Digital Commons Network^™

Wearther: An Ios Mobile Application For Women, Ting Kang

Theses

Have you ever wondered what to wear for the current weather and

later when you go outside you confirm that you were too optimistic

about your ability to endure the cold?

Wearther: an iOS Mobile Application for Women is an iOS Mobile

Application designed to help women choose the proper outfit that

matches the weather outside. It is an interaction design and visual

design project.

Unlike other dressing related application, "Wearther" is not a clothing

organizer or a fashion adviser. It is not a weather app either, although

it emphasizes weather. The concept of this project is to analyze real …

Axiom, Jon Fila, Peter Klinkon

Theses

Axiom is a short narrative video, using live-action and 3D computer graphics to re-interpret the Greek myth of Persephone through the framework of contemporary science-fiction. The aim of the video is to use narrative, approached from a design strategy that thematizes the representational role of 3D computer generated graphics, to raise questions in the minds of thoughtful viewers about the use of genetics and computer simulated worlds in the context of the vulnerable natural environment. The conceptualization of the video is explained, followed by a summary of the production pipeline, and finally an evaluation of the finished piece.

Biodegradation Of Cresols Using Pseudomonas Putida Immobilized In Poly Vinyl Alcohol (Pva) Gel, Riham Mohamed Sorkatti Abu Bakr

Theses

The characteristics and viability of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a support material for biomass immobilization and utilization for the biodegradation of cresols have been evaluated. PVA gel pellets were prepared by repeated freezing-thawing method using different PVA compositions. The porous structures of the PVA pellets were examined using a Compound Microscope and SEM and revealed that the matrix structure and pore size distribution were affected by PVA composition. Mechanical properties of the PVA gel were also characterized to evaluate the PVA integrity as a matrix for immobilizing microbial cells and found to be dependent on the PVA mass composition. The …

Perfection: United Goal Or Divisive Myth? A Look Into The Concept Of Posthumanism And Its Theoretical Outcomes In Science Fiction, Rebecca Leah Mccarthy

Theses

As science races to keep up with science fiction, many scientists are beginning to believe that the next step in human evolution will be a combination of human and machine and look a lot like something out of Star Trek. The constant pursuit of perfection is a part of the human condition, but if we begin to stretch beyond the natural human form can we still consider ourselves human? Transhumanism and posthumanism are only theories for now, but they are theories that threaten to permanently displace the human race, possibly pushing it into extinction. This thesis will look at the …

Augmented Sound, Berio Molina

Theses

A Computer Vision System for doing Interactive Installations

This thesis is a computer vision system for doing interactive-creative musical installations: A portable computer vision system based on video projection and a green laser, that allows the interaction with the projection itself, with the physical space where it is projected and with multiple users.

By using a green laser as a physical user interface, people create projections of sound balls that are projected on top of objects. These balls interact with the physical characteristics of the object where they are projected, as well as with other balls that where previously created …

Designing The Tangible Experience Of Interactive Memories, Miguel Angel Cardona Jr

Theses

The process for memory keeping in the digital age has become easier, immediate, and more efficient thanks to the advent of sophisticated pocket-sized toolsets that can capture everyday experiences.

Consumer-level photo and video recording products are introduced regularly and boast more fidelity, faster speeds, and greater control than their predecessors. More often than not, these expanding feature sets do not properly serve all of their users' needs.

While the technology exists to allow for a near-complete record of one's life to be made through the use of sensors and storage media, problems involve how best to meaningfully learn from and …

Sustainability Curriculum Inventory And Literacy Assessment: The Influence Of Values On Knowledge Of And Perceived Importance Of Sustainability Components, David James Drogos

Theses

The incorporation of sustainability education and sustainable practices in higher education serves several purposes. It prepares students for work in sustainability-focused professions, fosters environmentally responsible behavior in individuals, and helps to reduce the ecological impacts of the operational aspects of educational institutions. However, contemporary definitions of sustainability, which consider social, political, ecological, and economic influences on the environment, complicate educational initiatives. Distinct educational departments often consider sustainability through their specialized lens. Trans-disciplinary initiative must be enacted in order for sustainability education to reach its full potential. This paper outlines the results of an electronically administered faculty sustainability curriculum inventory as …

Regional-Climate And Local-Microbial Controls On Ecosystem Processes During Grassland Restoration, Meredith Lynne Mendola

