Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Highly Functional, Surface Tunable, And Efficient Composite Coatings For Pool Boiling Heat Transfer Enhancement, Aniket Mohan Rishi

Theses

Rapid growth and advancements in high-power electronic devices, IC chips, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries have compelled the development of efficient and novel thermal management solutions. Currently used air and liquid cooling systems are unable to remove the heat efficiently due to significant pressure drops, temperature differences, and limited heat-carrying capacities. In contrast, phase-change cooling techniques can remove the larger amount of heat with higher efficiency while maintaining safer operational temperature ranges. Pool boiling heat transfer is a type of phase-change cooling technique in which vapor bubbles generated on the boiling surface carry away the heat. This pool boiling performance …

The Scene- Interactive Video Scene Controller, Haena Lee

Theses

In modern society, people spend much time watching videos to meet their emotional and social needs. Movies and TV shows increasingly contain violence and sexuality to catch the eye. In addition to this trend, the current age-based rating becomes more and more lenient than the one in the past. As a result, the content rating system does not provide a clear standard about the level of graphic intensity anymore. This situation prevents a particular group of viewers from fully enjoying the video contents: parents and highly sensitive people. Whenever these two groups watch movies or live TV, they need to …

Hormone Receptors And Steroidogenic Enzymes In Oocytes, Cumulus And Granulosa Cells, Follicular Fluid Hormone Milieu, And Follicle Blood Perfusion In Mares, Marilia Pastorello

Theses

Ovulatory follicle development and associated oocyte maturation involve complex coordinated molecular and cellular mechanisms not fully understood. This study addresses, for the first time in any species, the relationships among diameter, vascularization, follicular-fluid factors, and gene expression for follicle growth, steroidogenesis, angiogenesis and apoptosis in granulosa/cumulus cells and oocytes during different stages from the beginning of largest/ovulatory follicle to impending ovulation. Follicle dynamics was tracked and follicle-wall blood flow evaluated daily through transrectal ultrasonography in mares. The largest follicle of the ovulatory wave was distributed in six diameter groups (predeviation, deviation, postdeviation, early preovulatory, preovulatory, and impending ovulation) according to …

Characterization Of Proteostasis Mechanisms In Chlamydia Trachomatis, Amanda M. Blocker

Theses

Chlamydia trachomatis is a gram negative, obligate intracellular pathogen with a highly reduced genome of ~1 Mbp. It is the leading cause of the reportable sexually transmitted infection known as chlamydia in the United States and is the leading cause of preventable blindness (trachoma) worldwide. While treatment of infections is possible, weaknesses of current approaches include treatment failure, antibiotic-induced dysbiosis, and resistance development of bystander bacteria during chlamydial treatment. These weaknesses support the need for improved therapeutic approaches. C. trachomatis undergoes a biphasic developmental cycle with two forms, the infectious elementary body (EB) and replicative reticulate body (RB), that have …

Molecular Mechanisims Underlying The Anti-Cancer Activity Of Gum Arabic From Acacia Sp. In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Sawsan Yaslam Hussein Alyafii

Theses

Metastatic breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive, accounting for 15-20% of all breast cancer cases. As TNBC cells lack the expression of hormone receptors estrogen receptors (ER) and progesterone receptors (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), TNBCs are unresponsive to hormonal therapy and often become highly resistant when exposed to standard chemotherapy, which has been identified as a major obstacle in TNBC treatment. Gum Arabic, a natural exudate produced from plants, is widely used traditionally for religious, cosmetics as well as medicinal purposes …

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 …

Molecular Mechanisims Underlying The Anti-Cancer Activity Of Gum Arabic From Acacia Sp. In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells., Sawsan Yaslam Alyafii

Theses

Metastatic breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive, accounting for 15-20% of all breast cancer cases. As TNBC cells lack the expression of hormone receptors estrogen receptors (ER) and progesterone receptors (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), TNBCs are unresponsive to hormonal therapy and often become highly resistant when exposed to standard chemotherapy, which has been identifies as a major obstacle in TNBC treatment. Gum Arabic, a natural exudate produced from plants, is widely used traditionally for religious, cosmetics as well as medical purposes …

Can Home Garden Be A Safe Haven In Times Of Crisis? To Measure Householders Attitudes, Preferences And Willingness To Have Home Garden At Time Of Pandemics, Noura Mubarak Al Mansouri

