Digital Commons Network^™

Compact And High Optical Efficiency Near-Eye Displays With Liquid Crystal Flat Optics, Junyu Zou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Since the concepts of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) were introduced, they have attracted people's attention worldwide, both in the industry and research areas. As the most promising hardware architecture that can bring AR/VR into daily life, near eye displays (NEDs) have been studied and investigated heavily over the past half-century, especially the concept of "Metaverse" introduced by some top companies in recent years. However, the form factor and optical efficiency are two major bottlenecks for the current NEDs before they can become the major platform. Liquid crystal (LC) flat optics have several advantages, including compact, high diffraction …

Getting The Story, Ann Mccutchan

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

Obojobo Information Literacy Modules 2023 Archive, Chereeka Garner

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Obojobo is a learning platform that was created and maintained at the University of Central Florida. It was maintained by an individual employed by the university and maintenance of the platform did not continue after their departure from the university. As time progressed and federal accessibility standards were updated, the platform moved out of compliance. As a result, the content was removed from Obojobo, updated to meet existing accessibility guidelines, and rehomed in Webcourses. This is an archive of the original content.

Excess Body Weight And It’S Association To Diabetes Mortality Among Florida Adults, Shivanie M. Sharma

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Fall 2023

“Excess Body Weight and Its Association to Diabetes Mortality” is a topic that has been highly studied and researched. However, there has yet been a study that looks at excess body weight and its association to Diabetes Mortality among Florida Adults. Specifically, by utilizing data from the Florida Health Charts. This includes the analyzation by Person (Florida Blacks versus Whites), Place (Florida counties), and Time (rate of diabetes mortality though the years in Florida). This study further provides information on the idea of the “obesity paradox.” But, it also sheds light on the implications and limitations based on previous epidemiological …

Shepherd's Hope, Rory J. Fall

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Fall 2023

I did my service learning project at a nonprofit called Shepherd’s Hope. Shepherd’s Hope works to provide free healthcare to uninsured individuals. During my time there I fulfilled the roles of the front desk. This involved me checking in and checking out patients into the online patient manager. I also helped discharge patients, giving them their paper prescriptions and notes from the doctor. While there I learned about the impact of having no insurance can have on a family, or an individual, and how stressful that can be. I also witnessed the wide range of patients that came into the …

Decolonized Femininity And Post-Colonial Trauma Autobiographies: Reading Adriana Páramo, Julia Alvarez, And Azar Nafisi Through 'Scriptotherapy', Nicole Suárez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis investigates testimonies of three female authors from Latin America and the Middle East through scriptotherapy narratives which "give voice to previously repressed memories," defined by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Through the genre of autobiography, women have an opportunity to showcase acts of resistance towards the inner turmoil of colonial trauma that has been brought upon their existence. Decoloniality re-integrates the roots of colonial power into re-invigorated narratives that will become lineage. The only way that they can create their own identity is through "legending," Gilles Deleuze's conceptualized theoretical framework, which does not offer an escape from colonialism …

Body-Image Distress In Breast Cancer Survivors And Their Evaluation Of Medical Tattooing Following Surgery, Miranda Proctor

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

A review of the literature reveals a high incidence of body-image distress among breast cancer survivors who have undergone surgery, which is a natural response to the significant changes in their appearance. Reconstructive surgery, utilizing implants or flaps, may be employed to restore breast size and shape. Medical tattooing can simulate the nipple-areola complex and decorative appliques can conceal scars and skin color variations. Both reconstructive surgery and medical tattoos are associated with patient-reported satisfaction, yet further research is necessary to understand their combined impact on body-image distress. To investigate this, a survey was distributed among national breast cancer support …

