Digital Commons Network^™

An Evaluation Of Current Policy Guidelines For The Best Practices Of Robotic Surgery Training, Zachary Geffert

Theses

Robotic surgery is a young and new technology, becoming widely used only within the past twenty years. Robotic surgery is categorized as minimally invasive and has immense patient benefits, including shorter hospital stays, reduction of human errors, increased precision, and faster recovery time. A recent study looked “at more than 10,000 incident reports from the FDA spanning from 2000 to 2013…found [finding] that robots were involved in 144 patient deaths and 1,391 patient injuries” (Wagstaff, 2015, pp. 2). Wagstaff (2015) also notes that very little information regarding cause of death was provided by the incident reports, which brings forth the …

Impact Of Stoplight Policies On Urban Traffic System Emissions, Jessica Pimentel Almonte

Theses

With increasing urban populations (Boyd 2015), also comes higher land resource demands and more concentrated pollution levels. Increasing the efficiency of transportation systems is key to fostering sustainable urban development because it can decrease urban pollution levels, better meet the social demands of its residents, and decrease vehicle fuel consumption – encompassing the three pillars of sustainability: social, environment, and economic. This study aims to better understand the environmental impact of traffic light coordination and their timing policies in a randomly generated traffic network on an urban area. We focus on the effect of three different stoplight policies on emission …

Trilepisium (Moraceae): Four New Species From Madagascar, Shawn Kelley

Theses

Trilepisium is a genus of tree with two member species: T. madagascariense and T. gymnandrum. This genus shows diversity in habit and morphology greatly exceeding that expected of a genus with two member species. Concerted collection efforts since the last revision have suggested there are several unrecognized species within Trilepisium and a revision is needed. Chapter one of this thesis details the history of this taxanomically challenging genus and presents the results of our study of 600 Malagasy herbarium specimens. Trilepisium is more adequately circumscribed as containing 17 species, 11 of which are new to science. Chapter two contains …

Breathing Room, Madeline Rile Smith

Theses

Breathing Room is a thesis driven by a conceptual investigation of glass as an embodiment of physical limitation. My research considers glass as a somatic medium, as a material with limitations that mirror those of the human body, and a way to engage bodies in space. This work, which used hot glass, scientific flameworking techniques, and collaborative gestures, resulted in a series of performances and objects. My thesis research culminated in two separate yet related bodies of work and two thesis exhibitions. This dissertation will analyze the work and studio-based research in relation to historical and contemporary performance art focusing …

A Model For Achieving Sustainable Commercial Complexes In Shanghai, China, Yudong Yan

Theses

In recent years, political and social concerns have risen in China related to green energy utilization and sustainable architecture. Architectural development in China has increased dramatically since the 2000s, and there is an increasing demand for and focus on energy-saving and sustainable architecture. However, there are few commercial complexes in China that apply sustainability standards. This research explores the future development of sustainable commercial complexes as the next step of architectural development in China, green technology evolution, and appropriate solutions for local conditions to provide a suitable sustainable commercial complex in Shanghai, China. The documentary analysis will be performed based …

New Methods For Deep Learning Based Real-Valued Inter-Residue Distance Prediction, Jacob Barger

Theses

Background: Much of the recent success in protein structure prediction has been a result of accurate protein contact prediction--a binary classification problem. Dozens of methods, built from various types of machine learning and deep learning algorithms, have been published over the last two decades for predicting contacts. Recently, many groups, including Google DeepMind, have demonstrated that reformulating the problem as a multi-class classification problem is a more promising direction to pursue. As an alternative approach, we recently proposed real-valued distance predictions, formulating the problem as a regression problem. The nuances of protein 3D structures make this formulation appropriate, allowing predictions …

Wait., Kayla Cantu

Theses

Wait explores concepts of discomfort and acceptance through the use of the human body, glass, and honey. The artwork and this thesis both use personal experience of physical insecurities and scholarly investigations into psychology related to unruly bodies. The work and research allude to the material qualities of glass such as its malleability, susceptibility, and softness to draw a parallel between the materials and the human identity. Parallels between glass and body create conversations investigating acceptance of identity and questions ideas about resistance of unruly bodies.

Lightsup: Modern Organization For The Modern Living Room, Fang-Yi Lin

Theses

Studies show a cluttered home makes people feel anxious, helpless and overwhelmed. Home should be a place where people can relax and live comfortably. A messy house can lead to negative behavior, making people impatient and argumentative. An organized house can not only make people be in a good mood but also encourage harmonious relationships in a family. This paper puts forth how design can help people be more organized in their homes thus creating a relaxing environment. The research shows how clutter affects people’s behaviors, emotions and relationships; why people do not organize; and the importance of finding a …

Pond Scum: Partygeddon, Zachary Kirwin

Theses

Pond Scum: Partygeddon is a film about three lowlifes, Algee, Oozer and Ewwglena, who set out to throw a party to end all parties, and get a little more than they bargained for. Their scrappy friendship will be all that keeps them alive by the end of the night.

