Digital Commons Network^™

Production And Characterization Of Natural Date Fruit Powder (Pheonix Dactylifera L.), Fayeza Hasan

Theses

The aim of this thesis was to study the possibilities for production and the characterization of powder from ripened date fruits (Phoenix dactylifera L.). Various techniques including tray drying, freeze-drying, vacuum drying, microwave drying, convection drying were tested for their ability to dry the dates sufficiently to produce a dated powder. Six varieties of dates namely Barhi and Khalas (soft varieties), Sagi and Sukari (semi-dry varieties), and Barakawi and Gundeila (dry varieties) were evaluated for their drying characteristics. The drying parameters and the physicochemical characteristics were compared and a storage study for the date powder was conducted. It …

Controllability And Observability Of Blood Glucose Levels And The Impact Of Covid-19 On Diabetic Patients, Mahra Salem Nasser Abdulla Alblooshi

Theses

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that is characterized by high blood glucose concentrations resulting from insulin deficiency in case of type 1 or insulin inefficiency in case of type 2. While no cure for diabetes exists, the artificial pancreas is a possible way to manage diabetes, especially for type 1 diabetics. Where an artificial pancreas is a closed-loop control system with an integrated mathematical model. This control system imitates the function of a healthy pancreas. The first part of this thesis is concerned with the control system of an artificial pancreas that is based on Bergman’s minimal model of glucose-insulin …

Investigating The Factors That Cause Cost And Time Overrun In The Residential Construction Projects In The Uae: Project Managers Perspective, Enas Jamal Abu Namous

Theses

The construction industry is considered an essential element to stabilize countries economically. In the UAE, this sector has received a lot of attention and development since the discovery of oil. This has enhanced the continuous expansion in construction activities. Recently, the construction projects in the UAE and KSA together reached 60% of the whole projects in the Middle East region, and the majority of it was in Dubai, which in 2018 enhanced its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to reach 14.5%. Therefore, the decision-makers apply multiple methods at different projects in order to achieve the prime factors for project success which …

Effect Of High-Pressure Processing On Quality And Shelf Life Of Green Fresh Juice Produced From A Blend Of Fruit And Vegetable, Ahlam Abdulla Al Hammadi

Theses

Background: The technology of high hydrostatic pressure (HPP) in food processing started to take a huge attention in food industries due to its ability to increase the shelf life of processed products by inactivating food-borne microorganisms and undesired enzymes that cause changes not acceptable by the consumers. Because of the treatments take place at low temperature and because no chemical preservatives are added, advantageous and gives more value to the product and matches consumer demand for healthy products.

Aims: The aim of this thesis was to study the effect of HPP on certain quality parameters of green fruit juice compared …

Healthway: A Personal Health Record System For User To Manage Their Own Health Condition, Jie Zhang

Theses

The 21st century is the era of the Internet, big data, but also the era of AI. The vigorous development of AI and Internet technology has also injected fresh blood into the traditional medical industry. Today, the Internet affects every aspect of the medical and health industry. For example, medical providers can use the Electronic Health Record System (EHR) to quickly obtain the necessary information and data to assist them to make disease diagnoses. The remote consultation and consultation of medical staff also require the help of the Internet, especially the 5G Internet. In this context, the demands of individual …

Computational Design, Simulation Of Meshing, And Stress Analysis Of Strain Wave Gear Drives, Eloy Yague-Spaude

Theses

Strain wave gear (SWG) drives were patented in 1959 by C. Walton Musser as a coaxial, compact, and lightweight gear drive providing remarkably large gear ratios without backlash. This outstanding performance requires the use of a flexible gear, as well as a meshing process with two regions of tooth contact as opposed to traditional gear drives, which only mesh in a single region. The latter drives have been studied for centuries under the principles of solid mechanics whereas SWG drives lack strong bodies of literature, principles, and computational tools for their design.

SWG drives include three parts: wave generator, flexible …

Architecting A One-To-Many Traffic-Aware And Secure Millimeter-Wave Wireless Network-In-Package Interconnect For Multichip Systems, M Meraj Ahmed

Theses

With the aggressive scaling of device geometries, the yield of complex Multi Core Single Chip(MCSC) systems with many cores will decrease due to the higher probability of manufacturing defects especially, in dies with a large area. Disintegration of large System-on-Chips(SoCs) into smaller chips called chiplets has shown to improve the yield and cost of complex systems. Therefore, platform-based computing modules such as embedded systems and micro-servers have already adopted Multi Core Multi Chip (MCMC) architectures overMCSC architectures. Due to the scaling of memory intensive parallel applications in such systems, data is more likely to be shared among various cores residing …

The Impact Of Guided Reading On Kg1 Students’ Reading Performance, Nasibah Abdulrahman Alyousef

