Digital Commons Network^™

Consumer And Business Barriers To Household Food Waste Solutions, Jessica Oehman

Theses

An estimated 35.3 million tons of food waste are landfilled each year in the United States, causing negative environmental, economic, and social impacts and almost half of that waste is from households (US EPA, 2017). To meet EPA goals for landfill diversion of food waste, the material can be captured as a resource and re-used through methods such as composting. However, participation in household food waste collection programs is lacking; there is a need to understand the interplay between the individuals’ responsible for providing the waste stream and the pickup services providing the infrastructure to collect and manage the separated …

A Deep Learning-Based Pipeline To Generate Patient-Specific Anatomical Models Of The Heart Using Cardiac Mri, Roshan Reddy Upendra

Theses

Image-based patient-specific anatomical models of the heart have the potential to be used in a variety of clinical scenarios such as diagnosis and prognosis of various cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), including cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), ablation therapy, risk stratification, and minimally invasive cardiac interventions. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides images with high-resolution and superior soft tissue contrast, rendering it as the gold standard modality for imaging cardiac anatomy. To obtain meaningful information from such image-based personalized anatomical models of the heart, it is crucial to combine the geometric models of the cardiac chambers extracted from cine cardiac MRI and the …

Tourism, Mapping, Retail And Recreational Trails: A Case Study Of Connectivity Between Trails And Adjacent Downtowns In Anniston, Alabama, Usa, Jennifer Green

Theses

This study examines the estimated increase in economic impact on a geography’s local economy by creating cross-marketing efforts between expanding an established outdoor recreation trail to a closely located city downtown commerce district. This research will analyze the resulting potential rise in sales/lodging tax revenues for that city by mapping the trail and downtown district, and cross-marketing the other to users of both or either venue. Potential increase in economic impact will be estimated utilizing IMPLAN methodology by assessing the economic impact on the local economy that a percentage range of increased spending resulting from this cross-marketing effort could generate.

The Psychogeographic Relationship With Memories, Popular Music, And Identity: A Case Study From 1995-2022 Of The Grateful Dead, Margaret Lane Walton

Theses

This paper will explore sonic geography and its impact on human and cultural geography through popular music, specifically the Grateful Dead, from 1995 to 2022. This research focuses on the eventization of the band and popular music post-Jerry Garcia’s death, whereas previous research has focused primarily on the band from 1965 to 1995. The infamous psychedelic rock and roll band was widely known for the created and imagined communities that it forged over their 30-year run. Recent research on soundscapes and music’s role in the study of geography precipitated the need for more attention to music geography. This paper explores …

اﻟﺘﻌﻮﯾﺾ ﻋﻦ ﺗﻔﺎﻗﻢ اﻟﻀﺮر اﻟﺠﺴﺪي ﺑﻌﺪ ﺻﺪور اﻟﺤﻜﻢ اﻟﻨﮭﺎﺋﻲ (ﻓﻲ ﺿﻮء ﻗﺎﻧﻮن اﻟﻤﻌﺎﻣﻼت اﻟﻤﺪﻧﯿﺔ اﻻﺗﺤﺎدي رﻗﻢ 5 ﻟﺴﻨﺔ 1985 وﺗﻌﺪﯾﻼته), منى محمد البلوشي

Theses

Bodily harm is considered one of the most complex types of damages to estimate compensation for, as it affects the life, work, and livelihood of the injured person. Especially since the physical injury that remains from the harmful act may exacerbate in the future after the issuance of the final judgment in a manner that may not be foreseen by the judge or medical experience, whether in terms of the exacerbation of the harm itself and its constituent elements or in terms of the exacerbation of the harm's value due to currency fluctuations.

This study demonstrates the jurisprudential differences regarding …

A Microscopic Investigation Of Chemically Modified Membranes For Potential Oil Water Separation Applications, Latifa Rashed Al Nuaimi

Theses

Oil spills can have catastrophic impacts on both the environment and human society, an enormous oil spill known as the Deepwater Horizon Disaster happened in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 caused by an explosion of oil rig which started the catastrophe. It is achievable to reduce oil spills by developing and advancing technologies including gravity settling, centrifugation, gas flotation, coagulation, electrochemical, adsorption, and membrane filtration. There are many materials that can be used to form membranes, and each one has unique properties and advantages. The current study used the 3D printing porous membrane which is manufactured with an …

A Survey Of Qubit Routing Algorithms, Harrison Barnes

Theses

Before applications actually run on quantum hardware, the design of the quantum application and its pre-processing take place in the classical environment. Transforming a quantum circuit into a form that is able to run on quantum hardware, known as transpilation, is a crucial process in performing quantum experiments. Routing is a particularly important and computationally expensive part of the transpilation process. The routing process can alter a circuit’s accuracy, execution time, quantum gate count, and depth. Several routing algorithms exist that aim to optimize some portion of the routing process. There are many variables to consider when choosing an optimal …

Escaping Tradition: An Exploration Of Optimized Learning Environments, Mak W. Friery

Theses

This undergraduate interior design capstone research focuses on understanding how forward-thinking design approaches can improve student success and teacher effectiveness in the classroom environment. Addressing the ever-changing needs of students, this research investigates variables of classroom environments such as the impact of color, lighting, acoustics, technology, space planning, furniture, and biophilia. Understanding these factors in the classroom environment can inspire new approaches to design and class flexibility whilst positively impacting student learning outcomes, teacher effectiveness, and overall well-being.

