Digital Commons Network^™

Childhood Obesity Prevention In Income-Disadvantaged Populations: An Evaluation Of Two Novel Approaches, Kayla L. Vosburgh

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Chemosensory Function In Chronic Smokers: Findings From Nhanes 2011-2014 And An E-Cigarette Intervention, Sarah-Grace Glennon

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Understanding How Intentionally Unplugging From Cell Phones Shapes Interpersonal Relationships And The Undergraduate College Experience, Jadelin P. Felipe

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of what motivated college students—the Unplugged Students—to intentionally use their cell phones less and how they understood the impact that unplugging had on their interpersonal relationships and college experience. Nine undergraduate college students from four private schools were interviewed in one-on-one semi- structured interviews. These students, considered non-users, provided a particularly useful perspective as these students made a conscious choice to counteract social norms and experienced both being plugged in and unplugged. Cell phones and the act of unplugging proved to make up a complex and more nuanced topic than …

A Physiologically Motivated Approach To The Classification Of Natural Sounds Using High Order Sound Statistics, Brian B. Bishop

Master's Theses

The ability of humans and animals to classify sounds into behaviorally relevant categories is an ongoing field of study in auditory neuroscience and psychophysics. We employed a physiologically motivated signal processing scheme to extract time-varying statistics from a large database of real sounds. Our hypothesis is that two sound statistics, intensity and contrast, will be sufficient to classify broad categories of sounds using a naïve Bayesian classifier. We seek to evaluate this hypothesis, determine to what extent these two time-varying statistics can be used to classify sounds and to evaluate the limitations of the technique. The sounds themselves were organized …

Inducing Emotional Response In Interactive Media, Keenan M. Reimer

Master's Theses

Video games, and entertainment media have been developed for many years, and eliciting emotional experiences is an integral part of that process. Producing and editing game content in order to affect desired emotional experiences can be expensive and cumbersome to developers. This paper presents a study intended to show that such experiences can be affected with simple after-the-fact audio-visual effects. As subjects of the study, participants experience three different emotional states, fear, peace, and none, over three rounds and in three different game environments. They are given a simple narrative in each environment that directs them to gather various objects. …

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …

Being With Bees: An Anthropological Study On Human-Animal Relations In Southern Beekeeping, Kori Nadine Armstrong

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates the complex and dynamic communicative relationship between beekeepers and their managed honey bee colonies, providing insight into the relationship between bees, their stewards, and the interface between nature and culture. It also helps unravel the ways in which this interspecies relationship changes a beekeepers’ perception of what it means to be human. Data collection features extensive participant observation with 21 semi-structured interviews with Southern beekeepers.

The interrelationship between communication and interaction, as well as diverse ways in which messages and cues manifest in the bee yard are explored through olfactory, optical, touch, and mechanical modalities. Variables including …

"Black And White Together, We Shall Win": Southern White Activists In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Olivia Bethany Moore

Master's Theses

During the Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi has often been characterized as a simple battle of white racists against black activists. Drawing heavily on oral histories, personal publications, and Mississippi Sovereignty Commission reports, this thesis examines the unconventional stories of white southerners who transcended the segregationist environments in which they were born. As southern white activism took many forms, this work offers biographical insights to three individuals who have received little scholarly attention: journalist P.D East, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activist Buford Posey, and William Carey president Ralph Noonkester. While their contributions between 1950-1971 differed, being …

Shaken, Not Stirred: Espionage, Fantasy, And British Masculinity During The Cold War, Anna Rikki Nelson

Master's Theses

This project seeks to define and explore the development of Cold War British masculinity and national identity in response to decolonization. Following World War II, Great Britain experienced a time of political and cultural rebuilding. This project argues that following World War II, Britain had to renegotiate gender and national identity within the context of decolonization, the rise of the welfare state, and Britain’s diminished role in global politics, and the tensions within gender and national identity were expressed in Britain’s interest in espionage narratives both real and fictionalized. British spy novels by Ian Fleming, Desmond Cory, and John Le …

Decolonizing The Ya North: Environmental Injustice In Sherri L. Smith’S Orleans, Micah-Jade M. Coleman

