Digital Commons Network^™

June 3, 2020 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

A 100 M Population Grid In The Conus By Disaggregating Census Data With Open-Source Microsoft Building Footprints, Xiao Huang, Cuizhen Wang, Zhenlong Li, Huan Ning

Faculty Publications

In the Big Data era, Earth observation is becoming a complex process integrating physical and social sectors. This study presents an approach to generating a 100 m population grid in the Contiguous United States (CONUS) by disaggregating the US census records using 125 million of building footprints released by Microsoft in 2018. Land-use data from the OpenStreetMap (OSM), a crowdsourcing platform, was applied to trim original footprints by removing the non-residential buildings. After trimming, several metrics of building measurements such as building size and building count in a census tract were used as weighting scenarios, with which a dasymetric model …

Universal Design Creates Equity And Inclusion: Moving From Theory To Practice, Clayton A. Copeland Phd, Brady Cross, Kim Thompson

South Carolina Libraries

Universal design focuses on small changes that can be made to benefit everyone. Universal design principles can be applied to both physical and virtual environments and help provide universal access to technology and information. This paper provides a case study of the design of a library computer kiosk in an academic library, using principles of universal design to create a universally accessible workstation. The paper provides an overview of features included in the workstation, images of the workstation, and includes discussion of additional considerations and lessons learned from the design experience.

What Gets Libraries Sued: Measuring Librarian Fears Against Statistical Realities, Kristina Schwoebel, Eve Ross

South Carolina Libraries

“We can’t do that, we’ll get sued.” How do libraries balance the benefits of a course of action with legal risks? Our project attempts to explore this by obtaining librarian feedback via a survey, evaluating existing literature, and compiling legal cases.

Challenges And Innovations: Collections, Access, And The South Caroliniana Library Renovation, Edward Blessing, Graham Duncan

South Carolina Libraries

Major library renovations, here defined as those requiring the removal of all staff and collections to one or more alternate locations, are especially challenging for both staff and patrons. This poster highlights how a major renovation has become – and continues to be – an opportunity for innovation and productive change at the South Caroliniana Library.

Molecular Properties Are A Primary Control On The Microbial Utilization Of Dissolved Organic Matter In The Ocean, Yuan Shen, Ronald Benner

Faculty Publications

The global ocean sequesters a large amount of reduced carbon in dissolved organic molecules that can persist for centuries to millennia. The persistence of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the deep ocean has been attributed to inherently refractory molecules and to low concentrations of molecules, but the relative roles of molecular properties and molecular concentrations remain uncertain. We investigate both of these possibilities using bioas-say experiments with unfiltered seawater collected from five depths (50–1500 m) at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-Series Study site. The microbial utilization of compositionally distinct forms of seawater DOC at in situ and elevated concentrations was determined. …

The Relationship Of Executive Function And Alpha Band Activity During The Eriksen Flanker Task: An Eeg Study, Destiny A. Willis

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Objective: Neural frequencies, measured by electroencephalogram, can be indicative of certain cognitive states. One oscillation, called the alpha wave, has become a proxy for the cognitive ability related to attention. Research suggests that anxiety may result in atypical alpha oscillations when engaging in an attention task, thereby also resulting in potentially dysfunctional attentional abilities. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between alpha wave frequency, executive function, trait anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and response selection.

Method: The Eriksen flanker task was used to measure response selection, while an electroencephalogram recorded alpha brainwave activity (N = 47). This study incorporated …

Comprehensive Second-Order Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology (2nd-Asam) Applied To A Subcritical Experimental Reactor Physics Benchmark: V. Computation Of Mixed 2nd-Order Sensitivities Involving Isotopic Number Densities, Ruixian Fang, Dan Gabriel Cacuci

Faculty Publications

This work applies the Second-Order Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology (2nd-ASAM) to compute the mixed 2nd-order sensitivities of a polyethylene-reflected plutonium (PERP) benchmark's leakage response with respect to the benchmark's imprecisely known isotopic number densities and the other benchmark imprecisely known parameters, including: (i) the 6 × 180 mixed 2nd-order sensitivities involving the total microscopic cross sections; (ii) the 6 × 21,600 mixed 2nd-order sensitivities involving the scattering microscopic cross sections; (iii) the 6 × 60 mixed 2nd-order sensitivities involving the fission microscopic cross sections; and (iv) the 6 × 60 mixed 2nd-order sensitivities involving the average number of neutrons produced …

