Digital Commons Network^™

My Spot. A New Kind Of Workspace., Bridget Dee Sheehan

Theses

Designed with the creative industry in mind, my spot is a work space that accommodates today's rapidly changing technology and the shifting workforce. The user can create a work space that works best for his or her unique tools and technologies, whether digital or analog. It offers multiple work surfaces, allowing the worker to utilize their space in different ways throughout the day. This modular system is minimal and functional, but it also allows the worker to maintain his or her identity within the office environment. My spot attempts to break down the traditional cubicle wall and encourage collaboration with …

Reflections, Sooja Lee

Theses

In order to tell my story, I learned how to express myself by making art, using metal. Through this creative process, I listened to my inner voice and found what I really wanted to say for my thesis. My body of work is a reflection of my faith and symbolizes my appreciation for God who gave me this precious life. It is a story of how my life has been changed after I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior. When I look back on my life, I know that it is truly God who has been guiding me, …

Over Bed Table Service System Design Aging Design Practice Through Research In A Nursing Home, Yu Liu

Theses

As citizens we all comprehend that an aging population is one of the biggest trends of our society in the 21st century and as designers, we should understand the significance of assistive products for geriatric use and provide in-depth research on how to optimize the social service system utilizing them.

My project started with a general open-topic survey, in order to record authentic daily inconveniences from seniors and select the direction that is most characteristic and has the most potential to be fully developed. The Overbed Table System Design not only redesigns an existing product, but reconsiders the complete service …

Nutritional Status, Dietary Habits, Practises And Knowledge And Their Relationship With Performance Among Young Athletes In The United Arab Emirates, Seham Mohammed Al Reesh

Theses

Objectives: The goals of this project are 1) To assess the nutritional status, 2) To describe the nutritional knowledge, 3) To describe Nutritional Practices, Dietary Habits for Athletic individual in the United Arab Emirates, Then to investigate the relations of both Nutritional status and Knowledge with Performance.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study was done to conducted in a sample of 59 Athletes recruited from AI Jazeera Academic sports clubs in the UAE in which, Nutrition Knowledge, Practices and Habits was evaluated by questionnaire, different components of the nutritional status (Weight, Body Composition, Skin Fold Thickness, Biochemical Parameters) and the Physical Performance …

Transitions, Krista Rose Frohling

Theses

Transitions developed after experiencing one of the largest transitions of my life from an autonomous being and business owner to a pregnant woman to a mother, all during my three year Masters of Fine Art program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The first section of the show follows my emotional progression throughout pregnancy, as well as physical form, highlighting inner conflict. An emotional conflict and progression is illustrated through the use of emotional landscapes on the exterior walls of the space. Each emotional landscape is created from 25 canvas prints that I photographed on my mobile devices. The interior walls …

Plant Responses To Increased Experimental Nitrogen Deposition In A Boreal Peatland, Meaghan Petix

Theses

Increased nitrogen (N) deposition onto boreal peatlands and forests is anticipated with further expansion of Alberta's oil sands industry and consequently, an increase in sources of nitrogen oxide emissions. Increased N deposition has the potential to affect peatland flora and alter N cycling patterns in peatlands, therefore it is imperative to investigate at what level of excess N deposition these effects take place. This thesis discusses results from the first two years of a five year N fertilization study being conducted at a peatland complex near the hamlet of Mariana Lake in northeastern Alberta, Canada aimed at quantifying the N …

Role Of Myd88 Protein In The Maintenance Of Immunological Self-Tolerance: Induction Of Autoimmunity By Salmonella Infection Consequent To Myd88 Deficiency., Jincy Merin Issac

Theses

Activation of the innate immune system is a prerequisite for the induction of adaptive immune responses to both infectious and non-infectious agents. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a family of proteins important for recognizing pathogen associated molecular patterns. MyD88 is an adaptor molecule whose function is critical in TLR signaling. MyD88-deficient (MyD88^-/-) mice exhibit heightened susceptibility to infections, even by attenuated strains of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Paradoxically, despite their hypersusceptibility, infected MyD88^-/- mice produce elevated serum levels of anti-Salmonella antibodies regardless of the route of infection. This hypergammaglobulinemia was observed with both Th1-driven (IgG2c and IgG3) …

Judas Kiss: How Never Ratting On Your Friends & Always Keeping Your Mouth Shut Does Not Apply To Street Snitches, Joseph John Pashea, Jr.

