Digital Commons Network^™

The Perception Of Year 11 Students In Catholic Secondary Schools Towards Christian Service-Learning, Salvatore Pietro De Luca

Theses

The purpose of this research was to firstly, explore the perceptions of Year 11 students in four Catholic secondary schools in Western Australia towards Christian Service-Learning (CSL), and secondly to assist improvement in the delivery of CSL programs through an understanding of the students’ perceptions. The study explored Year 11 student perceptions regarding their understandings of CSL, as well what they perceived to be the benefits, challenges, and impacts of participating in a CSL program. A key informant (KI) from each school provided contextual understanding about the CSL program within their school and how the program is delivered within the …

Ngala Kaditjiny ’Our Culture’, Barbara Bynder

Theses

In this study I explored some of the key components of Noongar cultural practice that remain embedded within Noongar society today yet have adapted, changed, and evolved over time and demonstrate that there remains a sense of duty and commitment among Noongar women to follow cultural values and value systems that determine rights, responsibility, and obligation during the practice of disputes.

The target group for this inquiry is Noongar women, The target group is made up of nine Noongar women who shared their personal story, a group of senior Noongar women called the Kookaburra Club who guided me through the …

Deterring The Digital Dragon, Bryn Lacey

Theses

Australia’s 21st century has been heavily influenced by a growing number of cyber incidents ranging from individuals causing extraordinary damage to state-based attacks from adversary states such as China. Focusing on state actors in the cyber domain, this thesis investigates Martin Libicki’s cyber-deterrence framework, with a specific emphasis on the employment of deterrence by punishment, and applies this concept to the case study of the relationship between Australia and China.

In recent years, Australia has been consistently targeted by sophisticated state-based cyber actors and the Australian Government has appeared increasingly prepared to publicly criticise Beijing as a key security challenge. …

Design-Build Discussions: Coordination Practices In Design-Build Education Projects, Michael James Phillips

Theses

Design-build projects involve guiding a group of participants through the collaborative process of designing and constructing an architectural outcome while offering relevant learning opportunities. Guidance is often delivered intuitively through discussions between coordinators and participants, which integrate learning opportunities with activities that advance the development of the outcome. This study explores the discussion-based guidance practices of experienced coordinators, to address a gap in the literature on coordination practices.

As a step towards providing a more diverse range and detailed accounts of designbuild coordination practices, this study examines how experienced coordinators make sense of the design-build process and share their understanding …

Lived Experiences Of Former Secondary School Students With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Phenomenological Study, Dinoshi Sajivini Keiper

Theses

This study was an exploration of the lived experiences of students with ADHD in the Australian secondary school classroom in identifying factors influencing their learning outcomes. Students with ADHD face short-term issues, such as strained relationships with teachers, peers, and parents, a lack of relatedness and engagement with school, late arrival and absenteeism, and high drop-out rates, leading to poor academic outcomes (Dembo et al., 2016; Fried et al., 2016). In the long-term, their poor academic achievements have led to many other negative outcomes including psychological conditions, under-employment, substance abuse, criminality, and an overall poorer quality of life, causing significant …

First Nations Children: Investigating Elements For A Successful Education Model, Frances Mccarthy

Theses

This study was undertaken at the request of and in collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders, community members and families, and educators. These First Nations participants allowed the study to explore what might contribute to the creation of a successful model of education for First Nations children to lead them to be successful contributing members of the community.