This capstone research is conducted at a time of change within educational design approaches as they continually aim to determine which factors …

Investigating The Importance Of Non-Textual Caption Properties From Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Viewers' Perspective, Akhter Al Amin

Theses

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) viewers rely on captioning to perceive auditory information while watching live television programming. Captioning ensures that viewers can receive textual and non-textual information that is crucial to comprehend the content of the video. However, no research has investigated how non-textual properties of captioning, such as caption placement and the presentation of current speakers, influence DHH viewers’ ability to comprehend video content and their judgement of a captioned video’s quality. Thus, this work aims to understand the effect of non-textual properties of captioning on DHH viewers’ live captioned video watching experiences; these findings can inform a better …

The Interstellar Scintillation Of Psr J1614-2230, Lekshmi Rajagopal

Theses

Observations of the millisecond pulsar J1614-2230 as part of the NANOGrav 12.5 yr dataset were utilised to study the scintillation and interstellar medium along the line of sight of PSR J1614-2230. Modelling noise signals in pulsar line of sight allows for isolation of the raw signal and therefore more precise pulse period measurements. These are extremely useful in Pulsar Timing Arrays and in their potential to be used as cosmic detectors for the gravitational wave background. J1614 presented clear, distinguishable intensity variations in a long observation taken in March 2014 by B.J.Shapiro-Albert et al. (2020), which provided motivation to further …

Transmuting Tragedy: The Political Martyrdom Of The Executed Leaders Of The 1916 Easter Rising In Irish Visual Arts, Megan Howard

Theses

The Easter Rising of 1916 marked a defining moment in Irish history, as a group of Irish nationalists sought to overthrow British rule and establish an independent Irish Republic. While the rebellion was initially unsuccessful, it was a pivotal moment in Irish history that sparked a wave of national mourning and resistance following the execution of its leaders by the British government. Such a transition occurred with the careful and deliberate shaping of their legacy by their families with the aid of the Irish Catholic Church. This thesis explores the depiction of the executed leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising …

Content Analysis Of Activities Of The Emirati Science Textbooks For The Fifth Grade In Light Of Science Process Skills, Teba Abdulazeez Al-Faiadh

Theses

Similar to several other countries, the United Arab Emirates places a high value on the use of science textbooks in the process of teaching and learning science. Therefore, the content of science textbooks must always be evaluated and analyzed in light of scientific knowledge and skills. Providing science process skills in the activities of science textbooks is essential and has a significant role in pushing students toward balanced scientific knowledge because attention to skills is a tool that enables the student to succeed in understanding the nature of science. However, based on the literature, there is a scarcity of scientific …

Potential Of Flow Energy Reduction By Coral Reef: Hydrodynamic Analysis On Acropora Species, Faisal Karim

Theses

One of the most crucial components of the ocean ecology is coral reefs. Being environmentally sustainable, natural structures like coral reefs have recently drawn a lot of attention as a means of reducing the flow energy. The absence of scientific validations on the potential of coral reefs in reducing high-energy flow limits engineering applications of coral reefs to the benefit of civilization. In this research, extensive experimental studies were carried out to investigate the capabilities of coral reefs, to reduce high-energy flows. To determine the high-energy wave reduction by coral reefs, the coral roughness coefficient along with the coral structure …

An Analysis Of Heterogeneous Quantization Schemes For Neural Networks, Anusha Holavanahali

Theses

Quantization of neural network models is becoming a necessary step in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge. The quantization process reduces the precision of model parameters, thereby lowering memory and computational costs. However, in doing so, this process also limits the model’s representational capacity, which can alter both its performance on nominal inputs (clean accuracy) as well as its robustness to adversarial attacks (adversarial accuracy). Few researchers have explored these two metrics simultaneously in the context of quantized neural networks, leaving several open questions about the security and trustworthiness of AI algorithms implemented on edge devices. This research explores …

Automatic Text Simplification Tools To Provide Reading Assistance For Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Individuals, Oliver Alonzo

