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Community-Based Coastal Restoration: Long Term Impacts On Habitats And People In Volusia County, Rachel Wimmer Jan 2019

Community-Based Coastal Restoration: Long Term Impacts On Habitats And People In Volusia County, Rachel Wimmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coastal habitats provide invaluable economic and ecosystem services. However, coastlines are eroding at increasing rates due to anthropogenic and climate driven changes. Grey and green infrastructure solutions have been proposed to retard the decay of coastlines, with oysters serving as a popular living shoreline. Three community-based stabilizations that implemented living shorelines and engaged local communities in restoration efforts over the past decade in Volusia County were revisited to determine if they were successful and if they produced positive public perceptions of success. Chicken Island, which was restored after waves, boat wakes, tides, and adverse weather altered the natural shoreline, had …

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Numerical Investigation And Optimization Of Pin Fins In Micro Heat Sinks, Fuad Ismayilov Jan 2019

Numerical Investigation And Optimization Of Pin Fins In Micro Heat Sinks, Fuad Ismayilov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Operating temperature in electronics applications is continuously increasing. Therefore, for the past few decades, high heat flux removing micro heat sinks are investigated in terms of heat transfer effectiveness. This study generally concentrates on improving the passive heat transfer techniques. Micro heat sinks used in experiments are fabricated using MEMS techniques. Resistance temperature detectors, RTDs, were used for temperature measurements. The experimental data was obtained for single and two phase flow regions; however, only single phase flow results were considered in numerical simulations. Numerical validations were performed on the micro heat sinks, including cylinder and hydrofoil shaped pin fins. Following …

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Mode Coupling In Space-Division Multiplexed Systems, Huiyuan Liu Jan 2019

Mode Coupling In Space-Division Multiplexed Systems, Huiyuan Liu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Even though fiber-optic communication systems have been engineered to nearly approach the Shannon capacity limit, they still cannot meet the exponentially-growing bandwidth demand of the Internet. Space-division multiplexing (SDM) has attracted considerable attention in recent years due to its potential to address this capacity crunch. In SDM, the transmission channels support more than one spatial mode, each of which can provide the same capacity as a single-mode fiber. To make SDM practical, crosstalk among modes must be effectively managed. This dissertation presents three techniques for crosstalk management for SDM. In some cases such as intra-datacenter interconnects, even though mode crosstalk …

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Fluid Flow Characteristics Of A Co-Flow Fluidic Slot Jet Thrust Augmentation Propulsion System, Brian Garrett Jan 2019

Fluid Flow Characteristics Of A Co-Flow Fluidic Slot Jet Thrust Augmentation Propulsion System, Brian Garrett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The UAV industry is booming with investments in research and development on improving UAV systems in order to increase applications and reduce costs of the use of these machines. Current UAV machines are developed according to the quadcopter design which has a rotary propulsion system which provides the lift needed for the aerial vehicles. This design has some flaws; namely safety concerns and noise/vibration production both of which come from the rotary propulsion system. As such, a novel propulsion system using slip stream air passed through high performance slot jets is proposed and analysis of the fluid characteristics is presented …

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Central Florida School Districts' Responses To Hispanic Growth, 1980-2010, Kendra Hazen Jan 2019

Central Florida School Districts' Responses To Hispanic Growth, 1980-2010, Kendra Hazen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, Hispanics have been the fastest growing minority in the United States and have been moving into rural, Southern areas where there have previously not been populations of Hispanics. Studies of these demographic changes have concentrated on how communities impacted by the influx of Hispanics have created or adjusted socioeconomic and political infrastructures to accommodate the linguistic and cultural needs of the Hispanic population. The public-school system is a sociopolitical structure that has affected and has been affected by the increase in Hispanics. Whereas the modern Civil Rights movement had created legal precedence for students' language rights and …

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Selecting Methods To Teach Controversial Topics: A Grounded Theory Study, Sean Loomis Jan 2019

Selecting Methods To Teach Controversial Topics: A Grounded Theory Study, Sean Loomis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This grounded theory study examined the perceptions of 14 high school social studies teachers from three school districts in the Central Florida area. They were interviewed to uncover the decision-making process that high school social studies teachers use to choose methodologies when teaching controversial public issues (CPIs). The result was a three-phase model, the CPI Decision-Making Model, in which teachers move through three conceptual phases to decide on a particular methodology. By working through this process, teachers analyze the benefits and drawbacks of different methods for teaching controversial public issues. Significant results from this study included: (a) teachers were choosing …

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Health Risk Tolerance As A Key Determinant Of (Un)Willingness To Behavior Change: Conceptualization And Scale Development, Hyoyeun Jun, Yan Jin Jan 2019

Health Risk Tolerance As A Key Determinant Of (Un)Willingness To Behavior Change: Conceptualization And Scale Development, Hyoyeun Jun, Yan Jin

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

After the study of testing determinants of risk tolerance affecting information sharing, this study was conducted as a second step to actually develop the scale for risk tolerance. Firstly, this study followed qualitative steps, such as in-depth interview and focus group, to capture how public describes the situation when they are tolerating the risk, when they knew what the recommended behavior is to relieve the risk. Secondly, this study collected 1000 U.S. public sample for the survey questionnaire that are the items generated from the qualitative steps.

