Digital Commons Network^™

Amazon Reviews Using Sentiment Analysis, Ammar Rashed Hamdallah

Theses

The intense competition to attract and maintain customers online is compelling businesses to implement novel strategies to enhance the customer experiences. It is becoming necessary for companies to examine customer reviews on online platforms such as Amazon to understand better how customers rate their products and services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how companies can conduct sentiment analysis based on Amazon reviews to gain more insights into customer experiences. The dataset selected for this capstone consists of customer reviews and ratings from consumer reviews of Amazon products. Amazon product reviews enable a business to gain insights on …

Ambiguity, Rinoi Imada

Theses

Ambiguity explores the sense of ambiguous identity through conceptual investigations of glass and language structure. This body of work and thesis refer to my personal experience and scholarly research to observe transformation and transition of identity. My thesis considers glass as a phenomenal substance through its transformative materiality; my body of work reflects materiality of glass as an ephemeral identity of humanity. Utilizing glass as a transformative material, my body of work is the result of experimental art practices which are observations of photography, fusing glass techniques, live and site-specific gestures, and hotshop glass techniques.

Cultural Connection: The Value Of Art History In Early Childhood Development And Education, Sara Ashley Turner

Theses

This thesis focuses on the utilization of art historical inquiry to improve the relationship and narrative of culture within appropriate settings. Although this thesis will prove the beneficial and important role that the subject matter of art history can have in early education, the subject matter will also show the specific possibilities of using such inquiries in art therapy, museum education, and in general education classrooms. The aim of the thesis is to present these practical and useful employments of art historical inquiry, within subject matter for young children, to be a tool for finding cultural identity and inclusivity in …

Voltage And Frequency Control In Ac Islanded Microgrid, Hamad Mohammad Al Sharif

Theses

Microgrids are described as linking many power sources (renewable energy and traditional sources) to meet the load consumption in real-time. Because renewable energy sources are intermittent, battery storage systems are required, typically used as a backup system. An energy management strategy (EMS) is required to govern power flows across the entire microgrid. In recent research, various methods have been proposed for controlling the micro-grids, especially voltage and frequency control. This study introduces a microgrid system, an overview of local control in the microgrid, and an efficient EMS for effective microgrid operations using three smart controllers for optimal microgrid stability. We …

Modeling The Speed And Timing Of American Sign Language To Generate Realistic Animations, Sedeeq Al-Khazraji

Theses

While there are many Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) individuals with excellent reading literacy, there are also some DHH individuals who have lower English literacy. American Sign Language (ASL) is not simply a method of representing English sentences. It is possible for an individual to be fluent in ASL, while having limited fluency in English. To overcome this barrier, we aim to make it easier to generate ASL animations for websites, through the use of motion-capture data recorded from human signers to build different predictive models for ASL animations; our goal is to automate this aspect of animation synthesis …

Test Naming Failures. An Exploratory Study Of Bad Naming Practices In Test Code, Zachariah Wigent

Theses

Unit tests are a key component during the software development process, helping ensure that a developer's code is functioning as expected. Developers interact with unit tests when trying to understand, maintain, and when updating code. Good test names are essential for making these various processes easier, which is important considering the substantial costs and effort of software maintenance. Despite this, it has been found that the quality of test code is often lacking, specifically when it comes to test names. When a test fails, its name is often the first thing developers will see when trying to fix the failure, …

Feasibility Of Twitter Sentiment Analysis In Predicting Crime In The Uae, Rashed Khalifa Alsubousi

Theses

In this study, we demonstrate how the information provided by individuals on social media can represent some aspects of their behavior to predict criminal activities and intentions in societies. The problem discussed in this study is finding a model that can analyze social media posts to infer the intentions and feelings of the publisher behind those posts to predict the probability of committing a crime. This is a preventive technique that can be used to monitor individuals or organizations who have a behavioral pattern that can be inferred as criminal intent. To help detect and predict criminal activities, we observe …

Cultural Competence In The Baccalaureate Degree Nursing Curriculum, Angela E. Silvestri-Elmore

Theses

Health care providers are members of a helping profession and need to provide quality care to all members of society. As a result of current and projected demographic changes within the United States (U.S.), health care professionals are faced with the challenges of providing culturally competent care and fulfilling the role as the "helping profession." In the past 10 years, minority populations have increased in the U.S. For example, the African American population experienced an approximate 12.3% increase, and the Hispanic population increased by 43%. Just as it is necessary for health care professionals to respond to the increase in …

