Digital Commons Network^™

He's The Hero We Deserve: Batman As A Figure Of Dominant Masculinity, Karen Medrano

Master's Theses

For decades, comic books have been a prevalent media format through which cultural perceptions of masculinity are disseminated. Batman is an exemplary character who is expected to perform and behave in a manner that corresponds with social constructs of the American masculine identity: strong, dominant, and protective. These gendered traits, as represented through Batman’s body and relationships with various allies, are analyzed through the lens of R.W. Connell’s theory of dominant and subordinated masculinities (derived from her larger theory of hegemonic masculinity). As our cultural perception of masculinity has shifted, so has the visual representation of Batman over his eighty-year …

Classification Of Hyperspectral Colon Cancer Images Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Sean Joseph Mobilia

Master's Theses

Hyperspectral images are 3-D images, which contain data in hundreds of spectral bands as opposed to 2-D images, which contain data in at most 3 bands (red, green, and blue). Hyperspectral imagery was initially developed for remote sensing; however, recently, researchers have started to see its potential in medical diagnosis and cancer detection. Hyperspectral images provide massive amounts of data about the objects they are studying, and this causes challenges during information processing. Machine learning tools, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), are known to be successful in extracting features and classifying traditional 2-D images. This thesis proposes CNN architectures …

Combining Blockchain And Swarm Robotics To Deploy Surveillance Missions, Ardalan Razavi

Master's Theses

Current swarm robotics systems are not utilized as frequently in surveillance missions due to the limitations of the existing distributed systems' designs. The main limitation of swarm robotics is the absence of a framework for robots to be self-governing, secure, and scalable. As of today, a swarm of robots is not able to communicate and perform tasks in transparent and autonomous ways. Many believe blockchain is the imminent future of distributed autonomous systems. A blockchain is a system of computers that stores and distributes data among all participants. Every single participant is a validator and protector of the data in …

Increasing The Persistence Of Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder In Higher Education Settings: Faculty Perspectives On The Social Skills Needs In Classroom Environments, Amy Rodriguez

Master's Theses

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who transition to higher education environments vary in their level of skills when engaging in social activities. Current research is limited about supporting college students with ASD socially in the classroom. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the perceptions of faculty regarding the social skills support needs of students with ASD in classroom settings that can influence the level of achievement of academic goals in postsecondary environments. Seven faculty members from a comprehensive public university in the west participated in a qualitative interview. The results of this study showed that participants …

Pond Occupancy By Western Pond Turtles In The Diablo Range Of Santa Clara County, California, Billy Tu

Master's Theses

The loss of natural habitat is one the primary drivers for species decline worldwide. Artificially, created habitat in human-altered landscapes can help supplement or enhance habitat for threatened wildlife populations. The western pond turtle (Emys pallida), a species declining in California, depends on aquatic habitats for its survival, but can use human-created livestock ponds in lieu of natural aquatic habits. This study examined the extent to which western pond turtle used livestock ponds in Santa Clara County, CA, and the importance of key habitat features in the turtle occupancy of livestock ponds. From March 2017 to September 2017, I conducted …

Dna Methylation Methods For Donor Age Prediction Using Touch Dna, Emily Neverett

Master's Theses

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated over 30 million individuals fall victim to human trafficking each year, of which, 50% are children below the age of 16. In 2012, the ILO reported there to be 168 million child laborers worldwide, with many trafficked into hazardous conditions to manufacture consumer products that are sold in developed countries. This is a modern form of slavery with poor working conditions, no access to education, and low wages. The hidden nature of this crime, however, makes it extremely difficult to identify and locate victims of forced child labor, and thus making it challenging to …

Effects Of Lisdexamfetamine On Effort-Related And Consummatory Behaviors Supported By Foods With Varying Degrees Of Palatability: Exploration Of A Binge-Like Eating Model, Rose Presby

Master's Theses

Diets high in sugar or fat are associated with multiple health conditions, including binge eating disorder (BED). BED affects approximately 2% of the US adult population, and occurs more frequently in females. It is important to develop animal models of palatable food consumption, food seeking, and voluntary physical activity that may have relevance for BED. The d-amphetamine prodrug lisdexamfetamine (LDX) is used to treat BED. The present experiments studied the effect of LDX on food intake and effort-based choice tasks in female Wistar rats. In experiment one, three groups of rats received different food exposure conditions randomly spread over several …

