Digital Commons Network^™

The Understudy, Linda Denise Harris

Theses

This story is a first person true account of love and loss between two sisters. The sisters are separated by seven years and other siblings, yet the bond formed in childhood is strengthened through the trials and tribulations of life. When the older sibling learns that she has terminal cancer she wants her sister by her side.

From the perspective of the younger sister, the story weaves from past to present, back and forth, as each substantial scene unfolds. Through her eyes, the younger sibling sheds light on the early years and the reader learns what it was like growing …

Upon Wakening, Joan M. Lovelace

Theses

Upon awakening is a memoir essay that details the free fall from my prime into the disease of addiction, which took everything from me but the one thing I willingly would have given: my life. Instead, alcoholism dragged me on a horrifying public journey that began in a secret place in my mind.

At first, only I knew the trouble I was in, as I began drinking from the liquor bottles in the wet bar of our home. As my craving for booze grew beyond my control, I lost my career as a television journalist, my self-respect, my dignity and …

Eternal Note Of Sadness, Pyra Intihar

Theses

This collection of poems and short stories is an attempt to answer what Matthew Arnold calls "the eternal note of sadness." The thesis contains poems, two short stories, and one personal narrative. While each of these can be read with different interpretive slants, I choose here to show how each work in this collection is a response to the eternal note of sadness. The poems and personal narrative in the first part of this collection are concerned with the writer's quest, and l will go into depth discussing each of these poems and the narrative because I think they directly …

Petals And Mortar, Amanda Rose Bramley

Theses

The stories in this collection focus on the little, almost insignificant symbols that appear in our daily lives. People, in general, don't notice how certain objects gravitate toward us. The symbols in my life and in my writing appear in places and forms unexpected: a bird outside of a windowsill, flowers that grow by themselves in our backyards, a scarf purchased at a discount store, domino tiles in a common game. How easy it is to take pieces of our lives for granted. They can, for many, hold an almost transcendental power. They provide landmarks for the steps we choose …

Parental Absence, Benjamin Brainsby

Theses

The two short stories presented herein feature wildly different narratives operating under a common thematic umbrella; absent fathers.

While not always the central focus of the narrative, or the principle motivation of the protagonists, the fathers' absence in both stories casts a long shadow that defines their sense of happiness. Characters in both_ stories suffer from a feeling of incompleteness that is rooted in the longing for the absent father.

1n both cases the father's absence is beyond the protagonist's control and as such they must react to the affect it has on their lives and the situations that it, …

Cochlear Implants In The Deaf Community: Current Circumstances Of Cochlear Implant Users Among The Deaf Youth In Sweden’S Educational System, Christopher Samp

Theses

Sweden has maintained an environment of equal opportunities and inclusive disability policies for its citizens. In Swedish education, a bilingualism method of Swedish Sign Language and spoken Swedish is used in teaching deaf children. The cochlear implant device is considered an advanced form of hearing technology and is used with deaf youth to assist with speech development. Several medical experts and researchers support the language development theory that there is a "critical period" for a deaf person to acquire natural language and speech development at a young age. Some experts believe that in order to achieve this language acquisition of …

Development Of A Three-Axis Mems Accelerometer, Jacob Leveto

Theses

While originally developed to deploy air bags for the automotive industry, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) based accelerometers have found their way into everything from video game controllers to cells phones. As prices drop and capabilities improve, it is expected that the use of accelerometers will further expand in the coming years. Accelerometers currently have the second highest MEMS sales volume, trailing only pressure sensors [1]. In this work several single and three-axis accelerometers are designed, fabricated, and tested under a variety of conditions. The designed accelerometers are all based off of the piezoresistive effect, where the value of a resistor changes …

Re-Evaluating California’S Greenhouse Gas Emission Law: Is It Rational Under The Current Economic Situation?, Hassan Algadi

Theses

This research evaluates the impact of the economic recession on the California Air Resource Board (CARB) strategy for reducing current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles. The principle potential contribution of this work is that it evaluated whether the rationale behind the CARB strategy is or is not valid under the current, unanticipated economic recession.

