Digital Commons Network^™

Using Social Media Data In Demand Forecasting: The Case Of Walmart, Aybike Akici

Theses

We describe a fully empirical study on demand forecasting, that is applicable to any real-world data. This is a hands-on case study on the power of social media in demand forecasting. We implement a Box-Jenkins methodology with exogenous variables, namely ARIMAX, to forecast Walmart's future sales. The social media components that we utilize are the number of likes and comments on the official Facebook page of Walmart. The details of the empirical investigation for fitting the best ARIMAX model are presented, and the results are discussed. With this thesis, we demonstrate that social media information should be considered in forecasting, …

Effects Of Slips And Trips On Resultant Lumbar Kinematics, Lumbar Muscle Activity And Low-Back Loads, Kavish J. Kathawala

Theses

Slips, trips, and falls (STFs) represent one of the leading causes of occupational injuries and fatalities. In particular, many prior reports have linked STFs with the onset of low-back disorders, which, depending on the severity of the incident, can leave the worker physically limited both in the workplace and at home. In contrast, the incidence and outcomes of loads acting on the low back due to a slip and trip that does not lead to a fall (i.e., slip/trip without fall: STWF) remain only marginally investigated to date. To address this research deficit, this quantitative study was designed to explore …

Web Whys? An Investigation Into The Capacity, Capability And Commitment Of Youth Work Providers To Engage Young People In Their Services Through New Media And Technologies., Nora Butler

Theses

Firstly, we shall explore what technologies young people have at their disposal and how tools like social networking sites have created a shift in our communication processes. In order to harness the potential of this technology and improve the relationship between youth work and technology, we must first understand how it is used in practice which requires investigative research, of which this paper has undertaken. I suggest that Web Whys? is used as a resource for other practitioners in Youth Work to understand the real impact and potential of digital platforms for improving young people’s lives.

A mixed method approach …

Effects Of Exertion Variability On The Fdi Muscle Fatigue During Intermittent Contractions, Abdul Mathin Shaik

Theses

Many current workplace tasks involve prolonged and/or repetitive physical exertion, which can result in localized muscle fatigue (LMF). LMF has been shown to reduce a worker’s performance and increase the chance of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). Exertion variation is an approach known to impart a generally positive impact to reduce LMF. In this study, our main goal was to observe how exertion variability under specific laboratory working conditions affects the fatigue and recovery of the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscle. Twelve participants performed finger abduction task during four different experimental conditions: 1) baseline intermittent contractions (20% MVC); 2) active rest …

The Design, Test And Evaluation Of A Sensing System For Process Analytical Technology (Pat), Trevor Murphy

Theses

Increased globalisation and competitiveness has given rise to a more dynamic and diverse global market that has begun to place incredible strain on manufacturing supply chains. Conventional manufacturing methods such as the batch manufacturing methods employed largely by the materials processing industries i.e. pharmaceuticals, polymers and magnesium processing plants are ill-suited to cope with the demands of today. As products evolve with technological advancements they become more complex to produce and require alternative approaches to manufacturing to ensure product quality while reducing costs and increasing manufacturing efficiencies.

A potential solution to the growing demands on today’s supply chain is process …

Low-Shot Learning For The Semantic Segmentation Of Remote Sensing Imagery, Ronald Kemker

Theses

Deep-learning frameworks have made remarkable progress thanks to the creation of large annotated datasets such as ImageNet, which has over one million training images. Although this works well for color (RGB) imagery, labeled datasets for other sensor modalities (e.g., multispectral and hyperspectral) are minuscule in comparison. This is because annotated datasets are expensive and man-power intensive to complete; and since this would be impractical to accomplish for each type of sensor, current state-of-the-art approaches in computer vision are not ideal for remote sensing problems. The shortage of annotated remote sensing imagery beyond the visual spectrum has forced researchers to embrace …

The Chromatic Villainy Of Complete Multipartite Graphs, Anna Raleigh

Theses

Suppose the colors in a $\chi(G)$-coloring of a graph $G$ have been rearranged. We will call this rearrangement $c^*$.

