Digital Commons Network^™

Heavy Vehicle Classification Analysis Using Length-Based Vehicle Count And Speed Data, Eren Yuksel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing demand for application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in order to make highways safer and sustainable. Collecting and analyzing traffic stream data are the most important parameters in transportation engineering in enhancing our understanding of traffic congestion and mobility. Classification of the vehicles using traffic data is one of the most essential parameters for traffic management. Of particular interest are heavy vehicles which impact traffic mobility due to their lack of maneuverability and slower speeds. The impact of heavy vehicles on the traffic stream results in congestion and reduction of road efficiency. In this paper, length-based …

Partial Characterization Of Plasmodium Falciparum Protein Kinase Abck2 (Pfabck2), Muhammad Khalid

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Malaria is a major threat to the public health worldwide as it is affecting populations in tropical and subtropical areas globally. Among those populations are around 40% of pregnant women and children who are susceptible to this disease. Plasmodium falciparum is the most lethal agent that causes malaria in human. Currently, there is drug resistance against antimalarial drugs in parasite against treatment of malaria infections, it is essential to search for new drug targets in order to find cure and alleviate suffering of human population.

There are approximately 100 protein kinases in P. falciparum that are involved in phosphorylation of …

Determining Level Of Cognitive Impairment Via Computing Fractals Using A Computer, Kodhanda Karthik Siriyala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mild Cognitive Impairment is a condition that affects an individual's thinking and decision making capabilities. Specifically, it is one where an individual's capabilities of memorizing, thinking and decision making are less efficient when compared to others. In order to diagnose this condition, a conventional method is to provide the subject with a small challenge they should be completed using pen and paper. This thesis focuses on how this method can be converted to a computer based test. A data visualization tool named Processing has been used to develop a system that runs a game-like test, which is completed by individuals …

Political Decisions On Police Expenditures: Examining The Potential Relationship Between Political Structure, Police Expenditures And The Volume Of Crime Across Us States, Xavier D. Burch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study was designed to examine the variations in criminal justice expenditures across states in relation to crime, measures of political party membership, and several control variables that also attempt to explain both property and violent crime. The year, 2009, was chosen for the analysis. Data in the present study were collected by Olugbenga Ajilore (2016) for the year 2009 and supplemented with other state level data. The Ajilore dataset is one of the few datasets that has reliable criminal justice expenditure data across states, which is also disaggregated by type. Criminal justice expenditure data is actually quite difficult …

Evaluating The Influence Of Time Of Day On Activity Engagement In Persons With Dementia, Darienne E. Boyden

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dementia is a serious disease affecting a growing number of people. With the onset of dementia comes a decline in social activity engagement which can negatively impact multiple aspects of a person’s life. Research suggests that time of day may influence activity engagement of a person with dementia, but such research is limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of time of day on engagement in activities in persons diagnosed with dementia. The secondary purpose of this study was to assess the validity of preference assessments in individuals diagnosed with dementia and determine if low preference …

A Case Study Exploration Of Internships In Undergraduate Business Education, Kawana W. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A single case study was used to examine internships at an (AACSB) accredited business school located at a Research 1 university in the southeastern United States. Internships are the dominant form of experiential learning used within the college under study and the “preferred method of business schools worldwide to give students practical experience and help them transition to the real world” (Kosnik, Tingle, Blanton, 2013, p. 616). The Grant University College of Business, pseudonym selected for this case, supports an internship and career services office that oversees nine internship courses representing six departments within the college. At minimum, each department …

An Analysis Of Organ Donation Presentations On Weibo, Shengfei Li

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the presentation of organ donation organization on Weibo. This study used content analysis to find out the Love.Hope organ donation organization’s main content of Weibo’s content.

The main content includes six themes. The theme of popularizing organ donation knowledge is the majority. Through analyzing the correlation of content of each themes with shares, likes, and comments. It is concluded that people are more inclined to engage with Weibo posts with popularization of organ donation knowledge and stories of organ donors and recipients, and people also concern about the organ supply and demand situation in China.