Theses

This thesis is concerned with finding the impact of applying guided reading activities on Kindergarten 1 (KG1) students’ reading performance. The current study focuses on two reading skills which are word recognition and reading comprehension. The main objective of this thesis is to examine how guided reading can affect KG1 learners’ reading performance. The research included 50 KG1 students as participants of the study. A quantitative research method was used. The data was collected via the use of pre-post test research instruments. The study found that guided reading has a positive impact on KG1 learners’ reading performance. The research results …

The Last, Tony D. Riel

Theses

This thesis shares a collection of paintings that demonstrates my understanding of how to paint still lifes using oil paint. The tools, preparation, steps, and techniques other still life painters have used to create paintings were examined in-depth and were applied by me to create my still life paintings. Food is the subject of my paintings. My family’s eating habits and wastefulness of food were my sources of inspiration. My observations took place at the end of mealtimes because that is when I noticed that my family tends to not eat every piece of food. This often means there are …

Beginning Band: Cognitive Development Based Instruction, Kayla Price

Theses

This project focuses on how to facilitate a more efficient beginning band experience for students based on the average state of cognitive development for their age group. The primary focus is presenting an alternative to immediately starting students in a traditional band method book when they first begin band classes. The aim of the project is to study the cognitive development of the average sixth grader to best determine what instructional approach would best suit their processing abilities before introducing the band method book. Furthermore, the study exposes the fallacies of the traditional band method book system and suggests and …

How Diversity And Inclusion Affect Shopper Attitudes, Melissa Michelle Oliver

Theses

This paper analyzes the effects of consumer behavior in relation to diversity and inclusion in retail advertisements. The primary objective of diversity and inclusion initiatives is to have a workforce that closely resembles an organization’s target audience and the growing group of loyal customers the company wants to retain. Differences in age, race, gender, national origin and sexual orientation should be encouraged in advertisements to ensure optimal organizational performance. People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand. By analyzing consumer behavior based off …

High Dynamic Range (Hdr) Display Perception, Fu Jiang

Theses

Displays have undergone a huge development in the last several decades. From cathode-ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal display (LCD), to organic light-emitting diode (OLED), even Q-OLED, the new configurations of the display bring more and more functions into industry and daily life. In the recent several years, high dynamic range (HDR) displays become popular. HDR displays usually refer to that the black level of the display is darker and the peak being brighter compared with the standard dynamic range (SDR) display. Traditionally, the peak luminance level can be used as the "white" in characterization and calibration. However, for HDR displays, …

Guavanet: A Deep Neural Network Architecture For Automatic Sensory Evaluation To Predict Degree Of Acceptability For Guava By A Consumer, Vipul Mehra

Theses

This thesis is divided into two parts:Part I: Analysis of Fruits, Vegetables, Cheese and Fish based on Image Processing using Computer Vision and Deep Learning: A Review. It consists of a comprehensive review of image processing, computer vision and deep learning techniques applied to carry out analysis of fruits, vegetables, cheese and fish.This part also serves as a literature review for Part II.Part II: GuavaNet: A deep neural network architecture for automatic sensory evaluation to predict degree of acceptability for Guava by a consumer. This part introduces to an end-to-end deep neural network architecture that can predict the degree of …

Learning With Limited Labeled Data In Biomedical Domain By Disentanglement And Semi-Supervised Learning, Prashnna Kumar Gyawali

Theses

In this dissertation, we are interested in improving the generalization of deep neural networks for biomedical data (e.g., electrocardiogram signal, x-ray images, etc). Although deep neural networks have attained state-of-the-art performance and, thus, deployment across a variety of domains, similar performance in the clinical setting remains challenging due to its ineptness to generalize across unseen data (e.g., new patient cohort).

We address this challenge of generalization in the deep neural network from two perspectives: 1) learning disentangled representations from the deep network, and 2) developing efficient semi-supervised learning (SSL) algorithms using the deep network.

In the former, we are interested …

Expo 2020 Positive & Negative Sentiment, Tariq Albehandy

Theses

Sentiment analysis is the progression of detecting positive or negative sentiment in text. It’s often used by businesses to detect sentiment in social data, gauge brand reputation, and understand customers. Since customers express their thoughts and feelings more openly than ever before, sentiment analysis is becoming an important tool to monitor and understand that sentiment. Inevitably analyzing customer feedback, such as opinions in survey responses and social media conversations, allows brands to learn what makes customers happy or frustrated, so that they can tailor products and services to meet their customers’ needs. For example, using sentiment analysis to automatically analyze …