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Reinforcement Learning For Optimal Control Of Network Epidemic Processes, Alec H. Kerrigan Jan 2019

Reinforcement Learning For Optimal Control Of Network Epidemic Processes, Alec H. Kerrigan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Our society is increasingly interconnected, making it easy for cascades/epidemic (diseases, disinformation etc). Current epidemic control efforts are based on approximate network epidemic models, which often ignore the unique complexity and rich information embedded in the complex interconnections of real-world networks/populations.Deep reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful tool at learning policies for these nonlinear, complex processes in high-dimension. To control an epidemic outbreak on a Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible network epidemic model, we design a RL framework with a custom reward structure using the node2vec embedding technique. Results indicate deep RL is able to determine and converge on an optimal intervention policy in …

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Evaluating Lactobacillus Acidophilus As A Model Organism For Co-Culture Cancer Studies, Samuel A. Mikhail Jan 2019

Evaluating Lactobacillus Acidophilus As A Model Organism For Co-Culture Cancer Studies, Samuel A. Mikhail

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The causality dilemma between dysbiosis and cancer has given rise to numerous studies both exploring the mechanisms behind cancer progression and the associative shifts in the microbiota upon carcinogenesis. Aside from the hallmark study of Dr. Barry Marshall in establishing the true causal relationship between Helicobacter pylori and gastric adenocarcinoma, studies have only been successful in adding associative links of carcinogenesis mediated by bacteria to the literature. The current field is limited in its ability to establish causative relationships, and further work is needed to construct a reference community whose physiological responses reflect global community responses. In this thesis, the …

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Mechanochemically Synthesized Cobalt Oxide-Based Particles For The Reduction Of Nitrophenols And Impacting Factors To Its Mechanism, Lorianne R. Shultz Jan 2019

Mechanochemically Synthesized Cobalt Oxide-Based Particles For The Reduction Of Nitrophenols And Impacting Factors To Its Mechanism, Lorianne R. Shultz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Mechanochemically synthesized cobalt oxide-based particles are employed for the catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4NP), a toxic water contaminant. This reduction produces 4‑aminophenol (4AP), a less toxic, pharmaceutical precursor for drugs such as paracetamol. The indicated reduction has been completed previously using noble metals and/or catalysts requiring extensive solvent use, and time as part of their preparation. The cost and synthesis of these noble metal catalysts hinders the sustainable broad scale application as an environmental remediation solution. The catalyst synthesis explored in this study utilizes the green chemistry technique of vibratory ball-milling and annealing cobalt oxide-based particles at different temperatures, producing …

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Perceived Factors That Contributed To The Success Of College Students With Dyslexia, Jessica Doyle Jan 2019

Perceived Factors That Contributed To The Success Of College Students With Dyslexia, Jessica Doyle

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this pilot project was to determine the factors or supports that college graduates perceived as helping them to thrive and attempt higher education, despite having a learning disability, specifically dyslexia. Based on the literature review, this pilot study examined the four main kinds of support that most students receive while growing up; including family support, peer support, teacher support, and support from other programs and resources. The specific research question explored: What encouraged or discouraged these now adults in their pivotal growing years in regards to dyslexia? This pilot study used a mixed-methods research design which included …

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Development Of Nonlocal Green-Kubo Formalism With Applications To Coupled Heat And Mass Transport, Kevin Fernando Jan 2019

Development Of Nonlocal Green-Kubo Formalism With Applications To Coupled Heat And Mass Transport, Kevin Fernando

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Nonlocal equations for coupled heat and mass transport are developed within the Green-Kubo formalism. Nonlocal thermal transport in Lennard-Jones solids is computed to establish the existence of semi-ballistic transport. Deviations from the diffusive theory are shown by comparing the Fourier transform of the response function from the nonlocal theory to that of the diffusive one. It is shown that the deviations from the local theory correspond to acoustic phonons, whose frequency dependence gives rise to the observed deviations from the local theory.