It turns …

Simulation Of Radiation Flux From Thermal Fluid In Origami Tubes, Robert R. Bebeau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Spacecraft in orbit experience temperature swings close to 240 K as the craft passes from the shadow of the Earth into direct sunlight. To regulate the craft’s internal energy, large radiators eject unwanted energy into space using radiation transfer. The amount of radiation emitted is directly related to the topology of the radiator design. Deformable structures such as those made with origami tessellation patterns offer a mechanism to control the quantity of energy being emitted by varying the radiator shape. Three such patterns, the Waterbomb, Huffman Waterbomb, and Huffman Stars-Triangles, can be folded into tubes. Origami tubes offer greater control …

Cue Competition During Phonotactic Processing In Bilingual Adults As Measured By Eye-Tracking, Katherine Manrique

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is well documented in the literature that bilingual speakers simultaneously activate both languages during spoken language processing (e.g., Marian & Spivey, 2003). However, parallel activation can lead to competition between the two languages (e.g., Blumenfield & Marian, 2013; Freeman, Shook, & Marian, 2016). The Unified Competition model (UCM) provides a theory as to how bilingual speakers navigate through two languages while different linguistic cues are competing (MacWhinney, 2005). The UCM proposes that cues are used to process language, based on cue validity (the product of how reliable and available a cue is), which is determined by cue strength (a …

Evaluation Of A Hierarchal Training Model For Group Home Staff, Elizabeth Marie Lynch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Direct-care staff working with individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) are frequently exposed to challenging behavior from residents and expected to respond correctly to challenging resident behavior, but often receive insufficient training due to lack of resources and high staff turnover (e.g., Collins, 2012; Collins, Higbee, & Salzberg, 2009; Haberlin, Beauchamp, Agnew, & O’Brien, 2009; Pelletier, McNamara, Braga-Kenyon, & Ahearn, 2010). Training methods such as Behavioral Skills Training (BST) are highly intrusive and require high amounts of resources (e.g., Parsens, Rollyson, & Reid, 2012). Research suggests technological based alternatives are more cost effective, decreases training time and response effort from management, …

Borromean: Preserving Binary Node Attribute Distributions In Large Graph Generations, Clayton A. Gandy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Real graph datasets are important for many science domains, from understanding epidemics to modeling traffic congestion. To facilitate access to realistic graph datasets, researchers proposed various graph generators typically aimed at representing particular graph properties. While many such graph generators exist, there are few techniques for generating graphs where the nodes have binary attributes. Moreover, generating such graphs in which the distribution of the node attributes preserves real-world characteristics is still an open challenge. This thesis introduces Borromean, a graph generating algorithm that creates synthetic graphs with binary node attributes in which the attributes obey an attribute-specific joint degree distribution. …

Sr Flip-Flop Based Physically Unclonable Function (Puf) For Hardware Security, Rohith Prasad Challa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are now widely being used to uniquely identify Integrated Circuits (ICs). In this work, we propose a novel Set-Reset (SR) Flip-flop based PUF design. For a NAND gate based SR flip-flop, the input condition S (Set) = 1 and R (Reset) = 1 must be avoided as it is an inconsistent condition. When S=R=1 is applied followed by S=R=0, then the outputs Q and Q' undergo race condition and depending on the delays of the NAND gates in the feedback path, the output Q can settle at either 0 or 1. Because of process variations in …

Adapting Safemedicate (Medication Dosage Calculation Skills Software) For Use In Brazil, Samia Valeria Ozorio Dutra

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Medication related errors are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. In Brazil, most errors are related to prescribing, preparing, and administering medications. One way to deal with this barrier to safe care is through assessment and education of medication calculation dosage skills. Considering the Brazilian reality, this dissertation is a context and language adaptation of an evidence-based intervention called safeMedicate, a program that reinforces learning synthesis in crucial elements of medication dosage problem solving and provides the foundation for development in remaining levels of the hierarchy of learning. A guideline for medication calculation skills development or improvement based on …

Efficient Adjacency Queries And Dynamic Refinement For Meshfree Methods With Applications To Explicit Fracture Modeling, James Olliff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Meshfree methods provide a more practical approach to solving problems involving large deformation and modeling fracture compared to the Finite Element Method (FEM). However meshfree methods are more computationally intensive compared to FEM, which can limit their practicality in engineering. Meshfree methods also lack a clear boundary definition, restricting available visualization techniques. Determining particle locations and attributes such that a consistent approximation is ensured can be challenging in meshfree methods, especially when employing h-refinement. The primary objective of this work is to address the limitations associated with computational efficiency, meshfree domain discretization, and h-refinement, including both placement of particles as …

A Key Based Obfuscation And Anonymization Of Behavior Vhdl Models, Balausha Varshini Kandikonda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Intellectual Property (IP) based Integrated Circuit (IC) design is an established approach for the design of a complex System-on-Chip (SoC). Porting the preparatory designs to third-party without enough security margin exposes an attacker to perform reverse engineering (RE) on the designs and hence counterfeiting, IP theft etc., are common now-a-days. Design obfuscation can reduce RE attempt by an attacker. In this work, we propose a key based obfuscation and anonymization method for a behavioral IP. Given a behavioral VHDL description, the assignment and conditional statements are modified by incorporating random boolean operations with unique random key bits. The obfuscated VHDL …

Producing The Past: Contested Heritage And Tourism In Glastonbury And Tintagel, Vivian Beatrice Gornik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Heritage, the “present-centered” use of the past (Ashworth 2007) influences the identities of contemporary citizens (Palmer 2005, Sommer 2009). Grasping the ways in which the production and consumption of heritage takes place is becoming increasingly relevant in a post-Brexit Britain, where the national identity is constantly up for debate. This research asks: what role does heritage tourism play in (re)producing hegemonic national narratives in Glastonbury and Tintagel? And subsequently, what do these narratives say about broader conceptualizations of English identity?

