study illuminates that alignment of home …

A Lesson In Geospatial Inquiry, Eric Nolan, Brooke A. Whitworth, Lori Rubino-Hare

Publications

No abstract provided.

Quick And Easy Notes: Practical Strategies For Busy Teachers, C. C. Bates, Stephanie Madison Schenck, Hayley J. Hoover

Publications

Teachers’ knowledge of each child helps them to plan appropriately challenging environments and activities that are tailored to the children’s strengths and needs. Assessing children regularly is essential to build that individualized knowledge—and to identify children who may benefit from more specialized supports. This article offers practical tips for you to engage in systematic, observation-based assessment by keeping anecdotal records on each child.

Multilevel Combinatorial Optimization Across Quantum Architectures, Hayato Ushijima-Mwesigwa, Ruslan Shaydulin, Christian F.A. Negre, Susan M. Mniszewski, Yuri Alexeev, Ilya Safro

Publications

Emerging quantum processors provide an opportunity to explore new approaches for solving traditional problems in the Post Moore's law supercomputing era. However, the limited number of qubits makes it infeasible to tackle massive real-world datasets directly in the near future, leading to new challenges in utilizing these quantum processors for practical purposes. Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms that leverage both quantum and classical types of devices are considered as one of the main strategies to apply quantum computing to large-scale problems. In this paper, we advocate the use of multilevel frameworks for combinatorial optimization as a promising general paradigm for designing hybrid …

Hypergraph Partitioning With Embeddings, Justin Sybrandt, Ruslan Shaydulin, Ilya Safro

Publications

The problem of placing circuits on a chip or distributing sparse matrix operations can be modeled as the hypergraph partitioning problem. A hypergraph is a generalization of the traditional graph wherein each "hyperedge" may connect any number of nodes. Hypergraph partitioning, therefore, is the NP-Hard problem of dividing nodes into k" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-table; line-height: normal; font-size: 16px; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(93, 93, 93); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; position: relative;">kk similarly sized disjoint sets while …

Developing A Monthly Radiative Kernel For Surface Albedo Change From Satellite Climatologies Of Earth's Shortwave Radiation Budget: Cack V1.0, Ryan M. Bright, Thomas L. O'Halloran

Publications

Due to the potential for land-use–land-cover change (LULCC) to alter surface albedo, there is need within the LULCC science community for simple and transparent tools for predicting radiative forcings (ΔF) from surface albedo changes (Δαs). To that end, the radiative kernel technique – developed by the climate modeling community to diagnose internal feedbacks within general circulation models (GCMs) – has been adopted by the LULCC science community as a tool to perform offline ΔF calculations for Δαs. However, the codes and data behind the GCM kernels are not readily transparent, and the climatologies …

Gender Inclusivity And Equity In Academic Libraries, Buhle Mbambo-Thata, Jia Tina Du, Ulrike Lang, Jesús Lau, Amal Mostafa, Bharat Mehra, Clara M. Chu, Jaya Raju

Publications

In order to draw attention to and learn about gender inclusivity and equity in the academic library workplace in a fluid non-binary gendered society, academic librarians and researchers from major world regions were invited to respond to the question: What are the three most significant issues that are impeding and the three most significant issues that are enhancing gender inclusivity/equity in your region? The regions included are Africa, Asia and Oceania, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North America.

Expanding Beyond Carnivores To Improve Livestock Protection And Conservation, Shari L. Rodriguez, Christie Sampson

Publications

Promoting human–wildlife coexistence is critical to the long-term conservation of many wild animal species that come into conflict with humans. Loss of livestock to carnivore species (e.g., lions, tigers, wolves) is a well-documented occurrence and the focus of mitigation strategies around the world. One area that has received little research is the impact of noncarnivores on livestock. Both African and Asian elephant species are known to cause livestock injuries and deaths. Livestock owners within elephant ranges perceive elephants as a risk to their livestock, which may reduce their tolerance towards elephants and jeopardize conservation efforts in the area. Though feral …

Clemson Commencement Program, August 2019, Clemson University

Clemson Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Identification Of Soil-Structure System Designed By Direct Displacement-Based Method For Different Site Conditions, Vahidreza Mahmoudabadi, Omid Bahar, Mohammad Kazem Jafari, Amir Safiey

Publications

This study mainly aims to assess the performance of soil-structure systems designed by direct displacement-based method coupled with strong column-weak beam design concept through various system identification techniques under strong ground motions. To this end, various system identification methods are employed to evaluate the dynamic characteristics of a structure (i.e., modal frequency, system damping, mode shapes, and plastic hinge formation pattern) under a strong seismic excitation considering soil-structure interaction for different site conditions as specified by ASCE 7-10. The scope of the study narrowed down to the code-complying low- to high-rise steel moment resisting frames with various heights (4, 8, …

A Machine Learning Framework For Energy Consumption Prediction, Chakara Rajan Madhusudanan

