Digital Commons Network^™

Humberto: The Fire Next Time, John David Fournie

Theses

“The Fire Next Time” is the opening section of a novel, Humberto, that tells the story of a group of people working at a biomedical engineering firm in St. Louis. The section follows Charles, a well-respected employee and leader whose marriage is slowly disintegrating. In the first chapter, a larger-than-life employee, the Priest, joins the company. He befriends Charles while working closely with him. The Priest, however, begins an affair with Charles’ wife, Linda. Charles is put in a difficult position: how should he work with a man he both hates and admires? As Charles struggles with this dilemma, a …

An Empirical Study On Code Comprehension: Dci Compared To Oo, Hector A. Valdecantos

Theses

Comprehension of source code affects software development, especially its maintenance where reading code is the most time consuming performed activity. A programming paradigm imposes a style of arranging the source code that is aligned with a way of thinking toward a computable solution. Then, a programming paradigm with a programming language represents an important factor for source code comprehension. Object-Oriented (OO) is the dominant paradigm today. Although, it was criticized from its beginning and recently an alternative has been proposed. In an OO source code, system functions cannot escape outside the definition of classes and their descriptions live inside multiple …

Funeral Home Or Ritualistic Edifice? An Assessment Of An Enigmatic Structure At The Late Pre-Hispanic Site Of Panquilma, Central Coast Peru, Alysia Ashley Leon

Theses

Mortuary remains within an archaeological context can illuminate the social and political aspects not only of the individual(s) buried, but also of the living who interred them. Although this is so, a consensus has not been reached in regard to the following questions: how can we determine the social identity of the living that interred the dead? What are the implications of the living-dead interaction, and how do mortuary practices alter social memory in order to fit political needs? This thesis constitutes an initial attempt to answer these questions while examining pre-internment mortuary practices, and associated ideologies regarding the afterlife …

Retopologizing Mri And Diffusion Tensor Tractography Datasets For Real-Time Interactivity, R. Scott Riddle

Theses

Current technology allows MRI and other patient data to be translated into voxel-based 3D models for the purpose of visualization. However, these voxel models are extremely complex and are not suitable for rapid real-time manipulation. For true “on-the-fly” interactivity, polygon-based models must be hand-built using other methods and imported into a game engine.This project develops an algorithm to translate complex datasets into optimized models for real-time interactivity without sacrificing accuracy of the original imaging modality. A working prototype, ready for integration into game engines, has been built with brain tumor data exported from OSIRIX1 and 3D Slicer2 via Mudbox3, retopologized …

Ecologically Inspired Metrics For Rare Earth Element Critical Material Systems, Berlyn Jo Hubler

Theses

Greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have increased demand for clean energy technologies, and the growth required for these technologies has led to concern over material availability and criticality. Critical materials are defined as having risks associated with them such as supply gaps or price volatility. Existing metrics for criticality determination are narrowly focused on physical scarcity of single materials, whereas many critical materials are byproducts of large, complex, interconnected material systems. Industrial ecology borrows methods from ecology to study complex material and energy flows, which can be used for a systems-perspective analysis. In this work, critical rare earth material systems …

Deadly Pleasure, Chunhui Bao

Theses

In this work, a girl’s father is one of the victims in the mass political persecution by Emperor Yongzheng, 18 A.D., and he is killed in front of his family. The Emperor is present during his murder and he notices the girl and her gorgeous, long hair. Because of this the girl survives the massacre of her entire family and is sent away and trained to become a concubine. It becomes the goal of the girl to work hard to become a chosen concubine by the Emperor so she can avenge the murder of her family with her gorgeous, magical …

Scent Of Geranium, Naghmeh Farzaneh

Theses

“Scent of Geranium” is an animated graduate thesis film, with a runtime of 4 minutes and 41 seconds. This film is a completion of an unfinished project from 2011, the year that I immigrated to the United States of America, called “The Whole World Is Watching”. Scent of Geranium is an autobiography about the challenges, fears, unexpected events and adaptation process that I experienced after my immigration. This film captures a series of memories and events that were significant to me and that have affected me in a certain way.

This film is a full color, hand-drawn animation that was …

Candelaria Hot Dog, Alexander Montoya

Theses

Candelaria Hotdog is a short animated film that attempts to show a personal perspective of a city’s landscape and culture. It’s a journey through the eyes of a person who treasures a simple memory and wants to make the best out of it by sharing it in a unique and comprehensible way.

