Digital Commons Network^™

An Empirical Comparison Of Life Cycle Cost Of Green School Buildings And Non-Green School Buildings, Nitisha Pushpala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

One of the major economic concerns today of the world is reduction of energy consumption because of depleting energy sources in the world. The construction sector in the United States is also contributing in reducing the energy consumption and construction cost of the buildings by constructing cost and energy efficient buildings with energy efficient materials and techniques. The U.S Department of Energy introduced the Building Technologies Program that develops techniques, tools and technologies for making buildings more energy efficient. Other private bodies like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which is developed by the U.S. Green Building Council …

Impact Of Design Cost On Project Performance Of Design Bid Build Projects, Nirajan Mani

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The majority of public projects in the United States are procured and constructed by state or local governments using the design-bid-build (DBB) project delivery method. In the DBB method, the detailed design is completed by a design firm, then, a contractor builds the project according to the plans and specifications prepared by the design firm. Some studies show that a project's performance depends upon the quality of the design. If the errors in a design are minimized, the construction cost and schedule growth of the project also will be minimized.

This study analyzed data from Clark County, Nevada public works …

Operation Span Task’S Susceptibility To Math Anxiety: Support From Fluid Intelligence, Robert T. Durette

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This experiment tested possible math anxiety effects on the two most prominent working memory span tasks, the operation span and reading span tasks. Math anxiety effects on the performance of the processing component of the operation span task, which is math based, were found, but not on the processing component of the reading span task, which is reading based. High math anxious individuals were the largest group of individuals that failed to meet the prescribed 85% accuracy threshold of the processing component of the operation span, countering the hypothesis that not meeting the threshold score is due to a lack …

Planning For Building-Integrated Agriculture In Las Vegas, Robert Vralsted

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

High food prices, concern about food nutrition and safety, and an awareness of commercial farming's environmental impact have generated a renewed interest in sustainable urban agriculture. Advances in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) have made it possible to grow food virtually anywhere in a much more sustainable manner than traditional field-based agriculture. Locating and planning urban farms using retrofitted existing building stock to maximize food production and ease of distribution in Las Vegas requires consideration of multiple barriers related to geography, economics, and the built environment. Consideration of these factors in the planning process informs the design of a successful BIA …

Lateral Variability Of Facies And Cycles In The Furongian (Late Cambrian) Carbonate Platform: An Example From The Big Horse Member Of The Orr Formation In Western Utah, U.S.A., Ratna Widiarti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Carbonate depositional cycles and sequences have been proposed to be formed by glacioeustatic sea-level changes. This mechanism would be questionable during times of high atmospheric CO2 and negligible continental ice sheets such as the supergreenhouse time in the Furongian (late Cambrian), during which limited glacioeustatic sea-level changes would be expected. A detailed sedimentological study of the Furongian Orr Formation in western Utah is aimed at testing the hypothesis that, under supergreenhouse climate conditions, most meter-scale carbonate cycles may have been formed through autocyclic processes and thus they should be laterally variable. The research was conducted in a small area ( …

Using Smoothing Techniques To Improve The Performance Of Hidden Markov’S Model, Sweatha Boodidhi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The result of training a HMM using supervised training is estimated probabilities for emissions and transitions. There are two difficulties with this approach Firstly, sparse training data causes poor probability estimates. Secondly, unseen probabilities have emission probability of zero. In this thesis, we report on different smoothing techniques and their implementations. We further report on our experimental results using standard precision and recall for various smoothing techniques.

Colonization And Decontamination Of Quagga Mussels In The Western United States: Monitoring Veligers In Lake Mead And Field Testing In The Effects Of Hot-Water Spray As A Means Of Watercraft Decontamination, Sean Robin Comeau

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The introduction and establishment of aquatic invasive species (AIS) is one of the top causes of global biodiversity loss and ecological change, and is also financially costly for taxpayers and agencies managing protected areas. This is especially true regarding the nationwide spread of dreissenid mussels to various bodies of freshwater. The discovery of invasive quagga mussels (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) in Lake Mead on January 6, 2007 has changed the popular recreation area into a potential vector of the destructive AIS. This location could allow for an increased spread of these dressenid species to uninfested bodies of water in the western …

Exploring The Factors That Influence Adequate Yearly Progress Within Elementary School Settings, Shannon Marie Hennrich

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the recent past, standards and access to resources for accountability and equity have been implemented nationally in schools. For example, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, was a federal mandate designed to raise the academic expectations and accountability of all learners. In addition, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 were created to protect the rights of all individuals with disabilities in programs that receive federal funds and ensure equal access to knowledge. Additionally, English language learners (ELL) must be included in the general …

A Statistical Model For Long-Term Forecasting Of Strong Sand Dust Storms, Siqi Tan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Dust elevated into the atmosphere by dust storms has numerous environmental consequences. These include contributing to climate change; modifying local weather conditions; producing chemical and biological changes in the oceans; and affecting soil formation, surface water, groundwater quality, crop growth, and survival (Goudie and Middleton, 1992). Societal impacts include disruptions to air, road and rail traffic; interruption of radio services; the myriad effects of static-electricity generation; property damage; and health effects on humans and animals (Warner, 2004).

