Digital Commons Network^™

The Nearness Of You, Tianyi Yin

Theses

The Nearness Of You is an animated 2D graduate thesis film. The entire film, including the credits, is 4 minutes 55 seconds long. The production phase went from September 2016 to May 2017.

This is a love story about two mannequins. The story takes place in a European looking city. The male mannequin meets the female mannequin under a romantic scenario.They fall in love as the time pass by. However, in the end, they don’t get to actually end up together. As a result, the male mannequin gets to have a symbolic figure as the female mannequin and they spend …

Rethinking Dalian New International Airport: The Exploration Of A Net-Zero Airport Powered By Tidal Power Energy On An Artificial Island., Xiaofan Jiang

Theses

Fossil fuel is still the number one energy resource in China, and among the fossil fuel, coal is the primary resource to generate electricity and heat during heating days. Fossil fuel will result in global warming, sea level rising, but we may not perceive these because of the relatively subtle changes. Nevertheless, China got the punishment from the natural in recent years, most of the mainland China is experiencing the terrible smog, which gets worse in the winter. The cause of the smog is same to London, a huge amount of coal has been consumed in last few decades. To …

Re-Envisioning Kindergarten Learning Spaces In The U.S Education System, Suhina Agarwal

Theses

The thesis work aims at improving the learning environments of the Kindergarten classrooms in the United States by taking inspiration from a very simple and popular play element namely the ‘blocks’. The classroom environments and learning methods have not seen a significant change since the time of the Industrial Revolution. The essence of school education remains the same, which is expected to be a closed classroom, conventional furniture and the teacher determining the learning activities. With the changing times, as new studies on multiple styles of learning and brain functions emerge, there is a need to customize education and cater …

The Advent Of University-Level Packaging Scholarship: The Time, The Place And The People, Diana Twede, Laura Bix

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

In 1952, Michigan State College (MSC), now Michigan State University (MSU), was the first university in the world to offer a Bachelor of Science degree in Packaging. Other universities had previously offered related courses like canning (as part of a food science degree) or military packaging (in wartime), but MSU was the first to propose packaging as its own academic field of scholarship.

Other universities followed, sharing faculty and curriculum models developed at MSU. As a result, graduates’ careers in packaging now have a higher professional status, and universities play a key role in developing our international community of packaging …

Development Of Starch-Polyvinyl Alcohol (Pva) Biodegradable Film: Effect Of Cross-Linking Agent And Antimicrobials On Film Characteristics, Aniket Satish More, Chandani Sen, Madhusweta Das

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

To satisfy the need of developing eco-friendly flexible antimicrobial packaging film with minimum use of synthetic chemical ingredients, the present study examined the efficacy of citric acid (CA) as cross-linking agent and essential oils (EOs), viz., cinnamon essential oil (CEO) and oregano essential oil (OEO) as natural antimicrobials in corn starch-polyvinyl alcohol (CS-PVA) film. Compared to film prepared from filmogenic solution (FS) containing 75 kg CS+8.75 kg PVA+24.6 kg glycerol per m³ FS, film additionally containing CA at 0.07 kg/kg CS indicated 95% higher ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and 27% lower water vapor permeability (WVP). Film developed with incorporation …

A Hoard Of Unpaid Invoices: Dissecting Economies & Private Market Forces To Solve B2b Late Payments, Adam Walker

Theses

The average small-to-medium-size business in the United States keeps just enough of a cash buffer to last 27 days worth of normal operational costs, but in 2016 81% of all B2B invoices were delayed at least 30 days or more past the due date of payment.

Furthermore, in 2016, the average SMB held roughly $84,000 in unpaid accounts receivables, with that number also varying across industries. As an example, the average IT SMB held roughly $163k in unpaid accounts receivables, while the average transportation company held roughly $102k in the same. Yet we wonder why 50% of all SMBs close …

A Direct Tex-To-Braille Transcribing Method, Andreas Papasalouros, Antonis Tsolomitis

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The TeX/LaTeX typesetting system is the most wide-spread system for creating documents in Mathematics and Science. However, no reliable tool exists to this day for automatically transcribing documents from the above formats into Braille/Nemeth code. Thus, visually impaired students of related fields do not have access to the bulk of study material available in LaTeX format. We have developed a tool, named latex2nemeth, for directly transcribing LaTeX documents to Nemeth Braille, thus facilitating the access of blind students to Science. In order to support the extensive set of Mathematics symbols covered by TeX, we propose some new symbols based on …

Allrecovery – Mobile App For Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Education, Yao Jia Zhang