The cultural interface theory is the theoretical framework used in the design of this research project. Through the implementation of the phenomenographic methodology, knowledge was gathered through semi-structured interviews with participants. By listening and questioning, a picture of the educational …

Access, Security, And Trust: Balancing Agencies' Need-To-Access Encrypted Data With Digital Security And Public Trust In Australian Government's Policy Approaches To Law Enforcement And National Security, Stephen Anthony Haydon

Theses

In the 21st Century, governments around the world are confronted by the challenges of policing against serious crime, terrorism, and other malicious-actor threats in an increasingly complex and convoluted digital landscape. Accelerating social changes and advances in secure and anonymising technologies (including end-to-end encryption) are providing regular frustrations to law enforcement and intelligence organisations. These agencies must detect, deter, and disrupt the threats to lives, public safety, and national security posed by malicious foreign and domestic actors who are utilising such technologies to communicate securely and ‘go dark’ online. Accessing encrypted data to identify and investigate these threats frequently requires …

Sms : A Smartwatch Application Suite For Mobility Assessment, Suresh Avula

Theses

Regular assessment of mobility can detect changes in physical health over time and discover underlying health issues. Some of these changes in mobility may indicate an increased risk of falls, which can lead to serious injuries. Identifying mobility changes can help prevent these incidents. Wearable technology can facilitate mobility tests at home and alert caregivers or medical professionals to any irregularities and promote proactive healthcare. Adoption of smartwatches with various built-in sensors like accelerometer and gyroscope creates new opportunities for wearable health monitoring. We developed the Smartwatch Application Suite to evaluate functional mobility using standard mobility tests: Timed Up and …

The Effect Of Emotional Demeanor Of Adult Sexual Assault Victim Testimonies On Mock Jurors' Verdicts, Callie Ahearn

Theses

Experiencing a sexual assault and testifying in trial are both highly emotional events that can influence a witness to display strong negative emotions. The display of emotion is referred to as the emotional demeanor and the present study examined the impact of a victim’s emotional demeanor on jury decision-making. Results revealed a main effect of crying during the direct examination with more guilty verdicts and higher pro-victim ratings (believability, credibility, and trustworthiness). Female participants provided higher pro-victim judgments on believability than male participants. Verdict reasoning demonstrated that participants had an idea of what they expected a rape victim to look …

Isolation, Purification, Crystallization And Preliminary X-Ray Data Analysis Of The B Family Dna Polymerase From Thermococcus Thioreducens, Emika Miyamoto

Theses

Family B DNA polymerases are the core polymerizing enzymes that carry out the essential process of DNA replication in many Archaeal organisms. Archaea depend on the unique properties of their DNA polymerases to faithfully replicate DNA within extreme environments. Variation in the catalytic properties of DNA polymerases from different organisms can be elucidated through detailed structural analysis by means of macromolecular X-ray crystallography. Crystallization is the crucial and bottleneck step in the process of determining the protein’s three-dimensional structure by X-ray diffraction—essentially no crystal, no structure. This study optimizes the isolation and purification of recombinant DNA polymerase B from Thermococcus …

Spectropolarimetric Properties Of Vortex Retarders, Ella Elizabeth James

Theses

Vortex retarders are unique optical elements that create a uniform electric field phase retardance, but the traditional fast axis varies azimuthally over the area of the optic. This affects the radial and azimuthal polarization components of the incoming beam. The vortex retarders discussed here generate TEM10 and TEM20 Laguerre-Gaussian beams. While several varieties of these TEM10 and TEM20 vortex retarders exist, designed to function at specific wavelengths–and a few studies have reported their use at those wavelengths–almost no data exists detailing their polarimetric properties outside those wavelengths. Using a Mueller matrix spectropolarimeter with dual-rotating retarders, the polarization properties of four …

Generation Of True Random Numbers With A First Order Chaotic Circuit, Austin Davis

Theses

True randomness backed by first principles theory is surprisingly rare in physically implemented circuit for cybersecurity applications. This thesis provides an illustrative case of a chaotic one-dimensional map circuit with a design driven by a need for rudimentary theory concerned with the limits of its entropy production. Analysis, simulation, and hardware measurements are evaluated against statistical randomness tests issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Interestingly, the results provided here highlight strong relationships between first principles theory of design and measured results when varying parameters. We observe matching characteristics between analytic, simulated and measured hardware results for NIST …

