Digital Commons Network^™

Analysis Of The Dutar Playing Technique Of Abdurehim Heyt, Michael Alan Kee

Masters Theses

Uyghur dutar player Abdurehim Heyt is hailed by many Uyghurs as the Dutar King, referring to his mastery of the instrument. This thesis examines several of Heyt's songs and compares them with songs from three other Uyghur dutar players in an attempt to isolate and define the unique characteristic of Heyt's dutar playing technique that sets him apart from other Uyghur dutar players.

This study presents a brief examination of the concept of music ornamentation as it has developed in the West. The Uyghur concept of music ornamentation - purakh - is then explained and compared with the Western concept …

Humor And Brand Image-Shaping: A Content Analysis Of "America Runs On Dunkin" Campaign Television Advertisements, Yilin Fang

Masters Theses

This study examines the role of humor in television advertisements of Dunkin' Donuts "America Runs on Dunkin" campaign to find out how humor is used to shape the brand image. Eight Dunkin' Donuts coffee television advertisements were analyzed to find out the role of humor. The results showed that humor variables, such as ludicrous humor, satire, intent humor, audio and visual humor, are used in this campaign advertisements. The study also found out that the advertisements are intentionally message dominant advertisements; structurally, they have syntactic relatedness; and they are thematically related. With the findings, the study concludes that humor in …

Singing From The Village, Bonnie Lynn Bost

Masters Theses

Singing from the Village brings to light some basic problems in education for a village school near Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, South India. While problems of poverty, social strife, possible over use of rote learning, lack of critical and creative thinking are discussed, the focus of this study is the problem of how the children hear western melodies differently because of the musical vocabulary their ears and brains have become accustomed to in their village. Singing from the Village attempts to examine village songs and compare them to a western children's song, Praise Him, Praise Him sung each day at the …

Geological Controls On Reservoir Quality And Geologic Carbon Sequestration Potential In The Upper Cambrian Mount Simon Sandstone, Kyle Patterson

Masters Theses

The Upper (?) Cambrian Mount Simon Sandstone is an important deep saline geological carbon sequestration (GCS) target throughout the Midwest, USA. The distribution of sedimentary facies, primary mineralogy, and diagenetic alterations and the relationship to wireline log response and reservoir quality throughout the Michigan basin are not well known. This study uses rock core, thin section point counts, x-ray diffraction, inferred spectroscopy, conventional core plug porosity and permeability and pressure fall-off test data to constrain wireline log interpretations of regional geology and reservoir quality.

Prior to the permitting of a CO₂ sequestration project, documentation of a robust transient injection …

Comparison Of Martin’S Empirical Correlation With Measurements On A Compact Plate Heat Exchanger, Abdulmohsen A. Alothman

Masters Theses

The need for more effective heat exchangers is becoming more necessary these days. At the same time, the size of the heat exchanger also plays a big role. Therefore, in many applications the compact plate heat exchanger is used where high effectiveness and small size are required. As a result, it is a necessary to study and understand the performance of compact plate heat exchangers. More specifically, the performance of heat transfer, represented by the Colburn factor j, and friction factor f, must be deeply studied and understood.

A mathematical model has been built to express f and j factors …

Study Of Metamerism And Inconstancy Of Basic Color System Used In Wood Grain Laminates, Awadhoot Vijaykant Shendye

Masters Theses

In product gravure printing, many spot color inks are used. Because the use of spot colors tends to be customer specific, they are typically mixed in house by the gravure printer to satisfy the requirements of a specific customer order. Printers are often concerned about the best utilization of inks, and their recyclability, if possible, to make the production more sustainable. Spot colors may exhibit metameric behavior. This tendency causes problems in color matching, as these products are viewed in a standardized environment, using light source D₅₀ or D₆₅ , but are viewed under fluorescent lighting at the …

Controlling The Sandman: The Function Of The Grotesque In The Ninth Art, Jill A. Johnson

Masters Theses

One of the methods that should be implemented in the diverse, and often erratic, systems already practiced with comics is looking at the elements of the grotesque to understand and interrupt a story by the way these elements control, move, and illuminate the story. This method is important because comics are largely visual, which means the grotesque is able to dominate the story in a way that is not present within a prose piece. One comic in particular that lends itself to this kind of practice is the ten-part saga Sandman by Neil Gaiman. This paper will investigate and reveal …

Language And Identity In Postcolonial African Literature: A Case Study Of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Abigail Guthrie

