Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of 3d Printed Facsimiles In Fulfilling Museum Visitors’ Desire To Touch, Elizabeth Carr

Theses

By nature, humans have a desire to touch the things they encounter in daily life. Museums are no exception to this desire, even though museum objects are rarely available for visitor handling. This thesis explores the question: “can accurate 3D printed facsimiles help fulfill the desire of visitors to touch museum objects?” For this project and case study, I selected, and 3D scanned a museum object, which was then recreated via 3D printing. The reproduction was then put on display alongside the original object, and a visitor study was conducted to see if interacting with the facsimile while seeing the …

Smart Solutions To Control Air Pollution In Dubai - Al Qouz Area, Anwar Alshamsi, Lateefa Almarzooqi

Theses

Air pollution is a major concern, both in industrial and developing countries. Measuring and monitoring air pollution is mandatory to have a smart and clean environment. By the recent developed technology such as Internet of Things (IoT), levels of poisonous gases (GHG) are measured and controlled, which will help in having healthier atmosphere and help people whose life are endangered from living near polluted areas. The project proposes to use smart sensors to sense and measure the percentage of polluted gases like CO, CO2, SO2 and NO2. Since Dubai aims to achieve the best results of having the least effect …

Machine Learning For Real-Time Data-Driven Security Practices, Shane Coleman

Theses

The risk of cyber-attacks exploiting vulnerable organisations has increased significantly over the past several years. Cyber-attacks can be described as any type of aggressive strategy which targets computer information systems, computer networks, personal computer systems or other organisational infrastructures which may originate internally or externally. These attacks may combine to exploit a vulnerability breach within a system’s protection strategy which has the potential for loss, damage or destruction of assets. Consequently, every vulnerability has an accompanying risk which is defined as the “intersection of assets, threats, and vulnerabilities”.

This research project uses various types of recommender system techniques, employed for …

Production Of Anti-Corrosion Materials From Uae Date Palm Waste, Nour Shehadeh Abdelrahman

Theses

Palm tree serves as the main source of biomass in the Gulf countries. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) alone is blessed with more than 40 million date palm trees, which generate a huge amount of waste annually. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the ability to produce a corrosion inhibitor from a date palm tree, waste, starting by extracting lignin from different parts of the date palm tree and characterizing the extracted lignin, converting lignin to sodium lignosulfonate, while selecting the optimum condition for the conversion reaction and characterizing the prepared lignosulfonate. Finally, the corrosion efficiency for …

Evaluating The Performance Of Digital Micromirror Devices For Use As Programmable Slit Masks In Multi-Object Spectrometers, Anton Travinsky

Theses

Multi-object spectrometers are extremely useful astronomical instruments that allow simultaneous spectral observations of large numbers of objects. Studies performed with ground-based multi-object spectrometers (MOSs) in the last four decades helped to place unique constraints on cosmology, large scale structure, galaxy evolution, Galactic structure, and contributed to countless other scientific advances. However, terrestrial MOSs use large discrete components for object selection, which, aside from not transferable to space-based applications, are limited in both minimal slit width and minimal time required accommodate a change of the locations of objects of interest in the field of view. There is a pressing need in …

Secondary Analysis Of Caregiver Pain Management Issues During Telehospice Versus In-Person Interventions, Marjorie M. Kelley

Theses

Most hospice care in the US is provided in the home by lay family caregivers. These caregivers suffer physically, psychologically, emotionally, and socially from the burden of caring. The most often identified area of burden for caregivers is the management of end-of-life pain. Despite advances in pain management pharmacology and alternative therapies, unrelieved pain continues to plague patients and their care providers. Although pain management has been targeted as a national healthcare concern and research priority, specific issues of caregiver pain management remain vague and undefined. Understanding issues surrounding caregiver pain management may help clarify needs thus enabling the creation …

Child Pornography And Child Sexual Abuse In The 21st Century: A Critical Overview Of The Technological Shifts In Distribution, The Academic Literature, And The Current Re-Entry Policies For Convicts Of These Crimes, Arion A. Rivera

Theses

This capstone project focuses on four distinct but interrelated papers. The first details the role of technology in creating a resurgence of child pornography and how both the authorities and corporations have responded to this phenomenon. The second paper provides a literature review on research assessing the amount of child pornography consumers who victimize children. The third work is my own original research on the topic explored in the second paper. The fourth and final paper explains the post-incarceration consequences child pornography possessors often encounter and how they reintegrate into society, in addition to assessing the flaws and successes of …

Relational Neurogenesis For Lifelong Learning Agents, Tej Pandit

Theses

Reinforcement learning systems have shown tremendous potential in being able to model meritorious behavior in virtual agents and robots. The ability to learn through continuous reinforcement and interaction with an environment negates the requirement of painstakingly curated datasets and hand crafted features. However, the ability to learn multiple tasks in a sequential manner, referred to as lifelong or continual learning, remains unresolved.

