Digital Commons Network^™

A Study To Determine The Agricultural Perceptions Of High School Students For The "I Love Farmers…They Feed My Soul!" Organization, Mindy N. Burris

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to identify a target market of the “I Love Farmers…They Feed My Soul!” (ILF) organization and establish marketing techniques for the organization. ILF is a non-profit organization committed to connecting the younger generations with information about agriculture and how food is produced.

This study thoroughly investigated the markets in three geographic areas throughout California. Surveys were administered to three high school’s English classes to gather data for analysis. The analysis identified the target market of the ILF organization and the associations between each target market and responses to questions regarding their agricultural knowledge, social …

Dna Purification Process Optimization At Life Technologies Corporation, Trevor J. Shepherd

Master's Theses

This project focused on optimizing the plasmid DNA purification process at Life Technologies. These plasmids are designed to code for specialized proteins used by research universities, national laboratories, or research companies. Once cultivated and harvested, the plasmids must be analyzed for quality and quantity. The project is divided into improving three aspects of the process: 1) plasmid identification, 2) plasmid purity evaluation, and 3) process yield. Plasmid identification is now simpler, more robust and has zero ambiguity. Plasmid purity evaluation is now measured with computer software, which reduces user error and eliminates subjectivity. Using the nascent metrics provided by the …

Stabilization Of Nepheline Syenite Filler In A Uv-Cure Polyurethane Dispersion Wood Coating And Viscosity Stabilization Of Tinted Latex Architectural Coatings, Maung Ye Htet

Master's Theses

PART I ABSTRACT

STABILIZATION OF NEPHELINE SYENITE FILLER IN A UV-CURE

POLYURETHANE DISPERSION WOOD COATING

Nepheline syenite is a naturally occurring, silica deficient, sodium potassium aluminum silicate functional filler used in polymeric coatings, adhesives, and inks. Due to its unique optical characteristics, it can be utilized in formulating a low-viscosity polyurethane dispersion UV-cure clear wood coating system to enhance its functional properties. However, when the coating is formulated with the ultrafine filler, especially at a high loading level (e.g. >10% solids), the filler rapidly settles after formulated, forming a densely packed sediment layer shortening its shelf-life. Suspension of the filler …

Calcium Carbonate Particle Size Effects On Titanium Dioxide Light Scattering In Coatings, Jason W. Boke

Master's Theses

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is an essential component in a white paint formulation due to its excellent light scattering ability. TiO2 also happens to make up most of the raw materials cost. Viable replacements to TiO2 do not currently exist in a feasible manner. Rising costs in the recent TiO2 supply shortage have forced coatings formulators to find a balance between cost and performance. One method includes partial substitution of TiO2 with cheaper material such as calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which serves to occupy volume.

The purpose of this study was to compare the coating spread rate of paints with varying TiO2 …

Dairy Manure Flushwater Treatment By Packed-Bed Anaerobic Digesters, Neal Cary Adler

Master's Theses

Wastewater treatment performance of three pilot-scale packed-bed anaerobic digesters with walnut shell medium was researched for treating dairy freestall barn flushwater. Reciprocation mixing was evaluated as a means to lessen channelization in the media bed and to improve biogas production and organic matter removal at ambient temperatures. Reciprocation has been used in biological nitrogen removal systems to introduce air into the system to repeatedly oxygenate nitrifying biofilm along with mixing (Behrends et al. 2003), but the anaerobic systems benefit from mixing. Two tanks were used in each system, where one was full and one was empty at any given time. …

Establishment And Validation Of A Novel Fucci (Fluorescent Ubiquitination-Based Cell Cycle Indicator) In An In Vitro Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Model, Jane Marie Isquith

Master's Theses

The deregulation of the cell cycle is important in the leukemic transformation and in the continued discovery of more efficient targeted therapies. After elucidation of the role of the RNA editor ADAR1 in the malignant reprogramming of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) progenitors to leukemia stem cells (LSCs) during the chronic phase to blast crisis stages of the disease, current research seeks to uncover the mechanism of action of ADAR1 in this process. To study the potential role ADAR1 plays in the changes to cell cycle during this disease progression, a novel Fucci (fluorescent ubiquitination-based cell cycle indicator) system was introduced …

Shark Sim: A Procedural Method Of Animating Leopard Sharks Based On Raw Location Data, Katherine S. Blizard

Master's Theses

Fish such as the Leopard Shark (Triakis semifasciata) can be tagged on their fin, released back into the wild, and their location tracked though technologies such as autonomous robots. Timestamped location data about their target is stored. We present a way to procedurally generate an animated simulation of T. semifasciata using only these timestamped location points.