In this thesis, we extend the idea of empirical recurrence rate (ERR), developed by Ho (2008), to model the temporal trend of the …

Calcium Supplemental Usage And Potential Health Issues Sssociated With The Rate Of Usage In Las Vegas, Nv, Tanesha Nicole Moss

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Calcium is a very important nutrient and as such, it is very important that all humans consume sufficient amounts. However, some calcium supplements have been known to contain small quantities of lead. This research project used a retrospective approach to explore the trade-off between the benefits of calcium vs. the potential lead exposure amongst people who are taking these supplements. A survey consisting of 10 questions was used to try to assess the rate of consumption of specific types of calcium supplements. This research project obtained lead levels in calcium supplements from previous research and applied that data into this …

Implementation Of Numerically Stable Hidden Markov Model, Usha Ramya Tatavarty

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A Hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states. HMM is an extremely flexible tool and has been successfully applied to a wide variety of stochastic modeling tasks. One of the first applications of HMM is speech recognition. Later they came to be known for their applicability in handwriting recognition, part-of-speech tagging and bio-informatics.

In this thesis, we will explain the mathematics involved in HMMs and how to efficiently perform HMM computations using dynamic programming (DP) which makes it easy to implement …

Mathematical Modeling Of Metamaterials, Valjean Elizabeth Elander

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Metamaterials are artificially structured nano materials with negative refraction index. The successful construction of such metamaterials in 2000 triggered a great interest in study of metamaterials by researchers from different areas. The discovery of metamaterials opened a wide potential for applications in diverse areas such as cloaking, sub-wavelength imaging, solar cell design and antennas.

In this thesis, we investigate the most popular Drude metamaterial model. More specifically, we first present a brief overview of metamaterials and their potential applications, then we discuss the well-posedness of this model, and develop several numerical schemes to solve it. We implement our schemes using …

Impacts Of Climate Change And Weather Modification On Hydrologic Characteristics Of Watersheds In The Western United States, Anil Acharya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research quantifies the impacts of climate change and weather modification (WM) on hydrologic characteristics of watersheds in the arid regions of the western United States. This research performs a long-term simulation of streamflow for present and future climate conditions in the North Platte (NP) Watershed, Wyoming; a shorter duration simulation is then performed to observe the likely impacts of event based changes in an urban watershed in Las Vegas, Nevada.

First, a study is carried out in Chapter 3 that evaluates the impacts of WM on water supply by developing a hydrologic model for the NP Watershed. The variable …

Association Of Oceanic-Atmospheric Oscillations And Hydroclimatic Variables In The Colorado River Basin, Ajay Kalra

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With increasing evidence of climatic variability, there is a need to improve forecast for hydroclimatic variables i.e., precipitation and streamflow preserving their spatial and temporal variability. Climatologists have identified different oceanic-atmospheric oscillations that seem to influence the behavior of these variables and in turn can be used to extend the forecast lead time. In the absence of a good physical understanding of the linkages between oceanic-atmospheric oscillations and hydrological processes, it is difficult to construct a physical model. An attractive alternative to physically based models are the Artificial Intelligence (AI) type models, also referred to as machine learning or data-driven …

An Ecological Study Of Peregrine Falcons (Falco Peregrinus) At Lake Mead National Recreation Area, 2006-2010, Joseph Graham Barnes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) represent an encouraging conservation biology success story in North America during the twentieth century. Their distribution and population size suffered major restrictions after the initiation of widespread application of the synthetic pesticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) within the U.S. in the 1940s. The species was federally listed as endangered in the U.S. in 1969 and was then delisted in 1999 after DDT was banned in 1972. Herein, I present my ecological research of peregrines within Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LMNRA), concentrating on the years 2006-2010. This thesis is comprised of two chapters. In the first chapter, I …

Using Graphs To Represent Physical Phenomena In A Fourth Grade Classroom, Mehmet Fatih Dulger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined to what extent inquiry-based instruction supported with real-time graphing technology improves fourth grader's ability to interpret graphs as representations of physical science concepts such as motion and temperature. This study also examined whether there is any difference between inquiry-based instruction supported with real-time graphing software and inquiry-based instruction supported with traditional laboratory equipment in terms of improving fourth graders' ability to interpret motion and temperature graphs. Results of this study showed that there is a significant advantage in using real-time graphing technology to support fourth graders' ability to read and interpret graphs.