The search for lifelong learning algorithms creates the foundation for this work. While there has been much research conducted in supervised learning domains under lifelong learning, the reinforced lifelong learning domain remains open for much exploration. Furthermore, current …

“15 Miles On The Erie Canal”: Navigating The Erie Canal Through A Digital Exhibit, Mason Lezette

Theses

The Erie Canal is one of the engineering marvels of the world and was largely responsible for Rochester’s transformation into an economic powerhouse, yet there is little representation of it in the cultural institutions throughout Rochester. In collaboration with the Office of the City Historian, I created a digital exhibit to commemorate the Erie Canal and its economic and social effects on the City of Rochester. This paper tracks the many decisions I made throughout the process of creating the exhibit and goes into detail about how best to select items, craft a narrative, and put the exhibit together in …

Beware Of Uncharitable Speech: Perceptions Of Newly Graduated Nurses Regarding Their Experiences Of Academic Incivility Between And Among Nursing Students In Undergraduate Nursing Education, Tatiana K. Penconek

Theses

The perceptions of newly graduated nurses regarding their experiences of academic incivility between and among nursing students in undergraduate nursing education were explored in this qualitative descriptive study. Six newly graduated registered nurses shared their experiences of academic incivility between and among nursing students in their undergraduate nursing programs. Online public domain data with specific content pertaining to experiences of academic incivility were also gathered. Four main categories resulted from the data analysis including Not Here to Make Friends, Nobody Stood Up, Making it to the End, and The Role of Nursing Faculty. Highlights of this study include an increased …

Aerial Object Detection Using Learnable Bounding Boxes, Aneesh Bhat

Theses

Current methods in computer vision and object detection rely heavily on neural networks and deep learning. This active area of research is used in applications such as autonomous driving, aerial imaging, defense and surveillance. State-of-the-art object detection methods rely on rectangular shaped, horizontal/vertical bounding boxes drawn over an object to accurately localize its position. Such orthogonal bounding boxes ignore object pose, resulting in reduced object localization, and limiting downstream tasks such as object understanding and tracking. To overcome these limitations, this research presents object detection improvements that aid tighter and more precise detections. In particular, we modify the object detection …

Design And Fabrication Of A Remote-Controlled Plane For The Advanced Class Sae Aero Design Competition, Simon Esau

Theses

The goal of the present research is to optimize the radio-controlled airplane design for the Society of Automotive Engineers International (SAE) Aero Design Advanced Class competition. The SAE Aero Design Advanced Class seeks to further research and development of an aeronautic system that can deliver cargo and passengers to form a colony on Mars. Mission success is achieved by attending to the rules, constraints, and requirements of the competition. System-level engineering is applied to meet these diverse requirements and create a robust final product. The radio-controlled airplane submitted for competition can theoretically be scaled to carry colonists, habitats, and supplies …

Controlled Release Chemical Oxidation: Sodium Persulfate Encapsulated In Pvac Polymer, Mosarrat Samiha Kabir

Theses

In this study, sodium persulfate was encapsulated in polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) polymer to investigate the potential of activated persulfate to remediate total coliform and E. coli bacteria from contaminated water through a control release system. Controlled release structures were produced with the polymer and persulfate melted to form pellets at two different baking times. CRP structures containing 60 weight % sodium persulfates blended with 40 weight % polyvinyl acetate (PS- PVAc) were baked for 4 minutes and 10 minutes at 120ºC. The kinetics release of sodium persulfate was studied in a water system and in sand columns. Experimental results showed …

Feasibility Of Integrating Microfluidics Into Point-Of-Care Bio-Diagnostics, Swetha Manoharan

Theses

Potassium in the body needs to be maintained in proper levels for the normal functioning of heart and kidneys. The aim of this work is to develop a simple technique to measure the concentration of Potassium present in a bodily fluid sample, which can be used to assess the health condition of extremely sick patients, especially when the patient's condition needs to be diagnosed and results needs to be obtained rapidly under Point-of-Care settings. Microfluidics is one of the platforms used in bio-diagnostics because of several advantages such as low sample volume requirement and integration into high-throughput screening. In this …

Music Retrieval System Using Dynamic Time Warping, Emeka Jude Okafor

Theses

With the growth of digital audio data, various and fast access to music data is strongly desired, especially for large music databases. A more natural way to retrieve a song from a database will be to hum to the tune. To relate and compare musical pieces is a very complex task. Musical compositions usually collapse multiple information sources and complex, multifaceted interactions established between parts. Despite such degrees of complexity, humans are outstandingly good at performing individual musical judgments with little conscious effort, while a computer cannot efficiently achieve this task. In this work, we focus on one such task: …