Masters Theses

Sociolinguists often research the development of language attitudes and the state of language within speech communities. Individual speakers reflect the status of their L1 language in both speaking and writing (Wa Thiong'o 1986, Showalter 2001), and the idea that writing can be used as a set of data that reflects an author's language attitude is the motivation for this research. Salikoko Mufwene (2001), one of the leading experts on creolization and the ecology of language, has argued that individual speakers of a language make daily choices that affect the future of their native tongue. Using the novel Things Fall Apart …

It Is Well With My Soil: Ecocriticism Of Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow And Hannah Coulter & Marilynne Robinson's Gilead And Housekeeping, Lauren Hoessly

Masters Theses

Ecocriticism places nature as the central subject of life, but avoids analysis of human relationships as an integral part of man's relationship with nature. Wendell Berry's novels Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter, and Marilynne Robinson's novels, Gilead and Housekeeping posit ecocritical claims about man and his work in nature without forsaking the union of the body and soul. Thus, Berry and Robinson connect relationships between people to this work in nature in order to reveal the relationship between man and God. They integrate principles of environmental recovery with Christian principles of redemption, and thereby offer new possibilities for ecocritical writing …

Social Media Dialogue: An Analysis Of The Social Media Presence Of Selected Fortune 500 Companies, Philip J. Luca

Masters Theses

This paper investigates the manner in which the companies engage various publics in the realm of social media. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the type of communication Fortune 500 companies use in their social media presence. Analyzing the web sites, Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts of 21 Fortune 500 companies, the present study assesses the dialogic efforts of these companies using Kent and Taylor's (1998) five dialogic principles. Results suggest that the researched companies have an established social media presence. The accounts are developed but not distinctly dialogic. Further research may assess the quality of the …

Our Lamb Has Conquered, Let Us Follow Him!: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Seal Of The Moravian Church Using Sonja Foss' Visual Rhetoric Schema And Cara Finnegan's Image Vernacular, Bethany L. Conrad

Masters Theses

This study rhetorically and visually analyzed the seal of the Moravian Church using Sonja Foss' theory of visual rhetoric and Cara Finnegan's image vernacular. Two versions of the seal were analyzed to provide a more thorough assessment of the function of the seal. Foss' theory and Finnegan's framework provide a method for analysis that explores the history, obvious elements and themes, implied concepts and themes, and the functions of the artifact. Using these frameworks, this study found that four themes emerged. The seal acts as a representation of the Moravian church, a calling, a promise, and a reminder for those …

Seismic Interpretation And Reservoir Characterization Of The Middle Eocene Gialo Formation, Assamoud Field, Sirte Basin, Libya, Abdalla Abdelnabi

Masters Theses

"The Gialo Formation is a major gas producing reservoir in the Assamoud Field, Sirte Basin, Libya. It is called Gialo limestone because it consists of shallow marine limestone. Seismic and well data in conjunction with the results of a previous study were used to delineate the hydrocarbon reservoir of Middle Eocene Gialo Formation of Assamoud Field area located in Eastern part of concession 6, Sirte Basin, Libya. The data include three-dimensional seismic data acquired by Sirte Company in 2009. It covers approximately an area of 150 km² and with more than 10 wells penetrating the reservoir. Seismic data were used …

Simulink As A Tool For Modelling Communication Systems, Chaitri Avinash Aroskar

Masters Theses

"Simulink is a graphical tool provided by MathWorks to enable model-based design and simulation. This thesis consists of two papers which take advantage of Simulink features in order to model communication systems.

The first paper employs Simulink to create projects to supplement a purely lecture oriented course: Communication Systems I. The projects cover Linear systems, Analog modulation and Digital modulation concepts in a set of six projects. These projects have been designed based on Gagne's nine events of instruction to enhance their impact on students' learning process. The paper also outlines the advantages of this approach over the conventional programming …

Comparison Of Matrix Pencil And Prony Analysis For Estimating Electromechanical Modes In Noisy Signals For Power System Applications, Lisa L. Grant

Masters Theses

"As modern power systems continue to grow and evolve, accurate system stability analysis and oscillation control become increasingly important to guarantee system security. Network instability due to power system oscillations caused by the natural modes of the system is becoming a common occurrence. Modal analysis techniques can estimate the eigenvalues of large nonlinear systems from their dynamics responses. The extracted modal information can be applied to detect low frequency oscillations and assess stability margins for power system monitoring and preventive control. Modal information is also useful for low-frequency oscillation damping controller design. This thesis examines two techniques for modal identification …

Improving Student Learning Outcomes Through Personal Response Systems (Clickers), Ran Cai

Masters Theses

"The main purpose of this research was to examine the impact of Personal Response Systems (PRS) or clickers, (as they are commonly called), on student learning outcome. Student learning outcomes as measured by course grades were compared between traditional lecture format and clicker use lecture format. Student perceptions on clicker use were observed in the mean time. Statistical analysis indicated that although student conveyed positive attitude on clicker adoption, there were no significant differences in course scores between students who used clickers and students who did not.