Public Interest Standard Characteristics In Hybrid Digital Multicasts Of Noncommercial Educational Radio, Michele Ann Gothard

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Radio broadcasting implements digital multicasting in the United States with the adoption of HD Radio from iBiquity. Hybrid digital radio multicasts can upgrade either AM or FM facilities, and stations adopt the technology without loosing traditional analogue broadcasts. Broadcasting with digital technology creates additional channels of information, extending limitations of the electromagnetic spectrum. Scholarly research about hybrid digital technology considers motivations for adoption by stations but has not focused on content of existing multicasts. This study examines noncommercial educational radio multicasts for characteristics of service in the public interest.

Discourse characteristics find a mix of sounds that include both speech …

Co-Development Of Biological Soil Crusts, Soil-Geomorphology, And Landscape Biogeochemistry In The Mojave Desert, Nevada, U.S.A. – Implications For Ecological Management, Amanda Jean Williams

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are complex matrices of soil particles, mosses, lichens, and cyanobacteria that prevent erosion and influence water and energy balances, soil fertility, and vascular plant germination. The processes that form BSCs, the factors that control their distribution, and the ecosystem feedbacks that they sustain are poorly understood. This dissertation employed a novel interdisciplinary approach to address those research unknowns through investigations of the micromorphological structure, soil-geomorphic relationships, and biogeochemical feedbacks of BSCs in the Mojave Desert.

A micromorphological study of BSCs resulted in a succession model that illustrates how crust formative processes and structures change through time. …

Information Extraction In An Optical Character Recognition Context, Ramon Pereda

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this dissertation, we investigate the effectiveness of information extraction in the presence of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). It is well known that the OCR errors have no effects on general retrieval tasks. This is mainly due to the redundancy of information in textual documents. Our work shows that information extraction task is significantly influenced by OCR errors. Intuitively, this is due to the fact that extraction algorithms rely on a small window of text surrounding the objects to be extracted.

We show that extraction methodologies based on the Hidden Markov Models are not robust enough to deal with extraction …

Numerical Simulations Of Accretion Disks And Extrasolar Planets, Stefan Luketic

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We study mass outflows from astrophysical objects. Using numerical hydrodynamical simulations, we investigate outflows from accretion disks and exoplanets. In the first part of this dissertation, we present the results of Zeus 2D hydrodynamical simulations of the disk photosphere irradiated by strong X–rays that are produced in the innermost part of the disk of an accreting black hole. As expected, the irradiation heats the photosphere and drives a thermal wind. To apply our results to the well– studied X–ray transient source GRO J1655–40, we utilized the observed mass of its black hole and the observed properties of its X–ray radiation …

The Right To Privacy In Light Of The Patriot Act And Social Contract Theory, Betsey Sue Casman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There is a continual debate between individuals who attempt to measure the individual’s right to privacy against the government’s right to know in order to provide for the security of all citizens.

The questions that beg to be answered are whether the individual’s right to privacy outweighs the government’s duty to provide security; and if security is deemed more important, can there even be a right to privacy. It is critical to our nation’s anti-terrorism effort that our intelligence agencies possess the legal capacity to intercept all forms of communications utilized by terrorists and hostile intelligence agents. Inevitably this will …

The Hormonal Correlates Of Stress And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms In Female Veterans, Meghan Pierce

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With the increase of female veterans serving in the military, a better understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder is needed to provide comprehensive treatment. This study examines salivary cortisol in female veterans with PTSD, female veterans without PTSD, civilian females with PTSD and healthy controls. The Posttraumatic Stress and Beck Depression Inventory-II were used to assess posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms. Saliva samples were collected at bedtime and awakening, as well as in response to the Trier Social Stress Test. Significant results were not found for diurnal cortisol levels [ F (3, 11)= .979, p < .05] or stress cortisol levels (F (3,12) = 1.140, p >.05). …

Mesozoic Burial, Mesozoic And Cenozoic Exhumation Of The Funeral Mountains Core Complex, Death Valley, Southeastern California, Mengesha Assefa Beyene

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Funeral Mountains of Death Valley National Park, CA, provide an opportunity to date metamorphism resulting from crustal shortening and subsequent episodic extensional events in the Sevier hinterland. It was not clear whether crustal shortening and thus peak temperature metamorphism in the hinterland of the Sevier-Laramide orogenic wedge have occurred whether in Late Jurassic, Early Cretaceous , Late Cretaceous or somewhere between. Particularly ambiguous is the timing of crustal shortening in the deep levels of the hinterland of the Sevier belt, now manifest in the metamorphic core complexes, and how and when these middle-to-lower crustal rocks were exhumed. A 6-point …

