Digital Commons Network^™

Trail Of A Swarm, Cory Fitzgerald

Theses

Within Trail of a Swarm the photograph is used as a portal through which a new visual world can be discovered and explored by the viewer. The images take the form of desolate, abstracted landscapes articulated by paths of light and dark, and ranging from the highly saturated color photographs, to the subdued and black and white photographs. Also portrayed, in similarly abstracted form, are the inhabitants of this world - the remainders of the masses: humans, animals, and insects - subjects we commonly perceive as ordinary, appear alien. Artifacts within these images are also treated with an alike peculiar …

Toward Establishing A Catalog Of Security Architecture Weaknesses, Joanna Cecilia Da Silva Santos

Theses

The architecture design of a software system plays a crucial role in addressing security requirements early in the development lifecycle through forming design solutions that prevent or mitigate attacks in a system. Consequently, flaws in the software architecture can impact various security concerns in the system, thereby introducing severe breaches that could be exploited by attackers. In this context, this thesis presents the new concept of Common Architectural Weakness Enumeration (CAWE), a catalog that identifies and categorizes common types of vulnerabilities rooted in the software architecture design and provides mitigation techniques to address each of them. Through this catalog, we …

Onemile: An Interactive Journey To Wellness For Those With Chronic Illness, Keli M. Dirisio

Theses

Using interaction design, video, and social media to create an application that will encourage people to maintain or improve their quality of life when dealing with a chronic illness.

There are many tools, both tangible and online, for people with debilitating illnesses. There are websites and apps that focus on symptom management, medication monitoring or general wellness. The majority of these resources are mainly used for rehabilitation. There is technology used to help people, both healthy and those with an illness, to improve their health–featuring exercise, eating healthy, tips and tricks. Most people with a chronic illness are looking for …

Blush: An Exploration Of Empathetic Cultivation Through Technological Devices, Jordan Reading

Theses

Technology has helped us keep in touch. Letters, telegrams, telephones, email, video chatting, social-networking — all ways in which we have communicated throughout the years. Each innovation has allowed us to lead independent lives from our loved ones and friends, while trying not to lose touch with each other. It’s freed us, but at the same time we’ve become chained it to. We’ve lost our ability to converse and empathize with each other directly — we’ve become more comfortable in front of a screen.

Unfortunately for us, digital devices in their current state are terrible forms of communication. It lacks …

Validating Color Doppler Ultrasound Performance Via A Quantitative Comparison With Particle Image Velocimetry, Allan Alexander Andranikian

Theses

Color Doppler Ultrasound (CDUS) is a method of non-invasive fluid velocity measurement that is used for regular cardiac screenings as well as during complex surgeries such as valve replacements. A Color Doppler image is a contour map of the velocity field and can thereby indicate the presence of abnormal flows or be used to quantitatively measure velocities. CDUS is inexpensive and completely non-invasive. It is for these same reasons that CDUS has the potential to be a powerful tool not only in the medical field, but in the industrial and engineering research fields as well. While there are many devices …

Reconstructed Memories, Emily Bellinger

Theses

In the following document, I discuss the body of artwork I completed for my Masters of Fine Arts degree at Rochester Institute of Technology. The thesis work as presented, explores visual metaphors that relate to memories and emotions associated with past relationships. This autobiographical memoir visually illustrates loneliness, heartache, and nostalgia. Through installations of abstract nontraditional quilting and printmaking, I have depicted visual representations derived from my own experiences and universal ideas about relationships.

A Scalable Flash-Based Hardware Architecture For The Hierarchical Temporal Memory Spatial Pooler, Lennard G. Streat

Theses

Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is a biomimetic machine learning algorithm focused upon modeling the structural and algorithmic properties of the neocortex. It is comprised of two components, realizing pattern recognition of spatial and temporal data, respectively. HTM research has gained momentum in recent years, leading to both hardware and software exploration of its algorithmic formulation. Previous work on HTM has centered on addressing performance concerns; however, the memory-bound operation of HTM presents significant challenges to scalability.

