Digital Commons Network^™

Acquisition Of Hockey Goalies Kinematic Data Using Motion Capture Systems, Tzu-Ting Hsu

Theses

Hockey goalies all over the world have adopted the butterfly style of goaltending due to the fast pace of the game. However, the style of play has brought the potential for injuries to goalies. In this study, a motion capture system was used to analyze the butterfly motion performed by a human subject to quantify the kinematics and kinetics associated with the motion. Further analysis was done with the motion capture data to obtain the joint angles of the hip and the knee joints and the forces in the joints associated with the butterfly motions. Through the experiments, the kinematics …

Habitat And Conservation Suitability Assessment For Shrubland Birds In Monroe County, New York, Rachel Allen

Theses

Shrublands and successional ecosystems are of special interest to land managers and conservation groups because to be maintained, they must be disturbed periodically. Shrubland birds rely on variation in the landscape, regular disturbance, and ephemeral patches of shrubs for breeding, foraging, and nesting. Many of these avian species are in decline, so monitoring and mapping shrublands is necessary for future conservation and management strategies (DeGraaf & Yamasaki, 2003; Howard et al., 2015; Litvaitis, 2003). Large proportions of shrubland bird populations rely on shrublands in the northeast states for breeding habitat, and the identification and land use monitoring of these regions …

Design Address On Phubbing During Dining, Shih-Hsuan Huang

Theses

Phubbing is the practice of ignoring one's companion or companions to pay attention to one's phone or other mobile device. What happens when phubbing occurs in situations such as eating with friends? Phubbing instantly stops the interaction, and this unconsciousness behavior may affect the mood of one’s companions, destroy the taste of one’s food, or ruin one’s relationships.

Using a phone while eating is not a bad practice. People often use their phones to record the moment, to capture the delicious food, or to share information with others.

The best way to deal with hurt caused by phubbing during dining …

Research On A Future Senior Housing Model In Wuhan, China, Fangyuan Shi

Theses

Recently in China, seniors’ health and living conditions after retirement have become the focus of increasing political and social concerns. Due to fertility policies in China since the 1980s, improvements in living conditions have led to longer average lifespan, increasing demand in the country’s senior housing market. This research explores the future development of senior housing for this and the next generation, the evolution of needs after retirement, and possible future solutions for providing an up-to-date senior housing community in Wuhan, China. Through documentary analysis of the current conditions as well as the needs and social concerns of seniors, case …

The Role Of Parathyroid Hormone 1 Receptor (Pth1r) Signaling In Gastric Epithelial Homeostasis, Maram Maher Al-Hasan

Theses

In the stomach, the epithelial stem cells are responsible for glandular homeostasis. These stem cells continuously undergo cellular proliferation and differentiation to balance the death of senescent cells. Studies conducted on gastric cancers showed a significant increase in parathyroid hormone-like hormone (PTHLH). Moreover, both PTHLH along with parathyroid hormone (PTH) act as endogenous ligands for parathyroid hormone 1 receptor (PTH1R) which belongs to family B of G- protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). This receptor functions by mediating many different signaling pathways and the most studied pathway is the stimulation of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) as a second messenger.

There are very few …

Examining The Impact Of Using Point Of View Video Modeling On Improving Self-Care Skills Of A Student With Autism, May Ali Elmetwally Ghoneim

Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using point of view video modeling intervention strategy on improving the self-care skills of a student with autism. The target skills were handwashing and toothbrushing skills. A single-subject ABA design was used in this study. Data was collected using mixed-method approach. The intervention lasted for six weeks. The results of this study indicated that point of view video modeling is an effective instructional tool to improve handwashing and toothbrushing skills for a student with autism. Moreover, the participant was able to generalize handwashing and toothbrushing skills to two different …

Exploring Emirati Ninth Grade Students’ Use Of Edmodo In Learning English: A Mixed-Method Study, Amna Hamad Al Nuami

Theses

This mixed-method study is aimed at exploring the use of EDMODO by Emirati ninth grade female students (n = 97) who are studying English as a second language. In the first phase of the study, quantitative data were collected by using a questionnaire. Additionally, from the original pool, a subset of students (n = 11) were interviewed with regards to EDMODO usage in the classroom. The findings from this study revealed that ninth-grade students found EDMODO to be first and foremost an interesting and joyful learning experience; Second, they also reported it is an efficient platform for …

Hyperspectral Imaging Evaluation Of The Freshness Of Mushrooms (Agaricus Bisporus), Meera Hmoud Saeed Aldhaheri

