Digital Commons Network^™

I Am Arbor, Anannya Sengupta

Theses

I Am Arbor is a film that captures the beauty and tragedy of Trees in our civilization, which are going through tragic transformations due to rapid urbanization. Perhaps for the first time, this short movie has created a narrative that is anchored on the feelings and emotions of Trees, their existence as families, and their collective contribution to human existence. The movie blends live action and Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), to merge real and imaginary worlds; all of which comes together to create a touching story.

The film is a product of a childhood influence coupled with children’s literature. The …

Oil Dependency And National Food Security: A Case For Nigeria, Alexandra A. Akaakar

Theses

Food insecurity is a condition of insufficient access to quality nutritious food; it is often rooted in shocks that interrupt the food production/distribution system in an area. Amidst the capabilities of Nigeria's agricultural system, the number of households across Nigeria experiencing food shortages has increased rapidly. The main reason for this increase were price shocks. This incident highlighted a huge vulnerability in Nigeria's food system, the vulnerability to price shocks. Incidences such as poverty and conflicts magnify the frequency of food insecurity. The ability to reduce vulnerabilities while addressing existing issues in food production and supply depends on a stable …

Observing Exoplanet Transits With The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (Cate) Experiment Telescope Network, Robert A. Baer

Theses

The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) Experiment established a standardized set of observation procedures and 72 volunteer observation teams with identical equipment along the path of the 2017 total solar eclipse. CATE successfully imaged the solar corona from 66 of the 72 observation sites resulting in a high dynamic range animation of 90 minutes of solar corona data collected by volunteer citizen science teams. A subgroup of CATE began work in the fall of 2017 to evaluate use of the standard CATE observation setup for exoplanet transit observations. Light curves and analysis of data using AstroImageJ of two well know …

Real-Time Facial Emotion Recognition Using Fast R-Cnn, Salem Bin Saqer Almarri

Theses

In computer vision and image processing, object detection algorithms are used to detect semantic objects of certain classes of images and videos. Object detector algorithms use deep learning networks to classify detected regions. Unprecedented advancements in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have led to new possibilities and implementations for object detectors. An object detector which uses a deep learning algorithm detect objects through proposed regions, and then classifies the region using a CNN. Object detectors are computationally efficient unlike a typical CNN which is computationally complex and expensive. Object detectors are widely used for face detection, recognition, and object tracking. In …

Sunday In The Shop With Rob, Robert J. Anderson

Theses

On February 21st, 2019, Southern Illinois University Department of Theater produced

Act-Based Statements Effect On Bartending Tips, Mariah Patz

Theses

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a behaviorally-based intervention that emphasizes psychological processes related to mindfulness, values, committed actions towards values, defusion from troubling thoughts, and acceptance. ACT is often used with populations who experience psychological inflexibility or stress, but not much research has been done understanding how ACT processes may affect everyday tasks within the common public or within business practices. The present study used a randomized controlled trial to determine the effect that statements related to ACT processes given while receiving a bar tending service altered the outcome tipping percentage from guests. The current research also discussed how …

A Low-Cost Search-And-Rescue Drone Platform, Jonathan Mcclure

Theses

In this work, an unmanned aerial system is implemented to search an outdoor area for an injured or missing person (subject) without requiring a connection to a ground operator or control station. The system detects subjects using exclusively on-board hardware as it traverses a predefined search path, with each implementation envisioned as a single element of a larger swarm of identical search drones. To increase the affordability of such a swarm, the system cost per drone serves as a primary constraint. Imagery is streamed from a camera to an Odroid single-board computer, which prepares the data for inference by a …

Examining The Impact Of Using Point Of View Video Modeling On Improving Self-Care Skills Of A Student With Autism, May Ali Elmetwally Ghoneim

Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using point of view video modeling intervention strategy on improving the self-care skills of a student with autism. The target skills were handwashing and toothbrushing skills. A single-subject ABA design was used in this study. Data was collected using mixed-method approach. The intervention lasted for six weeks. The results of this study indicated that point of view video modeling is an effective instructional tool to improve handwashing and toothbrushing skills for a student with autism. Moreover, the participant was able to generalize handwashing and toothbrushing skills to two different …

