Digital Commons Network^™

Optimization Study Of Ba-Filled Si-Ge Alloy Type I Semiconducting Clathrates For Thermoelectric Applications, Joshua Martin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thermoelectric phenomena couple thermal and electric currents, allowing for solid-state conversion of heat into electricity. For decades Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators have supplied power to NASA satellites and deep space probes. A more accessible application to consumers is the automotive industry's aspiration to incorporate thermoelectrics into active waste heat recovery systems. Higher power demands require these new thermoelectric devices to operate at higher temperatures and higher efficiencies, justifying new materials research. Recently, clathrates have gained interest for thermoelectric applications due to the unique properties they possess.These properties are directly related to their crystal structure. Therefore, clathrates are not only of interest …

School-Based Mental Health Services Delivered By School Psychologists, Emily Luis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study involved analyses of an existing database conducted for the purposes of identifying and understanding factors that are associated with the delivery of school-based mental health services by school psychologists. The study examined the average number of hours per week in which school psychologists engage in mental health services and the types of mental health services in which they engage. Factors such as training, desire to deliver mental health services, time available and support for mental health services were investigated. The database that served as the basis for these analyses had been created by mailing a survey to 1000 …

The Florida Burrowing Owl In A Rural Environment: Breeding Habitat, Dispersal, Postbreeding Habitat, Behavior, And Diet., Robert Mrykalo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first observations of Florida burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia floridana) occurred in the 19th century on historical dry prairie habitat in south central Florida. These early observations documented the ecology of burrowing owls in rural environments. Since then the vast majority of research on this subspecies has been undertaken in suburban and urban environments during the breeding period. The research undertaken on burrowing owls in suburban and urban environments includes determining natal dispersal distance, assessing female fecundity, mate fidelity, territory fidelity, date of juvenile and adult dispersal from breeding habitat, date of clutch initiation, nesting success, density of …

System Level Energy Optimization For Location Aware Computing, Hariharan Sankaran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We present an energy conscious location-aware computing system that provides relevant information about the users current location. The location-aware computing system is initialized with a map (in the form of a graph) as well as audio files associated with several locations in the map. The system consists of: GPS receiver module, Serial port, Compact flash module, Stereo codec, Power manager module implementing three sub modules namely, GPS-to-real-world position conversion module (implements algorithm to convert GPS co-ordinates to graph nodes), Nearest-location-search module (implements modified Dijkstras algorithm), and User speed estimation module. The location-aware computing system receives the GPS co-ordinates for the …

Adolescents And Their Fathers: Do Dads Make A Difference?, Dimitra Kamboukos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the role of fathers in adolescents behavioral and emotional functioning. Results revealed gender differences in adolescent ratings of their parents. Compared to girls, boys endorsed significantly lower negative affect toward mothers and fathers. Girls reported higher levels of maternal versus paternal involvement, monitoring and acceptance, and higher positive and lower negative affect toward mothers than fathers. Few gender differences were found in associations between maternal and paternal variables and adolescent outcomes. Results supported the unique contribution of fathers in explaining adolescent emotional and behavioral functioning. When considering boys and girls separately, fathers added unique variance in explaining …

Voices From A Marginalized Population: Life Histories Of Individuals With Physical Impairments, James Peter Marsh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with physical impairments have been marginalized and discriminated against since the social identification of these individuals occurred as a sub-group within society. While much has been done to resolve prejudice against individuals with physical impairments, more needs to be done to decrease, or at least deter, discrimination and prejudice against individuals who have been marginalized. The purpose of this study is to give four individuals with physical impairments the opportunity to tell their stories. Through the telling of these stories, I believe others can identify with these individuals, and thereby, help decrease discrimination against individuals with physical impairments.

Life …

Developing An Anthropology Curriculum For High School: A Case Study From Durant High School, Hillsborough County, Florida, Kory Mcneil Bennett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has become increasingly apparent that anthropology has much to offer when it comes to educating our youth. This is true for all grade levels, kindergarten through senior level studies in high school. Here, this idea will be explored further by focusing on the students of Durant High School (DHS) of Plant City, Florida.

This project was designed to explore the idea of combining widely accepted pedagogical theories (Gardner 1983, 1993, 1999; Geraci 2000; Silver, Strong and Perini 1997) with anthropological theory and methods in order to devise effective curricula for high school archaeology and other anthropology courses. More essentially, …

Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Career Development Strategy, Martha J. Sutton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goals of the present study were to 1.) develop a model of career related factors that could be related to organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB); and 2.) determine if the proposed relationships between the career focused variables and OCB differed across rating source. A total of 262 volunteers from a Corporation and University completed a survey in either online or by paper and pencil that included demographics and measures of: job involvement, career motivation, occupational commitment, perceptions of career plateau, career stage, and OCB. Ratings of OCB were obtained from approximately 195 participant supervisors and/or coworkers.

