Digital Commons Network^™

An Analysis Of State Level Legislation Aimed At Reducing Pharmaceutical Prices: Are They Enough?, Braedon Williams

Theses

The rising cost of pharmaceuticals has been an issue of growing concern in many countries both developing and developed. In the United States, high pharmaceutical prices cause significant financial stress to patients and create barriers to access, causing treatable conditions to deteriorate. Many legislative attempts have been attempted on various levels to control prices, but in the United States it has been mostly left to states to address the issue. In this comparative case study, pharmaceutical utilization data and sentiment data are analyzed from three states to represent various approaches: South Dakota to represent states with little legislation, Rhode Island …

The Virtues Of Podcasting And Multimodal Literacies In The Creative Writing Classroom: Diversity, Voice, And The New Digital Environment, Saul B. Lemerond Phd, Leigh Camacho Rourks Phd

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

No abstract provided.

Setting The Scene For Community-Based Learning: Creative Writing As A Platform For Inquiry And Integrative Learning, Adam Watkins

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Creative writing pedagogy has received a surge of critical interest of late, though much remains to be said about its capacity to support trans-disciplinary learning outcomes, such as those related to community-based learning. Through an assessment of a place-based course focused on community-based learning, this article provides evidence that creative writing assignments can be an effective learning tool for cultivating community engagement and intercultural competencies. The educational value of creative writing, this study shows, has much to do with its unique mode of inquiry, which is well suited for integrating diverse perspectives, multi-modal research, and multiple ways of knowing.

Lightness, Brightness, And Transparency In Optical See-Through Augmented Reality, Lili Zhang

Theses

Augmented reality (AR), as a key component of the future metaverse, has leaped from the research labs to the consumer and enterprise markets. AR optical see-through (OST) devices utilize transparent optical combiners to provide visibility of the real environment as well as superimpose virtual content on top of it. OST displays distinct from existing media because of their optical additivity, meaning the light reaching the eyes is composed of both virtual content and real background. The composition results in the intended virtual colors being distorted and perceived transparent. When the luminance of the virtual content decreases, the perceived lightness and …

Multi-Scale Architectures For Human Pose Estimation, Bruno Artacho

Theses

In this dissertation we present multiple state-of-the-art deep learning methods for computer vision tasks using multi-scale approaches for two main tasks: pose estimation and semantic segmentation. For pose estimation, we introduce a complete framework expanding the fields-of-view of the network through a multi-scale approach, resulting in a significant increasing the effectiveness of conventional backbone architectures, for several pose estimation tasks without requiring a larger network or postprocessing. Our multi-scale pose estimation framework contributes to research on methods for single-person pose estimation in both 2D and 3D scenarios, pose estimation in videos, and the estimation of multiple people’s pose in a …

Advancing Ubiquitous Collaboration For Telehealth - A Framework To Evaluate Technology-Mediated Collaborative Workflow For Telehealth, Hypertension Exam Workflow Study, Christopher Bondy Ph.D., Linlin Chen Ph.D, Pamela Grover Md, Pengcheng Shi Ph.D

Articles

Healthcare systems are under siege globally regarding technology adoption; the recent pandemic has only magnified the issues. Providers and patients alike look to new enabling technologies to establish real-time connectivity and capability for a growing range of remote telehealth solutions. The migration to new technology is not as seamless as clinicians and patients would like since the new workflows pose new responsibilities and barriers to adoption across the telehealth ecosystem. Technology-mediated workflows (integrated software and personal medical devices) are increasingly important in patient-centered healthcare; software-intense systems will become integral in prescribed treatment plans [1]. My research explored the path to …

Technology Assisted Review Of Legal Documents, Malik Umar Hassan

Theses

A legal prediction-based approach will help judges and solicitors to take judicial decisions on current cases, which are going on in courts, and make predictions on new cases on the basis of existing references and judgments. This model also helps law students learn about legal references. This application was developed specifically for the “Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP)” and the “Pakistan Bar Council (PBC)” to expedite their judgments and provide legal guidance to lawyers based on historical data and constitutions.