The chromatic villainy of the $c^*$ is defined as the minimum number of vertices that need to be recolored in order to return $c^*$ to a proper coloring in which each color appears the same number of times as in the initial coloring.

The maximum chromatic villainy when considering all rearrangements of all $\chi(G)$-coloring of $G$ is the chromatic villainy of $G$.

Here, the chromatic villainies of certain families of graphs were investigated and the chromatic villainies of paths and certain …

Using Packet Timing Information In Website Fingerprinting, Mohammad Saidur Rahman

Theses

Website Fingerprinting (WF) enables an eavesdropper to discover what sites the user is visiting despite the use of a VPN or even the Tor anonymity system. Recent WF attacks on Tor have reached high enough accuracy (up to 98%) to prompt Tor to consider adopting defenses based on packet padding. Defenses such as Walkie-Talkie mainly remove features related to bursts of traffic without affecting packet timing. This was reasonable given that previous research on WF attacks ignored or deemphasized the use of packet timing information. In this thesis, we examine the extent to which packet timing can be used to …

Accretion Disks Formed From Tidally-Disrupted Companions Inside Agb Stars, Gabriel Colin Guidarelli

Theses

The origin of isolated white dwarfs (WDs) with magnetic fields in excess of ∼1 MG has remained a mystery since their initial discovery. Recently, the formation of these high-field magnetic WDs has been observationally linked to binary interactions with low-mass companions (< 0.1 solar mass ) during post- main-sequence evolution. Planetary and M dwarf companions orbiting within several AU of main-sequence stars will become engulfed during the primary’s expansion off the main sequence. Such low-mass companions rapidly in-spiral inside a “common envelope” until they are tidally disrupted near the natal white dwarf core. Formation of an accretion disk from the shredded companion provides a source of turbulence and shear which, in principle, acts to amplify magnetic fields and transport them to the WD surface. However, the disk is initially very cold (∼ 10^3 K) compared to the hot thermal bath present in the center of the red giant (∼ 10^7 K). As there is significant shear in the system, entrainment of hot stellar material into the cold disk may lead to vigorous mixing and thermal evaporation before the field can be sufficiently amplified. To study the evolution and lifetime of the tidally-disrupted disks, we perform three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of accretion disks formed from 1, 3, 6 and 10 Jupiter mass planets. While entrainment leads to a decrease in disk mass, we find that all disks survive long enough to sufficiently amplify the magnetic field.

Robust Path-Based Image Segmentation Using Superpixel Denoising, Renee T. Meinhold

Theses

Clustering is the important task of partitioning data into groups with similar characteristics, with one category being spectral clustering where data points are represented as vertices of a graph connected by weighted edges signifying similarity based on distance. The longest leg path distance (LLPD) has shown promise when used in spectral clustering, but is sensitive to noisy data, therefore requiring a data denoising procedure to achieve good performance. Previous denoising techniques have involved identifying and removing noisy data points, however this is not a desirable pre-clustering step for data sets with a specific structure like images. The process of partitioning …

Mapping The Circumnuclear Gas Of The Active Galaxies Ngc 4180 And Mcg−06-30-15, Trent Seelig

Theses

The growth of Super Massive Black Holes in galactic nuclei has been shown through em- pirical studies to be connected with the evolution of the host galaxy. The growth of the black hole through accretion of interstellar gas can generate enough energy to outshine the host galaxy; during this phase it is observed as an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). The nature of the feeding processes that regulate the accretion flow and the processes governing the feedback of radiative and mechanical energy to the host galaxy is still an active field of research. These processes may be investigated by mapping the …

Novel Methods To Determine And Use The Magnetic Vector Potential In Numerical General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics, Zachary J. Silberman

