Digital Commons Network^™

Organocatalytic Decomposition Of Poly(Ethylene Terephthalate) Using Triazabicyclodecene Proposal, Julien Matsumoto Lecuyer

Master's Theses

This study focuses on the organocatalytic decomposition of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) using 1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (TBD) to form a diverse library of aromatic amides. The reaction scheme was specifically designed to use low reaction temperatures (>150oC) and avoid using solvents during the reaction to provide a more environmentally friendly process. Of all the amines tested, PET aminolysis with aliphatic and aromatic amines demonstrated the best performance with yields higher than 72%. PET aminolysis with click functionalized and non-symmetric reagents facilitated attack on certain sites on the basis of reactivity. Finally, the performance of the PET degradation reactions with secondary amine and …

Shock Layer Radiation Measurements For Mars And Venus Entry Conditions In An Electric Arc Shock Tube, Ramon Martinez

Master's Theses

This work reports on upgrades in the Electric Arc Shock Tube (EAST) Facility and shockwave characterization experiments performed at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC). The importance of testing in the EAST Facility is shown, detailing research work that has occurred in the facility. A facility description follows, in order to explain how the facility is structured and how it conducts operations. The EAST Facility upgrade project is summarized to present current advancements in the facility. Calibration techniques are explained, and experimental data is presented. This data is obtained with the use of highly specialized spectroscopic, …

Employment Decisions As A Function Of An Applicant's Accent, Lam Thanh Nguyen

Master's Theses

Using data collected from 167 college students, the present study examined the effects of an applicant's accent (Standard American English vs. Spanish) on employment-related decisions (i.e., job suitability, likelihood of promotion, and decision to hire) and perceived applicant characteristics (i.e., competence and likability). Results showed that Spanish-accented applicants were rated less suitable for an entry-level software engineering job, were perceived as having a lower chance of being promoted to a managerial position, and were hired less frequently compared to the Standard American English-accented applicant. Additionally, the Spanish-accented applicant was rated less competent but just as likable as the Standard American …

Functionalized Silica Nanostructures For Biosensing Applications, Hector Nuno

Master's Theses

This work covers both two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) silica-based nanostructures for use in biomedical sensing applications. The first section of this study discusses the formation of 2D nanostructured surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based biosensor substrates. The surface of these biosensors was nanostructured by adding sacrificial star polymers or block copolymers to a silicate precursor solution. Subsequent vitrification resulted in two distinct morphological patterns: random and ordered porosity. Amino groups on the surface of the biosensors enabled the installation of analyte receptors and antifouling agents such as oligo (ethylene oxide).

The second section discusses the development of 3D core-shell …

Surfactant-Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis Of Titania Nanorod Thin Films, Ben Milo Petersen

Master's Theses

Titania (TiO2) nanorods have shown promise for applicability in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) and may present a cost-effective solution for the fabrication of efficient and affordable solar power generation. In contrast to traditional silicon solar cell fabrication, the fabrication of DSSCs does not require expensive high energy, vacuum, and temperature processes. Titania nanorods have the potential to increase the electron transport rate in DSSCs by forming a direct electrical pathway, thus improving the performance. This study set out to investigate ways in which titania nanorod hydrothermal growth could be enhanced and made more reliable through (1) experimentation with procedures to …

Denoising Of Natural Images Using The Wavelet Transform, Manish Kumar Singh

Master's Theses

A new denoising algorithm based on the Haar wavelet transform is proposed. The methodology is based on an algorithm initially developed for image compression using the Tetrolet transform. The Tetrolet transform is an adaptive Haar wavelet transform whose support is tetrominoes, that is, shapes made by connecting four equal sized squares. The proposed algorithm improves denoising performance measured in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) by 1-2.5 dB over the Haar wavelet transform for images corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) assuming universal hard thresholding. The algorithm is local and works independently on each 4x4 block of the image. It performs …

Design And Analysis Of Multistage Cooperative Broadcast With Amplify And Forward Relays, Bhargava Yammanuru

Master's Theses

Cooperative communication achieves spatial diversity by having the transceivers in an ad-hoc network pool their resources at the physical layer and cooperatively transmit their information. For this to be possible without adding a large overhead, we need low overhead-distributed protocols. This thesis proposes one such distributed scheme for wireless ad-hoc networks.

In this work, we study the propagation of the signal in a cooperative network where a single source message is retransmitted by multiple stages (levels) of relays. Relays are assumed to have limited computational abilities and hence adopt the amplify-and-forward scheme. At each node, cooperative diversity is obtained by …

Structure-Function Relationship Studies Of The Udp-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase From Escherichia Coli, Agnieszka Maria Orlof

Master's Theses

UDP-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase (UDP-Glc PPase) is a key enzyme of the carbohydrate metabolic pathway widely used among prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In plants, UDP-Glc PPase is necessary for sucrose synthesis while mammals utilize this enzyme for the production of glycogen. A bacterium such as Escherichia coli uses UDP-Glc PPase for biosynthesis of the lipopolysscharide core which forms a cell wall.

