Digital Commons Network^™

The Psychology Behind Voting Behavior In Kosovo, Fjolla Qorri

Theses

The extent to which voting is a rational behavior is highly debated among social psychologists and political scientists. This paper aims to answer the question of what guides the voting behavior in Kosovo. Firstly, it suggests that the voters’ rationality is limited and that implicit biases override policy analysis. Secondly, it argues that social identity, family voting, gender bias, ideology, and emotions are all significant in its own way in guiding the voting behavior in Kosovo. It does this through a combination of secondary and primary research that includes one survey of 250 respondents and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). …

A Study Of The Lightfastness Of High-Chroma Water-Based Flexographic Printing Inks, Nuanjan Narakornpijit

Theses

The study of new material for package printing is critical because packaging is not only about visual aesthetics, but also function. Technologies such as High-chroma ink that aid expanded gamut printing can be especially useful in package printing.

The thesis experiment examined the lightfastness characteristics of High-chroma water-based flexographic printing inks sets within the context of package printing applicability. Using conventional water-based flexographic printing inks as a standard, the study examined whether High-chroma inks exhibit different lightfastness characteristics. First, the researcher chose yellow and magenta process color water-based flexographic inks because of the traditional process colors, they are the least …

Effects Of Fullerenes On A Freshwater Benthic Community: Toxicity And Implications For Ecological Functions And Services, Sarah Ponte Cabral

Theses

Production of engineered carbon-based nanomaterials (CNM) is rising, with increased risk of release to the environment during production, transportation, use, and disposal. This trend highlights a need to understand potential impacts of CNM on the natural environment. Fullerenes (n-C60) are insoluble in water, and form aggregates that settle quickly, suggesting higher relative vulnerability of aquatic benthic ecosystems. This study aimed to determine eco-toxicity of fullerene and its functionalized derivatives on functionally representative benthic organisms, and evaluate how the potential lethal and sub-lethal effects of fullerene on these organisms indirectly impact benthic ecosystem function, including decomposition, primary productivity and nutrient cycling. …

Flipped Classroom Video Analytics, Robert Garrick

Presentations and other scholarship

Rising tuition and stringent accreditation standards increase the pressure educators feel to improve student learning using active teaching techniques. The flipped classroom allows educators to use externally viewed videos to focus on in-class time for problem-based learning. The flipped classroom is a recent pedagogical model in Engineering Technology classes Video learning analytics are an important tool to understand student engagement and usage of flipped classroom video resources. Video analytics can also help instructors understand and continuously improve the effectiveness of the video lecture class component. This research used video analytics of a Fluid Mechanics & Fluid Power Engineering Technology flipped …

Social Media And Its Impact On Users’ Decision Making To Visit A Fine Dining Restaurant, Petra Malbasa

Theses

This study focused on exploring what factors and social media tactics are important to consider when creating an effective social media strategy for a fine dining restaurant in Zagreb for Facebook and Instagram. The important factors to consider when creating an effective social media strategy and useful social media tactics to use for a fine dining restaurant in Zagreb were defined. The study used a qualitative research approach and in-depth research questions. Ten participants shared their personal experiences connected to social media and fine dining restaurants. Fifty percent of the participants were experts in marketing and the food industry who …

Transatlantic Détournement? An Institutional Perspective On François Bon’S Reception Of Kenneth Goldsmith’S Uncreative Writing, Gert-Jan Meyntjens

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This article investigates the ambivalent reception of Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing by the French author and writing workshop facilitator François Bon. Although admiring Goldsmith’s radical poetics, Bon hesitates when it comes to integrating digitally-driven uncreative writing methods in his own workshop. In one entry on his personal website, Bon proposes a détournement of Goldsmith’s experimental practices in the form of a return to the novel. To account for this ambivalence on the part of Bon, this article takes the contexts of American creative writing and the French atelier d’écriture into account. It argues that the novelty of Goldsmith’s project can …

Highly Ordered Titanium And Titanium Dioxide Nanotubes Electrode Development And Electrochemical Application, Xiang Li