Effect Of Family Structure On Mental Health Problems In Adolescents In The United States, Adekemi Olaide Suleiman

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Marital Relationship, And Its Association With The Physical And Emotional Health Of Women In A Low-Income Community Of Mumbai, India, Nita Thapa-Chhetri

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Understanding Trade-Offs Between Built And Natural Assets In Coastal Management Projects For Inland, Coastal Residents Using Latent Class Modeling Techniques: An Application To The Connecticut Coastline, Julia Dumaine

Master's Theses

Climate change threatens our established communities worldwide through consistently increased average surface temperatures, rising sea levels, and precipitation extremes, and Connecticut is no exception (U.S. Global Change Research Program 2017). As coastal communities in Connecticut increase their focus on mitigating the effects of climate change, they are not always able to incorporate town residents’ preferences and values into their planning; particularly those residents who may not receive a direct benefit from the plan of which they contribute tax dollars towards. Our study attempts to estimate these preferences and values by using a choice experiment survey distributed across the Connecticut coastline …

Onshore Habitat Use As A Driver Of Diet, Contaminant Exposure, And Immune Function Of Southern Beaufort Sea Polar Bears (Ursus Maritimus), Jennifer Bourque

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of New England Sheep Producers, Arielle L. Halpern

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Model-Based Medium-Voltage Induction Machine Insulation Material Characterization, Arshiah Yusuf Mirza

Master's Theses

The voltage and frequency handling capability of power converter modules have tremendously increased with the penetration of wide-band-gap (WBG) semiconductor technology in power electronics. However, very little is known about the effect of the high-voltage high-frequency transients exerted by WBG power electronics on insulation materials. This thesis investigates the effect of high-voltage, high-frequency transients on aging and breakdown characteristics of insulation materials. The aim of this research was to analyze this breakdown and develop the behavioral model of the breakdown time when such insulation materials are used in inverter-fed medium-voltage induction machines. As a part of this research, a series …

Improving The Accuracy Of A Finite Element Based Manufacturing Simulation: A Case Study Of Laser-Induced Bending In A Thin Metal Sheet, Joseph Johanson

Master's Theses

Finite element analysis (FEA) has become an increasingly popular tool used by researchers and professionals for comparing experimental data to theoretically expected values. Its use can prove to be an invaluable resource when analyzing or designing a system by giving the user the ability to understand the process being modeled at a much deeper level. However, finite element analysis it is still prone to generating inaccurate results if not used properly. When simulating certain physical processes, such as those found during manufacturing, the obtained results are sometimes prone to error when compared with their experimentally obtained counterparts.

The present work …

The Influence Of Sentence Context On Phonetic Recalibration, Sahil Luthra

Master's Theses

Individual talkers vary considerably in how they produce different speech sounds, and a challenge for the listener is to learn the appropriate mapping between acoustics and phonetic categories for an individual talker. Several studies have shown that listeners are able to leverage various sources of context (e.g., coincident visual information, lexical knowledge) to guide this process, sometimes termed perceptual learning of speech. Here, we examine how sentence-level semantic information – specifically, whether preceding sentence context is predictive of an upcoming word – might modulate the size of learning effects. Across a series of perceptual learning experiments, we manipulate how learning …

The Impact Of Junk Food Marketing Regulations On Food Sales: An Ecological Study, Yumi Kovic

Master's Theses

Objectives. To evaluate the impact of junk food marketing policies implemented worldwide from 2003 through 2014 on nationwide junk food sales and to identify the most effective policy characteristics in reducing junk food sales.

Methods. Junk food marketing policy data were obtained and categorized through a thorough literature review. These data were analyzed using a repeated measures design against EuroMonitor junk food sales data from 2002 and 2016.