Theses

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a cancer of the bone marrow. Lymphoblasts are unable to mature due to errors in signaling leading to an accumulation of non-functioning lymphoblasts. ALL is one of the most common cancers found in children; with an estimated 6590 new cases in the United States in 2016 (seer.cancer.gov, 2016). When a family finds out that their child has been diagnosed with cancer, it could be a shocking and terrifying experience. Understanding and learning about the nature of the disease can be a helpful method to cope with the fear and anxiety. ALLRecovery is created to present …

Life Begins, Yuju Yen

Theses

My work reveals the world I see, the world I feel, and the world I imagine. The story I want to tell in my thesis is about every stunning moment when a life begins. While the sculptures and jewelry in my thesis body of work differ in scale, they are all singing the same theme: when a life starts to grow and when a flower blooms.

The forms of my thesis work are inspired from various natural lives, such as virus, fungi, jellyfish, bacteria, blooming flowers, and sea creatures. They are vividly waving, rotating, spinning their tentacles, antennas, and microfibers …

Industry And Academics, Dan Rucker

Theses

My thesis containts the story of the design management and programming of a major industry design manufacturer and a group of college students.

I was able to build a partnership with Herman Miller and RIT while I worked in R&D at the organization. The metaproject04 effort was what myself and my design team members at Herman Miller were involved in, allowing myself to model design management techniques and connecting two well-established entities in a way that felt like a natural fit for both. The stories of the process and challenges, including the end result work embodies my thesis submission.

Avant L’Appétit: An Augmented Reality Interactive Menu That Elevates The Gourmet Food Experience, Emili Koui

Theses

Restaurant businesses try to come up with ways to increase and maintain their clientele. In many restaurants, images of food often misrepresent the quality and quantity of the menu item. The results are a disappointment on the customer side, and a loss of clientele on the business side. Gourmet restaurants have the ability to provide consistency, which helps in maintaining their client numbers. However, new customers are hesitant in trying this experience due to reasons of portion size accuracy, ingredient identification, language barrier and dietary preferences.

This thesis investigated how the digitization of a traditional printed menu, can better enhance …

Statefulness And Tangible Interaction In Design Education, Alex Lobos, Tim J. Wood

Presentations and other scholarship

Interaction in Industrial Design is expanding from tangible realms to intangible digital experiences. In this new environment, Interaction Design provides logical sequences and behaviors that allow users to easily navigate through complex workflows. This paper discusses a framework in which interaction design provides an innovative approach to traditional industrial design. This includes the concept of ‘statefulness’, where the dynamic changes of complex systems are broken down into states that can be defined and manipulated in order to achieve a desired user experience. This framework goes beyond having physical components of a product control digital interfaces and develops experiences that jump …

Game Design & Development Curriculum: History & Future Directions, Elizabeth L. Lawley, Roger Altizer, Tracy Fullerton, Andrew Phelps, Constance Steinkuehler

Presentations and other scholarship

It has been nearly twenty years since the first undergraduate degree program in computer game development was established in 1998. Since that time, the number and size of programs in game design and development have grown at a rapid pace. While there were early efforts to establish curricular guidelines for the field, these face a number of challenges given the diverse range of academic homes for game-related programs. This panel will address the history of curricular development in the field, both in individual programs and across institutions. It will also explore the potential risks and rewards of developing curricular and/or …

Card Tricks: A Workflow For Scalability And Dynamic Content Creation Using Paper2d And Unreal Engine 4, Owen Gottlieb, Dakota Herold, Edward Amidon

Presentations and other scholarship

In this paper, we describe the design and technological methods of

our dynamic sprite system in Lost & Found, a table-top-to-mobile

card game designed to improve literacy regarding prosocial

aspects of religious legal systems, specifically, collaboration and

cooperation. Harnessing the capabilities of Unreal Engine’s

Paper2D system, we created a dynamic content creation pipeline

that empowered our game designers so that they could rapidly

iterate on the game’s systems and balance externally from the

engine. Utilizing the Unreal Blueprint component system we were

also able to modularize each actor during runtime as data may be

changed. The technological approach behind Lost …

The Omnichannel Marketplace: A Look At Modern Consumers, Rosa Arnone

Theses

Since the advent of the digital marketplace, marketing techniques to reach consumers have shifted. Traditional media and demographic analysis are no longer the only means for brands reaching consumers. Marketing has now taken an omnichannel approach. This study examined the relationship between the omnichannel consumer, the consumer benefits sought online versus in brick and mortar, and the modern marketer’s approach to omnichannel marketing. It outlines a psychographic and demographic profile of today’s omnichannel consumer, which will ultimately create a more detailed profile for businesses to market across integrated channels ultimately delivering a hybrid consumer experience (HCE). Findings in this study …

