Digital Commons Network^™

College Students’ Use Of Digital And Traditional Media: Uses And Gratifications Approach, Kelly M. Bodine

Theses

In the higher education field marketers need to better understand how to keep abreast with the trends of their current and future audiences. With ever-evolving technologies, students’ have multiple methods in which to acquire campus related information. The aims of this study were to discover what communication methodologies students employ when learning about campus information and what methodologies they employ when actively searching. Based on a uses and gratifications framework, this study involved conducting an online survey to compare college students’ use and level of influence from traditional or digital media marketing. The findings of this study show that both …

Online News Coverage About Fraud And Self-Defensive Behavior In China, Congxi Wang

Theses

This study explores the role of online news media in directing people’s behavior in China. Previous literature shows that Chinese tend to be suspicious or hostile towards strangers and those outside their network. This study assumes that this self-defensive behavior was caused by negative portrayal of strangers in Chinese online news media. A survey and a qualitative content analysis were conducted to understand how the exposure to crime news affects people’s perception of strangers and public safety in China, then causes self-defensive behavior in China. The finding shows consistency between survey responses and media coverages about strangers, which establishes the …

Team Queue: A Mobile Application Which Provides A Third Party Stage For An E-Sports Service Provider, Mengying Wang

Theses

E-Sports, known as electronic sports, professional video gaming or pro gaming, refers to the use of video games for sports. In today’s a growing economy, there is a continuous strengthening of the E-Sports industry; E-Sports has officially become a kind of sports. Believe or not, E-Sports has an incredible market share in the gaming market. In 2017, E-Sport the grew of 41.3 % over last year, which equates up the value of $696 million (NewZoo, 2017).

According to 2017 Global E-Sports Market Report (NewZoo, 2017), day, worldwide, there are E-Sports games held every day. It also reported that 67 million …

Uses And Gratification Of Posting Selfies On Social Media, Amanda Kearney

Theses

Selfies have become an easy and instantaneous form of self-expression and communication. Posting selfies to various social media platforms has become wildly popular and socially accepted in the digital age. This study investigated the motivation behind posting selfies to Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat using the framework of uses and gratification theory. This study also compared differences in gratification sought from individual social media platforms. A cross-sectional survey shared on Facebook using a snowball sampling method recruited participants who post at least one selfie per week (N = 156). Factor analysis revealed five gratifications for posting selfies to social media: attention …

Batsen: Modifying The Batman Routing Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks, Nelson Henry Powell Iii

Theses

The proliferation of autonomous Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has spawned research seeking power efficient communications to improve the lifetime of sensor motes. WSNs are characterized by their power limitations, wireless transceivers, and the converge-cast communications techniques. WSN motes use low-power, lossy radio systems deployed in dense, random topologies, working sympathetically to sense and notify a sink node of the detectable information. In an effort to extend the life of battery powered motes, and hence the life of the network, various routing protocols have been suggested in an effort to optimize converge-cast delivery of sensor data. It is well known that …

Catpanion: A Ui/Ux Ios-Based App Design To Support Cat Adoptions, Chenchen Ji

Theses

Homeless and abandoned cats are becoming an issue in urban areas around the world: a majority of them may carry illnesses that may lead to infectious diseases. Once back in the wild, cats may also harm the ecological equilibrium of urban areas as they are known to be hunters of birds and smaller mammals.

The popularity of online cat-related material has ballooned over the past decade. Within the confines of social media, cat-related matters have gained an enormous amount of attention. Due to the increase in cat enthusiasts, celebrities occasionally help post information about cats and have even helped ask …

Stage, Ying Xu

Theses

Stage is three minutes 2D/3D experimental animation. The whole story is about the growth of a person who is pursuing her dream. The story starts with a dancer practicing and learning the skills. As her skill and ability increases, her desires and needs expand. She begins to recognize, perceive and introspect everything around her deeply. After lost, confusion, self-doubt, finally, she accepts how the world is and decide not to live against her truth.

