Digital Commons Network^™

Lore: A World Beyond Pages, Anushka Nalluri

Theses

All around us are hundreds of people with years of accumulated knowledge and unique life stories. I call these people ‘Human books’. At the same time, there are people around us who want to hear the stories from these human books and glean the knowledge from their life experiences. When people realize this, they will naturally develop an urge to connect with the others and learn more from them. Unfortunately, in our increasingly impersonal and disconnected culture, we do not have a method to discover and connect with those who are interested in sharing their knowledge. I’m proposing a system …

System Design Considerations For A Low-Intensity Hyperspectral Imager Of Sensitive Cultural Heritage Manuscripts, Tyler R. Peery

Theses

Cultural heritage imaging is becoming more common with the increased availability of more complex imaging systems, including multi- and hyperspectral imaging (MSI and HSI) systems. A particular concern with HSI systems is the broadband source required, regularly including infrared and ultraviolet spectra, which may cause fading or damage to a target. Guidelines for illumination of such objects, even while on display at a museum, vary widely from one another. Standards must be followed to assure the curator to allow imaging and ensure protection of the document. Building trust in the cultural heritage community is key to gaining access to objects …

The Characterization Of Earth Sediments Using Radiative Transfer Models From Directional Hyperspectral Reflectance, Rehman S. Eon

Theses

Remote sensing techniques are continuously being developed to extract physical information about the Earth’s surface. Over the years, space-borne and airborne sensors have been used for the characterization of surface sediments. Geophysical properties of a sediment surface such as its density, grain size, surface roughness, and moisture content can influence the angular dependence of spectral signatures, specifically the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF). Models based on radiative transfer equations can relate the angular dependence of the reflectance to these geophysical variables. Extraction of these parameters can provide a better understanding of the Earth’s surface, and play a vital role in …

Being A Social Enterprise: Value-Added Or Fuel To The Misconceptions? The Case Of Social Enterprises In Kosovo, Majlinda Dervishi

Theses

The main focus of this research study is to understand the current state of social enterprise development in Kosovo and public perception about them, as well as to look at the methods that social enterprises use to reach their customers. Since social enterprises have emerged as innovative models in the recent decades, their importance has been growing continuously. The social enterprise’s approach to address social and environmental issues through a market-driven approach has contributed to its financial stability and long-term sustainability. However, the public has not been able and has not been educated to grasp the concept of social enterprises. …

The Relationship Between Religion And Diet-Related Disparities In African American Men., Joel Hamilton

Theses

This study utilized a cross-sectional design to report quantitative results. Equal numbers of African American men, religious and non-religious, were sought out for comparison. Participants must have identified as African American, been 30 years of age or older, and lived within 10 miles of Carbondale, IL during the time of the study. African American men are at an increased risk of developing many diet-related disparities. This study aimed to see if religion influenced these factors.

An Evaluation Of The Impact Of Anger On Aggression In Pretend Play And The Role Of Pretend Play In Regulating Anger In Preschoolers, Kristen Boog

Theses

Multiple studies have supported the link between anger and aggression. It is not uncommon for anger to result in aggressive acts, especially in children still learning socially appropriate ways of coping. Furthermore, childhood aggression is typically viewed as a concerning act that should be reduced or eliminated. However, some research shows that within pretend play, aggression can be adaptive. Studies have supported the Mastery/Catharsis hypothesis, the theory that aggression in pretend play acts as a release of emotions and processing of events, by showing that children who exhibit more aggression within their pretend play exhibit less aggression outside of play. …

Fabrication Of Resistive Thermo-Optic Heaters On Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits, Venkatesh Deenadayalan

Theses

A reliable process for the fabrication of active heater components on passive silicon photonic integrated circuits is presented in this thesis. The heater components enable modulation of the photonic circuits’ optical response through the concept of Joule heating. This thesis proposes and successfully establishes an optimized process that can be entirely carried out in an academic clean room facility. The entire cycle of design, simulation and modelling, fabrication and testing is covered. Target lithographic resolution of 300 nm was achieved through process optimization (using a spin on carbon hard mask) by using i-line 365 nm lithography. A very good resolution …

Examining The Conflict Between User Experience And Software Development In Industry, Marissa K. Wilson