Theses

The new coronavirus that has rapidly become a worldwide outbreak leads people to Self-quarantine, where work, school, and shopping have become through remote applications. Keeping fit and being healthy is important at any time, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Having a garden or outdoor space provides the opportunity to have a place that can be used to maintain a healthy life and well-being of an individual. The coronavirus lockdown has provided the time ad opportunity to create a garden that has been always wanted by householders. A Garden is a plot of ground where herbs, fruits, flowers, vegetables, and etc. …

In-Vitro Analysis Of Potential Autophagy Mediated Safranal-Sorafenib Combined Effect On Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Aaminah Farrukh

Theses

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most commonly occurring cancers worldwide. The risk factors include obesity, hepatitis, alcoholism, smoking etc. One of the biggest associated challenges is the current treatment strategies. The therapeutic options are limited with economical and accessibility challenges, especially with increased HCC incidence. Sorafenib, a multikinase inhibitor, is one of the first FDA approved drugs for HCC. But drug resistance and cancer relapse are a common drawback for this treatment. The need for better treatment is crucial now more than ever. The use of saffron as a potential natural therapeutic option is not a novel strategy. …

The State Of Practice For Security Unit Testing: Towards Data Driven Strategies To Shift Security Into Developer's Automated Testing Workflows, Danielle Nicole Gonzalez

Theses

The pressing need to “shift security left” in the software development lifecycle has motivated efforts to adapt the iterative and continuous process models used in practice today. Security unit testing is praised by practitioners and recommended by expert groups, usually in the context of DevSecOps and achieving “continuous security”. In addition to vulnerability testing and standards adherence, this technique can help developers verify that security controls are implemented correctly, i.e. functional security testing. Further, the means by which security unit testing can be integrated into developer workflows is unique from other standalone tools as it is an adaptation of practices …

Iii-Nitride Ultraviolet Light-Emitting Diodes: Approaches For The Enhanced Efficiency, Moulik Patel

Theses

III-nitride ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) offer marvelous potential for a wide range of applications, including air/water purification, surface disinfection, biochemical sensing, cancer cell elimination, and many more. III-nitride semiconductor alloys, especially AlGaN and AlInN, have drawn significant attention due to their significant advantages that include environmental-friendly material composition, compact in size, longer lifetime, low power consumption, and tunable optical emission. However, the performance of III-nitride UV LEDs in terms of efficiency and output power is still deficient. The presence of high defects and dislocations due to lattice-mismatched epilayers, polarization induced quantum-confined Stark effect, electron overflow with low hole injection …

Stock Market Prediction Using Investor Sentiment, Sarvesh Shukla

Theses

Stock market prediction has attracted not only business but academia as well. It is a research topic, to which many computational methods have been proposed, but desirable and reliable performance is yet to be attained. This study proposes a new method for stock market prediction, which adopts the Gated Recurrent Unit a deep neural network and incorporates investor sentiment to improve its forecasting performance. By extracting investor sentiment from news headlines using VADER sentiment, this paper makes it possible to analyze the irrational component of stock price. Our empirical study on DJIA index proves that our prediction method provides 6% …

Finite Element Modeling Of Underwater Acoustic Environments And Domain Decomposition Methods, General Ozochiawaeze

Theses

Underwater acoustic scattering problems have several important applications ranging from sonar imaging in target detection to providing information for sediment classification and geoacoustic inversion. This work presents numerical methods for time-harmonic acoustic scattering problems, specifically, finite element methods for the Helmholtz equation. Furthermore, an iterative domain decomposition formulation is introduced for acoustic scattering problems where the physical domain consists of multiple layers of different materials.

The Role Of Irak-1 Transcripts In Sepsis, Adithya Subramanian Sahasranamam

Theses

Sepsis is a complex, life-threatening syndrome that can lead to systemic organ failure and dysfunction. Its high morbidity and mortality rates makes it a critical global health issue. The primary factors at play during sepsis are abnormal inflammation and a lack of oxygen supply to the tissues and muscles. The toll-like receptors play a crucial role in eliciting innate immune in response to infection, primarily through the interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase (IRAK) pathways. Disturbances in the homeostasis of IRAK signaling cascades can lead to immune dysfunction. n this paper, we review the molecular mechanisms of IRAK-1, an important mediator of TLR-induced …

Limitations Of Artificial Intelligence, Sahar Sultan

Theses

Artificial Intelligence is a groundbreaking technology that is now an established field. It is being used to mimic human capabilities such as speaking, listening, learning, and planning by using different algorithms to process data and produce results depending on the information provided by the user. Artificial Intelligence has been used in several industries when it comes to data processing and decision making. Artificial Intelligence has been invented to help decision and solutionmaking processes using a problem-solving approach. The development of Artificial Intelligence software provides efficiency and acceleration on different kinds of workflows, which will help organizations increase their profit and …