Master's Theses

Young Adult (YA) dystopias, in recent years, have imagined a future world fueled by the overuse and misuse of technology, the advancement of science for human gain, as well as societies ruled by governments that govern based on their own self-interests and economic gain. Such novels have opened the door for discussion about how the present-day actions of societies can impact the future of the environment; yet many only focus their attention on societies in the North— regions considered “developed” by the western world. In her YA novel, Orleans (2014), Sherri L. Smith focuses attention on the aftermath of Hurricane …

Supporting Emerging Multilingual Newcomer Students And Their Teachers In California Public High Schools, Rosa Lea V. Ojeda

Master's Theses

This study focuses supporting emerging multilingual newcomer students and their teachers. The study examines research regarding deficit mindset that has led to student labels that perpetuate negative school and teacher views of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Additional research used for this study includes studies on what has been determined to benefit emerging multilingual students, as well as studies about the role of globalization and politics in the education of emerging multilingual and other culturally and linguistically diverse students. The study seeks to further the research on what changes in practice and mindset need to take place in the system …

Location Inference Of Social Media Posts At Hyper-Local Scale, Brian D. Mcclanahan

Master's Theses

This paper describes an approach to infer the location of a social media post at a hyper-local scale based on its content, conditional to the knowledge that the post originates from a larger area such as a city or even a state. The approach comprises three components: (i) a discriminative classifier, namely, Logistic Regression (LR) which selects from a set of most probable sub-regions from where 1 a post might have originated; (ii) a clustering technique, namely, k-means, that adaptively partitions the larger geographic region into sub-regions based on the density of the posts; and (iii) a range of techniques …

Whisk: Web Hosted Information Into Summarized Knowledge, Jiewen Wu

Master's Theses

Today’s online content increases at an alarmingly rate which exceeds users’ ability to consume such content. Modern search techniques allow users to enter keyword queries to find content they wish to see. However, such techniques break down when users freely browse the internet without knowing exactly what they want. Users may have to invest an unnecessarily long time reading content to see if they are interested in it. Automatic text summarization helps relieve this problem by creating synopses that significantly reduce the text while preserving the key points. Steffen Lyngbaek created the SPORK summarization pipeline to solve the content overload …

The "Creative Workspace": A Comparative Analysis Of Stakeholder Perceptions, Augustina Radziunaite

Master's Theses

The rise of information technologies and creative industries formed a new class of “creative knowledge workers” with special needs for a workspace design. The recent tendency of playful and bold workspace designs for creative industries was labeled by some researchers as a “creative workspace,” but a body of knowledge about design strategies supporting “creative knowledge workers’” performance is still limited.

This master’s thesis research attempts to define “creative workspace” design phenomenon based on the three main stakeholder groups’ perceptions. The research analyzes existing literature and conducts in-depth interviews with designers and users to collect the data and compare the findings. …

Mechanical Behavior Of Hybrid Glass/Steel Reinforced Epoxy Composites, Amanda Mcbride

Master's Theses

Our nation’s deteriorating infrastructure demonstrates the need for a new class of multifunctional materials that alleviate the shortcomings of traditional materials. Conventional fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have served as an alternative material in civil structures for the past three decades. They offer high strength and stiffness, low weight, and corrosion resistance, however, lack ductility and the ability to absorb energy before failure.

To address these shortcomings for structural composites, research was conducted to investigate the capabilities of fiber hybridization. Varying volume fractions of thin steel reinforcement were introduced into typical glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites. This hybrid FRP may address …

The 2013 Boston Marathon Attacks: An Experimental Investigation Of Worldview Change Following Film Re-Exposure To Mass Trauma, Ian A. Gutierrez

Master's Theses

Models of meaning making and post-traumatic growth contend that traumatic events are catalysts for significant and long-lasting change in a person’s worldview—that is, their beliefs about social, metaphysical, theological, and political reality. Nearly all tests of this contention have employed retrospective and cross-sectional methods. However, the limitations inherent in these designs preclude causal conclusions. The current study represents the first longitudinal, laboratory-based experimental examination of belief change following trauma exposure using the trauma film paradigm. Findings reveal that the trauma film paradigm can successfully induce posttraumatic affective responses with live news coverage of a mass trauma (i.e., the 2013 Boston …

The Impact Of A Smarter Lunchrooms Makeover On Children's Food Choice And Consumption, Polina Zhuzhina

Master's Theses

Childhood obesity has tripled over the past three decades and poses a serious public health problem. The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement aims to increase healthy eating by incorporating low-cost to no-cost alterations to the school lunchroom in an effort to increase consumption of healthier foods, such as fruits and vegetables, by making them more attractive and convenient.