Theses

Many codes have been developed to study highly relativistic, magnetized flows around and inside compact objects. Depending on the adopted formalisms, some of these codes evolve the vector potential A, and others evolve the magnetic field B = curl(A) directly. Given that these codes possess unique strengths, it is sometimes desirable to start a simulation using a code that evolves B and complete it using a code that evolves A. Transferring data from one code to another requires an inverse curl algorithm. This dissertation describes two new inverse curl techniques in the context of Cartesian numerical grids: a cell-by-cell method, …

Binary Black Holes In The Inspiral Regime: The Effect Of Spins And Eccentricity On Spacetime Dynamics And Gravitational Radiation, Brennan M. Ireland

Theses

Observations of black hole binaries via the emission of gravitational waves are one of the most exciting discoveries in physics in the past 50 years. The most generic black holes in nature are ones with spin, which may be misaligned with the orbital angular momentum of the binary, and also orbital eccentricity. This demands computationally inexpensive and accurate models of spinning binary black holes for hundreds of orbits as the binary inspirals.

This dissertation is divided into two projects, both of which focus on binary black holes with spin. In the first project, I construct and present a new global, …

Professional Heartbreakers: Male Entertainers And The Divide Between Popular Culture And History In Japan, Meradeth Lin Edwards

Theses

While prostitution in Japan is widely studied, there are seldom specific examinations of males in these roles. This paper uses primary sources and secondary sources to study men as purchasable commodities, and how these roles have shaped the fictional world as well as the real world in Japan.

Bubble Stream Production By Belugas (Delphinapterus Leucas), Megan Slack

Theses

Bubble stream production in belugas has been poorly characterized and its function is not well understood. I examined behavioral states when producing bubble streams (“bubbling”), and when bubbling calls, to determine whether bubbling was significantly associated with a particular call category or behavioral state. Using 19 hours of video and audio recordings collected over a two-day period, I quantified bubble streams of a 4-month old calf and an unrelated adult female housed together. Based on the overall activity budgets and pool of vocalizations for both animals, I calculated the expected counts of bubble streams with and without vocalizations, assuming that …

Changes In Antisocial Attitudes And Recidivist Outcomes, Maranda Rose Quillen

Theses

This purpose of this study is to examine whether changes in offender antisocial attitudes predict recidivism, violent reoffense, and severity of reoffending among completers of the community based, Counter-Point treatment program. While offender antisocial attitudes changed following treatment completion, these changes did not significantly predict violent recidivism and general recidivism. However, violent offenders, upon entering the program, were more likely to recidivate violently, and a decrease in antisocial attitudes following treatment completion increased the severity of reoffending. These findings highlight that change takes time and treatment dosage may serve as an important component of maintaining attitudinal change in treatment and …

Modification Of A Current Coalbed Methane Permeability Model For Horizontal Strain Only, Sawyer David Schrader

Theses

Cleat permeability of coal is the most critical parameter affecting the amount of production from a coalbed methane (CBM) reservoir. As a result, there have been many studies about how cleat permeability changes over the life of a reservoir, leading to the development over time of several different permeability models. Most permeability models used today consider volumetric strain as an input parameter; however, permeability is impacted primarily by the increase in cleat aperture, resulting from matrix shrinkage in the horizontal direction. Recent work has shown that coal exhibits transverse isotropy, with total strain in the vertical direction being significantly higher …

Evaluation Of Perennial Plant Success On A Green Roof, Chris White

Theses

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF: CHRISTOPHER M. WHITE, for the Master of Science degree in PLANT, SOIL AND AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, presented in 2017 at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. TITLE: EVALUATION OF PERENNIAL PLANT SUCCESS ON A GREEN ROOF MAJOR PROFESSORS: Karen Stoelzle Midden, S. Alan Walters A two-year study (2011-2012) was conducted on a section of an extensive green roof of the Agriculture Building at Southern Illinois University to evaluate the adaptability of four plant species to green roof culture. Extensive green roof survival, growth, and general success of four plant species (Allium schoenoprasum L., Dianthus gratianopolitanus ‘Grandiflorus’ Vill., …

