Digital Commons Network^™

Synthesis Techniques For Sub-Threshold Leakage And Nbti Optimization In Digital Vlsi Systems, Shilpa Pendyala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rising power demands and cost motivates us to explore low power solutions in electronics. In nanometer Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) processes with low threshold voltages and thin gate oxides, subthreshold leakage power dominates total power of a circuit. As technology scales, Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) emerged as a major limiting reliability mechanism. It causes a threshold voltage shift which, over time, results in circuit performance degradation. Hence, leakage power and NBTI degradation are two key challenges in deep sub micron regime.

In this dissertation, interval arithmetic based interval propagation technique is introduced as an effective leakage optimization …

Lipoproteins And Health Outcomes: Cognitive And Physical Function In Older Adults, Marianne Chanti-Ketterl

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cardiovascular health is a major determinant of quality of life and mortality, especially in older adulthood. With the world’s oldest population increasing at expedited rates, challenges from cardiovascular conditions and its implications are spawning. Although it is well known that dyslipidemia may lead to cardiac events, less is known about the effects on cognitive and physical function in older adults. Epidemiological studies show that optimizing current preventive strategies even at older ages may reduce the incidence of cardiovascular comorbidity (e.g. hypertension, stroke) and increase quality of life. Determining the association between lipoproteins and cognitive and functional performance in older adults …

Predictive Analytics Of Organizational Decisions And The Role Of Rationality, Arash Barfar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How can we predict key decisions made by organizations in the presence of big data and on-demand information? In this dissertation we exploit a large repository of B2B real-time transactional data with service quality indicators and present evidence that organizational decision analytics apply both rational and boundedly-rational (i.e. behavioral) economic models. The dissertation’s findings demonstrate that both utility and heuristic models, respectively, play significant roles in predicting organizational decisions on churn, a key decision in this context. In the presence of a large data set the assumed rationality of organizations appears to provide accurate predictions in uncontrolled experiences and selected …

Preference Of Chinese Undergraduate Music Majors For Chinese Xi-Qu And Western Opera, Hong Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to explore the preference of the Chinese undergraduate music majors (N = 27) for Chinese Xi-Qu and Western opera audiovisual examples, the reasons for preference, influence of familiarity on preference, and the relationship between preference ratings and the emotions as detected by FaceReader. The mixed research method, convergent parallel design, was used to explore this topic in depth. As Xi-Qu and opera integrate multiple art forms, eight audiovisual examples (Xi-Qu, n = 4, opera, n = 4) were selected as the stimuli to show the characteristics of the two genres. The participants watched …

Pragmatic Competence In Efl Context: Suggestions In University Office Hour Discourse, Hatime Ciftci

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Office hour interactions at universities are one type of communicative activity in which international instructors and their Turkish EFL students are involved as a form of academic or institutional discourse (Drew & Heritage, 1992). In such real world communication, both parties employ several linguistic strategies and attend to various interactional goals to address the academic concerns at hand (Chiang, 2011; Chiang & Mi, 2008; Limberg, 2007; 2010; Reindhart, 2010; Skyrme, 2010). Embracing a discourse analytic approach, this study investigated the primary functions and topics of office hour interactions; discourse organization of office hour interactions with regard to the features of …

In Vacuo Fabrication And Electronic Structure Characterization Of Atomic Layer Deposition Thin Films, Michael Schaefer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Improvement of novel electronic devices is possible by tailor-designing the electronic structure at device interfaces. Common problems observed at interfaces are related to unwanted band alignment caused by the chemical diversity of interface partners, influencing device performance negatively. One way to address this problem is by introducing ultra-thin interfacial dipole layers, steering the band alignment in a desired direction. The requirements are strict in terms of thickness, conformity and low density of defects, making sophisticated deposition techniques necessary. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) with its Ångstrom-precise thickness control can fulfill those requirements.

The work presented here encompasses the implementation of an …

A Gadamerian Analysis Of Roman Catholic Hermeneutics: A Diachronic Analysis Of Interpretations Of Romans 1:17-2:17, Steven Floyd Surrency

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Catholic exegesis of scriptural and dogmatic statements has become rigid in the period following the Enlightenment. Gadamer’s account of philosophical hermeneutics, when applied to the Catholic situation, elaborates how Catholic exegesis might return to its premodern, freer form. Following Gadamer, I hold that to understand is to fuse the horizon of the old with today’s horizon using the preunderstandings that have been provided by the tradition while at the same time bringing the questions of today into dialogue with the text.