La Candelaria is a historic neighborhood in Bogota Colombia, characterized by a constant display of a variety of street artists, musicians and beautiful locations that portray many of the local traditions and artistic styles of Colombia. The architecture from La Candelaria is primarily distinctive of the Spanish colonial …

Moovy: Sensorial Communication Device, Mariana Pinheiro

Theses

Over time humans evolved and perfected their communication tools. The world today is more connected than ever, and we are able to reach people all over the world using handheld technology such as smartphones, computers, and tablets. Society is living in a digital era and many negative side effects are being identified. The excess of digital immersion can lead to physical harm, such as neck injuries caused by poor postural habits, as well as psychological and social consequences.

Inspired by the historical evolution of communication and concerned about the impacts in social behaviors, this thesis proposes a new language of …

Predicting Choices In Bumblebees (Bombus Impatiens): Learning Rules And The Two-Armed Bandit, Isabel Lucia Rojas-Ferrer

Theses

Animals must make estimates about possible resources in order to choose the resource which will save them time and energy while conferring high energetic content. In order to make the most optimal decision, foragers must use various parameters to come up with an accurate estimate for each possible alternative. Learning rules allow us the possibility of analyzing which parameters animals may be using in order to make the best decision. We use compare known learning rules (i.e. Linear Operator Rule, Relative Payoff Sum Rule, Perfect Memory) and experimental data extracted from bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) subjected to a two armed bandit …

A Temporally Coherent Neural Algorithm For Artistic Style Transfer, Michael Dushkoff

Theses

Within the fields of visual effects and animation, humans have historically spent countless painstaking hours mastering the skill of drawing frame-by-frame animations. One such animation technique that has been widely used in the animation and visual effects industry is called "rotoscoping" and has allowed uniquely stylized animations to capture the motion of real life action sequences, however it is a very complex and time consuming process. Automating this arduous technique would free animators from performing frame by frame stylization and allow them to concentrate on their own artistic contributions. This thesis introduces a new artificial system based on an existing …

Discovery, Cloning, Expression, Purification, And Characterization Of Phosphoglycolate Phosphatase From Staphylococcus Aureus, Isreal Moreno

Theses

Staphylococcus aureus is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections. The multi-drug resistant nature of certain S. aureus strains makes the discovery of new drug targets for S. aureus vital. A newly discovered virulence factor from S. aureus was described as an ortholog of NagD from E. coli, a member of the nitrophenyl phosphatase family of the HAD (Haloacid Dehalogenase) superfamily. This thesis will show that this virulence factor is not an ortholog of NagD UMPase from E. coli, but rather a phosphoglycolate phosphatase (PGPase). If phosphoglycolate accumulates in the cell, it will inhibit the glycolytic enzyme triose phosphate isomerase (TPI). …

Techno-Environmental Analysis Of Generating Animal Feed From Wasted Food Products, Melissa Hall

Theses

The scope of this thesis was to investigate the technological and environmental parameters related to producing animal feed from wasted food products (FFP). An analysis was conducted to understand both the global and local (New York) factors affecting food waste diversion to feed. In the case of New York, the State has great potential resources for FFP, however, it is currently lacking in both visibility and a motivating factor to incentivize industry growth.

Published literature was analyzed to understand deployment of FFP operations in other global regions, including Japan, Korea, and Europe. Food waste resources available in New York State …

Digitabs: Share. Learn. Play, Alfredo Lopez

Theses

This project focused on designing an effective online sharing network that includes video tutorials and music tablatures of any original or pre-existing song, created and shared by fellow musicians. This network encourages people with little to no musical background to perform their own versions of songs by practicing and learning music theory in a pedagogical interactive environment.