Theses

Root productivity likely has consequences for the composition, activity, and recovery of soil microbial populations and the belowground processes mediated by these organisms. In tallgrass prairie, ecotypic variation potentially exists in response to a strong precipitation gradient across the Great Plains. Thus, ecotypic variation within a species may differentially affect belowground net primary productivity (BNPP), the associated soil microbial community, and may scale up to affect ecosystem processes. The goals of this study were to elucidate: (1) whether ecotype, environment, or an ecotype by environment interaction regulate BNPP of a dominant species (Andropogon gerardii) collected from and reciprocally planted in …

Window Thermal Performance Optimization In The Government Built Emirati Family House-Abu Dhabi Emirate., Tareq I.A Abuimara

Theses

Presently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has one of the world’s largest energy consumption per capita, with the building sector accounting for 70% of the consumed energy, primarily used for cooling. In the last three decades, the UAE government launched several housing programs that fit the needs of Emirati beneficiaries while recently targeting also energy efficiency.

This study aims at optimizing the window thermal performance in relation to orientation in a typical house within a representative governmental housing program. Often enough, housing orientation is governed by urban planning layout, where windows rarely show any adapted heat control treatment in relation …

Approachi Significans, Luke Shaw

Theses

Approachi Significans is a demonstration of the interference patterns created by scientific and artistic logics. It promotes immersion in the everyday world through experimentation and a search for novel experience, as such efforts prime the mind for novel thought. It is loosely based in a search for constellations of experiences that prompt Eureka moments and an effort to illustrate the organic nature of the scientific process. The title is derived from the phrase `approaching significance,' which is used to indicate that experimental data is moving towards the confirmation of a hypothesis.

Sustainability And Our Current Food Production System, Jennifer Nott

Theses

Food is necessary to human survival and having a sustainable food supply is one way to help guarantee this necessity. Sustainability comes in two forms. Weak sustainability, or substitutability, defines sustainability as the ability to substitute a diminishing resource with another more plentiful resource without irrevocably damaging the environment. Strong sustainability shifts its focus away from substitution and focuses only on renewable resources while maintaining the environmental caveat found in weak sustainability. Our current industrial food production system fails to meet the definition for strong sustainability because of its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and pesticides as well …

Persuasion In Antiquity: A Content Analysis Of Ptahhotep’S Maxims And Lao Tzŭ’S Tao Te Ching, Joel Skelton

Theses

This study investigated persuasive strategies used in ancient Egypt and ancient China. In an effort to attain a better understanding of the utilization of persuasive tools from these two ancient societies, this study was completed by examining Ptahhotep's Maxims from Egypt and Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching from China. A thematic analysis revealed the most common themes found in Ptahhotep's Maxims (e.g., humility) and Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching (e.g., comparison). A content analysis examined persuasive tactics within passages of both texts. It was found that Ptahhotep principally utilized negative expertise and loss-framed messages while Lao Tzu utilized positive expertise …

Character Demonstration: Zombie Video Game Characters With Specific Occupations, Jooyoung Byun

Theses

Video games with zombies, which are infected creatures that attack humanity, thirst for human flesh and leave behind a human life of their own. Pop culture has glorified them in video games, but zombies are just repetitious; they rush forward to the players in an attempt to reflect their insatiable hunger. In doing so, zombies have the same motion, the same appearance, and the same challenge. Think; what if zombies still remembered the occupations that they had before the infection? Would it be possible for them to use their own profession to assault players in the video game? For example, …

I Am Pakistan, Shehzil Malik

Theses

I Am Pakistan is a project that aims to address the question of whether interaction design can be used to create human connections and foster the intrinsic motivation needed for becoming an agent of social change.

Pakistan is a country riddled with crippling problems such as poverty, illiteracy, terrorism and injustice. There is a need to make young people aware of proactive measures they can take to help change this dire situation.

Figures show that around 55% of Pakistani nationals are under the age of 25 with over 30 million Internet users in the population. This indicates that there is …

Oh My Plant: A Creative Design For Building Emotional Relationships Between People And Plants, Boran Song

Theses

While speaking with plant owners, I realized that one of the main reasons why people's plants were dying was that people lacked emotional relationships with their plants. In creating Oh My Plant, I wanted to help busy people to easily improve their gardening skills and to create an emotional relationship between people and their houseplants.

When our lives become busy and stressful, it is easy to forget to take care of our own bodies, let alone our houseplants. Yet houseplants offer numerous benefits to people, beautifying the environment and purifying the air.

