Digital Commons Network^™

The Search For Microbial Martian Life And American Buddhist Ethics, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Multiple searches hunt for extraterrestrial life, yet the ethics of such searches in terms of fossil and possible extant life on Mars have not been sufficiently delineated. In response, in this essay I propose a tripartite ethic for searches for microbial Martian life that consists of default nonharm toward potential living beings, default nonharm to the habitats of potential living beings, but also responsible, restrained scientific harvesting of some microbes in limited transgression of these default nonharm modes. Although this multifaceted ethic remains secular and hence adaptable to space research settings, it arises from both a qualitative analysis of authoritative …

Redmond (2002) Revisited: Have Standardized Behavioral Rating Scales Gotten Better At Accommodating For Overlapping Symptoms With Language Impairment?, Kirsten M. Hannig, Sean M. Redmond, Amy Wilder

Faculty Publications

Seventeen years ago, Redmond ¹ reviewed five standardized behavioral rating scales and identified several aspects of their design that made them prone to mischaracterize language impairments as socioemotional behavioral disorders. The purpose of this report is to provide an update and extension of the original audit. We consulted test manuals to evaluate: (1) representation of children with language impairments in their standardization samples; (2) presence of language, or academic items within their inventories; (3) accommodations for administering the measure to children with language impairments; and (4) procedures for identifying inordinately punitive ratings. Overlapping language and academic symptoms continued to be …

Building Bridges With Bach: Syntegration Of Music And Visual Art, Tara L. Carpenter, Brittany Nixon May

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Student Retention In Information Systems Majors: The Role Of Creative Self-Efficacy, Peter Garrow, Greg Anderson, Mark J. Keith, Alexandra N. Spruill

Faculty Publications

At times the Information Systems (IS) major has suffered from declining enrollment. Also, STEM fields such as IS are known to suffer from a lack of gender diversity. This research focuses on why students drop out from IS programs and how to provide actionable feedback to improve student retention, particularly among female students. We use creative self-efficacy (CreaSE) as a theoretical lens to explain student retainment. In particular, as students have more confidence in their ability to solve business problems with IS solutions, they are more likely remain in IS courses. Students who sought help from their instructor and StackOverflow.com …

On First-Come, First-Served Queues With Two Classes Of Impatient Customers, Ivo Adan, Brett A. Hathaway, Vidyadhar G. Kulkarni

Faculty Publications

We study systems with two classes of impatient customers who differ across the classes in their distribution of service times and patience times. The customers are served on a first-come, first-served basis (FCFS) regardless of their class. Such systems are common in customer call centers, which often segment their arrivals into classes of callers whose requests differ in their complexity and criticality. We first consider an M/G/1 + M queue and then analyze the M/M/k + M case. Analyzing these systems using a queue length process proves intractable as it would require us to keep track of the class of …

Disclosure Overload? A Professional User Perspective On The Usefulness Of General Purpose Financial Statements*, Michael S. Drake, Jeffrey Hales, Lynn Rees

Faculty Publications

We survey a broad group of professionals who use financial statements as part of their job to assess the extent to which they believe financial reports suffer from disclosure overload. Consistent with the claims made by regulators, auditors, and preparers, we find that a significant portion of professional financial statement users believe disclosure overload is a problem. However, this group is in the minority, with about twice as many professional users believing that overload is not a problem and that more information should be disclosed in financial statements. This dichotomy presents a difficult challenge to standard setters aiming to improve …

A Decade Of Disability Depictions In Newbery Award Books, H. Grow, Sharon Black, K. Egan, Tina Taylor, K. Moss, Rachel L. Wadham, Mary Anne Prater

Faculty Publications

Newbery awards are conferred annually on books recognized as having made the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature; these books reach a wide audience, and their depictions of characters with disabilities can influence children's perceptions and attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. Eight Newbery Medal and Honor books chosen from 2010 to 2019 were identified as portraying 11 main or supporting characters with a disability. Six disabilities were represented: emotional disturbance, deafness, specific learning disability, speech/language impairment, orthopedic impairment, and traumatic brain injury. Applying the Rating Scale for Quality Characterizations of Individuals with Disabilities in Children’s Literature, we found most of …