Computational Study Of Passive Neutron Albedo Reactivity (Pnar) Measurement With Fission Chambers, Sandra De La Cruz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Passive Neutron Albedo Reactivity technique (PNAR) was used to assay used nuclear fuel as a potential method for the measurement of fissionable material in fuel assemblies. A Monte Carlo transport code (MCNPX 2.6) was used to develop simulation models to evaluate the PNAR technique. The MCNPX simulated models consisted of two 17x17 Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) used fuel assemblies; one with an initial 3 wt% uranium-235*, cooled for 20 years and second with an initial 4 wt% uranium-235*, cooled for 5 years. Each used fuel assembly was simulated at four different burn up rates of 15, 30, 45, and …

Effects Of Inlet Conditions On Diffuser Outlet Performance, Zaccary A. Poots

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Building air distribution terminal system designers and system installers require accurate quantitative information on the performance of the installed system to achieve optimum efficiency and levels of human comfort. This requires field installation adjustment values from published ideal pressure loss, air distribution and sound generation installation performance. This study documents the air output performance of different installation configurations of six types of ceiling diffusers and compares the results to performance when installed according to ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 70-2006. A diffuser inlet supply plenum was designed for optimum flow and used to acquire a baseline set of data covering the six types …

The Dilemma Of Minors’ Access To Adult Content On The Internet: A Proposed Warnings Solution, Helen Zaikina-Montgomery

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Internet can be a dangerous place for children. Because minors have unrestricted access to adult content, a system of warnings targeting minors on the Internet should be developed. The present studies tested icons for such a system and subsequently to examined selected icons in combination with signal words, color, and warning messages. One hundred and ninety three adults and eleven children participated in the first study. Participants rated thirty eight icons created by the researcher for their understandability, carefulness, attention-getting, likelihood of encountering and severity of danger, likelihood of avoidance and familiarity. Familiar icons were found to be rated …

Zero-Sum Magic Graphs And Their Null Sets, Samuel M. Hansen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For any element h of the Natural numbers, a graph G=(V,E), with vertex set V and edge set E, is said to be h-magic if there exists a labeling of the edge set E, using the integer group mod h such that the induced vertex labeling, the sum of all edges incident to a vertex, is a constant map. When this constant is 0 we call G a zero-sum h-magic graph. The null set of G is the set of all natural numbers h for which G admits a zero-sum h-magic labeling. A graph G is said to be uniformly …

Vertebrate Taxonomic Composition, Species Diversity, And Paleoecology Of Two Pliocene Mid-Latitude, Inland-Basin Fossil Assemblages: Panaca Local Fauna (Lincoln County, Nevada) And Hagerman Local Fauna (Twin Falls County, Idaho), Vicki Lynn Meyers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I studied the sedimentology, species diversity, relative abundance, paleoenvironment, and paleoecology of the vertebrate fauna of the early Pliocene (Blancan Land Mammal Age) Panaca Formation of southeastern Nevada, and I compared these data with the slightly younger Hagerman fauna of south-central Idaho. The purpose of this study is to characterize the paleoecology and species diversity of mid-latitude inland basins during the Blancan Land Mammal Age, a time of climate change and immigrating taxa from Asia and South America. This study involved surface collecting and screenwashing of the Panaca Formation sediment in Meadow Valley, as well as a compilation of data …

Modeling Mortality Rates For Leukemia Between Men And Women In The United States, Blessed Quansah

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Leukemia related deaths increased dramatically over the last forty years. Leukemia is a malignant disease or cancer of the bone marrow and blood. It is characterized by the uncontrolled accumulation of blood cells. Leukemia is divided into two categories: myelogenous or lymphocytic, each of which can be acute or chronic. The terms, myelogenous or lymphocytic denote the cell type involved.

In this thesis, the proposed modeling techniques are applied to leukemia deaths data from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER). In particular, annual deaths data from 1969 to 2007 are used in the data analysis, which includes three major …

Resilient Leadership In High Poverty Schools, Edward P. San Nicolas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Children in high poverty schools often receive inadequate services in dilapidated facilities while enduring inexperienced and unprepared educators (Darling-Hammond, 2004). Communities with a dense impoverished population in turn create school wide poverty, which is ultimately more detrimental than individual family poverty (Books, 2004). With most teachers leaving impoverished urban schools within the first five years, it is no surprise of the difficulty to retain qualified and professional school leaders. As suggested by Haberman (2005), attracting educators with specific qualities to fill these critical roles may be the best route to lasting success. Equally important is the possibility to transform existing …