Design And Verification Of A Round-Robin Arbiter, Aung Toe

Theses

As the number of bus masters increases in chip, the performance of a system largely depends on the arbitration scheme. The throughput of the system is affected by the arbiter circuit which controls the grant for various requestors. An arbitration scheme is usually chosen based on the application. A memory arbiter decides which CPU will get access for each cycle. A packet switch uses an arbiter to decide which input packet will be scheduled to the output. This paper introduces a Round-robin arbitration with adjustable weight of resource access time. The Round-robin arbiter mechanism is useful when no starvation of …

Heaven & Earth, Nelson Caliguia Jr.

Theses

Heaven & Earth is a graduate animated thesis film with a runtime of four minutes and 58 seconds. This animated short film is a playful take on the eternal struggle between humans and the heavenly forces that dictate weather conditions. Heaven & Earth combines elements from both Philippine folk art and classic American cartoons, exploring a stylistic hybrid borne out of influences that I have genuine affinity for.

This animated short is in full color, and was produced using digital 2D animation. It was entirely animated in TVPaint, while the backgrounds were drawn and painted in Photoshop. For compositing and …

An Empirical Evaluation Of The Indicators For Performance Regression Test Selection, Kevin Hannigan

Theses

As a software application is developed and maintained, changes to the source code may cause unintentional slowdowns in functionality. These slowdowns are known as performance regressions. Projects which are concerned about performance oftentimes create performance regression tests, which can be run to detect performance regressions. Ideally we would run these tests on every commit, however, these tests usually need a large amount of time or resources in order to simulate realistic scenarios.

The paper entitled "Perphecy: Performance Regression Test Selection Made Simple but Effective" presents a technique to solve this problem by attempting to predict the likelihood that a commit …

Low-Cost Multiple-Mav Slam Using Open Source Software, Andrew Hollenbach

Theses

We demonstrate a multiple micro aerial vehicle (MAV) system capable of supporting autonomous exploration and navigation in unknown environments using only a sensor commonly found in low-cost, commercially available MAVs—a front-facing monocular camera. We adapt a popular open source monocular SLAM library, ORB-SLAM, to support multiple inputs and present a system capable of effective cross-map alignment that can be theoretically generalized for use with other monocular SLAM libraries. Using our system, a single central ground control station is capable of supporting up to five MAVs simultaneously without a loss in mapping quality as compared to single-MAV ORB-SLAM. We conduct testing …

Compelling, Fatmah Bamashmous

Theses

As a woman from Saudi Arabia learning the craft of woodworking in America, I intend to embrace the opportunity to blend Arabic art and design with my knowledge of making furniture to create a body of work that is uniquely mine.

In my thesis, I created a body of work that helped me define my voice as an Arabic designer and maker. I have seen and researched Islamic art and graphic details such as Arabesque (عربسكي), which is an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines, and architectural details found in Mashrabiya (مشربية) arches, doors,..etc., and incorporated these aspects into …

Special Interest Magazine Publishers’ Digital Strategies For Reader Engagement, Patricia Axford

Theses

This research study is intended to examine the strategies that special interest magazine publishers are utilizing to develop engaging reader experiences. In addition, the role of reader input in the curation and creation of interactive content for these publications is also investigated. Published research has indicated that reader interest in specific topics increases the likelihood of engagement with the publication, resulting in prolonged readership. Furthermore, studies suggest that interactivity has a positive effect on entertainment value, visual appeal, service excellence, and a return on investment with regard to readers. Digital technologies enable publishers to provide readers with bundled offerings with …