The film is hand drawn 2d animation created in Toon Boom Harmony and composited with original, hand-painted, watercolor backgrounds in Adobe After Effects. The soundtrack is a mix of original songs by the bands Pond Scum, Lord Scum, and Sh*t Rat.

This paper is both a documentation of the process of …

A Cross-Cultural Study On The Relationship Between Environmental Awareness And Social Media Use: Saudi Arabia Vs United States, Mohammed Alsahafi

Theses

For many countries today, environmental sustainability is a subject of concern, and the world has witnessed the rise of environmental activism in recent years. Social media is increasingly being used by relevant stakeholders to raise environmental awareness. This study explores the relationship between social media use and environmental awareness from a cross-cultural perspective. Building upon previous research, this study compares social media use, environmental awareness, and their relationship between Saudi Arabian and American college students. Survey data was collected from a convenient sample of 266 Saudi Arabian and 290 American college students on their use of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram …

Searching For Answers: Examining Historical Christianity In Nineteenth Century Europe Through Kierkegaard & Nietzsche, Robert Jones

Theses

The Europe of the 1800s saw remarkable change. Previously unthinkable ideas and 'isms' made their way to the forefront of exploration in European society, forcing Christianity to a crossroads it had never before experienced. This thesis examines the fusion of politics and religion into a sort of surrogate religion for the Post-Enlightenment world. Above all, it examines historical Christianity through precedent-setting writers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Given the unique process of secularization in the nineteenth century, both writers offer something often overlooked; the inevitable progress or decline of the Lutheran tradition depends, in true existentialist fashion, on the individual.

Low Cost Radiometer Design For Landsat Surface Temperature Validation, Jonathan Miller

Theses

Land Surface Temperature (ST) represents the radiative temperature of the Earth’s surface and is used as an input for hydrological, agricultural, and meteorological science applications. Due to the synoptic nature of satellite imaging systems, ST products derived from spaceborne platforms are invaluable for estimating ST at the local, regional, and global scale. Over the past two decades, an emphasis has been placed on the need to develop algorithms necessary to deliver accurate ST products to support the needs of science users. However, corresponding efforts to validate these products are hindered by the availability of quality ground based reference measurements. NOAA’s …

Data Warehouse Performance Comparing Relational Database Management Systems And The Hadoop-Based Nosql Database System, Nazar Al-Wattar

Theses

One of the biggest problems that many companies face nowadays is dealing with the huge volumes of data that they generate daily. In the data-driven world all data needs to be stored, organized and analyzed to get the required information that will help the administration to make the right decision to support the next step of the company. Big Data and Business Intelligence have become very popular terms in the business field, where Big Data highlights the tools that are used to manage the huge volume of data. One of the Big Data tools is the Data Warehouse, which is …

Incidental Exposure, Laural Hartman

Theses

This thesis is an exploration of my lack of environmental and situational accessibility as a Deaf person. I will be identifying and highlighting how my life experiences differ from my hearing counterparts by utilizing visual elements from my personal collection that I’ve accumulated over the years. In this thesis, I will discuss how I give the viewer an interactive way to experience incidental exposure, what I learned about the importance of experimenting with different mediums and techniques, and how I found the combination of medium and technique that best emulates and reinforces the impression of my own incidental exposure. As …

Design Of A Comprehensive Modeling, Characterization, Rupture Risk Assessment And Visualization Pipeline For Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms, Golnaz Jalalahmadi

Theses

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) is a dilation of the abdominal aorta, typically within the infra-renal segment of the vessel that cause an expansion of at least 1.5 times the normal vessel diameter. It is becoming a leading cause of death in the United States and around the world, and consequentially, in 2009, the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) practice guidelines expressed the critical need to further investigate the factors associated with the risk of AAA rupture, along with potential treatment methods. For decades, the maximum diameter (Dmax) was introduced as the main parameter used to assess AAA behavior and its …

Techno-Economic Optimization Of Food Waste Diversion To Treatment Facilities To Determine Cost Effectiveness Of Policy Incentives, Kanwal Shahid

Theses

New York state recently passed a food waste (FW) disposal ban, which will prohibit land-filling of FW produced by commercial entities generating more than 2 tons/week by the year 2022. This will redirect 370,000 tons/year of FW from landfills. In this work, we investigate three questions about the landfill ban: 1) How can this waste be diverted to treatment facilities at lowest system cost? 2) To what degree can an expanded anaerobic digestion portfolio help with the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standards? 3) What policies can help with the transition of waste-to-energy technologies? We develop a mixed-integer linear programming model that …