Locating The Attentional Template Using Theta-Gamma Coupling, Michael Miuccio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A significant amount of research has investigated the underlying neural mechanisms that enable the direction of attention throughout a search array. The biased competition model (Desimone & Duncan, 1995) proposes that an attentional template (the neural instantiation of the search target) is created when the target representation in visual working memory (VWM) is communicated to frontal regions which then bias early visual areas to attend to target features. Despite this, much of the current work focuses solely on the target representation in VWM, which is only one small part of the attentional template according to biased competition. Thus, I used …

Deep Learning Approaches For Automatic Colorization, Super-Resolution, And Representation Of Volumetric Data, Sudarshan Devkota

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

This dissertation includes a collection of studies that aim to improve the way we represent and visualize volume data. The advancement of medical imaging has revolutionized healthcare, providing crucial anatomical insights for accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. Our first study introduces an innovative technique to enhance the utility of medical images, transitioning from monochromatic scans to vivid 3D representations. It presents a framework for reference-based automatic color transfer, establishing deep semantic correspondences between a colored reference image and grayscale medical scans. This methodology extends to volumetric rendering, eliminating the need for manual intervention in parameter tuning. Next, it delves into …

Reflections On White-Passing Black Identity, Edi Mucka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Now, there are more options than ever for racial identity. Identities such as Black, White, Native, Asian, and Latino have put into contention how past racial boundaries and definitions interact with newer racial color lines. Racial passing is one concept that captures both older and newer forms of identity maintenance. Racial passing refers to when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived as a member of another. In this thesis, I review the literature on racial passing to understand its history and theoretical explanations. Based on the review, I examine a convenience sample …

Diamond's Hidden Gems - Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery Services, Ucf Libraries, Diamond Williams

Libraries' Documents

Hello, everyone! My name is Diamond Williams; I am a second- year double- majoring in Criminal Justice and Writing & Rhetoric. Welcome to the first installment of Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not have known about!

Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery Services (ILL/DDS)

If you’ve attended the University of Central Florida (UCF) for long, chances are you’ve heard someone mention “ILL” or “loan services” in passing. From professors to library staff themselves, the ILL department is incredibly popular, but remains an under-utilized resource …

Effects Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Online Instructional Approaches On English-Learning Undergraduate College Students: An Exploratory Study, Ivana Markova, Cristina Azocar

Journal of English Learner Education

Although the significance of the use of online classes remains evident due to their growing prevalence at US universities, they still remain an untested experience for countless English learners (ELs). This research explores EL students’ perceptions of the opportunities for interaction in synchronous and asynchronous online university classroom modalities. It also examines how socioacademic relations and Bandura’s social learning theory can explain the interactions between students and instructors that influence EL students’ literacy development. Participants (n=105) were selected from a large sample pool of 261 EL undergraduate student participants aged 18 to 35. A mixed methods design was …

Technology In The Classroom: The Features Language Teachers Should Consider, Sophie Cuocci, Padideh Fattahi Marnani

Journal of English Learner Education

The fast development of technology and the new generation of highly computer literate students led to consider the integration of technology in school as essential. Throughout the last two decades, research has identified multiple factors leading to the successful and unsuccessful integration of technology in the classroom. Educators must consider these factors when deciding on which technology tools to use and how to integrate them to their lessons. Simultaneously, the increasing number of English learners in the United States calls for the identification of teaching strategies that will best support their needs. Many language teachers now rely on teaching techniques …

Making Thinking Visible: Reading Metacognitive Strategies In Intensive English Programs, Adil Bentahar

Journal of English Learner Education

The use of metacognitive strategies has been linked to increased motivation for reading as well as reading fluency and accuracy. In this study, I evaluated whether teaching three metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) would (a) improve intensive English program international students’ metacognitive knowledge, which in turn would (b) improve their comprehension. Eight college English learners (ELs) completed the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari et al., 2018) and a reading test at the beginning of a reading-writing course and again at the end of the course. The results revealed an increase from pretest to posttest in all …

Foreign Language Anxiety: A Review On Theories, Causes, Consequences And Implications For Educators, Padideh Fattahi Marnani, Sophie Cuocci

