Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Small Pass-Through Wetlands And Stormwater Retention Ponds On Dissolved Organic Matter, Michael B. Burkett

Theses

Retention ponds and mitigation wetlands have become more common throughout the urban and suburban landscape for stormwater management and nutrient removal. It is well known that wetlands can effectively remove nitrogen and phosphorus, but the effect of wetlands on dissolved organic matter (DOM) and its impact on water quality is often overlooked, in spite of the importance of DOM in aquatic ecosystems. We seasonally sampled the inflow and outflow of five natural wetlands, five created wetlands and ten stormwater retention ponds in the urban and suburban environment of Monroe County, New York, for dissolved organic carbon (DOC), dissolved organic nitrogen …

Veteran Identity And Gender Representation: A Critical Visual Analysis, Ruth Harvie

Theses

This study reveals struggles over gender and identity in the military and shows how representations embody cultural, political, and ideological tensions over the role of women in the military and society. A chronological series of Veterans Affairs (VA) posters communicate this over a thirty year period. Visual communication and the area of representation and identity have long been studied across multiple disciplines, but no studies exist that examine the VA images. A critical visual analysis with the application of semiotics and gender theory revealed that veteran identity is significantly different between representation of men and representation of women.

Axiom, Jon Fila, Peter Klinkon

Theses

Axiom is a short narrative video, using live-action and 3D computer graphics to re-interpret the Greek myth of Persephone through the framework of contemporary science-fiction. The aim of the video is to use narrative, approached from a design strategy that thematizes the representational role of 3D computer generated graphics, to raise questions in the minds of thoughtful viewers about the use of genetics and computer simulated worlds in the context of the vulnerable natural environment. The conceptualization of the video is explained, followed by a summary of the production pipeline, and finally an evaluation of the finished piece.

What Factors Influence Wind Perceptions, Tatiana Stein

Theses

Over the last decade, wind power has emerged as a possible source of energy and has attracted the attention of homeowners and policy makers worldwide. Many technological hurdles have been overcome in the last few years that make this technology feasible and economical. The United States has added more wind power than any other type of electric generation in 2012. Depending on the location, wind resources have shown to have the potential to offer 20% of the nation's electricity; a single, large wind turbine has the capacity to produce enough electricity to power 350 homes. Throughout the development of wind …

Biodegradation Of Cresols Using Pseudomonas Putida Immobilized In Poly Vinyl Alcohol (Pva) Gel, Riham Mohamed Sorkatti Abu Bakr

Theses

The characteristics and viability of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a support material for biomass immobilization and utilization for the biodegradation of cresols have been evaluated. PVA gel pellets were prepared by repeated freezing-thawing method using different PVA compositions. The porous structures of the PVA pellets were examined using a Compound Microscope and SEM and revealed that the matrix structure and pore size distribution were affected by PVA composition. Mechanical properties of the PVA gel were also characterized to evaluate the PVA integrity as a matrix for immobilizing microbial cells and found to be dependent on the PVA mass composition. The …

Augmented Sound, Berio Molina

Theses

A Computer Vision System for doing Interactive Installations

This thesis is a computer vision system for doing interactive-creative musical installations: A portable computer vision system based on video projection and a green laser, that allows the interaction with the projection itself, with the physical space where it is projected and with multiple users.

By using a green laser as a physical user interface, people create projections of sound balls that are projected on top of objects. These balls interact with the physical characteristics of the object where they are projected, as well as with other balls that where previously created …

An Examination Of Delay Discounting In Sex Offenders With Dual Diagnoses, Chad A. Poncinie

Theses

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF CHAD A. PONCINIE. For the Master of Science degree in Behavior Analysis and Therapy, presented on 21 June 2013. TITLE: AN EXAMINATION OF DELAY DISCOUNTING IN SEX OFFENDERS WITH DUAL DIAGNOSES MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Mark R. Dixon Discounting of delayed rewards by sex offenders with dual diagnoses was compared to discounting of delayed rewards by matched control non-offenders with dual diagnoses. All participants completed a hypothetical choice task in which they made repeated choices between 10 dollars/servings after a delay and an equal or lesser amount available immediately. The delay to the large reward …

Perfection: United Goal Or Divisive Myth? A Look Into The Concept Of Posthumanism And Its Theoretical Outcomes In Science Fiction, Rebecca Leah Mccarthy

Theses

As science races to keep up with science fiction, many scientists are beginning to believe that the next step in human evolution will be a combination of human and machine and look a lot like something out of Star Trek. The constant pursuit of perfection is a part of the human condition, but if we begin to stretch beyond the natural human form can we still consider ourselves human? Transhumanism and posthumanism are only theories for now, but they are theories that threaten to permanently displace the human race, possibly pushing it into extinction. This thesis will look at the …