Analyzing Temporal Patterns In Phishing Email Topics, Erika Bliss

Theses

In 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found phishing to be the most common cybercrime, with a record number of complaints from Americans reporting losses exceeding $4.1 billion. Various phishing prevention methods exist; however, these methods are usually reactionary in nature as they activate only after a phishing campaign has been launched. Priming people ahead of time with the knowledge of which phishing topic is more likely to occur could be an effective proactive phishing prevention strategy. It has been noted that the volume of phishing emails tended to increase around key calendar dates and during times of uncertainty. …

Examining Mentorship In The Field Of Sign Language Interpreting: An Application Of Relational Dialectics Theory, Hanna Hoekman

Theses

Using relational dialectics theory, this study examined mentoring approaches and dialectical tensions that occur in mentoring relationships in the field of sign language interpreting. The traditional function of a mentor is to provide guidance or support to someone who has less experience than themselves. This study focuses on a deeper understanding of the dynamics of mentoring relationships in the field of sign language interpreting. Using a qualitative approach, I conducted semi-structured interviews with sign language interpreters who have been in the role of mentor and mentee. The results, based on interviews with mentors and mentees, show that mentors and mentees …

Tuberculosis Screening And Education In The Urban Public School District, Nikolaos S. Moraros

Theses

Tuberculosis (TB) is the world's deadliest curable communicable infectious disease. The eradication of TB is a significantly important intractable global public health challenge for health agencies at all levels. Global migration, cultural-socioeconomic factors and increase of multidrug-resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB) affect the epidemiology of TB in the United States and other countries worldwide. Studies have shown that increase in TB knowledge and understanding contributes to early TB screenings/diagnosis, interventions and treatments, result in reducing MDR-TB, rates of TB transmissions, relapse, morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this project is: (1) to develop a TB screening risk assessment protocol for the Urban …

An Exploratory Assessment Of Peer-Reviewed Life Science Literature Statement Readability Used In Text-Based Interpretive Analyses, Jeremy Jackson

Theses

This project looked to explore the process of one of the scientific community’s leading text mining software, Pathway Studio, which efficiently streamlines the tedious task of information sorting and gathering in a clinical setting. To do this Pathway Studio implements a sentiment scoring algorithm which decides, based on interpreting literature similarly to natural human understanding, what sections of literature are most relevant to a given search request and provides corresponding peer-reviewed work in the industry. The novel statistics derived of its performance are used to establish an average form of a statement which reflects that of a standard level of …

Elementary Rhythm Pedagogy Analysis, Antonio D. Griffin Jr.

Theses

Rhythm is a foundational element for a child’s development. Rhythm builds motor skills, aids in language acquisition, and is at the root of all musical experience. While the concept of rhythm is universal, there is no universal approach that educators agree best helps students develop rhythmic ability. This research seeks to discover the most common research-based methods and better practices for elementary rhythm instruction and align each to current national music standards and expectations.

Standard Accented Turkish Speakers’ Perception Of Kurdish Accented Speakers: The Factors Behind The Evaluations, Busra Can

Theses

This study investigates the attitudes of standard accented Turkish speakers towards non-standard Kurdish accented speakers of Turkish. Given the fact that there are strict language policies in Turkey, this paper analyzes the effect of such standard language ideologies on listener attitudes using a mixed-methods design. The study included 50 Turkish participants with ages ranging from 19 to 51. Participants completed a survey with 21 questions and could volunteer to also participate in an interview. The survey asked about biographical data, evaluations of various speakers and ratings of accents of Turkish. Using a matched guise technique in the survey, a Kurdish …

Intelligent Statcom Voltage Regulation Using Fuzzy Logic Control, Saleh Hussein

Theses

Reactive power compensation is a very important and challenging task in electrical power systems today. Future trends foreseen in power systems such as high interconnectivity and the integration of renewable energy resources produce even more issues related to power system control and stability. Flexible AC transmission systems are vastly used in power systems in order to mitigate several performance aspects found in typical power systems. One shunt connected device in particular, STATCOM, is very powerful and commonly used in voltage regulation at the power transmission level. STATCOM uses voltage sourced converters to inject or absorb reactive power from the power …

Modeling Dyadic Human Interaction Using Sequential Neural Network, Srijan Kumar Sharma

Theses

Social networks, involving people and their interactions are at core of human society. But many current computational social methods focus more on the individual than their interactions. Deep neural networks have been successfully applied to tasks such as natural language processing, dialog modeling, or analyzing sentiments in a conversation. In these areas, we will often encounter data that originate from multiple sources. These signals can interact with each other synchronously, but detecting such synchrony may prove challenging.