Theses

Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) consists of computing techniques to rewrite text to make it simpler to read and understand, and prior research has explored its use to provide reading assistance to various user groups who may benefit from reading support. Prior literacy research has identified great diversity in literacy skills among DHH adults, and prior computing accessibility research has identified benefits from providing ATS-based reading assistance to other user groups. Thus, while ATS holds promise to benefit DHH adults, little research has investigated the benefits from, interests in and preferences for such technologies among DHH adults. Thus, this work aims …

Unsupervised Progressive And Continual Learning Of Disentangled Representations, Zhiyuan Li

Theses

Unsupervised representation learning is an important task in machine learning that identifies and models underlying explanatory factors hidden in the observed data. In recent years, unsupervised representation learning has been attracting increasing attention for its abilities to improve interpretability, extract useful features without expert annotations, and enhance downstream tasks, which has been successful in many machine learning topics, such as Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, and Anomaly Detection. Unsupervised representation learning has many desirable abilities, including disentangling generative factors, generalization between different domains, and incremental knowledge accumulation. However, existing works had faced two critical challenges. First, the unsupervised representation learning …

System Integration Of Cstars: Cryogenic Star Tracking Attitude Regulation System, Matthew Klein

Theses

The Cryogenic Star Tracking Attitude Regulation System (CSTARS) utilizes a Scientific CMOS (sCMOS) CIS2521F image sensor operating at cryogenic temperatures (77K) to track stars. This is used aboard a sounding rocket for attitude control of the CIBER-2 experiment payload. Standard optical sensors used traditionally for astronomical observations, such as CCD’s, have a low responsivity at cryogenic temperatures. In contrast, CMOS sensors do not exhibit this issue. During flight, the CIBER-2 primary imaging sensors and CSTARS are co-boresighted to the same telescope, all of which are cooled down to cryogenic temperatures. The attitude feed- back provided by CSTARS ensures that CIBER-2 …

Representing Color As Multiple Independent Scales, Hao Xie

Theses

The concept of color space has served as a basis for vast scientific inquiries into the representation of color including colorimetry, psychology, and neuroscience. However, the ideal color space that can model both color appearance attributes and color difference as a uniform Euclidean space is still not yet available. In addition, different color appearance phenomena such as the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect highlight the interference or lack of independence between the existing color metrics. Based on the alternative representation of independent one-dimensional color scales and the concepts of brilliance and zero grayness proposed by Ralph Evans, a series of psychophysical experiments were …

Ensuring Food Security, Converting Urban Industrial Buildings For Indoor Agriculture: The Call For Urban Indoor Agriculture, Christopher Quinn Whittaker

Theses

Outdated food production models result in the continued disconnect between communities and vital nutrition. Poverty and a lack of food awareness perpetuate the effects of food insecurity within communities. These effects are most evident in urban areas where fresh produce is out of reach for large swaths of the population. Connecting communities back to the food they eat will benefit cities and residents economically, socially, and environmentally. Farming with the community in the community will empower a broad urban population. Urban areas pose several challenges to food production, such as a lack of open space and a high volume of …

Idealized Learning Environments: An Investigation Of K-5 Classroom Design To Improve Student Academic Performance, Stephanie Buckingham

Theses

This undergraduate interior design capstone investigates how elementary school classrooms located in the United States can be designed to improve student learning outcomes. The goal of this research is to answer the question: how can K-5 learning environments be designed to improve student’s academic performance? Preliminary research led to a hypothesis of learning environments can be designed to improve student’s academic performance by applying flexible design strategies that meet student’s individual preferences while also accommodating pedagogical variations.

To answer this question, the literature review consists of a detailed analysis of existing scholarly research investigating which elements of the built environment …

Urban Waterfront Revitalization: A Case Study Of Downtown Waterfront In Rochester, New York, Yaoyu Lorrain Xiao

Theses

This research paper presents a case study of the Rochester downtown waterfront revitalization project. The project aims to revitalize the neglected waterfront and create a vibrant and attractive space for residents and visitors alike. Key factors contributing to the success of the Rochester downtown waterfront revitalization project include strong community engagement, public-private partnerships, adaptive reuse of existing structures, and a focus on sustainability. The study finds that the revitalization efforts have led to uneven economic, social, and environmental benefits for the community. The purpose of this study is to gain a comprehensive evaluation of the current status, difficulties, and potential …

An Investigation Of How Interior Design Elements Can Enhance Customer’S Interest In Fast Fashion Retail Stores In-Person Experience After The Covid-19, Qianyue Tu

Theses

The goal of this capstone project is to investigate how interior design elements can enhance customers’ interest in fast fashion retail stores’ in-person experience after the COVID-19 pandemic. To answer the research question, this capstone is organized into three parts which are the literature review, research agenda, and creative agenda. First, the literature review section of this manuscript examines consumer behavior and changes in fast fashion brands before and after the pandemic. The goal of the literature review is to understand four questions: 1) What are changes in consumer behavior after COVID-19? 2) Why are fast fashion brands retailing being …