Correlational and multiple regression …

Stability Studies Of Cdte/Cds Thin Film Solar Cells, Bhaskar Reddy Tetali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

CdTe/CdS solar cells have shown great potential for terrestrial solar power applications. To be commercially viable they need to operate efficiently for about 30 years. CdS/CdTe solar cells fabricated at USF have shown record efficiencies upto 16.5% [46]. This research involves the study of thermal stress (TS) and light soaking (LS) on the stability of high efficiency (>10%) solar cells. The change in key electrical parameters V_oc, FF, J_sc, A and J_o are quantified for more than 2000 hours of stressing.

The device degradation was found to increase with stress temperature for TS. Below …

Performance Oriented Scheduling With Power Constraints, Brian C. Hayes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current technology trends continue to increase the power density of modern processors at an exponential rate. The increasing transistor density has significantly impacted cooling and power requirements and if left unchecked, the power barrier will adversely affect performance gains in the near future. In this work, we investigate the problem of instruction reordering for improving both performance and power requirements. Recently, a new scheduling technique, called Forced Directed Instruction Scheduling, or FDIS, has been proposed in the literature for use in high level synthesis as well as instruction reordering [15, 16, 6]. This thesis extends the FDIS algorithm by adding …

Rational Fraction Approximations For Passive Network Functions, William Joel Dietmar Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In electrical engineering, the designer is often presented with the problem of synthesizing a circuit for which the mathematical specifications are unsuitable for physical realization. Hence, the engineer must approximate as well as possible the prescribed network function by another function which is realizable. This paper describes a new approximation method for solving the problem of realizing passive network transfer functions, where the realization is carried out through the use of passive, reciprocal, lumped, linear, and time-invariant elements.

Flood Forecasting Using Time Series Data Mining, Chaitanya Damle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Earthquakes, floods, rainfall represent a class of nonlinear systems termed chaotic, in which the relationships between variables in a system are dynamic and disproportionate, however completely deterministic. Classical linear time series models have proved inadequate in analysis and prediction of complex geophysical phenomena. Nonlinear approaches such as Artificial Neural Networks, Hidden Markov Models and Nonlinear Prediction are useful in forecasting of daily discharge values in a river. The focus of these methods is on forecasting magnitudes of future discharge values and not the prediction of floods. Chaos theory provides a structured explanation for irregular behavior and anomalies in systems that …

Process Development And Characterization Of Sol-Gel Lead Zirconate Titanate Films For Fabrication Of Flexural Plate Wave Devices, Praveen Kumar Sekhar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, research on development of chemical, biological and hazardous gas sensors for homeland security have attracted great deal of interest. Actuators possessing high sensitivity, easy fabrication techniques and excellent integration compatibility are in great demand. Towards this need, the development and characterization of improved solgel processing for in-house fabrication of highly sensitive and reliable Flexural Plate Wave (FPW) device was pursued

This work focuses on an experimental design approach to improve texture and morphology of PZT thin film by systematically controlling the spin, pyrolysis and anneal cycles. The process alterations resulted in an 8-fold increase in the relative …

Self-Guided Micro Vehicle: An Autonomous Vehicle With Gps Navigation And 802.11b Communications, Roberto J. Guerra

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To facilitate the learning of automatic navigation systems by engineering students an easy to obtain platform is useful. The topic of this thesis is the design and implementation of a basic self-guided vehicle that can be programmed and expanded by anyone possessing basic experience with the C programming language. The Self-Guided Micro Vehicle, (SGMV), uses off-the-shelf easy to obtain parts such as a toy R/C truck and the Handyboard to maximize availability of this technology to students.

This thesis divides the SGMV design process by functionality. It starts by documenting the locomotion system, which was a modified R/C toy truck. …

A Geographic Information System For Dynamic Ridematching, Sasha Dos-Santos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Online Transportation Option System (OTOS) is a Geographic Information System (GIS) that addresses many of the limitations associated with traditional dynamic ridematching applications. The main improvements are in the areas of trip scheduling and match searching. OTOS is unique in its ability to accept trips with schedules that can not be expressed in terms of a regular weekly trip. OTOS also distinguishes itself in its use of spatial analysis techniques to locate matches. Specifically, the use of a shortest path solver enables the ridematching algorithm to perform a search along the path of a user’s trip, in addition to …

An Integrated Optimal Design Method For Utility Power Distribution Systems, Ralph E. Fehr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a comprehensive and integrated design methodology to optimize both the electrical and the economic performance of a utility power distribution system. The proposal is structured to facilitate its adoption and incorporation into the existing utility infrastructure by allowing the various portions of the new design to be implemented gradually into the existing infrastructure without the need to abandon the portions of the existing system that are performing satisfactorily.