The Role Of Parathyroid Hormone 1 Receptor (Pth1r) Signaling In Gastric Epithelial Homeostasis, Maram Maher Al-Hasan

Theses

In the stomach, the epithelial stem cells are responsible for glandular homeostasis. These stem cells continuously undergo cellular proliferation and differentiation to balance the death of senescent cells. Studies conducted on gastric cancers showed a significant increase in parathyroid hormone-like hormone (PTHLH). Moreover, both PTHLH along with parathyroid hormone (PTH) act as endogenous ligands for parathyroid hormone 1 receptor (PTH1R) which belongs to family B of G- protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). This receptor functions by mediating many different signaling pathways and the most studied pathway is the stimulation of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) as a second messenger.

There are very few …

Smile, Luke Polito

Theses

Smile is a film about June, an unhappy high school girl who lives in a world of unrelenting positivity. Everyone in this world has a massive, overwhelming smile and wears bright, vibrant colors. As she leaves school one day June is invited to a karaoke party that evening by a group of exceedingly enthusiastic students, which she hesitantly agrees to attend. June rides her rusty, uneven bicycle home to find her father working in the garage. She tries to enter the house unnoticed, but her father scoops June up in a massive hug and excitedly tells her that he picked …

Multiscale Fluid-Structure Interaction Models Development And Applications To The 3d Elements Of A Human Cardiovascular System, Yogesh Karnam

Theses

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the number one cause of death of humans in the United States and worldwide. Accurate, non-invasive, and cheaper diagnosis methods have always been on demand as cardiovascular monitoring increase in prevalence. The primary causes of the various forms of these CVDs are atherosclerosis and aneurysms in the blood vessels. Current noninvasive methods (i.e., statistical/medical) permit fairly accurate detection of the disease once clinical symptoms are suggestive of the existence of hemodynamic disorders. Therefore, the recent surge of hemodynamics models facilitated the prediction of cardiovascular conditions.

The hemodynamic modeling of a human circulatory system involves varying levels …

Design And Production Of 3d Animation Short Film “Relict”, Rundong Wang

Theses

Relict is a science fiction 3D animated short film that surrounds a fantasy of future Beijing, the capital city of the People's Republic of China. The short film critically explores three important problems, which are heatedly discussed nowadays in Beijing, of large population, environmental pollution and declination of people’s living standard through a fictional point of view of several Landmark buildings of the metropolis.

These three issues I hope to discuss in this short film are closely related to each other. Firstly, the large population problem is caused by the fact of its greater resources in politics, economy and education …

You Can Be Strong: An Animation About A Young Woman Fighting Against Breast Cancer, Yuting Hou

Theses

Many young women don’t take cancer as a potential threat. They consider this situation only when they attain a certain age. But in fact, cancer is a serious threat. Breast cancer has become the fastest-growing type of cancer in urban areas. The age of women between 25-39 years old are diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, accounting for 10-15 percent of all patients.

Being stressed, depressed, lacking of sleep, eating unhealthy food, and smoking are among the factors that are potential causes for breast cancer. It should be taken seriously by young women.

In order to improve awareness of this disease, …

Mudboy: An Animated Short Story Of Procrastination, Wentao Huang

Theses

Procrastination is becoming an issue of people daily lives. This thesis aims to use a short film called Mudboy to investigate what is the main factors that caused procrastination, and raise public awareness of procrastination, through a story about lazy boy whom turns himself into mud whenever he feels like running away from doing his work. Mudboy was developed based on a strictly scheduled plan. More specifically, in the first stage, research and planning were conducted, with significant emphasis on idea creation, story creation, and animatic design. Following the theories and evidence of comprehensive research, a 3D animation story integrating …

Additives Abyss, I-Tang Wu

Theses

Through the news, publications and journals about misuse of food additives in Taiwan, food additives are gradually recognized by the public. However, many people were neither aware of the additives nor able to understand the importance of nutrition usage until some negative food safety issues broke out. This has a lot to do with the lack of knowledge about additives among Taiwanese. People are seldom suspicious of the unnatural taste, even get familiar with it. Therefore, food companies replace the natural ones with food additives not only to lower costs and make food attractive, but also to fulfill customers’ need …

Leper/Cat, Bryan Halvarsson

Theses

This novella is about an artist stricken with leprosy who has to spend the rest of his living days on a mountainside with a particularly large cat.