Journal of English Learner Education

Anxiety has been considered one of the main obstacles in second language learning in instruction-based contexts. During the last few decades, many scholars have tried to shed light on different aspects of this phenomenon. This literature review clarifies previous scholarly works and covers some of the most significant empirical studies conducted in this field. The purpose of this literature review is to review various aspects of foreign language anxiety, its corresponding theoretical frameworks and models, causes, consequences, gender differences, class modalities (face-to-face and online) and lastly, implications for educators. Foreign language anxiety is a significant barrier that hinders the learning …

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume 5. Gender And Human-Machine Communication

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 5

Gender Ambiguity In Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception And Influences Of Context, Sandra Mooshammer, Katrin Etzrodt

Human-Machine Communication

Recently emerging synthetic acoustically gender-ambiguous voices could contribute to dissolving the still prevailing genderism. Yet, are we indeed perceiving these voices as “unassignable”? Or are we trying to assimilate them into existing genders? To investigate the perceived ambiguity, we conducted an explorative 3 (male, female, ambiguous voice) × 3 (male, female, ambiguous topic) experiment. We found that, although participants perceived the gender-ambiguous voice as ambiguous, they used a profoundly wide range of the scale, indicating tendencies toward a gender. We uncovered a mild dissolve of gender roles. Neither the listener’s gender nor the personal gender stereotypes impacted the perception. However, …

Gender And Human-Machine Communication: Where Are We?, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards

Human-Machine Communication

In this introduction to the fifth volume of the journal Human-Machine Communication, we present and discuss the five articles focusing on gender and human-machine communication. In this essay, we will analyze the theme of gender, including how this notion has historically and politically been set up, and for what reasons. We will start by considering gender in in-person communication, then we will progress to consider what happens to gender when it is mediated by the most important ICTs that preceded HMC: the telephone, mobile phone, and computer-mediated communication (CMC). We outline the historical framework necessary to analyze the last section …

Florida Frontiers Radio Program #492, Dr. Ben Brotemarkle, Florida Historical Society

Florida Frontiers Radio Transcripts

SEGMENTS | One-man "A Christmas Carol" | Florida Phosphate and the Soviet Union | Surfing Santas

Peat And Patty: Providing A Voice For Nature Through Animation, Clinnie Brinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Peat and Patty is a 3D animated short story of a young scientist, Patty, and her pet parrot Peat, whose goal is to save their world from a dying ecosystem. Ultimately, they inadvertently receive help from a nearby polar bear which leads to the success of Patty's experiment. The purpose of this story is to highlight the dangers of global warming to our own ecosystem thus building eco-consciousness in viewers. We currently have natural disasters increasing in frequency, a rising global temperature, and pollution in our bodies of water (Rossati). By personifying nature, animation can invoke empathy from viewers towards …

Torward Real-World Cross-View Image Geo-Localization, Sijie Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Cross-view image geo-localization aims to determine the locations of street-view query images by searching in a GPS-tagged reference image database from aerial view. One fundamental challenge is the dramatic view-point/domain difference between the street-view query images and aerial-view reference images. Recent works have made great progress on bridging the domain gap with advanced deep learning techniques and geometric prior knowledge, i.e. the query is aligned at the center of one aerial-view reference image (spatial alignment) and the orientation relationship between the two views is known (orientation alignment). However, such prior knowledge of the geometry correspondence of the two views is …

High Performance And Low Cost Passivating, Carrier-Selective Contacts For Silicon Photovoltaics, Jannatul Ferdous Mousumi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The world is now focusing on expanding renewable energy sources to reduce the carbon footprint and mitigate climate change. Solar energy is one of the most environment-friendly and fastest-growing renewable energy sources in the present world. While crystalline silicon (c-Si) based devices dominate the global photovoltaics (PV) market with a current share of 95%, it is still challenging to achieve the theoretical efficiency limit of 29.4% with this technology due to a few performance limiting factors. Contact recombination losses are dominant among them which result from the recombination of photo-generated charge carriers due to the presence of defects at the …