I want to use experimental animation as a way of describing how people feel when they experience their lives. This concept is based initially on my …

Effect Of Lead Contaminated Soils On Lycopene And Mineral Contents Of Tomatoes (Solanum Lycopersicum), Andrea T. Amati

Theses

Eating fruits and vegetables is beneficial to human health, not just because they provide essential nutrients and vitamins, but also because phytochemicals scavenge free radicals and can reduce the risk of developing cancer and other diseases. However, not all people have access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. People who live in “food deserts” often are limited to smaller stores where prices are higher and the quality and variety of fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce. Urban gardens have been proposed as a potential solution to the issue of food deserts and as a way to promote nutrition in low …

Young Cash Karen, Jade Thiraswas

Theses

Young Cash Karen is an ongoing body of work about a community of young men refugees from Burma (or Myanmar) who have recently resettled in Western New York State. They are members of the Karen, a Burmese ethnic minority that has fought a decades-long civil war against the Burmese government over the native lands of their people and for their very right to exist. The Karen people have been the victims of ethnic-cleansing policies by the oppressive Burmese military regime. For most or all of their lives, the young men of Young Cash Karen lived in refugee camps across the …

Consumer Preferences In Food Interactive Packaging, Nuchjarin Pareeratanasomporn

Theses

Interactive packaging is an innovation that has been adopted by the packaging design industry. It enables consumers to interact with packaging through their smart devices. Although the technology is already available, it is uncertain how many consumers use it or will ever find it useful.

This research measured the young Millennial (18-24 years old) consumers’ perspectives and their preferences for interactive feature on food packaging. College students between 18 to 24 years old were chosen by using a purposive sampling method. First, a questionnaire asked for information about the participants’ behavior surrounding two topics. The first topic asked about their …

Application Of Plant Based Edible Coatings For Maintaining Post Harvest Quality And Extending Shelf Life Of Strawberries, Rajiv Dhital

Theses

Strawberries are a popular fruit with a pleasing color and flavor. However, its delicate tissue and high sugar content makes it highly perishable with visible mold. In this study, we have attempted to test feasibility of different edible coatings for extending shelf life of ‘Chandler’ strawberries subjected to simulated vibrations of local transportation. Six types of coatings were compared based on the quality of treated berries. Curcumin and limonene were used as natural antimicrobials and coatings were prepared from their liposomes and were over-coated with methyl cellulose. One set of each coating type were subjected to the simulated vibration of …

Empowering Women Through Advertising: A Content Analysis On 'Femvertising' Campaigns, Shan Wang

Theses

This study selects and content analyzes a sample of 40 femvertising videos, aims to explore what messages are delivered by the videos, and whether the campaigns actually break down the cliched ways in which media present women as the companies claim. The messages of the videos sent to viewers are qualitative content analyzed to provide a general description of the campaign videos. Women’s representations in the campaign videos are quantitively coded in terms of how women look like (i.e. physical characteristics), what age groups they are in, what traits they possess, and what roles they play in the advertisements. Also, …

The Effects Of Societal Threat On Authoritarianism And Social Dominance Orientation, Chasity Ratliff

Theses

The present study examined the effects of societal threat on levels of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation and investigated if those self-report measures were consistent or inconsistent with a measure of implicit attitudes regarding Americans and Immigrants. Exposure to societal threat was hypothesized to increase authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, as well as to increase implicit prejudicial attitudes, as measured by the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), towards out-group members. Based on prior findings, men were expected to have higher levels of social dominance orientation. As predicted, exposure to societal threat significantly increased right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Additionally, …

Nutrition Knowledge Among Adolescent Athletes, Caregivers, And Coaches, Ann-Kathrin Puschkasch

Theses

The thesis, Nutrition Knowledge Among Adolescent Athletes, Caregivers, and Coaches, explores the nutritional knowledge of these three groups and highlights gaps that may impact young athletes' performance and health. Conducted in Missouri, the study used customized online surveys to evaluate participants' understanding of general and sports nutrition, including macronutrients, hydration, and supplementation. A total of 306 participants, comprising 47 athletes, 117 caregivers, and 142 coaches, completed the surveys.

Findings revealed significant gaps in knowledge across all groups, though coaches scored the highest, followed by caregivers and then athletes. For example, many athletes lacked awareness of basic nutritional concepts like …

Face 2 Face, Joseph Hurley

Theses

For my final year at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), I worked on my thesis film, “Face 2 Face,” which runs for 6 minutes and 22 seconds. My thesis film tells the story of a young man attending a Comic-Con convention who spends more time taking photos of what he sees in front of him for his social media page rather than living in the moment within his environment. This film was inspired by my experiences at conventions and on vacations, during which I devoted much of my energy to recording footage of unique events or taking photos of an …

Oliver's Rumination: A Short Video Game About Failure, Shaemus Spencer

Theses

Studying and working in a creative field requires designers and artists to produce consistently high-level, novel work. In some cases, taking risks to pursue new concepts, methods, or products is highly valued. At the same time, not all companies, students, or individual artists have the resources to risk should their exploration fail. What remains is a crossroad: creative professionals and students are rewarded for taking risks, but are often unable to do so because the possibility of failure carries too much weight.