Centering Black Trans Lives: Social Network Exploration Of #Blacktranslivesmatter Content On Twitter, Jordan Brooks

Theses

May 27, 2020 saw the fatal shooting of Tony McDade, a Black transgender man. McDade is one of many lives underlying the Black Lives Matter movement which, in 2020, became the largest movement in United States’ history. Although the Black Lives Matter movement has successfully brought the reality of systemic racism in the United States to the forefront of media, there remains a lack of visibility for and conversation surrounding the most vulnerable members: the Black transgender community. Through an intersectional lens, this thesis broadly examines the sentiment surrounding tweets utilizing the #blacktranslivesmatter hashtag, and how the intersection of race …

Leading A Horse To Water: Investigating The Semiotic Motif Of Water And Drowning In Bojack Horseman, Zachery A. Sherman

Theses

This semiotic analysis examines the affect that trauma, in the form of metaphor or semiotic motif involving water, has on the titular character of BoJack Horseman in Netflix’s BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) as well as how the use of water mirrors generational trauma passed down via historical associations. The impact that this trauma has upon these characters is frequently paired with water imagery and symbolism. The show’s use of water draws particular attention to how its characters perpetuate aspects of their traumatic pasts in their day-to-day life and reveals the nuanced psychological impact inherent to trauma while simultaneously hinting at its …

Social Media Influencer Motivation: Exploring What Drives Micro-Celebrities To Produce Content Using Social Exchange Theory, Jennie Giardino

Theses

Social media influencers are online celebrities who have the power to shape the opinions of audience members due to their relatable qualities. Influencer sponsorships have changed the nature of social media platforms and the strategy by which the content is posted. But besides the potential to be sponsored, why do influencers post content? The purpose of this study was to understand what motivates influencers to post content through the lens of social exchange theory by identifying resources exchanged between the social media influencer and the audience and explain how this affects their motivation to post content. I interviewed 15 lifestyle …

Everything That Glitters, Zichen Liang

Theses

This paper discusses the preparation and creative process of my thesis feature screenplay Everything That Glitters, including the inspiration, proposal, re-proposal, shooting, and revising of the script. It also documents the background story from aspects of Chinese culture and tradition. The script revolves around a young Chinese woman’s journey to America. Unable to accept the marriage her parents have arranged for her, she comes to the United States as an international student to live her life on her own terms. It doesn’t work out well. This story is largely based on my own life experiences, except the part about the …

Unforeseen Connections, Miranda Mattson

Theses

Using floriography within my own work, I captured the essence of human emotion and used its familiarity to bring mental health issues to the foreground of conversation. The parallels of hidden emotion and social discordance between the Victorian era and the 21st Century inspired my introspective research into "invisible" illnesses: health issues that affect both the mind and the body, respectively. Utilizing knowledge in mixed media, as well as traditional metalsmithing techniques, these ideas manifested into a series of wearable art and sculpture with the intention of prompting in-depth discussions on mental health stigmas. Without compromising the ambiguity of floriography, …

Controls On Denitrification And Nitrous Oxide Flux In Created Wetlands, Sonia Huang

Theses

Freshwater wetlands are frequently created or restored with the goal of replicating valuable ecosystem functions lost elsewhere. However, studies in created wetlands have demonstrated production of greenhouse gases (GHG) may be enhanced during early establishment, potentially counteracting desirable ecosystem services such as nutrient removal. In this research, we investigated the impact of hydrology and carbon addition on denitrification and fluxes of N2O from two created wetlands that differ in antecedent land use and hydrology. Ten experimental zones were installed in both wetlands and compost (municipal leaf litter) was added to half of the zones as a soil amendment. Soil and …

Half A Heart, Maria Gesek

Theses

Half a Heart is a screenplay that follows a character’s journey to find happiness in her life and learn to be strong enough to stand on her own. Cara has spent a significant portion of her life in a relationship with Sal, and while this relationship has made her happy and could be considered true love, it is something she must learn to walk away from as it is not moving forward. Cara must learn to find other forms of happiness while also learning to stick up for herself. One of the most difficult struggles she needs to overcome is …

Settling For Efficiency: Power And The People Left In Its Wake, Theodore D. Forsyth