Diabetes Education In Vellore, India, Nirja Desai

Theses

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus has risen dramatically in developing countries over the past two decades, especially in India. There is a lack of awareness about the condition, how to treat it, and the symptoms of diabetes amongst the general population. Regular screening of adults is essential for early detection and care, but inadequate knowledge about type 2 diabetes is preventing the country from fighting a fair battle. Christian Medical College (CMC) in collaboration with Albert Einstein College of Medicine has taken the initiative to educate the general public and re-educate the physicians around the country about diabetes. There is …

Generation, Verification, And Attacks On Elliptic Curves And Their Applications In Signal Protocol, Tanay Pramod Dusane

Theses

Elliptic curves (EC) are widely studied due to their mathematical and cryptographic properties. Cryptographers have used the properties of EC to construct elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC). ECC are based on the assumption of hardness of special instances of the discrete logarithm problem in EC. One of the strong merits of ECC is providing the same cryptographic strength with smaller key size compared to other public key cryptosystems. A 256 bit ECC can provide similar cryptographic strength as a 3072 bit RSA cryptosystem. Due to smaller key sizes, elliptic curves are an attractive option in devices with limited storage capacity. It …

Ovals And Niho Bent Functions In Small Dimensions, Rasha M. E. Issa Shat

Theses

In this thesis hyperovals and ovals are considered in the projective plane PG(2,q), q = 2^m even. Traditionally these objects are studied algebraically via o-polynomials. In our work, a different approach is used by means of g-functions. These functions also provide a natural description of Niho bent functions. Using g-functions, all ovals and Niho bent functions are listed up to equivalency for dimensions m ≤ 6.

A Numerical Method For Solving Fuzzy Initial Value Problems, Safa Emad Al-Refai

Theses

In this thesis, the optimized one-step methods based on the hybrid block method (HBM) are derived for solving first and second-order fuzzy initial value problems. The off-step points are chosen to minimize the local truncation error of the proposed methods. Several theoretical properties of the proposed methods, such as stability, convergence, and consistency are investigated. Moreover, the regions of absolute stability of the proposed methods are plotted. Numerical results indicate that the proposed methods have order three and they are stable and convergent. In addition, several numerical examples are presented to show the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed methods. …

Reuse Of Sewage Sludge Ash In Producing Self Compacting Concrete, Siham Saed (Moh’D Saeed) Al Shanti

Theses

Rapid growth of self-compacting concrete (SCC) marks a significant milestone in enhancing the product quality and effectiveness of the construction industry. This special type of concrete is known for its high flowability characteristics and surface finish without the tendency for segregation. To achieve the desired properties, the production of SCC requires high powder content, i.e. higher cement content. Cement production is considered to be an extreme energy intensive process; which is responsible for the emissions of a greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide (CO₂). Recently, due to the current innovations and development worldwide, the rate of producing solid …

أثر استخدام الخرائط الذھنیة في تحسین التحصیل الدراسي وتنمیة مھارات التفكیر لدى طلاب الصف الثالث الابتدائي في بیئة التعلیم الھجین بإحدى مدارس العین في دولة الإمارات العربیة المتحدة, نوال خلیفة الغیثي

Theses

THE EFFECT OF USING MIND MAPS IN IMPROVING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND DEVELOPING THINKING SKILLS AMONG THIRD-GRADE STUDENTS IN A HYBRID TEACHING ENVIRONMRNT IN ONE OF AL AIN SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of mind-mapping strategy on improving academic achievement and development of thinking skills of the thirdgrade social studies students in a hybrid classroom setting. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted in which a group of 52 male and female third grade elementary students taught in a public school in Al Ain Education District were selected and divided into two …

The Effects Of Temperature And Body Size On The Metabolism And Hypoxia Tolerance Of White Abalone (Haliotis Sorenseni) And Red Abalone (H. Rufescens), Stephanie Fan

Theses

In 2001, white abalone, Haliotis sorenseni, became the first marine invertebrate to be listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Allee effects due primarily to overharvesting and disease resulted in individuals being too far apart for successful fertilization. Despite the fishery closure in 1996, H. sorenseni still shows no signs of recovery. Today, the White Abalone Recovery Consortium (WARC), a group that includes federal and state agencies, aquaculture organizations, academic institutions, and public aquaria, is working to recover this endangered species back from the brink of extinction.