Beyond Justice: Reading Alma 42 In The Context Of Atonement Theories, Mark D. Ellison

Faculty Publications

In Alma 42, Alma teaches his son Corianton about the atonement in a statement laden with legal vocabulary. Terms such as law, judged, just, justice, injustice, punishment, probationary, and penitent dominate the message, in company with such concepts as the execution of the law, the infliction of punishment, and punishment being affixed to violation of law. By all appearances, Alma sets forth what theologians call a juridical view of atonement (one concerned with the administration of justice). The problem as Alma states it is that “all mankind were fallen” and because of disobedience were “in the grasp of justice” and …

Comparison Of Wind Farm Layout Optimization Results Using A Simple Wake Model And Gradient-Based Optimization To Large-Eddy Simulations, Jared J. Thomas, Jennifer Annoni, Paul Fleming, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

The models used during wind farm layout optimization use simplifying assumptions that can alter the design space. Some characteristics of the simple models may negatively influence the resulting layouts. In this paper, we perform wind farm layout optimization using a simple wake model and compare the resulting improvements to large-eddy simulation (LES) results to confirm that the layout was actually improved. We begin by describing the models used, including changes specific for use with gradient-based optimization. We then compare our models’ output to previously published model and LES results. Using the models described, we performed gradient-based wind farm layout optimization …

Testing The Test: Expanding The Dialogue On Technical Writing Assessment In The Academy And Workplace, Lindsay Tanner, Jonathan Balzotti

Faculty Publications

The small amount of work on workplace writing assessment has focused almost entirely on student readiness for professional writing or included case studies of employer expectations for new writers. While these studies provide insight into current pedagogies for technical writing and writing instruction in general, the main conclusion to be drawn from them is the unsatisfactory number of recent graduates who display workplace readiness. In this article, we explore writing assessment research in both the academy and the workplace and attempt to identify ways in which the academy’s assessment practices lead, lag behind, or simply differ from writing assessment in …

Improving Compassion Measurement In The Workforce By Analyzing Users’ Mouse-Cursor Movements, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Haley Kirk, Joseph S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Compassion is often an important characteristic of effective employees in the workplace. To measure improvements in employee compassion, identify shortcomings, and even screen applicants, researchers and practitioners have sought reliable measures of compassion. Measuring compassion, however, can be very difficult because people are hesitant reporting a lack of compassion, due to their desire to be viewed favorably by others. We draw on the domain of human-computer interaction to help address this issue. Namely, we propose a theoretically-grounded methodology for helping differentiate between high and low compassion by monitoring users’ mouse-cursor movements in specialized online surveys. We find that people with …

Redmond (2002) Revisited: Have Standardized Behavioral Rating Scales Gotten Better At Accommodating For Overlapping Symptoms With Language Impairment?, Kirsten M. Russell, Sean M. Redmond, Amy Wilder

Faculty Publications

Seventeen years ago, Redmond reviewed five standardized behavioral rating scales and identified several aspects of their design that made them prone to mischaracterize language impairments as socioemotional behavioral disorders. The purpose of this report is to provide an update and extension of the original audit. We consulted test manuals to evaluate: (1) representation of children with language impairments in their standardization samples; (2) presence of language, or academic items within their inventories; (3) accommodations for administering the measure to children with language impairments; and (4) procedures for identifying inordinately punitive ratings. Overlapping language and academic symptoms continued to be a …

Correlations Of The Elemental Compositions Of Primary Coal Tar And Char, Andrew P. Richards, Colson Johnson, Thomas H. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

