Digital Commons Network^™

Did I Tell You About My Date Last Night?, Palwasha Azimi

Theses

did i tell you about my date last night? is an animated short that illustrates a transformation in two characters who are experiencing their date together in different ways.

This film gives a small taste of a larger story that all women go through, whether or not they know it’s happening.

It is a tale of toxic masculinity, gaslighting, consent and entitlement. These things have been ever-present in history but never contested and brought to light on a scale like this. Recently, these issues have risen to the forefront of social change. Now, because of the internet, the support of …

Tracing The History Of Racial Injustice In Policing And Working Towards Justice Through Data Analysis, Emily Gollub

Theses

There is an extensive history of racial disparity in the criminal justice system that has influenced the issue of racial bias in policing which continues to be a prominent issue even up to this day. The Sentencing Project (2008) explains that racial disparity “exists when the proportion of a racial or ethnic group within the control of the system is greater than the proportion of such groups in the general population” (1). It is important to note that there is a difference between the modern use of “disparity” and the historic subjugation and control. Back in the 1600s to the …

Purged, Veenal Ronald D'Silva

Theses

This paper describes the entire thought process, the work and journey behind the completion of my Thesis Film titled “PURGED”. This film was animated in 3D and created over the course of four semesters. Purged is a thrilling short animated film about a couple’s escape from death. The film mainly revolves around a couple; namely the white king and queen, and how death; the black pieces of a chessboard enact out the game as if it’s happening in real life until the big reveal at the end of it merely being a game of chess.

The film is centered around …

System-Level Eco-Driving (Sled): Algorithms For Connected And Autonomous Vehicles, Hrishikesh Barad

Theses

One of the main reasons for increasing carbon emissions by the transportation sector is the frequent congestion caused in a traffic network. Congestion in transportation occurs when demand for commuting resources exceeds their capacity and with the increasing use of road vehicles, congestion and thereby emissions will continue to rise if proper actions are not taken. Adoption of intelligent transportation systems like autonomous vehicle technology can help in increasing the efficiency of transportation in terms of time, fuel and carbon footprint. This research proposes a System Level Eco-Driving (SLED) algorithm and compares the results, produced by performing microscopic simulations, with …

Graphene/Polypropylene Nanocomposites, Carmen Karam Abuoudah

Theses

Graphene has been regarded as a multifunctional nanofiller for manufacturing polymer nanocomposites. A small amount of graphene nanosheets is expected to significantly improve the properties of base polymers. The property enhancement, however, is a function of the degree of exfoliation and dispersion of graphene as well as its compatibility with the polymer. The non-polar nature of polyolefins such as polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) restricts the homogeneous dispersion of graphene, leading to significant agglomeration of the nanosheets and thus, limiting the expected property improvements in polyolefins. Currently, more efforts are focused on finding strategies to improve graphene dispersion in polyolefins. …

Understanding The Role Of Epstein-Barr Virus Encoded Rna-1 (Eber-1) In The Cell Proliferation, Yasmeen Atta Ali Abdelmowla

Theses

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a human herpes virus that infects and persists in > 90% of human adults, generally without causing disease. However, EBV has oncogenic properties and is associated with several malignancies of epithelial and lymphoid origin. The details of the molecular steps leading to these different malignancies are poorly understood. It is believed that some of the EBV latent gene products are involved. Two small EBV-encoded RNAs referred to as EBER1 and EBER2 have been shown to be expressed in all forms of EBV latent infection. These non-polyadenylated and non-protein-coding RNAs are by far the most abundant transcripts expressed …

Multi-Objective Optimal Capacity And Placement Of Distributed Generators In The Power System Networks Using Atom Search Optimization Method, Ashwaq Faisal Alkhatib

Theses

Nowadays, renewable energy sources become a significant source of energy in the new millennium. The continuous penetration of dispersed resources of the reactive power into power systems is predicted to introduce new challenges. Power loss mitigation and voltage profile development are the major investigation challenges

that recently attracted the attention of researchers in the field of power systems. Distributed generation (DG) is widely preferred because it is a highly effective solution that strengthens the performance of power system networks. This multiobjective function study aims to minimise power losses in the feeders, sustain voltage levels and reduce the application cost of …

E-Government In The United Arab Emirates: A Study Of The Abu Dhabi Government Contact Centre, Hessa Mohammed Aleisaei