This study also considered the influence of other factors, such as gender, student …

Comprehensive Evaluation Of A Computer Based Learning System, Arun Sharma Chintalapati

Masters Theses

"This thesis presents the results of a comprehensive multi-method evaluation that was conducted on the Rapid Development System (RDS), a computer-based learning environment. The development of the project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Prior to this evaluation, the RDS had gone through two iterations.

A pre/post evaluation was conducted using questionnaires and eye tracking. Multi-method evaluation was employed to help triangulate the results and to provide additional insights. Data from the eye tracking was used to study the influence of the RDS interface on the attention and the cognitive workload of students with respect to the learning …

Laboratory Studies Of Compatibility Of Tamper Detection Materials With Improvised Explosive Device Crater Repairs, Levi Anthony Smith

Masters Theses

"Past methods for road repairs of craters caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on main supply routes (MSRs) and alternative supply routes (ASRs) in Iraq and Afghanistan have been problematic. Traditional temporary and permanent solutions have proven deficient by being easily penetrable or by exposing troops for long periods of time. The use of a pre-blended rapid hardening cementitious material for lED crater repair has solved issues such as quick placement of the repair and high strength of the repair within an hour of placement. However, there are still issues with IEDs being hidden in repairs tampered by or replicated …

A Social Network Of Service Providers For Trust And Identity Management In The Cloud, Makarand Bhonsle

Masters Theses

"With the advent of a new paradigm in computing known as Cloud Computing which offers computing as a service, the inflow of a variety of service vendors is increasing constantly. One of the main challenges in this distributed network of service provisioning and deprovisioning system is the end user's privacy. Enforcing authentication and authorization protocols customized to the needs of every service provider evolves to a very intricate Identity Management System with respect to both the collaborating service providers as well as the user. This problem was addressed by the Federated Identity Management systems, where the user information is stored …

Memristor Based Lookup Table - Novel Testing And Reconfiguration Techniques, Veeresh Anilkumar Hongal

Masters Theses

"Nanotechnology is soon predicted to replace the CMOS technology, as current CMOS lithographic techniques will become void for complex IC designs with smaller feature size, and are hence incapable of keeping up with Moore's law. The devices in nanotechnology are fabricated using bottom up self-assembly. Memristor is one promising nanotech device which can replace the transistor used as a switch or memory device as it is just half the size and uses only fraction of the energy. This work considers Memristor Look Up Table (MLUT) design, which is a building block for asynchronous FPGAs built with memristors. In spite of …

Analyzing Dashboard Performance In Educational, Non-Profit Sectors, Rutuja B. Honnatti

Masters Theses

"Applications of the performance dashboard in the business sector are well documented, but very little research has been performed on its implementation in higher education. The changing economic scenario has exerted pressure on universities to perform to a new standard and achieve their missions and goals. The objective of this research is to investigate if performance management dashboards can be applied to overcome challenges faced by institutions of higher education, such as lack of access to information, stakeholders not taking advantage of what is being offered, students' anxiety about not being able to find a job and strategic planning. A …

Risk Assessment For Conceptual Design Of Hydrokinetic Turbines, Praveen Kailkere Srinivas

Masters Theses

"Hydrokinetic energy is a relatively new concept in the field of renewable energy. The rotor of the turbine, immersed in water, uses the velocity from the flowing water to generate power. Thus the hydrokinetic turbines are also known as zero head turbines. These turbines can be installed in rivers, oceans and sea beds. The design of these systems depends on the site conditions, installation and maintenance costs. Since this technology has not been assessed for its potential power producing capabilities, not much research has been done in order to harness this form of renewable energy and to study the impact …

An Examination Of The Intersection Between Alcohol Use And Unanticipated Consequences For College Females, Jessica A. Wright

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the intersection between alcohol use and unanticipated consequences for college females. The second purpose of this study was to examine how the participants perceived their risk of sexual assault. Prior quantitative research in this field indicated that binge drinking is a predictor of risky behaviors. Research also showed that many negative consequences, including sexual assault, can occur as a result of binge drinking. A qualitative study was conducted to gain a better understanding of the drinking behaviors of college females in their own voices, as well as their perceived risk of negative …

Direct Inference Instruction: The Effects On Fourth Grade Students' Reading Comprehension And Motivation, Kalee Bengtson