This simulation utilizes several components. Input timestamps dictate a monotonic time-space curve mapping the simulation clock to the space curve. The space curve connects all the location points as a spline without any sharp folds that are too implausible for shark traversal. We create …

A Stand-Alone Methodology For Data Exploration In Support Of Data Mining And Analytics, Michael Gage

Master's Theses

With the emergence of Big Data, data high in volume, variety, and velocity, new analysis techniques need to be developed to effectively use the data that is being collected. Knowledge discovery from databases is a larger methodology encompassing a process for gathering knowledge from that data. Analytics pair the knowledge with decision making to improve overall outcomes. Organizations have conclusive evidence that analytics provide competitive advantages and improve overall performance. This paper proposes a stand-alone methodology for data exploration. Data exploration is one part of the data mining process, used in knowledge discovery from databases and analytics. The goal of …

Misheard Me Oronyminator: Using Oronyms To Validate The Correctness Of Frequency Dictionaries, Jennifer G. Hughes

Master's Theses

In the field of speech recognition, an algorithm must learn to tell the difference between "a nice rock" and "a gneiss rock". These identical-sounding phrases are called oronyms. Word frequency dictionaries are often used by speech recognition systems to help resolve phonetic sequences with more than one possible orthographic phrase interpretation, by looking up which oronym of the root phonetic sequence contains the most-common words.

Our paper demonstrates a technique used to validate word frequency dictionary values. We chose to use frequency values from the UNISYN dictionary, which tallies each word on a per-occurance basis, using a proprietary text corpus, …

Speed And Agility Training The Mustang Way: The Development Of An Instructional Dvd For Cal Poly Athletes' Summer Training, Gary D. Heron

Master's Theses

SPEED AND AGILITY TRAINING THE MUSTANG WAY:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INSTRUCTIONAL DVD FOR CAL POLY ATHLETES’ SUMMER TRAINING

Gary Douglas Heron

The purpose of this project was to create an instructional DVD of speed and agility training for Cal Poly student-athletes. The DVD is for athletes’ use when they are away from campus during summer break and contains information about the same drills and information the strength and conditioning coaches provided while athletes were on campus. The project was filmed and edited by the graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach for Cal Poly intercollegiate athletics. The DVD contains 74 …

Analysis Of Protein Pre-Coatings And Their Effect On Endothelial Cell Adhesion In A Tissue Engineered Blood Vessel Mimic, Rachel Ann Gohres

Master's Theses

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in developing countries. Because thousands of people are affected by this disease, medical device companies are constantly developing new intravascular devices in attempt to cure or alleviate the symptoms of the disease. However, before these devices can be brought to market or implanted in to patients, they must complete three stages of testing to receive FDA approval. These testing stages include: in vitro testing, in vivo testing, and clinical trials. Currently, there is a large gap between in vitro and in vivo testing because it is difficult to obtain physiologic information about …

Social Isolation And Cell Phone Use By College Students, Nichol Elise Myers

Master's Theses

In our technologically ever-advancing world, cell phones can either help us remain socially connected or can contribute to social isolation by substituting for face-to-face contact. This study examines the levels of social isolation in terms of the state of loneliness and trait of shyness and their correlations with academic achievement in 206 community college and university students to examine the connection between social isolation, GPA and cell phone use in college students. Two instruments used in the collection of data were the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS) and the DeJong Gierveld Loneliness Scale. Correlational analysis was used …

An Analysis Of Generational Caching Implemented In A Production Website, Marc E. Zych

Master's Theses

Website scaling has been an issue since the inception of the web. The demand for user generated content and personalized web pages requires the use of a database for a storage engine. Unfortunately, scaling the database to handle large amounts of traffic is still a problem many companies face. One such company is iFixit, a provider of free, publicly-editable, online repair manuals. Like many websites, iFixit uses Memcached to decrease database load and improve response time. However, the caching strategy used is a very ad hoc one and therefore can be greatly improved.

Most research regarding web application caching focuses …

Paris: A Parallel Rsa-Prime Inspection Tool, Joseph R. White

Master's Theses

Modern-day computer security relies heavily on cryptography as a means to protect the data that we have become increasingly reliant on. As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, methods of security must be better than ever. Validation tools can be leveraged to help increase our confidence and accountability for methods we employ to secure our systems.

