Digital Commons Network^™

Reliability Theory: Properties Of Probability Distributions For Lifetimes Of Systems Of Components, Rachel Santiago

Theses

The purpose of this paper is to make the concepts of reliability theory manageable even for those without an extensive mathematics background. This paper will break down the types of systems, explore the aspects of probability distributions which are important in reliability theory, as well as examine some concepts regarding the differences between system lifetimes and lifetimes of components. The goal of this paper is to allow the reader to gain an understanding of some of the key concepts explored in this theory, to provide examples for the reader to try, and to include proofs that have been broken down …

Eye Scream For Candy, Aaron Ramsier

Theses

Eye Scream for Candy is an animated graduate thesis film that chronicles a boy's unplanned evening adventure and the creatures and confusion that drive this outing. It was produced using industry standard 2D, 3D, and audio software. The following paper addresses the journey taken to produce this film, including, Original Concepts, Goals, Styles and Influences, Production Pipeline, Experience, and Screenings. Additional materials are included to further demonstrate both the paths taken, and not taken.

An Investigation Of Electrochemomechanical Actuation Of Conductive Polyacrylonitrile (Pan) Nanofiber Composites, Mark Gonzalez

Theses

A polymer-based nanofiber composite actuator designed for linear actuation was fabricated by electrospinning, actuated by electrolysis, and characterized by electrical and mechanical testing to address performance limitations and understand the activation processing effects on actuation performance. Currently, Electroactive polymers (EAPs) have provided uses in sensory and actuation technology, but have either low force output or expand rather than contract, falling short in capturing the natural motion and function of muscle desperately needed to provide breakthroughs in the bio-medical and robotic fields. Previous research has shown activated Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers having biomimetic functionalities similar to the sarcomere contraction responsible for muscle …

Based On A True Story, Wil Sideman

Theses

My thesis exhibition will contain work that is derived from objects in my family history. Through this work, I will research concepts of family investigation and self-identity. With the use of glass as well as other materials, I will work from site visits, memories, and family stories to create individual sculptures. When combined, these separate pieces will function as a whole in a narrative installation. This work will pay tribute to the makers that came before me in my family, as well as further my knowledge and understanding of the importance of the objects in my life. Inspired directly by …

Hyperspectral Monitoring Of Chemically Sensitive Plant Sensors, Danielle Simmons

Theses

Current events clearly demonstrate that chemical and biological threats against the public are very real. Automated detection of chemical threats is a necessary component of a system that provides early warning of an attack. Plant biologists are currently developing genetically engineered plants that de-green in the presence of explosives (i.e. TNT) in their environment. The objectives of this thesis are to study the spectral reflectance phenomenology of the plant sensors and to propose requirements for an operational monitoring system using spectral imaging technology. Hyperspectral data were collected under laboratory conditions to determine the key spectral regions in the reflectance spectra …

Cross Section, Joanna Poag

Theses

I plan to make sculpture using modules to build monolithic structures. The sculptures will explore equilibrium as it relates to an interaction and balance between elements. Weight, both visual and physical, will be a key focus of each piece. The sculptures incorporate gravity and mass in a way that exaggerates or defies the weight of the pieces. The formal strategy of breaking symmetry is employed to develop sculptures that incorporate gravity and mass and express visual movement in opposition to predictable mathematical sequencing. Line is used as a sculptural means to explore form. It has been used in a way …

Functional Carbon Nanotubes For Electrical Conductors, Christopher Schauerman

Theses

Carbon nanotube (CNT) conductors are an enabling technology for advancing the efficacy of sustainable energy systems. In parallel, proactive consideration for each of the phases in the material life cycle can enhance device performance while minimizing unwanted impacts. Increasing the yield of CNTs through advances in synthesis will help reduce the electricity, chemicals, and costs associated with their production. Modifications to the nanoscale morphology (alignment, bundling, density and lower contact resistances) are needed to improve the CNT material properties to meet or exceed those of conventional metallic conductors. Also, a robust evaluation of methods for contacting carbon-based wires is needed …

Measuring Attention Using Microsoft Kinect, Darren Stanley

Theses

The transfer of knowledge between individuals has increasingly become achieved with the aid of interfaces or computerized training applications. However, computer based training currently lacks the ability to monitor human behavioral changes and respond to them accordingly. This study examines the ability to predict user attention using features of body posture and head pose. Predictive abilities are assessed by an analysis of the relationship between the measured posture features and common objective measures of attention, such as reaction time and reaction time variance. Subjects were asked to participate in a series of sustained attention tasks while aspects of body movement …