Effectiveness Of China's Plug-In Electric Vehicle Subsidy, Tamara L. Sheldon, Rubal Dua

Faculty Publications

Subsidies for promoting plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) adoption are a key component of China's overall plan for reducing local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the light-duty vehicle sector. In this paper, we explore the impact and cost-effectiveness of the Chinese PEV subsidy program. In particular, a vehicle choice model is estimated using a large random sample of individual level, model year 2017 Chinese new vehicle purchases. The choice model is then used to predict PEV market share under alternative policies. Simulation results suggest that the 2.5% PEV market share of Chinese new vehicle sales in 2017 resulted in …

The Relation Between Linguistic Awareness Skills And Spelling In Adults: A Comparison Among Scoring Procedures, Victoria S. Henbest, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D., Krystal L. Werfel, Kenn Apel

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Spelling is a skill that relies on an individual’s linguistic awareness, the ability to overtly manipulate language. The ability to accurately spell is important for academic and career success into adulthood. The spelling skills of adults have received some attention in the literature, but there is limited information regarding which approach for analyzing adults’ spelling is optimal for guiding instruction or intervention for those who struggle. Thus, we aimed to examine the concurrent validity of four different scoring methods for measuring adults’ spellings (a dichotomous scoring method and three continuous methods) and to determine whether adults’ linguistic awareness skills …

Material Discovery And High Throughput Exploration Of Ru Based Catalysts For Low Temperature Ammonia Decomposition, Katherine Mccullough, Pei-Hua Chiang, Juan D. Jimenez, Jochen A. Lauterbach

Faculty Publications

High throughput experimentation has the capability to generate massive, multidimensional datasets, allowing for the discovery of novel catalytic materials. Here, we show the synthesis and catalytic screening of over 100 unique Ru-Metal-K based bimetallic catalysts for low temperature ammonia decomposition, with a Ru loading between 1–3 wt% Ru and a fixed K loading of 12 wt% K, supported on γ-Al2O3. Bimetallic catalysts containing Sc, Sr, Hf, Y, Mg, Zr, Ta, or Ca in addition to Ru were found to have excellent ammonia decomposition activity when compared to state-of-the-art catalysts in literature. Furthermore, the Ru content could be reduced to 1 …

April 15, 2020 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Multimodal Mental Health Analysis In Social Media, Amir Hossein Yazdavar, Mohammad Saeid Mahdavinejad, Goonmeet Bajaj, William Romine, Amit P. Sheth, Amir Hassan Monadjemi, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, John M. Meddar, Annie Myers, Jyotishman Pathak, Pascal Hitzler

Publications

Depression is a major public health concern in the U.S. and globally. While successful early identification and treatment can lead to many positive health and behavioral outcomes, depression, remains undiagnosed, untreated or undertreated due to several reasons, including denial of the illness as well as cultural and social stigma. With the ubiquity of social media platforms, millions of people are now sharing their online persona by expressing their thoughts, moods, emotions, and even their daily struggles with mental health on social media. Unlike traditional observational cohort studies conducted through questionnaires and self-reported surveys, we explore the reliable detection of depressive …

Search For An Invisibly Decaying Z' Boson At Belle Ii In E+ E− → Μ+ Μ− (E∓Μ∓)Plus Missing Energy Final States, I. Adachi, P. Ahlburg, H. Aihara, N. Akopov, A. Aloisio, N. Anh Ky, D. M. Asner, H. Atmacan, T. Aushev, V. Aushev, T, Aziz, V. Babu, S. Baehr, P. Bambade, Sw. Banerjee, V. Bansal, M. Barrett, J. Baudot, J. Becker, Milind Purohit, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

Theories beyond the standard model often predict the existence of an additional neutral boson, the Z'. Using data collected by the Belle II experiment during 2018 at the SuperKEKB collider, we perform the first searches for the invisible decay of a Z' e⁺e⁻→μ⁺μ⁻Z′ and of a lepton-flavor-violating Z' in e⁺e⁻→e^±μ^∓Z′. We do not find any excess of events and set 90% credibility level upper limits on the cross sections of these processes. We translate the former, in the framework of an L_μ−L …