In this work, a scalable flash-based storage processor unit, Flash-HTM (FHTM), is presented along with a detailed analysis of its potential scalability. FHTM leverages …

Implicating E. Coli Pal In The Pathogenesis Of Gram-Negative Sepsis, Bethany R. Novick

Theses

Just under half of all sepsis cases are caused by Gram-negative bacterial infections. Sepsis occurs when an infection results in a systemic inflammatory response, which can lead to organ dysfunction and death. Studies have shown that some outer membrane proteins, lipoproteins, and lipopolysaccharides are released from Gram-negative bacteria during sepsis; those proteins and LPS toxins are thought to induce the over-exuberant host inflammatory response, which is characteristic of sepsis. The ability to detect those proteins and determine the role they play in the development and severity of sepsis infection would be a powerful tool for immunotherapy. Escherichia coli (E. coli) …

Down, Down, Baby, Ciara M. Duffy

Theses

The series Down, Down, Baby is a visual diary, a documentation of the transitory period of my youth: the moments of freedom, debauchery, and recklessness I experienced with my closest companions. These individuals exist in these moments as a symbol for an undeniable attitude within youth culture that is greater than themselves. Down, Down, Baby illustrates our early reactions to independence and the animals we wanted to be and were, as well as the desire to stay young and relative by creating spectacles of ourselves. This way of living defies the logic of refined sensibility, political correctness, and good taste …

Sampling And Counting Crossing-Free Matchings, Wenbo Sun

Theses

Sampling of combinatorial structures is an important statistical tool used in applications in a number of areas ranging from statistical physics, data mining, to biological sciences. Of comparable importance is the computation of the cor- responding partition function, which, in the case of the uniform distribution, is equivalent to the problem of counting all such structures. For self-reducible combinatorial structures, once we can produce an almost uniform sample from them, then we can approximately count them.

Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method, this thesis presents polynomial-time algorithms to approximately count and almost uniformly sample crossing-free matchings for certain input …

Video Qos/Qoe Over Ieee802.11n/Ac: A Contemporary Survey, Rebeen R. Hama Amin

Theses

The demand for video applications over wireless networks has tremendously increased, and IEEE 802.11 standards have provided higher support for video transmission. However, providing Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for video over WLAN is still a challenge due to the error sensitivity of compressed video and dynamic channels. This thesis presents a contemporary survey study on video QoS/QoE over WLAN issues and solutions. The objective of the study is to provide an overview of the issues by conducting a background study on the video codecs and their features and characteristics, followed by studying QoS and QoE …

Phenotypic Studies Of Pho13Δ In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Courtney Kellogg

Theses

PHO13 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) is a para-nitrophenyl phosphatase (pNppase) of the haloacid dehalogenase (HAD) superfamily. A biological substrate for PHO13 had remained undiscovered while a knockout phenotype has only been observed in strains engineered to grow on D-xylose. The purified enzyme has been identified in our lab to specifically hydrolyze 2-phosphoglycolate, classifying it as a phosphoglycolate phosphatase (PGPase). In photosynthetic organisms, 2-phosphoglycolate (2-PG) is generated by the oxygenation reaction of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (RuBisCO) in the Calvin Cycle. To be recycled back into general metabolism, photosynthetic PGPase converts 2-PG to glycolate. In non-photosynthetic yeast, 2-PG must be generated by …

Equipoise: An Animated Short Film About Positiveness And Negativity., Gung-Kai Koo

Theses

Equipoise is an animated short about positiveness, negativity and the opposite but complementary relationship between them. The two opposite attitudes of an individual’s personality not only affect but also establish emotions, decisions and behaviors. Positiveness reinforces positive thinking while pessimistic assumptions and hardship are driven by negativity. A person who has an imbalanced mind may live in pain or lead to high risks.

To have a great mental condition, both positiveness and negativity have to be involved to establish the balance. However, the importance of negativity, in one case, pessimism was frequently ignored as a result of education that focuses …

How The Academy Awards Influence Audience Perception Of A Film, Zoilo Pimentel

Theses

The Academy Awards are the most prestigious and influential award TV show in the film world; it is also the most watched among the big TV award shows. People´s motivations for watching a film have been the subject of multiple research studies; however, few have focused their attention on how award shows might influence the public’s decision to see a film. This study addresses this gap in the communication literature by implementing an experiment that addresses whether the Academy Awards nomination signal in movie advertisements influences audience perception of a film’s quality and subsequently modifies their likelihood of watching a …

