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Eudaimonia And The Best Life: Epicurus' Objective Goods Perfectionism, Alex R. Gillham

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that there is a standard reading of Epicurus’ ethics (SRE). The thesis of SRE is that Epicurus is both a hedonist and monist about the good, which entails that if something is good, then it (a) is pleasure, (b) contributes to pleasure, or (c) constitutes pleasure. If something is good in the sense of (a), it is intrinsically good. If something is good in the sense of (b), it is instrumentally good, i.e., it is good insofar as it is a tool for securing pleasure. If something is good in the sense of (c), it …

Conceptualizing Individual Disaster Resilience: Benchmarking Tools For Individual And Social Coping Capacity For A Disaster Resilient Society, Lindsey J. Ditirro

Open Access Dissertations

Individual disaster resilience is a new and understudied concept. It is defined as the degree to which an individual has the capacity to obtain, process, and understand disaster-related information and identify and mobilize relevant resources to make appropriate decisions and actions in dealing with disaster-related risk situations. This concept is composed of four factors: knowledge coping, information coping, communal coping and affective coping. This dissertation operationalizes this new concept and its four dimensions and develops a measurement system to test this multivariate concept known as the Individual Disaster Resilience Assessment or InDRA. This was accomplished by conducting two studies. Forty-six …

Efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods, Youhan Fang

Open Access Dissertations

Generating random samples from a prescribed distribution is one of the most important and challenging problems in machine learning, Bayesian statistics, and the simulation of materials. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are usually the required tool for this task, if the desired distribution is known only up to a multiplicative constant. Samples produced by an MCMC method are real values in N-dimensional space, called the configuration space. The distribution of such samples converges to the target distribution in the limit. However, existing MCMC methods still face many challenges that are not well resolved. Difficulties for sampling by using MCMC …

Predicting Graduation And College Gpa: A Multilevel Analysis Investigating The Contextual Effect Of College Major, John A. Gipson

Open Access Dissertations

Despite the overwhelming evidence that higher education data are nested at various levels, single-level techniques such as regression and analysis of variance are commonly used to investigate student outcomes. This is problematic as a mismatch in methodology and research questions can lead to biased parameter estimates. The purpose of this study was to predict cumulative grade point average (GPA) and the likelihood of four-year and six-year graduation while simultaneously accounting for select pre-college characteristics, during-college experiences, and the interrelationship between student-level and major-level predictors. To achieve the desired outcomes, the study applied multilevel modeling techniques to secondary data for new …

Political Order In The Modernizing Mormon Kingdom, 1887-1896, Mark Denninghoff

Open Access Dissertations

What was the function of political parties in colonizing the American West? How did the arrival of national party politics impact the public lives and lived religious experience of everyday Mormons? How did the Latter-day Saints disaggregate their hierarchal religious communities and re-aggregate them into party affiliations that pitted co-religionists against one another? Mormons had endured coerced adoption of secular public education, industrialization, a hostile military presence and legal battles threatening the existence of the church. The introduction of national political parties served as tipping point that precipitated the integration of this religiously constituted community into the American polity at …

Food Quality Versus Quantity: Consumer's Value Perception And The Influence Of Eating Style, Li Ge

Open Access Dissertations

Increased portion size of commonly consumed foods has been considered a strong environmental factor contributing to food overconsumption. Regulatory interventions to reduce portion sizes in restaurants, however, are likely to be opposed by the foodservice industry due to concerns that reduced portions may negatively affect consumers’ value perception. These interventions may also be considered as paternalistic by some consumers. Three studies were conducted to examine possible approaches to the “portion inflation” problem from different perspectives, with the intention to seek balance between public health benefits and business interests, and between corporate responsibility and consumer responsibility.

