Digital Commons Network^™

Asssembly And Deployment Of The Uaeu 256-Element Radio Array For Space Science, Ibrahim J.M. Alghoul

Theses

The scope of this project, a 256-element Radio Interferometer Array was assembled and deployed as part of the “UAEU Radio Astronomy Pathway Project”, which is jointly supported by the College of Science and the National Space Science & Technology Centre (NSSTC) at the UAE University. This antenna array was deployed at the NSSTC site, and it will serve as the central part of the ground-based radio observations facility to be utilized for multi-disciplinary space science research at the UAEU. The facility is capable of making low-frequency radio observations of astronomical sources and events, measurements for spacecraft tracking, atmospheric studies, planetary …

Factors Affecting The Antibacterial Activity Of Cefiderocol On Klebsiella Pneumoniae With Diverse Characteristics, Lana Jamal Rashed Daoud

Theses

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing serious threat that poses a burden on the healthcare system. Spread of AMR bacteria limits treatment options; thus, new antimicrobial agents are required. Cefiderocol (CFDC) is a novel siderophore cephalosporin, approved by the FDA in 2019 for use in treating infections caused by multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens; but it is not yet in clinical use in the UAE. CFDC is equipped with stabilizers against β-lactamases as well as a siderophore side chain that allows it to penetrate the outer membrane of bacteria through the iron uptake pathways. The aim of this study is to …

Optimization Of Palmitic Acid Production In Chloroidium Sp. Utex 3007 As A Sustainable Source Of Palm Oil Alternative, Amnah Salem Alzahmi

Theses

The increase in palm oil consumption and production has resulted in removing up to 90% of trees in some tropical forests. The green microalgae Chloroidium sp. UTEX 3007 can be an alternative sustainable source of palm oil due to its high palmitic acid content. The objective of this study was to generate a mutant Chloroidium population that is capable of producing and accumulating elevated levels of palmitic acid and to characterize the obtained populations’ lipid contents. The palmitic acid production optimization in Chloroidium sp. UTEX 3007 was conducted via a workflow of ultraviolet (UV) mutagenesis and sorting of high-lipid producing …

The Use Of Actinobacteria To Improve The Efficacy Of Phytoremediation Of Heavy Metal-Polluted Soils In The United Arab Emirates, Fatima Abdulmoneim Hussain

Theses

In an effort to gain the advantages provided by actinobacterial enzyme (1- aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid) (ACC) deaminase (ACCD) in the phytoremediation of heavy metals from the environment, the ability of native actinobacteria with ACC deaminase activity to promote the growth of Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon L.) in soils contaminated with nickel nitrate was evaluated under greenhouse conditions. This enzyme hydrolyzes (ACC), the immediate biosynthetic precursors of the hormone ethylene (ET) in plant tissues to ammonia and α keto-butyrate. The main objectives of this study were: (1) Isolating beneficial native heavy metal-tolerant actinobacteria from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) contaminated soil capable …

A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (Mcdm) Approach For Data-Driven Distance Learning Recommendations, Aysha Meshaal Alshamsi

Theses

Distance learning has been adopted as an alternative learning strategy to the dominant face-to-face teaching methodology. It has been largely implemented by many governments worldwide due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implication in enforcing lockdown and social distancing. In emergency situations distance learning is referred to as Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Due to this dynamic, sudden shift, and scaling demand in distance learning, many challenges have been accentuated. These include technological adoption, student commitments, parent involvement, and teacher extra burden management, changes in the organization methodology, in addition to government development of new guidelines and regulations …

Investigation Of Thickness And Robustness Of Ultrathin Parylene Membranes For Tissue Barrier And Co-Culture Models, Shayan Gholizadeh

Theses

Ultrathin porous membranes are currently used for various biomedical applications, ranging from co-culture systems to tissue barrier models. In the blood-brain barrier model, the intimate proximity between endothelial and glial cells plays a significant role in cell-cell communication and transmigration across the barrier, which cannot be physiologically modeled with conventional co-culture systems typically separating cell types by more than 10 μm. A thickness gradient membrane can enable studies where the goal is to understand the physical characteristics of co-culture arrangement in the barrier model. Here, a robust method to generate ultrathin porous Parylene C (UPP) membranes is developed not just …

Smart City Operation System An Innovative Approach For A Collaborative Smart City Platform, Mohamed Gaber Abouelkassem