Enhancing Accessibility : A Pilot Study For Context-Aware Image-Caption To American Sign Language (Asl) Translation, Oluwafolahanmi Adedamola Aluko

Theses

Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the explosion of Generative AI, much work has been done around image captioning, providing wildly accurate captions from still images, and more recently videos [3]. Alt-Text has improved dramatically with efforts to enhance context and sentiment captured during automated captioning. This thesis attempts to expand on a section on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and its relevance to promoting accessibility and context-awareness in the premise of the American Sign Language (ASL) application. This thesis explores what it means to give full context about a caption or image to the end user, including sentiments, …

Assessing Learning Outcomes In Electrical Engineering Using Natural Language Processing: A Comparative Analysis Of Student And Employer Evaluations, Toka Khalil

Theses

The Co-op program is a graduation requirement for all majors in RIT Dubai. Just like any course, Co-op has also learning programs that is different from one major to another. The academic departments ensure that those learning programs are being achieved throughout the co-op duration that the student goes for to complete the requirement. By end of each co-op duration, the student completes a student evaluation form which consists of questions that are supposedly related to the learning outcomes of the academic program. At the same time, also the employer evaluation which needs to be filled by the employer, includes …

Predictive Methods And Data Pattern Analysis For Reducing Car Plate Theft, Noor Alzayani

Theses

The project titled " Predictive Methods and Data Pattern Analysis for Reducing Car Plate Theft" seeks to provide innovative solutions to combat car plate theft. The project contains data of 6500 thieves who have stolen number plates and were involved in various other types of criminal activities by putting that number plate in their vehicle. The data collected for the present project is from the emirates of Dubai. It contains information related to thieves age, education, nationality, type of crime committed, area in which crime is committed, number of crimes committed, timing of crime, residential status of criminal, visa status, …

Towards Algorithm Selection For Efficient Search-Based Software Engineering, Niranjana Deshpande

Theses

In Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE), metaheuristic search algorithms are used to construct software by combining components that fulfill diverse user and business requirements. These search algorithms typically employ randomization to accurately and efficiently evaluate numerous component combinations using limited computational resources. As a result, several search algorithms have been proposed to address SBSE problems, each with varying solution quality guarantees and computational resource usage. Recent research has demonstrated that search algorithms exhibit complementary behavior, that is, different search algorithms outperform each other on specific problem instances in terms of computational resource usage and solution quality. Problematically, current SBSE approaches do …

A Novel Method For Time-Based Synchronization Of Acquired Force And Motion Data, Darnisha Detraniece Crane

Theses

Enhancing the performance of flapping wing micro air vehicles hinges upon a thorough comprehension of the intricate interplay between wing kinematics and resulting forces. This understanding necessitates a method of synchronization capable of establishing a precise correlation of wing motion and force generation. The objective of this project is to develop a time-based synchronization method using existing hardware in the ATOM lab. Algorithms were developed to control the Vicon motion-tracking system and the ATI force sensor to achieve the synchronization of acquired data. Experimental testing was conducted to validate the algorithms and system architecture. Results from testing revealed a time …

Reduction Of Cognitive Load In Immersive Virtual Reality With Multisensory Cues, Daniel Wilson

Theses

This study investigated the effects of multimodal interfaces and immersive virtual environments on cognitive load. Participants played a first-person target shooting game with either a virtual reality headset or on a monitor, using visual, auditory-visual, and a haptic-visual interfaces. Performance and self-reported data about cognitive load and spatial presence were collected for each interface. The study found that both immersive environments and multimodal interfaces reduced cognitive load. Additionally, an interaction was seen such that multimodal interfaces were more effective at reducing cognitive load in immersive environments. These findings indicate that the addition of more modalities into interfaces, especially in highly …

The Design, Implementation, And Evaluation Of A Hybrid Sensemaking Tool Combining Traditional Physical Devices With Augmented Reality, Kaden Gryphon

Theses

This thesis is about our work integrating traditional devices, for example, mobile and stationary displays, into an augmented reality (AR) tool for analyzing data during sensemaking tasks. We create a framework for breaking down analysis tasks into three steps. Using our framework we design and implement the AR bulletin board (ARBB).We conduct a user study to evaluate ARBB, using the results and user feedback to create design implications. Our study supports that having a physical device helps users complete interactions faster, and users are more likely to use the tools during sensemaking to create more complex organizations.

