Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling Tools For Conformal Orthotic Devices, Steven David Riddle

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to advance the design of conformal orthotic devices through the development of two modeling tools to address knowledge gaps in the field.

The field of human orthotics has been continually troubled by identifying successful methods of harnessing devices to the body. Past orthotics have utilized a rigid framework with minimal degrees of freedom (DOFs) driven by hard actuators attached to the body at select anchor points. Many devices design the structure and anchor points such that they reduce the degrees of freedom of a targeted joint, limiting the user's mobility and often causing the …

Characterization Of Heat And Mass Transport In Magnesium Hydride Hydrogen Storage Systems, Jennifer Anne Dadson

Open Access Theses

Hydrogen systems can provide viable alternatives for satisfying the world's energy requirements that both reduce dependency on and are more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. For vehicular systems for example, hydrogen storage systems must have adequate gravimetric and volumetric storage capacities in addition to rapid uptake and release. Magnesium hydride shows good potential as a solid state hydrogen storage media due to its high gravimetric storage capacity of 7.6 wt% H₂; the highest of all reversible metal hydrides. Drawbacks, however, are its large reaction enthalpy of 78 kJ/mol for the desorption reaction and its low thermal conductivity of …

Analysis Of Android Update Packages As A Method To Load Forensic Utilities And Malicious Applications To An Android Device, Mark Lohrum

Open Access Theses

Android devices are extremely popular and are projected to stay popular. Both forensic tools and malware exist designed specifically for Android devices. The purpose of this study is to explore a new method of loading forensic tools and malware to Android devices. This new method is the update module, which is used to install updates to the operating system. This thesis proposed and completed research to test four different custom update packages on three different Android devices. Two of the update packages contain forensic utilities and the other two contain malicious tools. An update package collecting web history using the …

Hare And Tortoise: How Do Price Change Patterns Affect Propensity To Book, Zhuoyang Li

Open Access Theses

With an increasing using of online booking, hotel room rate changing information becomes nearly transparent to consumers. And this trend encourages deal-seeking consumer behaviors, which are based on price change information. So hotels can influence consumers' propensity to book through managing price changes. The present study aims at examining consumers' propensity to book in a more realistic context by introducing two conditions: different price changing patterns and interaction between price-moving trends and price patterns. It is important for hotel managers to understand the impact of different price change trends and patterns because price changes can directly affect consumer perception and …

Impact, Chantal Levesque-Bristol

IMPACT Presentations

Presentation given to Purdue Admissions Department, West Lafayette, IN. Goal of Instruction Matters Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT) is to achieve a student centered learning environment. This presentation describes faculty learning communities, redesign of learning spaces and assessment of IMPACT progress, specifically student perceptions of learning in IMPACT classrooms.

Annual Impact Report 2013: A Report By The Impact Data Collection And Analysis Team, Impact Management Team, Impact Assessment Team

IMPACT Reports

This is an annual report of Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT). IMPACT was created in 2010, and is a large collaborative initiative on the Purdue West Lafayette campus involving multiple key partners across campus including the Office of the Provost, Center for Instructional Excellence (CIE), Information Technologies at Purdue (ITaP), Purdue Libraries, the Discovery Learning Research Center (DLRC), and Purdue Extended Campus (PEC). IMPACT works with instructors to redesign large enrollment, foundational courses with the aim of engaging students more fully in their learning and creating a more student-centered environment, with the expectation that this will improve student …

Product Characterization And Headspace Analysis Of Solar Irradiated Aqueous C60 Clusters, Dan Su

Open Access Theses

Buckminsterfullerene (C60) is an important fullerene material that has drawn much attention and is currently being applied in many different fields. It was discovered in 1985. As its production has largely increased to meet these industrial needs, it is obvious that its environmental occurrence, especially in aqueous systems, will occur. To further provide information for environmental toxicity studies and for its risk assessment, this thesis focuses on the photo transformation processes of aqueous C60 clusters (Aqu/nC60), with a particular interest in measuring any mineralization that occurs under different irradiation conditions. Two sets of experiments were conducted to test for CO2 …

Learning To Use Information: Informed Learning In The Undergraduate Classroom, Clarence Maybee, Christine S. Bruce, Mandy Lupton, Kristen Rebmann

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

“Informed learning” is a pedagogy that focuses on learning subject content through engaging with academic or professional information practices. Adopting the position that more powerful learning is achieved where students are taught how to use information and subject content simultaneously, the research reported here investigated an informed learning lesson. Using phenomenographic methods, student’s experiences of the lesson were compared to what the teacher enacted in the classroom. Based on an analysis of student interviews using variation theory, three ways of experiencing the informed learning lesson emerged. Some students understood the lesson to be about learning to use information, i.e., researching …