Valuing A European Option With The Heston Model, Yuan Yang

Theses

In spite of the Black-Scholes (BS) equation being widely used to price options, this method is based on a hypothesis that the volatility of the underlying is a constant. A number of scholars began to improve the formula, and they proposed to employ stochastic volatility models to predict the behavior of the volatility. One of the results of the improvement is stochastic volatility models, which replaces the fixed volatility by a stochastic volatility process. The purpose of this dissertation is to adopt one of the famous stochastic volatility models, Heston Model (1993), to price European call options. Put option values …

Anti-Propaganda Propaganda Animation, Ruban Tamrakar

Theses

This motion graphics project tries to shed light on how a few media conglomerates controls most of the information we get as citizens. This is done to manipulate and control the public. For this project, I picked one of the theories relating to media-society relationship. This theory says that the media has a big influence on society. Here I present the current media-ownership scenario and their motive for information manipulation. Then, I talk about how these companies are able to control the public by controlling the media. At last, I urge the viewers to break the illusion, question every thing …

Packaging Print Buyer Willingness To Trade Off Image Quality For Environmental Benefits, Rattana Mayteekriengkrai

Theses

Consumers are increasingly concerned about environmental friendliness, in addition to product quality. However, widely used technologies are not yet capable of producing packaging that combines the highest level of image quality with the highest level of environmental friendliness. As a result, print buyers are forced to trade-off image quality for increased environmental friendliness. The amount of image quality that a print buyer is willing to trade-off for a given improvement in environmental friendliness is unknown. This is a problem for printers and print suppliers who are attempting to develop products without access to this potentially critical empirical design information. This …

Something Other Than I Had Planned, Kristy Carpenter

Theses

Something Other Than I Had Planned is an extended portrait of my mother, exploring themes of representation, familial roles, the archive, and personal narrative. Curating existing images from our family archive as well as creating my own visual documentation, the series examines both the current life and past history of my mother in an attempt to understand her as an individual and our evolving relationship as mother and daughter. Rooted in research of historical representations and understandings of the mother figure, as well as photography's history as a tool for preserving and examining the past, I explore ideas around nostalgia, …

Go!Polo-Discovering The "Sport Of Kings", Shelley Kornatz

Theses

GO!Polo is an instructional application designed to help people interested in equestrian polo save time and money by allowing the user to review basic information about the sport on their own time before even getting on a horse. Thus, the user arrives to their first lesson with several lessons’ worth of foundational knowledge, allowing them to focus on things that cannot be taught without being in the saddle—horsemanship and riding. This structure allows users to begin playing much more quickly than those without prior exposure to the application. The Adobe Flash-based application strives to accomplish four main goals: (1) Provide …

Reliability-Aware Multi-Segmented Bus Architecture For Photonic Networks-On-Chip, Patrick Sieber

Theses

Network-on-chip (NoC) has emerged as an enabling platform for connecting hundreds of cores on a single chip, allowing for a structured, scalable system when compared to traditional on-chip buses. However, the multi-hop wireline paths in traditional NoCs result in high latency and energy dissipation causing an overall degradation in performance, especially for increasing system size. To alleviate this problem a few radically different interconnect technologies are envisioned. One such method of interconnecting different cores in NoCs is photonic interconnects. Photonic NoCs are on-chip communications networks in which information is transmitted in the form of optical signals. Photonic interconnection is one …

The Electronic Medical Record: Designing With The Patient In Mind, Alyssa Costino

Theses

The transition from paper charts to Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is intended to create a more efficient health care industry. The use of EMRs eliminates paper waste and allows doctors and other medical staff to communicate with others conveniently wherever they happen to be located. Currently, the focus is on working through functionality and design issues in the hospital EMRs and getting doctors acquainted with how the EMR works. The patient focus has not been addressed at this time in terms of how they use and interact with their personal medical history. Based on my own personal experiences suffering from …

Reliable And Secure Body Fall Detection Algorithm In A Wireless Mesh Network, Sanjana Rakhecha

Theses

Falls in elderly is one of the most serious causes of severe injury. Lack in immediate medical help makes these injuries life threatening. An automatic fall detection system, presented in this research, would help reduce the arrival time of medical attention, reduce mortality rate and promote independent living. Therefore, the algorithm finds its application in the medical field, specifically in nursing homes. The system designed and presented in this research is not only capable of detecting human falls but also distinguishing them from routine fall-like activities. Falls are detected with the help of a small wearable embedded device, i.e. Texas …