Results. Countries with junk food marketing policies saw a decrease in junk food sales after implementation, while those without said policies saw an increase in sales. Countries with statutory policies saw a …

Topology Optimization Of Space Frames Via Geometry Projection, Manal Tahhan

Master's Theses

There is growing interest in space agencies to design lunar habitats for different stages of habitation. In this work, we present a topology optimization method to design a class of these structures consisting of rigid space frames with elements transported from earth and assembled in situ. Since the space frame must be made of stock material for ease of transportation and assembly, this work employs the geometry projection method, which is a topology optimization technique that render designs made exclusively of geometric primitives. This work makes three contributions to the geometry projection method that are necessary for the design of …

Exploring The Impact Of National Culture On Logistics Performance, Deepak Parathur Kesavan

Master's Theses

The increased logistics complexity due to supply chain globalization requires a deeper understanding of a country’s logistics performance. This performance is usually captured through infrastructure, services and procedure elements and understood in operational and economical terms. This thesis adds a social view to understand logistics performance variation across countries through focusing on their national culture dimensions. Using secondary data from the international Logistics Performance Index (LPI) report as well as the scores from Hofstede’s national culture dimension surveys, the impact of national culture on logistics performance was explored. Statistical results showed Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance dimensions were found to …

Sweep And Taper Analysis Of Surfboard Fins Using Computational Fluid Dynamics, Brandon James Baldovin

Master's Theses

The research presented here provides a basis for understanding the hydrodynamics of surfboard fin geometries. While there have been select studies on fins there has been little correlation to the shape of the fin and its corresponding hydrodynamic performance. This research analyzes how changing the planform shape of a surfboard fin effects its performance and flow field. This was done by isolating the taper and sweep distribution of a baseline geometry and varying each parameter individually whilst maintaining a constant span and surface area. The baseline surfboard fin was used as a template in Matlab to generate a set of …

Strawberry Detection Under Various Harvestation Stages, Yavisht Fitter

Master's Theses

This paper analyzes three techniques attempting to detect strawberries at various stages in its growth cycle. Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG), Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) were implemented on a limited custom-built dataset. The methodologies were compared in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency. Computational efficiency is defined in terms of image resolution as testing on a smaller dimensional image is much quicker than larger dimensions. The CNN based implementation obtained the best results with an 88% accuracy at the highest level of efficiency as well (600x800). LBP generated moderate results with a 74% detection accuracy …

Effect Of Bio-Augmentation Product Biowish® Septic Rescue On The Wastewater Treatment Performance Of Residential Septic Tanks, Kimberly Michelle Lamar Merilles

Master's Theses

Residential septic systems provide reliable wastewater treatment for over 26 million homes and facilities in the United States, and many more worldwide. When properly maintained, these systems are reliable, low-cost, and long-term treatments for residential wastewater. When neglected, septic systems can fail and lead to health concerns and ecological harm to soil and groundwater contamination through the improperly treated wastewater effluent.

This study tested the effect of the bio-augmentation product BiOWiSH® Septic Rescue of BiOWiSH® Technologies International, Inc. (hereafter referred to as BiOWiSH) on the biological treatment of residential septic tanks. BiOWiSH is meant to act as a bio-augmentation product …

Indoor Air Monitoring Of Ethanol And Benzene In A Pilot Winery Using Active Sampling, Andrew I. Kaneda

Master's Theses

Acute indoor concentrations of benzene and ethanol were evaluated in the California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo’s pilot winery workroom. Air samples were collected during four different wine-making activities: fermentation, fermentation with Brix content testing, post-alcoholic fermentation pressing, and storage/finishing. Average workroom benzene concentrations ranged from 0.05 to 0.12 mg/m³. Ethanol concentrations in the winery workroom varied with the activity, ranging from 0.9 to 12 mg/m³. Pressing and fermentation with Brix content testing both led to higher indoor ethanol concentrations than fermentation without Brix content testing and storage/finishing.