Simulation And Framework For The Humanoid Robot Tigerbot, Felisa Sze

Theses

Walking humanoid robotics is a developing field. Different humanoid robots allow for different kinds of testing. TigerBot is a new full-scale humanoid robot with seven degrees-of-freedom legs and with its specifications, it can serve as a platform for humanoid robotics research. Currently TigerBot has encoders set up on each joint, allowing for position control, and its sensors and joints connect to Teensy microcontrollers and the ODroid XU4 single-board computer central control unit. The components’ communication system used the Robot Operating System (ROS). This allows the user to control TigerBot with ROS. It’s important to have a simulation setup so a …

Design For Curiosity: A Study Of Visual Design Elements, Interaction, And Motivation, Elaine Carole Montambeau

Theses

The field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has traditionally focused on the usability of a system, but as increasing numbers of interactive products become entwined in our daily lives, so does the opportunity to understand user impacts that reach beyond usability. In particular, interaction design, a subdomain of HCI, expands the focus of HCI by looking at the aesthetic impacts a system may have on user emotions. Curiosity is one such emotion that tends to induce information-seeking and motivational behaviors. An experimental study was undertaken to determine whether an interactive, front-end graphic that incorporated curiosity principles in its design would …

Adaptive Water Governance And Community Resilience: Assessing The Impact Of The Cache River Wetlands Joint Venture Partnership On Communities In The Cache River Watershed Of Southern Illinois, Rachel Emeline Boucher

Theses

Resilience is a concept that is becoming heavily researched in the sustainability and resource management literature. For rural resource-dependent communities, community resilience is the ability to adapt to various drivers of change while maintaining or enhancing community well-being. In recent decades, the field of water resource governance has been transitioning from a reliance on command-and-control institutional structures toward adaptive multi-level institutions, such as adaptive co-management and adaptive governance. These transitions offer potential opportunities for enhancing the resilience and sustainability of resource-dependent communities. However, the relationship between these emerging governance approaches and community resilience is not fully understood. The Cache River …

Delineating Capture Zones Using A Systematic Sensitivity Analysis That Varies Recharge, Hydraulic Conductivity And Conductance, Nick C. Lamkey

Theses

The Saline Valley Conservancy District (SVCD) formed in 1980 to provide groundwater to communities in Saline and Gallatin, Counties, Illinois. Sulfate contamination from a nearby coal mine threatens the SVCD’s current well field. Three of the wells are reaching the end of their service and have elevated levels of sulfate. This study investigated multiple well configurations on three different parcels of land to find possible new well locations that do not recharge water directly from the mine site over a 50-year period. A steady-state finite difference groundwater flow model was created using Graphic Groundwater GIS (Krienert and Esling, 2016), a …

Time Reversal Symmetry Breaking In 4f-Doped Topological Insulators, Stephen Hofer

Theses

Time-Reversal Symmetry (TRS) is a hallmark of Topological Insulator (TI) systems. TRS in conjuction with the strong Spin-Orbit Coupling (SOC) present in Bismuth Selenide is responsible for the uniquely robust surface states shown in this material. Breaking TRS in these systems in order to achieve gapped surface states requires the presence of a magnetic field throughout the material. We achieve this effect by doping the system with 4f elements whereby the magnetic field is provided by the local magnetic moments of the dopants manifesting ferromagnetic behavior. Through this spontaneous gap opening in the surface states in is expected that the …

The Effects Of Fluopyram On Macrophomina Phaseolina And Charcoal Rot Of Soybean, Annie Caroline Padgett

Theses

Macrophomina phaseolina (Tassi) Goid., is a soilborne fungus that causes charcoal rot in over 500 plant species including Zea mays L. and Glycine max (L.) Merr. The pathogen is present in most soybean growing regions of the United States. Infection in soybean can occur after emergence and throughout the vegetative growth stages in a range of environmental conditions. The syndrome is manifest during periods of hot and dry conditions during the reproductive states of the crop. Management options are lacking and consist of avoidance and irrigating crops to lessen the damage caused by the pathogen. Fluopyram is a succinate dehydrogenase …