I believe that the design for Oh My …

Rescue Breathing In Noisy Environments, Brianna Slutsky

Theses

This study considered rhythmic performance of rescue breathing by trained emergency responders and lay persons. Participants were asked to complete rescue breathing in 10 different scenarios. Such scenarios were intended to evaluate the effects of target rhythms and distractors on the responder's ability to administer rescue breathing ventilations at the appropriate rate and rhythm, in accordance with the standards established by the American Red Cross (2011). Current research concerning rhythmic performance with target and distractor rhythms suggests that auditory rhythms, whether target or distractor, have a greater influence on the motor behaviors of the human than visual rhythms. This research …

Regularization Of Dynamic Time Warping Barycenter Averaging, With Applications In Sign Classification, John A.W.B. Costanzo

Theses

Sign language synthesis is a useful tool in addressing many of the issues faced by deaf communities. Sign languages are as different from spoken languages as spoken languages are from each other, and hence deaf persons raised learning sign language are not automatically proficient in communicating in written language. Existing methods of generating signing avatars are clunky and often unintuitive; hence the ability to classify gestures common to sign language using only data recorded by video would simplify the process dramatically.

Methods of gesture classification require a way to compare time series, and often (in particular, for k-means clustering) require …

The Apple Tree, Justin Scricco

Theses

We as human beings inherently strive to live the best life that we possibly can. We all want to be happy. Many times we see happiness in terms of what and how much we posses. This story is about how we don't always need the biggest and the best to be happy. The simple things in life are the ones that matter.

Through this paper I will document my process in the making of my thesis animation "The Apple Tree". I will discuss how my main character Zach, discovers through his interaction with a magical apple tree, that biggest isn't …

Homecoming, Posheng Chiang

Theses

A 30-minute narrative, based on a true story, Homecoming is about a journey of a family returning to Taiwan for father's funeral and disputing on the control with the uncle because of the cultural differences between Western (USA) and Eastern (Hakka). Through this event, Christian and Hakka conventions on death would be revealed, and reflects the spirits of life in two ways. However, the two generations would eventually find each other the common thing, the love of family. Pre-production of this overseas production happened in Rochester and Taiwan. The shoot was scheduled for 6 days in Taiwan only. The Budget …

Secondhand Blues, Dennis Michael Davis

Theses

“Secondhand Blues” is the first part of a novel-in-progress of the same title. It is a work of realist fiction that tells the story of an aspiring rock & roll artist, exploring the nature of ambition and how it affects (and is affected by) personal relationships. It also seeks to depict the world as it exists on the fringes of fame and success through the eyes of several different characters whose talents and ambitions have led them to take up residence there. “Stealing Home” is a coming-of-age story that explores the sometimes elusive concepts of home and family through the …

Preschool Teachers' Early Perceptions Of Education For Sustainable Development In Early Childhood Education, Shannon Susan Green

Theses

This study explored five preschool teachers' perceptions about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Early Childhood Education (ECE). Participating teachers provided a wide range of responses about ESD and its related subthemes. The findings of this study show that the participating teachers indicated a willingness to reflect on the principles of sustainable development, a commitment to developmentally appropriate practice, a value for participatory and problem-based curriculum, and appreciation for the benefits of community engagement. Teachers also expressed values of fairness and equality, and being open, honest, and matter-of-fact with children. Teachers were new to the ideas of interdependence, social justice, …

Under Construction: Viewing Manipulated Space, Michael David Farrell Jr.

Theses

North America, the United States in particular, has established an unique and distinct connection to the the wildspaces outside of urban environments. The two spaces, urban and wilderness, are placed in opposition to one another in a sliding valuation scale that is based on the degradation experienced in these urban areas, due to industrialized capitalist means of production, by the inhabitants. These effects are the source of both literary and visual art protests that originate in the 19th century in both generations of the Hudson River School painters, American pastoral writing, philosophy, and photographs. These romanticized views of natural space …

Dynamics And Control Of A Single-Line Maneuverable Kite, Christopher Donnelly

Theses

Through simulation, an automated control system for a single-line maneuverable kite is developed for application in kite wind energy production. The kite used in this study is a small, tension-controlled, single-line kite, commonly known as a fighter kite. These kites have a simple design, but flying them requires complex control of line tension and visual input. At low tether tension, the kite is unstable; spinning about the tether. Increasing tension in the tether causes the kite to deform and fly in the direction it was facing. Experienced fliers can produce intricate maneuvers and often participate in competitions with other fliers. …