Theses

In this current age of information technology (IT), electronic government (e-government) has transformed the interaction between the government and the citizens. To make this transformation contextually and locally relevant, this research examines the efficiency of e-government in Abu Dhabi by undertaking a case study of the efficiency of the electronic contact channels at the Abu Dhabi Government Contact Center (ADGCC). It, also, identifies the challenges faced by the ADGCC and provides recommendations to overcome the challenges accordingly. The study model for this research is developed by reviewing the key concepts related to the implementation of the e-government. The primary research …

Moral Outrage Is Elicited By Others’ Beliefs Just As Much As Their Actions: Implications For Workplace Ideological Discrimination, Emily Rose Galeza

Theses

Moral outrage is an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral response to moral violations, resulting in a desire to punish the transgressor. Previous research has examined moral outrage toward transgressive behaviors, but no studies have examined the potential for moral outrage to be roused by another’s beliefs alone. Do people experience moral outrage at one another’s thoughts? If so, how do they punish someone who has roused their outrage but has “done nothing wrong”? In Study 1 (n = 209), I examined moral outrage reactions at people’s unacceptable beliefs on three topics (pedophilia, sexual assault, fraud) by comparing moral outrage elicited by …

Social Discounting Of Clean Water And Environmental Sustainability, Ashley Katz

Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine choice-making as it relates to providing a source of clean water to those at varying social distances. A discounting survey was completed by 65 participants asking them to choose between spending a specified about of money on plastic water bottles that have a 100% chance of harming the environment or spending $1000 on a water filtration system that has a 0% chance of harming the environment. Results indicated that as social distance increased, responding became more impulsive as evident by a steeper amount of discounting. For “Person #1”, 27.69% of participants chose …

Releve´, Lauren Afton Stoelzle

Theses

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

The Effects Of Seasonal Variations, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, And Climate Change On The Tuna-Dolphin Association, Caitlynn Birch, Michael D. Scott, Zhi-Yong Yin, Lisa T. Ballance

Theses

Tuna and dolphins swim together in the waters of the eastern tropical Pacific, and this association has long benefitted tuna fishermen and intrigued scientists. Although the tuna-dolphin association is often referred to as a “mystery,” much is known about the association. Yellowfin tuna are primarily caught with spotted dolphins and, to a lesser extent, spinner dolphins; historically the spotted dolphin has borne the brunt of the bycatch mortality. The tuna-dolphin association is thought to be a product of the distinct oceanography of the ETP: a shallow mixed layer, a thick oxygen minimum zone, and warm surface waters. As the mixed …

Network-Based Apt Profiler, Benjamin Bornholm

Theses

Constant innovation in attack methods presents a significant problem for the security community which struggles to remain current in attack prevention, detection and response. The practice of threat hunting provides a proactive approach to identify and mitigate attacks in real-time before the attackers complete their objective. In this research, I present a matrix of adversary techniques inspired by MITRE’s ATT&CK matrix. This study allows threat hunters to classify the actions of advanced persistent threats (APTs) according to network-based behaviors.

A Means To An End: Adding Value To The Preference Debate, Laura Miller

Theses

Helping disadvantaged people involves trusting them to make the best possible choices. Under scrutiny, however, it seems that the disadvantaged often fail to make the best choices for themselves. In this paper, I oppose both the traditional philosophical view that some choices of the disadvantaged are deformed or adaptive, and the view of preference utilitarians, who favor aiming to satisfy all preferences.

My rejection of the traditional views of preference is founded on my identification of two distinct kinds of preferences and their relationship to each other: means preferences and end preferences. Means preferences are those choices that are made …

Unintentional Injuries And Violence In Schools, Lina G. Nouwayhed

Theses

The project was done to study the causes and outcomes of injuries and violence at school, and to provide the school with a plan to prevent unintentional injuries and violence.