Theses

This study examines claims data, prepared by an insurance carrier and obtained through an open records request, of police-involved incidents in Rochester, New York from 2001-2012. The dataset includes information about the incidents and financial outcomes accepted by claimants. Eighteen independent variables are broken up into three categories: claimant characteristics, claim characteristics, and situational characteristics. The research question guiding this study is: What, if any, claimant, claim, or situational characteristics impact final settlement amounts for claims stemming from police-involved incidents? Four theories are utilized to explain the phenomenon examined in this study: social capital, power differentials using Donald Black’s behavior …

The Racked System: A Historically Based Interactive Roleplaying Experience, Will Truran

Theses

“History repeats itself” is a saying we are all too familiar with, but why is that true? As we look at our modern society we can see that pain persists and hate crimes are on the rise, particularly those of antisemitism and those holding anti-Asian ideologies. The Racked System aims to address this by introducing a new method of learning about our past so that we can apply its lessons to our future. Classroom settings require students to memorize dates and data that often capture hard to comprehend facts, like that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. It …

Port-All: Reproduction Of The Sense Of Companionship In A Long-Distance Relationship, Xincan Yang

Theses

The long-distance relationship is a common phenomenon in contemporary society. Nowadays with the development of the Internet, we have various instant messaging software which gives us an effective way to keep communication with distant others. But it also brings a series of new problems.

Due to the lack of physical contact, time difference, and high dependence on the Internet, people often experience negative emotions in long-distance relationships from delayed communication, suspicion, and misunderstanding of messages. Research shows that most couples feel tired and anxious for a long time in a long-distance relationship, and one of the core reasons is the …

Chek And Hava, Komal Ashfaq

Theses

Chek and Hava is an absurdist romantic comedy about using your boyfriend to rebel against your parents. While remaining light and easy to watch, it is additionally meant to have three intentionally designed layers:

1. The surface level story revolves around Hava bringing home her boyfriend Chek- an unemployed artist, that she knows her wealthy demigod parents will disapprove of. Her parents ultimately force Chek out of his carefree life and into a corporate career, accepting him and deflating Hava’s rebellion. She finally breaks free by exiting the system of their beliefs and trying to form her persona independently rather …

Oit: A Ux Design Project For Better Decision Making In Generative Design, Yunsheng Zhou

Theses

New technology, such as AI and Machine learning, grows fast and plays a crucial role in improving efficiency and reducing the repeated working load in our daily lives. In the Architecture and Engineering area, AI is widely used in generative design. Generative design is a design exploration process. The software explores all the possible permutations of a solution, quickly generating design alternatives. However, the problem is that the intelligence systems can generate thousands of solutions that difficult for users to distill. This situation even reduces the efficiency of the working flow. The project's approach is to help users make better …

Human Augmentation: A System Engineering Conceptual Framework, Hazel Colleen R. Gamboa

Theses

In today’s literature, there is not one clear definition for ‘Human Augmentation’ and quite often, it is used interchangeably with the term ‘Human Enhancement’. Human enhancement is a field that has relatively more research and has a broader definition that encompasses both invasive and non-invasive procedures aimed at restoring or enhancing the capabilities of the human body. Medicine, implants, genetic engineering – there are some examples of procedures attributed to human enhancement. On the other hand, the word ‘augment’ is defined as the addition or making something better; this research will focus and narrow down the definition of Human Augmentation …

Augmented Reality Application ‘Finder’, Yiran Li

Theses

Children are always curious and excited about the world, but there are often accidents around them. According to some previous studies, each year in the United States, more than 2,200 children – or six kids a day – die from an injury at home. To deal with this situation, parents usually set simple life safety rules for their children and be consistent about enforcing them in a reasonable manner. At the same time, they try to reduce the possibility of psychological harm to children when correcting errors. As a result, parents desperately need a way to watch and improve their …

Translating Macroscale Concepts To Microfluidic Devices, Nicole Hill

Theses

Electrokinetics represents an extremely versatile family of techniques that can be used to manipulate particles and fluid in microfluidic devices. This dissertation focused on taking techniques commonly used on a macroscale and developing microscale equivalents utilizing electrokinetics to effectively manipulate and separate microparticles. This analysis focuses on chromatography and separation trains as macroscale techniques translated to microfluidic insulator-based electrokinetic devices. The geometries of insulating post arrays embedded in microchannels were optimized using a combination of mathematical simulations and experimentally derived correction factors. Two particle separations were experimentally demonstrated: a separation based on differences in particle size and a separation based …