Theses

Command and Control Centers (CCCs) are an essential building block in the structure of smart cities. Typically, in most developed cities, CCCs are built to serve a certain function or application as a dedicated and standalone center that belongs to a certain entity or city department, such as transportation, police and security, utilities, or municipal operations departments, etc. The integrated command and control center (ICCC) has a central platform that integrates some of the city systems. The ICCC output is a sophisticated dashboard that acts as an interface to display and analyze collected data with the objective to help operators …

The Origin Of Knowledge And Interest In Interpreting: Mapping Out White And Bipoc Interpreters Experiences In Rochester, Ny, Jonathan Roman

Theses

High schools across the United States, located in a range of communities, offer American Sign Language (ASL) courses as a foreign language option. Some are in 'disadvantaged communities'; a school area where there is a lack of economic resources present for students to benefit from (McKillip, M. E. E., Godfrey, K. E, & Rawls, A, 2012). As terminology would suggest, the inverse of that are schools in advantaged communities. Also in the past, there have been BIPOC recruitment efforts for associates and bachelor level signed language interpreter training programs (ITP) by organizations like the National Interpreter Education Center (NIEC). But …

Evaluation Of The Accessibility Of Touchscreens For Individuals Who Are Blind Or Have Low Vision: Where To Go From Here, Elizabeth Codick

Theses

Touchscreen devices are well integrated into daily life and can be found in both personal and public spaces, but the inclusion of accessible features and interfaces continues to lag behind technology’s exponential advancement. This thesis aims to explore the experiences of individuals who are blind or have low vision (BLV) while interacting with non-tactile touchscreens, such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, coffee machines, smart home devices, kiosks, ATM machines, and more. The goal of this research is to create a set of recommended guidelines that can be used in designing and developing either personal devices or shared public technologies with accessible …

Buyer Prediction Through Machine Learning, Rashed Ibrahim Karmostaje

Theses

Targeted marketing has grown in popularity in recent years, as well as recognizing when a consumer will desire a commodity may be extremely important to a business. Predicting this demand, however, is a complex procedure. Businesses, promoters/marketers, and sellers are using machine learning approaches to execute buyer prediction. This study focuses on when a customer would buy fast-moving retail merchandise by evaluating a customer’s purchase history at partner vendors. The projections should be used to customize special discounts for customers who are about to make a purchase. In addition, buying behavior is a set of consumption habits that can be …

Hourly Demand Prediction Of Shared Mobility Ridership, Eman Asa'ad

Theses

This research focuses on predicting the hourly number of bikes needed using Citi bike data. Micro mobility is the new trend that serves the transportation sector in any city. With the development of technology and introduction of new modes, comes new challenges. Bike sharing is the most developed and standard micro mobility device with extensive data sources. In this research we introduce the rebalancing bike sharing problem, which is very recent and interesting problem. Bikes are being ridden from a station and returned to another, not necessarily the same one of departure, this procedure can cause some stations to be …

Using An Agent Based Model And Deep Learning To Simulate And Infer Market Behavior On Networks, Benjamin Weir

Theses

The financial markets have been affected by the recent advancements in social media. Retail traders often use social media as a source of financial information. This thesis provides a mathematical proof of concept for how retail traders on social media can cause a large change in market price and that it is possible to identify the factors that drive the price change before it is seen in the market. An Agent Based Model is used to simulate a self-contained artificial market on a network. Traders gather pricing information from social media posts created by traders on the network and their …

Hate Speech Detection In A Mix Of English And Hindi-English (Code-Mixed) Tweets, Mohamed Sameer

Theses

With the increasing usage of social networking platforms seen over recent years, there has been an extensive rise in hate speech usage between the users. Hence, Government and social media platforms face lots of responsibility and challenges to control, detect and eliminate massively growing hateful content as early as possible to prevent future criminal acts such as cyber violence and real-life hate crimes. Since Twitter is used globally by people from various backgrounds and nationalities, the platform contains tweets posted in different languages, including code-mixed language, namely Hindi-English. Due to the informal format of tweets with variations in spelling and …

Predictive Policing, Amna Ali Al Boom, Shaikha Khalid Bin Thani

Theses

UAE is one of the safest countries to live in, but that does not indicate that the country does not witness crimes, During the COVID-19 pandemic, the country saw an increase in cyber and digital crimes. Apart from cybercrime, there are other types of crimes, such as street crimes and violent crimes. Data analytics aids Dubai Police to predict crimes. Criminal investigation is one of the fields that is very interesting and is taught in colleges and academies. Data analytics opens the door for studying the details of each crime. Data mining tools consist of a variety of techniques that …