Theses

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most extensively studied compounds in materials science. Since the first successful fabrication of highly ordered TiO2 nanotubes (TiO2-NTs) arrays via electrochemical anodization in ’90s, thousands of publications have focused on the growth, properties, and applications of these versatile nanostructures. In the present study, anodization conditions were found to be the key determinants for TiO2-NTs’ structures and properties. In fact, this work demonstrates that tuning anodization conditions leads to tailoring TiO2-NTs’ for distinctive electrochemical applications. Deconvoluting myriad factors, for example temperature, electrolyte, reaction time, and potential, which govern the anodized products properties, was possible …

Anatomy Of The Rotator Cuff, Shevon Barnes

Theses

Health literacy is the level at which an individual can obtain, comprehend, and retain general health information and available health services. Health literacy determines more than just how well a person understands medical information. It affects how well they can navigate the medical world. There are problems that often reoccur in patient education materials. Most patient education materials should be written at a 5th or 6th grade level (Health Literacy, NIH 2015) whereas most materials are written at an 11th grade level, or higher. Many illustrations included in resources are complex and not designed to give a general overview of …

Up To Code: Systematically Evaluating And Standardizing Legacy Repository Content, Frances Chang Andreu

Presentations and other scholarship

Rochester Institute of Technology implemented its first Open Access repository in 2002. An early effort to quickly populate and legitimize the repository, coupled with staff turnover, led to a collection of materials that was inconsistent, accompanied by insufficient metadata, and of dubious copyright status. While the system itself was re-evaluated and migrated to a new platform in 2012, much of the original content was batch imported without further inspection. In 2017, we underwent a systematic audit of all 2,500+ faculty works (student theses and dissertations were excluded from this project) to check for copyright compliance, as well as adherence to …

Storage And Retrieval Of Optical Information In Levitated Cavityless Optomechanics, Pardeep Kumar, Mishkatul Bhattacharya

Presentations and other scholarship

No abstract provided.

Justice By Any Means: The Relationship Between Societal Stress And The Rise Of Vigilantism In Comic Books, Gregory Heerkens

Theses

The following study used sales data to ascertain the presence of a link between current socio-political tensions (as measured by the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences’ Doomsday Clock and national crime statistics) and the prevalence and acceptance of so-called “vigilante justice” portrayed in the top-selling comic books during the period between 1989 and 2001. The purpose of this study is to understand what, if any, relationship exists between dark times and desperate measures; between a feeling of powerlessness in world affairs, and the belief that justice outside of the system is acceptable when that system, at home or abroad, fails to …

College Students’ Use Of Digital And Traditional Media: Uses And Gratifications Approach, Kelly M. Bodine

Theses

In the higher education field marketers need to better understand how to keep abreast with the trends of their current and future audiences. With ever-evolving technologies, students’ have multiple methods in which to acquire campus related information. The aims of this study were to discover what communication methodologies students employ when learning about campus information and what methodologies they employ when actively searching. Based on a uses and gratifications framework, this study involved conducting an online survey to compare college students’ use and level of influence from traditional or digital media marketing. The findings of this study show that both …

Online News Coverage About Fraud And Self-Defensive Behavior In China, Congxi Wang

Theses

This study explores the role of online news media in directing people’s behavior in China. Previous literature shows that Chinese tend to be suspicious or hostile towards strangers and those outside their network. This study assumes that this self-defensive behavior was caused by negative portrayal of strangers in Chinese online news media. A survey and a qualitative content analysis were conducted to understand how the exposure to crime news affects people’s perception of strangers and public safety in China, then causes self-defensive behavior in China. The finding shows consistency between survey responses and media coverages about strangers, which establishes the …

Team Queue: A Mobile Application Which Provides A Third Party Stage For An E-Sports Service Provider, Mengying Wang

Theses

E-Sports, known as electronic sports, professional video gaming or pro gaming, refers to the use of video games for sports. In today’s a growing economy, there is a continuous strengthening of the E-Sports industry; E-Sports has officially become a kind of sports. Believe or not, E-Sports has an incredible market share in the gaming market. In 2017, E-Sport the grew of 41.3 % over last year, which equates up the value of $696 million (NewZoo, 2017).