In order to better understand the metabolic demands and hypoxia tolerance of the …

Coastal Watershed Monitoring And Management: Geomorphology, Geochemistry, And Hydrologic Modeling Of Los Peñasquitos Creek, Ca, Ravleen Khalsa-Basra

Theses

Rivers in semi-arid climates are directly influenced by local geographic and hydrologic conditions and impacted by modifications to hydrology via urbanization. Changes can influence erosion, morphology, habitat sustainability, and watershed health. In highly urbanized southern California coastal regions, these rare open spaces provide vital ecosystem services. Los Peñasquitos Creek in San Diego County is one such watershed. Using stream surveying and laboratory methods we quantified channel characteristics, grain size distribution, total metal concentration [M], organic carbon (%OC), and phosphate to longitudinally characterize the creek for improved management. Results identified three distinct reaches in the watershed (upper, middle, lower). Downstream, depth …

Towards Robust Gaze Estimation And Classification In Naturalistic Conditions, Rakshit S. Kothari

Theses

Eye movements help us identify when and where we are fixating. The location under fixation is a valuable source of information in decoding a person’s intent or as an input modality for human-computer interaction. However, it can be difficult to maintain fixation under motion unless our eyes compensate for body movement. Humans have evolved compensatory mechanisms using the vestibulo-ocular reflex pathway which ensures stable fixation under motion. The interaction between the vestibular and ocular system has primarily been studied in controlled environments, with comparatively few studies during natural tasks that involve coordinated head and eye movements under unrestrained body motion. …

Communication At The Core: Exploring Decision-Making When Communication Is At The Heart Of An Organisation’S Strategy Development, Sinead Hewson

Theses

This investigation considers whether the position, territory and scope of the public relations function in organisations influences strategic thinking, decision-making, and results. Scholars say communication is a strategic management function and has a significant role to play (Grunig J.E., Dozier and IABC Research Foundation 1992, pp. 325–356; Kitchen, 1997, pp. 43–73). Yet, the strategic expertise of communicators is neither understood nor acknowledged outside of the sector. The study’s investigation into the issue and level of access to industry opinion-makers adds to the strategy discussion, while the proposed model of Adaptive Communication contributes to new knowledge.

Artisanal Mining Impacts In Urbanized Semi-Arid Environments: Lessons From Historic Arsenic Mining Near San Diego, California, James A. Wright

Theses

Anomalously elevated arsenic concentrations occur at an abandoned artisanal mine site in an open space recreational park in urban San Diego County, California. Although mining at the site ceased 100 years ago little to no remediation efforts took place leaving shafts, adits, waste piles and derelict infrastructure accessible by inquisitive hikers and adventurers frequenting Black Mountain Open Space Park. This study evaluates the geochemical mechanisms of As transport downgradient from the mine and examines the contribution of both climate and urbanization on the restriction of As mobility. Sediment As concentrations reach 2,320 mg/kg (483 times background crustal concentrations; n=73) along …

An Exploratory Study Of Change Management In The Irish Defence Forces For Implementing New Technologies., Paul Dermot Hegarty

Theses

The aim of this research is to determine if the Irish Defence Forces would benefit from the introduction of change management processes when implementing new technological systems. The extant theory has neglected to examine the application of change management processes in military organisations, a shortcoming this thesis addresses. The research draws on semistructured interviews undertaken with military and civil servant professionals from the Irish Defence Forces and the Department of Defence. Analysis of the interviews resulted in a number of new findings. The research highlighted the current deficiency in long-term funding and long-term strategic planning at the political level, and …

Smart Ageing And Renewal Through Entrepreneurial Skills Training, Sarah Davis

Theses

Globally, while the population is ageing, only 3% of older (≥65 years) adults are engaged in entrepreneurship. The Healthy Ageing agenda is responding to the population trends by increasing its focus on elements of active or productive ageing (incorporating older working) with quality of life as a primary outcome. Alignment and exploitation of the synergies between healthy ageing and older entrepreneurial engagement are lacking. Entrepreneurship education is broadening its focus and targeting inclusivity, albeit with as yet little focus on the older population. Older entrepreneurship, while tentatively linked with increased quality of life, has yet to receive direct attention in …

Producing Panic : An Analysis Of Conspiracy Theory Rhetoric During The Coronavirus Pandemic Of 2020, Aaron Andrews

Theses

In 1938, Orson Welles and his theatre group broadcasted an adaptation of War of the Worlds in the style of a breaking newsflash. The result produced a panic across America as millions believed they were under attack by an alien army. In 2020 during a global pandemic, millions of Americans turned to social media for news and updates, only to be the victims of conspiratorial posts that suggest the virus is part of a nefarious plot for world domination or to steal the Presidential election. In this thesis I will argue that the COVID-19 conspiracy theories share aspects of imagination, …

Machine Learning Classification Of Inundation Following Hurricane Florence (2018) Via L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar And Ancillary Datasets, Alexander Melancon

Theses

During and after flooding events, mapping the extent of floodwaters aids in the distribution of resources, recovery efforts, and damage assessment practices. Development of a land cover classification system focused on mapping inundation after major hurricane events using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data could allow for the production of near-real-time inundation mapping, enabling government and emergency response entities to get a preliminary idea of a developing situation. In response to Hurricane Florence of 2018, NASA JPL collected numerous swaths of quad-pol L-band SAR data with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) instrument observing the record-setting river stages across …