The Facile Preparation Of Bis(Imino)Pyridine Complexes Via Mechanochemistry And Inorganic Synthons Via Benign Reductants, Thomas Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis is comprised of two key themes: (i) leveraging mechanochemical synthetic methods for the green preparation of bis(imino)pyridine ligands and associated first row transition metal coordination complexes, and (ii) the preparation and characterization of both historic and novel mid-valent inorganic synthons via the use of dimethylphenylsilane as a stoichiometric reducing agent. The first portion of this thesis highlights the utilization of solvent-free vibratory ball-milling in lieu of traditional, solvent-based refluxes. A variety of both bis(imino)pyridine ligands and complexes were formed in drastically reduced timeframes with solvent-economical work-up procedures. This methodology was also leveraged for the isolation of acetyl(imino)pyridine ligands …

Multi-Plane Light Conversion: Devices And Applications, Yuanhang Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Multi-plane light conversion (MPLC) has recently been developed as a versatile tool for manipulating spatial distributions of the optical field through repeated phase modulations. An MPLC Device consists of a series of phase masks separated by free-space propagation. It can convert one orthogonal set of beams into another orthogonal set through unitary transformation, which is useful for a number of applications. In telecommunication, for example, mode-division multiplexing (MDM) is a promising technology that will enable continued scaling of capacity by employing spatial modes of a single fiber. MPLC has shown great potential in MDM devices with ultra-wide bandwidth, low insertion …

Advanced Deep Learning Methodologies For Deepfake Detection, Aminollah Khormali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The recent advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and an abundance of training samples along with robust computational resources have significantly propelled the field of AI-generated fake information in all kinds, e.g., deepfakes. Deepfakes are among the most sinister types of misinformation, posing large-scale and severe security and privacy risks targeting critical governmental institutions and ordinary people across the world. The fact that deepfakes are AI-generated digital content and not actual events captured by a camera implies that they still can be detected using advanced AI models. Although the deepfake detection task has …

Episode 23: Taylor Matthew Ashley, Christina Torres

Futures in Languages Transcripts

No abstract provided.

Staff Council Financial Statement December 2022, Staff Council

Staff Advisory Council Treasurer Reports

No abstract provided.

Episode 35: Christopher Clifford ’22: Find A Cure For Type 1 Diabetes, University Of Central Florida

Knights Do That Podcast Transcripts

Season three of Knights Do That, UCF’s official podcast, returns with its eighth guest, Christopher Clifford ’22, a UCF electrical engineering alum who is pursuing a Ph.D. in bioengineering at Harvard-MIT. Clifford’s research is centered around find a cure for and reducing the impact of Type 1 diabetes — a cause that’s personal to him. Before attending Harvard-MIT, he received the prestigious honor of being selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. However, Clifford turned it down to pursue another competitive path.

Here he shares his personal and professional insights into diabetes, finding your own version of success, and his hopes …

S9 E4: Post Pandemic Concerns, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

Studies have shown the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the educational setting. This impact includes learning loss but also how we interact with one another. In today's episode, Drs. Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines talk about post-pandemic learning concerns. Please tune in to hear some of their tips on increasing students' executive function skills and the importance of including more movement in the classroom.

Don't forget we love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Google Phone (407) 900- 9305, Facebook …

S9 E2: Co-Teaching Part 1, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

In today’s episode, Dr. Rebecca Hines interviews Dr. Lisa Dieker about Co-Teaching. Co-teaching is a collaborative approach to instruction in which two teachers, typically a general education teacher and a special education teacher, work together to plan and implement instruction for a class that includes students with disabilities. Tune in to this episode to hear their tips on co-teaching for teachers, and administrators, and how to get buy-in from all stakeholders.

Don't forget we love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Google …