An Anti-Pyruvate Kinase Monoclonal Antibody And Translocated Intimin Receptor (Tir) For Specific Detection Of Listeria Species And Shiga-Toxigenic Escherichia Coli, Titiksha Dikshit

Open Access Theses

Foodborne illnesses pose a significant health concern and economic impact worldwide. In this study, we aimed at developing alternate and improved methods for Shiga toxigenic E. coli (STEC) and Listeria species detection. In Listeria monocytogenes, an auxiliary secretory system, SecA2, plays an important role in translocating virulence and housekeeping proteins to cell surface to aid bacteria to maintain saprophytic and intracellular life styles. Here we investigated if pyruvate kinase (PyK), present in both pathogenic and nonpathogenic Listeria, is translocated by SecA2 system and determined its potential application in immunologic detection of these bacteria. Additionally, cell surface localization and enzymatic activity …

The Role Of Test Administrator And Error, Michael Edward Brockly

Open Access Theses

This study created a framework to quantify and mitigate the amount of error that test administrators introduced to a biometric system during data collection. Prior research has focused only on the subject and the errors they make when interacting with biometric systems, while ignoring the test administrator. This study used a longitudinal data collection, focusing on demographics in government identification forms such as driver's licenses, fingerprint metadata such a moisture and skin temperature, and face image compliance to an ISO best practice standard. Error was quantified from the first visit and baseline test administrator error rates were measured. Additional training, …

Swat Model Simulation Of Bioenergy Crop Impacts In A Tile-Drained Watershed, Chelsie Marie Werling Boles

Open Access Theses

Tile drains are an important component of agricultural production in the Midwest, and their inclusion in modeling studies is important in watersheds where they are a principal hydrologic pathway. The new tile drainage simulation method in the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was parameterized and tile flow results were compared with reviewed literature. Streamflow, sediment, and nutrient outputs were compared to measured values and simulated crop yields were examined with respect to average county yields. Plant growth stressors were examined to account for differences between simulated and published yields. The bioenergy crop switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) was applied over …

Photochemical Reactions Of Naproxen, Ibuprofen And Tylosin, Yang He

Open Access Theses

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) include a wide range of compounds that are used extensively and sometimes daily by people. Some PPCPs have been detected in surface water (streams, rivers, lakes) due to incomplete removal in wastewater treatment plants. The water contaminated by PPCPs is harmful to aquatic organisms and human. Naproxen (NXP), ibuprofen (IBP) and tylosin (TYL) are chosen as representative PPCPs in the current research, because they are consumed in large quantities throughout the world and there is limited data about photodegradation of these compounds in aqueous solution at the wavelength of 254 nm.

The combination of …

Time Domain Simulation Of Novel Photovoltaic Materials, Haejun Chung

Open Access Theses

Thin-film silicon-based solar cells have operated far from the Shockley- Queisser limit in all experiments to date. Novel light-trapping structures, however, may help address this limitation. Finite-difference time domain simulation methods offer the potential to accurately determine the light-trapping potential of arbitrary dielectric structures, but suffer from materials modeling problems. In this thesis, existing dispersion models for novel photovoltaic materials will be reviewed, and a novel dispersion model, known as the quadratic complex rational function (QCRF), will be proposed. It has the advantage of accurately fitting experimental semiconductor dielectric values over a wide bandwidth in a numerically stable fashion. Applying …

Vibrational Photoacoustic Tomography: Deep Tissue Imaging With Biomarker Sensitivity, Rui Li

Open Access Theses

As a molecular and functional imaging modality, photoacoustic imaging has been applied to animals or human organs such as breast, brain and skin. Till now, the contrast mechanism of photoacoustic imaging is mainly based on electronic absorption in visible and near infrared region. Inherent molecular vibration offers a contrast mechanism for chemical imaging in a label free manner. In vibrational microscopy based on either infrared absorption or Raman scattering, the imaging depth is limited to the ballistic photon mean free path, which is a few hundred microns in a biological sample. Owing to much weaker acoustic scattering in tissues as …

Stories Of Journalistic Careers: From Serial Killers To The Changing Nature Of Journalism, Linda Hughes-Kirchubel

Open Access Theses

A career narrative is a story that helps a person define who she is, and how she should act, within the context of career (Meijers & Lengelle, 2012). This thesis is an analysis of three distinct, yet related, career narratives: a metanarrative, a mesonarrative, and a micronarrative. I examine the field of journalism through metanarratives that reflect the sea-change brought about by the advent of the Internet and the production of on-demand news (see 111th Congress, 2009; Rainey & Wellman, 2012; Weldon, 2008). Using the story of two serial killers, I show how the industry has begun to think differently …

The 'X It Up' Verb Construction: A Syntactic And Sociolinguistic Approach, Ryan Hubble