Recreating East Asia Creatures That Exist In Mythology As Rpg Fantasy Characters, Woosang Kim

Theses

Today, MMORPG Games (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) are one of the most popular games in the PC online game genre because users can enjoy the game with other players. They can also choose their own characters and control the character`s avatar. Wide selection of characters available is one of the most important elements in the game. These characters have to be well-designed to draw the user`s attention. These characters, which appear in fantasy MMORPG (World of War craft), and their special features originate from Western myths and ancient stories. Likewise, East Asian has a long history with many myths …

Anaerobic Codigestion Of Dairy Manure And Food Manufacturing Waste For Renewable Energy Generation In New York State, Matthew Rankin

Theses

Anaerobic digestion is a microbiological process that converts biodegradable organic material into biogas, consisting primarily of methane and carbon dioxide. Anaerobic digestion technologies have been integrated into wastewater treatment facilities nationwide for many decades to increase the economic viability of the treatment process by converting a waste stream into two valuable products: biogas and fertilizer. Thus, anaerobic digestion offers potential economic and environmental benefits of organic waste diversion and renewable energy generation. The use of biogas has many applications, including cogeneration, direct combustion, upgrading for conversion to feed a fuel cell, and compression for injection into the natural gas grid …

Learn Html: A Refreshingly Fun Way To Learn The Foundations Of Html, Brandon Capp

Theses

Learn HTML is an interactive website with the purpose of teaching foundations of HTML. The website was designed to appeal to a teenage audience, ages 15 - 19 years old.

The nature of the website diverges away from the typical text based approach utilized in similar applications by abandoning a dependency on the heavy use of text to communicate information. Learn HTML, instead, features a strong use of graphic elements, visual metaphors, and a heavy focus on interactivity, all of which offer the user a visual representation of information.

Through interaction with the provided graphic elements and visual metaphors, the …

Virtual 3d Environments: Implementations Of 3d Environments For Virtual Tours And Online Communication, Scott Bessey

Theses

Virtual tours can be found over the web in many different scenarios: touring a campus, displaying consumer products, documenting a trip. These tours provide information using images, movies and sound to provide users with navigation in such a way that they user feels they are experiencing the information in real time. These tours are usually driven by mouse clicks, whether it is clicking on an image gallery, movie gallery or panning around a panoramic image. While virtual tours are interactive in those examples, there is a lack of interaction be tween the users viewing the tour. Online communication has become …

Surface Modification Of A Proton Exchange Membrane And Hydrogen Storage In A Metal Hydride For Fuel Cells, Lisa Andrews

Theses

Interest in fuel cell technology is rising as a result of the need for more affordable and available fuel sources. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells involve the catalysis of a fuel to release protons and electrons. It requires the use of a polymer electrolyte membrane to transfer protons through the cell, while the electrons pass through an external circuit, producing electricity. The surface modification of the polymer, Nafion®, commonly researched as a proton exchange membrane, may improve efficiency of a fuel cell. Surface modification can change the chemistry of the surface of a polymer while maintaining bulk properties. Plasma modification …

Country Women: Back-To-The-Land Feminism And Radical Feminist Praxis In The Women's Liberation Movement, Jessica Louise Lynn

Theses

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF JESSICA LOUISE LYNN, for the Master of Arts degree in HISTORY, presented on March 25, 2013, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: COUNTRY WOMEN: BACK-TO-THE-LAND FEMINISM AND RADICAL FEMINIST PRAXIS IN THE WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Robbie Lieberman Historians of American History, cultural movements, the 60s-era, and even the counterculture frequently categorize second-wave feminism as a monolithic movement, its complexity minimized, its successes devalued. While there are a handful of feminist historians who have offered in depth, corrective histories to the popular narrative of the 60s-era, still missing from the historiography of …

The Sound Of Music: The Influence Of Evoked Emotion On Recognition Memory For Musical Excerpts Across The Lifespan, Sherrie L. Parks

Theses

TITLE: THE SOUND OF MUSIC: THE INFLUENCE OF EVOKED EMOTION ON RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR MUSICAL EXCERPTS ACROSS THE LIFESPAN Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen, 1999) posits that as people age, they selectively focus on positive aspects of emotional stimuli as opposed to negative as a way of regulating emotions. Thus, older adults remember positive information better than negative. This hypothesis has been tested extensively with visual stimuli, but rarely with auditory stimuli. Findings from this study provide support in the auditory domain. In this study, 135 younger, middle-aged, and older adults heard consonant (pleasant) and dissonant (unpleasant) musical excerpts. Participants were …

