Digital Commons Network^™

Controlling Artistic Identity—Artist V. Museum: A Case Study Of Kaws At The Brooklyn Museum, Courtney Barber

Theses

Through contemporary social media applications, non-traditional artists now hold the ability to curate their own artistic identities and associated brands. Accordingly, the constant use of social media platforms and consistent reinforcement of familiar artistic styles and characters, have become linked to the artist’s relationship with their public following. In the case of the street artist KAWS, the artist has strategically built the familiar foundations of his public persona upon the repeated use of the character Companion, frequent social media interactions, and consistent brand collaborations. In bringing an artist utilizing such contemporary methods into the traditional museum space, it can be …

A Type Of Preservation: Modern Recreations Of Typeface At Genesee Country Village & Museum And The Cary Graphics Art Collection, Koda Drake

Theses

Historical objects that serve educational and interpretive purposes face frequent use and can easily be damaged, particularly when those objects are designed to be disposed of following high usage. Conserving these artifacts through both digital and physical reproductions enables museum staff, scholars, and the general public to tell a more complete history of the objects and of material culture. To demonstrate the necessity of preserving functional artifacts, this thesis examined historic wooden typefaces used for document printing to answer the following question: do digital and physical reproductions of wood type fonts allow for preservation of the original fonts while maintaining …

The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiments: Probing Large-Scale Structure Formation Using Near-Infrared Sounding Rocket Payloads, Chi Hanh Nguyen

Theses

The ensemble emission from all sources outside of the Milky Way is known as the extragalactic background light (EBL). At optical and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths, the EBL is primarily stellar emission tracing back to the Epoch of Reionization (EOR) at redshifts z > 6 when the first luminous structures formed. Given the large uncertainties in our understanding of the EOR, measurements of the EBL provide an important probe of the galaxies that were responsible for reionization. Direct observations of the EBL are challenging due to contamination from bright local foregrounds. In recent years, intensity mapping has emerged as a successful technique …

Using Advanced Analytics To Predict Vehicle Registrations And Help In Business Continuity Planning, Khalid Ibrahim Alzarouni

Theses

Dramatic changes happen in the world. People and organizations face problems with these changes. The ones who have everything planned in case of emergencies; survive, and the ones who do not plan it right, have a chance of falling. Today, a lot of organizations suffer because of the Covid-19 global pandemic, even the largest organizations in Dubai like Roads and Transport Authority. Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is one of the largest government entities and the sole planner and executer of all transport, road, and traffic projects in Dubai. It has happiness centers which register all the cars that are …

Technique To Reduce The Robbing Crime Rate In Dubai During The Event Of Expo 2020 By Analyzing Relevant Data., Abdulla Ahmed Kankzar

Theses

Dubai’s crime rate appears to be significantly lower. However, do not let this lull you into a false sense of security. Most of the crime occurs in areas populated primarily by lower-income, temporary laborers originating from other countries. Most crimes attributed to this group consist of petty theft, public offenses (e.g., fighting, public intoxication, and property damage), sexual harassment, and rare incidents of violent assault. Using advanced techniques to classify which category the crime belongs to; it will help the concerned authorities to tackle the major crime happening in the City and helpful to find out rare crimes in the …

Satellite Vision And Atomic Trails, Anson Wigner

Theses

Satellite Vision and Atomic Trails is an installation of photographs and a three-channel video crafted from an eclectic combination of government archival material, the theory of panopticism, Cold War propaganda, and satellite photographs of secret or obscured sites. Probing the creation and interpretation of what remains “unseen” within these satellite images, Satellite Vision and Atomic Trails decodes the anxious ambitions and failed promises of totalized surveillance. Satellite surveillance both envisions the surface of events and creates a map of their socio-political significance. But just as clouds obscure the view of earth from a CIA satellite, our pursuit of a totalizing …

Matter: Creating An Action Loop Of Mindfulness, Mriganka Gupta

Theses

In the past, radical innovation changed the way we live our daily lives without causing a change in fundamental human behaviour. Our “social suite” of behaviours - something that has evolved within us over centuries had mostly remained consistent in the early days of this innovation. Today, modern technology has slipped into our lives without any friction. Products are now designed to blend in with our homes, so well that we almost forget they’re there. And this has caused a concerning change in human behaviour - to the extent that people now think of computer behaviours as analogous to human …

The Effect Of Roadside Mowing And Road Traffic On Bumble Bee Abundance And Pollinating Insect Habitat Quality In New York Highway Rights-Of-Way., Alyssa Schoenfeldt