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A Comparison Of Sixth-Grade English Language Arts And Mathematics Achievement Between Middle Schools And K-8 Schools, Brennan Asplen Jan 2019

A Comparison Of Sixth-Grade English Language Arts And Mathematics Achievement Between Middle Schools And K-8 Schools, Brennan Asplen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the academic achievement of sixth grade students enrolled in a traditional middle school model versus those enrolled in a K-8 school model by analyzing English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics scores. Developmental Scale Score (DSS) data from the 2017 Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) were collected from three K-8 schools and three middle schools in one high-performing Florida school district. Results from an independent samples t-test revealed that middle school student scores were slightly higher in overall ELA and mathematics proficiency, but the differences were not substantive. Cross-tabulation was utilized to compute the …

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Hadwiger Numbers And Gallai-Ramsey Numbers Of Special Graphs, Christian Bosse Jan 2019

Hadwiger Numbers And Gallai-Ramsey Numbers Of Special Graphs, Christian Bosse

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores two separate topics on graphs. We first study a far-reaching generalization of the Four Color Theorem. Given a graph G, we use chi(G) to denote the chromatic number; alpha(G) the independence number; and h(G) the Hadwiger number, which is the largest integer t such that the complete graph K_t can be obtained from a subgraph of G by contracting edges. Hadwiger's conjecture from 1943 states that for every graph G, h(G) is greater than or equal to chi(G). This is perhaps the most famous conjecture in Graph Theory and remains open even for graphs G with alpha(G) …

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Bridging The Gap Between Hospital And School: Addressing The Academic And Social-Emotional Needs Of Students With Chronic Illness, Nicole Eggert Jan 2019

Bridging The Gap Between Hospital And School: Addressing The Academic And Social-Emotional Needs Of Students With Chronic Illness, Nicole Eggert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation in practice examined the literature and a sample of existing programs that addressed the educational and social-emotional challenges of students with chronic illness in order to bridge the gap between hospital discharge and school re-entry. Literature showed that the hospital homebound setting was problematic for chronically ill students due to minimal hours of academic instruction and little interaction with peers. Students with chronic illness were at higher risk for maladaptive behaviors, lower educational attainment, and higher use of social services. Programs created at other facilities to address this problem were visited and reviewed for pertinent information such as …

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Teacher Candidates' Civic Attitudes And Civic Knowledge: A Comparative Study, Brian Furgione Jan 2019

Teacher Candidates' Civic Attitudes And Civic Knowledge: A Comparative Study, Brian Furgione

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The foundations of a democratic society are the citizens who engage in its political processes and functions. The democratic skills and dispositions needed to be engaged citizens must be embedded within the school system of that society. In the United States, teachers serve as the delivery system of these skills and dispositions, and it is therefore imperative to understand who these teachers are as citizens. Leveraging survey research and various quantitative measures, the civic attitudes and civic knowledge of teacher candidates in various fields were investigated. Using self-reported demographic information, teacher candidates were compared based on their academic program track, …

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An Examination Of A College And Career Preparation Program For Low Socioeconomic And First-Generation Students In An Urban School District, Lucille Gillam Jan 2019

An Examination Of A College And Career Preparation Program For Low Socioeconomic And First-Generation Students In An Urban School District, Lucille Gillam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if the college and career program, in one urban high school setting, was being implemented as intended by the school district. A mixed methods analysis was conducted using student PSAT/SAT scores, interviews, surveys, focus groups, classroom observations and anecdotal notes from the program director. The results were coded to show emerging trends and themes. The results of the analysis showed that portions of the program were being conducted as designed by the school district; however, of the four criteria required to be invited to bet admitted into the program, one was not …

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Using Argument As A Bridge Between Literacy And Science: An Intervention Study In A Science Methods Course For Elementary Preservice Teachers, Rebeca Grysko Jan 2019

Using Argument As A Bridge Between Literacy And Science: An Intervention Study In A Science Methods Course For Elementary Preservice Teachers, Rebeca Grysko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of an intervention on teaching science as argument within a science methods course on elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs') (a) understandings of the nature of science (NOS), (b) knowledge about argumentation, (c) complexity of their written explanations, and (d) ability to incorporate components of the framework for teaching science as argument to support students' literacy and science learning. This mixed-methods study utilized an embedded quasi-experimental design with a treatment (n = 20) and control group (n = 25). The treatment group instructor, who completed an eight-week professional development course, implemented the …

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Seascape Genetics And Rehabilitation Efficiency In The Florida Manatee, Madison Hall Jan 2019