Theses

In this age the modern consumer expects a software product to be profusely technically functional with an elegant and intuitive user interface. To accomplish this goal, it has become necessary for software development teams and user experience teams to collaborate on software projects. These two complementary teams often come from different backgrounds, with different technical knowledge, processes, management structures, and deadlines. As these teams continue to collaborate more and more the chance of encountering a conflict also increases. In this research we examine the conflict that can occur between software development and user experience teams and the possible effects on …

Security Vetting System In Kosovo: Challenges And Opportunities, Rita Ejupi

Theses

The purpose of this Honors project is to provide insights into the current condition of Kosovo’s vetting system, highlight its major drawbacks, and provide recommendations on how to overcome them. This paper discloses that the vetting system, despite being recently established, remains greatly challenged by political implications and the clannish and/or individual decisions to issue or deny security clearances for civil servants, intelligence and police personnel. The study emphasizes that an oversight in the development of the vetting process may come associated with political and material costs, thus, putting the integrity and objectivity of the whole security system in question. …

Gender Bias In Managerial Positions In The Private Sector In Kosovo, Diona Hoxha

Theses

This project analyzes gender bias and gender barriers in managerial positions by focusing on private the sector in Kosovo. The study specifically analyzes the barriers that women in the private sector face, such as disregarding qualifications, traditional gender based occupations, discriminatory language in job ads, maternity leave and the lack of contracts that make the employee-employer relationship legally binding. It further elaborates on the concept of gender quotas in management and analyzes their effects in managerial positions and the workplace in general. The study also analyzes best practices outside Kosovo, in which gender equality has been integrated as a part …

Social Media Footprints Of Public Perception On Energy Issues In The Conterminous United States, David Leifer

Theses

Energy has been at the top of the national and global political agenda along with other concomitant challenges, such as poverty, disaster and climate change. Social perception on various energy issues, such as its availability, development and consumption deeply affect our energy future. This type of information is traditionally collected through structured energy surveys. However, these surveys are often subject to formidable costs and intensive labor, as well as a lack of temporal dimensions. Social media can provide a more cost-effective solution to collect massive amount of data on public opinions in a timely manner that may complement the survey. …

Plasmid Mediated Colistin Resistance In Enterobacteriaceae Isolated From Feces Of Broiler Chicken In The United Arab Emirates, Sara Abdelkafi Mahmoud Ali

Theses

Although human infections with colistin-resistant Mcr-producing Enterobacteriaceae have been reported from the Arabian Peninsula, the presence of mcr gene in strains of animal origin has not been studied.

Ten composite faecal samples were collected in each of four geographically distant poultry farms in Abu Dhabi Emirate. Ten colonies from McConkey agar containing 1 mg/L colistin from each sample were PCR-screened for mcr-1, mcr-2, MCR-3, mcr-4, mcr-5. Of the positive ones, one isolate representing each distinct plasmid profile was selected for susceptibility testing and for whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Transfer of the MCR-1 gene into Escherichia coli …

Predicting The Emotional Intensity Of Tweets, Intisar M. Alhamdan

Theses

Automated interpretation of human emotion has become increasingly important as human-computer interactions become ubiquitous. Affective computing is a field of computer science concerned with recognizing, analyzing and interpreting human emotions in a range of media, including audio, video, and text. Social media, in particular, are rich in expressions of people's moods, opinions, and sentiments. This thesis focuses on predicting the emotional intensity expressed on the social network Twitter. In this study, we use lexical features, sentiment and emotion lexicons to extract features from tweets, messages of 280 characters or less shared on Twitter. We also use a form of transfer …

Ultrafast Laser Polishing For Optical Fabrication, Lauren L. Taylor

Theses

Next-generation imaging systems for consumer electronics, AR/VR, and space telescopes require weight, size, and cost reduction while maintaining high optical performance. Freeform optics with rotationally asymmetric surface geometries condense the tasks of several spherical optics onto a single element. They are currently fabricated by ultraprecision sub-aperture tools like diamond turning and magnetorheological finishing, but the final surfaces contain mid-spatial-frequency tool marks and form errors which fall outside optical tolerances. Therefore, there remains a need for disruptive tools to generate optic-quality freeform surfaces.