Timeflies: Push-Pull Signal-Function Functional Reactive Programming, Edward Amsden

Theses

Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) is a promising class of abstractions for interactive programs. FRP systems provide values defined at all points in time (behaviors or signals) and values defined at countably many points in time (events) as abstractions. Signal-function FRP is a subclass of FRP which does not provide direct access to time-varying values to the programmer, but instead provides signal functions, which are reactive transformers of signals and events, as first-class objects in the program. All signal-function implementations of FRP to date have utilized demand-driven or "pull-based" evaluation for both events and signals, producing output from the FRP system …

Computational Modeling Of Human Dorsal Pathway For Motion Processing, Yuheng Wang

Theses

Reliable motion estimation in videos is of crucial importance for background iden- tification, object tracking, action recognition, event analysis, self-navigation, etc. Re- constructing the motion field in the 2D image plane is very challenging, due to variations in image quality, scene geometry, lighting condition, and most importantly, camera jit- tering. Traditional optical flow models assume consistent image brightness and smooth motion field, which are violated by unstable illumination and motion discontinuities that are common in real world videos.

To recognize observer (or camera) motion robustly in complex, realistic scenarios, we propose a biologically-inspired motion estimation system to overcome issues posed …

Natural Resource Management Knows No Bounds: A Case Study Of The Cache River Joint Venture Partnership, Jennifer Ann Behnken

Theses

In southern Illinois, multiple state, federal, and private ownerships are implementing various management tactics in the Cache River watershed. Although some aspects are coordinated under the Cache River Joint Venture Partnership (CRJVP), individual agencies and entities retain specific ownership priorities and approaches to management. This case study explores how agency/organizational characteristics and interrelations affect land management decision-making among land managers employed by federal agencies, state agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five participants, including land managers, staff members who maintain active participation with on-the-ground activities, and individuals who have worked closely with CRJVP. Triangulation of interview transcriptions, …

Relationship Of Childhood Activity To Leisure Time Activities And Recreation Specialization Among College Students, Alexandra Sandoval

Theses

Leisure time and outdoor recreation are participated in during childhood, which allows for children to being able to learn about different recreation activities, whether they may be indoor or outdoor oriented. Children begin to learn about the world around them, having significant life experiences and beginning to understand the concept of recreation specialization. As a child moves into adulthood, specifically as college students, their leisure time activities being to change; this may be due to the fact that their time is limited for both indoor and outdoor recreation, but could also be due to the fact that technological advances have …

The Oaxaca Barrio In Teotihuacan: Mortuary Customs And Ethnicity In Mesoamerica's Greatest Metropolis, Maria Teresa Palomares Rodriguez

Theses

This research examines the mortuary customs of the Oaxaca Barrio, one of the foreign settlements in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. The Oaxaca Barrio is associated with the Zapotec homeland in the state of Oaxaca, southern Mexico (roughly 290 miles); but many questions remain unanswered about its origins and development. The mortuary customs of the Oaxaca Barrio show how Zapotec migrants adapted to living in Teotihuacan over a considerable period of time, maintaining aspects of their homeland identity, but also generating a new cultural repertoire by which members of the enclave redefined themselves. The presence of Zapotec people in Teotihuacan …

Effect Of Celebrity Endorsements On Treatment Choices Made By Professionals And Parents With Children Diagnosed With Asd, Jenika Karnik

Theses

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated that one in 50 children are diagnosed with Autism in the U.S. Now, parents out there not only have to face a doctor's diagnosis, but also a flood of confusing promises for recoveries and miracle cures. Parents have to sift through recommendations made by media, celebrities, professionals, and many, many more. The purpose of this study is to examine what influences the choices parents make involving treatment for their children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Modern Arabic Calligraphic-Based Logos: The Influence Of Traditional Arabic Calligraphy On Modern Arabic Calligraphic-Based Logo Designs, Amer Alkharoubi

Theses

Calligraphy in the Arabic language is an ancient form of communication and a method of documenting history. The Arabic script started in a very simple form with characters similar to each other. However, through the years, many developments have occurred within this form of communication. These developments were created by several artists and calligraphers, which resulted in generating a variety of styles of scripts with unique treatments.

Since the twentieth century, these traditional calligraphic styles have started to lose their importance, and the use of modern Arabic calligraphy is becoming more dominant, especially in the fields of modern design such …