Opinion Mining Of Phone Sitting Feature, Atiq Yousuf Ahmad

Theses

This report aims to evaluate opinion mining of customers about phone sitting features in cell phones in different brands across the world by using data mining techniques. Therefore, Data for the report has been collected from data scrapping in Qoura which collects opinion of customers. The collected information from the data base has evaluated by using sentiment analysis. The collected information from Qoura transforms the content and extracts data from API’s. In relation to this, information obtains from the research contributed for providing useful information for these features. The collected information from application scrapping has been analysed through sentiment analysis. …

Finding The Meaning In Ceramic Patterns From A Chaco Canyon Burial, Michael Lucero

Theses

The focus of this research considers the culture of the Ancestral Puebloans from the American Southwest region. This project reflects and examines the cultural arts and practices in relation to funerary aspects of the ancient Puebloan society that flourished in Chaco Canyon, located in present-day New Mexico. While investigations of historians and archaeologists have concentrated on findings within the Great House of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, research focused on the structures and objects within rooms. The base of this research examines a collective set of vessels from burial room 33, excavated from the original exhibition of George H. Pepper, …

Sustainable Antibacterial And Antiviral Polyesters Based On Succinic Acid, Mercaptosuccinic Acid, And Eugenol, Rebekah Finster

Theses

Synthetic polymers have become indispensable in modern life. However, the prevalent use of synthetic polymers has created major sustainability issues including petroleum resource depletion and overfilling of landfills. At the same time, antibiotic resistance and the spread of new viruses have driven a need for antimicrobial and antiviral materials. A sustainable way to make materials antibacterial or antiviral is to use essential oils. Eugenol is a commonly used essential oil for these purposes, but it has been found to cause tissue irritation on contact. When eugenol is covalently connected to the material, these effects of oil leaching can be avoided. …

Gazing Upon The Moon, Fang-Yu Sarah Chang

Theses

Relationships are universal, they exist across cultures, geographic boundaries, and other barriers. This idea intrigues me as I have lived and currently study abroad. The emotion, the sense of unease; I was surrounded by these feelings. Everything changed when I took the first step and looked into others' stories, and realized I was not alone. Overall, my inspiration for my thesis stems from a poem regarding the moon and the idea of “‘we are always together”.

Racial Disparity In Health Insurance Acquisition In The State Of California, Florence Jill Polina

Theses

Racial disparity continues to be a struggle in America. The main purpose of this project was to determine whether there is a relationship between race and the acquisition of health insurance in adult residents of California who are younger than 65 years old. Through secondary data gathering, analysis of an existing racial disparity in health care insurance acquisition was accomplished. The results of the project indicate that a relationship exists between race and health insurance acquisition, thereby promoting an opportunity to determine hindering factors and discuss recommendations that can help to alleviate them.

Spiral Of Silence And The Use Of Social Media By Sexual Violence Survivors, Tanvi Thakur

Theses

Sexual violence has been a global health concern for over decades, but activism on social media such as #MeToo has increased public discourse and awareness about this issue. In its early advent, the #MeToo movement raised ample awareness, stimulated free discourse, and placed this issue as an important concern to address. While countries have implemented austere laws to prevent such hate crimes against women, societal norms and codes have deemed this type of violence as stigma or taboo resulting in the underreporting of the majority of sexual violence-related crimes. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted in 2015 …

Scents Of Memory In The Film: Tender Scent, Teng Chen

Theses

Tender scent is a film about perfumer Rita who finds that her favorite scents are all leading to the memory of her loved one whom she lost forever. Throughout the project year, I tried to visualize the protagonist’s feeling of the scents and deliver the emotions to the audience. There were several versions of the story during scriptwriting. The revisions happened due to the fact of psychology and the build-up of the character arc. The difficulty of blending the character-study story with active and attractive plots made me decide to have a non-linear story structure. We spent three months on …

In Layman's Terms, Jennifer Schoonmaker

Theses

To Do see about grinding up a clock two watches holding identity in between deer rocket launch stop sign with a double crescent moon reflecting back pitbull light switch black floppy moon slice hypnagogic writing as a function of continuously opening the present moment orbital position as a function of time conjoined potato chip the most approachable work makes people the most angry flatten nature into the realm of human experience ocean office lights fold time and think about painting Things you can never be but things you already are: 1. The feelings another person is having 2. The delicate …