Changing the way creators see failure could revolutionize the way they work. By accepting and incorporating failure into …

Terra: The Earthen Refrigerator, Priyanka Bambarkar

Theses

This thesis consists of the study of reducing the overuse of technology in a modern household for a healthier lifestyle.

“The kitchen is the most important and expensive room in any household.” - Dan Harel.

It has many appliances and even though not always really appreciated, it does have technologically advanced gadgets. These gadgets were designed for convenient cooking and effective kitchen time usage.

One such appliance which has gained tremendous appreciation is the refrigerator. The refrigerator in general has undergone change over time and has evolved. Initially, satisfying the basic need of food storage and preservation to now satiating …

Claiming Space, Gwendolyn Anne Davies

Theses

The self-portraits in Claiming Space are presented as large, glossy full-color posters, pinned directly to the gallery wall. The photographs are photographs of me, a plus-sized woman, as I want to be seen confronting and challenging the ideals of beauty, desire, and representation in contemporary culture and media. Using an active and direct gaze, I present a plus-sized woman with power and strength even in vulnerability. I am challenging the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women, especially fat women, and asserting the right to be seen.

Protein Vaccines Against Acute Otitis Media Caused By Nontypeable Haemophilus Influenzae In A Murine Model, Mark Zavorin

Theses

Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) is one of the major organisms in the upper respiratory nasopharyngeal microbiota. In addition to its role as a commensal in the nasopharynx, NTHi is also the cause of sinusitis, pneumonia, and meningitis. Most relevant to this work, NTHi is one of the major causes of otitis media (OM), an inflammatory disease of the middle ear that affects 65-300 million children globally each year. In the US, acute OM (AOM or ear infection) is the most common reason for prescribed antibiotics. Due to the dramatic increase in antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, there is currently an …

Velleity, Yiyun Chen

Theses

The work Velleity is an installation of photographs presented on the gallery wall along with a photobook, which explore the process of self-reflection and self-discovery. This experimental work is a form of meditation, which reveals itself through the process of walking photographing, and repurposing into a work of art. The photobook, with its textual references and adaptation of color, develops the concept of the images and text as the language to describe the seemingly unexceptional moments of everyday life. Visualizing the experience as a person navigating different cultures, social expectations, and realities, ponders my displacement in the past and present, …

A Study Of High-Chroma Inks For Expanding Cmyk Color Gamut, Sanyukta Sanjay Hiremath

Theses

The number of possible reproducible colors in a printing method is called the color gamut. The need to satisfy the growing quality demands and produce color match has given rise to the use of expanded color gamuts. There are many ways to achieve an expanded color gamut, including printing with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (CMYK) plus additional inks, printing with higher ink film thickness (IFT), and printing with high-chroma inks. The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between color gamut volume, metric chroma (C*), IFT, and solid ink density (SID) for regular and high-chroma inks in offset …

Self-Regulation Within The Wearable Device Industry And The Alignment To Device Users’ Perceptions Of Health Data Privacy, Tegan Ayers

Theses

Health data privacy has become increasingly pertinent as the Internet-of-Things (IoT), specifically, health-monitoring, wearable devices, has become more advanced. Today’s regulatory framework allows wearable device companies to self-regulate how data is collected and used, thus leaving consumer, health data at risk of possible mishandling or abuse. Consequently, this research sought to examine whether data privacy practices adopted by major wearable manufacturers align with consumer expectations about these devices and the data they collect. Both consumers’ understanding of health data privacy and the corresponding tech companies’ stance on protecting consumer privacy were evaluated by performing crowd-sourced surveys and a thematic analyses …

Discriminative Feature Extraction Of Time-Series Data To Improve Temporal Pattern Detection Using Classification Algorithms, David Stolze