Athletic Success And Its Influence On Freshman Enrollment, Grace E. Meadows

Senior Theses

NCAA Division I athletics have always been important, though in as recent as the early 2000s, athletic success did not have an effect on the number of freshmen enrolled at a university. This study shows between the years of 2010 and 2020, success in baseball, basketball, and football has begun to influence freshman enrollment at top universities in the United States. Using freshman enrollment data from the years before and after the university’s athletic success, this study analyzes percent change using regression analysis in order to determine if there is a significant increase in freshman enrollment following athletic success at …

Feel The Vibration! Measuring The Ground Motion Caused By Racecars At The Zmax Dragway, Gabrielle Herrin

Senior Theses

Dragsters raced down a 1,000 ft track at the zMAX Dragway and the resulting ground motion was recorded, analyzed, and displayed live to fans. At the NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals on April 26 – 28, 2019 and the NTK NHRA Carolina Nationals on October 11-13, 2019 the ground motion was recorded with novel devices anchored on the track walls. The devices were fit with Raspberry Pis, precise clocks, and accelerometers recording at 400 samples per second. In April, the geometry of the devices was located near the start line and in October, devices were anchored to the outside …

Sex Work Decriminalization And Feminist Theory, Gabriella Mesce

Senior Theses

This thesis explores the history and nuances of sex work and feminist philosophy, especially within the context of commercial sex and feminist legal theory. Through an analysis of four different feminist philosophies that stemmed from the “sex wars” of the 1980s such as abolitionism, neo-abolitionism, decriminalization and legalization and their perspectives on sex work, the belief systems of these perspectives and their relation to feminist jurisprudence, as well as a comparative study of decriminalized sex work in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands and Juárez, Mexico, this research shows the ramifications of decriminalization of sex work on progressive feminism.

Through A Glass Darkly: Eligibility Under The Idea - The Blurry Boundary Of The Special Education Need Prong, Perry A. Zirkel

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Universities & Other Institutions Of Higher Education - Recent Decisions

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

The Uniform Basis Rules And Terminating Interests In Trusts Early, F. Ladson Boyle, Howard M. Zaritsky, D. Ryan Wallace

Faculty Publications

The resolution of income tax issues that may arise for trust beneficiaries who dispose of temporal interests in trusts remains relatively obscure. Additional issues exist for subsequent interest holders; the methods that the Code and Regulations prescribe for establishing, maintaining, and potentially recovering basis for successor owners of interests in a trust are not well developed.

In some instances, the trust instrument creating a temporal interest will supply a suitable path for early termination and distribution of assets. In those cases, Sub-chapter J of the Code typically governs the transaction and provides that terminating the trust and distributing its assets …

Romanticism In Nineteenth-Century Russian Nationalistic Music: Case Studies Of Glinka’S Ruslan And Lyudmila And Cui’S Mystic Chorus, Jeffrey Crayton Yelverton Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is comprised of two case studies of the works Ruslan and Lyudmila and the Mystic Chorus, which were composed by two nineteenth century Russian composers Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857) and César Cui (1835–1918). The Chapter on Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila trances the influence of German romantic thought on the opera as a reinterpretation. The theories of Novalis” (1772–1801); Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829); and E.T.A. Hoffman (1776–1822) contribute to the reinterpretation of the opera as a dream that privileges German romantic ideas over Russia nationalistic ones. The Chapter on Cui’s Mystic Chorus, on the other hand, focuses on mysticism …

Natural Reed Enhancement: Establishing The First Universal Reed Break-In Process Through Hydro-Stabilization, Steven Isaac Christ

Theses and Dissertations

Reed players know the favorable sound of their cane does not last. Furthermore, students and educators who lack the reed pedagogy necessary to achieve any longevity and consistency suffer financially. In this study, a hydro-stabilization methodology is tested to analyze the systematic compression of parenchymatic cells within clarinet reeds. By compressing the parenchymatic cells of the cane, this project proposes that saliva will saturate the reed at ineffective/inefficient rates compared to fresh, non-stabilized reeds. 1,836 data points, collected from 17 reeds, comprised the overall study; 324 data points, collected from three reeds, represented the control group; and the remaining 1,512 …