Body-Worn Cameras (Bwc): The Sword And Shield For Defense Attorneys, Joseph Santoro

Theses

The use of body-worn camera (BWC) technology in the criminal justice system has brought with it new ways of handling cases and effecting interactions between police officers and citizens. BWC use in the criminal justice system begins when the cameras are turned on and depending on circumstances, the captured footage may become valuable evidence to then be entered into court for trials. Amongst the studies of BWC, two criminological theories have stood out the most. Deterrence theory and self-awareness, both provide explanation towards what kind of power and influence BWC has over officers, citizens, and court actors. The first is …

Behind The Plea: Factors That Shape Plea Bargaining Outcomes, Jonathon Chierchio

Theses

Four working papers on the topic of plea bargaining:

Plea Bargaining and Prosecutorial Discretion

Legal and Extralegal Factors in Plea Bargaining

Types of Defense and Their Impact on Plea Bargaining

Pleading Guilty to Lesser Charges: Which Factors Matter?

A Smart Yoga Mat System Designed For Visually Impaired People, Dan Han

Theses

Globally, nearly 2.2 billion people are visually impaired, while 39 million are blind at present. Due to various factors, it is difficult for the blind to exercise. Though associations for blind people and disabled schools provide more possibilities for sports training for visually impaired people, these resources cannot reach everyone in need because of location and foundation limits. The project aims to make fitness more accessible for visually impaired people to help them keep healthy. Thus it could support their confidence and independence as they expected. Furthermore, society's awareness of visually impaired people's difficulties while exercising then, more studies could …

Intelligent Relaxation System For Information Anxiety, Xiuyu Shi

Theses

The development of information technology has brought a lot of convenience to people's lives and changed the way we work. There are many people who use cell phones and computers every day, which has caused many health problems, and information anxiety is one of them. This paper discusses a project that proposed to help with the problem of information anxiety among workers and investigates the root causes of information anxiety among IT workers. After user testing and design, this project gives a potential design solution that uses sensory feedback. In addition, this paper gives some insights into the negative effects …

“Onq”: Contextual Information Design, Sally Boniecki

Theses

There is a countless amount of entertainment media available to a single viewer, and the internet makes that media easily accessible. However, keeping up with the rules, objectives, backstory, or culture of each one is difficult, and confusion hinders enjoyment. My thesis, “OnQ” dismantles the barrier of information in broadcast sports, viewership of which has been declining for 10-20 years. By exploring the flow of information, user interaction, user multitasking, and graphic design via on-demand explanations and statistics on top of live video, “OnQ” takes existing multitasking behavior and integrates it onto the same screen as the broadcast. Instead of …

Gamification Of Education And Learning: Heuristic Elements, Player Types, And Learning Outcomes For Art History Games, James L. Hutson Jr.

Theses

The technology of virtual reality (VR) and the gamification of education and learning has had proven educational benefits, especially in secondary education. However, there remains little to no research on the heuristic elements and mechanics that contribute to learning at the postsecondary level of education. Most research conducted has been refined to science programs, but even in these instances, a study of the effects and interests of different demographics has yet to be considered. Given the visual nature of how the discipline of art history has traditionally been taught, there are a number of virtual reality (VR) applications to assist …

Personifications Of The Sacred And The Sovereign Represented In The Art Of The Sala Del Maggior Consiglio In Palazzo Ducale, Susan Sholar Hanny

Theses

The aim of this research is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of why the Venetian Republic incorporated specific personifications in the art of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Chamber of the Great Council) (fig. 1) in Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) (fig. 2) created after 1577 (when a fire destroyed most of the existing artwork in the room) to promulgate the sacredness and sovereignty of the Venetian Empire. In addition, the research seeks to connect the personifications to events in Venetian history that influenced the use of specific figurative images within the artwork and to the message the Venetian Republic was …

Modernizing Handmade Crochet Lace, An Antiquated Craft, Through The Development Of A Blog, Livier Olson

Theses

This project investigates the degree of difficulty involved in initiating a web-based blog and growing its content with the intention to create craft-based entrepreneurship. With the advancement in technology and the help of the internet and social media, this project also aims to express how a vintage craft can be modernized and continue to thrive as a cottage industry. The final deliverable is a blog that intends to educate the public about the history of crochet and its ties to the lace and fashion industry, tutorials for crocheted lacemaking, and the continued use of crocheted lace in modern fashion.