Simulations of large-scale coal combustors rely on accurate submodels to describe the chemical and physical changes in coal during reaction. Typically, simplified empirical submodels are tuned to experimental data to reduce the computational complexity. When data are not readily available, simplifying assumptions are used, which can create inaccuracies and biases in a large simulation. One such simplifying assumption in coal research is how to describe the elemental composition of primary pyrolysis products. This paper explores several different empirical model forms to predict the dry, ash-free fractions of C, H, O, N, and S in both the char and tar, using …

Modified Cpd Model For Coal Devolatilization At Underground Coal Thermal Treatment Conditions, Ding Wang, Thomas H. Fletcher, Swomitra Mohanty, Hoaquan Hu, Eric G. Eddings

Faculty Publications

To study coal pyrolysis behavior at underground coal thermal treatment (UCTT) conditions, a modified CPD (M-CPD) model was developed and evaluated using two scales of experiments as well as two different coals, Utah Sufco and Illinois #6. Compared with the original CPD model, three major aspects were changed, including (1) rewriting the algorithm using MATLAB built-in functions; (2) developing a correlation method between coal elemental composition and the initial functional group population to calculate the effect of cross-linking on the lattice structure; and (3) using a two-activation energy approach for gas generation kinetics modeling. Results predicted by the M-CPD model …

Make Summer Great Again -- Do The Research Experience For Teachers (Ret) Program, Dan Broadbent

Faculty Publications

What is the RET Program?

• “Research Experience for Teachers”
• It is a National Science Foundation (NSF) program that…
• “supports the active involvement of K-12 teachers and community college faculty in research in order to bring knowledge and innovation into their classrooms.”
• So, research universities apply for a grant from the NSF and then set it up.
• Usually paired with REU

Kms Conditions, Standard Real Subspaces And Reflection Positivity On The Circle Group, Karl Hermann Neeb, Gestur Ólafsson

Faculty Publications

We continue our investigations of the representation theoretic side of reflection positivity by studying positive definite functions Ψ on the additive group (ℝ, +) satisfying a suitably defined KMS condition. These functions take values in the space Bil (V) of bilinear forms on a real vector space V. As in quantum statistical mechanics, the KMS condition is defined in terms of an analytic continuation of Ψ to the strip [z ∈ : 0 ≥ Imz ≥ β] with a coupling condition Ψ (iβ + t) = Ψ (t) on the boundary. Our first main result consists of a characterization of …

An Analysis Of The Effect Of Tooth Wear On Bovid Identification, Juliet K. Brophy, Gregory J. Matthews, George K. Thiruvathukal

Faculty Publications

Previous research provides a method for reducing the subjectivity in taxonomic identification of species in the family Bovidae by quantifying the occlusal surface of molar teeth using elliptical Fourier analysis. In this current study, we specifically test what effect medium to late tooth wear has on the identification of bovids when using the form (size and shape) of the occlusal surface to classify specimens. To achieve this, the classification results of teeth with ≥85% of their occlusal surface (training data set) were compared with the results of teeth with 87% of the time with both Alcelaphini and Reduncini classifying correctly …

Ranking Accounting Journals By Topical Area And Methodology, John A. Barrick, Nathan W. Mecham, Scott L. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

This paper presents rankings of accounting journals disaggregated by topical area (AIS, audit, financial, managerial, tax, and other) and methodology (analytical, archival, experimental, and other). We find that only for the financial topical area and archival methodology does the traditional top-3 characterization of the best journals accurately describe which journals publish the most-cited work. For all other areas, including AIS, audit, managerial, tax, and other topics, and all other methodologies, including experimental, analytical, and other methodologies the top- 3 characterization does not describe which journals publish the most cited work. For only analytical research does the traditional top-6 journal characterization …

Characterizing Conceptual Modeling Research, Lois M. L. Delcambre, Stephen W. Liddle, Oscar Pastor, Veda C. Storey

Faculty Publications

The field of conceptual modeling continues to evolve and be applied to important modeling problems in many domains. With a goal of articulating the breadth and depth of the field, our initial work focused on the many implicit and explicit definitions of conceptual modeling, resulting in the Characterizing Conceptual Modeling (CCM) framework. In this paper, we focus on conceptual modeling research, presenting a Characterizing Conceptual Model Research (CCMR) framework and a series of evaluations to assess the coverage and usability of CCMR, the utility and independence of the individual fields in the framework, and likelihood of consistent use.