This study focused on UDP-Glc PPase from Escherichia coli which is encoded by both galU and galF genes. The first part of this project investigated amino acids that could play an important role in the function of UDP Glc PPase (GalU). Based …

Design Techniques To Improve Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown Based Failure For Cmos Circuits, Emanuel S. Tarog

Master's Theses

This project investigates the failure of various CMOS circuits as a result of Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown (TDDB) and explores design techniques to increase the mean time to failure (MTTF) of large-scale circuits. Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown is a phenomenon where the oxide underneath the gate degrades as a result of the electric field in the material. Currently, there are few well documented design techniques that can increase lifetime, but with a tool chain I created called the MTTF Analyzing Program, or MAP, I was able to test circuits under various conditions in order to identify weak links, discover relationships, …

Recommender System For Audio Recordings, Jong Seo Lee

Master's Theses

Nowadays the largest E-commerce or E-service websites offer millions of products for sale. A Recommender system is defined as software used by such websites for recommending commercial or noncommercial product items to users according to the users’ tastes. In this project, we develop a recommender system for a private multimedia web service company. In particular, we devise three recommendation engines using different data filtering methods – named weighted-average, K-nearest neighbors, and item-based – which are based on collaborative filtering techniques, which work by recording user preferences on items and by anticipating the future likes and dislikes of users by comparing …

Charge Injection And Clock Feedthrough, Jonathan Yu

Master's Theses

Turning off a transistor introduces an error voltage in switched-capacitor circuits. Circuits such as analog-to-digital converters (ADC), digital-to-analog converters (DAC), and CMOS image sensor pixels are limited in performance due to the effects known as charge injection and clock feedthrough. Charge injection occurs in a switched-capacitor circuit when the transistor turns off and disperses channel charge into the source and drain. The source, which is the sampling capacitor, experiences an error in the sampled voltage due to the incoming channel charge. Simultaneously, the coupling due to gate-source overlap capacitance also contributes to the total error voltage, which is known as …

Aircraft Deconfliction Responsibility Across En Route Sectors In Nextgen Separation Assurance, Christopher Donald Douglas Cabrall

Master's Theses

The subject of the current research is a Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) concept that involves automated separation assurance developed to enable controllers to provide both safe and efficient air traffic services at much higher traffic densities than possible today. The study investigated the issue of how responsibility should be handled between controllers for the resolution of a conflict that is predicted to occur in a sector other than where it was detected. Two possibilities, a De-Conflicting AirPlanes procedure (DCAP) versus a De-Conflicting AirSpace procedure (DCAS), were examined under human-in-the-loop simulations with scripted aircraft conflicts. Results showed that the …

Numerical Simulation Of Capsule Dissolution In The Usp Apparatus Ii, Jasmine Han

Master's Theses

The capsule is the second most common type of drug dosage form, yet detailed research of capsule dissolution in the USP Apparatus II (a paddle dissolution apparatus that mimics the drug dissolution process in an in vivo environment) is not well reported. In this work, a mathematical model was developed that incorporates both the dissolution of the capsule shell and the slug within the capsule shell. Capsule shell dissolution was modeled with the assumption that the shell undergoes an erosion process only. The capsule slug dissolution model incorporated mass transfer principles, Markov chain theory, and the influence of hydrodynamics on …

Cooperative Symbol-Based Signaling For Networks With Multiple Relays, Yuanyuan Quan

Master's Theses

Wireless channels suffer from severe inherent impairments and hence

reliable and high data rate wireless transmission is particularly challenging to

achieve. Fortunately, using multiple antennae improves performance in wireless

transmission by providing space diversity, spatial multiplexing, and power gains.

However, in wireless ad-hoc networks multiple antennae may not be acceptable

due to limitations in size, cost, and hardware complexity. As a result, cooperative

relaying strategies have attracted considerable attention because of their abilities

to take advantage of multi-antenna by using multiple single-antenna relays.