Sustainability Curriculum Inventory And Literacy Assessment: The Influence Of Values On Knowledge Of And Perceived Importance Of Sustainability Components, David James Drogos

Theses

The incorporation of sustainability education and sustainable practices in higher education serves several purposes. It prepares students for work in sustainability-focused professions, fosters environmentally responsible behavior in individuals, and helps to reduce the ecological impacts of the operational aspects of educational institutions. However, contemporary definitions of sustainability, which consider social, political, ecological, and economic influences on the environment, complicate educational initiatives. Distinct educational departments often consider sustainability through their specialized lens. Trans-disciplinary initiative must be enacted in order for sustainability education to reach its full potential. This paper outlines the results of an electronically administered faculty sustainability curriculum inventory as …

Regional-Climate And Local-Microbial Controls On Ecosystem Processes During Grassland Restoration, Meredith Lynne Mendola

Theses

Root productivity likely has consequences for the composition, activity, and recovery of soil microbial populations and the belowground processes mediated by these organisms. In tallgrass prairie, ecotypic variation potentially exists in response to a strong precipitation gradient across the Great Plains. Thus, ecotypic variation within a species may differentially affect belowground net primary productivity (BNPP), the associated soil microbial community, and may scale up to affect ecosystem processes. The goals of this study were to elucidate: (1) whether ecotype, environment, or an ecotype by environment interaction regulate BNPP of a dominant species (Andropogon gerardii) collected from and reciprocally planted in …

An Examination Of Memory In Children With Inattention, Hyperactivity, And Depressive Symptoms, Jordan Marie Constance

Theses

The purpose of the current study was to explore the relationships between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, depression, and memory impairment in children. It was hypothesized that level of inattention would negatively correlated with performance on measures of visual-spatial short-term memory and verbal memory. Children with greater levels of depressive symptoms were predicted to perform more poorly than less depressed peers on effortful measures of verbal and visual short-term memory, measures of verbal working memory, and measures of verbal long-term memory recall. Results indicated that impaired performance on one measure of visual-spatial short-term memory was related to increased levels of inattention and depression. …

Sustainability And Our Current Food Production System, Jennifer Nott

Theses

Food is necessary to human survival and having a sustainable food supply is one way to help guarantee this necessity. Sustainability comes in two forms. Weak sustainability, or substitutability, defines sustainability as the ability to substitute a diminishing resource with another more plentiful resource without irrevocably damaging the environment. Strong sustainability shifts its focus away from substitution and focuses only on renewable resources while maintaining the environmental caveat found in weak sustainability. Our current industrial food production system fails to meet the definition for strong sustainability because of its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and pesticides as well …

Golfing The Ho Chi Minh Trail, Angela Mary O'Gorman

Theses

A Thesis Submitted to The Graduate School at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Fine Arts – Creative Writing

Quantifying Mutational Impacts On Intrinsic Dna Flexibility In Prokaryotic Genomes, Mohammed Alawad

Theses

The existence of synonymous codon biases across all taxonomic groups is a long standing problem in biology. While codon bias seems to be adequately explained by the maintenance of translation efficiency and accuracy in some organisms, there is still no adequate explanation of why codon biases universally track the intergenic gc content, as these regions of the genome would not be under selection pressures affecting translation. One part of the story may come from the triplet nature of codon in which each third position defines the minor groove width and thus affects the basic structure of the DNA by altering …

Establishing A Women's And Gender Studies Program At Auk, Teuta Avdimetaj

Theses

The aim of this research project is to serve as a guiding document towards the establishment of a taught Women’s and Gender Studies minor program at AUK which would offer students the opportunity to critically expand their views in the field of gender and actively promote the political, social and economic empowerment of women in Kosovo and the wider region through proactive gender equality initiatives and projects. The Gender Studies program will tackle the main theories that revolve around issues of gender, status of men and women in several spheres, analyze the discrepancies that can be found based on gender, …

Rescue Breathing In Noisy Environments, Brianna Slutsky

Theses

This study considered rhythmic performance of rescue breathing by trained emergency responders and lay persons. Participants were asked to complete rescue breathing in 10 different scenarios. Such scenarios were intended to evaluate the effects of target rhythms and distractors on the responder's ability to administer rescue breathing ventilations at the appropriate rate and rhythm, in accordance with the standards established by the American Red Cross (2011). Current research concerning rhythmic performance with target and distractor rhythms suggests that auditory rhythms, whether target or distractor, have a greater influence on the motor behaviors of the human than visual rhythms. This research …