Seascape Genetics And Rehabilitation Efficiency In The Florida Manatee, Madison Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) was recently downlisted federally from "endangered" to "threatened" despite acknowledgments of remaining threats to long term population persistence. Challenges to future manatee conservation include, but are not limited to, increases in frequency of harmful algal blooms, intensifying anthropogenic disturbance, and loss of warm-water habitat. The goals of this dissertation were 1) to assess threats to the manatee via a comprehensive, long-term (1973-2016), retrospective analysis of the manatee rescue and rehabilitation partnership (MRRP) and 2) to use seascape genetics analysis to examine whether abiotic, biotic, or anthropogenic seascape variables could significantly describe genetic distance patterns …

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The Stories Of Transition: A Qualitative Exploration Of International Undegraduate Students' Academic Experiences In First-Year Seminar Courses In The United States, Masa Krsmanovic Jan 2019

The Stories Of Transition: A Qualitative Exploration Of International Undegraduate Students' Academic Experiences In First-Year Seminar Courses In The United States, Masa Krsmanovic

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to explore how international undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year seminar (FYS) course perceived and described their academic experiences in a large, public university in the southeastern region of the United States. Guided by Schlossberg's (1984) 4 S Transition Model, this qualitative investigation was conducted through in-depth interviews with 10 international undergraduate students representing different countries and academic majors. The participants' narratives revealed that the academic experiences of international first-year students enrolled in the FYS course can be described as challenging, especially in terms of a) understanding U.S. higher education, b) establishing relationships …

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Variational Inclusions With General Over-Relaxed Proximal Point And Variational-Like Inequalities With Densely Pseudomonotonicity, George Nguyen Jan 2019

Variational Inclusions With General Over-Relaxed Proximal Point And Variational-Like Inequalities With Densely Pseudomonotonicity, George Nguyen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the existence and uniqueness of the solutions of variational inclusion and variational inequality problems and then attempts to develop efficient algorithms to estimate numerical solutions for the problems. The dissertation consists a total of five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction to variational inequality problems, variational inclusion problems, monotone operators, and some basic definitions and preliminaries from convex analysis. Chapter 2 is a study of a general class of nonlinear implicit inclusion problems. The objective of this study is to explore how to omit the Lipschitz continuity condition by using an alternating approach to the proximal …

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Estimation And Clustering In Statistical Ill-Posed Linear Inverse Problems, Rasika Rajapakshage Jan 2019

Estimation And Clustering In Statistical Ill-Posed Linear Inverse Problems, Rasika Rajapakshage

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The main focus of the dissertation is estimation and clustering in statistical ill-posed linear inverse problems. The dissertation deals with a problem of simultaneously estimating a collection of solutions of ill-posed linear inverse problems from their noisy images under an operator that does not have a bounded inverse, when the solutions are related in a certain way. The dissertation defense consists of three parts. In the first part, the collection consists of measurements of temporal functions at various spatial locations. In particular, we study the problem of estimating a three-dimensional function based on observations of its noisy Laplace convolution. In …

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High Performance Liquid Crystal Devices For Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality, Md Javed Rouf Talukder Jan 2019

High Performance Liquid Crystal Devices For Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality, Md Javed Rouf Talukder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

See-through augmented reality and virtual reality displays are emerging due to their widespread applications in education, engineering design, medical, retail, transportation, automotive, aerospace, gaming, and entertainment. For augmented reality and virtual reality displays, high-resolution density, high luminance, fast response time and high ambient contrast ratio are critically needed. High-resolution density helps eliminate the screen-door effect, high luminance and fast response time enable low duty ratio operation, which plays a key role for suppressing image blurs. A dimmer placed in front of AR display helps to control the incident background light, which in turn improves the image contrast. In this dissertation, …

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An Analysis Of The Relationships Between Homework Frequency And Homework Grading Procedures Of Algebra 1 Teachers On Student Outcomes As Measured On The Algebra 1 End-Of-Course Examination, Jonathan Taylor Jan 2019

An Analysis Of The Relationships Between Homework Frequency And Homework Grading Procedures Of Algebra 1 Teachers On Student Outcomes As Measured On The Algebra 1 End-Of-Course Examination, Jonathan Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship, if any, between homework practices of Algebra 1 teachers and student outcomes as measured by the state of Florida's Algebra 1 End of Course assessment (EOC). Algebra 1 EOC scores were collected from the study district's central office. Data on teacher homework practices was collected through a researcher-created survey. Cross-tabulation tables were used to identify variations in homework assignment, homework frequency, homework type, and homework grading practice associated with school (middle or high) and teacher (educational attainment and experience teaching Algebra 1) characteristics. A two-way ANOVA was used to analyze …