Masters Theses

This research investigated student motivation and comprehension when an inference strategy was explicitly taught to fourth-grade students. Students in the experimental group (n=18) received instruction in an inference strategy developed for the purpose of this study that was based upon the five-step inference strategy created by Fritschmann, Deshler, and Schumaker (2007). Scaffolding instruction, the teacher modeled questioning the text and answering questions using a graphic organizer. After the teacher modeled the process, students worked in groups to read the text, question the text, make inferences, and answer questions at the end of the text. Finally, students completed the process independently …

Economic & Political Factors For Renewable Energy In The United States, Jeremiah Daniel Yokley

Masters Theses

The results of this study provide some insight to how qualitative regime variables affect the production of renewable energy in the United States. Specifically this paper found that while working with other variables the political affiliation of the President of the United States and the party holding the majority of seats in the United States House of Representatives and Senate can aid in forecasting renewable energy production growth. With this insight it is possible to better prepare for future energy investments by either governments or the private sector. This paper specifically examines total renewable energy production, hydroelectric energy production, solar …

Knowing Whose [Sic] Calling: Telephone Telepathy, Clint Harvey

Masters Theses

This study focuses on the possible role of mental telepathy in perceiving the identity of telephone callers before the caller is known through the normal senses. Many people report that this phenomenon occurs frequently in their day-to-day lives prompting controlled laboratory experimentation. The data was collected during the summer of 2010. One of the most important goals in determining the existence of mental telepathy involves the replication of different modes of research in different laboratory settings. This research attempts to replicate data Rupert Sheldrake collected during the beginning part of this century, in which he reported significant findings from studies …

Diet, Physical Activity, And Lifestyle Factors That Influence Weight Change The First Year Of College, Sarah R. Gaines

Masters Theses

First year college students are at an increased risk for weight gain, which could have an effect on the future obesity status in America. Several studies indicate that weight gain does occur the first year of college; however, little research actually studies the population's behaviors prior to college. A literature review was conducted on several factors that relate to the diet, physical activity, and lifestyle changes that students may undergo as they transition from high school to college. It was hypothesized that a change in these factors would be associated with student weight gain and an increased BMI the first …

Of Music, Mathematics, And Magic: Why Math Is All Made Up And Why It Works So Well, Gregory A. Leach

Masters Theses

The purpose of my study was to answer the philosophical question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered. This question is an age-old and important one with many implications regarding the understanding of mathematics, logic, science, and truth. Answering this question correctly can inform us not only about the nature of what is known, but even what is possible to know. In the field of mathematics itself, the answer to this question could change the way that mathematics is taught, learned, and implemented in the future. The problem was addressed through research, comparison, and analysis of books and articles where …

An Exploration Of Japanese Percussion Composers Through Performance And Analysis, Patrick James Rheingruber

Masters Theses

Concentration in Percussion Performance

The analyses presented looks into contemporary Japanese percussion repertoire and selected composers. Through discussion and research, the following pieces were selected due to their relevance to Japanese Percussion repertoire:

• Concertina For Xylophone and Orchestra - Tashiro Mayuzumi
• Thirteen Drums, Op. 66 - Maki Ishii
• Time for Marimba - Minoru Miki
• Rhapsody for marimba, flute, clarinet, contrabass and drums - Takayoshi Yoshioka
• Perspectives II - Toshi Ichiyanagi
• Marimba Spiritual - Minoru Miki
• Universe - Shiryu, Arranged by Nanae Mimura & Patrick Rheingruber

These works are representative of standard Japanese Percussion Repertoire, and have influenced the way contemporary …

Financial Well-Being Among Selected Students At Eastern Illinois University, Eric John Mazoch

Masters Theses

This study examined the financial well-being of Eastern Illinois University undergraduate students. Specifically the areas of financial debt, stress, and specific buying habits were addressed in determining the financial status of EIU students. The study was completed during spring 2011 by means of an online survey.

Significant correlations were found between the level of debt students had and their overall level of self-reported stress using a local five item semantic differential measure. There were no significant differences between student academic class standing and collective outstanding debt. Major on-campus versus off-campus spending differences were the cost of utilities and in the …

The Initial Application Screening Process For P-12 Potential Teacher Candidates, Brian Edward Neighbors

Masters Theses

This study was designed to understand what factors determine how a school district hiring official takes a stack of many applicants and screens those down to a few to bring in for a face to face interview. The application process is seldom a focus in teacher education curriculum, and the study sought to see how important the application documents were in determining how the candidate was viewed by the hiring official. The researcher conducted one on one interview with a selected sample of district hiring officials using a qualitative inquiry method. Interviews were analyzed to determine how district size and …