Investigating Equitable Office Design: Addressing Women’S Wellness In The Corporate Office Through Human-Centered Design To Improve The Quality Of Life For All Employees, Jacqueline Collins

Theses

The goal of this undergraduate capstone project is to investigate how open offices impact women in the workplace and to propose a prototypical alternative to an open office. Both a literature review and a research agenda were conducted, in order to gather information regarding this topic. The literature review outlined current research on the topic. It was found that, while open offices were originally designed to allow for equal workspace and greater collaboration, budget costs and private offices remaining in high demand diminished many of their positive qualities. Consequently, open offices began to rely on a hierarchical layout, which often …

A Parametric Numerical Analysis Investigation To Optimize The Performance Of The Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Tube, Muneer Ahmad Sungur

Theses

A vortex tube is a device that separates compressed air into two streams: one with a higher temperature (hot stream) and the other with a lower temperature (cold stream). It is a popular cooling option because it is small, safe, and affordable. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the energy separation performance of RHVT by varying the internal tapering angles of convergent angles (2°, 1.75°, 1.5°, 1.25°, 1°, 0.75°, and 0.5°), straight angles (0°), and divergent angles (0.5°, 1°, 2°, 4°, and 6°), While the cold mass fraction is constant (0.317). Length-to-diameter ratio (Lt/Dt), inlet pressure, and …

A Novel Approach For Detection Fault In The Aircraft Exterior Body Using Image Processing, Noura Nayef Almansoori

Theses

The primary objective of this thesis is to develop innovative techniques for the inspection and maintenance of aircraft structures. We aim to streamline the entire process by utilizing images to detect potential defects in the aircraft body and comparing them to properly functioning images of the aircraft. This enables us to determine whether a specific section of the aircraft is faulty or not. We achieve this by employing image processing to train a model capable of identifying faulty images. The image processing methodology we use involves the use of images of both defective and operational parts of the aircraft's exterior. …

Valuation Of Asian Options In A High Volatility Market With Jumps, Zeeshan Khalid

Theses

The evaluation of financial derivatives represents a central part of financial risk management. There are many types of derivatives among other path-dependent options. In this study, we aim at valuing Asian options. They are path dependent and have several benefits. For instance, their values are habitually lower than European options. Also, an Asian option on a commodity drops the risk value close to maturity. Though, the disadvantage is that they are in general difficult to value since the distribution of the payoff is usually unknown. It is agreed in the literature that a stochastic process with a jumps model for …

المسؤولیة التضامنیة لأعضاء مجلس الإدارة في شركة المساھمة العامة وفقا للمرسوم بقانون اتحادي رقم (32) لسنة 2021 بشأن الشركات التجاریة, نورة جمعة الشامسي

Theses

This study aims to identify the joint liability of the members of the board of directors in public joint stock company. The descriptive and analytical approach was adopted to identify the joint responsibility of the members of the Board of Directors in a joint stock company the analyses of the provisions related thereto in Federal Law by Decree No. (32) of 2021 regarding commercial companies in order to structure the limits of such responsibility.

This study has reached a number of results, the main result stipulates the general rule of the responsibility of the members of the board of directors …

Cheating Detection In Online Exams Based On Captured Video Using Deep Learning, Aysha Sultan Alkalbani

Theses

Today, e-learning has become a reality and a global trend imposed and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are many risks and challenges related to the credibility of online exams which are of widespread concern to educational institutions around the world. Online exam system continues to gain popularity, particularly during the pandemic, due to the rapid expansion of digitalization and globalization. To protect the integrity of the examination and provide objective and fair results, cheating detection and prevention in examination systems is a must. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to develop an effective way of detection …

A Support Theorem For A Wave Equation, Aysha Khaled Alshamsi

Theses

It is well known that the fundamental solution to the classical wave equation Δ�� (��, ��) − ∂_������(��,��) = 0 is supported on the light cone {(��, ��) ∈ ℝ^��× ℝ : ||��|| = |��|} if and only if the dimension �� is odd and ≥ 3. Because we are living in a 3-dimensional world we can hear each other clearly; One has a pure propagator without residual waves. In this thesis we consider the wave equation

2||��||Δ_����_��(��, ��) − ∂_������(��,��) = 0, (��, ��) ∈ ℝ^�� × ℝ …

A Comparative Study On Microchip Implants In Humans And Wearable Devices, Ltifa Mohammed Almansoori

Theses

After the tragic covid pandemic in 2020, many things changed in the world, from learning physically all the way to e-learning, as the whole world was forced to switch digitally. It is expected that a lot of people will be more willing to invest in new technologies that aid in human development and among them are human microchip implants. The emerging technology of human microchip implants is slowly catching the attention of various countries around the world after the sudden surge of adoption in Europe. With the introduction of Biohax microchip implants in the UAE by Etisalat it is most …