The topology of the substation plays a vital role in determining both the reliability and the economy of the distribution system. The ring bus topology is offered as the …

The Analysis Of Dielectric Loss In Co-Planar Waveguide Structures Using Generalized Transverse Resonance, James William Culver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are several methods for the full-wave characterization of waveguide discontinuities; Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference Technique (FDT), and Method of Moments (MoM) are popular. However, these methods are not easily applied when studying the ‘modal anatomy’ of a discontinuity. Other full-wave techniques are better suited. This dissertation discusses the formulation of a technique known as Generalized Transverse Resonance (GTR), which is a subset of Method of Moments. Generalized Transverse Resonance is a hybrid method combining the Transverse Resonance Method (TRM) with the Mode Matching Technique (MMT).

The understanding of the generalized transverse resonance method starts with a discussion …

Evaluation Of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools (Abets) And Their Application In Improving Tcp Performance, Yegyalakshmi Easwaran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Available bandwidth is a time-dependant variable that defines the spare bandwidth in an end-toend network path. Currently, there is significant focus in the research community on the design and development of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools (ABETs), and a few tools have resulted from this research. However, there is no comprehensive evaluation of these tools and the research work in this thesis attempts to fill that gap. A performance evaluation of important ABETs like Pathload, IGI and pathChirp in terms of their accuracy, convergence time and intrusiveness is conducted in several scenarios. A 2 k factorial design is carried out to …

Automatically Determining Route And Mode Of Transport Using A Gps Enabled Phone, Himanshu Gilani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A system consisting of a GPS-enabled phone and a database has been designed and implemented. This system is capable of recording the route traveled by a user and determining the mode of transport (walk, bicycle, car or bus) used. The Java code running in the GPS-enabled phone automatically records location data, determines critical locations for the trip, and transmits the locations to a central database using the wireless capabilities of the phone. As the route information arrives at the database, it is processed by the mode detection algorithm that determines the mode of transportation being used by the individual for …

Reconfigurable Wireless Sensor Platform For Training And Research In Networked Embedded Systems, Oscar V. Gonzalez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ever since the University of California, Berkeley released the first commercial Wireless Sensor Network, (WSN), "mote", applications that employ the WSN technology have increased many fold. There are many kinds of prototypes and architectures for WSNs that are being developed by major communication companies. Due to the lack of a common standard for different physical and MAC layer protocols, interoperability among the wireless systems is constrained. Additionally, remote sensing capability, reconfigurability and interoperability have not yet been designed. In the current platforms hardware upgrading has to be performed on-site by replacing the old sensors with new ones. This procedure increases …

Foraminiferal Assemblages As Bioindicators Of Potentially Toxic Elements In Biscayne Bay, Florida, Elizabeth A. Carnahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Heavy-metal pollution is an issue of concern in estuaries such as Biscayne Bay that are heavily influenced by agricultural, urban, and harbor activities. The goals of this study were to provide a “state of the bay” assessment that can be used to interpret changes that have occurred over the past 60 years in Biscayne Bay, to provide a baseline to compare changes in the ecosystems during and after execution of the Comprehensive Everglades Restorations Plan (CERP), and to determine if benthic foraminiferal assemblages in Biscayne Bay reflect heavy-metal contamination in sediments.

Surficial samples were collected at 147 sites throughout the …

Trade And Plunder Networks In The Second Seminole War In Florida, 1835-1842, Toni Carrier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Second Seminole War in Florida, 1835-1842, was a time of disruption and upheaval for all of those unfortunate enough to occupy the territory of Florida during the seven years of this protracted battle over Seminole removal to the West. Illicit trade was a major factor which enabled the Seminoles to resist removal for such an extended period. Illicit trade requires outside assistance. Documentary evidence suggests that such assistance was rendered by Spanish fishermen, English and American wreckers, slaves, free blacks, Native Americans and white American settlers. This thesis examines the evidence for plunder and illicit trade, and the possible …