In study one, two quasi-experiments …

Highly Excited States Of Small Molecules And Negative Atomic Ions, Matthew T. Eiles

Open Access Dissertations

Excited states of atoms and molecules exhibit a rich array of diverse phenomena. This dissertation examines two exotic states of atoms at such excited levels: Rydberg molecules and atomic negative ions. Rydberg molecules are formed by a Rydberg atom and one or more ground state atoms, and can be highly polar due to their unusual electronic wave functions and enormous bond lengths. This dissertation expands the theory of these molecules by studying the formation and structure of polyatomic molecules, multichannel Rydberg molecules formed from divalent atoms, and spin effects and relativistic interactions. It also details intermolecular forces between Rydberg molecules, …

Influence Of Radical Proximity On The Charge Transport Of Nitroxide-Based Electronics, Martha E. Hay

Open Access Dissertations

As the societal dependence upon electronics continues to expand, consumer demand dictates the development of new materials to further augment both performance and user experience. Organic electronic materials enable unique features and applications due to the synthetic tunability of their optoelectronic properties, light weight, compatibility with flexible substrates, and biocompatibility. Radical polymers, macromolecules bearing pendant stable radical sites, have emerged as a new class of conducting polymers. These materials have demonstrated charge storage and transport capabilities in electrolyte-supported systems (e.g., secondary batteries) and have since been a source of inquiry for solid-state applications. Initial studies of their solid-state properties have …

The Design And Analysis Of Calcium-41 Clinical Trials To Study Treatments For Bone Loss, Courtney N. Henry

Open Access Dissertations

Calcium-41 (41Ca) is a biological tracer used to rapidly and sensitively monitor skeletal calcium metabolism. Measurements of the 41Ca:Ca ratio in urine quantify changes in net bone turnover (i.e. differences in bone formation and resorption). A biomedical application of 41Ca technology clinically assesses the efficacy of treatments for preventing bone loss, primarily targeting susceptible populations such as post-menopausal women.

This research initially describes a 41Ca simulation study to determine efficient 41Ca experimental designs that preserve the accuracy and reliability of estimation and the statistical power of our conventional design, whilst substantially lowering costs by reducing the number of samples and/or …

Nooses & Balancing Acts: Reflections And Advice On Racism And Antiracism From Black Writing Tutors At Predominantly White Institutions, Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison

Open Access Dissertations

Over the past 10-15 years, writing center scholars have acknowledged the significance of race to writing center work and examined the ways racism manifests within writing center spaces and practices. More recently, conversations have shifted from acknowledging racism to how to combat it through antiracist activism. However, due to the demographics of the field, the voices most often contributing to these conversations are white scholars, many of them directors at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). This study positions Black writing tutors as individuals with expertise to share on how to engage in antiracism through writing center work that stems from their …

Effects Of Within-Day Dietary Protein Distribution On Changes In Plasma Amino Acid Concentrations And Body Composition, Joshua L. Hudson

Open Access Dissertations

The increasing prevalence of adults with overweight and obesity in the United States emphasizes the need for research on novel behavioral and lifestyle interventions such as dietary manipulation to modulate the epidemic. While consuming an energy-restricted diet is a proven method of reducing adiposity, adhering to and adopting a diet that is not self-chosen is difficult. Not unimportantly, reducing energy intake also typically results in a reduction in skeletal muscle mass. Skeletal muscle is important for facilitating functional movements, metabolizing glucose, and contributing to resting energy expenditure. Multitudinous research has focused on the macronutrient composition of an energy-restricted diet both …

Model And Appearance Based Analysis Of Neuronal Morphology From Different Microscopy Imaging Modalities, Sarun Gulyanon

Open Access Dissertations

The neuronal morphology analysis is key for understanding how a brain works. This process requires the neuron imaging system with single-cell resolution; however, there is no feasible system for the human brain. Fortunately, the knowledge can be inferred from the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, to the human system. This dissertation explores the morphology analysis of Drosophila larvae at single-cell resolution in static images and image sequences, as well as multiple microscopy imaging modalities. Our contributions are on both computational methods for morphology quantification and analysis of the influence of the anatomical aspect. We develop novel model-and-appearance-based methods for morphology quantification …