On Unifying Declarative Memory, Thomas Ames

Theses

The distinction between episodic and semantic declarative memory systems, as introduced by Tulving (1972, updated in 1984, 1991), was a revolutionary approach to human memory. While the distinction is now widely endorsed in the study of memory, there are debates about what constitutes each system’s domain, how each system is used, how each system functions, and the phenomenal experiences associated with the functioning of each system. On the basis of clinical studies and insights from conditions affecting memory, this paper argues that the episodic/semantic distinction can be reframed as a result of a unified declarative memory system. In this view, …

What Influences Federal Allocation Of Behavioral Health Grants: Evidence From The United States, Jenna Rahrle

Theses

Subnational government entities benefit from federal funds to support programs and operations. There are a variety of factors that influence federal grant funds to recipients. This study seeks to identify the effects of multiple factors on federal grant allocation from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to state entities. The literature suggests three categories of factors affecting federal funding distribution, including problem severity and need, recipient capacity, and political motivation. I conduct a regression analysis to test the effects of these factors, using a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set. The results indicate that political motivation has a …

Deepfake Detection And Low-Resource Language Speech Recognition Using Deep Learning, Bao Thai

Theses

While deep learning algorithms have made significant progress in automatic speech recognition and natural language processing, they require a significant amount of labelled training data to perform effectively. As such, these applications have not been extended to languages that have only limited amount of data available, such as extinct or endangered languages. Another problem caused by the rise of deep learning is that individuals with malicious intents have been able to leverage these algorithms to create fake contents that can pose serious harm to security and public safety. In this work, we explore the solutions to both of these problems. …

A Systematic Analysis Of Accessibility Education Within Computing Disciplines, Paula Conn

Theses

Accessible technologies improve the usability for all users, including 1 billion people in the world who have a disability. Although there is a demand for accessible technologies, there is currently no requirement for universities to integrate this content within the computing curriculum. A systematic comparison of teaching efficacy is important to effectively prepare future computing professionals with the skills to create accessible technologies.

This dissertation contains a mixed-methods cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of undergraduate Software Engineering and Information Technology students’ learning of accessibility. Four teaching conditions were assessed at Rochester Institute of Technology: content lectures, projects, exposure to stakeholders with …

Characterization Of Boiling Sound At Conditions Approaching Critical Heat Flux, Akshat Negi

Theses

In industry, boiling heat transfer is extensively used to efficiently dissipate high heat fluxes from heated substrates. Such industrial applications of boiling include cooling of reactor cores in nuclear power plants, steam generation in industrial boilers, and cooling of high heat flux generating electronic equipment. The maximum heat flux dissipated during boiling is limited by critical heat flux (CHF). At CHF, due to very high bubble generation and coalescence rates, a stable insulating vapor film is formed on the heated surface that leads to very high surface temperatures in a short time. The sudden temperature overshoot causes thermal breakdown, and …

Subjective Image Quality Assessment Of Digitally Printed Images, Gaurav Sheth

Theses

Smartphones have become ingrained in our daily activities, driving their cameras to become better with every generation. As more and more images are being taken by cell phones it has become increasingly important to assess the quality of the images taken by different phones. While many cell phone images are only viewed electronically, many images also get transformed into printed images, especially photo-books, as digital printing gets better and cheaper compared to traditional printing processes. The gap between electronic image and printed image in shrinking rapidly and it becomes important to study the transition of images from screen to paper. …

Smart Tracking For Healthier Lifestyle, Shiwen Ding

Theses

Smart Tracking for healthier lifestyle is an interactive prototyping application to monitor sugar intake. For most individuals, their amount of sugar intake is much higher than the amount they need per day. Many people like sweet food as they find that it makes them satisfied and relaxed. People tend to consume sugar unconsciously eating cakes, candies, drinking soft-drinks, juice, and even coffee. Regular consumption of these foods substantially increases the amount of sugar people consume. It has been found that people are less conscious of their sugar intake in regard to drinking liquids than eating solid foods. Parents are very …

Computational Methods For Segmentation Of Multi-Modal Multi-Dimensional Cardiac Images, Shusil Dangi

Theses

Segmentation of the heart structures helps compute the cardiac contractile function quantified via the systolic and diastolic volumes, ejection fraction, and myocardial mass, representing a reliable diagnostic value. Similarly, quantification of the myocardial mechanics throughout the cardiac cycle, analysis of the activation patterns in the heart via electrocardiography (ECG) signals, serve as good cardiac diagnosis indicators. Furthermore, high quality anatomical models of the heart can be used in planning and guidance of minimally invasive interventions under the assistance of image guidance.

