Digital Commons Network^™

The Interconnection Of The Vestibular And Oculomotor Systems Analyzed In Healthy Young Adults By Examining Postural Sway, Cassandra Martin

Theses

In order to study the human brain in a non-invasive way, the vestibular and oculomotor systems have been analyzed simultaneously. To achieve this, an eye movement and balance assessment was conducted for 29 (23 male; 21.6 ± 3.8 years) healthy participants with no history of concussions, brain injuries, vertigo, migraines, brain surgeries, eye surgeries, or amblyopia. The tasks consisted of eyes open, eyes closed, horizontal saccades, vertical saccades, vergence jumps, horizontal vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), and vertical VOR. Each task was completed in two stances: feet shoulder width apart and feet together. Distance, velocity, sway area, center of pressure (COP) frequency, …

Regulation Of Activity Patterns In Astyanax Mexicanus Cavefish, Udodirim Nwosu

Theses

Organisms commonly modulate their behavioral activity in relation to the 24-hour solar cycle. This modulation of behavior is driven by a combination of responses to external cues in the environment, such as light/dark visual signals, and internal pattern generators that can persist in the absence of external cues. However, there are animals that live in caves or in the deep sea that are isolated from solar circadian cues. How these animals regulate their behavioral activity in relation to external and internal rhythms is an open question in neuroscience that may help us to understand the mechanisms that other animals, including …

Smart City Operation System An Innovative Approach For A Collaborative Smart City Platform, Mohamed Gaber Abouelkassem

Theses

Command and Control Centers (CCCs) are an essential building block in the structure of smart cities. Typically, in most developed cities, CCCs are built to serve a certain function or application as a dedicated and standalone center that belongs to a certain entity or city department, such as transportation, police and security, utilities, or municipal operations departments, etc. The integrated command and control center (ICCC) has a central platform that integrates some of the city systems. The ICCC output is a sophisticated dashboard that acts as an interface to display and analyze collected data with the objective to help operators …

Inch - Unpacking Measurements, Pallavi Singh

Theses

While global efforts to close gender gaps have taken great strides in the past years, broad cultural views and social institutions still exist to place women at a subordinate level to men. It is a common scenario to trivialize a woman’s achievements or power in instances when she does not conform to gender norms taken as “a given” in a cultural context. A few elementary examples of such social inequality could include unequal pay at the workplace or menstruation in cultures where it is considered a defilement of a woman’s body instead of a female bodily process. In most of …

Low Income Housing Residents' Perceived Competency Regarding Hypertension And Diabetes, Tiangela B. Austin

Theses

People of African-American ethnicity are affected by hypertension and diabetes at alarming rates. Prevalence of hypertension and diabetes is thought to be the result of many different factors. When considering why each or both of these diseases disproportionately affect this population of people, much focus should query around factors such as socio-economic status, culture, beliefs, diet, lifestyle, and patient perceptions. Evaluation of perception is an integral component in demystifying disease morbidity and mortality. This study evaluates the perception of low-income housing resident's perceived ability to maintain normal blood pressure and blood glucose levels.

The Health Impacts Of Nursing Shift Work, Amanda M. Shandor

Theses

This descriptive pilot study was intended to evaluate negative outcomes of shift work stress in nursing. Objective analysis of waist-hip-circumference ratios (WHR) and subjective survey reports were utilized to assess whether differences existed in expressed stress, stress related health disorders, and stress associated behaviors among day shift, night shift, and rotating shift registered nurses (RNs). Statistical analysis of the WHRs indicates that no statistical difference exists in the results from this study across the three nursing shifts.