According to 2017 Global E-Sports Market Report (NewZoo, 2017), day, worldwide, there are E-Sports games held every day. It also reported that 67 million …

Uses And Gratification Of Posting Selfies On Social Media, Amanda Kearney

Theses

Selfies have become an easy and instantaneous form of self-expression and communication. Posting selfies to various social media platforms has become wildly popular and socially accepted in the digital age. This study investigated the motivation behind posting selfies to Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat using the framework of uses and gratification theory. This study also compared differences in gratification sought from individual social media platforms. A cross-sectional survey shared on Facebook using a snowball sampling method recruited participants who post at least one selfie per week (N = 156). Factor analysis revealed five gratifications for posting selfies to social media: attention …

Batsen: Modifying The Batman Routing Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks, Nelson Henry Powell Iii

Theses

The proliferation of autonomous Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has spawned research seeking power efficient communications to improve the lifetime of sensor motes. WSNs are characterized by their power limitations, wireless transceivers, and the converge-cast communications techniques. WSN motes use low-power, lossy radio systems deployed in dense, random topologies, working sympathetically to sense and notify a sink node of the detectable information. In an effort to extend the life of battery powered motes, and hence the life of the network, various routing protocols have been suggested in an effort to optimize converge-cast delivery of sensor data. It is well known that …

Catpanion: A Ui/Ux Ios-Based App Design To Support Cat Adoptions, Chenchen Ji

Theses

Homeless and abandoned cats are becoming an issue in urban areas around the world: a majority of them may carry illnesses that may lead to infectious diseases. Once back in the wild, cats may also harm the ecological equilibrium of urban areas as they are known to be hunters of birds and smaller mammals.

The popularity of online cat-related material has ballooned over the past decade. Within the confines of social media, cat-related matters have gained an enormous amount of attention. Due to the increase in cat enthusiasts, celebrities occasionally help post information about cats and have even helped ask …

Stage, Ying Xu

Theses

Stage is three minutes 2D/3D experimental animation. The whole story is about the growth of a person who is pursuing her dream. The story starts with a dancer practicing and learning the skills. As her skill and ability increases, her desires and needs expand. She begins to recognize, perceive and introspect everything around her deeply. After lost, confusion, self-doubt, finally, she accepts how the world is and decide not to live against her truth.

I want to use experimental animation as a way of describing how people feel when they experience their lives. This concept is based initially on my …

Effect Of Lead Contaminated Soils On Lycopene And Mineral Contents Of Tomatoes (Solanum Lycopersicum), Andrea T. Amati

Theses

Eating fruits and vegetables is beneficial to human health, not just because they provide essential nutrients and vitamins, but also because phytochemicals scavenge free radicals and can reduce the risk of developing cancer and other diseases. However, not all people have access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. People who live in “food deserts” often are limited to smaller stores where prices are higher and the quality and variety of fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce. Urban gardens have been proposed as a potential solution to the issue of food deserts and as a way to promote nutrition in low …

Young Cash Karen, Jade Thiraswas

Theses

Young Cash Karen is an ongoing body of work about a community of young men refugees from Burma (or Myanmar) who have recently resettled in Western New York State. They are members of the Karen, a Burmese ethnic minority that has fought a decades-long civil war against the Burmese government over the native lands of their people and for their very right to exist. The Karen people have been the victims of ethnic-cleansing policies by the oppressive Burmese military regime. For most or all of their lives, the young men of Young Cash Karen lived in refugee camps across the …

Consumer Preferences In Food Interactive Packaging, Nuchjarin Pareeratanasomporn

Theses

Interactive packaging is an innovation that has been adopted by the packaging design industry. It enables consumers to interact with packaging through their smart devices. Although the technology is already available, it is uncertain how many consumers use it or will ever find it useful.

This research measured the young Millennial (18-24 years old) consumers’ perspectives and their preferences for interactive feature on food packaging. College students between 18 to 24 years old were chosen by using a purposive sampling method. First, a questionnaire asked for information about the participants’ behavior surrounding two topics. The first topic asked about their …

Face 2 Face, Joseph Hurley

Theses

For my final year at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), I worked on my thesis film, “Face 2 Face,” which runs for 6 minutes and 22 seconds. My thesis film tells the story of a young man attending a Comic-Con convention who spends more time taking photos of what he sees in front of him for his social media page rather than living in the moment within his environment. This film was inspired by my experiences at conventions and on vacations, during which I devoted much of my energy to recording footage of unique events or taking photos of an …

Oliver's Rumination: A Short Video Game About Failure, Shaemus Spencer

Theses

Studying and working in a creative field requires designers and artists to produce consistently high-level, novel work. In some cases, taking risks to pursue new concepts, methods, or products is highly valued. At the same time, not all companies, students, or individual artists have the resources to risk should their exploration fail. What remains is a crossroad: creative professionals and students are rewarded for taking risks, but are often unable to do so because the possibility of failure carries too much weight.