Unified Communications: The Search For Roi Through Tomorrow’S Business Communication Solutions, Vincent Puglia

Theses

The traditional workplace is evolving; the way in which businesses communicate today is different than it was in the past and yet is likely to change again in the future. The current state of the economy and globalization has forced every organization to review its future business plans and cut costs everywhere including communications. Organizations are seeking out technology in hopes of finding new ways to reduce their bottom-line communication costs. Today, many enterprise business infrastructures are comprised of separate networks - voice, data, and mobile - yet most of the time these networks never interact. The ability to link …

Automatic Object Detection And Tracking In Video, Isaac Case

Theses

One ability of the human visual system is the ability to identify and track moving objects. Examples of this can easily be seen in any sporting event. Humans are able to find an object in motion and track its current path and even predict a trajectory based on its current motion. Computer vision systems exist that are able to track an object in video, but usually these systems need to be instructed what the object to track is. As a way to further the work done by these computer vision systems, I present two additions to the work in the …

Segmentation Of Slap Fingerprints, Derek Johnson

Theses

This thesis describes a novel algorithm that segments the individual fingerprints in a multi-print image. The algorithm identifies the distal phalanx portion of each finger that appears in the image and labels them as an index, middle, little or ring finger. The accuracy of this algorithm is compared with the publicly-available reference implementation, NFSEG, part of the NIST Biometric Image Software (NBIS) suite developed at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The comparison is performed over large set of fingerprint images captured from unique individuals.

Scene Classification Using Spatial Pyramid Matching And Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes, Haohui Yin

Theses

The goal of scene classification is to automatically assign a scene image to a semantic category (i.e. "building" or "river") based on analyzing the visual contents of this image. This is a challenging problem due to the scene images' variability, ambiguity, and a wide range of illumination or scale conditions that may apply. On the contrary, it is a fundamental problem in computer vision and can be used to guide other processes such as image browsing, contentbased image retrieval and object recognition by providing contextual information. This thesis implemented two scene classification systems: one is based on Spatial Pyramid Matching …

Manipulation Of Elections By Minimal Coalitions, Christopher Connett

Theses

Social choice is the study of the issues arising when a population of individuals attempts to combine its views with the objective of determining a collective policy. Recent research in artificial intelligence raises concerns of articial intelligence agents applying computational resources to attack an election. If we think of voting as a way to combine honest preferences, it would be undesirable for some voters cast ballots that differ from their true preferences and achieve a better result for themselves at the expense of the general social welfare. Such an attack is called manipulation. The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem holds that all reasonable …

Service Innovation Framework, John Timmerman

Theses

The purpose of this study is to identify critical success factors and important approaches that service companies can utilize in the design of products, services, and programs. It is common for service companies to have design teams that are responsible for facilitating the innovation process. However, these design teams might not benefit from a systematic training and knowledge transfer process. Therefore, it is important to translate critical success factors and important approaches into a model that will serve as a common framework for both training and facilitating the innovation process. Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches were utilized in this …

Exploration Of The Effect Of Surface Roughness On Heat Transfer In Microscale Liquid Flow, Nicholas M. Schneider

Theses

As technology provides smaller devices with greater heat dissipation needs, microfludic systems become essential. The scale of device architecture causes concerns to arise that were previously not an issue. The results of manufacturing processes, such as roughness structures on machined surfaces, now play a significant role in transport phenomena. This study takes an analytical and experimental approach to understanding the fundamental heat transfer process in rectangular channels with artificially roughened walls. Steady, incompressible, fully developed liquid flow is modeled with lubrication theory to develop an expression for the fully developed Nusselt number. The heat transfer performance of the small aspect …

Scanning Acoustic Microscopy For Gdl Water Distribution Characterization, Christopher Mcdade

Theses

The objective of this research was to identify and apply possible acoustic imaging techniques for water transport studies in PEM fuel cell diffusion mediums. To accomplish this, a scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) was designed and built along with dedicated control and analysis software to implement all investigative tests and scans. The results of the study were in two parts, acoustic response characterization of the fibrous material and implementation of the developed imaging technique for water saturation distribution characterization. Having used a focused 30MHz centered wide band transducer with focal point FWHM beam diameter of 90 microns the target material ensured …