Security validation, however, can be difficult and time-consuming. As our computational ability increases, calculations that were once considered “hard” due to length of computation, can now be done in minutes. We are constantly increasing the size of our keys and attempting to make computations harder …

Maternal Acculturation Levels And Their Effect On Children's Food Intake, Maternal Perceptions Of Body Size And Maternal Stress, Tracie A. Chavoor

Master's Theses

In the U.S., obesity has hit alarming rates and affects Hispanic children disproportionately. Acculturation, the shift from one culture’s values, beliefs and practices to those of a new culture, may have both negative and positive health effects on immigrants. The objectives of this study were to determine the association between the level of acculturation (low acculturation or high acculturation) of low-income Latina mothers and the foods consumed by their children (0 to 36 months old). The association between acculturation and maternal perceptions of infant and toddler body size, maternal perceptions of her own body size and maternal parenting stress were …

Accurate Hardware Raid Simulator, Darrin Kalung Weng

Master's Theses

Computer data storage is growing at an astonishing rate. With cloud computing and the growth of the Internet enterprise storage has been predicted to grow at rates as high as 300\% per year. To fulfill this need technologies such as Redundant Array of Independent Disks or RAID are being used in industry today. Not only does RAID increase I/O performance but also provides redundancy measures to protect against hardware failure. Even though RAID has existed for some time now and is well understood, proprietary optimizations such as command scheduling and cache strategies that are employed by current RAID controllers are …

Urban Agriculture Stormwater Management In California Cities, Rachel L. Cohen

Master's Theses

Cities within California are beginning to incorporate urban agriculture into their land use designations. Prompted by residents and local organizations, cities are hoping to capture the benefits that urban agriculture provides. Research has shown that urban agriculture renews and beautifies neighborhoods, provides healthy food choices, increases public health, has the potential to help with stormwater runoff, creates jobs, and fosters community. In the last few years, several California cities have made headlines as they have adopted new zoning codes that include urban agriculture.

In reviewing these new zoning codes and exploring the topic of urban agriculture, it became evident that …

A Multiphysics Simulation Of A Coronary Artery, Garry L. Howe

Master's Theses

This thesis hypothesizes that a commercially available multiphysics simulation software package can be easily employed to characterize the fluid flow and mechanical behavior in healthy and diseased arteries. To this end, multiphysics model of a coronary artery —the LAD artery—was created in COMSOL Multiphysics®. Wall shear stresses and distension were examined to validate the model. Such a model can be adapted to guide the design of cardiovascular devices.

A Novel Unit Cell Antenna For Highly Integrated Phased Arrays In The Shf Band, Timothy Bryan Ogilvie

Master's Theses

Phased arrays are electromagnetic antenna systems comprised of many radiating elements and processing electronics. Radiating elements are typically positioned in an orderly grid within the antenna aperture. In the receive mode of operation, radiating elements capture some of the signal energy from incoming radiation and guide these signals to processing electronics. Signals are filtered and amplified to maintain the desired sensitivity and complexly weighted using circuits with reconfigurable amplification gain and phase delay. Finally, all signals are combined. The summation of these complexly weighted spatial samples forms a spatial filter in the same way complexly weighted temporal samples establish a …

Comparison Of Biofilm Media In Reciprocating Biofilters Treating Dairy Flushwater, Kyle Keoki Tatsuo Fooks

Master's Theses

Reciprocating biofilters known as ReCip is a viable technology to manage nutrients, mainly nitrogen, problems at livestock operations such as swine farms and dairies. Past studies have demonstrated that ReCip is more adept at total nitrogen (TN) removal than traditional subsurface flow wetland systems. The traditional substrate used to attach biomass was rock aggregate; this media may be hard to obtain for some agricultural projects, so alternate substrates are tested and compared with the rock aggregate. The purpose of the study was twofold: first, different biofilm media were tested and compared in terms of treatment performance and, second, the long-term …

Surface Tethered Pamam Dendrimers On Controlled Pore Glass As Color Release Sensors For Phosphates, Chang Liu

Master's Theses

Poly(amidoamine) dendrimer (PAMAM) are highly branched macromolecules with reactive amine groups in their interior and exterior. PAMAM dendrimers were attached to controlled pore glass (CPG) surfaces in order to create new functionalized surfaces and used as platforms for UV-vis and fluorescent sensing of phosphate substrates via indicator displacement assays (IDA).