This study is to explore cooperative signaling for different relay networks,

such as multi-hop relay networks formed …

Library Services In U.S. Immigration Detention Facilities, Stephanie Lan Chin

Master's Theses

The thesis explores the current state of library services in facilities in which U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) houses immigrant detainees, including (1) Bureau of Prison (BOP) facilities, (2) contracted detention facilities (CDF), (3) ICE-owned facilities (often called Service Processing Centers, or SPC's), and (4) Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGSA) facilities. The study was based on a survey that was mailed to 356 facilities that detain immigrants by or on behalf of ICE. The results of the survey were used to determine the current status of library services in immigration detention facilities as well as to identify issues or problems …

Hcnabc Gene Expression In The Soil Bacterium Pseudomonas Putida Ath2-Iri/9 Under Various Culture And Rhizosphere Conditions, Myrna May Biswas

Master's Theses

Pseudomonas putida ATH2-1RI/9, a bacterium that colonizes plant roots, can suppress weed seedling growth of velvetleaf by producing hydrogen cyanide in the rhizosphere. The operon hcnABC constitutively expresses HCN synthase, an enzyme which catalyzes glycine to form carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide, a secondary metabolite. Cyanogenesis is influenced by several environmental factors including iron, phosphate, and oxygen-limiting conditions. This study used a hcnABC::luxAB gene fusion in Pseudomonas putida ATH2-1RI/9 involving the insertion of a promoterless luxAB gene into the hcnABC operon, which results in bacterial luciferase expression instead of HCN synthase. Bioluminescence by this reporter strain was compared to cyanide …

Finite Element Analysis Of A Golf Ball And Driver Head Impact: Understanding The Feasibility Of An Acoustical Optimization, Nickolai A. Volkoff-Shoemaker

Master's Theses

An acoustic profile from the impact between a golf ball and driver head was produced using FEA. Following this, the results were analyzed to determine the feasibility of an acoustical optimization of such an impact. A validation of the FEA program LS-DYNA® was undertaken to ensure a proper solution was attained in the software analysis. An experimental and theoretical validation was performed that involved firing a golf ball at a titanium plate and comparing data from the impact to FEA simulations. Once the FEA program was validated, a golf club driver head model was used to generate an acoustical output …

The Design And Manufacture Of A Light Emitting Diode Package For General Lighting, Michael S. Krist

Master's Theses

Lighting technologies have evolved over the years to become higher quality, more efficient sources of light. LEDs are poised to become the market standard for general lighting because they are the most power efficient form of lighting and do not contain hazardous materials. Unfortunately, LEDs pose unique problems because advanced thermal management is required to remove the high heat fluxes generated by such relatively small devices. These problems have already been overcome with complex packaging and exotic materials, but high costs are preventing this technology from displacing current lighting technologies.

The purpose of this study is to develop a low-cost …

The Obama Effect And Its Relationship To The Perceptions Of Blacks On Education And Social Mobility, Lydia K. Young

Master's Theses

The educational system in the United States has been characterized as political, a meritocracy (Hurn, 1992), a structure that socializes citizens (Warren, 1996), a system that marginalized those of races marked other or defined as minority by society (Ratvich, 1983; West, 1993; Katz, 1999) and, most importantly for this study, the key to a more equitable society through schooling and personal beliefs and the possibility of lifelong achievement (Anderson, 1988). Our educational system, ever changing and complicated by definition and action, plays a large role in one's perception of the ability of people to achieve social mobility -- especially for …

Embracing Compulsory Education: The Case Of Singapore, Chaitut Roungchai

Master's Theses

Singapore is a late adopter of compulsory education (CE). Six years of schooling for all children became compulsory in Singapore in 2003 (Ministry of Education, 2009). Surrounding Southeast Asian countries passed compulsory education legislation in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Countries such as the Philippines adopted compulsory education in 1899, and Thailand in 1921. However, Malaysia, similar to Singapore, adopted CE legislation in the early-twenty-first century. In order to explain Singapore's adoption of CE legislation, we must look further into each country's reasons for implementing it.

Singapore reported in 2000 that its dropout rate was 0.4 percent at the primary …

The Educators Of Educators: An Evaluation Of Carnegie Foundation's "Very High Research Activity" Universities' Schools Of Education Professors, Joshua R. Polanin

Master's Theses

The field of education is diverse, its history marred with politically driven problems, and its research ill-funded and often disaggregated. Indeed researchers of the past have questioned education research's purpose (Kaestle, 1993) while researchers of the present doubt the field's ability to evaluate properly its current researchers and research (Hedges & Hans-Martin, 2009). Therefore the purpose of this thesis was to investigate and evaluate critically who education researchers were and what type of research they produced.

Using a nationally representative, stratified-random sample technique, this author distributed the Education Research Identity Survey (ERIS) electronically via email to 2,723 Schools of Education …

The City Imagined: Race, Place And Identity In The Making Of Urban Church, Jessica M. Barron

Master's Theses

In this study, I will explore the racial and urban imaginary of church leaders and members seeking to create an authentic and relevant church for Chicago's unchurched, young-adult urbanite. In their quest to develop a relevant church, the varied imaginations of the city of Chicago by leaders, volunteers and members come to the forefront. How these imaginations are fostered, incorporated, rebelled against or dismissed brings to light the politics of imagining the imagined city. This paper will discuss these varied, dueling, and sometimes contradictory imaginations informing the construction, operation, and branding campaigns of Urban Church. Particular focus will be paid …

Undergraduate Music Student Stress And Burnout, Helen Jane Orzel

Master's Theses

Burnout is fatigue and diminished interest caused by long-term stress. It is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment. In the university music atmosphere, stress and burnout are prevalent and accepted as part of the culture. Symptoms and causes of general stress and burnout have been well researched, but much less has been presented on college musicians' burnout, let alone how to deal with it. This study examines the sources of stress, burnout, and ways of coping for undergraduate music students.