Health Service Cost And Use Associated With Advance Directive Documentation Among Patients With Copd, Brandon Duck

Theses

Little available research has focused on the question of whether advanced-careplanning has the potential to impact health-care related spending especially in patients with chronic and incurable conditions such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The purpose of this secondary data analysis was to investigate the prevalence of Advance Directives (ADs) documented in the electronic health records, compare healthcare spending between individuals with versus those without ADs on file, and examine socio-demographic variables as potential predictors of having documented ADs on file for patients with COPD in a large tertiary academic medical center in 2012 and 2013. This retrospective cohort study …

Buyer Prediction Through Machine Learning, Rashed Ibrahim Karmostaje

Theses

Targeted marketing has grown in popularity in recent years, as well as recognizing when a consumer will desire a commodity may be extremely important to a business. Predicting this demand, however, is a complex procedure. Businesses, promoters/marketers, and sellers are using machine learning approaches to execute buyer prediction. This study focuses on when a customer would buy fast-moving retail merchandise by evaluating a customer’s purchase history at partner vendors. The projections should be used to customize special discounts for customers who are about to make a purchase. In addition, buying behavior is a set of consumption habits that can be …

Hourly Demand Prediction Of Shared Mobility Ridership, Eman Asa'ad

Theses

This research focuses on predicting the hourly number of bikes needed using Citi bike data. Micro mobility is the new trend that serves the transportation sector in any city. With the development of technology and introduction of new modes, comes new challenges. Bike sharing is the most developed and standard micro mobility device with extensive data sources. In this research we introduce the rebalancing bike sharing problem, which is very recent and interesting problem. Bikes are being ridden from a station and returned to another, not necessarily the same one of departure, this procedure can cause some stations to be …

The Missing Concept To Improve The Nursing Process: A Quality Management System, Pilar Parker

Theses

Quality in the healthcare industry has been gaining much importance in the last two decades. Every health professional is carefully trained to provide high quality service. Historically, healthcare providers have done their best in providing honorable service to the public. However, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, the healthcare industry reports hospital stays of $375.9 billion in aggregate costs (2010). As a result, the healthcare crisis has demanded improvement in the quality of the healthcare industry. Because nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers in hospitals, they have become a major target for improving healthcare in …

The Power Of Mind Control, Ali Adnan Majed

Theses

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a technology that has been used for so long to read and record neurological activity in the brain. EEG recordings are widely used nowadays for different neurological applications. Emerging technologies that can detect and analyze eye focus using EEG based technology are now are developing quickly. At a relatively affordable cost one can own an EEG kit. With the help of predisposed algorithms or the help of developers, new algorithms for different commands are being worked on. Along with other technologies EEG eye tracking can be beneficial in many domains such as, psychology, marketing, automotive industry, and …

Hate Speech Detection In A Mix Of English And Hindi-English (Code-Mixed) Tweets, Mohamed Sameer

Theses

With the increasing usage of social networking platforms seen over recent years, there has been an extensive rise in hate speech usage between the users. Hence, Government and social media platforms face lots of responsibility and challenges to control, detect and eliminate massively growing hateful content as early as possible to prevent future criminal acts such as cyber violence and real-life hate crimes. Since Twitter is used globally by people from various backgrounds and nationalities, the platform contains tweets posted in different languages, including code-mixed language, namely Hindi-English. Due to the informal format of tweets with variations in spelling and …

Opinion Mining Of Phone Sitting Feature, Atiq Yousuf Ahmad

Theses

This report aims to evaluate opinion mining of customers about phone sitting features in cell phones in different brands across the world by using data mining techniques. Therefore, Data for the report has been collected from data scrapping in Qoura which collects opinion of customers. The collected information from the data base has evaluated by using sentiment analysis. The collected information from Qoura transforms the content and extracts data from API’s. In relation to this, information obtains from the research contributed for providing useful information for these features. The collected information from application scrapping has been analysed through sentiment analysis. …

Evaluating Psychiatric Nursing Competencies Applied To Emergency Settings: A Pilot Role Delineation Study, Joanna J. Mello

Theses

Aims: 1) To examine emergency department (ED) nurses' reports of a) frequency b) importance and c) self-efficacy related to the application of recommended psychiatric nursing competencies in three domains (i.e., assessment, tasks, knowledge).

2) To test the extent to which frequency and importance independently predict ED nurses' self-efficacy related to the application of the competencies in their daily work.