Automated Fault Detection, Diagnostics, Impact Evaluation, And Service Decision-Making For Direct Expansion Air Conditioners, Andrew L. Hjortland

Open Access Dissertations

This work describes approaches for automatically detecting, diagnosis, and evaluating the impacts of common faults in unitary rooftop air conditioning equipment. A semi-empirical component-based modeling approach using virtual sensors has been implemented using low-cost microcontrollers and tested on fixed-speed and variable-speed equipment using laboratory psychrometric test chambers. A previously developed virtual refrigerant charge sensor was applied to a fixed-speed rooftop unit with combinations of condenser types and expansion valve types and resulted in average prediction errors less than 10%. In addition, a methodology was developed that can be used to tune the empirical parameters of the model using data collected …

How Heat Affects Human Hair: Thermal Characterization And Predictive Modeling Of Flat Ironing Effects, Jaesik Hahn

Open Access Dissertations

Many people with curly hair experience heat damage – loss of curls and structural degradation of hair – after repetitive use of flat irons. While an array of relevant studies provide insight into thermochemical processes behind the phenomenon, practical tools for flat iron users are unavailable. As a result, people shun heat for fear of unpredictable amount of heat damage while adopting other laborious methods to satisfy a persevering need for temporary hair straightening. Thus three overarching research projects emerge to address the problem. In Part 1, I develop an empirical approach to mathematically correlate four flat ironing parameters (a …

Investigating The Developmental Toxicity Of Legacy, Emergent, And Current Use Environmental Toxicants Using The Zebrafish Model System, Katharine Ann Marie Horzmann

Open Access Dissertations

Environmental toxicants are chemical or physical agents that enter the environment and can have adverse health effects on populations of humans. Chemical contamination of rivers, lakes, and ground water is a significant public health concern; 23% of private wells are contaminated with at least one significant environmental toxicant and chemical spill incidences can have severe consequences to human health and the environment. Even low doses of chemicals in the environment can have an effect on human health, and it is suggested by the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis that embryonic exposure to toxicants alters health status and …

Ultra Purification Of Gallium By Zone Refining, Daniel Kim

Open Access Dissertations

High electron mobility is essential to improve two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) quality in MBE grown AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures. Recently, gallium purity was identified as limit to electron mobility in such structures. A laboratory horizontal zone refiner was constructed and procedures such as cleaning operation and handling/extracting samples were developed to suit needs for producing ultra-high purity gallium. One major problem is that most of the impurities are already below detection limit of current measurement techniques for starting high purity gallium. The 8N gallium (99.999999%, 10 ppb nominal purity) is the most pure commercially available gallium and measuring the purity becomes difficult …

Large Scale Constrained Trajectory Optimization Using Indirect Methods, Thomas Antony

Open Access Dissertations

State-of-the-art direct and indirect methods face significant challenges when solving large scale constrained trajectory optimization problems. Two main challenges when using indirect methods to solve such problems are difficulties in handling path inequality constraints, and the exponential increase in computation time as the number of states and constraints in problem increases. The latter challenge affects both direct and indirect methods. A methodology called the Integrated Control Regularization Method (ICRM) is developed for incorporating path constraints into optimal control problems when using indirect methods. ICRM removes the need for multiple constrained and unconstrained arcs and converts constrained optimal control problems into …

Evaluation Of Reactivity Feedbacks Due To Core Deformation In Fast Reactors, Tian Jing

Open Access Dissertations

In order to meet the worldwide demands on sustainable energy, new generation of nuclear reactor systems has been proposed to continue the benefit of nuclear power for electricity production. Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) is one of the most promising candidate among those reactor concepts for both energy production and minimizing radioactive nuclear waste and features inherent safety potential. To ensure inherent safety characteristics of SFR, accurate evaluation of reactivity feedbacks is essential. However, accurate evaluation of the negative reactivity induced by the core radial expansion and assembly bowing remains challenging. SFR has a relatively large coolant temperature rise, and thus …