Data Remanence Vulnerabilities In Embedded Sram At Low Temperature, Farzana Hoque

Theses

Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) memory is prevalent as cache memory in computing platforms and embedded systems. SRAM frequently stores essential information such as cryptographic keys, passwords, and other confidential data. Consequently, a data remanence-based attack on SRAM can result in significant damage. When power is removed, SRAM gradually loses data rather than immediately, especially at lower temperatures. This phenomenon, known as data remanence, poses a significant security risk, as it can be exploited through cold boot attacks targeting encryption keys and other sensitive data. Understanding temperature-induced vulnerabilities in embedded SRAM is crucial for enhancing the security and reliability of …

Potential Mechanisms Maintaining A Conspicuous Polymorphism In Eastern Mosquitofish (Gambusia Holbrooki), Katelyn Giltner

Theses

Genetic variation often precedes adaptation, so the mechanisms that maintain this variation are a central topic in evolutionary biology. Gambusia holbrooki, or eastern mosquitofish, possesses a rare polymorphism for melanistic coloration. Melanics and typical silver males were examined for differences in behavioral and physiological traits that may impact the persistence of the melanism trait. No differences in standard metabolic rate were found via closed-chamber respirometry, but a detour task indicated that melanic males possess greater cognitive flexibility. Effects of the social environment on stress and reproductive traits were also evaluated by pairing males and comparing cortisol levels and sperm quality …

Aerodynamic Losses Of Additively Manufactured Blades In Transonic Conditions With Different Surface Treatments, Chase Allen Herrin

Theses

Additive manufacturing (AM) allows the production of high strength and high temperature alloys to increase the operational temperature of turbines and other engine components. AM inherently has high surface texturing, inclusive of waviness due to the layering effect in the laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process, and roughness due to surface defects such as partially sintered powder, deep notches, and micro-cracks. This thesis investigates how different surface treatments affect the surface static pressure variations and wake aerodynamic loss characteristics for each blade. A supersonic transonic blow down wind tunnel with a linear cascade test section is used to acquire this …

Constructing Other Worlds: An Intertextual Analysis Of Cow Eye Press, Adrian Jones Pearson And The Works Of A.J. Perry, James A. Galliher

Theses

Cow Eye Press, A.J. Perry, and the pseudonymous Adrian Jones Pearson have largely been ignored by academics. Between 2001 and 2021, Perry composed a collection of texts which this study calls the Cow Eye Project. The project received brief attention when critics and journalists began comparing Pearson to Thomas Pynchon. However, the online spectacle overshadowed engagement with the texts themselves. This thesis exists to document the project and foreground Perry’s works on their own merits to examine their value and position within contemporary American literature. Previous scholars have treated the texts individually. This thesis argues that the central texts of …

Grating Lobe Suppression Techniques In Sparse Linear And Planar Phased Array Antennas With Reconfigurable Phasor Elements, William M. Current

Theses

With the continual increase in the need for wireless communications, there comes a desire to decrease fabrication costs. One of the primary drivers for the cost of an antenna array is the actual number of antennas used. This number, however, can only be decreased so far for a fixed aperture area without causing undesired secondary main beams, grating lobes, to appear in the radiation pattern. This work aims to analyze the results of two methods for reducing these grating lobes in sparse, scanning phased array antennas. Both of these methods are based upon dual-mode antenna elements, as opposed to single-mode …

Physiological Effects Of Facial Expressions During Cognitive And Social Stress, Emily X. Sorrells