Our study implemented Smarter Lunchrooms interventions at two primarily Hispanic elementary schools in Paso Robles, CA. The interventions focused on increasing the appeal of the salad bars, including installation of age-appropriate signage highlighting fruits and vegetables, as well as branding of fruits and vegetables …

A Multi-Carrier Collaborative Solution To Minimize Connectivity-Loss, Michael Wong

Master's Theses

Nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smart phone, and 19% of Americans rely on their smartphone for either accessing valuable information or staying connected with their friends and family across the globe [15]. Staying always-on and always-connected to the Internet is one of the most important and useful features of a smartphone. This connection is used by almost every single application on the device including web browsers, email clients, messaging applications, etc. Unfortunately, the cellular networks on our smartphones are not perfect and do not always have cellular signal. Our devices often lose Internet connection when users are on the …

Empirical Validation Of An In Silico Model Predicting The Fluid Dynamics Of An Iliac Artery Aneurysm, Rachel E. Willis

Master's Theses

Iliac artery aneurysms are considered rare and difficult to detect and treat. Prompt diagnosis and timely intervention are essential, because the incidence of rupture is as high as 50%. The reported mortality rate for patients who undergo surgery for ruptured iliac artery aneurysm ranges from 50% to 70%. This study developed an in-vitro mechanical model of an iliac artery aneurysm to verify the accuracy of computer simulation software. Both the in vitro model and the in silico model can be used for further research to develop better treatment technology. This study also looks at the different types of iliac artery …

Exploring Travel Time Reliability Using Bluetooth Data Collection: A Case Study In San Luis Obispo, California, Krista Purser

Master's Theses

Bluetooth technology applications have improved travel time data collection efforts and allowed for collection of large data sets at a low cost per data unit. Mean travel times between pairs of points are available, but the primary value of this technique is the availability of the entire distribution of travel times throughout multiple days and time periods, allowing for a greater understanding of travel time variations and reliability. The use of these data for transportation planning, engineering and operations continues to expand. Previous applications of similar data sources have included travel demand and simulation model validation, work zone traffic patterns, …

Design Of Inexpensive And Easy To Use Diy Internet Of Things Platform, Samuel R. Jaffe

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a new, inexpensive, and less complex system for a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Internet of Things (IoT) platform. The hardware aspects focus on a new chip called the ESP8266 which contains both microcontroller and WiFi connectivity capabilities in an extremely affordable package. The system uses the Arduino IDE to program the ESP8266, which is known to be an extremely user-friendly environment. All other software is both free and easy to use. Past methods of creating IoT projects involved either expensive hardware, often ranging from $50-$100 per node, or complicated programming requiring a full …

After The Paris Agreement: How India Can Use Climate Financing To Implement A Sustainable Clean Cookstove Program, Hannah Kornfeld

Master's Theses

The burning of biomass for cooking purposes without proper ventilation and filters poses a massive health and climate risk. Health implications from exposure to household air pollution from this type of fuel impacts women and children in many developing countries, who spend many hours a day cooking and gathering fuel. Climate implications from burning solid biomass results in increased carbon dioxide and black carbon emissions, which contribute to global climate change. This thesis aims to explore the issues associated with biomass cookstoves in terms of both health and climate, and seeks to understand how a new national clean cookstove program …

The Effects Of Quorum Sensing And Temperature On The Soluble Proteome Of Vibrio Salmonicida, Christopher L. Massey

Master's Theses

Vibrio salmonicida causes cold-water vibriosis in salmon populations around the world and causes financial damage to fisheries designed to farm these salmon. Very little is known about the physiology of how V. salmonicida causes disease and measures to contain vibriosis are restricted to either vaccinating individual fish against disease or administering antibiotics when an outbreak is detected. These procedures are costly and increase the risk for selection of antibiotic-resistant V. salmonicida strains. A recent reoccurrence of outbreaks in Norwegian fisheries provided incentive to better understand the virulence mechanisms of V. salmonicida. In this thesis, a proteomic approach was used to …

The Influence Of Exclusive Breastfeeding On Growth Trajectory From Birth To Year 5 In A Wic Cohort, Lindsey Arevalos

Master's Theses

OBJECTIVE. The impact of exclusively breastfeeding (EBF) on child body mass index (BMI) from birth through 60 months of age was investigated.