Formation Of Social Capital For Community College Students: A Second-Order Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Yu (April) Chen, Soko S. Starobin

Faculty Publications

Objective: This quantitative study constructed a statistical model to measure family social capital and college social capital among community college students. The authors also examined influences of these two types of social capital constructs on degree aspiration. Method: This study utilized the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Student Success Literacy Survey (SSSL) to collect data in all 15 community college districts in Iowa. With more than 5,000 responses, the authors conducted descriptive analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. Results: College social capital was measured by three latent variables such as interaction with advisors, …

Undergraduate International Student Enrollment Forecasting Model: An Application Of Time Series Analysis, Yu April Chen, Ran Li, Linda Serra Hagedorn

Faculty Publications

This study developed statistical models to forecast international undergraduate student enrollment at a Midwest university. The authors constructed a Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model with input variables to estimate future enrollment. This model reflected enrollment patterns by semester through highlighting seasonality. Further, authors added input variables such as visa policy changes, the rapid increase of Chinese undergraduate enrollment, and tuition rate into the model estimation. The visa policy change and the increase of Chinese undergraduate enrollment were significant predictors of international undergraduate enrollment. The effect of tuition rates was significant but minimal in magnitude. Findings of this study generate …

Deliberative Multiattribute Valuation Of Ecosystem Services Across A Range Of Regional Land-Use, Socioeconomic, And Climate Scenarios For The Upper Merrimack River Watershed, New Hampshire, Usa, Mark E. Borsuk, Georgia Mavrommati, Nihar R. Samal, Shantar Zuidema, Wil Wollheim, Shannon Rogers, Alexandra M. Thorn, David Lutz, Madeleine Mineau, Curt Grimm, Kevin Gardner

Faculty Publications

We evaluate the relative desirability of alternative futures for the upper Merrimack River watershed in New Hampshire, USA based on the value of ecosystem services at the end of the 21st century as gauged by its present-day inhabitants. This evaluation is accomplished by integrating land-use and socioeconomic scenarios, downscaled climate projections, biogeophysical simulation models, and the results of a citizen-stakeholder deliberative multicriteria evaluation. We find that although there are some trade-offs between alternative plausible futures, for the most part, it can be expected that future inhabitants of the watershed will be most satisfied if land-use planning in the intervening years …

Non-Pt-Symmetric Two-Layer Cylindrical Waveguide For Exceptional-Point-Enhanced Optical Devices, Yin Huang, Yuecheng Shen, Georgios Veronis

Faculty Publications

We investigate the exceptional points in a two-layer cylindrical waveguide structure consisting of absorbing and non-absorbing dielectrics. We show that, by tuning the core to total radius ratio and the refractive index of the core layer in such a structure, the complex effective indices of two waveguide modes can coalesce so that an exceptional point is formed. We show that the sensitivity of the effective index of the waveguide mode to variations of the refractive index of the material filling the shell layer is enhanced at the exceptional point. In addition, we show that larger sensitivity enhancement is obtained for …

Modeling/Simulation Of The Dividing Wall Column By Using The Rigorous Model, Chi Zhai, Qinjun Liu, Jose A. Romagnoli, Wei Sun

Faculty Publications

Dividing wall column (DWC) is an atypical distillation column with an internal, vertical WE partition wall that effectively accommodates two conventional distillation columns into one to improve the thermodynamic efficiency. In previous studies, different equivalent models by combining conventional columns are adopted to approximate the DWC modeling, which may not well describe the integration of the DWC; moreover, the computational cost increases when multiple columns are implemented to represent one DWC. In this paper, a rigorous mathematical model is proposed based on the mass balance, the energy and phase equilibrium of the DWC, where decision variables and state variables are …