Theses

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a non-destructive analytical tool that can be used for sensing multiple attributes of foods. This thesis evaluates the application of HSI for measuring the freshness of the mushroom Agaricus bisporus (A. bisporus) in comparison with traditional seed methods. Three separate experiments were performed with 135 mushroom samples stored either in packed or unpacked conditions for 11 days. The overall results suggest that the HSI spectral region between 400 and 1000 nm is suitable for the inspection of mushroom freshness. Two distinguishing variables that aligned with physicochemical and microbiological analysis were recognized. Moisture loss was the main …

Environmental Risks And Benefits Of Nano-Enabled Clean Energy Technologies, Elizabeth A. Moore

Theses

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are increasingly incorporated into clean energy technologies due to observed improvement in technological and system performance. Though these materials could revolutionize many products and technologies, increased use of ENMs can also introduce uncertainty and risks that are difficult to predict. Increase in ENM use could significantly increase ENM releases to the environment across their life cycle, from material synthesis to end-of-life. To address knowledge gaps and uncertainties, this work assesses a portfolio of ENMs from a systems perspective. First, characterization and quantification methods were developed for three carbonaceous ENMs, fullerenes (C60, C70, and derivative PCBM), which have …

Smile, Luke Polito

Theses

Smile is a film about June, an unhappy high school girl who lives in a world of unrelenting positivity. Everyone in this world has a massive, overwhelming smile and wears bright, vibrant colors. As she leaves school one day June is invited to a karaoke party that evening by a group of exceedingly enthusiastic students, which she hesitantly agrees to attend. June rides her rusty, uneven bicycle home to find her father working in the garage. She tries to enter the house unnoticed, but her father scoops June up in a massive hug and excitedly tells her that he picked …

Multiscale Fluid-Structure Interaction Models Development And Applications To The 3d Elements Of A Human Cardiovascular System, Yogesh Karnam

Theses

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the number one cause of death of humans in the United States and worldwide. Accurate, non-invasive, and cheaper diagnosis methods have always been on demand as cardiovascular monitoring increase in prevalence. The primary causes of the various forms of these CVDs are atherosclerosis and aneurysms in the blood vessels. Current noninvasive methods (i.e., statistical/medical) permit fairly accurate detection of the disease once clinical symptoms are suggestive of the existence of hemodynamic disorders. Therefore, the recent surge of hemodynamics models facilitated the prediction of cardiovascular conditions.

The hemodynamic modeling of a human circulatory system involves varying levels …

Dream Life, Menghan Tsai

Theses

Dream Life, is a series of photographic work based on the contemporary Chinese phenomenon known as social media celebrity (SMC). In order to achieve an identical trendy “perfect” appearance, numerous young women undergo cosmetic surgery, apply on bold makeup, and use heavy Photoshop on their social media photos. I aim to criticize this practice and question how this distorted aesthetic standard for females is developed. By reconstructing the elements that the SMCs are showing, I want to show the absurdity of this “dream life”.

Biochar As A Substitute For Carbon Black In Lithographic Ink Production, Vanessa Hulse

Theses

Replacing carbon black with biochar, a more sustainable carbon negative material, in commercial inks will be presented. The overall project goal was to produce an optimal feedstock for biochar through impurity removal techniques. Biochar is most commonly used in soil applications or water remediation, due to its highly porous nature, leading to high contaminant adsorption. This project however, focuses on biochar as a pigment for lithographic inks. When raw boxboard or recycled paper pulp was subjected to pyrolysis, an appreciable amount of mineral impurities remained. These harder mineral impurities result in poor black coverage power. Harder mineral impurities also made …

Lightweight Information Security Methods For Indoor Wireless Body Area Networks: From Channel Modeling To Secret Key Extraction, Ruslan Dautov

Theses

A group of wirelessly communicating sensors that are placed inside, on or around a human body constitute a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Continuous monitoring of vital signs through WBANs have a potential to revolutionize current health care services by reducing the cost, improving accessibility, and facilitating medical diagnosis. However, sensitive nature of personal health data requires WBANs to integrate appropriate security methods and practices. As limited hardware resources make conventional security measures inadequate in a WBAN context, this work is focused on alternative techniques based on Wireless Physical Layer Security (WPLS). More specifically, we introduce a symbiosis of WPLS …

You Can Be Strong: An Animation About A Young Woman Fighting Against Breast Cancer, Yuting Hou

Theses

Many young women don’t take cancer as a potential threat. They consider this situation only when they attain a certain age. But in fact, cancer is a serious threat. Breast cancer has become the fastest-growing type of cancer in urban areas. The age of women between 25-39 years old are diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, accounting for 10-15 percent of all patients.