Physicochemical Characterization Of Safranal-Β-Cyclodextrin Inclusion Complexes Prepared By Supercritical Carbon Dioxide And Conventional Methods., Sanaz Abbaszadegan

Theses

Saffron (Crocus sativus. Linn) has attracted much attention over the last decade because it has a large number of potent and biologically active compounds such as crocin, crocetin, picrocrocin and safranal. Researchers have shown that safranal has high antioxidant and cytotoxicity activities against several types of tumour cells (e.g., hepatocellular carcinoma) both in-vitro and in-vivo. However, the low aqueous solubility of safranal prevents using it as a therapeutic or preventive agent.

β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) inclusion complexes are being used in pharmaceutical applications to alter physicochemical properties (e.g., solubility, volatility, stability, chemical reactivity, and bio-availability) of poorly water soluble drugs. Thus the …

Framework For Near Real Time Feature Detection From The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly Images Of The Solar Dynamics Observatory, Santosh Suresh

Theses

The study of the variability of the solar corona and the monitoring of its traditional regions (Coronal Holes, Quiet Sun and Active Regions) are of great importance in astrophysics as well as in view of the Space Weather applications. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) provides high resolution images of the sun imaged at different wavelengths at a rate of approximately one every 10 seconds, a great resource for solar monitoring . Today, the process of identifying features and estimating their properties is applied manually in an iterative fashion to verify the detection results. We …

Recurring Side-Chain Triads In Monomeric Enzymatic Structures, Mikhail Osipovitch

Theses

An algorithm was developed to exhaustively screen monomeric enzymatic structures for recurring 3-residue side-chain arrangements. The algorithm was used in the screening of two datasets: 100 enzymatic structures with a recurring 3-residue active site, and 100 enzymatic structures with a unique 3-residue active site. In each structure, the algorithm considered all distinct side-chain triads that can be compiled from the entire complement of residues in a single isolated chain. Increasing chain length demonstrated a logarithmic growth in the number of recurring triads. The distribution of total distances in recurring triads adhered to normality while the distribution of unique triad distances …

Silence So Loud, Qian Li

Theses

In this thesis I will examine the relationship between dolls and human beings through a series of oil paintings and installations that involve the arrangement of canvases and small, three dimensional figures. The dolls that I paint are a metaphor for how humans interact. I also have incorporated language into the paintings. By lining up paintings of the dolls to "say" several short statements, each mouth on a doll's face is formed to represent part of a spoken word. Although the dolls attempt to say something, silence still remains. In the following document my childhood influence, and struggle of transforming …

Responsive Website Design For First Unitarian Church And Louis Kahn, Chen Zhang

Theses

Responsive Website Design for First Unitarian Church and Louis Kahn is a thesis project for Master Degree of Fine Arts in Computer Graphics Design program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This thesis project is to design a responsive website for the First Unitarian Church, a website which has three user experiences: a desktop site, tablet site and a mobile site. The website audience is architecture or design students, professors, and enthusiasts. There are three objectives in this thesis project: first, to design a responsive website for cross-platform experience for users; second, to provide users a real digital visiting experience …

An Assessment Of Worldview-2 Imagery For The Classification Of A Mixed Deciduous Forest, Nahid Carter

Theses

Remote sensing provides a variety of methods for classifying forest communities and can be a valuable tool for the impact assessment of invasive species. The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) infestation of ash trees (Fraxinus) in the United States has resulted in the mortality of large stands of ash throughout the Northeast. This study assessed the suitability of multi-temporal Worldview-2 multispectral satellite imagery for classifying a mixed deciduous forest in Upstate New York. Training sites were collected using a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, with each training site consisting of a single tree of a corresponding class. Six classes were …

Whole-Transciptome Analysis Of [Psi+] Budding Yeast Via Cdna Microarrays, Jared Carter

Theses

Introduction: Prions of yeast present a novel analytical challenge in terms of both initial characterization and in vitro manipulation as models for human disease research. Presently, few robust analysis strategies have been successfully implemented which enable the efficient study of prion behavior in vivo. This study sought to evaluate the utilization of conventional dual-channel cDNA microarrays for the surveillance of transcriptomic regulation patterns by the [PSI+] yeast prion relative to an identical prion deficient yeast variant, [psi-]. Methods: A data analysis and normalization workflow strategy was developed and applied to cDNA array images, yielded quality-regulated expression ratios for a subset …

Monitoring The Natural Processing Of Organic Carbon And Phenols In Selective Wetlands Within Monroe County, Ny, Muhammad Rubaiyat