A questionnaire with both quantitative and open-ended questions was administered during the 2009 spring semester. Participants …

Autumn Garden, Les Brady

Master's Theses

Autumn Garden is a novel using a semi-omniscient third-person narrator who conveys the perspectives of ten-year-old Nick Lucera, his mother, Mary, and father, Tony. The story challenges conventional beliefs of mortality as Nick confronts the greatest loss of his young life, his mother's impending death. The novel is set in 1970's coastal California.

Two characters influence how Nick processes events in his life: seventeen-year-old neighbor, Brian, an evangelical Christian, and Sal Amato, an acquaintance of Nick's parents, whose insights range from the curious to the fantastic. Brian's friendship is a refuge for Nick, who suffers regularly from the bullying inflicted …

Valley Of Heart's Delight: Orchards To Hard Drives In The San Jose Mercury News, Megan Lynn Alpers

Master's Theses

This research was conducted to explore how the San Jose Mercury News (formerly San Jose Mercury Herald) covered the Santa Clara Valley's transition from an agricultural community known as "The Valley of Heart's Delight" to Silicon Valley, focusing on the changes made in the reporting of farm and ranch news.

The time period surveyed in this thesis is from 1935 to 2000. The purpose was to establish any changes to reporting agricultural news over the years. A social history of agricultural journalism in the San Jose Mercury News over a 65-year period provided insight into how the farming industry was …

An Analysis Of Stacy Garrop's Sonnet Settings For Treble Choir And Piano, Kathryn Alexis Feetham

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a thorough and detailed analysis of Stacy Garrop's two works for treble chorus and piano, Pity Me Not (2003) and Thou Famished Grave (2006) for the purposes of providing a base for future research and study. Since Garrop's goal as she composes is to tell the story contained in the text, this analysis of her works looks closely at the approaches she takes to communicate the story to the listener. The two choral pieces are examined on several musical levels including but not limited to form, melody, harmony, register, rhythm, tempo, meter, …

A Framing Analysis Of Weblogs And Online Newspapers, Maria Carolina Janssen

Master's Theses

The thesis examined possible differences in framing of information in news weblogs and professional news articles. A frame analysis was conducted to answer the main question: Is news framed differently in online newspapers as compared to weblogs? Articles from four blogs and four online newspapers were gathered over a period of 30 days. A total of 43 frames were identified in the selected blogs. A total of 92 frames were identified in the selected online newspapers. The most commonly identified frame in both blogs and online newspapers was the progress frame with 51 appearances. The critical frame was used 47 …

Health Information Version 2.0: Female Students In Cyberspace, Sonia Easaw

Master's Theses

The arrival of the Internet, one of the greatest mass media vehicles of our time, has presented a wide platform for the dissemination of health information to the American public. A majority of adults in the United States search online for information about various health and medical topics, yet a particular portion of the general public, namely college students, searches for health information online at a higher rate than the general population. Female college students especially have cause to seek information about particular women's health matters that are relevant to their age group.

This study reveals new details about the …

Morton Subotnick's Ghost Scores: Interaction And Performance With Music Technology, Jeffrey Hanson

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates the ghost works of Morton Subotnick and their contribution to the world of sound art and electronic music technologies. Subotnick's work in this area is an integral part of his outstanding achievements, on which there is little collected research. The discussion focuses on the development of Subotnick's designs and techniques that he applied to the construction of the ghost works. Through an exploration of earlier background details, it is shown that tape recording, voltage-controlled technologies, and the analog sequencer provided Subotnick with the means to follow his vision and begin creating "music as studio art." An examination …

Marketing Latin Alternative Music Through Social Networking Sites, Vanessa Ursala Garcia

Master's Theses

This thesis examined the marketing strategies for Latin alternative music used on MySpace, Facebook, and Al Borde (On the Edge). This study found that the understanding of the target demographic was important for implementing successful marketing strategies to niche audiences. Marketing Latin alternative music has not been successful at a mainstream level; therefore, marketers have targeted niche communities on social networking sites. The most dominant strategy used involved the status update feature on Facebook. It allowed musicians and marketers to communicate information and media to a large network of individuals across the country. Three other major strategies included event invitations, …