Theses

Time-series data streams often contain predictive value in the form of unique patterns. While these patterns may be used as leading indicators for event prediction, a lack of prior knowledge of pattern shape and irregularities can render traditional forecasting methods ineffective. The research in this thesis tested a means of predetermining the most effective combination of transformations to be applied to time-series data when training a classifier to predict whether an event will occur at a given time. The transformations tested on provided data streams included subsetting of the data, aggregation over various numbers of data points, testing of different …

Eighteen Mile Creek, Allison Nichols

Theses

Eighteen Mile Creek is a body of work consisting of cyanotype chemigrams that explores the space of a Superfund site located in Lockport, New York. The works installed in the gallery are large in scale and abstract. They are created solely through the interactions between photographic chemistry, contaminated water collected from Eighteen Mile Creek, and light. The cyanotypes are bound in contradictions, engaged in a push and pull with the viewer. Ranging in tone from deep blue to harsh yellow, they make visual gestures towards landscapes and topography, but also towards toxicity and warning. Further contradictions exist. While the prints …

Identifying The Main Effects That Cause Spatial Variation In A Stereolithographic 3d-Printer With A Test Target And Graphical Analysis, Joseph V. Kain

Theses

This thesis investigates a stereolithography printers’ ability to resolve converging features within its build volume. This experiment employs the use of a Formlab Form 2 stereolithography device to create Geometric Element Test Target (GETT) artifacts designed in Solidworks. The sample will consist of a global arrangement of test artifacts in predetermined positions from a fractional factorial design of experiments. Each local sample will be a slanted ray GETT with designed wedge heights of 1 and 2mm. The finished array of samples are photographed and cataloged for graphical analysis. The ray step heights will be measured using a caliper and graphical …

Evaluation Of The Implementation Of The New York State (Nys) Concussion Management And Awareness Act, Elise Wilcocks

Theses

Since the 1990s, sports-related concussions have become a public health concern in the youth and adolescent athlete population. After some professional athletes revealed that their retirement was connected to concussions, public awareness of concussions and identifying the need to protect these high school athletes emerged. Between 2009 and 2013, all 50 states in the U.S. passed a state concussion management policy modeled after the Lystedt Act. In July 2012, the New York State (NYS) Concussion Management and Awareness Act went into effect for all students in public and charter schools, with most schools applying their policies to interscholastic sports. This …

Predicting The Stock Market Using News Sentiment Analysis, Majid Memari

Theses

ABSTRACT MAJID MEMARI, for the Masters of Science degree in Computer Science, presented on November 3rd, 2017 at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL. Title: PREDICTING THE STOCK MARKET USING NEWS SENTIMENT ANALYSIS Major Professor: Dr. Norman Carver Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing application software is inadequate to deal with them. GDELT is the largest, most comprehensive, and highest resolution open database ever created. It is a platform that monitors the world's news media from nearly every corner of every country in print, broadcast, and web formats, in …

Somewhere Else, Xiaoxi Liu

Theses

Somewhere Else is a site-dependent, video, sound installation. Captivated by memory, landscape and time and how they affect both the physical and psychological, I construct my artwork to reflect the liminal in-between. This artwork consists of fragments of recollections of the different places, landscape, moments and locations from my past. The intermittent, jarring, and distant quality of the sounds and video fill the installation space as well as the viewers’ mental space.

Traditional Clothing Of Kuwaiti Women, Montaha Alqattan

Theses

In this thesis, I present my artwork of “traditional clothing of Kuwaiti women” completed for my Master of Fine Art at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This work has been a culmination of my feelings about the symbolic meaning of traditional clothing as well as my knowledge and experience gained throughout the master’s program. My learning curve has been reshaped in terms of method and school of art: I was plunged into oil painting as an art method to produce realistic art in all of my artwork before joining the master’s program, but I became more inspired to monoprinting to …

Hangout! A Comprehensive Outdoor Activity Planner & Information Sharing Platform, Yani Qu

Theses

Hangout! is a mobile social-activity app, encouraging users to connect with friends and family. Users can specify their preferred leisure activity, whether that may be camping or caving, kayaking or surfing, running or rock climbing—whatever type of fun they are looking for. Combining a GPS location and a user’s history of outside recreational experiences, the app provides news about the area in real time, along with any emergency notifications for issuing caution.

As the name implies, Hangout! is an application celebrating the recreational places you frequent and the people you socialize with. High-quality imagery and video helps bolster a high …