Three Essays On Strategic Human Capital, Managers And Competitive Advantage, Jongsoo Kim

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I investigate the interplay between strategic human capital and the role of managers in an organization. In Essay 1, using a natural experiment setting with a dataset on change of interdependence that an organization requires, and unexpected employee exit in a professional sports league for the period 1992 to 2010, I examine the consequence of losing strategically important human resources (HR) and shows that how specific organizational recovering techniques for dealing with HR can help the firm’s strategic renewal process. The data present that the consequential impact of losing employees is depending upon the type of interdependence …

Motion Paradigm To Detect Pedestrians And Vehicle Collision, Mehmet Kilicarslan

Open Access Dissertations

Nowadays, many vehicles are equipped with a vehicle borne camera system for monitoring drivers’ behavior, accident investigation, road environment assessment, and vehicle safety design. This produces a huge amount of video data recorded daily. Analyzing and interpreting these data in an efficient way has become a non-trivial task. Therefore, in this work, for efficient analysis of these data, videos are mapped into a temporal profile image of reduced dimension for acquiring motion information. The video profile is compact and continues motion representation of a video. This work examines those motion profile trajectories. A new motion based collision avoidance and pedestrian …

Welfare Impcats Of Optimal Virtual Bidding In A Multi-Settlement Electricity Market With Transmission Line Congestion, Hyungkwan Kim

Open Access Dissertations

With a goal of improving the performance of wholesale electricity markets, virtual financial products have been introduced. Virtual bids are purely financial instruments that may be used to speculate on the differences between prices in the forward and spot markets in a two-settlement electricity market. While there is evidence that price convergence across these markets can be induced by virtual bidding, other research has shown that the impacts on the welfare of market participants are less clear. The problem is that, while virtual bidding may narrow the price gap, if it does so by inflating the prices, then electricity consumers …

Multi-Scale Modeling Of Particle-Laden Flows, Anand Samuel Jebakumar

Open Access Dissertations

Particle-laden flow occur in a wide range of engineering applications such as combustors, gasifiers, fluidized beds and pollution control systems. Particle-flow interactions are complex, especially in turbulent and confined flows. A proper understanding of these interactions is critical in designing devices with better performance characteristics. In this work, particle-laden flows in channels are numerically investigated with the lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM). A three-dimensional parallelized lattice-Boltzmann method code is developed to carry out these studies. The code resolves the particle surface and the boundary layer surrounding it to gain fundamental insights into particle-flow interactions. The lattice-Boltzmann method is assessed for its accuracy …

System And Thermal Modeling Of Hydraulic Hybrids: Thermal Characteristics Analysis, Hyukjoon Kwon

Open Access Dissertations

Hybrid vehicles have become a popular alternative to conventional powertrain architectures by offering improved fuel efficiency along with various other environmental benefits. Among them, hydraulic hybrid vehicles (HHVs) have several benefits, which make it the superior technology for certain applications over other types of hybrid vehicles, such as lower component costs, more environmentally friendly construction materials, higher power densities, and more regenerative energy available from braking. There have been various studies on HHVs, such as energy management optimization, control strategies for various system configurations, the effect of system parameters on the hybrid system, and proposals for novel hybrid architectures. One …

The Impact Of Host Variables And Tumor Necrosis Factor On The Gut Microbiome In A Mouse Model Of Crohn's Disease, Ariangela J. Kozik

Open Access Dissertations

Crohn’s Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) are chronic, inflammatory conditions of the digestive tract that are collectively known as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Currently, IBD has no cure and the exact mechanisms of disease development and progression are unknown. The gut microbiome is the collection of microbes that reside in the digestive tracts of humans and animals, and it has been shown to be associated with a variety of diseases, including IBD. Mouse models of colitis are often used to investigate the role of the gut microbiome in IBD. In this work, I investigated the role of tumor necrosis …