Quantification Of Hemodynamic Pulse Wave Velocity Based On A Thick Wall Multi-Layer Model For Blood Vessels, Jeffrey S. Lillie, Alexander S. Liberson, David A. Borkholder

Articles

Pulse wave velocity (PWV) is an important index of arterial hemodynamics, which lays the foundation for continuous, noninvasive blood pressure automated monitoring. The goal of this paper is to examine the accuracy of PWV prediction based on a traditional homogeneous structural model for thin-walled arterial segments. In reality arteries are described as composite heterogeneous hyperelastic structures, where the thickness dimension cannot be considered small compared to the cross section size. In this paper we present a hemodynamic fluid - structure interaction model accounting for the variation of geometry and material properties in a radial direction. The model is suitable to …

Evaluation Of Homomorphic Primitives For Computations On Encrypted Data For Cps Systems, Peizhao Hu, Tamalika Mukherjee, Alagu Valliappan, Stanislaw Radziszowski

Presentations and other scholarship

In the increasingly connected world, cyber-physical systems (CPS) have been quickly adapted in many application domains, such as smart grids or healthcare. There will be more and more highly sensitive data important to the users being collected and processed in the cloud computing environments. Homomorphic Encryption (HE) offers a potential solution to safeguard privacy through cryptographic means while allowing the service providers to perform computations on the encrypted data. Throughout the process, only authorized users have access to the unencrypted data. In this paper, we provide an overview of three recent HE schemes, analyze the new optimization techniques, conduct performance …

Optimal Phase Masks For High Contrast Imaging Applications, Garreth J. Ruane

Theses

Phase-only optical elements can provide a number of important functions for high-contrast imaging. This thesis presents analytical and numerical optical design methods for accomplishing specific tasks, the most significant of which is the precise suppression of light from a distant point source. Instruments designed for this purpose are known as coronagraphs. Here, advanced coronagraph designs are presented that offer improved theoretical performance in comparison to the current state-of-the-art. Applications of these systems include the direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets and circumstellar disks with high sensitivity. Several new coronagraph designs are introduced and, in some cases, experimental support is provided. …

The Effect Of Environment-Friendly Attitude On Consumer Perception Of Usability Of Product Packaging, Majid Esmaeilpour, Azade Rajabi

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Today, consumers are more concerned about environmental changes and their purchasing behavior has changed in this regard. Concern for the environment in buying patterns of consumers who prefer products that support the environment with a growing trend are visible. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the impact of Environment-friendly attitude on consumer perception of reusability of product packaging. The present research is applied regarding the aim, and in terms method of data collection is a descriptive survey and correlation. Using Simple random sampling, a sample of 385 customers of big stores in Bushehr were selected and studied. …

Which Associate Degree Programs Should Ntid’S Department Of Engineering Studies Offer? A Decision-Analysis Dissertation, Dino J. Laury

Presentations and other scholarship

This decision-making analysis was completed to assist leaders in the Department of Engineering Studies of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in determining a program offering. The analysis utilized a mixed scanning framework and mixed methods to determine DES and NTID program offerings for the Associate of Occupational Studies (AOS) degree that trains students for employment as technicians. The impact of five alternatives on 10 objectives was predicted based on data from a faculty focus group, individual interviews, surveys, and literature analysis. The five alternatives were to maintain the status quo, add a new AOS program (i.e., Biomedical Equipment …

Music Uses And Gratifications Among Youth, Karen De La Rosa Herrera

Theses

This study identified the uses and gratifications of music genres and communication needs among young adults. An online survey of young adults in the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology was conducted. Seven communication factors were found to correlate with listening to 21 different music genres. A sense of identity was significantly related to alternative, indie, jazz, and new age music. Behavior was related to dance, easy listening, hip hop/rap, new age, pop, and world music. Interaction with others was related to easy listening and pop music. Knowledge was related to alternative, dance, easy listening, hip hop/rap, …

Web Of Life, Zhenwei Chu

Theses

The inspiration for my artwork comes from the emotional relationships that people have with family, friends and their social environment. In addition, the ecological food chain influences my art forms. After research, analysis and development, the triangle shape has become the main element in my thesis work. The triangle form helps me to ideate the infinite cycles, connections and links that create a complex web.