Predicting Energy Consumption During Expo 2020, Rashed Waleed Albishre

Theses

The art of the Expo event is the bloom in the economy of the country where it is hosted along with the collaboration among the various areas of the country. Dubai availed the privilege of hosting Expo 2020. Dubai being a center of attention for tourist attraction and the growth in its economy, took pride in hosting the event while working on themes and ways to make the event stand out. Expo is known to bring visitors from around the world to one country for a duration of six months where the visitors are provided with an opportunity to enjoy …

Speech Feature Analysis And Discrimination In Biological Information, Shogo Honda

Theses

A silent speech interface is a system that allows people doing speech communication without using their own speech sounds. Today, a variety of speech interfaces have been developed using biological signals such as the eye movement, and the articulatory. These interfaces are mainly for supporting people who have speech disorder to communicate with others, yet there are many speech disorder that have not been addressed by the current technologies. The possible cause of the issue is the limited numbers of the biological signals used for the speech interface. The uncovered issues with speech disorders can be addressed through identifying new …

Loan Default Prediction System, Ali Abdullatif Ali Albastaki

Theses

Financial institutions have battled with handling and determining the creditworthiness of their clients in the recent past. The ever-increasing customer base makes it hard for financial institutions, especially banks to follow due process of determining if a customer qualifies for a loan or not depending on one's credit history manually. As a result, there have been delays in processing customer loans, making banks and other financial institutions inefficient. Automation of these tasks has come as a factor of necessity, to improve the speed, cost, and efficiency of processing loans. Thus, an AI web-based application that predicts the probability of borrowers’ …

Scalable Probabilistic Model Selection For Network Representation Learning In Biological Network Inference, K C Kishan

Theses

A biological system is a complex network of heterogeneous molecular entities and their interactions contributing to various biological characteristics of the system. Although the biological networks not only provide an elegant theoretical framework but also offer a mathematical foundation to analyze, understand, and learn from complex biological systems, the reconstruction of biological networks is an important and unsolved problem. Current biological networks are noisy, sparse and incomplete, limiting the ability to create a holistic view of the biological reconstructions and thus fail to provide a system-level understanding of the biological phenomena. Experimental identification of missing interactions is both time-consuming and …

Efficacy Of Flapping-Wing Flight Via Dual Piezoelectric Actuation, Quinn Andrew O'Rourke

Theses

A novel piezoelectric-actuated wing system featuring dual actuators for increased wing control is presented and evaluated for its forward-flight characteristics via theoretical modeling and physical wind tunnel testing. Flapping wing aerial systems serve as a middle ground between the traditional fixed-wing and rotary systems. Flapping wing aerial systems exhibit high maneuverability and stability at low speeds (like rotary systems) while maintaining increased efficiency (like fixed-wing systems). Flapping wings also eliminate the necessity of dangerous fast-moving propellers and open the door to actuation mechanisms other than traditional motors. This research explores one of these alternatives: the piezoelectric bending actuator. Piezoelectric materials …

Supply Chain Resilience By Strategic Sourcing: A Case Study, Abel Mathews

Theses

Purpose- To briefly explore the topic of improving supply chain resilience using strategic sourcing and its benefits to businesses when adopted. The project also develops a framework for the implementation of the principles of strategic sourcing for an HVAC manufacturer and supplier in the UAE, considering the pandemic and its impact on market requirements. Approach- Define the need for strategic sourcing to meet the current market condition in the UAE. Develop a strategic sourcing framework tailor-made to the company based on the requirement of the case study to offer an advantage in the current market. Develop methodologies to implement strategic …

Influence Of Pinholes On Water Vapor And Oxygen Permeation Of Packaging Foil And Films, Petri Johansson, Johanna Lahti, Jurkka Kuusipalo

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Controlling of moisture and oxygen permeation through the packaging material is essential in most packaging applications. With multilayer structures of different barrier materials, there is possibility to create desired barrier properties to the package. The challenge is to plan appropriate barrier level, e.g. WVTR and OTR, theoretically to the package before producing the package. Furthermore, in specific packages there is a need to control the permeation e.g. respiration in vegetable packages. Typically foils and polymer films have high barrier properties, therefore, permeation can be controlled by producing artificial pinholes in these kinds of packages.

Influence of artificial pinholes in aluminium …

Optimization Of Parameters For The Welding Ss 304 Using Gtaw And Taguchi Grey Relational Analysis (Tgra), Ahmed Majdi Hasan

Theses

Welding is one of the most popular methods of metal joining processes. The joining of the materials by welding provides a permanent joint of the components. The objective of this research is to determine the influence of various welding parameters on the weld bead of SS 304 welded joint. Welding technique of Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) was involved in this research work and the influence of the welding speed, current, electrode, root gap on the strength of the material was analysed. The result showed that speed is most influencing factor to have highest bend strength and current that is …