Theses

Many insect pollinators, including native pollinators such as bumble bees (Bombus spp.), are facing population declines globally due to loss of natural habitats and other anthropogenic factors. The mandated grassy areas alongside roads, known as roadside rights-of-way (ROWs), are potential habitats for insect pollinators. Yet, roadsides ROWs are highly susceptible to disturbances including on-road traffic and roadside management practices, such as mowing, that may impede their performance as suitable habitat. My research objective was thus to examine if and how road traffic levels and roadside mowing interact to influence pollinating insect habitat quality and bumblebee abundance in highway roadside ROWs …

Socio-Ecological Context Matters For Wetland Project Outcomes, Sydney Vanwinkle

Theses

Restoration or creation of wetlands is used to counteract wetland loss in the United States. However, projects often fail to meet functional equivalence with natural wetlands, and the shortcomings increase with time since construction. Many restoration projects are located in suburban or urban areas and are highly influenced by human impacts. Lack of understanding of how human communities influence restoration outcomes, in ways both positive and negative, hinders the ability of restoration managers to produce favorable long-term outcomes. This thesis investigates relationships among ecological metrics of success and the biotic, abiotic and social context for 38 created and restored wetlands …

Origami Food Packaging Based On Sustainable Concepts, Can Wang

Theses

This paper discusses food packaging based on sustainable design concepts. Firstly, it gives a brief overview of packaging, including functions and commonly used materials. Besides, this paper introduces the present situation of the packaging industry, combined with the actual condition of the importance of sustainable packaging in contemporary society. The necessity of sustainable design is emphasized by packagings’ large market, its negative impacts on the environment, strong connection with food waste, and people’s, especially millennium’s attitudes towards sustainable packaging. A large amount of waste has polluted the environment and consumed much energy, and food is high on the wastage list, …

Strange Future, Nathan Emerson Rochefort

Theses

According to experts, the planet is now in a geologic period called the Anthropocene in which human action will progressively alter the course of life on Earth and the systems that support it. Every year global temperatures rise, and the frequency and severity of natural disasters increase. All evidence points to these trends continuing. “Climate change” is the name given to this predicament, and it poses a threat of existential proportion. For the past two years, I have been photographing the landscape of the northeastern United States looking for symbols of change. I have explored areas impacted by natural disasters, …

Smuggling Life, Mahmoud Alkurd

Theses

I was mentally prepared to accept the inevitable reality shock before I moved to Rochester from my home country, Palestine. A place like the Gaza Strip, where I grew up, has its own unique reality that mixes the norms of a contemporary life with the abnormalities. As I thought that I overcame the reality shock after spending almost two years in Rochester, I became aware of the fact that I became able to look back at my Gazan identity from a new and fresh angle. Smuggling Life is a multimedia art project that highlights the phenomenon of sperm smuggling by …

Medical Expertise, Patient Expertise, And Surrogate Decision Making: The Importance Of Co-Deliberation In Medical Decision-Making, Lindsey Grossheim

Theses

In biomedicine, there are many cases where a patient is incapacitated and unable to make their medical decisions. Often, these patients have no declared decision-maker. This thesis explores solutions which promote these patients’ ability to receive beneficent care and have a respect for their autonomy by proposing a requirement for co-deliberation between a medical professional (medical expert) and someone who knows the patient well (patient expert). This thesis studies a case and applies three solutions: one where each expert has full authority and a final solution where the two experts co-deliberate. Co-deliberation is a conversation between the two experts to …

Advanced Iii-Nitride Leds For Display Applications, Matthew T. Hartensveld

Theses

Gallium Nitride (GaN) light emitting diodes (LEDs) are viewed as the next generation of display technology as a replacement for both liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays. GaN based LEDs offer immense improvements in terms of efficiency, reliability, and resolution as compared to these conventional display technologies. New device opportunities are presented with the advent of LED displays, however there are a number of key challenges that also need to be addressed. Displays rely upon transistors in order to individually control the brightness of each color in a pixel. LED displays are no different, though …

Who Do They Think We Are? Analyzing Misrepresentation Of Races In Netflix Original Films Using Critical Race Theory And Social Identity Theory, Jacob Osseck