What Is The Relationship Between Conflict Management And Employee Empowerment? A Message Design Logic Perspective And Its Importance For Managers And Supervisors, Michelle Maura Fernandez

Theses

This study focused on how conflict management between employees affects employee empowerment. Conflict naturally occurs between individuals, and its management in organizations can result in positive or negative consequences. Employee empowerment influences greater job satisfaction and commitment to organizations. Based on the theory of message design logic, it was hypothesized that employees who employ rhetorical design while managing conflict will experience greater levels of empowerment. The sample consisted of 196 employees at an educational institution who completed a short, online survey. Results showed no relationship between levels of perception of empowerment and message design logic, thus not supporting the hypothesis.

Searching For Color In Black & White: Epistemic Closure, The Rit Archives, And The Colonial Roots Of White Invisibility, Andrew James

Theses

When examining an image, a viewer often focuses on what they see and less often on what they are able to see. Nowhere is this as true, and as problematic, as it is with the visual representation of persons of African descent. This study describes how problematic photographic representation was used as a powerful semiotic tool in the Victorian age conquest of the other, was exported to early Hollywood (creating a lucrative hate-based industry), and was then pushed back into the cultural recesses, settling finally into systemic forms of modern oppression, empowered by the invisibility of whiteness. Images from the …

A Content Analysis Of News Source Characteristics Within Broadcast News Stories Concerning The Financial Crisis Between September 8, 2008 – December 31, 2008, Jennifer L. Freer

Theses

A content analysis was conducted to identify potential differences in the characteristics of sources appearing in stories shown on the three national evening news broadcasts of ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News during the first four months of the 2008 Financial Crisis. The names, titles, affiliations, and societal sectors of each on-camera, named individual were identified and analyzed for their differences and frequencies of appearance. The study found the government sector was the most frequently appearing sector, and members of the House of Representatives appeared far more than any other government officials. Though the evening network …

Finding Practical Way To Minimize The Time And Space Needed At The Temporary Donation Places, Reema Aldossari

Theses

This study exploits and describes how to manage donations and send them to the affected people when natural disaster occurs. Throughout my experience in working with some organizations for collecting donations, I found out that there are many problems that harden the goods. Since affected people need the help and the goods immediately, it will take time to reach and be delivered to the people who need them. The process takes a long period of time due to the following reasons: first, the donor ships unsolicited donations and that will consequently waist time and money because no one need them. …

Using The Opposition Effect In Remotely Sensed Data To Assist In The Retrieval Of Bulk Density, Brittany L. Ambeau

Theses

Bulk density is an important geophysical property that impacts the mobility of military vehicles and personnel. Accurate retrieval of bulk density from remotely sensed data is, therefore, needed to estimate the mobility on "off-road" terrain. For a particulate surface, the functional form of the opposition effect can provide valuable information about composition and structure. In this research, we examine the relationship between bulk density and angular width of the opposition effect for a controlled set of laboratory experiments. Given a sample with a known bulk density, we collect reflectance measurements on a spherical grid for various illumination and view geometries …

Panorama, Ayuko Sakurai

Theses

The series of art forms “Panorama” was my visual representation of interpreting an individual’s world and invisible 360 degree space around him or her. By observing different scenes and people from above, I simplified them and their panoramic space into dots and spheres through my imaginary bird’s eye. The core idea of “Panorama” was a perception within or from this personal encompassing space.

With experiments and new techniques such as welding, the art forms turned out as a pentagon with five free-standing steel panels and four wearable pieces with aluminum structures. These wearable works were hung from the gallery ceiling …

Efficient Template-Based Nanomanufacturing Of Carbon Nanotube Arrays For Cell Applications, Adeel Ahmed

Theses

Carbon nanotube arrays have been found to be highly effective at carrying out intracellular delivery of cargo at high efficiencies while ensuring cell viability. Template based chemical vapor deposition is a commonly used process to fabricate these arrays. However, current etching methods used to expose carbon nanotubes from templates are expensive and time consuming. The high cost and time-consuming processes currently required to fabricate such arrays are factors which limit the commercialization of this technology and inhibit scope for larger research programs. In this thesis, alternative nanofabrication methods were explored with the aim of making the fabrication of CNT arrays …