Organizational Excellence And Agility - Correlation Model, Karam Yousef Al-Assaf

Theses

The strive to sustain excellence within organizations has increased with the constant change in customer demands and toughening of competition. With these rapid changes occurring, the need for organizations to be agile has become a significant element in their operation schemes to sustain the excellence and be future-ready. This need raises the question of the relationship between organizational excellence and agility. Various models and frameworks have been developed to achieve excellence and agility in organizations. However, limited studies have correlated the two. This research investigates the relationship between excellence and agility within organizations and develops an assessment correlation index matrix …

Refactoring For Reuse: An Empirical Study, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Tianjia Wang, Vaibhavi Raut, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Christian D. Newman, Ali Ouni

Articles

Refactoring is the de-facto practice to optimize software health. While several studies propose refactoring strategies to optimize software design through applying design patterns and removing design defects, little is known about how developers actually refactor their code to improve its reuse. Therefore, we extract, from 1,828 open source projects, a set of refactorings that were intended to improve the software reusability. We analyze the impact of reusability refactorings on the state-of-the-art reusability metrics, and we compare the distribution of reusability refactoring types, with the distribution of the remaining mainstream refactorings. Overall, we found that the distribution of refactoring types, applied …

Towards Sustainable Cities: E-Waste Collecting Machine: A Conceptual Design, Marwah Al Ramsi, Alia Al Helali

Theses

Continuous development, keeping up with technology and increasing the production of multi-feature electronic devices are all factors that have increased the use of electronic devices all over the world. The accumulation of E-devices by individuals increases the amount of electronic waste that causes environmental pollution problems. Therefore, an innovative solution must be found that encourages people to give up old or damaged electronic items for recycling and benefit from their contents. An electronic waste collecting scheme that grants reward points to contributors and link the waste to recycling companies is suggested as an appropriate solution to attract people's attention. The …

Digital Accessibility In Iran: An Investigation Focusing On Iran's National Policies On Accessibility And Disability Support, Laleh Nourian, Kristen Shinohara, Garreth W. Tigwell

Articles

Digital accessibility has become an important topic in the field of HCI, but when looking at accessibility on a global scale, we find that the representation of accessibility research is mostly centered in the Global North with countries that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). Our paper explores digital accessibility in Iran, focusing exclusively on its national policies on accessibility. Iran is a non-WEIRD country located in the Global South, with no reports on its digital accessibility status from the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict). We found that there is not enough focus on …

Exploring Accessibility Features And Plug-Ins For Digital Prototyping Tools, Urvashi Kokate, Kristen Shinohara, Garreth W. Tigwell

Articles

Many digital systems are found to be inaccessible and a large part of the issue is that accessibility is not considered early enough in the design process. Digital prototyping tools are a powerful resource for designers to quickly explore both low and high fidelity design mockups during initial stages of product design and development. We evaluated 10 popular prototyping tools to understand their built-in and third-party accessibility features. We found that accessible design support is largely from third-party plug-ins rather than prototyping tools' built-in features, and the availability of accessibility support varies from tool to tool. There is potential to …

Accessible Design Is Mediated By Job Support Structures And Knowledge Gained Through Design Career Pathways, Sarah Andrew, Garreth W. Tigwell

Articles

Digital designers often do not make their work accessible (e.g., websites failing criteria set by the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and accessible design research discusses many solutions to address this problem (e.g., teaching accessibility within university design and technical courses). However, prior research in this area typically does not acknowledge whether recommendations and resources to support accessible design are suitable for all digital designers due to different training pathways and job support structures (e.g., large-company vs. rural and self-employed designers or designers who learned their skills outside of formal education settings). We interviewed 20 digital designers from rural and …

Satdbailiff- Mining And Tracking Self-Admitted Technical Debt, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Ben Christians, Mihal Busho, Ahmed Hamad Alkhalid, Christian D. Newman

Articles

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is a metaphorical concept to describe the self-documented addition of technical debt to a software project in the form of source code comments. SATD can linger in projects and degrade source-code quality, but it can also be more visible than unintentionally added or undocumented technical debt. Understanding the implications of adding SATD to a software project is important because developers can benefit from a better understanding of the quality trade-offs they are making. However, empirical studies, analyzing the survivability and removal of SATD comments, are challenged by potential code changes or SATD comment updates that may …

2022-2023 Undergraduate Bulletin, Rochester Institute Of Technology

RIT Digital Archives

No abstract provided.