A Trumpet Player’S Performance Guide Of Three Selected Works For Trumpet, Cello, And Piano, Justin Wayne Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This document explores, in detail, three works for trumpet, cello, and piano. These works were performed on a chamber recital before the writing of this document. The three selected works are Statements, Commanding by Robert J. Bradshaw, Elegy by Alex Shapiro, and Trio for Trumpet, Violincello, and Piano by Eric Ewazen. This document focuses on the musical performance of these three works, ways to prepare specific sections, and issues the author and his trio experienced during the preparation of these works. To the author’s knowledge, no previous documents have explored these three works. The field of study focusing on the …

Computational Tools For Analyzing Correlations Between Microbial Biological Diversity And Ecosystems, Behzad Torkian

Theses and Dissertations

Metagenomics has developed into a reliable mechanism to analyze microbial diversity of microbial communities in the recent years. Through the use of next-generation sequencing, metagenomic studies can generate billions of short sequencing reads that are processed by computational tools. However, with the rapid adoption of metagenomics, a large amount of data has been produced. This high level of data production requires the development of computational tools and pipelines to manage data scalability and performance. In this thesis, we developed several tools that will aid in the exploration of the large amount of DNA sequence data, and we further developed a …

How Has Sports Journalism Been Forced To Adapt To Twitter?, Landon Stamper

Senior Theses

This paper seeks to analyze case studies, prior research and tweets to understand the impact Twitter has had on the field of sports journalism. I am looking at this impact through the lenses of breaking news, speed, content, expanded dissemination and gatekeeping. These five aspects are things that Twitter excels at providing, and I want to see what these provide to sports journalism, specifically as it has adapted to a new medium.

April 1, 2020 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Columbus's Legacy: Trafficking Of Native American Women In The 21st Century, Carly Gillespie

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Probing The Interstellar Medium Of Galaxies Using Gravitationally Lensed Sight Lines And The Relevant Atomic Physics, Frances Cashman

Theses and Dissertations

Absorption spectroscopy of gravitationally lensed quasars (GLQs) enables study of spatial variations in the interstellar and/or circumgalactic medium (ISM, CGM) of foreground galaxies. In this work I present observations of 4 GLQs, each with two images separated by 0.8-3.000, that show strong absorbers at redshifts 0.4 abs< 1.3 in their spectra, including some at the lens redshift. The H I Lyman lines were measured in five absorbers using HST-STIS, and metal lines with either the MagE spectrograph or the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. These data, combined with the literature, show no strong correlation between absolute values of differences in NH I, NFe II, or [Fe/H] and sight line separations at absorber redshifts. The measured abundance gradients show a tentative anti-correlation with abundances at galaxy centers.

A study of the lens galaxy foreground to the doubly lensed quasar SBS 0909+532 reveals a large difference in H I and metal column densities between sight lines. Using archival HST-STIS and Keck HIRES spectra, log N _{H I} 18.18 cm−2 and log N _{H I} = 20.38±0.02 cm⁻²were measured, resulting …

Tailored Multifunctional Heterometallic Metal-Organic Frameworks, Otega Anthonia Ejegbavwo

Theses and Dissertations

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are well-defined and porous extended structures consisting of organic linkers connected to inorganic secondary building units, are a class of materials that have received tremendous attention over the last decade. This geometrically growing interest in MOFs is attributed to their properties of porosity, tunability, modularity, crystallinity, flexibility, and long-term stability, which makes them attractive candidates for various applications. This dissertation focuses on two major studies, the first part encompasses the strategic design, preparation, and extensive studies of actinide containing MOFs (An-MOFs). This work, presented within the first two chapters, demonstrates the effective utilization of MOF modularity …

Flexible Regression Models For Survival Data, Ennan Gu

Theses and Dissertations

Survival analysis is a branch of statistics to analyze the time-to-event data or survival data. One important feature of survival data is censoring, which means that not all the subjects’ survival time are observed directly. Among all the survival data, right-censored data are the most common type and consist of some exactly observed survival times and some right-censored observations. In this dissertation, we focus on studying flexible regression models for complicated right-censored survival data when the classical proportional hazards (PH) assumption is not satisfied. Flexible semiparametric regression models can largely avoid misspecification of parametric distributions and thus provide more modeling …