Arthurian legend permeates the historical narrative in both locations. According to the legend, King Arthur was conceived and born in …

Identifying The Personal And Perceived Organizational Characteristics Associated With Job Satisfaction Among Juvenile Probation Staff, Julie M. Krupa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Satisfied employees are essential to an organization, as they are the primary means for meeting organizational needs. Employees who are more satisfied at work are less likely to leave their job or think about leaving their job, less likely to feel burnt out or stressed, and perform better at work. Job satisfaction is particularly important among criminal justice agencies, specifically probation agencies which largely rely on personnel for the supervision and rehabilitation of offenders. Yet the correlates of job satisfaction among juvenile probation staff are largely unknown. Theory suggests that organizational characteristics are influential predictors of job satisfaction across occupational …

A Woman's Place In Jazz In The 21st Century, Valerie T. Simuro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women often harbor ingrained attitudes that restrain them from achieving a successful career. They retain deep-seated attitudes that confine them to a self-defined space based on internalized patriarchal standards. Some women do achieve success in spite of the challenges they face. Esperanza Spalding, a young, African-American woman jazz instrumentalist is one such success story. She defies convention, plays an unconventional musical instrument in a musical genre that is historically deemed a masculine world. My thesis discusses the difficult path she traverses between feminist ideals and commercial success. It discusses what characteristics of femininity she chooses to display. Some intentional, some …

Yet Another Ferguson Effect: An Exploratory Content Analysis Of News Stories On Police Brutality And Deadly Force Before And After The Killing Of Michael Brown, Carl Root

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examined the police-media relationship through an exploratory content analysis of news articles indexed as police brutality and/or deadly force published in six newspapers (The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Denver Post and USA Today) between August 9th, 2013 and August 9th, 2015. This timeframe was selected in order to determine whether significant differences exist between articles published in the year before the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9th, 2014 compared to those published in the year afterward. Specifically, this research examined whether and how news stories pre and …

Collaboration Among Mathematicians And Mathematics Educators: Working Together To Educate Preservice Teachers, Amanda R. Mohn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Collaboration among higher education professors who are responsible for the education of preservice teachers is one potential solution to the problem of poor teacher preparation. Specifically, collaboration among mathematics educators and mathematicians can enhance preservice teacher preparation because it provides opportunities for preservice teachers to develop pedagogical content knowledge. However, collaborative efforts are challenging, and collaborators often face obstacles and tensions arise among the collaborative group members. Learning about ways the collaborators approach their collaborative efforts, the issues and tensions that arise, the hindering and supporting factors that affect the collaboration, and the potential outcomes of collaborative efforts provides information …

Behavior Change For Children Participating In Parent-Child Interaction Therapy: A Growth Curve Analysis, Kayla Larosa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Disruptive behavior disorders including Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder (CD), and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), are listed among the most common reasons youth are referred for mental health services (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [CDC], 2016b; Kazdin, Mazurick, Siegel, & 1994). Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is one intervention that has been found to reduce clinically significant levels of disruptive behavior. The purpose of the current study was to determine the form of change, typical change trajectory, and individual variation in change for disruptive behavior across the two phases of PCIT; the Child-Directed Interaction (CDI) and Parent-Directed Interaction (PDI) phases. …

“I Want To Be Who I Am”: Stories Of Rejecting Binary Gender, Ana Balius

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Historically, in academic literature—sociological and otherwise—surrounding the daily lives of LGBT+ people, people who reject binary gender are very marginally represented. In this study, I specifically seek to understand the way my participants articulate their sense of their gender identities through the stories they tell of their experiences. This study attempts to answer the following questions: What are the stories of gender identity construction for people who reject binary gender? How do they understand the ways they are held accountable to binary gender in the day-to-day? How do they perceive and make meaning of gender in their lives? Through ten …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, John Hartman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter, I investigate reputational effects of the disclosure of negative information in a market affected by adverse selection. A series of recent discoveries has increased consumer concern over the presence of counterfeits in the market for fine and rare wine. For the thousands of bottles sold at auction each year, house reputation is used as a quality assurance mechanism to signal product authenticity. Using sales data from 2005-2015 for the ten largest auction houses, I study consumer reaction following two recent disclosures of an auction house having offered or sold counterfeit wine. My identification strategy to examine …