This thesis work investigates a high-precision, flexible, non-contact methodology for optics polishing using femtosecond ultrafast lasers. Femtosecond lasers …

Magnificent Constructions: The Role Of Environment On The Stellar Mass Growth Of Massive Galaxies, Kevin Christopher Cooke

Theses

To understand how the present day universe came to be, we must understand how the massive structures in which we live formed and evolved over the preceding billions of years. Constraining how galaxies grow are the most massive galaxies, called brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). These luminous and diffuse elliptical galaxies inhabit relaxed positions within their host cluster's gravitational potentials and provide a look at the high mass extreme of galaxy evolution. The relaxed structure, old stellar populations, and central location within the cluster indicate a high redshift formation scenario, however, star-forming BCGs have been observed at much more recent epochs. …

/Səm/ Of The Parts, Marija Ratkeviciute

Theses

This thesis focuses on the role of memory in identity development and discusses the creation of work that explores transitions that we go through in life, the effects of time on our relationships, and the shifts that happen within the person involved. The emphasis of my exploration is the investigation of states of being where the past is more than a memory, and the future is yet unclear.

Everyone grows through liminal states, especially in this time of globalization and social change. There are some rituals to help us transition into different social roles and stages of life, such as …

Development Of Topography Monitors For Inhaled Nicotine Delivery Systems, Samantha "Emma" Sarles

Theses

Significance – Tobacco related disease is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. The global inhaled tobacco product market is rapidly evolving as new products such as ‘electronic cigarettes’ and ‘heat not burn’ grow in popularity around the world. It is not yet fully understood whether these relatively recent tobacco products will have a negative, neutral, or positive impact on public health in the USA and around the world. This thesis is focused on the design, development, and deployment of a family of monitors which can be deployed with users in their natural environment to better understand …

Sustainability Implications Of Consumer Electronics Adoption In The United States, Shahana Althaf

Theses

High rates of technological innovation and consumer adoption in the consumer electronics sector has led to increasing concerns about the potential implications on resource consumption and waste generation. Despite growing public and policy attention on recycling as a strategy to curb resource demand and waste management impacts, less than 50 percent of end-of-life electronics are recovered for recycling in the U.S. A critical barrier to sustainable management of electronics is the lack of data and tools to proactively estimate consumption and waste flows, to create solutions that respond to the dynamic nature of this product sector. For sustainable solutions to …

Methodology For The Integration Of Optomechanical System Software Models With A Radiative Transfer Image Simulation Model, Keegan S. Mccoy

Theses

Stray light, any unwanted radiation that reaches the focal plane of an optical system, reduces image contrast, creates false signals or obscures faint ones, and ultimately degrades radiometric accuracy. These detrimental effects can have a profound impact on the usability of collected Earth-observing remote sensing data, which must be radiometrically calibrated to be useful for scientific applications. Understanding the full impact of stray light on data scientific utility is of particular concern for lower cost, more compact imaging systems, which inherently provide fewer opportunities for stray light control. To address these concerns, this research presents a general methodology for integrating …

The Role Of Insurance Agents In The Prevention Of Environmental Loss And Damage, Leslie Ellen Arnold

Theses

Over the past several decades, businesses have been placed under great pressure from government and the public to avoid environmental loss and damages. To mitigate environmental loss and damages, companies purchase environmental insurance, which protects companies from direct financial liability and transfers the risk to the insurance agency. Thus, insurance companies to have a vested interest in preventing payouts to businesses by ensuring that their clients protect against environmental losses.

Past literature in the field of environmental management has paid little attention to the role of insurance companies and their agents in the prevention of environmental loss and damage. However, …

Joint Source-Channel Coding For Image Transmission Over Underlay Multichannel Cognitive Radio Networks, Long Pham

Theses

The increasing prominence of wireless applications exacerbates the problem of radio spectrum scarcity and promotes the usage of Cognitive Radio (CR) in wireless networks. With underlay dynamic spectrum access, CRs can operate alongside Primary Users, the incumbent of a spectrum band, as long as they limit the interference to the Primary Users below a certain threshold. Multimedia streaming transmissions face stringent Quality of Services constraints on top of the CR interference constraints, as some packets in the data stream have higher levels of importance and are the most vulnerable to packet loss over the channel. This raises a need for …

Accessibility Lab #1: Audio Cues, Jan Guillermo

Theses

An increasingly large number of people with disabilities are using software nowadays. However, much of the software created today is inaccessible to people with disabilities. The WorldWideWeb Consortium (W3C) and many other well-known companies have provided the best practices of creating accessible software. Unfortunately, developers either struggle to sympathize with accessibility issues, do not know the best practices of accessibility design, or both. Hence, there is a need to teach developers about accessibility and how to create accessible software. Unfortunately, accessibility is not widely taught in education.