Control Of Separated Flow Using A Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Actuator, Mahdi Hasan

Theses

Historically, Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma actuators have shown to be an effective method to control adverse pressure gradient induced boundary layer separation. In this study, a numerical investigation was carried out to explore the effects of a DBD plasma actuator on a three-dimensional incompressible, separated flow. The well-validated National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wall-mounted hump configuration studied in the simulations, were run at a Reynolds Number of 936,000, based on chord length, and a freestream Mach number of 0.1. The baseline code, CALC-LES, developed by the Chalmers University of Technology was modified to include the effects of the …

Using Long Short-Term Memory (Lstm) Recurrent Neural Network (Rnn) To Classify Network Attacks, Pramita Sree Muhuri

Theses

Cyber-attacks have increased greatly in recent years. Therefore, the identification of various network attacks has been an important research area. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS), can identify an ongoing invasion or an intrusion which has already occurred. Intrusion Detection is a classification problem. It identifies whether the network traffic behavior is normal or anomalous or identifies the attack types. Various approaches have been proposed to improve the accuracy of classifiers for identifying the intrusion types. Recently, deep learning has emerged as a successful approach in IDSs having a high accuracy rate with its distinctive learning mechanism. In this research, Long …

Reinforcement Learning Reward Design For Low-Level Controllers, Evan J. Olney

Theses

The past few decades have produced many successful applications of machine learning. In the area of automated controls, machine learning controllers have been developed to take advantage of the tendency for computers to stumble upon avenues to solutions people either overlooked, or simply do not have the computational capability to explore. Reinforcement learning is a machine learning technique for learning how to choose actions in an environment to increase its expected reward. The reward is the signal that indicates whether or not proper actions were chosen, therefore a behavioral goal is achieved from implicit rewards rather than explicit direction. The …

Investigating A Cyber-Human System For Millennial Caregivers, Ashley Lofton

Theses

Research indicates that most caregiving of persons with dementia (PwD) is done by adults 49 years of age and older. However, millennials make up 25% of the estimated 44 million caregivers in the United States. Although the definition varies, “millennials” for this research is defined by those born between 1984 - 2000, which aligns with the research by Strauss and Howe (2003). Millennial caregivers are taking on this task as their parents or grandparents get older and diagnosed with dementia. Taking on the task of caring for a loved one with dementia can present itself as difficult because of competing …

Mesoporous Bimetallic Oxides Supported Mono And Bimetallic Catalysts For Fischer-Tropsch Studies In A Stainless-Steel Microchannel Reactor, Robert Stevens-Boyd

Theses

Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis is the controlled catalyzed conversion of synthesized (syn) gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, to fuel grade alkanes or hydrocarbons. One of the objectives of NSF-CREST Bioenergy Center is to develop stable catalysts for F-T synthesis with the goal of conversion of syngas enriched with CO2 in microchannel microreactors to liquid fuels. In our previous work, the effect of silica and titania sol-gel as support for F-T studies using syngas (CO:H2; 1:3 or 1:2) was investigated and significant differences in the activities of Co, Fe, and Ru catalysts were observed. In order to investigate synergistic …

Effects Of International Trade On Food Security Of Selected Low Income And Low-Middle Income Economies, Rose Anapoka Anaabah

Theses

Food security has been a challenge for most people all over the world, especially among people living in low income countries. Food security is considered a complex sustainable development issue and is linked to health through malnutrition due to poverty. Food security became a major challenge following the sharp increase in global food prices during the last decade. Several factors contribute to food security. One factor is international trade which plays a major role in shaping the economy in most countries of the world. Access to food which is supposed to be an entitlement, or a basic right can be …

Feedback Control For Leader Follower Architecture Of Unmanned Arial And Ground Vehicles, Mahmoud El Mahmoud

Theses

This thesis presents development of a feedback controller for a cooperative mission using unmanned aerial vehicle and unmanned ground vehicle. This developed controller offers a solution to the time delayed collaborative autonomous systems for multiple robot systems. There are many motivating applications for these missions including exploration, search and rescue in damaged areas. The architecture developed in this thesis consists of an unmanned ground vehicle as a leader and an unmanned aerial vehicle as a follower. To be specific, the unmanned ground vehicle navigates through a damaged environment and leads the mission. The unmanned aerial vehicle follows the leader and …

Optical Properties Of Iii-V Nanowire/Nanopillar Lasers Grown On Si, Juan Salvador Dominguez Morales

Theses

Nanowires (NW) /nanopillars (NP) offer the possibility of reducing the mismatch of III-V semiconductor materials grown on different substrates such as Si, SiN, SiO2 and are hence being considered potential candidates for coherent light sources in optoelectronics technologies. The difference between NPs and NWs lies in the growth process. The NPs are site-controlled using a patterned mask, while the NWs use a self-catalysed such as gold or Ga-droplet.. In this dissertation, the emission properties of GaAs/AlGaAs (core-shell and core-multishell) and InGaAs (unpassivated and passivated with InGaP) nanolasers have been studied with excitation powers above and below the lasing threshold at …