Theses

In a society like today’s, racial misrepresentation can be found across a vast number of different forms of media. Racial misrepresentation has been found in television portrayals of characters within series and programs during primetime television. This sort of misrepresentation creates obstacles for certain minorities to overcome prejudice, racism, and bigotry that oppresses their ingroup. A content analysis of 20 Netflix Original films which were chosen through random purposive sampling, to include comedy and drama genres, was conducted for the research. The analysis produced results that helped explain that Netflix’s representation of minorities through inclusion has improved for Blacks, yet …

The Impulse Of Destruction, Chenyue Yang

Theses

Driven by the impulse to destroy, I use glass as a proxy for my own body and identity. Through a series of destructive experiments, provocations, dialogues, and games with materials, this body of work addresses this complex human mechanism of self-destruction by creating empathy with materials. Based on the introduction of my personal experience and cultural background, this work puts forward my obsession with the paradoxical aspect of human nature. I verify the self-destructive tendency of myself through the study of psychology and historically similar art movements. I discuss, the reflection that the research content brought to my creation. I …

The Fresh Fridge - Design To Enable Healthy Eating, Tatiana Ferrucio

Theses

A significant part of the population has adjusted life years (DALY’s) due to bad eating habits throughout their lives. This study explores the pain points to a healthier diet and proposes a design intervention for this problem.

The goal is to empower users to eat healthier and in a more sustainable way. As part of the discoveries throughout the research, healthy eating is the individual’s ability to achieve their nutritional values according to their physical structure and biotype.

The design process for this project considered potential strategies to engage people on healthy eating, using positive design methodologies to maintain people …

A Risk Management Framework Using Digital Transformation For The Healthcare Sector During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Mohammad Awni Khasawneh, Mohamed Alayat

Theses

Despite the many changes in the orientation of the world economy and the spotlight positioning, the healthcare sector remains one of the most important and critical sectors for its contribution in every aspect of human life. Improvements in the healthcare sector are seen and evident on a daily basis to cope with the technological and digital advancements in the world, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has put these improvements into a faster pace. Several challenges in the health sector have risen to surface since the beginning of the pandemic; some of these challenges have been properly addressed and tackled, while …

Those Thrice Marked By Time: The Significance Of The Last Known Survivor, Their Death, And Our Remembrance, Michael Tofte

Theses

Following Adam Zarakov, the last known survivor is a significant figure and a representative of a larger type that is under-considered. Last known survivors are ubiquitous in fictional media and how history is told. Some survivors like Frank Buckles are given lavish state funerals with participation of strangers. Yet, this under-analysis is concerning as the 21^st century will likely feature the recognition of last known survivors of many significant 20^th century events. I offer one attempt of addressing this lacuna.

The first aim is to motivate philosophical interest in the phenomenon of the last known survivor. I present …

Warrant And Non-Function: A Critique Of The Sensus Divinitatis In Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, Lukas Merrell

Theses

In recent years, there has been a surge in attempting to demonstrate how a theistic belief can be held rationality apart from classical proofs. Championed by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Reformed Epistemology attempts to defend a God-belief as properly basic, which is therefore justified and warranted apart from traditional argumentation. With this in view, he put forward a position of religious epistemology that attempts to show how a GB can be on par with other beliefs we have on a daily basis that are considered rational, even if devoid of argumentation. In this paper I focus …

Representational Enactivism, Zhexi Zhang

Theses

In the literature on enactive approaches to cognition, representationalism is often seen as a rival theory. In this paper, I argue that enactivism can be fruitfully combined with representationalism by adopting Frances Egan’s content pragmatism. This representational enactivism avoids some of the problems faced by antirepresentational versions of enactivism. Most significantly, representational enactivism accommodates empirical evidence that neural systems manipulate representations. In addition, representational enactivism provides a valuable insight into how to identify representational content, especially in brainless organisms: we can identify representational content by investigating autopoietic processes.

Development Of A Low-Cost Eye Screening Tool For Early Detection Of Diabetic Retinopathy Using Deep Neural Network, David Mwanguo Mwasikira

Theses

It has been said that technology used in the lab does not directly transfer to what is done in healthcare. Research on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) has seen tremendous growth over the last couple of years but it is also true not much of that knowledge has been transferred into practice to benefit patients in need. One reason is that it’s a new frontier with untested technologies and one that is evolving too fast. Also, the Real Healthcare situation can be very complicated presenting itself with numerous challenges starting with strict …