Transferring Generalized Knowledge From Physics-Based Simulation To Clinical Domain, Mohammed Abdullatif Alawad

Theses

A primary factor for the success of machine learning is the quality of labeled training data. However, in many fields, labeled data can be costly, difficult, or even impossible to acquire. In comparison, computer simulation data can now be generated at a much higher abundance with a much lower cost.

These simulation data could potentially solve the problem of data deficiency in many machine learning tasks. Nevertheless, due to model assumptions, simplifications and possible errors, there is always a discrepancy between simulated and real data. This discrepancy needs to be addressed when transferring the knowledge from simulation to real data. …

Effect Of Religion On Domestic Violence Perpetration Among American Adults, Cassidy Mitchell

Theses

After Hirschi and Stark’s Hellfire and Delinquency (1969), researchers have been seeking to determine whether there is a correlational link between religion and crime. This paper seeks to add to the literature by correlating domestic violence with four elements of religion (use of belief to solve everyday problems, prayer frequency, religious importance, and attendance of worship) that correspond with the four elements of Hirschi’s social control theory (attachment, commitment, belief, and involvement, respectively) (1969). It also includes male victims of domestic violence among female victims, unlike most previous literature. Using a series of logistic regression models, only attendance of worship, …

Industrial Design Strategies To Enhance The Value Of Paraguayan Artisans’ Textiles, Andrea Gonzalez Esteche

Theses

Countries around the world promote their identity by sharing their culture, traditions, and people. Artisans play an important way of demonstrating a unique variety of elements that show the identity of a country. They share the country’s culture through its products in the world.

Artisans have an insight into the cultural interaction of the folkloric work, inspired by elements of nature to produce different artisanal products oftentimes lack technical knowledge for how to develop their products. This paper proposes an industrial design strategy to help enhance the value of the artisans broaden their offering through new product development, while preserving …

Eastern State Penitentiary: A Digital Restoration, Nicholas Gregory Golden

Theses

A model of prison architecture which has been replicated in modern prisons and schools throughout the world, Eastern State Penitentiary was built as the first prison to induce reformation upon its inmates. While kept in solitary confinement inside of generously proportioned cells with barrel vaulted ceilings lit by skylights, inmates were thought to see the light of God and be penitent of their crimes. Today, the interior of the structure is kept in ruin without funding to restore a major cell-block to its former prestige. The cells of the prison today have become dilapidated since the prison closed in 1970 …

Using Emotional Design To Make Memories And Enhance Relationships, Xi Guo

Theses

We have all experienced this. When we see a thing, the memory of it will come back in our minds no matter how many years have passed. This is the power of memory. What follows is our feelings and emotional reaction to this memory. Reminders of happy memories can bring back pleasant feelings tied to the original experience, regulate positive emotion and promote better well-being. This paper will focus on using emotional design to generate and recall positive memories in order to develop healthy relationships.

What The Water Brought Me: A Composite Of Two Short Stories And A Novel Portion, Shannon Strawhun

Theses

This thesis is a collection of two short stories and three chapters from my novel, Shore Walkers. The short stories, “Lights Against Your Back” and “Thunder and Dust” are a part of a larger collection I have been working on. Each story is based on a different being or place from Gulliver’s Travels. Though the stories can be read separately, there are characters and settings which eventually link all the works in the collection. The stories follow characters in different places and time in the United States. “Thunder and Dust” centers around the dismantling of the Hearst Castle in the …

Factors Limiting Organic Carbon Degradation By Antibiotic-Resistant Heterotrophic Microorganisms In Wastewater Contaminated Sediments, Katelyn Whitburn

Theses

This study aims to assess the interactions between antibiotic resistance and the ability of heterotrophs effected by highly polluted environments to remediate antibiotics from soil via biodegradation. These findings would reveal whether a self-cleaning process is occurring in the waters of Western NY. Water and sediment heterotrophs were obtained from wastewater contaminated environments to understand the factors influencing metabolism. A total of 113 isolates from Charlotte, Durand, and Payne Beaches, the Genesee River, and Hemlock Lake were cultured and detected for antibiotic resistance to 24 different antibiotics. Of these, seven robust bacteria from sediments were considered for their ability to …