The Accessibility Learning Labs (ALL) were created to address the limitation of readily …

Attracting Investment From Kosovar Diaspora, Dritëro Bajrami

Theses

The economy of Kosovo for decades has been fueled by remittances sent from Kosovar diaspora. These remittances have improved the standard of living in Kosovo, however, the full potential of diaspora for economic development of Kosovo has not been utilized properly by Kosovo’s institutions. Thus, this study focuses on analyzing the current framework of institutions in Kosovo that aim to translate the contribution of diaspora from sending remittances, which in short term increases the budget of their families, to direct investments that have an impact in the overall economy of Kosovo. Using both primary and secondary data this study will …

Breaking The Stigma: Major Depressive Disorder, Joanna Cox

Theses

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a mood and mental disorder affecting the brain; it is caused by the reduction of three monoamine neurotransmitters: serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine (Rot, M. A., Mathew, S. J., & Charney, D. S. 2009). MDD is one of the world’s most common mental disorders, affecting a predicted 4% of the world’s population and roughly 16.1 million adults in United States alone (Major Depression. 2019; Ritchie, H., & Roser, M. 2018). The concentrations of these neurotransmitters are reduced in the brains of people with MDD due to their increased reabsorption from synapses in the brain back into …

My Guest From Afar, Yuan Yao

Theses

An elderly American old man accepts a young Chinese visiting scholar to live in his house. They argue for trifles, they fight for money, but they build up the friendship as time goes by. One day the scholar finishes his research then the old man suddenly realizes that he has already been embedded in his life.

An Exploration Of Microaggression Awareness In Real-Time Conversations And Long-Term Tracking And Learning System, Feifei Guo

Theses

Microaggression is a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group. Microaggressions are often subtle and ambiguous, it's often hard to know if you're committing one or if you're on the receiving end. The recipients of microaggressions always feel a sense of powerlessness and invisibility, while the aggressors are often unaware of the harm they’ve brought. The impact of microaggressions always negatively affects both mental and physical health of recipients and results in persistent health problems.

My goal of the thesis is to make the invisible visible. …

State Policies Of Medical Marijuana Versus Food & Drug Administration Policies Of Pharmaceutical Drugs, Kayla Stephan

Theses

In the past 22 years, 32 states have legalized and regulated marijuana for medical use. However, marijuana is scheduled as a Schedule I drug according to the federal government. This means that states have no specific regulations to follow for regulating marijuana for medical use. Because of this, states may be risking the safety of medical marijuana patients. Research was conducted to analyze the policies set out by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regarding the regulation of a prescription drug. Since the FDA is responsible for the safety and efficacy of prescription drugs, this analysis included what types of …

Mechanics Of Binder-Particle Interactions In Composite Battery Electrodes, Richard Johnson

Theses

A study into the particle level mechanics of polymer binder and active material used in composite lithium-ion batteries (LIB) has been conducted. Silicon is highly sought after material that can be used as an active material in a composite anode. Its high theoretical capacity can result in batteries that can store more energy than current LIBs, but high volume expansion of Si during charge/discharge cycles leads to rapid capacity fade and poor cyclic life. Understanding the stress that is generated in the binder and the active material due to the volume expansion has not been fully understood. In this study …

A Comparative Study Of Russian Trolls Using Several Machine Learning Models On Twitter Data, Kannan Neten Dharan Kannan Neten Dharan

Theses

Ever since Russian trolls have been brought into light, their interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections has been monitored and studied thoroughly. These Russian trolls have fake accounts registered on several major social media sites to influence public opinions. Our work involves trying to discover patterns in these tweets and classifying them by using different machine learning approaches such as Support Vector Machines, Word2vec and neural network models, and then creating a benchmark to compare all the different models. Two machine learning models are developed for this purpose. The first one is used to classify any given specific tweet …

The Line, Angelica Alegria Agelviz Rodriguez

Theses

The Line is an animated fairy tale for adults, meant to ask the age-old question of “who am I?” through the lens of its main character, Espe, a child born with skin made of mirror.

With this thesis, I wanted to delve deeper into my understanding of the themes of individuality, freedom of thought, fragility of ego and the unreliability of ‘truth’, as seen through the eyes of a child. The idea for this story was simple enough: What would happen if somebody was born made out of mirror? And what if that mirror were to look at itself? Though …