CPG surfaces were first modified with different sized PAMAM dendrimers (generation 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0), then reacted with two strong metal-chelators: aminofunctionalized terpyridine (synthesized from 2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridine) and Nα-Nα-bis(carboxymethyl)-L-lysine (Lys-NTA). First of all, Cu(II) metal ion binding capacities were measured on the surfaces. Second, two terminal group density tests, amine assay …

Get A Grip: How Consumers Interpret Images Of Women Golfers And The Impact On The Back9network's Marketing Strategy, Alexandra M. Badalucco

Master's Theses

For centuries, sport has been a space dominated by men and served as a microcosm of society in which women’s subordinate position has been highlighted. Despite the great strides women have made within the sport industry, sport continues to serve as a realm that is more welcoming to men than it is to women and that reinforces hegemonic masculinity (Cunningham & Singer, 2012; Connell, 1987). Although many sports reinforce male hegemony and patriarchy through use of violence and physicality, golf has also reproduced notions of male hegemony through the on-course rituals men take part in, the gendered language used on …

Management Alternatives To Reduce Pumping Effects In The Fenton River During Periods Of Low Stream Flow, David W. Payne

Master's Theses

The University of Connecticut relies on the Fenton River water supply wells to support 25% of their overall water supply. Low stream flow can commonly be seen from June - October, in which the University must reduce pumping based on stream flow thresholds to prevent adverse effects to fish habitat. The objective of this study was to investigate the stream/aquifer interaction in order to increase water withdrawals while minimizing adverse impacts to in- stream flow. A groundwater flow model was developed using MODFLOW to investigate the influence of well location and pump timing on in-stream flow in the vicinity of …

The Effects Of Hydration Status On Pacing And Performance During An Ironman Triathlon, Tracy L. Hicks

Master's Theses

Context: Dehydration can negatively impact aerobic performance. Objective: To observe the effect of hydration status on Ironman Triathlete performance and their ability to maintain pace; and to observe the effect of hydration status on pacing and performance for athletes who monitor heart rate for pacing feedback. Design: Observational ironman triathlon study Setting: Lake Placid Ironman racecourse (WBGT, 22.1±2.0 °C). Participants: 41 (30 males, 7 females) triathletes (age, 39±7 yrs; height, 174.0±9.9 cm; pre-race weight, 72.4±10.1 kg; body fat, 15.3±5.6%.) divided into groups based on use(HR) or no use(NHR) of heart rate as pacing feedback, and hydrated(HY) or dehydrated(DHY); based on …

Advanced Techniques In Emergency Preparedness And Geoprocessing, Dean P. Chauvin Jr

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Sulfonated Polyethersulfone As A New Platform For Thin Film Composite Membranes, Brendan R. O'Grady

Master's Theses

Membrane based separations are widely in many technically and commercially relevant processes, including sea and brackish water desalination and treatment. Current drawbacks from membrane-based processes are fouling propensity and low water fluxes. One solution to remediate these issues is the use of intrinsically hydrophilic support layers in composite membranes. The hydrophilic nature of the substrates will facilitate increased water transport across the membrane and provide anti-fouling characteristics.

This study investigated the use of sulfonated polyethersulfone (SPES) as a new material for thin film composite membranes. Four degrees of sulfonation were examined. Asymmetric membranes were cast with polymer loadings between 12-20 …

Grotesque Drag Queens And Toxic Matriarchs: Motherhood And The Subversive Female Body In Disney Animated Films, Allison Footit

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Working In The Gay Front Line: A Model Of Workplace Heterosexist Harassment, Daniel Herres

Master's Theses

Research on harassment by sexual orientation is becoming increasingly relevant in society. Gay rights have progressed to be in the forefront of the political and social awareness, and organizations are turning their focus toward improving workplace diversity. Still, discrimination and harassment of LGB people continue to be a problem. Although a number of studies have begun to address this issue, large gaps still exist in the literature. The goal of this study was to identify antecedents and outcomes of workplace heterosexist harassment, as well as the influences of contextual and individual moderating variables. Participants from multiple organizations completed an online …

Development Of An Analysis And Simulation Package For Protein Molecules & Improving The Graphics Of Their Conformational Transition, Hima N. Khoshreza

Master's Theses

Proteins are the building blocks of many living organisms and to study them is to discover many of nature’s processes. Abnormalities of these superb molecules make them also accountable for a wide range of human diseases. Every sixty seconds an American will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The mystery behind this disease and many others might well be revealed by novel protein prediction techniques. This thesis investigates developments of two tools to benefit such techniques.

First, a user-friendly graphical interface (GUI) was developed based on a previously perfected program named ProtoFold. ProtoFold is a protein simulation software that examines the …

A Method For Network Clustering And Cluster Based Routing, Jonathan Adelson

Master's Theses

Social networks and sensor networks are two very different types of networks that have been made possible by modern technology. Portable wireless devices, including laptops and cell phones, have made social networks part of our daily lives. Similarly, cheap, fast, portable devices are ideal for sensor networks. The common thread is the underlying graph structure, which is decentralized and can naturally form groups. However, human groups are messy, and can best be modeled by graph clusters that can be allowed to overlap with each other. We apply this idea to the identification of pre-existing groups as well as discovering a …