Preparing New Nurses To Improve The Systems In Which They Work: A Matter Of Degree Or Skillset?, Franco Herrera

Theses

The multitude of players, rules, and economic factors involved in organizing and delivering healthcare in the US today requires a highly skilled workforce, who can go above and beyond excellence at the practitioner level by acting as change agents to continuously improve the systems in which they work. Early acquisition of quality and safety competencies, along with leadership and inter-professional collaboration, systems thinking, and health economics are essential for preparing new nurses for the demands of their future jobs. Using these competency domains as a framework for evaluation, the purpose of this descriptive study was to examine program coordinators' assessments …

The Effect Of Different Feeding Regimes On Recent Nutritional And Growth Measurements In Juvenile California Killifish (Fundulus Parvipinnis), Emily Parks

Theses

Gaining a deeper understanding of in-situ growth approximations for juvenile fishes is one way to understand how food consumption may affect fish growth. If variations in growth rate are strongly mirrored by past food status, then the condition (degree of well-being) of fish can be potentially used as a reference for relative prey availability. Furthermore, confirming that there is a positive relationship between food availability and fish growth rate is a critical first step to deepen our understanding of growth rate variation as well as examining if growth can be a proxy for habitat quality.

The California killifish (Fundulus …

Sirplus - A Task Management System For Individuals With Executive Dysfunction, Thomas Roberti

Theses

A significant portion of the population struggles with executive functioning and task management. This project explores the pain points for organizing, initiating, and finishing tasks and proposes a design to address these problems. The objective of this project is to relieve the stress and anxiety people with executive dysfunction often experience with tasks. The design process for this project considered different product and interface strategies to help users with their tasks through positive motivation and rewards. Initial user testing showed that information overload and forgetfulness were barriers to setting and managing tasks. Furthermore, the act of crossing an item off …

Spiral Of Silence And The Use Of Social Media By Sexual Violence Survivors, Tanvi Thakur

Theses

Sexual violence has been a global health concern for over decades, but activism on social media such as #MeToo has increased public discourse and awareness about this issue. In its early advent, the #MeToo movement raised ample awareness, stimulated free discourse, and placed this issue as an important concern to address. While countries have implemented austere laws to prevent such hate crimes against women, societal norms and codes have deemed this type of violence as stigma or taboo resulting in the underreporting of the majority of sexual violence-related crimes. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted in 2015 …

Assessing The Influences On Rural Women's Reproductive Life Plans: A Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study, Lori M. Jagoda

Theses

Rural women's unique personal, social, cultural, and economic characteristics influence their health care decision-making processes. To assess the influences on rural women and their Reproductive Life Plans, a cross-sectional descriptive study, based on the Health Promotion Model (HPM), was used.

Racial Disparity In Health Insurance Acquisition In The State Of California, Florence Jill Polina

Theses

Racial disparity continues to be a struggle in America. The main purpose of this project was to determine whether there is a relationship between race and the acquisition of health insurance in adult residents of California who are younger than 65 years old. Through secondary data gathering, analysis of an existing racial disparity in health care insurance acquisition was accomplished. The results of the project indicate that a relationship exists between race and health insurance acquisition, thereby promoting an opportunity to determine hindering factors and discuss recommendations that can help to alleviate them.

Resource Use And Water Implications Of Material Consumption In Consumer Electronics, Hema Madaka

Theses

Rapid technological innovation has introduced a broad spectrum of materials in the consumer electronics sector. Consumption of these materials increases the demand for water and potentially discharge contaminants into the water resources across their life cycle, exacerbating freshwater scarcity and pollution. These water impacts have not yet been fully studied, as most literature on consumer electronics focuses on supply chain energy, carbon footprint, or end of life management. Evaluating water impacts requires data on material content, life cycle water consumption and emissions at spatial level, and availability of impact assessment models that connects life cycle data to water impacts. Data …

Between, Abigail Benkovich

Theses

I’m finally finding safety through learning to set boundaries in my life, which has carried into my artwork as physical barriers, whether worn or observed. Through the protection of volume, space, netting, and sharp objects, I can reclaim control over my immediate surroundings and my body. My sculptures were constructed to protect the body. As I dove deeper into why that brings me comfort, I realized it’s a reaction to the current culture that objectifies women’s bodies. This is specifically significant to me as I grew up subjugated to purity culture within the Evangelistic Christian church, which often leaves young …