Theses

Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) is one of the largest active organic carbon reservoirs formed from processes that break down terrestrial/aquatic matter and released from plant roots as exudates. In watersheds, DOC is continuously transported and processed through rivers, streams and lakes. DOC is present in wetlands around Monroe County, New York; in areas that function as groundwater recharge, stormwater retention, nutrient retention and habitats for wildlife. The conducted research was an initial step towards a more thorough understanding of DOC's processing, especially in regard to its phenolic content, in small urban/sub-urban wetlands in Monroe County, NY. DOC and phenol concentrations …

Computational Modeling Of Human Dorsal Pathway For Motion Processing, Yuheng Wang

Theses

Reliable motion estimation in videos is of crucial importance for background iden- tification, object tracking, action recognition, event analysis, self-navigation, etc. Re- constructing the motion field in the 2D image plane is very challenging, due to variations in image quality, scene geometry, lighting condition, and most importantly, camera jit- tering. Traditional optical flow models assume consistent image brightness and smooth motion field, which are violated by unstable illumination and motion discontinuities that are common in real world videos.

To recognize observer (or camera) motion robustly in complex, realistic scenarios, we propose a biologically-inspired motion estimation system to overcome issues posed …

An Sir Approach To Modeling Business Interactions In A Marketplace, Jessica R. Beiter

Theses

As interest in online coupons from distributors like Groupon and Living Social have grown, eBay has proposed and built a marketplace. This marketplace is called eBay Local. It is a place where local merchants can post coupons that distributors can bid on the right to publish. Based on some initial data, we have built a model to t and predict the growth of this marketplace. The influence of salesmen and organic growth convert potential merchants into active members of the marketplace posting their goods and services. We have modeled the recruitment and retention of businesses within the marketplace, based on …

Natural Resource Management Knows No Bounds: A Case Study Of The Cache River Joint Venture Partnership, Jennifer Ann Behnken

Theses

In southern Illinois, multiple state, federal, and private ownerships are implementing various management tactics in the Cache River watershed. Although some aspects are coordinated under the Cache River Joint Venture Partnership (CRJVP), individual agencies and entities retain specific ownership priorities and approaches to management. This case study explores how agency/organizational characteristics and interrelations affect land management decision-making among land managers employed by federal agencies, state agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five participants, including land managers, staff members who maintain active participation with on-the-ground activities, and individuals who have worked closely with CRJVP. Triangulation of interview transcriptions, …

Effect Of Substrate Composition On Microbial Diversity And Efficiency Of In Situ Pilot-Scale Passive Sulfate-Reducing Bioreactors Treating Acid Mine Drainage, Charles Wayne Pugh

Theses

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is an environmental problem of a global scale. Passive remediation strategies utilizing the metabolism of sulfate-reducing bacteria have emerged as promising options for the mitigation of impacted AMD sites. In order to test the effect of varying complex and simple carbon sources on AMD remediation efficiency, pilot-scale bioreactors were constructed and exposed to AMD in situ over a ten-month period. Geochemical analyses suggested that the efficiency of AMD remediation depended more on the seasonal weather patterns of Southern Illinois, USA than the substrate composition of each bioreactor. Enrichment cultures targeting sulfate-reducing organisms yielded several isolates most …

Socioeconomic Status And Social Class As Predictors Of Career Adaptability And Educational Aspirations In High School Students, Alec Eshelman

Theses

This study examined socioeconomic status (SES) and perceived social class as predictors of career adaptability and educational aspirations in a sample of American high school students. SES was measured using caregivers' occupation and education, and the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status--Youth Version (Goodman et al., 2001) assessed subjective social class. Career adaptability was be measured using the Career Futures Inventory-Revised (CFI-R; Rottinghaus, Buelow, Matyja, & Schneider, 2012) and the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI) Form C (Savickas & Porfeli, 2011). Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regressions. SES and perceived social class independently predicted educational aspirations and expectations, while SES …

"Oh, You Are An Exception!" Academic Success And Black Male Students Resistance To Systemic Racism, Lacharles Travell Ward

Theses

This study theorizes how Black male students narrate their experiences at a traditionally White institution (TWI). To date, research focusing on Black men in higher education highlights the continual struggles of Black men against racism (Feagin, Vera, & Imani, 1996; Harper, 2006, 2009, 2012; Smith, Yosso, & Solórzano, 2007); however, what remains to be extensively theorized is Black male academic excellence. Thus, I argue that it is vital to progressively broaden what we know about Black male students as intellectuals. In this study I forefront how Black male students articulate their intellectual identities and educational experiences on a traditionally White …