The Effect Of Perceived Entitativity On Implicit Image Transfer In Multiple Sponsorships, Francoì?Is Anthony Carrillat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes that in the case of multiple sponsorships (i.e., brands sponsoring concomitantly the same event), the group constituted by the sponsoring brands and the sponsored event will be perceived as an entity; a phenomenon that Campbell (1958) called entitativity. The extent to which a group of brands and a sponsored event is seen as being entitative will result in stereotypic processing of the group members (Brewer and Harasty 1996). Information about an entitative group is abstracted and used to form judgments about every group member (McConnell, Sherman, and Hamilton 1997). Characteristics tied to one brand or to the …

Effects Of Social Skills Training On The Interpersonal Behaviors Of Elementary School Students In An After-School Program, Robert Caples

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social skills training was investigated in an after-school program setting with four seven- and eight-year-old males. Two were Hispanic and two were African-American. Social skills training consisted of a direct instruction, behavioral learning model of skillstreaming as described by McGinnis & Goldstein (1997). There were four major components to each social skills training session: (1) an explanation of the skill being taught; (2) modeling by the researcher of the skill being taught; (3) role play by each of the participants; and (4) performance feedback regarding the role plays. Sessions lasted approximately 30 minutes and were held weekly throughout the intervention …

Sound Localization Abilities Of Two Florida Manatees, Trichechus Manatus Latirostris, Debborah E. Colbert

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) live in the shallow, often turbid inland and coastal waters of the southeastern United States. Since their vision is poor (Bauer et al., 2003), other senses probably guide orientation. Previous studies have found that manatees can hear over 40 kHz (Gerstein et al., 1999) and have the capacity for rapid auditory temporal processing (Mann et al., 2005). However, it is not known if manatees have the ability to localize underwater sounds.

Two Florida manatees were trained to identify underwater sound source locations using a four-choice discrimination paradigm. Three broad-band signals ( 0.2 - …

Promotoras Of The U.S.-Mexico Border: An Ethnographic Study Of Culture Brokerage, Agency, And Community Development, Ricardo B. Contreras

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines promotoras from the U.S.-Mexico border. Promotoras are women who live in colonias throughout the border area and who are employed by service provider and community development organizations to do health-related outreach and education with colonia residents. The role of promotoras can be seen from the perspective of culture brokerage; that is, they are mediators between local communities and external actors such as service providers and agencies of the government. As culture brokers, promotoras facilitate the relationship among the local communities, and the system of services and outside resources. The study proposes a conceptual framework through which programs …

Transformational Leadership, Leader-Member Exchange (Lmx), And Ocb: The Role Of Motives, Patrick W. Connell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of employee motives regarding select leadership-OCB relationships. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that the relationships observed between transformational leadership and various dimensions of OCB would be mediated by subordinate Organizational Concern. In contrast, the relationship between LMX-quality and subordinate Altruism was predicted to be either mediated or moderated by subordinate Prosocial Values.

Two hundred and one part-time and full-time employees (subordinates and supervisors) served as participants in this study, representing a total of 13 organizations in the Southeast United States. Results were based on a final sample of …

The Power Of The Spoken Word: Literature In The American Mass Media Of The 1990s, Codrina Cozma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The 1990s saw a climax of literature representations in what Ong called the secondary orality, particularly in film, television, and radio; for instance, the film industry produced a number of adaptations of novels that had been accepted into the American literary canon, while television and radio marketed literature through book clubs and literary shows. All these literary productions mediated through film, radio, and television are referred to in this study as mediatized literature.

The argument of this dissertation is that 1990s U.S. mediatized literature constitutes a post-modern re-enactment of the traditional oral literature that initially emerged on U.S. territory …

Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis In Hiv-Positive And Hiv-Negative Children In Haiti: A Hospital-Based Investigation, Marie F. Denis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Globally, one in four persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who are living with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) will die of tuberculosis (TB). The estimated number of HIV-infected children who die of tuberculosis, especially extrapulmonary TB (EPTB), in Haiti, is only loosely based on facts or investigation. This study proposes to describe demographics of children with EPTB in a pediatric TB hospital in Haiti. The objectives are two-fold. The first objective is to describe the population of children discharged from Grace Children’s Hospital with a confirmed diagnosis of tuberculosis overall, and broken down by whether or …

Molecular Dynamics And Time Correlation Function Theories, Russell H. Devane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research presented in this thesis makes use of theoretical/computational techniques to calculate nonlinear spectroscopic signals and molecular volumes. These techniques have become more practical with advances in computational resources and now are an integral part of research in these areas. Preliminary results allude to the power of these techniques when applied to relevant problems and suggest that much progress can be made in understanding the complex nature of nonlinear spectroscopic signals and molecular volume contributions. The nonlinear spectroscopy work involves writing the quantum mechanical response functions in terms of classical time correlation functions which are amenable to calculation using …