Tracer gas decay air exchange tests were …

Relevance Analysis For Document Retrieval, Eric Labouve

Master's Theses

Document retrieval systems recover documents from a dataset and order them according to their perceived relevance to a user’s search query. This is a difficult task for machines to accomplish because there exists a semantic gap between the meaning of the terms in a user’s literal query and a user’s true intentions. Even with this ambiguity that arises with a lack of context, users still expect that the set of documents returned by a search engine is both highly relevant to their query and properly ordered. The focus of this thesis is on document retrieval systems that explore methods of …

Dish: Democracy In State Houses, Nicholas A. Russo

Master's Theses

In our current political climate, state level legislators have become increasingly impor- tant. Due to cuts in funding and growing focus at the national level, public oversight for these legislators has drastically decreased. This makes it difficult for citizens and activists to understand the relationships and commonalities between legislators. This thesis provides three contributions to address this issue. First, we created a data set containing over 1200 features focused on a legislator’s activity on bills. Second, we created embeddings that represented a legislator’s level of activity and engagement for a given bill using a custom model called Democracy2Vec. Third, we …

A Higher-Order Method Implemented In An Unstructured Panel Code To Model Linearized Supersonic Flows, Jake Daniel Davis

Master's Theses

Since their conception in the 1960s, panel codes have remained a critical tool in the design and development of air vehicles. With continued advancement in computational technologies, today's codes are able to solve flow fields around arbitrary bodies more quickly and with higher fidelity than those that preceded them. Panel codes prove most useful during the conceptual design phase of an air vehicle, allowing engineers to iterate designs, and generate full solutions of the flow field around a vehicle in a matter of seconds to minutes instead of hours to days using traditional CFD methods. There have been relatively few …

Conflict Management Training In Video-Based Teams, Alexis Ward

Master's Theses

In the wake of an emerging economy that demands organizational agility, globalization and an increasing number of independent contractors, corporations have exponentially incorporated virtual teams in their organizations. However, despite their financial and geographical convenience, research has indicated that virtual teams have consistently experienced more conflict and lowered performance and satisfaction levels than that of their traditional counterparts. The present study sought to examine whether conflict management training could help video based virtual teams demonstrate more positive conflict handling techniques and less negative techniques, which would result in higher group process and group outcome satisfaction. This study did not find …

That They May All Be One: Historical And Contemporary Ideologies Of Regional Conferences In The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Debbie-Ann Francis

Master's Theses

The Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church has been known for its wide diversity along with its struggles in racial relations within the Black SDA community in the United States. The SDA Church established regional conferences for Black SDA leaders as an alternative to full integration within the denomination. For this analysis, an ideological criticism was performed on two videos that focused on the topic of regional conferences. The hegemonic ideology that surfaced was that separation within the church organization based on race is necessary in order to fulfill the mission of the SDA Church and that issues such as racism will …

Polyxpress+: Using Social Networking To Enhance The User Experience Of An Interactive Location-Based Storytelling Application, Desiree Creel

Master's Theses

There’s no denying the ever increasing presence of social networking in our daily lives. Every day, people share what they are thinking, doing, and experiencing. But even more so, they check their favorite networks to see what the people in their lives are sharing. Social networking has become so prevalent that most applications incorporate it since it keeps users engaged and beckons them back to the application again and again.

PolyXpress is an interactive, location-based storytelling mobile application that functions as a platform for creating and experiencing stories. Written as a research project at California Polytechnic State University, it allows …

Pro Or Bust: Career Aspirations Of Division I And Community College Basketball Players, Alexander Shahriar Engel

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Pro or Bust: Career Aspirations of Division I and Community College Basketball Players

Alexander Shahriar Engel

The purpose of this study was to determine the difference, if any, between Division I and community college basketball players career aspirations. Interviews were held with eleven athletes from the Cal Poly Men’s Basketball team, and ten athletes from the Cuesta College Men’s Basketball team. The interviews were used to determine the impact of different variables on the athletes career aspirations, and to explore themes in the data. To look for themes, both axial and open coding was used. Division I athletes were …

The Impact Of Environmental Degradation On The Analysis Of Manufactured Fibers, Alexis R. Weber

Master's Theses

The analysis of fiber evidence involves the ability to link a questioned fiber back to its known source. But before the collection and analysis of questioned fibers, they could be potentially exposed to various environmental conditions for an extended period of time. There has been little research on how manufactured fibers are affected by various environments and if this interaction affects the ability to link a questioned fiber back to its known source. Changes to the manufactured fibers are essential to be aware of, in order to avoid the possibility of erroneous exclusions when performing fiber comparisons. A six-month time …