Theses

This thesis aims to understand the complex world of the snitch. The data for this thesis comes from interviews that were obtained by Richard Rosenfeld, Bruce A. Jacobs and Richard Wright. The data was obtained by conducting interviews with 20 active offenders, 15 males and 5 females. The interviews were conducted in an informal manner and lasted between a half-hour and an hour. The interviews were conducted on a one on one basis and offenders used nicknames instead of their real names. The findings revealed that while snitching is prevalent in African American communities many of the subjects did not …

Energy Drinks: Factors That Influnce College Students' Consumption, Nameer Nassir Faris

Theses

The purposes of this study were: To assess factors that influence energy drink consumptions among college students. To analyze the reasons behind consuming energy drinks as well as the reasons for not consuming them. And to evaluate the participants' knowledge regarding energy drinks' ingredients, safety, and side effects. A total of 417 undergraduate students who registered in 101 general education classes during the Fall 2013 semester at the departments of Health Education, Kinesiology, and Nutrition at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale participated in the study. Energy drink use was associated with the number of the paid employment hours (p= .000). …

Aerobic Biodegradation Of 2, 4 Dichlorophenol In A Spouted Bed Bio-Reactor (Sbbr), Taghreed Tahseen Al-Khalid

Theses

Chlorinated phenolic compounds represent a major class of hazardous pollutants commonly encountered in wastewater generated by the petroleum and petrochemical industries. In this regard, biological treatment, as an economical and green technology, has been shown to be one of the most promising approaches for the removal of many organic water pollutants such as chlorophenols. Under aerobic conditions, bacteria utilize chlorophenols as a source of carbon and energy. This study aimed at developing an integrated system for biodegradation of 2, 4 dichlorophenol (DCP) in a specially designed spouted bed bioreactor (SBBR), characterized by systematic intense mixing, resulting in enhanced biodegradation rates. …

Toward Effective Access Control Using Attributes And Pseudoroles, Suhair Alshehri

Theses

Sharing of information is fundamental to modern computing environments across many application domains. Such information sharing, however, raises security and privacy concerns that require effective access control to prevent unauthorized access and ensure compliance with various laws and regulations. Current approaches such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and their variants are inadequate. Although it provides simple administration of access control and user revocation and permission review, RBAC demands complex initial role engineering and makes access control static. ABAC, on the other hand, simplifies initial security setup and enables flexible access control, but increases the complexity …

Waste Cooking Oil-To-Biodiesel Conversion For Institutional Vehicular Applications, David Elliot Frank

Theses

Biodiesel is a renewable, sustainable, clean-burning biogenic fuel that can serve as a substitute for conventional ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD). Biodiesel is comprised of mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids and is produced via transesterification, whereby glycerin is separated from the fatty acid component of either an oil or fat. The full process yields the fatty acid methyl ester (biodiesel fuel) and glycerin, an economically valuable by-product.

As part of a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Showcase Communities Grant to Monroe County, New York and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS) was …

Waste Cooking Oil-To-Biodiesel Conversion For Space Heating Applications, Daniel J. Bruton

Theses

Transesterification is a process that converts triglycerides, like vegetable oil, into fatty acid methyl esters, commonly known as biodiesel. This conversion reaction requires the triglyceride feedstock, an alcohol, and an alkali-catalyst to produce the biodiesel. Biodiesel is a versatile biofuel that is renewable, biodegradable, and environmentally beneficial in the sense that combustion adds only biogenic carbon to the atmosphere. The main limitation of commercialization of biodiesel is cost. However, developing closed-loop systems that have an available triglyceride supply, such as waste cooking oil, as well as demand for diesel based fuels, can achieve substantial emissions reductions and energy avoidance, while …

Galapagos Mosquitoes As Avian Disease Vectors, Daniel Anthony Hartman

Theses

An avian malaria parasite of the genus Plasmodium has been detected consistently in the Galapagos Penguin (Speniscus mendiculus) in recent years. Subsequent screening of passerines has revealed more PCR positive birds, with most of them sampled on the southern coasts of Isabela and Santa Cruz islands. We sampled the two zoophilic mosquito species (Aedes taeniorhynchus and Culex quinquefasciatus) using both CDC light traps and CDC gravid traps along an altitudinal gradient from the southern coasts of these islands to the highlands to investigate whether mosquitoes occur at all elevations, and whether there may be mosquito-free refugia at higher elevation zones …

“Una Isla Caribeña Sobrepoblada”: Luis Muñoz Marín’S Overpopulation Discourse, 1922-1948, Luimil Mishette Negrón-Pérez