Exploring The School Nurse's Perception Of Caring For Students With Severe Allergies, Alyson Kreitzman

Theses

The role of the school nurse continually evolves, with an increase in students who are medically fragile, have disabilities and those diagnosed with both acute and chronic illnesses. A major challenge for the school nurse is the number of students with severe allergies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates food allergies in children have increased by 50% in the past decade. These allergies can be life threatening and effect one in thirteen children under the age of eighteen, which means potentially two students in each classroom in the U.S. has a severe allergy. School nurses are responsible for …

Preparation And Characterization Of Novel Azocinnamates And Steroidal Azo Ethers, Abdullah Maamon Alhemyari

Theses

This thesis is concerned with the synthesis of novel azo-cinnamates and of steroidal azo ethers and with the analysis of the spectroscopic and thermal properties of these materials. The compounds were identified as possible photoswitchable liquid crystals. The molecules were prepared by multi-step sequences, involving etherification, azo coupling, and Appel-type reactions as the key steps in the case of the azo-cinnamates, and Finkelstejn reactions and Williamson-type etherification reactions as the major transformations in the case of the steroidal azo ethers. The preparation of the azo-cinnamates was a further example of an esterification reaction run under Appel-type conditions using BrCCl_{3 …}

Improving Energy Efficiency Performance Of Existing Residential Building In Northern China, Zhengyu Kang

Theses

China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s largest consumer of energy. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD)’s latest data shows that China’s building sector accounts for around one-third of its final energy consumption (MOHURD, 2016). Particularly in northern China, the cold climate exerts pressure on its central heating system, which is responsible for a total energy consumption of about four hundred million tons of standard coal equivalent (TCE) (National Development and Reform Commission, 2017). Due to the growing population, economic development, and increasing standards of living, China expects that building energy use will escalate in the coming …

Behind The Door, Pengxu Cheng

Theses

Behind the Door is a three-minute, nineteen-second 2D animation film. This story is about three rabbits, a hunter and a wolf and is told in two segments. The first segment of the film tells a linear story of a hunter who hunts rabbits, but fails continuously. The second segment of the film is told from the angle of the rabbits and a wolf. The wolf wants to hunt the rabbits, but also fails to catch them. The hunter also hunts the wolf, but the wolf outsmarts him. Although the rabbits are small and vulnerable animals, in this story they work …

Evaluating The Therapeutic Potential Of Crocin Against Diethylnitrosamine Induced Experimental Hepatocellular Carcinoma In Rats, Basma Ali Mustafa Awad

Theses

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common type of cancer and the third cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Liver cancer is the result of repeated injuries to the liver triggered by different causes. Currently, sorafenib is the only drug U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved targeted therapy. Sorafenib, an oral multikinase inhibitor, which inhibits the proliferation of tumor cells and blocks angiogenesis. Sorafenib has been shown to treat early and mild HCC lesions and it helped increase the survival rates at one year, but for only 44% of patients. Chemotherapies are an important line of defense when it comes …

Utilizing Mobile Technology To Improve Accessibility For Museum Visitors With Autism, Felicia Dianne Swartzenberg

Theses

What if museums could provide an app that makes interaction easier for visitors with autism and allows them to enjoy the museum any day of the week like their neurotypical counterparts? This research discusses how museums can utilize downloadable apps for personal devices to provide easily accessible resources for children on the autism spectrum and their families to use so they can have a more inclusive and sensory-friendly museum experience. To determine the feasibility of this, I worked in collaboration with an app developer, Peter Laurin, to create a prototype-app called SenseEase: Strong Museum for the Reading Adventure Land exhibit …

Museums And The Tax Code: A Fraught Friendship, Elisha Muir

Theses

Museums benefit immensely from their position in the American tax code and its peculiarities, but the fundamentals of this relationship are often muddled, confusing, and difficult to explain. But with recent alterations to the federal tax code and an atmosphere of apprehension in the field, understanding and explanation are critical to proper decision-making and governance. This thesis addresses that need through multifaceted research and analysis of historical data, expert analysis, and crucially case law at both the federal and state level. The result of this will be to expand the currently anemic body of current literature on the topic and …