Synthesis, Oxidation, And Distribution Of Polyphenols In Strawberry Fruit During Cold Storage, Katrina E. Kelly

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Plants inherently produce polyphenols (i.e., antioxidants) as a response to reduce oxidative stress caused by abusive environmental pre- and postharvest conditions. These antioxidants, as well as vitamin C, are present in considerable levels in strawberries; however, excessive oxidative stress brought on by improper postharvest handling conditions can reduce the levels of antioxidants in the fruit and shorten the shelf-life of strawberries. Nevertheless, it may be possible to utilize strawberry’s naturally occurring polyphenols to reduce postharvest stress and extend their shelf life. The polyphenolic profile has been previously investigated in several strawberry cultivars, however no studies have determined the unique polyphenolic …

A Machine Learning Framework To Classify Mosquito Species From Smart-Phone Images, Mona Minakshi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mosquito borne diseases have been a constant scourge across the globe resulting in numerous diseases with debilitating consequences, and also death. To derive trends on population of mosquitoes in an area, trained personnel lay traps, and after collecting trapped specimens, they spend hours under a microscope to inspect each specimen for identifying the actual species and logging it. This is vital, because multiple species of mosquitoes can reside in any area, and the vectors that some of them carry are not the same ones carried by others. The species identification process is naturally laborious, and imposes severe cognitive burden, since …

Dynamic Modeling Of An Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, Komal Rathore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Advanced wastewater treatment plants have complex biological kinetics, time variant influent rates and long processing times. The modeling and operation control of wastewater treatment plant gets complicated due to these characteristics. However, a robust operational system for a wastewater treatment plant is necessary to increase the efficiency of the plant, reduce energy cost and achieve environmental discharge limits. These discharge limits are set by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants to limit the amount of nutrients being discharged into the aquatic systems.

This document summarizes the research to develop a supervisory operational …

Covariates In Factor Mixture Modeling: Investigating Measurement Invariance Across Unobserved Groups, Yan Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Factor mixture modeling (FMM) has been increasingly used to investigate unobserved population heterogeneity. This Monte Carlo simulation study examined the issue of measurement invariance testing with FMM when there are covariate effects. Specifically, this study investigated the impact of excluding and misspecifying covariate effects on the class enumeration and measurement invariance testing with FMM. Data were generated based on three FMM models where the covariate had impact on the latent class membership only (population model 1), both the latent class membership and the factor (population model 2), and the latent class membership, the factor, and one item (population model 3). …

Framework Integrating Climate Model, Hydrology, And Water Footprint To Measure The Impact Of Climate Change On Water Scarcity In Lesotho, Africa, John W. Pryor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water scarcity is a problem that will be exacerbated by climate change. Being able to model the effect of climate change on water scarcity is important to effectively plan the use of future water resources. This research integrated the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), climate model, and water footprint analysis to measure the impact of climate change on future water scarcity. This was achieved through two objectives. The first objective was to create a modeling framework that links the output from climate model to SWAT and combined streamflow outputs from SWAT with water footprint analysis to measure how climate …

Design, Construction, And Characterization Of The University Of South Florida Wind Tunnel, Jason S. Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much of the aerosol research completed at the University of South Florida has revolved around evaluating industrial hygiene equipment and instrumentation in environmental chambers. Data collected during these studies has provided valuable baseline data on equipment and instrument performance under calm air conditions. A newly constructed wind tunnel now allows researchers to evaluate industrial hygiene instruments under moving air conditions. Because the wind tunnel is capable of producing wind velocities that a worker could encounter in the occupational setting, researchers may gain insight into instrument performance under simulated field conditions. Because aerosols can be introduced into the new wind tunnel …

An Experimental Examination Of Automatic Interpretation Biases In Major Depression, Alexandra H. Cowden Hindash

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive theories of depression have long posited automatic interpretation biases (AIB) as a central contributor to depressed mood. The current study was first to examine AIB in a clinically defined depressed sample. While assessing AIB using a semantic association paradigm, pupillary reactivity was simultaneously recorded to build insight into the AIB process. A total of 53 individuals (25 depressed and 28 healthy control) completed the Word Sentence Association Paradigm for Depression (WSAP-D) while pupillary reactivity was recorded. Results revealed the depressed group was significantly more likely to endorse negative AIB and less likely to endorse benign AIB compared to healthy …