Family Reunion, Carly Miller

Theses

This thesis, Family Reunion examines notions of family heritage, collection, and intimacy through the use of photographic portraiture. I observe the ways in which large format photography contributes to a larger photographic endeavor involving time and travel to investigate family relationships and genealogy. The thesis also addresses how American culture acquires, records, stores, preserves, displays, and passes on family photographs. Familial objects either preserve or lose meaning as they are passed down through generations. Family Reunion emphasizes the collection of images we preserve to record and represent our familial history, while addressing both personal and cultural significance between the need …

No Space Left Behind, Joseph Imbasciano

Theses

A unique storage problem occurred in the College of Science at RIT. A need for additional centralized storage was needed, but there were no additional resources allocated for centralized infrastructure. However, there was an abundance of free disk space on the lab computers that existed within the college. After calculating the total amount of hard disk space for each lab, it was found that there was approximately 36 terabytes of unused disk space per lab. The challenge was how does one utilize this space, yet still maintain reliability and availability of files? This thesis describes the development of a proof …

Dynamic Fault Tolerant Grid Workflow In The Water Threat Management Project, Young Suk Moon

Theses

Achieving fault tolerance is an inevitable problem in distributed systems, with it becoming more challenging in decentralized, heterogeneous, and dynamic-environment systems such as a Grid. When deploying applications requires time-criticality, how to allocate resources for jobs in a fault-tolerant manner is an important issue for the delivery of the services. The Water Threat Management project is a research to find solutions for the contamination incidents problems in urban water distribution systems, and it involves the development of the cyberinfrastructure in a Grid environment. To handle such urgent events properly, the deployment of the system demands real-time processing without the failure. …

Time Delay And Its Effect In A Virtual Lab Created Using Cloud Computing, Juan Nunez

Theses

The emergence of Cloud Computing, as a model of virtualized physical resources and virtualized infrastructure, offers the opportunity of outsourcing the implementation of a Virtual Lab Manager. Virtual Lab Management has come to be considered the Holy Grail in the deployment and administration of Labs created in a Virtual Environment. With the advent of Cloud Computing new opportunities are developing that promise to cover much of the future in Virtual Labs. Designing network and information labs with real equipment and tools does not make sense from a cost benefit standpoint, as hardware gets obsolete in a short gap of time, …

Creating Local Networks In The Cloud, José R. Sánchez E.

Theses

The resources and services offered by cloud computing platforms have been opening new alternatives of expansion to several research areas. The cloud computing platform applications to the educative area have been creating interest in different educative organizations. This thesis proposes the use of the Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform to build networking laboratories for the computational and networking educative areas. Within this paper, several options are evaluated in order to fulfill this objective. The final proposed design introduces a practical scenario for networking laboratories. Future enhancements of the final design are proposed.

Necessity Of Implementing Electronic Personal Health Information Privacy Regulation In Dominican Republic, Miguel Molina

Theses

The use of technology has increased considerably in the Dominican Republic in the past years. All public and private organizations have started a process of digitize all information they manage. The health area is not away from this process and hence they have started to use personal health records in a digital format. However, the management given to this information is not regulated by any law in the DR. Doctors, medical centers, health assurance companies and patients treat this data as they want without any control which represents a huge privacy risk for patients in the country. During our investigation …

Students’ Satisfaction When Using A Remote Virtual Lab Based On Amazon Ec2 For Networking Courses At Pucmm, Kenny Díaz Jorge

Theses

This thesis compared the students' level of satisfaction when using a remote virtual lab based on Amazon EC2 for networking courses at PUCMM, versus using the existing traditional laboratories. For this study junior and senior students were chosen from Systems Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering programs at PUCMM from two laboratories subjects: Operating Systems Lab I and Data Switching Lab. These lab subjects include certain number of laboratory practices during the whole class period. For this research, only one laboratory practice was evaluated (physically vs. virtually) in each subject. The rest of the laboratory practices were done as usual (physically) in …