All Theses

Energy needs to be used very efficiently in today's world. With fast paced improvements in the industrial sector, demand is increasing, and energy efficiency programs become vital to reduce the energy wastage while also meeting the demand. The analysis of several scenarios used by policy makers suggest that for the global temperature to raise by less than 2° C by the end of this century, it is necessary to reduce industrial energy consumption increase by at least a half. To be on track with these scenarios and to achieve the desirable targets, it is important that we incorporate a dependable …

Polarization-Resolved Second Harmonic Generation Microscopy Study Of Cardiac Hypertrophy, Cai Yuan

All Dissertations

As the most important structural and functional protein of cardiomyocyte, myosin is sensitive to mechanical and hormonal stimulus during cardiac hypertrophy. Accumulating evidence suggests that the changes in myosin during cardiac hypertrophy can eventually lead to heart failure. Therefore, the effective detection of the structural changes in myosin is critical to understanding the underlying mechanisms of cardiac hypertrophy and contributes to the early diagnose and treatment of cardiac hypertrophy.

Changes in myosin during the development of cardiac hypertrophy are not limited to tissue, cellular or sub-cellular levels such as series and parallel addition of sarcomere. Before cardiac hypertrophy develops obvious …

Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Modeling For Forecasting, Trend Assessment And Spatial Trend Filtering, Stella Coker Watson Self

All Dissertations

This work develops Bayesian spatio-temporal modeling techniques specifically aimed at studying several aspects of our motivating applications, to include vector-borne disease incidence and air pollution levels. A key attribute of the proposed techniques are that they are scalable to extremely large data sets which consist of spatio-temporally oriented observations. The scalability of our modeling strategies is accomplished in two primary ways. First, through the introduction of carefully constructed latent random variables we are able to develop Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms that consist primarily of Gibbs steps. This leads to the fast and easy updating of the model …

Does Location Matter? Evaluating The Influence Of Dual Enrollment Program Location On Noncognitive Measures Of College Readiness And Academic Performance: A Multiyear Study, Donald Galen Dehay

All Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was two-fold. First, this study examines whether differences exist in students' noncognitive readiness between non-dually enrolled students, dually-enrolled students on high school campuses, and dually-enrolled students on college campuses. Second, this study evaluates the relationship between noncognitive college readiness factors, dual enrollment program location, and students' first year college grade point average (GPA).

Poor college readiness has been a persistent issue in higher education, contributing to stagnant college retention and graduation rates. Community colleges deliver dual enrollment programs to improve college readiness and postsecondary academic outcomes. Dual enrollment participation has grown at a rapid …

Dynamics Of A Vibration Driven Bristle Bot, Chandravamsi Gandra

All Theses

Vibration driven robots utilize periodic forced vibration of an internal mass to achieve directed locomotion. Bristle bots are a class of vibration driven robots which are characterized by the presence of bristles or cilia on their surface and contain an internal mass that is driven to oscillate at a high frequency. Besides well-known applications in investigating swarming behaviour, such robots have potential applications in rescue operations in the rubble, inspections of pipes and other inaccessible confined areas and in medical devices where conventional means of locomotion is ineffective. Bristle bot or its commercially available variants such as hexbugs are popular …

M-Ary Partitions, Soumendra Ganguly

All Theses

We study the number of ways in which n ≥ 0 be written as the sum of powers of m ≥ 2. After briefly discussing historical results and examples, we prove recurrence relations, exact formulae, bounds, and asymptotic formulae. The proofs are based on elementary reasoning using induction and the mean value theorem.

Cohen-Macaulay Type Of Weighted Edge Ideals And Path Ideals, Shuai Wei

All Theses

No abstract provided.

Terfenol-D Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (Cfrp) Embedded Sensing For Early Damage Detection, Brandon Eugene Williams

All Theses

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs) have become an essential part of designing and engineering lightweight rigid bodies; predominantly in the aerospace and automotive industries. Typical epoxy-based CFRPs exhibit virtually no plasticity with minimal strain

to failure. Although CFRPs have high specific strengths and elastic moduli, the brittle fracture mechanism presents unique challenges in failure detection for the Army's vertical lift vehicles since failure occurs catastrophically. The current state of the art structural health monitoring (SHM) for aerospace structures are intrusive to the surface of the part and/or requires electrical connectivity. Army uses a "safe-life" interval-based service methodology where components are …

Analytical And Iterative Regularization Methods For Nonlinear Ill-Posed Inverse Problems: Applications To Diffuse Optical And Electrical Impedance Tomography, Sanwar Uddin Ahmad

All Dissertations

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) and Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT) are imaging methods that have been gaining more popularity due to their ease of use and non-ivasiveness. EIT and DOT can potentially be used as alternatives to traditional imaging techniques, such as computed tomography (CT) scans, to reduce the damaging effects of radiation on tissue.

The process of imaging using either EIT or DOT involves measuring the ability for tissue to impede electrical flow or absorb light, respectively. For EIT, the inner distribution of resistivity, which corresponds to different resistivity properties of different tissues, is estimated from the voltage potentials measured …