Being stressed, depressed, lacking of sleep, eating unhealthy food, and smoking are among the factors that are potential causes for breast cancer. It should be taken seriously by young women.

In order to improve awareness of this disease, …

Mudboy: An Animated Short Story Of Procrastination, Wentao Huang

Theses

Procrastination is becoming an issue of people daily lives. This thesis aims to use a short film called Mudboy to investigate what is the main factors that caused procrastination, and raise public awareness of procrastination, through a story about lazy boy whom turns himself into mud whenever he feels like running away from doing his work. Mudboy was developed based on a strictly scheduled plan. More specifically, in the first stage, research and planning were conducted, with significant emphasis on idea creation, story creation, and animatic design. Following the theories and evidence of comprehensive research, a 3D animation story integrating …

Additives Abyss, I-Tang Wu

Theses

Through the news, publications and journals about misuse of food additives in Taiwan, food additives are gradually recognized by the public. However, many people were neither aware of the additives nor able to understand the importance of nutrition usage until some negative food safety issues broke out. This has a lot to do with the lack of knowledge about additives among Taiwanese. People are seldom suspicious of the unnatural taste, even get familiar with it. Therefore, food companies replace the natural ones with food additives not only to lower costs and make food attractive, but also to fulfill customers’ need …

Transferring Generalized Knowledge From Physics-Based Simulation To Clinical Domain, Mohammed Abdullatif Alawad

Theses

A primary factor for the success of machine learning is the quality of labeled training data. However, in many fields, labeled data can be costly, difficult, or even impossible to acquire. In comparison, computer simulation data can now be generated at a much higher abundance with a much lower cost.

These simulation data could potentially solve the problem of data deficiency in many machine learning tasks. Nevertheless, due to model assumptions, simplifications and possible errors, there is always a discrepancy between simulated and real data. This discrepancy needs to be addressed when transferring the knowledge from simulation to real data. …

Effect Of Religion On Domestic Violence Perpetration Among American Adults, Cassidy Mitchell

Theses

After Hirschi and Stark’s Hellfire and Delinquency (1969), researchers have been seeking to determine whether there is a correlational link between religion and crime. This paper seeks to add to the literature by correlating domestic violence with four elements of religion (use of belief to solve everyday problems, prayer frequency, religious importance, and attendance of worship) that correspond with the four elements of Hirschi’s social control theory (attachment, commitment, belief, and involvement, respectively) (1969). It also includes male victims of domestic violence among female victims, unlike most previous literature. Using a series of logistic regression models, only attendance of worship, …

The Limits Of Sociality, Johnna B. Mcgovern

Theses

There is a longstanding tradition in Western philosophy of emphasizing the capacity for reflection in theories about humans’ characteristic nature. In Talking to Ourselves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency, John Doris attempts to shift the focus to an emphasis on human sociality. Particularly, Doris argues that sociality, both implicitly and in the form of collaborative reasoning, is what makes humans best equipped for moral improvement. This collaborativism possesses a defining role in his account of agency and responsibility. This thesis attempts to gain an understanding of how sociality affects moral behavior and to argue that it is not conducive to agency …

The Epistemic And Psychological Mechanisms Perpetuating Racism Within The Criminal Justice System, Danielle Walker

Theses

Abstract

Many attempts have been made by philosophers, political activists, psychologists, historians, social advocates, and others to explain the mechanisms at play in the perpetuation and resulting manifestations of systemic and institutional racism. On one side of the debate there lies a theory that there is an epistemic failure at the root of racial bias towards Blacks, white ignorance, a collective amnesia regarding what has and does take place in society, as it pertains to their oppression and isolation, like the view of philosopher Charles W. Mills. According to Mills, this type of ignorance, or non-knowing, is a cognitive phenomenon …

Designing Better Prosthetics For Use In Rock Climbing And Other Sports, Tyler Monica

Theses

Participation in sports, and rock climbing in particular, is able to offer many benefits to those who have lost or were born without a limb. Depending on the sport the individual wishes to participate in, there remains relatively few to no prosthetics despite the strong desire of amputees to engage in sports. Industrial designers are increasingly needed on teams to bring about change. Their skill set can help create prosthetics that are functional for a given sport, capture that sport’s essence, are aesthetically pleasing and comfortable for extended use. Together with engineers and prosthetists, they can find the right materials …

How To Improve The Office Workers’ Lifestyle With Emotional Design, Chi Zhang

Theses

Nowadays in China, nearly 83% of office workers have to work overtime and 94% of them have physical health conditions due to work schedules. Physical stress increases mental stress while working. nonetheless, many office workers ignore this stress, resulting in severe injury. This thesis explores on phenomenon of office workers in China giving up their health for work. It discusses their working condition and psychological status, and how it affects their balance of work and entertainment. Finally, it suggests a possible way to alleviate this problem- using the emotional design to give users a comfortable and enjoyable experience to make …

