Digital Commons Network^™

Fundamentals Of The Network Neutrality Debates, Tayfun Uslu

Theses

The Network Neutrality debate is a complicated one because of the dramatic impact of networks, mainly the Internet, on people’s lives. Therefore, concepts like innovation, decentralized networks, social and political aspects need to be analyzed to have a better understanding of the fundamentals of the debate.

Securing Tuple Space: Secure Ad Hoc Group Communication Using Pki, Kyle Morse

Theses

Secure group communication in an ad hoc network is a largely unexplored research area. Currently available key exchange protocols were not designed to be implemented in an ad hoc network where nodes sporadically enter and leave the group. This project explores establishing secure group communication in an ad hoc network through public key infrastructure. Public key infrastructure (PKI) provides a framework for establishing and authenticating secure communication between users. A trusted certificate authority (CA) generates an identifying token, or certificate, for an authorized user. The certificate contains the user's public key and other identifying information and is digitally signed by …

Fouling In Silicon Microchannel Designs Used For Ic Chip Cooling And Its Mitigation, Jeffrey L. Perry

Theses

Particulate fouling studies with alumina and silica dispersions were performed in silicon, rectangular microchannels having hydraulic diameters between 220-225 μm. The particulates used ranged from the colloidal size range up to tens of microns in size (for particle aggregates). Data show for the most part the absence of particle depositions within the microchannels. This is even the case when there is an electrostatic attraction between the particles and the microchannel surface. The primary reason for this is due to the high wall shear stress at the microchannel walls. In contrast, the headers for the microchannels are quite susceptible to particulate …

Accountability For Mental Health Counseling In Schools, Catherine Ann Lesio

Theses

Accountability has become an important concept in school-based mental health because students face many social and emotional issues that demand highly effective interventions (Repie, 2005). This study examined the data of a survey that was conducted with 147 members of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) regarding their counseling practices in the schools. The results indicated that a majority of NASP members only “sometimes” use pre and post measures with their counseling cases. A Stepwise Regression showed one significant predictor for the use of progress monitoring through pre and post measures in counseling – the more prepared for counseling …

Assessing Executive Functioning In Children With A Hearing Loss, Elizabeth Oberg

Theses

This study examined a variety of executive functioning assessment methods with a group of deaf children. The relationship between parent/teacher reports of 22 deaf and hard of hearing students' executive functioning, students' performance on cognitive tests and students' performance on selected achievement domains was studied. The findings showed significant positive correlations (p<.01) between the parent/teacher Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) on six of the eight clinical scales. Secondly, there were significantly positive correlations between the parent/teacher BRIEF reports and the students' scores on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the (Children's) Color Trails Test and the Woodcock- Johnson: Writing Fluency subtest. Lastly the importance of considering etiology when assessing deaf children was examined. Students with genetic deafness were rated as significantly different (p<.05) on BRIEF scales and performed significantly different on select student measures than students with other causes of deafness.

Student's Perception Of School Climate, Jodi L. Roberts

Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate student's perception of school climate in the middle school. More specifically, this study examined school climate as it relates to student's academic achievement, attendance, and disciplinary referrals. Participants consisted of 29 females and 14 males in grades 6th, 7th, and 8th and their parents from a rural middle school located in upstate New York. School climate was measured using the Student version of the Yale Child Study School Development Program, School Climate Survey-Revised Version (Emmons, Haynes, & Comer, 2002). Parents reported on their child's school performance. Data analysis consisted of a One …

The Analysis Of Potential Space Tourism Market, Sandra Sankovic

Theses

In December of 2004, RIT Professor C.J. Wallington and students in the space tourism development course (winter 2004/ 2005) conducted a space tourism market survey. The target markets for these surveys were comprised of acquaintances (including family) of RIT students who took the space tourism course. Professor Wallington was interested in finding out if the student's families, friends, and acquaintances would want to take a space trip. The survey was comprised of twenty-one questions that focused on gathering demographic information, knowledge of and interest in zero-gravity, suborbital flights, and low earth orbit habitats. The results of this survey were never …

Creative Problem Solving Through Methods Of Collaborative Improvisation, Alex J. Girard

Theses

The field of graphic design is an inherently creative and collaborative endeavor. The design process itself can involve a range of people and variables that are brought together for the purpose of creation through a forum of influence, exchange and teamwork. This thesis will study problem solving processes in a variety of settings, the role of parameters and constraints, and their effects on the evolution of creativity, particularly focusing on solutions that are responses to the predefined context in which they are created. One of the major goals of this thesis is to infuse the graphic design approach to problem …

Vision Based Localization Of Mobile Robots, Jason Mooberry

Theses

Mobile robotics is an active and exciting sub-field of Computer Science. Its importance is easily witnessed in a variety of undertakings from DARPA's Grand Challenge to NASA's Mars exploration program. The field is relatively young, and still many challenges face roboticists across the board. One important area of research is localization, which concerns itself with granting a robot the ability to discover and continually update an internal representation of its position. Vision based sensor systems have been investigated [8,22,27], but to much lesser extent than other popular techniques [4,6,7,9,10]. A custom mobile platform has been constructed on top of which …