Changing the way creators see failure could revolutionize the way they work. By accepting and incorporating failure into …

Terra: The Earthen Refrigerator, Priyanka Bambarkar

Theses

This thesis consists of the study of reducing the overuse of technology in a modern household for a healthier lifestyle.

“The kitchen is the most important and expensive room in any household.” - Dan Harel.

It has many appliances and even though not always really appreciated, it does have technologically advanced gadgets. These gadgets were designed for convenient cooking and effective kitchen time usage.

One such appliance which has gained tremendous appreciation is the refrigerator. The refrigerator in general has undergone change over time and has evolved. Initially, satisfying the basic need of food storage and preservation to now satiating …

Claiming Space, Gwendolyn Anne Davies

Theses

The self-portraits in Claiming Space are presented as large, glossy full-color posters, pinned directly to the gallery wall. The photographs are photographs of me, a plus-sized woman, as I want to be seen confronting and challenging the ideals of beauty, desire, and representation in contemporary culture and media. Using an active and direct gaze, I present a plus-sized woman with power and strength even in vulnerability. I am challenging the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women, especially fat women, and asserting the right to be seen.

Protein Vaccines Against Acute Otitis Media Caused By Nontypeable Haemophilus Influenzae In A Murine Model, Mark Zavorin

Theses

Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) is one of the major organisms in the upper respiratory nasopharyngeal microbiota. In addition to its role as a commensal in the nasopharynx, NTHi is also the cause of sinusitis, pneumonia, and meningitis. Most relevant to this work, NTHi is one of the major causes of otitis media (OM), an inflammatory disease of the middle ear that affects 65-300 million children globally each year. In the US, acute OM (AOM or ear infection) is the most common reason for prescribed antibiotics. Due to the dramatic increase in antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, there is currently an …

Velleity, Yiyun Chen

Theses

The work Velleity is an installation of photographs presented on the gallery wall along with a photobook, which explore the process of self-reflection and self-discovery. This experimental work is a form of meditation, which reveals itself through the process of walking photographing, and repurposing into a work of art. The photobook, with its textual references and adaptation of color, develops the concept of the images and text as the language to describe the seemingly unexceptional moments of everyday life. Visualizing the experience as a person navigating different cultures, social expectations, and realities, ponders my displacement in the past and present, …

A Study Of High-Chroma Inks For Expanding Cmyk Color Gamut, Sanyukta Sanjay Hiremath

Theses

The number of possible reproducible colors in a printing method is called the color gamut. The need to satisfy the growing quality demands and produce color match has given rise to the use of expanded color gamuts. There are many ways to achieve an expanded color gamut, including printing with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (CMYK) plus additional inks, printing with higher ink film thickness (IFT), and printing with high-chroma inks. The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between color gamut volume, metric chroma (C*), IFT, and solid ink density (SID) for regular and high-chroma inks in offset …

Self-Regulation Within The Wearable Device Industry And The Alignment To Device Users’ Perceptions Of Health Data Privacy, Tegan Ayers

Theses

Health data privacy has become increasingly pertinent as the Internet-of-Things (IoT), specifically, health-monitoring, wearable devices, has become more advanced. Today’s regulatory framework allows wearable device companies to self-regulate how data is collected and used, thus leaving consumer, health data at risk of possible mishandling or abuse. Consequently, this research sought to examine whether data privacy practices adopted by major wearable manufacturers align with consumer expectations about these devices and the data they collect. Both consumers’ understanding of health data privacy and the corresponding tech companies’ stance on protecting consumer privacy were evaluated by performing crowd-sourced surveys and a thematic analyses …

Discriminative Feature Extraction Of Time-Series Data To Improve Temporal Pattern Detection Using Classification Algorithms, David Stolze

Theses

Time-series data streams often contain predictive value in the form of unique patterns. While these patterns may be used as leading indicators for event prediction, a lack of prior knowledge of pattern shape and irregularities can render traditional forecasting methods ineffective. The research in this thesis tested a means of predetermining the most effective combination of transformations to be applied to time-series data when training a classifier to predict whether an event will occur at a given time. The transformations tested on provided data streams included subsetting of the data, aggregation over various numbers of data points, testing of different …