Eastern State Penitentiary: A Digital Restoration, Nicholas Gregory Golden

Theses

A model of prison architecture which has been replicated in modern prisons and schools throughout the world, Eastern State Penitentiary was built as the first prison to induce reformation upon its inmates. While kept in solitary confinement inside of generously proportioned cells with barrel vaulted ceilings lit by skylights, inmates were thought to see the light of God and be penitent of their crimes. Today, the interior of the structure is kept in ruin without funding to restore a major cell-block to its former prestige. The cells of the prison today have become dilapidated since the prison closed in 1970 …

Enhancing Dining Experiences Through Emotional Tableware Design, Yueyue Zhang

Theses

Positive dining experiences can improve both physical and psychological health. Eating with people and eating slowly can facilitate one’s experience and behavior during the process, owing to the unexpected information from their senses and the surrounding environment. Tableware is a very important bridge between people and food. People get food, share food, and serve food while dining. Therefore, the tableware based on emotional design can to a certain extent affect people's dining behavior and dining experience. This paper firstly introduces the reasons why people are getting hard to get a positive dining experience, and the importance of dining experiences. Then, …

Understanding Design Challenges For Homeless’ Sleeping Situation In The Us., Siqi Xu

Theses

The living situations of the unsheltered America homeless vary across America. This paper highlights this difference by comparing two cities: New York City and San Francisco. The author considers the causes of homelessness, difficulty of being shelters, current living situation and the influence of the society. In both cities, the sleeping space has the biggest problems. It is critical and worth to improve. Different from bedding supplies for camping, disaster reliefs and military, bedding for unsheltered homeless people must meet their chronic needs and flexible requirements of changing sites. As in the New York City, the unsheltered homeless people prefer …

Coffee Culture: Design Inspiration Balancing Social Connection And Independence In Modern Workplaces, Tianzhi Li

Theses

Positive interaction with others and employee themselves in the workplace can increase work engagement and satisfaction. However, the staff does not have enough flexibility to control their schedule or enough belongings to their coworkers and companies, which make them commit their time, talent, skills, and ambition to their team and companies hard. As a new modern workplace layout type, activity-based workplace (ABW) shows the trend of employee office interaction development. It allows employees to choose the most suitable workstation based on their activities, offering more flexibility to set up their own work life. However, there are some worries preventing people …

Factors Limiting Organic Carbon Degradation By Antibiotic-Resistant Heterotrophic Microorganisms In Wastewater Contaminated Sediments, Katelyn Whitburn

Theses

This study aims to assess the interactions between antibiotic resistance and the ability of heterotrophs effected by highly polluted environments to remediate antibiotics from soil via biodegradation. These findings would reveal whether a self-cleaning process is occurring in the waters of Western NY. Water and sediment heterotrophs were obtained from wastewater contaminated environments to understand the factors influencing metabolism. A total of 113 isolates from Charlotte, Durand, and Payne Beaches, the Genesee River, and Hemlock Lake were cultured and detected for antibiotic resistance to 24 different antibiotics. Of these, seven robust bacteria from sediments were considered for their ability to …

Starved Lubrication Using Ionic Liquid As An Additive To Biodegradable Oil In Titanium-Ceramic Contact, Sameer Magar

Theses

Friction leads to energy loss in any system that has two bodies in contact and relative motion with each other. Advancements in lubricants and the lubrication process have helped to reduce friction and in return reduced energy losses owing to friction. But, however, lubricant starvation is still a reality and can happen in applications like piston-ring and cylinder liner contact, and machining etc. It can cause equipment damage leading to unexpected downtime. Ionic liquids, in the recent years have shown a great potential in terms of friction and wear reduction. Using ionic liquids as additives helps reduce the cost of …

Simulating Pathway-Based Steady States To Prevent Epithelial- Mesenchymal Transition In Ovarian Cancer, K Jeselle Clark

Theses

Ovarian cancer is a complex disease that involves gene regulatory dysfunction and that requires a systemic viewpoint to fully understand. Applying executable biology to ovarian cancer research and leveraging documented regulatory protein interactions, one can efficiently inform the prediction of characteristic gene-product activation using a logical model checking approach. Using this innovative approach to reducing terms and satisfying constraints, this thesis presents a strategy for applying regulatory systems biology to cancer research. By viewing ovarian cancer pathways like an electrical circuit, and constructing a pathway model with natural language processing tools, gene product expression patterns that have not been explained …