Distfold: Distance-Guided Protein Folding, Matthew Bernardini

Theses

Protein structure prediction and its associated key sub-problems such as distance map prediction are of significance importance in biology and bioinformatics. The inter-residue distance prediction problem, or distance prediction in short, is to predict the physical distance between amino acids in a three-dimensional (3D) space, given a protein's one-dimensional sequence information. While there exist many methods to predict distance maps, there are currently no methods that can take those predicted distance maps and build 3D models from them in an ab initio way, i.e., without using any other information. This works aims to fill this gap by: a) developing a …

Family Planning Methods Among Couples Of A Selected Barangay In Tacloban City: Basis For Healthcare Program Enhancement, Ric-An Artemio S. Gadin

Theses

The increase of population affects many aspects of society, including living conditions, basic needs, employment status and most importantly the health system. It is thus imperative to adequately plan family size in order to build a stable society. But despite of the availability of family planning programs where most methods of contraception are available both in the rural and urban health centers, literatures shows that population growth is still at rise. Thus the researcher became curious of the knowledge, attitude and practices of couples in family planning. The study tried to assess the level of awareness and practices of family …

Can Feature Requests Reveal The Refactoring Types?, Sultan Fahad Almassari

Theses

Software refactoring is the process of improving the design of a software system while preserving its external behavior. In recent years, refactoring research has been growing as a response to the degradation of software quality. Recent studies performed an in-depth investigation in (1) how refactoring practices are taking place during the software evolution, (2) how to recommend refactoring to improve the design of software, and (3) what type of refactoring operations can be implemented. However, there is a lack of support when it comes to developers’ typical programming tasks, including feature updates and bug fixes. The goal of this thesis …

Predicting Smart Home's Energy In Smart Grids, Anood Alnuaimi, Hafsa Alyahya

Theses

Nowadays, data analytics plays a significant role in developing new business systems. In addition, it is taking a major part of the decision-making process in the organization. For this project we focused on predicting smart home's energy that uses smart meters starting with identifying the problem statement. We used RStudio tool to perform the data preprocessing, data exploration, machine learning algorithms implementation, and visualizations. To build our models we used a dataset from Kaggle website related to smart meters data. In addition, we have created different plots to explore and analyze the energy consumption for each appliance. The time-series analysis …

Deep Learning Of Scene-Specific Classifier For Pedestrian Detection In Dubai, Abduljalil Alolama

Theses

The performance of a generic pedestrian detector varies based on the data fed to it; when applied to a specific scene, its performance degrades dramatically, which require the detector to be fed with the specific target in mind so that it can produce the desired predictions and detect for the user the specified target. In this paper, I propose to feed the automated specialization of a scene-specific pedestrian detector, with multiple sources from pictures to even videos beginning with a generic video surveillance detector, however manually marking samples to ease the process, as the knowledge accumulated from the master program …

Using Advanced Analytics To Assist Stakeholders In Higher Education Institutions, Preethi Dsouza

Theses

Higher education institutions have access to a vast amount of student data that is recorded during the process of admissions and throughout the course of the program. After the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic most universities around the world had to either adopt a blended or a complete online mode of teaching. Students were required to access resources through a virtual learning platform and interaction with this environment also left an important trail of valuable information. Data analysis and machine learning can provide insights and predictions about students’ performances, online activities and academic progress. Advanced analytics can provide necessary …

Forensics Writer Identification Using Text Mining And Machine Learning, Saif Ali Alawar

Theses

Constant technological growth has resulted in the danger and seriousness of cyber-attacks, which has recently unmistakably developed in various institutions that have complex Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. For instance, for the last three (3) years, the most horrendous instances of cybercrimes were perceived globally with enormous information breaks, fake news spreading, cyberbullying, crypto-jacking, and cloud computing services. To this end, various agencies improvised techniques to curb this vice and bring perpetrators, both real and perceived, to book in relation to such serious cybersecurity issues. Consequently, Forensic Writer Identification was introduced as one of the most effective remedies to the concerned …

Sum Of Squares With Q-Series, Gosper’S Q- Trigonometry, An New Identities Via An Extended Bailey Transform, Zina Al Houchan

Theses

This report is concerned about q-series and some of their applications. Firstly, Jacobi’s q-series proof for Legendre’s theorem on sums of four squares will be presented. By way of comparison, the classical approach of this result will be also discussed. Secondly, Gosper’s q-trigonometry will be introduced using Jacobi’s theta functions and the theory of elliptic functions shall be employed to confirm one of Gosper’s conjectures. As an application, a proof for Fermat’s theorem on the sums of squares will be provided. Thirdly, an extended version of Bailey’s transform will be established and as a consequence, a variety of new q-series …