An Investigation Into The Management Of Branding In Irish Artisan Food Businesses, Daniel David Hickey

Theses

A consumer’s lifestyle is busier now then in the past and is moving towards products that reduce preparation and cooking times (Bia, 2015). The demand for value added convenience products has created opportunity for the Artisan food sector. This has lead to the expansion of food Small Medium Enterprises (SME’s) in Ireland. There were 235 specialty food producers in Ireland in 2018, a 2.7% increase on the previous year. SME’s are growing in popularity among consumers but there is very little research been completed into Irish SME’s. A 2016 study by Kennedy and Wright identified that the area is scant …

Developing A Model Of Post Incubation Support For New And Growing Ventures, Miriam Adair

Theses

Business incubators offer physical and virtual services for their new and growing start up clients. In Ireland, once companies exit an incubator, they do not have access to services similar to an incubator. In other countries there are post incubation services available.

There is a limited literature on post incubation in Ireland, however there is literature focusing on different programmes available to companies once they have left an incubator.

This thesis explores the post incubation support needs of new' and growing ventures.

Specifically, the research focused on three primary objectives:

1. To gain a deeper understanding of the specific needs …

Crystallographic Structure Determination Of Bacteriophage-Encoded Enzymes That Specifically Target Pathogenic Bacteria, Marta Sanz Gaitero

Theses

Antibiotic resistance is becoming a serious public health concern. Infections that some decades ago could be treated with antibiotics now sometimes do not respond to traditional treatment, causing higher mortality and economic losses. An alternative to the use of antibiotics are bacteria's natural predators, bacteriophages (or phages), and specifically their lytic enzymes. These proteins are produced by phages to degrade bacterial peptidoglycan to inject their genetic material into the bacteria (virion-associated peptidoglycan hydrolases) or to release their progeny once the infection is finished (endolysins). They can be applied exogenously to lyse Gram-positive bacteria or be genetically engineered to lyse Gram-negative …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Nursing Support And The Financial Implications Associated With Cpap Adherence, Christine Brunnick

Theses

The prevalence of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is increasing. As the prevalence of OSA increases, as does the need for the condition to be treated effectively to reduce several risk factors which increase both mortality and morbidity rates. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) therapy is easily recognised as the most effective treatment for OSA. Despite the recognised benefits of CPAP therapy, adherence rates reported worldwide remain suboptimal. A transitional change within the Irish healthcare system means that private medical device companies will provide CPAP devices in specific contractual regions throughout Ireland. This change presents challenges and opportunities for policymakers. This …

Improving Situational Awareness Of Heavy-Snowfall Using The Geostationary Lightning Mapper, Sebastian S. Harkema

Theses

While severe convective weather might be the focus of lightning data, studies regarding the use of these data for winter weather purposes are sparse. Next-generation satellite sensors, such as the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), provide new capabilities to gain a better understanding of the microphysical processes within heavy-snowfall. The advent of GLM provides a new opportunity to study how lightning is related to snowfall from a geostationary satellite perspective. Observed overlap between observations from GLM and National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services (NESDIS) merged Snowfall Rate (mSFR) product indicate the existence of thundersnow (TSSN) and offers valuable insight to …

Quantification Of Butanol Produced By C. Pasteuranium And Isolated By L-A-Lecithin Liposomes Using Quantitative Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (Qnmr), Luke X. Viegas

Theses

A cleaner and more efficient option to ethanol in the alternative fuel industry is n-butanol. The focus of this study was to establish that quantitative Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (qNMR) is a viable method to determine levels of n-butanol as it is produced by Clostridium pasteurianum in the fermentation of glycerol. Extractive fermentation using L-α-Lecithin liposomes is proposed to separate n-butanol, hence the spectroscopic behavior of n-butanol in the presence of liposomes was studied and partition coefficients were determined. Additionally, qNMR was used to quantify glycerol and other fermentation products during the fermentation of C. pasteurianum using a bioreactor. Two …

Jailhouse Informants & Empathic Cross-Examination, Megan Hillgartner

Theses

The current study aimed to evaluate the influence of jailhouse informant testimony on juror-decision making through the manipulation of cross-examination techniques as well as the presence and absence of an inconsistent statement concerning a specific crime detail. Thus, this study evaluated whether the method in which the defense attorney presented his cross-examination influenced jurors’ overall perception of the jailhouse informant. Participants listened to an audio-recording of a trial transcript in which method of cross-examination was manipulated in terms of an Aggressive, Neutral, and Empathic approach to determine if the addition of empathic understanding resulted in cross-examination serving as a more …