METHODS. 60,190 mothers and children attending Women, Infant and Children (WIC) clinics in the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties of California provided data on breastfeeding duration, maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, and child weight-for-length (WL) was measured at 3 month intervals until 5 years of age. Missing time points were interpolated in determining child BMI/WL z-score trajectories plotted on the Center of Disease Control (CDC) infant and child growth curves. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to contrast …

Polyfs Visualizer, Paul Martin Fallon

Master's Theses

One of the most important operating system topics, file systems, control how we store and access data and form a key point in a computer scientists understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a computer. However, file systems, with their abstract concepts and lack of concrete learning aids, is a confusing subjects for students. Historically at Cal Poly, the CPE 453 Introduction to Operating Systems has been on of the most failed classes in the computing majors, leading to the need for better teaching and learning tools. Tools allowing students to gain concrete examples of abstract concepts could be used to …

Skewer: Sentiment Knowledge Extraction With Entity Recognition, Christopher James Wu

Master's Theses

The California state legislature introduces approximately 5,000 new bills each legislative session. While the legislative hearings are recorded on video, the recordings are not easily accessible to the public. The lack of official transcripts or summaries also increases the effort required to gain meaningful insight from those recordings. Therefore, the news media and the general population are largely oblivious to what transpires during legislative sessions.

Digital Democracy, a project started by the Cal Poly Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy, is an online platform created to bring transparency to the California legislature. It features a searchable database of state …

The Bottlefly Ios Application For Wine Recommendations, Carson James Carroll

Master's Theses

The use of smartphone applications has taken over the way people interact with the world. The design of an application has become an important aspect in keeping the user engaged [22]. People are looking for applications that are easy to use and will get the job done. This thesis focuses on the design of a mobile application for iOS that recommends wine in various retail locations that match a user’s taste preferences.

The goals of this thesis are to design an iOS application that recommends wine to consumers, improve upon the wine recommendation algorithms by acquiring more customer data, and …

Categorizing Blog Spam, Brandon Bevans

Master's Theses

The internet has matured into the focal point of our era. Its ecosystem is vast, complex, and in many regards unaccounted for. One of the most prevalent aspects of the internet is spam. Similar to the rest of the internet, spam has evolved from simply meaning ‘unwanted emails’ to a blanket term that encompasses any unsolicited or illegitimate content that appears in the wide range of media that exists on the internet.

Many forms of spam permeate the internet, and spam architects continue to develop tools and methods to avoid detection. On the other side, cyber security engineers continue to …

Regrowth Of Chlorella Sorokiniana On Recycled Media With Replenished Nutrients, William H. Spence

Master's Theses

Growth media recycling during algae cultivation is necessary to increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of biofuel production from algae feedstocks. Without recycling media, the cost of algae based biofuel production would be prohibitively high and large scale algae based biofuel production would not be economically viable. The ratio of media recycled to media wasted assumed for algae farms is generally calculated to maintain salt concentrations below growth inhibitory levels, ignoring the influence of secondary metabolites which might decrease productivity. Secondary metabolites, which include allelopathic or auto-inhibitory biological contaminants, might lead to the accumulation of growth-inhibiting compounds in recycled …

Bim And Communication: Implementation Of Building Information Modeling Into An Integrated Project Delivery Contract To Encourage Project Teams To Communicate, Kathleen Worden

Master's Theses

The objective of this thesis is to explore BIM, IPD and their implementation into a building project contract. The Integrated Delivery Processes is comprised of a collaborative team of Designers, Constructors, and Owners working side by side to create a successful project. BIM has been introduced as a technology into the industry, as a tool that these parties can use for better understanding the project.

Through case studies of IPD projects using BIM are observed, it was determined that although BIM was used, one problem faced is the lack of BIM standards included initially in a contract for in an …