Lilac: Lightweight Low-Latency Anonymous Chat, John P. Podolanko, Revanth Pobala, Hussain Mucklai, George Danezis, Matthew Wright

Presentations and other scholarship

Low latency anonymity systems, like Tor and I2P, support private online communications, but offer limited protection against powerful adversaries with widespread eavesdropping capabilities. It is known that general-purpose communications, such as web and file transfer, are difficult to protect in that setting. However, online instant messaging only requires a low bandwidth and we show it to be amenable to strong anonymity protections. In this paper, we describe the design and engineering of LiLAC, a Lightweight Low-latency Anonymous Chat service, that offers both strong anonymity and a lightweight client-side presence. LiLAC implements a set of anonymizing relays, and offers stronger anonymity …

The Effect Of Microstructure On Mechanical Properties Of Powder-Based Materials For 3-D Printing, Yuan Tian

Theses

The Thesis simulates the microstructure of powder-based materials for the Powder-bed Fusion 3D printing processes. The microstructure is created with the Random Ballistic Deposition methodology, which simulates the sedimentation of spherical particles under the influence of an external field. For the bulk of particles of the same size, the packing fraction depends on the inter-particle forces among them. In the Thesis, different contact areas between particles are created to simulate the sintering effects. The specimens of simulated microstructures of different contact areas are produced with a 3D stereolithographic printer. The printed specimens are then subjected to testing for their differences …

Beauty Or Love, Khorvash Khayati

Theses

Mia is a pretty girl who has attracted many men who present her with empty love only because of her beauty. The film starts with an interior of Mia’s room and then transforms into the past; her memories depict what is in an exterior, outside of her house. She’s dancing and surrounded by many guys. She meets a guy with a hat in the crowd and likes him because he doesn’t try to show off to get her attention. Men start fighting over her; during the fighting, they forget about her. She accidentally gets injured in the middle of the …

The Incarnation, Lingfei Zhao

Theses

In this thesis, I talk about the influence in my growth and the development of my artworks during these past two years in fine arts studio of Rochester Institute of Technology where I pursued my Master of Fine Arts degree. I analyze how I get ideas from my childhood memory and my childhood fantasy and how I begin to record my everyday dreams and put them in my artworks. Besides, I explain how I mix my dream artworks with an observation of reality at the end of my graduate study. Besides, I analyze my use of materials, my improvement of …

Three-Dimensional Image Processing Of Identifying Toner Particle Centroids, Di Bai

Theses

Powder-based 3D printed products are composed of fine particles. The structure formed by the particles in the powder is expected to affect the performance of the final products constructed from them (Finney, 1970; Dinsmore, 2001; Chang, 2015; Patil, 2015). A prior study done by Patil (2015) demonstrated a method for determining the centroids and radii of spherical particles and consequently reconstructed the structure formed by the particles. Patil’s method used a Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope to capture a stack of cross-sections of fluorescent toner particles and Matlab image analysis tools to determine the particle centroid positions and radii. Patil identified …

Developing Effective Museum Text: A Case Study From Caithness, Scotland, Heather Strachan

Theses

When walking into museums, visitors already have expectations about what they will encounter inside. Whether they are there to see a specific object or exhibit everyone expects to confront an artifact and learn about it. What visitors might not think about is how they receive the information pertaining to these objects which can come from a docent, a guide, a label, or an online source. The written word is so relied upon by museums that a visitor will encounter text from the moment they enter a museum, throughout the visit, and until they leave. This means that everywhere they look …

A Replicative Study Involving Commercial Art Galleries In Upstate New York, Yingtong Bu

Theses

This study is a replication study of “Building Sustainable Success in Art Galleries: An Exploratory Study of Adaptive Strategies” by Discenza, Smith and Baker in Colorado state, 2006. Like the original study, the current study investigates changes in the gallery performances, gallerists’ perceptions of external factors (driving forces), and gallerists’ intentions to apply adaptive strategies. The current study focuses on small commercial art galleries in the second-tier art market in upstate New York, while in the original study the focus was Colorado state.

An online survey is used to collect responses from gallerists (gallery owners or managers). Questions in the …

An Exploration Of Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uavs) Through Life Cycle Assessments, Briana Neuberger

Theses

The objective of this study is to analyze the potential for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to displace current technology and look at how they impact the environment through a delivery transportation model. It is meant to encompass an ecological perspective of producing and using UAVs as well as understand the environmental consequences that accompany it. This paper presents a new way of looking at the uses of UAVs and attempts to apply typical life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to this technology. This research is intended to be used as an initial environmental baseline of drone technology and as a comparative …