The Synthesis And Characterization Of A Novel Single Source Beta-Barium Borate Precursor Barium (18-Crown-6) Dimesitylborinate, Travis M. Scott

Theses

Nonlinear optical materials are a rapidly growing market and are expected to exceed $1.6 billion by 2009. Significant time, energy, and investment have been applied to increasing the efficiency of producing NLO materials. Of these materials beta-barium borate has stood out as an important NLO product. The goal of this research was the development of a novel beta-barium precursor suitable for applications in thin film technology. Special attention was paid towards development of a precursor suitable for metal organic chemical vapor deposition. To that end special attention was paid towards the synthesis of a mononuclear barium compound. The novel BBO …

Displacement, Lila Mandzyk

Theses

Not Included

Parental Perceptions Of School Climate And Middle School Students' Performance, Christine Demart

Theses

This research study explored the relationship between parental perceptions of school climate and middle school students' academic and social success. In particular, this study investigated what specific school climate factors may have the greatest impact on students' academic achievement, disciplinary referrals, and school attendance.

Synthesis Of Transition Metal - Carbon Nanotube Hybrid Materials, Jamie E. Ellis

Theses

In this thesis research, three novel methodologies have been examined for their use in the synthesis of transition metal - carbon nanotube hybrid materials. These newly synthesized materials were assessed as catalysts in various heterogeneous catalysis reactions, including Fischer Tropsch synthesis, the Sabatier reaction, and the Reverse Water Gas Shift reaction. Specifically, this research was aimed at evaluating the relationship between particle size, support material, and activity of the metal-centerednanotube hybrid catalysts as compared to more traditional heterogeneous catalysts. Efforts were centered on establishing the conditions needed to obtain the optimum metal crystallite size deposited on the nanotube support, as …

Seating For Communicating, Myung Taek Jung

Theses

Not listed.

The Manta Project: Conception, Implementation, And Reflections On A Cable Array Robot And Its Interfaces, Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Theses

We have created and flown a cable array robot based flying sculpture. This sculp ture, in its various versions, flew in both Rochester, New York and London, England. This thesis both explores the construction of the flying sculpture and presents a pub lished paper wherein an Human-Robotic Interaction design space is proposed to facilitate discussion of robotic interfaces.

Tum Tum Yum Yum, Nongyao Moon Krapugthong

Theses

Not included

Identification And Ranking Of Relevant Image Content, Mustafa I. A. Jaber

Theses

The work in this thesis proposes an image understanding algorithm for automatically identifying and ranking different image regions into several levels of importance. Given a color image, specialized maps for classifying image content namely: weighted similarity, weighted homogeneity, image contrast and memory color maps are generated and combined to provide a perceptual importance map. Further analysis of this map yields a region ranking map which sorts the image content into different levels of significance.

The algorithm was tested on a large database that contains a variety of color images. Those images were acquired from the Berkeley segmentation dataset as well …

Artfully Concealed, Athesia V. Benjamin

Theses

The following document is a summary of the development of my work during two years in the MFA painting program at Rochester Institute of Technology. The process intrinsic to thesis development eventually brought me to my final concept of obscuring my identity as a way to develop a body of figurative paintings. Along with the eleven pieces created during this two-year period, I have thoroughly studied this specific topic within the context of contemporary and historical art and identified artists with like concepts and images.

Ieee Compliant Double-Precision Fpu And 64-Bit Alu With Variable Latency Integer Divider, Ryan D. Williams

Theses

Together the arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and floating-point unit (FPU) perform all of the mathematical and logic operations of computer processors. Because they are used so prominently, they fall in the critical path of the central processing unit - often becoming the bottleneck, or limiting factor for performance. As such, the design of a high-speed ALU and FPU is vital to creating a processor capable of performing up to the demanding standards of today's computer users.

In this paper, both a 64-bit ALU and a 64-bit FPU are designed based on the reduced instruction set computer architecture. The ALU performs …

Beetle Blasphemy, Ferris Webby

Theses

A descriptive narration of a project to create a 3D animated short comedy film, "Beetle Blasphemy," featuring a beetle who believes himself to be the Messiah. Includes original proposal, timeline, budget, original script, original storyboards, and film stills.

Communication Issues And Processes At The Rit Inn And Conference Center, Wayne J. Pater

Theses

This study focuses on communication issues at The RIT Inn and Conference Center, (the Inn). Effective communication is crucial to nearly everything. Communication is the learned skill that makes the difference between an average organization and a great one. A great organization's management can fully engage staff in operations at a company that achieves maximum efficiency (Williford, 2002).