This thesis work includes jewelry, installation and sculpture. Different forms of this work emphasize distinct themes about the relationships. In terms of the techniques, along with utilizing traditional techniques such as soldering, painting and stitching, …

Challenges And Opportunities In Dfo-At: A Study Of E-Nable, Jeremiah L. Parry-Hill, Daniel L. Ashbrook

Articles

In this paper, we present the results of a study of the e‑NABLE community–a distributed, collaborative volunteer effort to design and fabricate upper-limb assistive technology devices for distant strangers. We position e‑NABLE as the prototypical example of “Do-it-yourself For Others Assistive Technology” (DFO‑AT) and describe three key findings: how the project does and does not meet the recipient's nuanced needs for functional and social support; how e‑NABLE volunteers' motivations compare to those of volunteers for other efforts, including open source software projects; and we explore the challenges inherent in the distance between volunteers and recipients. We also describe opportunities for …

Evaluation Of Homomorphic Primitives For Computations On Encrypted Data For Cps Systems, Peizhao Hu, Tamalika Mukherjee, Alagu Valliappan, Stanislaw Radziszowski

Presentations and other scholarship

In the increasingly connected world, cyber-physical systems (CPS) have been quickly adapted in many application domains, such as smart grids or healthcare. There will be more and more highly sensitive data important to the users being collected and processed in the cloud computing environments. Homomorphic Encryption (HE) offers a potential solution to safeguard privacy through cryptographic means while allowing the service providers to perform computations on the encrypted data. Throughout the process, only authorized users have access to the unencrypted data. In this paper, we provide an overview of three recent HE schemes, analyze the new optimization techniques, conduct performance …

Flow Boiling Heat Transfer Over Open Microchannels With Tapered Manifold, Ankit Kalani

Theses

Boiling can provide several orders of magnitude higher performance than a traditional air cooled system in electronics cooling application. It can dissipate large quantities of heat while maintaining a low surface temperature to fluid difference. Flow boiling with microchannels has shown a great potential with its high surface area to volume ratio and latent heat removal. However, flow instabilities and early critical heat flux (CHF) have prevented its successful implementation. A novel flow boiling design based on a mechanistic approach is taken to overcome the above mentioned disadvantages while presenting a very low pressure drop. The design uses open microchannels …

Writing Without Shelter, Adrienne Perry

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

No abstract provided.

Against Creative Writing Studies (And For Ish-Ness), Anna Leahy

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

No abstract provided.

Spirituality & Young Adults Work Performance, Kirstijan Hrdzic

Theses

Young adults are facing though time adapting to their workplace environment. This results with reduced work performance. In order to find intrinsic motivation for their work, practicing spirituality is one of the possible solutions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between spirituality and young adults’ work performance. A survey was administered online asking young working adults in the Zagreb area to complete a 37 items questionnaire. The first part of questionnaire contained items that tested perceived daily spirituality experience, while the second part of questionnaire contained items pertaining to task work performance, contextual work performance and …

Measuring Participant Characteristics That Relate To Sign Language Technology Acceptance, Hernisa Kacorri, Matt Huenerfauth, Sarah Ebling, Kasmira Patel, Mackenzie Willard, Kellie Menzies

Annual Effective Access Technology Conference

No abstract provided.

Creating An Online Community Of Practice: The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Virtual Academic Community, Lisa B. Elliot, Donna Easton, James Mccarthy, Rebecca Murray, Annette Tavernese

Annual Effective Access Technology Conference

No abstract provided.

Creating An Online Community Of Practice: The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Virtual Academic Community, Lisa B. Elliot, Donna Easton, James Mccarthy, Rebecca Murray, Annette Tavernese

Annual Effective Access Technology Conference

This presentation describes the activities of the Deaf STEM Community Alliance project using the social media platform Google+ private community. The private community provides socialization opportunities and shares accessible STEM media with community participants. A pilot study was conducted on a segment of the community’s activity. Posting frequency was analyzed for the highest impact day, posting times, and types of posts that received the most activity. Tuesdays were the most active, and the best times to post were during the afternoon hours. Posts having content related to community members received the most responses. These findings were compared to research on …