In this work we focus on investigating how deep neural network architectures can help us better understand synchrony in social contexts. We investigate …

Examining Awareness And Identification Procedures Of Students With Specific Learning Disabilities In Uae Elementary Government Schools, Hana Aidrous Omar

Theses

Specific Learning Disability (SLD) is the most prevalent type of disability. Many students have been incorrectly identified as having SLD when, in fact, they have a different issue or disability. Other students with serious academic problems have been ignored and have not been evaluated. This study, therefore, examines the procedures used to identify students with SLD in UAE elementary government schools. The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to examine the diagnostic procedures and steps that UAE elementary government schools follow to identify and place students with SLD and (b) to investigate school professionals’ awareness of SLD. A mixed …

An Empirical Study Of Offensive Language In Online Interactions, Diptanu Sarkar

Theses

In the past decade, usage of social media platforms has increased significantly. People use these platforms to connect with friends and family, share information, news and opinions. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter are often used to propagate offensive and hateful content online. The open nature and anonymity of the internet fuels aggressive and inflamed conversations. The companies and federal institutions are striving to make social media cleaner, welcoming and unbiased. In this study, we first explore the underlying topics in popular offensive language datasets using statistical and neural topic modeling. The current state-of-the-art models for aggression detection only present a …

A Bibliometric Analysis Of The Eclipse Narrative In American Philosophy, Noah W. Collins

Theses

Philosophical pragmatism originated in the United States in the late 19th century. Some historians of philosophy have described the history of American pragmatism in terms of an “eclipse narrative”: dominant in the early 20th century, followed by a mid-century decline and, eventually, a late-century resurgence. Defenders of this narrative often point to the influx of European philosophers around WWII, and the rise of “analytic” philosophy, as the main reasons for pragmatism’s initial eclipse. While the eclipse narrative is common in the philosophical literature, it is not without controversy. Unfortunately, the contemporary debate tends to rely on anecdotal evidence and contested …

Who Do They Think We Are? Analyzing Misrepresentation Of Races In Netflix Original Films Using Critical Race Theory And Social Identity Theory, Jacob Osseck

Theses

In a society like today’s, racial misrepresentation can be found across a vast number of different forms of media. Racial misrepresentation has been found in television portrayals of characters within series and programs during primetime television. This sort of misrepresentation creates obstacles for certain minorities to overcome prejudice, racism, and bigotry that oppresses their ingroup. A content analysis of 20 Netflix Original films which were chosen through random purposive sampling, to include comedy and drama genres, was conducted for the research. The analysis produced results that helped explain that Netflix’s representation of minorities through inclusion has improved for Blacks, yet …

Lost In Transit, Drishti Bhandari

Theses

“I recognize, decontextualize, reconstruct.”

"Lost in transit" is the sense of loss that we experience when our heritage and stories are passed down to us. Like a game of Telephone, every generation loses a little of its past- which gets left behind. We do not have, in all originality, what the previous generation had. As we move through time, lived experiences change. We will never know what it felt like to live in a medieval kingdom, or to live through the renaissance. We will only ever have their echoes in pictures, stories and ruins. The only common thread is that …

Representational Enactivism, Zhexi Zhang

Theses

In the literature on enactive approaches to cognition, representationalism is often seen as a rival theory. In this paper, I argue that enactivism can be fruitfully combined with representationalism by adopting Frances Egan’s content pragmatism. This representational enactivism avoids some of the problems faced by antirepresentational versions of enactivism. Most significantly, representational enactivism accommodates empirical evidence that neural systems manipulate representations. In addition, representational enactivism provides a valuable insight into how to identify representational content, especially in brainless organisms: we can identify representational content by investigating autopoietic processes.