The most crucial step for the above mentioned applications is to segment the ventricles and myocardium from the acquired …

Implant Activated Source/Drain Regions For Self-Aligned Igzo Tft, Rahnuma Rifat Chowdhury

Theses

In this work, amorphous Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) TFTs with channel lengths scaled as small as L = 1 µm are presented which demonstrate excellent electrical characteristics, however the traditional metal-contact defined source/drain regions typically require several microns of gate overlap in order to provide ohmic behavior with minimal series resistance and ensure tolerance to overlay error. In addition, further scaling the channel length by simply reducing the source/drain metal gap is not feasible. The focus of this study is to investigate techniques to realize self-aligned (SA) IGZO TFTs that are not subject to gate-source/drain misalignment due to overlay …

Another You, Yiran Qiao

Theses

Another You is an animated 2D graduate thesis film. The entire film, including the credits, is 4 minutes 45 seconds long. The production phase went from September 2018 to May 2019.

This story is about a housewife who tries to escape from her daily life. Her escape takes place at the dinner table. The housewife has been busy with cooking and serving her family, but no one really cares about her, which makes her very angry and she abruptly leaves the table and everyone is shocked. She runs upstairs and to a hallway with many doors and moves from one …

Contribution Of Contact Line Heat Transfer In An Evaporating Meniscus And Characteristics Of Microlayer In Contact Line Region Of An Oscillating Meniscus, Ishan Dabri

Theses

In nucleate pool boiling, a thin film is formed under the nucleating bubble in the region where the solid, liquid and vapor phases meet. This is called the three-phase contact line region. High rates of heat transfer have been observed in this region. Researchers have developed a pool boiling apparatus with laser interferometry and artificial nucleation sites to observe the changes in thickness, frequency, velocity and the dynamic contact angle of the microlayer. Similarly, multiple meniscus studies have been conducted to observe the characteristics of microlayer in pool boiling and various other applications such as ink jet printing, miniature heat …

Word Importance Modeling To Enhance Captions Generated By Automatic Speech Recognition For Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Users, Sushant Kafle

Theses

People who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) benefit from sign-language interpreting or live-captioning (with a human transcriptionist), to access spoken information. However, such services are not legally required, affordable, nor available in many settings, e.g., impromptu small-group meetings in the workplace or online video content that has not been professionally captioned. As Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems improve in accuracy and speed, it is natural to investigate the use of these systems to assist DHH users in a variety of tasks. But, ASR systems are still not perfect, especially in realistic conversational settings, leading to the issue of trust and …

Mother’S Way, Chaofan Li

Theses

Mother’s way is my 2D graduate thesis film. The production phase of this film was between September 2018 to August 2019.

This is a film about the sincere feelings between mother and son. The protagonist of this film is an old man who has been estranged from his family for decades. He decides to visit his mother after getting the news that she is seriously ill. During his journey, his misunderstandings between them are eradicated through his mother's diary.

Mother’s way is mainly made using the 2D animation software TVPaint. At different stages of production, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, …

Encouraging Children To Actively Recycle: A Mobile Application To Promote Recycling In The Dominican Republic, Noelia A. Rivera Pagan

Theses

The Dominican Republic generates 14,000 tons of solid waste daily, 49% of this is recyclable, but only 5% is. This waste is causing health problems, affecting the tourism industry, and the quality of life of its residents. Problems of confusion, lack of motivation, and lack of prioritization of the activity, affect the decision-making process when recycling.

What if there was a way to motivate the Dominican population to recycle, and change the behavior towards this activity? Children learn new behaviors faster than adults. Why not use this opportunity to incorporate the engaging factor of design and technology to help improve …

From Cast-Out To Community: Identifying Barriers In Design That Keep Lgbtq+ Youth From Accessing Homeless Shelters, Leah Przybylski

Theses

There is a gap in homeless youth services in the United States. A vulnerable population, LGBTQ+ individuals comprise nearly 40% of all homeless youth and are particularly susceptible to repeated victimization, trauma, and violence from their community. Current shelters re-traumatize and fail to address the needs of this unique population triggering an extreme aversion to the institutional design aesthetic that many of these services inhabit. LGBTQ+ youth enter a cycle of homelessness and disengagement that perpetuates into adulthood as a result. Why do existing shelters fail to meet the needs of LBGTQ+ homeless youth?

Utilizing a series of diverse theories …