Three-Dimensional Analytical Poromechanical Solutions For An Arbitrarily Inclined Borehole Subjected To Fluid Injection, S. L. Chen

Faculty Publications

Hydraulic fracturing is the primary method of stimulation in unconventional reservoirs, playing a significant role in oil and gas production enhancement. A key issue for the analysis of hydraulic fracture initiation is to accurately determine the stress distributions in the vicinity of the borehole caused by the injection of pressurized fluids. This paper develops an exact, three-dimensional, poroelastic coupled analytical solution for such stress analysis of an arbitrarily inclined borehole subjected concurrently to a finite-length fluid discharge and in situ stresses, using Fourier expansion theorem and the Laplace–Fourier integral transform technique. The complicated boundary conditions, which involve the mixed boundary …

Analysis Of Cylindrical Cavity Expansion In Anisotropic Critical State Soils Under Drained Conditions, K. Liu, S. L. Chen

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a semi-analytical solution for the drained cylindrical cavity expansion problem using the well-known anisotropic modified Cam clay model proposed by Dafalias in 1987. The prominent feature of this elastoplastic model, i.e., its capability to describe both the initial fabric anisotropy and stress-induced anisotropy of soils, makes the anisotropic elastoplastic solution derived herein for the cavity problem a more realistic one. Following the development by Chen and Abousleiman in 2013 of a novel solution scheme that establishes a link between the Eulerian and Lagrangian formulations of the condition of radial equilibrium, the plastic zone solution can eventually be …

Mrt-Lattice Boltzmann Model For Multilayer Shallowwater Flow, Kevin R. Tubbs, Frank T.C. Tsai

Faculty Publications

The objectives of this study are to introduce a multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann model (LBM) to simulate multilayer shallow water flows and to introduce graphics processing unit (GPU) computing to accelerate the lattice Boltzmann model. Using multiple relaxation times in the lattice Boltzmann model has an advantage of handling very low kinematic viscosity without causing a stability problem in the shallow water equations. This study develops a multilayer MRT-LBM to solve the multilayer Saint-Venant equations to obtain horizontal flow velocities in various depths. In the multilayer MRT-LBM, vertical kinematic viscosity forcing is the key term to couple adjacent layers. We …

Ieee Access Special Section Editorial: Secure Modulations For Future Wireless Communications And Mobile Networks, Feng Shu, Shihao Yan, Dongming Wang, Xiangwei Zhou, Jiangzhou Wang

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Developmental Test And Requirements Best Practices Of Successful Information Systems Efforts Using Agile Methods, Jeremy D. Kramer, Torrey J. Wagner

Faculty Publications

This article provides insights into the current state of developmental testing (DT) and requirements management in Department of Defense information systems employing Agile development. The authors describe the study methodology and provide an overview of Agile development and testing. Insights are described for requirements, detailed planning, test execution, and reporting. This work articulates best practices related to DT and requirements management strategies for programs employing modernized Software Development Life Cycle practices.

Improved N-Dimensional Data Visualization From Hyper-Radial Values, Todd J. Paciencia, Trevor J. Bihl, Kenneth W. Bauer

Faculty Publications

Higher-dimensional data, which is becoming common in many disciplines due to big data problems, are inherently difficult to visualize in a meaningful way. While many visualization methods exist, they are often difficult to interpret, involve multiple plots and overlaid points, or require simultaneous interpretations. This research adapts and extends hyper-radial visualization, a technique used to visualize Pareto fronts in multi-objective optimizations, to become an n-dimensional visualization tool. Hyper-radial visualization is seen to offer many advantages by presenting a low-dimensionality representation of data through easily understood calculations. First, hyper-radial visualization is extended for use with general multivariate data. Second, a method …