Theses

This study explored the dynamics of facial expressions during stress. This 2 X 2 (Facial Expression by Task) mixed design evaluated how smiling and grimacing affected physiological and self-report measures of cognitive and social stress. The study implemented continuous monitoring of electrodermal activity (EDA). Facial expression was manipulated between-subjects as a genuine smile or grimace using chopsticks in the mouth. Task was manipulated as a counterbalanced within-subjects as a cognitive stressor using the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) and a social stressor using Cyberball. Time was analyzed as repeated measures of change from baseline of EDA. Participants provided ratings …

New Treatment Modality For Metastatic Cancer By Targeting The Endothelin Type A Receptor (Etar), Elbara Fathelrahman Abdelmoula

Theses

Ambrisentan, an FDA-approved selective antagonist of the Endothelin Type A Receptor (ETAR) for pulmonary arterial hypertension, has shown potential in limiting cancer growth and metastasis. While effective treatment options for melanoma remain elusive, this study investigates the effects of Ambrisentan on invasive, metastatic B16F10 melanoma using a syngeneic mouse model, aiming to assess Ambrisentan’s impact on tumor growth, metastasis, and overall host survival in B16F10 melanoma, along with gaining mechanistic insights into ETAR antagonism. C57Bl/6 mice were divided into two groups, receiving either dH2O or Ambrisentan orally. Treatments commenced prior to tumor implantation and continued post-implantation. Luciferase-expressing B16F10 cells facilitated …

Machine Learning Framework For Detecting Ldap Injection Attacks, Rahul Nair

Theses

LDAP injection attacks have posed a growing danger to web application security, utilizing directory service vulnerabilities to obtain unauthorized access or tamper with sensitive information in recent times. In this thesis, a comprehensive method is developed for detecting and preventing LDAP injection attacks by utilizing a role-based access control approach to generate a unique dataset. Various categories and variations of LDAP queries that mimic real attack situations, as well as legitimate benign queries representing typical LDAP operations, are included in the dataset to further classify them based on user roles. Four different machine learning algorithms, including XGBoost, Logistic Regression, Support …

Florescence, Evan D. Jaccodine

Theses

Florescence is a photographic project that provokes conversation between mediums, methods, and attitudes in art and design. Starting as grainy, screened Risograph prints mounted into custom wood frames, the uniformity of mechanical reproduction is distorted by handmade craft elements. The images examine the materiality of making as part of the message they produce; they are both eclectic handmade objects and mass-produced products. These pictures intend to communicate an idea like an advertisement, except the message, meaning, or intention isn’t clear. I am interested in the moment when the viewer comes close enough to the image to see the prints' poor …

Identifying Functional And Potential Therapeutic Sites In Reverse Transcriptase Using Comparative Short-Term Molecular Dynamics, Richmond Asare-Bediako

Theses

Drug escapes due to mutations in the HIV-1 virus genome have been a global menace over the last few decades. A major focus in dealing with this issue has revolved around taking advantage of the structural view of the virus to investigate how these mutations affect target drugs. The role of comparative molecular dynamics (MD), which provides valuable insights on motions involved in the functional interactions and dynamic fluctuations of the atoms in the amino acid residues on the protein chains. Although less explored than structural analyses of drug-target interactions, this study provides substantial and critical information needed to fully …

A Clinical Review Of Adult Obesity And Weight Management In The United States, Megan Helf

Theses

The standard of care for obesity has been lifestyle modifications, dietary changes and the use of some anti-obesity medications, however, given the increased rate of growth of obesity in not only the United States but globally, new drug therapies are needed. This paper aims to summarize and compare the current safety and efficacy evidence of new United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved weight loss drugs and to discuss the availability, cost-effectiveness, and use of these drugs in combating the obesity epidemic.

Web of Science and PubMed searches of obesity revealed primary sources and review articles on the topic …