How Does The Power Crisis Problem Affect Data Management In The Dominican Republic, José Raúl Vélez Díaz

Theses

In the last decade, the Dominican Republic has been affected by a power crisis nation wide. In 2008, the crisis reached a deficit of 40% in the generation of power; and the problem seems to go on as no agreement is executed to solve it. The problem is originated from the lack of efficiency of many generators, and debts with the generators companies. An important aspect of the power crisis is the challenge to provide power quality to electronic equipment. Data management can be affected by this problem whenever there is data corruption or lost, and devices are damaged. Data …

Gaining System Access Through Information Obtained In Web 2.0 Sites, Arsenio Guzmán

Theses

Along with growth of the internet in recent years, a related phenomenon is also growing: the complaints by internet users that their accounts have been hacked by others. What are the reasons behind this? Are those hackers really that good that they can find out our passwords and almost magically gain access to our systems? This project focuses on the ways in which personal information is propagated by users on the Internet by web 2.0 sites like social networks as well as on the problems inherited by password reset methods, which are how we inadvertently provide others with easy access …

The Development And Deployment Of A Remote Virtual Lab Based On Amazon Cloud For Networking Courses, Emilio Nunez

Theses

Remote virtual laboratories had been implemented using different approaches. Universities have adopted such model mostly for the distance learners. Furthermore, such systems have been implemented internally and used in conjunction with their physical hands-on labs. Nevertheless, the introduction of Cloud Computing and the virtual platform environment offered by it can serves for the creation of new type of services. This thesis aims to use this new technology and develop a remote virtual laboratory that can be used by students for doing their hands-on lab in the networking courses at PUCMM. For this purpose the services used were the Amazon Elastic …

Evaluation Of Privacy Assurance Methods And Guideline Development: Implications For Dr’S Higher Education Institutions, Noe Luzon

Theses

This project evaluates the actual mechanism of privacy assurance in the Dominican Republic's Higher Education institutions towards a standardization process. International regulations and type codes such as U.S Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and Spain Castilla's University de La-Mancha conduct code for personal data protection have been examined in order to obtain a ground for comparing and evaluating Dominican Republic's higher education privacy assurance methods. The evaluation of the Dominican Republic's actual higher education was developed through investigation of the different processes and procedures that people who are responsible of the students personal data, follow to achieve their …

Data Privacy: Legal And Business Malpractice, Gulmira Zhavgasheva

Theses

While banking system of Kazakhstan has been reformed during the past two decades to transition to the international standards, privacy of financial information seems to be left neglected. With the advent of the technological era and, hence, the rapid growth of computer crime, privacy of financial information has become a primary necessity in the context of relationship between financial institutions and their customers. However, collecting, storing, processing and transferring such data raises issues regarding security and privacy of customer's data. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the extent, to which privacy of credit card and cardholder data was …

Service Level Agreement In Virtualized Environment, Steven Sanchez Fermin

Theses

The Service Level Agreement is a process of negotiation in which the business (Managers, IT staff) and customers establish a common understanding about services, priorities and responsibilities. The purpose of this project is to analyze which metrics of physical environment can be used to recommend optimized Service Level Agreements for virtual environment. For the Analysis of this project, an enterprise-class hypervisor VMware ESXi and the tools VSphere Client, Solarwinds Engineer's Toolset and PRTG Network Monitor are used to make a virtual laboratory. The results showed the aspects to take into consideration to make and guaranty the most favorable Service Level …

Proposed Standards And Best Practices For Technological Infrastructure At Contact Centers In The Dominican Republic, Patricia Ortiz Suárez

Theses

The Contact Center industry in the Dominican Republic has experienced a considerable and fast growth in the last years. The main focus of this industry has been offering services to companies located outside the country. One notorious problem is the lack of written documentation in regards to general requirements needed to set up a Contact Center in the territory. The objective of this research is the presentation of a set of proposed standards and best practices for requirements of Technological Infrastructure for Contact Centers located in the Dominican Republic. These standards and best practices have been developed considering the needs …