An App With Ai Sorting Technology Designed For Lego Players To Improve Their Playing Experience Of Moc, Yiqin Zhang

Theses

As time goes, some Lego players are no longer satisfied with playing the Lego official set. I saw a comment on the internet about why Lego is so popular all over the world, it said, “I personally think that Lego, building in accordance with the instructions in the first basic gameplay, and ultimately it is necessary to reconstruct and design your own model with these basic parts. This is the ultimate charm of Lego toys.” If you played Lego long enough, you would want to jump out the instruction and challenge something different than you built before. Most Lego players …

The Role Of Sonification As A Code Navigation Aid: Improving Programming Structure Readability And Understandability For Non-Visual Users, Khaled L. Albusays

Theses

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) play an important role in the workflow of many software developers, e.g. providing syntactic highlighting or other navigation aids to support the creation of lengthy codebases. Unfortunately, such complex visual information is difficult to convey with current screen-reader technologies, thereby creating barriers for programmers who are blind, who are nevertheless using IDEs.

This dissertation is focused on utilizing audio-based techniques to assist non-visual programmers when navigating through large amounts of code. Recently, audio generation techniques have seen major improvements in their capabilities to covey visually-based information to both sighted and non-visual users – making them a …

Analyzing The Impact Of Negative Sampling On Fact-Prediction Algorithms, Iti Bansal

Theses

Knowledge graphs are useful for many applications like product recommendations and web search query engines. However, knowledge graphs are marked by incompleteness. Fact-prediction algorithms aim to expand knowledge graphs by predicting missing facts. Fact-prediction algorithms train models using positive facts present and creating negative facts not present in the knowledge graph at hand. Negative facts are obtained by corrupting information in the positive facts present in the knowledge graph at hand. Although it is generally assumed that negative facts drive the accuracy of fact-prediction algorithms, this concept has not been thoroughly examined yet. In this work, we investigate whether negative …

Towards The Automation Of Migration And Safety Of Third-Party Libraries, Hussein Ahmed Talib Al-Rubaye

Theses

The process of migration from one library to a new, different library is very complex. Typically, the developer needs to find functions in the new library that are most adequate in replacing the functions of the retired library. This process is subjective and time-consuming as the developer needs to fully understand the documentation of both libraries to be able to migrate from an old library to a new one and find the right matching function(s) if exists. Our goal is helping the developer to have better experiences with library migration by identifying the key problems related to this process. Based …

Nereus: A Proposal For Implementing Anti-Phishing Software Using Corporate Branding Color Matching, Benjamin Heald

Theses

Over the years, many anti-phishing software packages have been developed that can reliably and accurately detect and delete phishing emails as they are received. As communication on the internet evolves, however, these existing anti-phishing systems are becoming less effective. As more users migrate away from email and into emerging technologies such as Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, new effective anti-phishing filters must be created for each new communication platform. Developers are therefore fighting an uphill battle to keep users safe. An anti-phishing mechanism that positions itself instead directly between the user and the websites they visit is therefore proposed. This …

Hyperspectral Properties Of Date Palm Trees (Phoenix Dactylifera L.), Mohamed Ali Saeed Ahmed Al Abdouli

Theses

The goal of this study is to classify the Date Palm varieties based on hyperspectral signature technology since it is difficult to identify the Date Palm cultivars without fruits. It will also help to obtain the hyperspectral signature for different types of date palm trees. Moreover, it also assists to determine the wavelength fingerprint of each cultivar and to recommend the best classification protocol differentiating among different cultivars based on spectral signature. Utilizing the Hyperspectral imaging technology precisely on the leaves of different Date Palm cultivars, thus facilitating identification of date palm cultivars without the fruits and make the spatial …

Establishing Blockchain-Related Security Controls, Maitha Ali Al Ketbi

Theses

Blockchain technology is a secure and relatively new technology of distributed digital ledgers which is based on interlinked blocks of transactions. There is a rapid growth in the adoption of the blockchain technology in different solutions and applications and within different industries throughout the world, such as but not limited to, finance, supply chain, digital identity, energy, healthcare, real estate and government. Blockchain technology has great benefits such as decentralization, transparency, immutability and automation. Like any other emerging technology, the blockchain technology has also several risks and threats associated with its expected benefits which in turns could have a negative …

One-Pot O-Alkylation And C-C Cross-Coupling Reactions Involving Stabilized Phosphoranes, Areej Hashim Mohamed

Theses

This thesis is concerned with the one-pot reactions that are considered to be beneficial to preserve resources, save time, and are deemed a green chemistry strategy. To plan such one-pot reactions, it is important to combine two or more reactions that are compatible with each other and can be run under the same reaction conditions. In this work, possibilities of a combination of Wittig-olefination and Suzuki C-C-cross coupling reactions are explored further. Reaction sequences involve the combination of a Suzuki-reaction / Wittig olefination, a Suzuki reaction / Wittig olefination/hydrolysis, and a Suzuki-reaction / double Wittig olefination. In all cases, stabilized …