Open Access Theses

This thesis focuses on a unique and, as of yet, unstudied particle verb construction in English, referred to as the `X it up' construction (e.g. I partied it up last night). Syntactic and sociolinguistic perspectives are taken to explore this phenomenon. In the area of syntax, it is proposed that the `it' in the construction is non-referential and that `it' is an (object) expletive. It is further proposed that the construction is unergative. These hypotheses are confirmed via syntactic tests, and a potential syntactic representation based on Basilico's (2008) particle verb analysis is offered as a structure in which the …

Adaptive Nonlinear Control For Autonomous Ground Vehicles, William Spencer Black

Open Access Theses

We present the background and motivation for ground vehicle autonomy, and focus on uses for space-exploration. Using a simple design example of an autonomous ground vehicle we derive the equations of motion. After providing the mathematical background for nonlinear systems and control we present two common methods for exactly linearizing nonlinear systems, feedback linearization and backstepping. We use these in combination with three adaptive control methods: model reference adaptive control, adaptive sliding mode control, and extremum-seeking model reference adaptive control. We show the performances of each combination through several simulation results. We then consider disturbances in the system, and design …

"Refuge Of The Frivolous And Thirsty": Pleasure Seeking And Barbarian Virtue In The U.S. Laboratory For Empire, Rachel Christine Steely

Open Access Theses

Scholars have frequently referred to Latin America, and to Cuba in particular, as a "laboratory for empire" for the United States in reference to the experimentation with military occupation, political intervention, and financial manipulation that American actors practiced in this region during the early twentieth century. This thesis stretches the laboratory motif to include pleasure seeking as an additional channel through which American actors exerted influence on Cuba and as a critical driving force of U.S. imperial projects. Americans made use of their Cuban "laboratory for pleasure" as an uncivilized space in which they could evade the moral rubric of …

Modeling The Dynamics Of Household-Level Hurricane Evacuation Timing Decisions, Md. Tawfiq Sarwar

Open Access Theses

Frequent occurrences of hurricanes in the coastal areas of the United States in recent times have indicated the necessity of comprehensive evacuation planning. Failure to ensure efficient and timely evacuation causes devastating impacts including loss of lives and property damages. In order to ensure efficient evacuation, emergency officials need to understand how households make evacuation decisions and how their decisions can be influenced. Households' decisions to evacuate/stay, time of departure, route choice and destination choice are four fundamental behavioral issues in the evacuation process. In this thesis, we develop a joint modeling approach for both household-level evacuation decision and departure …

Investor Sentiment In The Stock Market, Bayram Veli Salur

Open Access Theses

Classical finance theories neglect the impact of investor sentiment on stock returns. These theories assume that investors are rational and make decisions in a way that maximizes their wealth. However, a vast amount of research shows that investors' decisions are affected by their psychological biases and feelings. These findings suggest that investor sentiment may have an impact on stock returns. This hypothesis is the main motivation of this study. First, this study examines whether there is correlation among investor sentiment indicators, and whether sentiment indicators have an impact on stock returns in the US and other countries. Second, this study …

Interaction Between Centromeric Histone H3 Variant And Shugoshin, Visarut Buranasudja

Open Access Theses

Precise and faithful segregation of chromosome segregation during mitosis depends on the ability of the cell to regulate chromosome bi-orientation on the mitotic spindle. Shugoshin (Sgo1), the protector of meiotic centromeric cohesin, is required for proper establishment of chromosome bi-orientation. Sgo1 plays a crucial role as part of a mitotic tension sensor between sister chromatids. Recently, Sgo1 has been reported to interact with histone H3 at the pericentromere region, as an important factor for tension sensing and chromosome segregation. However, the role of Sgo1 in tension sensing at centromere is still elusive. The centromere is the region of attachment of …

Developing White Ash With Resistance To The Emerald Ash Borer, Kaitlin Joy Palla

Open Access Theses

Hypocotyls isolated from mature embryos germinated on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 22.2 µM 6-benzyladenine (BA) and 0.5 µM thidiazuron (TDZ) were transformed using Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain EHA105 harboring the pBI121-8D2 vector containing the neomycin phosphotransferase (nptII) gene and a full length, codon-optimized Bacillus thuringiensis Cry8Da protoxin gene (cry8D2). Explants were transformed in a bacterial suspension with 100 µM acetosyringone using 90 s sonication and 10 min vacuum-infiltration. Four independent lines of transformed shoots were selectively regenerated on MS medium with 22.2 µM BA, 0.5 µM TDZ, 50 mg L^-1 adenine sulfate, 10% …

Examining The Effects Of Computational Tools On Students' Conceptual Understanding Of Thermodynamics Of Material Concepts And Representations, Oyindamola Oluwatimi

Open Access Theses

Technology is becoming a more critical agent for supporting learning as well as research in science and engineering. In particular, technology-based tools in the form of simulations and virtual environments support learning using mathematical models and computational methods. The purpose of this research is to: (a) measure the value added in conveying Thermodynamics of materials concepts with a blended learning environment using computational simulation tools with lectures; and (b) characterize students' use of representational forms to convey their conceptual understanding of core concepts within a learning environment that blended Gibbs computational resource and traditional lectures.