Nectar Bats And Their Flowers Across Cloud Forests Of Ecuador And The Effect Of Artificial Nectar Feeders, Nora Rossana Maguina Conde

Theses

Plant-pollinator interactions are important because they determine the reproductive success of animal-pollinated plant species, and contribute to speciation in plants and to the maintenance of biodiversity in the ecosystems. Plants pollinated by bats possess unique characteristics to attract them in order to be successfully pollinated. Also, pollinator bats have evolved several adaptations to feed from nectar and pollen. It is important to register and study these interactions, but also to analyze which activities could threaten them, in order to conduct optimal management decisions for their conservation. Our study addressed two topics related to bat-plant interactions. The first chapter is about …

Snakes In The Nest, Shane Durgee

Theses

This document accompanies my thesis titled, Snakes in the Nest, which was exhibited in the Bevier Gallery for two weeks in April 2016, and consisted of five paintings and one sculpture. In this essay I outline both the artistic influences and theoretical research that shaped the creation of my work. I argue that the construction of my identity has been largely manipulated by a culture of escapist consumerism as well as social conditioning performed by my society to maintain a gender binary. The making of my thesis exhibition sparked an investigation into my ongoing involvement with art. This called for …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Effectiveness, Efficiency And Equity Of Payment For Ecosystem Services In A User-Financed And A Government-Financed Program, Tanya Williams

Theses

Payment for Ecosystems Services (PES) programs which are considered as incentivized mechanisms has been implemented in Latin America as a strategy to reduce deforestation by rewarding landowners (sellers) to protect forests and to provide ecosystem services to ecosystem users/beneficiaries (buyers).

Two common management structures for PES programs have been implemented in Latin America: Government-financed and User-financed. User-financed PES programs are promoted as being more environmentally effective and cost-effective compared with Government-financed programs. Government-financed PES programs are perceived as less effective than User-financed PES due to the inclusion of equity as a critical policy outcome of PES.

In this thesis, an …

Continuum Mechanical Analysis Of Space And Time Dependent Deformation Pattern Of Brain With Blunt Injury, Chen Miao

Theses

Deformation of human brain due to acceleration impact has been widely accepted as the direct connection to the Trauma Brain Injury (TBI). However, the limitation of obtaining deformation data of TBI is a major obstacle to understanding TBI mechanism. This experiment mainly focuses on developing a method to measure deformation pattern of brain with blunt injury. First of all, displacement data of markers on sagittal plane of an injury head model was collected using 3D reconstruction software after an impact test. Second, the displacement data was used to calculate 2D Lagrangian strain tensor and the principal strain. The temporal and …

Multisensory Integration In Weakly Electric Fish, Andrea Roeser

Theses

Animals integrate information from across sensory systems, such as vision and hearing, to improve perception. To understand how neural circuits in the central nervous system integrate information from different senses, the responses of midbrain neurons to two categories of electrosensory stimuli in Eigenmannia virescens were studied. The first category of stimulus is electrical signals with frequencies below 50 Hz that are encoded in the activity of ampullary receptors. The second category is amplitude modulations of the electric organ discharge, which are encoded by p-type tuberous receptors. Six multisensory neurons were found that responded to both categories of stimuli. However, when …

Augmentation Of Experimental Design Using Statistical Power, Anil Nair

Theses

Hypothesis testing is an integral part in the process of experimental design that is used to identify significant effects in a study. A significant effect is one that is statistically determined to influence the response variable of interest and is based on the results of a hypothesis test. Any hypothesis test is prone to two types of error. When an effect is not significant in reality but the null hypothesis is rejected, then it is called a type I error and specified as α. Conversely, when an effect is significant in reality but we fail to reject the null hypothesis, …

Wearable Wonderland: Using Interaction Design And Wearable Technology To Motivate People To Stay Active, Xi Yang

Theses

Wearable Wonderland is an interactive game about a boy's wonderful journey. The game is a mobile app that works with wearables. The goal of the thesis is to promote a healthy lifestyle using wearable technology. The target audience is young people who want to build a healthy lifestyle and become more active, ranging from ages 18 to 30.

Staying active and maintaining enough sleep is important to one’s overall wellbeing. Today, many fitness trackers and fitness apps have appeared on the market to encourage doing exercise. They can track people's activities easily. However, most of these apps cannot engage users …

Prime Movers, Garvin Sealy

Theses

Prime Movers, exhibited from April 1-15 2016, at Bevier Gallery, Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T), explores the motivations behind human actions, and the inner workings of the self, through introspection, metacognition, research and experimentation. Inspiration for this work comes from a desire to gain better self-awareness and understanding. Social and personal mythologies are employed to investigate the contemporary human condition. Glass, porcelain, metal, wood, acrylic, soap, light and sound are the elements used to translate the concepts into tangible forms.