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The Schrödinger Equation With Coulomb Potential Admits No Exact Solutions, Ilia Toli Jan 2019

The Schrödinger Equation With Coulomb Potential Admits No Exact Solutions, Ilia Toli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We prove that the Schrödinger equation with the electrostatic potential energy expressed by the Coulomb potential does not admit exact solutions for three or more bodies. It follows that the exact solutions proposed by Fock [1–3] are flawed. The Coulomb potential is the problem. Based on the classical (non-quantum) principle of superposition, the Coulomb potential of a system of many particles is assumed to be the sum of all the pairwise Coulomb potentials. We prove that this is not accurate. The Coulomb potential being a hyperbolic (not linear) function, the superposition principle does not apply. The Schrödinger equation as studied …

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Two Ramsey-Related Problems, Jingmei Zhang Jan 2019

Two Ramsey-Related Problems, Jingmei Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Extremal combinatorics is one of the central branches of discrete mathematics and has experienced an impressive growth during the last few decades. It deals with the problem of determining or estimating the maximum or minimum possible size of a combinatorial structure which satisfies certain requirements. In this dissertation, we focus on studying the minimum number of edges of certain co-critical graphs. Given an integer r ≥ 1 and graphs G; H1; : : : ;Hr, we write → G (H1; : : : ;Hr) if every r-coloring of the edges of G contains a monochromatic copy of Hi in color …

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Imaging Through Glass-Air Anderson Localizing Optical Fiber, Jian Zhao Jan 2019

Imaging Through Glass-Air Anderson Localizing Optical Fiber, Jian Zhao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The fiber-optic imaging system enables imaging deeply into hollow tissue tracts or organs of biological objects in a minimally invasive way, which are inaccessible to conventional microscopy. It is the key technology to visualize biological objects in biomedical research and clinical applications. The fiber-optic imaging system should be able to deliver a high-quality image to resolve the details of cell morphology in vivo and in real time with a miniaturized imaging unit. It also has to be insensitive to environmental perturbations, such as mechanical bending or temperature variations. Besides, both coherent and incoherent light sources should be compatible with the …

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Asteroid Surfaces: The Importance Of Cohesive Forces, Keanna Jardine Jan 2019

Asteroid Surfaces: The Importance Of Cohesive Forces, Keanna Jardine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adhesive forces play a significant role on airless bodies due to their weak gravities. Investigating adhesion at the surface of asteroids and their constituent components is vital to understanding their formation and evolution. Previous research has been done to understand the interaction of micron-sized spheres to planar surfaces and sphere-to-sphere interactions, which have been used to develop models of asteroid surfaces. Our investigation experimentally investigates adhesion through atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements between JSC-1 simulant particles and several AFM tips, including a typical pyramidal gold tip and microspheres of sizes 2 μm and 15 μm. The samples of JSC-1 consist …

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Remediation Of Chlorinated Alkanes By Zero Valent Iron With Vitamin B12 And Utilization Of A Modified Gradual Release Of Responsibility Model In A Large Enrollment Chemistry Course, Nicole Lapeyrouse Jan 2019

Remediation Of Chlorinated Alkanes By Zero Valent Iron With Vitamin B12 And Utilization Of A Modified Gradual Release Of Responsibility Model In A Large Enrollment Chemistry Course, Nicole Lapeyrouse

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation looks at addressing environmental contaminants in the environment and the integration of an active learning style in an introductory chemistry course. It begins with addressing the concern for chlorinated propanes and ethane in the environment and the importance of looking into environmental remediation applications. This research looks at incorporating vitamin B12 as an environmentally friendly catalyst in the presence of zero valent iron for the reduction of chlorinated propanes and ethane. Chapter 2 presents the analytical methods and conditions in which samples were run. The results from these experiments are discussed in length in Chapter 3. Our …

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A Complete Approach To Predict Biodistribution Of Nanomaterials Within Animal Species From In-Vitro Data, Edward Price Jan 2019

A Complete Approach To Predict Biodistribution Of Nanomaterials Within Animal Species From In-Vitro Data, Edward Price

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smart drug-design for antibody and nanomaterial-based therapies allows for optimization of drug efficacy and more efficient early-stage pre-clinical trials. The ideal drug must display maximum efficacy at target tissue sites, but to track and predict distribution to these sites, one must have a mechanistic understanding of the kinetics involved with the individual cells of the tissue itself. This process can be tracked through biological simulations coupled with in-vitro approaches, which result in a rapid and efficient in-depth understanding of drug transport within tissue vasculature and cellular environment. As a result, it becomes possible to predict drug biodistribution within live animal …

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