Determination Of The Cost Optimum Passive Cooling Design Solutions For Residential Buildings In Uae: The Case Study Of Sharjah Governmental Villas, Raghad Azzam Ghazal

Theses

على مدى العقود الثلاثة الماضية، شهدت الإمارات العربية المتحدة تطور ا حضري ا سريعا ، وتم تصنيفها كأعلى نشاط بناء في العالم لكل كيلومتر مربع. قطاع البناء هو أكبر مستهلك للطاقة وأكبر مساهم في انبعاثات ثاني أكسيد الكربون في دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة، حيث يستخدم حوالي 60 ٪ من إجمالي الكهرباء. يستهلك القطاع السكني حوالي 30 ٪ من إجمالي استهلاك الكهرباء )هيئة كهرباء ومياه دبي، 2017 (. الهدف من هذه الأطروحة هو تحديد أفضل الحلول المستدامة من حيث التكلفة الإجمالية للفلل السكنية في الإمارات العربية المتحدة. المنهجية المتبعة في هذه الأطروحة ستأخذ في عين الاعتبار الجوانب البيئية والاقتصادية لمرحلتي الإنشاء …

2d Audio Magnetotelluric (Amt) Data Inversion Of Al-Jaww Plain Area (Al-Ain, Uae) For Groundwater Aquifer Investigations, Ahmad Esam Saeed Alfashti Alaran

Theses

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is considered within the arid climate zone having low rates of annual rainfall. The freshwater is mainly located in shallow groundwater aquifers. Understanding the depth and extent of such aquifers is an important issue for UAE local governments and environmental agencies. Hydrogeological conditions in the UAE are strongly related to the topographic features and are dominated by a mountain range in Oman at the eastern margin of the Arabian Platform. The alluvial plains such as Al-Jaww plain (eastern Al-Ain city) is considered as an important potential source of groundwater for the Al-Ain region. Al-Jaww plain …

Estimation Of The Removal Of Chiral Pharmaceutical Drugs From Domestic Wastewater Using Uplc-Ms/Ms, Mohammed Khaled Al Tabaji

Theses

This thesis is concerned with the estimation of the removal of chiral pharmaceutical compounds (PCs) from domestic wastewater in Al Ain using UPLC-MS/MS. PCs are classified into many classes such as hormones, antibiotics, analgesics, cosmetic products, ꞵ blockers, and anti-inflammatory drugs. PCs do not have a guideline to describe their concentrations in treated domestic wastewater. Additionally, there is a very high demand for using PCs around the world, which results in their discharge to wastewater at relatively high masses, which could be harmful to the environment. Furthermore, very limited work has been done to estimate the removal of chiral PCs. …

Determination Of Vitamin D Metabolites And Their Epimers In Obese Emirati Population, Bashar Hiatham Alzohily

Theses

Vitamin D deficiency is a global issue, and despite all-year-round sunshine, it is a big problem in the UAE. Obesity or overweight refers to an accumulation of excessive fat that may harm health so, it is considered a worldwide health concern. The accurate measurement of vitamin D active forms is a problematic issue. This study aimed to develop and validate a UHPLC-MS/MS method for the new method for determining vitamin D levels in the obese Emirati population. The vitamin D epimers and other metabolites were determined by UHPLC-MS/MS system, model 8060. The methods include the collection of blood samples from …

Calcium Phosphate/Ionic Liquid Ptfe Composite Membrane For Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Applications, Ahmad Ibrahim Hasan Ka’Ki

Theses

The dependence on fossil fuels can be possibly reduced by the utilization of renewable energy sources. Fuel cells offer a promising alternative for renewable power generation. Among the various types of fuel cells, Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is recently attracting attention due to its several advantages of high-power density, all solid structure, and silent operation. The diverse types of materials used in this type of fuel cell raised drawbacks related to fuel cell cost and durability. By far, Nafion of DuPont is still the current state-of-the-art membrane for PEMFCs. It is known for its high ionic conductivity and …

Prevalence Of Brca1 And Brca2 Mutations Among Breast And Ovarian Cancer Patients In Northern Emirates, Zahra Ahmed Mohammed Saeed

Theses

Breast Cancer (BC) is the most common cancer and the second most cause of death among women. Mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes confer high susceptibility to both breast and ovarian cancer. However, data on the prevalence of the BRCA1/2 mutations among breast and ovarian cancer patients is limited. The genetic component of breast cancer in the UAE is largely unknown and no study has evaluated the BRCA mutations status in breast and ovarian cancer patients in the UAE population. This retrospective study aimed to establish mutation frequencies of the BRCA genes in breast and ovarian cancer patients from the …