This study is important because it will identify the root causes of communication gaps between management and staff. In addition, it will identify problems related to disconnects between service staff and management that have caused several service recovery issues. These disconnects may …

Identification Of Trans-Splicing Sites In Leishmania Major Using Probabilistic Methods, Lukas Habegger

Theses

Leishmania major, a member of the Kinetoplastida family, is a primitive protozoan that causes a human disease, called leishmaniases, affecting numerous people worldwide. The identification of new drug targets to combat leishmaniases necessitates a thorough understanding of how genomic instructions are transformed into functional proteins. It requires not only the prediction and categorization of all the genes, but also a profound understanding of their regulation. Much of gene regulation may occur through a process known as frarcs-splicing. Trans-splicing, which is mechanistically similar to cissplicing, is the process of cleaving a large polycistronic transcript into smaller monocistronic components.

The goal of …

Performance Evaluation Of Extended Sparse Linearization In Gf(2) And Gf(28), Tigin Kaptanoglu

Theses

XSL (eXtended Sparse Linearization) is a recent algebraic attack aimed at the Advanced Encryption Standard. In order to shed some light into the behavior of the algorithm, which is largely unknown, we have studied XSL on equation systems with variables interpreted either as bits or bytes. The algorithm solves byte-systems much faster than it does bit-systems, which promts us to suggest that if a more compact representation of equation systems can be found, such as one where the variables are 8-byte blocks, or even a more generalized form of 8n-byte blocks, it may be possible to increase the speed of …

Effective Approaches To Minimize The Problem Of Pharmaceuticals And Other Personal Care Products In The Environment, Papun Pramanick

Theses

Studies have shown that pharmaceuticals and other personal care products (PPCPs) are present in the environment, especially in water, due to different human activities. Some of these compounds are toxic to our eco-system. Although there is no evidence of adverse human health effect from the presence of PPCPs in the environment to date , some adverse effects on aquatic life cycle already have been found. Therefore, protecting our environment as well as human health from adverse effect(s) of PPCPs is a growing concern. The objective of this thesis work was to collect information about the principal approaches available to pharmaceutical …

Using Eye Tracking To Understand Banner Blindness And Improve Website Design, Chad Lapa

Theses

Banners, as a form of advertising on the web, are important for businesses. Conversely customers want to navigate the site without being distracted by irrelevant or annoying ads. Design and placement of banners is not well understood and "banner blindness", which occurs when users overlook the banner entirely, is what causes the ineffectiveness of the banner. This study employs eye tracking to investigate how banner background color and the banner’s relevance to users’ tasks influence banner blindness. Eye movements were collected for users performing several tasks and viewing banners in a task-free context. Different banners were counterbalanced with task order. …

Rook Polynomials For Chessboards Of Two And Three Dimensions, Benjamin Zindle

Theses

Not provided.

How Ehs Managers Can Influence Environmental Excellence Within Their Organization, Joseph Whitaker

Theses

The objective of this work is to evaluate the various management styles and systems applicable to the Environmental, Health, and Safety ('EHS') profession; furthermore, it will present ways in which managers will discover how to understand and evaluate projects from a 'business' point of view, allowing them to compete within their organization for capital and human resources. ... This paper will also discuss various evaluations used to ensure proper buy-in from management -- a process that will facilitate the allocation of human and financial resources to environment, health, and safety projects. The evaluation will focus on two primary elements. The …

Situational Awareness In The Marine Towing Industry, Boris Towns

Theses

Loss of situational awareness has been cited as the most common cause of accidents in the maritime industry. However, current research has not proven beneficial in determining the factors that underpin situational awareness. This study examined situational awareness among licensed captains and pilots of the inland towing industry. Twenty towboat captains, who operate on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) from New Orleans, LA to Houston, TX and who represented 16 towing vessel companies, were interviewed and participated in an integrated survey that explored fatigue, communication, dangerous drugs and alcohol, social stress, and mental workload. These factors were believed to have …

Point Seeking: A Family Of Dynamic Path Finding Algorithms, Andrew Fanton

Theses

In the field of Artificial Intelligence, calculating the best route from one point to another, known as “path finding,” has become a common problem. If an agent cannot effectively navigate through an environment – be it real or virtual – it will often not be able to perform even the most routine tasks. For example, a Martian rover can't collect samples if it can't get to them; meanwhile, a computer game is not much of a challenge if your opponents can't find their way around. The problem of path finding has three basic aspects: map representation, path generation, and locomotion. …

Visualization Analysis Of Astrophysics N-Bodied Problem Using Image Morphological Processing Techniques, Thomas J. Borrelli

Theses

This project’s primary goal is to detect points of interest within the output data resulting from running a simulation of the Astrophysics N-Bodied problem (GRAPEcluster). Morphological Image Processing techniques will be applied to the visualized data in order to detect areas of interest within the original data. Several Morphological Image Processing techniques will be used and the results compared in the analysis. The final output of the VRAD (Visualization of Raw Astrophysics Data) System will be two-fold: first, the VRAD system will output a text file that contains the x, y and z coordinates of each region of interest in …