A mix-method approach was implemented …

Content Analysis Concerning State Green Lodging Certification Programs In The United States, Yue Yu

Open Access Theses

The present thesis reports a content analysis study of state green lodging certification programs (SGLCPs) in the United States. The study explores how the government and industry associations operate and maintain SGLCPs. Through online research, the researcher found that 20 states have SGLCP. There are total 21 programs in operation currently. The study focused on the textual content of the 21 programs' websites.

The study determined the rationale of SGLCPs adoption through analyzing program purposes and certification bodies. The application procedure, assessment process, participation rate, certification levels, recertification process of programs were discussed to figure out whether SGLCPs implement the …

The Effect Of Online Customer Reviews On Customer's Perceived Risk Associated With Online Leisure Hotel Booking, Biwei Yang

Open Access Theses

As online shopping is widely used in the hospitality industry, research in this field constantly strives to understand the customer behavior in online purchasing activities. Online customer reviews (OCRs) and perceived risk have been extensively evaluated in previous studies in related with online purchasing. In spite of the large body of work on the topic of OCRs effect on consumer behavior, it is still unclear that how OCRs affect the decision process of the consumers when they make online booking. Due to the intangibility of hospitality or tourism product and the nature of online booking, risk perception is considered as …

The Relationship Between Bullying And Weight Management Behaviors In High School Aged Youth, Lindsey Simpson-Pedigo

Open Access Theses

Purpose: Examined whether high-school students' body mass index (BMI) classification was related to being bullied, and whether being bullied mediates the student's likelihood of practicing unhealthy weight management and weight loss behaviors.

Methods: This study was a secondary data analysis of cross-sectional data obtained by the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) 2011. Mediation analyses were used to assess relationships between weight status, being bullied and use of unhealthy weight management and weight loss behaviors.

Results: The sample consisted of 15,425 high-school students in the United States drawn from a nationally representative survey. In this sample, 15.8% were overweight and …

Perception And Attitude About Breast And Cervical Cancer Screening Among Muslim Women In A Midwest University Campus, Tahira Yeasmeen

Open Access Theses

Early detection of breast and cervical cancer through mammograms and Pap smears can improve survival rates. Muslim women in the United States are faced with traditional beliefs and diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds that may affect their knowledge and perceptions about these cancer screening practices. The objective of this study is to determine the overall health status and participation rates, knowledge, and perceptions about, and barriers to, breast and cervical cancer screening among a controlled population of Muslim women. Data were collected from Muslim women residing at or near Purdue University and the Greater Lafayette area via an online questionnaire …

Visitor Perspectives Of The Authenticity At A Heritage Destination: South Luogu Hutong In Beijing, China, Xiaolin Shi

Open Access Theses

The present study examined visitors' perceptions of authenticity at the South Luogu Alley, a famous Hutong with more than a 700-year history in Beijing. The reconstruction of many historical heritage sites raises the issue about authenticity in tourism. After reconstruction, many Hutongs combined with traditional Chinese style and Western style in terms of architectural design, restaurants, tourism souvenirs, and activities. However, visitors' perceptions toward authenticity at Hutongs continue to be mostly unknown. The study applied a self-administered questionnaire to collect the data from July, 2012 to August, 2012 at the South Luogu Alley. Visitors were asked to rate the authenticity …

Investigating The Impact Of Visuohaptic Simulations For Conceptual Understanding In Electricity And Magnetism, Karla Lizeth Sanchez Martinez

Open Access Theses

The present study examined the efficacy of a haptic simulation used as a pedagogical tool to teach freshmen engineering students about electromagnetism. A quasi-experimental design-based research was executed in two iterations to compare the possible benefits the haptic device provided to the cognitive learning of students. In the first iteration of the experiment performance of learners who used visual-only simulations was compared to the performance of those who used visuohaptic. In the second iteration of the experiment modifications were made to learning materials and experiment procedures to enhance research design. Research hypothesis states that multimodal presentation of information may lead …

Sustainable Systems Thinking In Communication Design Education, Yvette M. Perullo

Open Access Theses

Design ingenuity and sustainability can, and should, work together. Designers have an ethical responsibility to provide ideas that do no harm, and better yet, create positive solutions that nourish the environment, social and cultural structures, and the economy. This approach, referred to as sustainable systems thinking--in contrast to more common design approaches--looks at a problem as an integrated component of an entire network. Sustainable systems thinking helps designers, clients, and consumers to consider who or what is connected to the design outcome, where the project will have positive and negative ecological, financial, cultural or social impacts, and make the entire …