Fault Analysis Using State-Of-The-Art Classifiers, Girish Chandrashekar

Theses

Fault Analysis is the detection and diagnosis of malfunction in machine operation or process control. Early fault analysis techniques were reserved for high critical plants such as nuclear or chemical industries where abnormal event prevention is given utmost importance. The techniques developed were a result of decades of technical research and models based on extensive characterization of equipment behavior. This requires in-depth knowledge of the system and expert analysis to apply these methods for the application at hand. Since machine learning algorithms depend on past process data for creating a system model, a generic autonomous diagnostic system can be developed …

Using Information Processing Techniques To Forecast, Schedule, And Deliver Sustainable Energy To Electric Vehicles, Praneeth Pulusani

Theses

As the number of electric vehicles on the road increases, current power grid infrastructure will not be able to handle the additional load. Some approaches in the area of Smart Grid research attempt to mitigate this, but those approaches alone will not be sufficient. Those approaches and traditional solution of increased power production can result in an insufficient and imbalanced power grid. It can lead to transformer blowouts, blackouts and blown fuses, etc. The proposed solution will supplement the ``Smart Grid'' to create a more sustainable power grid. To solve or mitigate the magnitude of the problem, measures can be …

Product System Implications At End-Of-Life: An Economic And Environmental Assessment, Mark Krystofik

Theses

While there are many opportunities to make adjustments in how products are produced and consumed to reduce environmental impact, this dissertation focuses on product reuse and proposes a framework to evaluate the economic and environmental effects of proposed interventions in the product system that encourage end-of-life product to be guided toward environmentally preferred reuse or recycling paths. A novel aspect of the approach requires characterizing the product system structure to distinguish between those interventions that maintain the interaction dynamics amongst product system actors (producers, consumers and government), and those that alter the product system structure, enabling unintended consequences. The consumer …

In Situ Measurement, Characterization, And Modeling Of Two-Phase Pressure Drop Incorporating Local Water Saturation In Pemfc Gas Channels, Evan See

Theses

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) have been an area of focus as an alternative for internal combustion engines in the transportation sector. Water and thermal management techniques remain as one of the key roadblocks in PEMFC development. The ability to model two-phase flow and pressure drop in PEMFCs is of significant importance to the performance and optimization of PEMFCs. This work provides a perspective on the numerous factors that affect the two-phase flow in the gas channels and presents a comprehensive pressure drop model through an extensive in situ fuel cell investigation. The study focused on low current density …

It's Hardly Noticeable, John Keedy

Theses

It's Hardly Noticeable attempts to make the abstract visually tangible and prompts a reconsideration of normalcy. Based both in academic research of psychology and personal experience with pathology, my photographs explore the world of a semi- autobiographical character who negotiates living with an unspecified mental illness and its impact on his thoughts and behaviors. As constructed tableaux, they exploit the relationship between fact and fiction, reality and perception, and truth and performance. The photographs question the legitimacy of applying the term `normal' in a societal context by prompting a reconsideration of what, if anything, is normal, or at least what …

Being Close To Far Away, Michailo Tulek

Theses

In 1948 my great-grandfather was imprisoned in a Russian forced labor camp known as the Gulag, an acronym for the title "Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies" Surviving this life event pushed my great-grandfather beyond the limits of civil society, rationality, and empathy into a world that author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called, "an unassimilable spiritual earthquake which not every person can cope with." Like millions of others, my great grandfather took a journey into the "Gulag country," a place beyond "vision" or "understanding." In the fall of 2012, I too traveled to the Gulag country, in order to trace …

It's Hard To Be Down When You're Up, Katherine Driscoll

Theses

IT'S HARD TO BE DOWN WHEN YOU'RE UP. by Katherine March Driscoll BFA, Photography, NYSCC School of Art and Design at Alfred University, 2008 MFA, Imaging Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2013 In times of transition, the American dream must be evaluated in terms of a possible future rather than an impossible past. It's hard to be down when you're up pictures Rochester, NY as a model for the transition- al state of today's American cities using the color documentary style of 70's photographers like Stephen Shore. Photographs and installation cite the fragments of potential found within the urban landscape …