Theses

In the years that preceded Luis Muñoz Marín's tenure as Puerto Rico’s first elected and longest running governor, he used Puerto Rico’s so-called alarming population growth as the explanation for the island’s troubles and reform failures. In the early 1920s, the young neo-malthusianist, carved a place for himself as a staunch supporter of policies advocating for state provided birth control in a climate where critics of the jíbaros (Puerto Rico’s peasants) deemed them immoral and barbaric for having too many children. Less than twenty years later though, the same jíbaros who were causing Puerto Rico’s problems in the twenties were …

Recasting The Darwinian Dilemma, Abram L. Brummett

Theses

It is uncontroversial to say that evolution has contributed little to the content of our factual judgments about the world. It is also uncontroversial to say that evolution has had a lot to contribute to the content of our non-factual judgments. What has been controversial is the extent to which evolution has influenced the content of our moral beliefs, and whether such influence has any metaethical implications. Sharon Street has received a lot of attention for her attempt to “debunk morality” in her paper, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value.” She argues that not only have evolutionary influences …

Lessons In Betrayal, Donald Quentin Counts

Theses

An Abstract on the Thesis of Donald Q. Counts Title: Lessons in Betrayal Each of the selected works in this thesis share one common element, as they attempt to explore the nature of betrayal as a thematic element, and each story depicts a different aspect of this theme. Cold Hearted is a coming-of age story, as a young boy discovers what it can mean when family cannot be trusted. Threads can be viewed as science fiction or magic realism, but at heart it concerns itself with a man whose own nature has led to time itself turning against him. Then …

Harmless Stories, David Wraith Dandridge

Theses

A collection of short stories.

Immigration Restriction Then, Immigration Restriction Now; The Politics Of Iq, Alexandra L. Kummerow

Theses

Background: Immigration laws in the United States have had a strong impact on the development and utilization of intelligence testing since the early 1800's. Basic restriction laws were initially put into place to uphold the biological fitness of our country by excluding persons with physical, mental and intellectual disabilities. As the United States drew more immigrants into its country, physicians and doctors began to develop intelligence tests to examine new immigrants from all over the world. It was at Ellis Island where an extraordinary amount of scientific research took place and intelligence tests became the standard for determining mental abilities. …

On The Necessary Connection Between Law And Ethics: The Ethical Content Of Law, Michael D. Sigler

Theses

I defend the claim that there is a necessary connection between law and ethics. I do so by analogy with other social rule-based systems, such as capitalism. Most social rule-based systems are (in part) conceptually understood by the collective overall content of their rules. If legal systems, which are also social rule-based systems, are best understood in the same way, then the collective overall content of legal systems’ rules tells us how to understand the concept of law. One possibility for the collective overall content of legal systems’ rules is ethical content. If so, then there is a necessary connection …

Watt Community Rowing Center High-Performance Athletes Yield High-Performance Architecture, Allison Marie Lachance

Theses

The Watt Community Rowing Center (WCRC) is a conceptual project that will

demonstrate and quantify how an architectural design response can be both spatially evocative and technologically grounded. The WCRC is an architectural design evolving the typical rectangular boathouse into an energy-efficient boathouse that stimulates `out of the box', forward thought, focused both on architectural form and sustainable design. The WCRC is a synthesis of architecture, environment, and athletics and is a conceptual design and theoretical research exploration. The proposed architectural solution motivates a new form in sustainable architecture that encourages the participation of building occupants. The interaction between individuals …

Guiding Attention In Controlled Real-World Environments, Thomas P. Booth

Theses

The ability to direct a viewer's attention has important applications in computer graphics, data visualization, image analysis, and training. Existing computer-based gaze manipulation techniques, which direct a viewer's attention about a display, have been shown to be effective for spatial learning, search task completion, and medical training applications. This work extends the concept of gaze manipulation beyond digital imagery to include controlled, real-world environments. This work addresses the main challenges in guiding attention to real-world objects: determining what object the viewer is currently paying attention to, and providing (projecting) a visual cue on a different part of the scene in …

Kinesthetic Empathy, Danielle Haendiges

Theses

Kinesthetic empathy is a term that talks about our ability as humans to feel each other's pain. We have an incredible understanding and connectivity with people we hold close in our lives. The body of work for my MFA Thesis Exhibition explores some aspects of these phenomena by illustrating emotional relationships in glass sculpture. There are many different ways that people empathize with one another, therefore, different aspects and rituals of commiserating are explored to better understand why we can feel another person's pain without physically experiencing it.