Can Feature Requests Reveal The Refactoring Types?, Sultan Fahad Almassari

Theses

Software refactoring is the process of improving the design of a software system while preserving its external behavior. In recent years, refactoring research has been growing as a response to the degradation of software quality. Recent studies performed an in-depth investigation in (1) how refactoring practices are taking place during the software evolution, (2) how to recommend refactoring to improve the design of software, and (3) what type of refactoring operations can be implemented. However, there is a lack of support when it comes to developers’ typical programming tasks, including feature updates and bug fixes. The goal of this thesis …

Automatic Speech Recognition For Low-Resource And Morphologically Complex Languages, Ethan Morris

Theses

The application of deep neural networks to the task of acoustic modeling for automatic speech recognition (ASR) has resulted in dramatic decreases of word error rates, allowing for the use of this technology in smart phones and personal home assistants in high-resource languages. Developing ASR models of this caliber, however, requires hundreds or thousands of hours of transcribed speech recordings, which presents challenges for most of the world’s languages. In this work, we investigate the applicability of three distinct architectures that have previously been used for ASR in languages with limited training resources. We tested these architectures using publicly available …

Forensics Writer Identification Using Text Mining And Machine Learning, Saif Ali Alawar

Theses

Constant technological growth has resulted in the danger and seriousness of cyber-attacks, which has recently unmistakably developed in various institutions that have complex Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. For instance, for the last three (3) years, the most horrendous instances of cybercrimes were perceived globally with enormous information breaks, fake news spreading, cyberbullying, crypto-jacking, and cloud computing services. To this end, various agencies improvised techniques to curb this vice and bring perpetrators, both real and perceived, to book in relation to such serious cybersecurity issues. Consequently, Forensic Writer Identification was introduced as one of the most effective remedies to the concerned …

Beginning Band: Cognitive Development Based Instruction, Kayla Price

Theses

This project focuses on how to facilitate a more efficient beginning band experience for students based on the average state of cognitive development for their age group. The primary focus is presenting an alternative to immediately starting students in a traditional band method book when they first begin band classes. The aim of the project is to study the cognitive development of the average sixth grader to best determine what instructional approach would best suit their processing abilities before introducing the band method book. Furthermore, the study exposes the fallacies of the traditional band method book system and suggests and …

Communication At The Core: Exploring Decision-Making When Communication Is At The Heart Of An Organisation’S Strategy Development, Sinead Hewson

Theses

This investigation considers whether the position, territory and scope of the public relations function in organisations influences strategic thinking, decision-making, and results. Scholars say communication is a strategic management function and has a significant role to play (Grunig J.E., Dozier and IABC Research Foundation 1992, pp. 325–356; Kitchen, 1997, pp. 43–73). Yet, the strategic expertise of communicators is neither understood nor acknowledged outside of the sector. The study’s investigation into the issue and level of access to industry opinion-makers adds to the strategy discussion, while the proposed model of Adaptive Communication contributes to new knowledge.

Prisoners, Power And Panopticon: Investigating Fremantle Gaol, 1831-1841, Emily Lanman

Theses

The history of crime and punishment is intertwined with Australia’s colonisation, including the foundation of the Swan River Colony in 1829. It can be demonstrated that Jeremy Bentham’s writings on criminal reform, specifically through his work on the panopticon model prison, influenced the development of punishment and prisons in the colony. This is evident in the construction of Fremantle Gaol (1831), which was built on the principles set forth by the panopticon and provides an interesting insight into what was deemed important in the penal system the colony continued to establish between 1831 and 1841. While Fremantle Gaol conformed to …

Villains To Heroes: Celebrity Criminals In 1960'S Britain And Their Subsequent Rise In Popularity, Richard Nixon

Theses

This thesis sits at the intersection of history, media and cultural studies, and will undertake a study into the emergence of criminal celebrities in Britain in the 1960s and their subsequent rise in popularity. It will seek to explain the reasons for and cultural impact of this emergence and rise against an ever-changing social, cultural, political and media landscape, including changes in social and cultural attitudes. In doing so, the study will seek to establish the extent to which criminal celebrities are a product of their time.

The thesis will essentially comprise two main strands with reference to criminal celebrities, …

A Theology Of Confirmation From The Canon Of Scripture, Peter Pellicaan

Theses

In the last forty years, scholars have commonly referred to confirmation as the “sacrament in search of a theology.” While various works have offered a theology of confirmation in recent years, they have not employed an explicitly biblical method. In contrast, the early Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers engaged an biblical method by employing a typological interpretation of scripture in order to understand baptism and the eucharist. In this sense, circumcision, the crossing of the Red Sea and the waters referred to in the creation narrative have been understood as prefiguring baptism; the Passover inaugurated by Moses in Egypt is …