Scents Of Memory In The Film: Tender Scent, Teng Chen

Theses

Tender scent is a film about perfumer Rita who finds that her favorite scents are all leading to the memory of her loved one whom she lost forever. Throughout the project year, I tried to visualize the protagonist’s feeling of the scents and deliver the emotions to the audience. There were several versions of the story during scriptwriting. The revisions happened due to the fact of psychology and the build-up of the character arc. The difficulty of blending the character-study story with active and attractive plots made me decide to have a non-linear story structure. We spent three months on …

Biohelm Smart Hockey Helmet: A Conceptual Wearable System For Protecting And Empowering Female Athletes, Anthony Parrucci

Theses

Women’s ice hockey is one of the fastest growing sports in the world and needs the most articles of protective equipment. At the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) level, not only do these athletes need to adapt to team issued equipment that rarely fits comfortably or safely but must also consider the important facets that impact overall performance. The main objective of this project is to promote inclusivity while protecting, empowering and educating athletes in an ethical, noninvasive manner to positively impact the culture of women’s sports. Overexertion at the NCAA level increases exponentially due to the intense training and …

Intelligent Relaxation System For Information Anxiety, Xiuyu Shi

Theses

The development of information technology has brought a lot of convenience to people's lives and changed the way we work. There are many people who use cell phones and computers every day, which has caused many health problems, and information anxiety is one of them. This paper discusses a project that proposed to help with the problem of information anxiety among workers and investigates the root causes of information anxiety among IT workers. After user testing and design, this project gives a potential design solution that uses sensory feedback. In addition, this paper gives some insights into the negative effects …

“A Heart Felt Toy System”: How Can Materials, Structured, And Unstructured Play, Impact Toy Innovation, And Design, Mary Keenan Mcloughlin

Theses

The pervasiveness of single use plastic for toy production has created the cultural consciousness that most things are disposable. The moment you’ve deposited something in the trash you are no longer responsible for it and for some, it no longer exists. A material’s lifespan, origin, and sensory experience can be positive factors in its inclusion for a design. I chose to study organic materials and how they can be used for toys and aspects of play. As a case study, I created a felt vehicle toy system that rethinks the way we use organic materials for toy applications. I then …

Poster Design: Possible Future Living Space For Overpopulated Hong Kong, Rong Dai

Theses

According to the official statistics of China, Hong Kong’s limited land space has always struggled with overpopulation, and cheap cage homes quickly became an easy solution for many poor people. However, terrible and cramped living conditions not only make physical activities difficult, but also deprive residents of their basic housing rights. People can not envision what the living space will look like in the future, and they lack a sense of what a healthy community is. This project intends to visualize a possible future living space through illustration and information diagrams, giving the audience who live in overpopulated countries an …

Kitchen Cooking System Designed For Wheelchair Users, Boheng Huang

Theses

This project is a system to help wheelchair users use the kitchen more conveniently. The kitchen is an indispensable place in everyone's daily life. However, for wheelchair users, the height of the kitchen countertop is too high, which makes them unable to easily take the items on the kitchen countertop and causes difficulty, complexity and a lack of safety to their daily life. The kitchen system project in this paper can solve the problem that the height of the kitchen console is inconsistent with that of wheelchair users. A small table that can adjust the height of the desktop can …

Eliminating Moisture In Military Footwear: An Air Flow Solution For Soldiers Perspiring Feet When Training In Extremely Cold Weather, Mingshuo Li

Theses

Ground soldiers in extremely cold environments could easily suffer terrible foot conditions because of the wet environment inside their boots produced by generated perspiration. The current winter military boot products on the market focus more on warmth and weather protection, eliminating moist air and functional design is lacking in winter boot products. A military boot system is proposed that will absorb and eliminate foot perspiration and provide a warm and comfortable environment for feet. This proposed design is to add an airflow system to the midsole of the shoe, pushing the air inside the shoe by naturally squeezing the airbag …

A Smart Walker That Reduces Falls And Injuries, Jungwhan Park

Theses

Most of the elderly fall in their homes. As a result, the elderly may be socially, psychologically, fatally affected. Living spaces and the safety of residents are essential factors so that the elderly can lead an independent life. The purpose of this study was to develop a protective product for the elderly that will decrease the impact of falls and reduce injuries. Living alone, a slippery floor, a lack of exercise, spatial cognitive ability problems, dark environment or low vision, are the top five factors that showed the highest risk of falls. The results of this study is expected to …