I have a very specific connection with this type of empathy; my …

A Different Sort Of Normal: Critical Analysis Of Five Lesbian Characters’ Coming-Out Narratives On Contemporary Television Shows, Amanda M. Carlino

Theses

The spiral of silence and cultivation theories both support the importance of positive lesbian portrayals on television, both for lesbian and heterosexual viewers. Throughout the history of lesbian representation in media, lesbian characters have been both under and misrepresented. This study examined five lesbian characters on recent and current television shows to demonstrate how their portrayals subvert the traditional lesbian representations in media. It is concluded that while Emily Fields, Santana Lopez, Sophie Webster, Emily Fitch, and Naomi Campbell's narratives fall victim to some negative tropes in representation, they are generally revolutionary and powerful storylines, thus increasing positive visibility, providing …

The Sages And Philosophers: Reevaluating The Interaction Between Ancient Israel And Greece, Mike Tolliver

Theses

The previously assumed late development of the Jewish sacred writings led many to conclude that the Hellenistic world greatly influenced both the content and worldview of the Hebrew authors. Though the evidence for the historical reconstruction that required the Jewish texts to develop late has been called into question, scholars have yet to reconsider the implications this has for the antiquity of the ideas contained within the Jewish writings and their influence on surrounding cultures. Whereas it was once taken for granted that the Jews borrowed form and content from their Greek neighbors, it is now possible, even probable, that …

Wing Chun: Introducing Basic Wing Chun Kung Fu Using Instructional Multimedia, Li Han Huang

Theses

"Wing Chun Kung Fu 3D" is a conceptual website that offers people a new experience to learn and play Wing Chun Kung Fu via instructional multimedia.

In the website, instead of showing the video or static images in a conventional way, users can learn basic Wing Chun with elements such as three dimensional visuals, animations, and interactivity.

By having a TV-game interactive style to create a pleasant learning environment, I will demonstrate how to use instructional multimedia to teach martial arts through non-traditional methods.

Website link:

wk3d.com

Wonderland, Meng-Han Yu

Theses

"I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear" Oprah Winfrey .

My thesis "Wonderland" derives its knowledge from my life experiences, re-used to narrate how people can change or improve their attitude towards their life. Let us begin with how the title was born.

My parents were divorced when I was ten years old. My mother, a registered nurse, sometimes had to stay on duty overnight. Her boyfriend, who used to stay home, very often stirred up trouble between my mother and me. My mother always scolded me without considering the …

A Portrayal Of Biomechanics In Avian Flight, Kelly M. Kage

Theses

The art of avian flight is incredibly complex and sophisticated. It is one of the most energy-intensive modes of animal locomotion, and requires specific anatomical and physiological adaptations. I believe that in order to truly comprehend the beauty and complexity of avian flight, it is necessary to clearly visualize the anatomical adaptations found in birds. To aid in the visualization process, I set out to produce a series of educational animations that focus on the biomechanical requirements for flight. These requirements are numerous and complex, often making the flight process difficult to visualize and understand. The artwork and animations that …

Ventricular Myocyte Contraction, Calcium Transport And Expression Of Genes Encoding Cardiac Muscle Proteins In Type 2 Diabetic Rats Fed A Sucrose-Enriched Diet, Eslam Mohamed Gaber El Nebrisi

Theses

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is currently the fastest growing disease in the world. The prevalence of DM has increased worldwide and is expected to double within 20 years. The UAE is ranked 15^th worldwide, with 18.98% of the UAE population living with diabetes. Six Middle East North Africa (MENA) region countries – Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) - are among the world’s 10 highest for prevalence of diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance. This represents a huge cost to society in terms of morbidity and mortality, and economically through lost productivity and cost burden on …

Multimodal Imaging And Characterization Of Biofilms, Kunal Vaidya

Theses

Bacterial infection is a rampant problem faced by the medical community. The bacteria gene pool is capable of adapting itself to changing conditions building biofilms to ensure the survival of progeny. This ability reduces the efficiency of antibiotics and protects the bacteria from immune system eradication, prompting the need for a technology capable of early detection of biofilms. The ability to non-invasively image and characterize bacterial biofilms in children during nasopharyngeal (NP) colonization with potential otopathogens and during acute otitis media, (AOM) would represent a significant advance. Identifying the properties of biofilms is a crucial step towards establishing a viable …