Helios, Minh D. Le

Theses

“Helios” is an advertisement for a futuristic electric vehicle that utilizes revolutionary materials and upcoming technologies to address some of the current shortcomings of electric vehicles both aesthetically and technologically. This project explores how to create an effective advertisement for an automobile. Factors affecting consumer behavior, barriers and motivations for purchase, brand strategy, and aesthetics as well as the design of the car itself were all considered. The process for creating and assessing the advertisement will be summarized and evaluated

Scare Tactics, Tiago Martines, Gabriel Ortega, Karan Sahu, Lucas Pereira Vasconcelos, Henrique Silva Chaltein De Almeida

Theses

It is the purpose of this document to describe the design and development processes of Scare Tactics. The game will be discussed in further detail as it relates to several areas, such as market analysis, development process, game design, technical design, and each team members’ individual area of background research. The research areas include asymmetrical game design, level design, game engine architecture, real-time graphics, user interface design, networking and artificial intelligence.

As part of the team’s market analysis, other games featuring asymmetric gameplay are discussed. The games described in this section serve as inspirations for asymmetric game design. Some …

Reaching Quiet, Michael Strobert

Theses

This thesis serves as the documentation into an investigation of an intersection of elements – the digital and mechanical and the organic and natural – that create our surroundings and inform our perspectives. Informed by the complex fluidity of the organic, juxtaposed with the precision and detail of the digital and mechanical, I have worked to create systems that expose the intangible through multiple forms. Through these new analogues, I explore the convergence of time, space, perception, and reality. I approach these concepts by focusing on the projection and exploration of hope, possibility, and potential.

Experimental Design In Game Testing, Bhargava Rohit Sagi

Theses

The gaming industry has been on constant rise over the last few years. Companies invest huge amounts of money for the release of their games. A part of this money is invested in testing the games. Current game testing methods include manual execution of pre-written test cases in the game. Each test case may or may not result in a bug. In a game, a bug is said to occur when the game does not behave according to its intended design. The process of writing the test cases to test games requires standardization. We believe that this standardization can be …

Sense3, Armaan Bhargava, Bruno Rocha, Lakshminarayanan Vijayaraghavan, Meith Jhaveri, Mrinal Jain, Srinivasan Thiagarajan

Theses

Sense3, at its core, is a game in which the player has to collectively use the three senses of sight, touch and hearing to primarily dodge obstacles and collect audio samples, which are vertically remixed to form music. We chose EDM themed music, coupled with a futuristic outer space theme for the art style of the game, creating an immersive environment. The game is a pseudo-endless runner, where the player has to collect all the components to assemble their music. After each play through, the game allows the player to listen to the newly assembled music before reloading. We wanted …

Sketchy, Matt Ansini

Theses

Sketchy is the story of Charlie, a 30-year-old underachiever working in the IT department of an office building. Despite his best efforts, he has slowly moved up the corporate ladder that he never intended to climb. In the beginning of the film, Charlie’s long term girlfriend Julie is thrilled to hear Charlie has been offered a management position with the company. She takes it as a sign that now is the perfect time to take their relationship to the next level and get married.

Charlie, on the other hand, sees this as a different sign. He has decided that he …

The Busk Below, Kenton Cummings

Theses

Whether above, or below the concrete jungle a.k.a. NYC, there is no doubt that this town is a proving ground. Countless individuals flock to the mecca city in search of success, money, and fame-looking to share their talents with anyone who will listen. No exception to this ethic, are the subway tunnels below ground that harbor an abundance of talent. Known as Street Performers, these subway buskers are more than the title mostly associated with panhandlers and beggars. Their talents captivate an audience, mostly distracted by their everyday lives, as they travel from one destination to the next. These performers …

Effects Of Using Ipad On First Grade Students' Achievements In Arabic Language Classes In Saudi Arabia, Jawaher Alsulami

Theses

Although the iPad device has become a new trend as a teaching and learning tool in schools, using it in Saudi schools is still relatively new. So, the purpose of the study was to investigate whether the iPad enhances the teaching and learning styles in Arabic language classes for first grade in Albushra primary school. It also examined how this new educational tool affects students' skills and achievements, how teachers and students use it in their Arabic language classes, and what are advantages and disadvantages of using it in a class and at home. The study data was collected by …