Predicting Students' Mental Disorders Using Machine Learning, Maryam Sadiq

Theses

The mental health issues among students are prevailing due to predictions of low mood, anxiety, depression, and academic difficulties. Late diagnosis of these mental health issues takes prolonged measures to minimise its impact. Nowadays, machine learning is used to assess mental health by detecting signals that provide information about mental health through brain scans and questionnaires. Early detection of mental health issues in students possible to control them effectively. Colleges and universities are trying to improve student care by assessing their mental health and reducing mental health problems through psychological therapies. Machine learning techniques, including Multiclass Classifier, LAD Tree, and …

Intelligent Navigation Service Robot Working In A Flexible And Dynamic Environment, Said Abdallah

Theses

Numerous sensor fusion techniques have been reported in the literature for a number of robotics applications. These techniques involved the use of different sensors in different configurations. However, in the case of food driving, the possibility of the implementation has been overlooked. In restaurants and food delivery spots, enhancing the food transfer to the correct table is neatly required, without running into other robots or diners or toppling over. In this project, a particular algorithm module has been proposed and implemented to enhance the robot driving methodology and maximize robot functionality, accuracy, and the food transfer experience. The emphasis has …

The Role Of Experts In Policymaking: An Assessment Of Witness Educational Backgrounds In Congressional Testimony, Benedicte Adair

Theses

This thesis provides a first-of-its kind benchmark on the extent to which academically-trained professionals in the United States are availed of opportunities to directly deliver evidence to the United States Congress, as well as how contemporary party politics shapes this system. We randomly sample and manually code the educational backgrounds of 2,147 witnesses from 32 Congressional Committee Hearings that occurred between 2001 and 2020. This study reveals three key findings. The first is that academically-trained professionals have extensive access to the halls of Congress. Second, that all types of degrees have at least some representation amongst witness calls. The third …

Prediction Of Dubai Apartment Prices Using Machine Learning, Ali Alshamsi

Theses

The Real Estate Industry has been facing an unprecedented fluctuation in prices in the recent past. The most alarming of all is the drastic fall in the prices of Apartments in Arab regions from Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the past year. In comparison to the rest of the cities in the world, Knight Frank Global Residential Cities Index shows a drastic drop in the prices of apartments by about 6.6 percent in Dubai and 8.3 percent in the recent 12 months of business (Arabianbusiness.Com, 2021). In this regard, this study aims at developing a machine learning model able to …

Evaluating Technology-Mediated Collaborative Workflows For Telehealth, Christopher Bondy Ph.D., Pengcheng Shi, Pamela Grover Md, Vicki Hanson, Linlin Chen, Rui Li

Articles

Goals: This paper discusses the need for a predictable method to evaluate gains and gaps of collaborative technology-mediated workflows and introduces an evaluation framework to address this need. Methods: The Collaborative Space Analysis Framework (CS-AF), introduced in this research, is a cross-disciplinary evaluation method designed to evaluate technology-mediated collaborative workflows. The 5-step CS-AF approach includes: (1) current-state workflow definition, (2) current-state (baseline) workflow assessment, (3) technology-mediated workflow development and deployment, (4) technology-mediated workflow assessment, (5) analysis, and conclusions. For this research, a comprehensive, empirical study of hypertension exam workflow for telehealth was conducted using the CS-AF approach. Results: The CS-AF …

On The Documentation Of Refactoring Types, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Jiaqian Liu, Kenneth Addo, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Christian D. Newman, Ali Ouni, Zhe Yu

Articles

Commit messages are the atomic level of software documentation. They provide a natural language description of the code change and its purpose. Messages are critical for software maintenance and program comprehension. Unlike documenting feature updates and bug fixes, little is known about how developers document their refactoring activities. Specifically, developers can perform multiple refactoring operations, including moving methods, extracting classes, renaming attributes, for various reasons, such as improving software quality, managing technical debt, and removing defects. Yet, there is no systematic study that analyzes the extent to which the documentation of refactoring accurately describes the refactoring operations performed at the …

Increasing Awareness Of Inclusive Stem Education Through A College-Level Student Research Group, Sami Kahn, Tiffany Agyarko, Grace Lanouette, Sean Lee, Courteney Wiredu

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The underrepresentation of persons with disabilities in STEM reflects not only a moral failing in society’s commitment to equity but also a practical dilemma as science benefits from the contributions of people with diverse perspectives. While teacher education programs attempt to address equity at the K-12 level, societal biases and misconceptions about who is “able” in science present persistent barriers for people with disabilities throughout the STEM pipeline, in higher education, employment, and beyond. How can we ensure that students with disabilities will encounter professors, employers, coworkers, and peers who are supportive of their efforts in STEM? To address this …