Stereotype Threat, Perfectionism, And Women's Career Outcomes, Chaihua Lin

Open Access Dissertations

The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) calls for efforts to understand factors that contribute to women’s career development in STEM fields. Using social cognitive career theory (SCCT), this study examines how the interplay of individual and contextual factors (i.e., perfectionism and stereotype threat) contributes to the academic and career outcomes of women STEM students (i.e., self-efficacy, outcome expectation, interest, goals, and procrastination). Hypotheses regarding the relationships among these variables, as well as the moderating role of perfectionism on the mediated effect of stereotype threat on interest through self-efficacy were assessed. Data was collected from 323 …

Data Compression In Multi-Hop Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks, Yimei Li

Open Access Dissertations

Data collection from a multi-hop large-scale outdoor WSN deployment for environmental monitoring is full of challenges due to the severe resource constraints on small battery-operated motes (e.g., bandwidth, memory, power, and computing capacity) and the highly dynamic wireless link conditions in an outdoor communication environment. We present a compressed sensing approach which can recover the sensing data at the sink with good accuracy when very few packets are collected, thus leading to a significant reduction of the network traffic and an extension of the WSN lifetime. Interplaying with the dynamic WSN routing topology, the proposed approach is efficient and simple …

Structural, Thermodynamic, And Electronic Properties Of Mixed Ionic/Electronic Conductor Materials, David M. Guzman

Open Access Dissertations

Due to the mainstream CMOS technology facing a rapid approach to the fundamental downscaling limit, beyond CMOS technologies are under active investigation and development with the intention of revolutionizing and sustaining a wide range of applications including sensors, cryptography, neuromorphic and quantum computing, memory, and logic, among others. Resistive switching electronics, for example, are devices that can change their electrical resistance with an applied external field. Despite their simple metal-insulator-metal structure, resistive switching devices exhibit an intricate set of IV characteristics based on the chemical composition of the solid electrolyte that ranges from non-volatile bipolar and non-polar switching to volatile …

Design And Analysis Of Sodium-Cooled Fat Reactor Systems For Nuclear Waste Minimization, Ching-Sheng Lin

Open Access Dissertations

The primary objective of this study was to develop fuel cycle options that minimize the nuclear waste generation using sodium-cooled fast reactor systems. In addition, this study aims to develop a new method that improves the accuracy in analyzing one of the developed options that the moderated target assembly was loaded in the fast reactor core. This document summarizes the objectives and lines of work focused on the design studies and performance analyses of transuranic (TRU) elements transmutation in fast reactor systems, the development of new depletion method, and the assessment of how well the design meets the objectives. Two …

Geometric Measure Theory With Applications To Shape Optimization Problems, Qinfeng Li

Open Access Dissertations

This thesis mainly focuses on geometric measure theory with applications to some shape optimization problems being considered over rough sets. We extend previous theory of traces for rough vector fields over rough domains and proved the compactness of uniform domains without uniformly bounded perimeter assumption. As application of these results, together with some other tools from geometric analysis, we can give partial results on the existence and uniqueness of minimizers of the nematic liquid droplets problem and the thermal insulation problem. Two other geometric minimization problems with averaged property, which include the generalized Cheeger set problem, are also studied.

Airborne Challenges To Vocal Folds: Studies On Barrier Function And Inflammation, Xinxin Liu

Open Access Dissertations

The vocal folds are located in the larynx and are responsible for voice production. The epithelium of the vocal folds is of the stratified squamous type. These epithelial cells along with the characteristic tight junctional complex create an active barrier, that protects the underlying connective tissue against air-borne xenobiotics. Damage to the epithelium can lead to penetration of xenobiotics and may cause inflammation in connective tissue. Particles and chemicals have different physical properties and have different capacities for penetrating epithelium and inducing inflammation in underlying tissues. In this study, we investigated the effects of one type of particle (single-walled carbon …