Examples of how Romans 1 and 2 have been interpreted historically serve to support this thesis. Origen reads Romans …

Direct Solutions To Perceptual Organization Problems, Ravi Kumar Panchumarthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quadratic optimization problems arise in various real world application domains including engineering design, microeconomics, genetic algorithms, integrated circuit chip design, probabilistic graphical models and computer vision. In particular, there are many problems in computer vision that require binary quadratic optimization such as motion segmentation, correspondences, figure-ground segmentation, clustering, grouping, subgraph matching, and digital matting. The objective of an optimization algorithm can be related to the state of a physical system, where the goal is to bring the initial arbitrary state of the system to a state with minimum possible energy. By recognizing that the Hamiltonian of nanomagnets can be expressed …

Dynamic Phasor Based Analysis And Control In Renewable Energy Integration, Lakshan Prageeth Piyasinghe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to carry out dynamic modeling, analysis and control of power systems with Renewable Energy Sources (RES) such as: Photovoltaic (PV) power sources and wind farms. The dissertation work is mainly focused on microgrid since it plays a major role in modern power systems and tend to have higher renewable power penetration. Two main theoretical concepts, dynamic phasor and impedance modeling have been adopted to model and analyze the power systems/mocrogrids with RES. The initial state calculation which is essential for small signal analysis of a system is carried out as the first step of …

Content Abuse And Privacy Concerns In Online Social Networks, Md Imrul Kayes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have seen an exponential growth over the last decade, with Facebook having more than 1.49 billion monthly active users and Twitter having 135,000 new users signing up every day as of 2015. Users are sharing 70 million photos per day on the Instagram photo-sharing network. Yahoo Answers question-answering community has more than 1 billion posted answers. The meteoric rise in popularity has made OSNs important social platforms for computer-mediated communications and embedded themselves into society’s daily life, with direct consequences to the offline world and activities. OSNs are built on a foundation of trust, where users …

Computational Methods For Biomarker Identification In Complex Disease, Amin Ahmadi Adl

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a modern systematic view of biology, cell functions arise from the interaction between molecular components. One of the challenging problems in systems biology with high-throughput measurements is discovering the important components involved in the development and progression of complex diseases, which may serve as biomarkers for accurate predictive modeling and as targets for therapeutic purposes. Due to the non-linearity and heterogeneity of these complex diseases, traditional biomarker identification approaches have had limited success at finding clinically useful biomarkers. In this dissertation we propose novel methods for biomarker identification that explicitly take into account the non-linearity and heterogeneity of complex …

Kinematic Control Of Redundant Mobile Manipulators, Mustafa Mashali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A mobile manipulator is a robotic arm mounted on a robotic mobile platform. In such a system, the degrees of freedom of the mobile platform are combined with that of the manipulator. As a result, the workspace of the manipulator is substantially extended. A mobile manipulator has two trajectories: the end-effector trajectory and the mobile platform trajectory. Typically, the mobile platform trajectory is not defined and is determined through inverse kinematics. But in some applications it is important to follow a specified mobile platform trajectory. The main focus of this work is to determine the inverse kinematics of a mobile …

Cognitive Load Of Registered Nurses During Medication Administration, Sarah Faith Perron

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over 4 million avoidable hospital admissions result from medication errors (IMS Insitute for Healthcare Informatics, 2013). Human error accounts for 80% of all medical errors (Palmieri, DeLucia, Peterson, Ott, & Green, 2008). Medication administration is a complex process. It is important to understand the cognitive load (CL) of Registered Nurses (RNs) working in an electronic health record environment to identify the risk factors of medication errors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence the CL of RNs during medication administration who are working in an electronic health record environment. Simulated medication administration scenarios with varying …

Hepatic Nutrient And Hormonal Regulation Of The Pancreatic-Derived Factor (Pander) Promoter, Whitney Ratliff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

PANcreatic-DERived factor (PANDER, FAM3B) has been shown to regulate glycemic levels via interactions with both pancreatic islets and the liver. Although PANDER is predominantly expressed from the endocrine pancreas, recent work has provided sufficient evidence that the liver may also be an additional tissue source of PANDER production. At physiological levels, PANDER is capable of disrupting insulin signaling and promoting increased hepatic glucose production. As shown in some animal models, strong expression of PANDER, induced by viral delivery within the liver, induces hepatic steatosis. However, no studies to date have explicitly characterized the transcriptional regulation of PANDER from the liver. …

An Empirical Comparison Of The Effect Of Missing Data On Type I Error And Statistical Power Of The Likelihood Ratio Test For Differential Item Functioning: An Item Response Theory Approach Using The Graded Response Model, Patricia Rodriguez De Gil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the context of educational research, missing data arise when examinees omit or do not reach an item, which generates an item nonresponse problem. Using a simulation approach, in addition to conducting complete data analyses, this study compared the performance of six methods for treating item nonresponse in the context of differential item functioning (DIF). The effect of missing data on the Type I error and statistical power of the Likelihood Ratio test for DIF detection in small scales was examined in the context of Item Response Theory (IRT-LR), using polytomous, Likert-type data and the graded response model. The effect …

A Case Study Of Four Female Electrician Technicians In A Male-Dominated Occupation, Maniphone S. Dickerson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the reasons the four female participants decided to pursue electrician technician training, their perspectives of the apprenticeship program, their perceptions of successful employment in a male-dominated occupation, and differences in treatment based on their gender. The exploratory questions that guided the study were: what led the females to make the decision for applying to the electrician technician apprenticeship; what was the nature of the education and training experiences of the participants in the electrician technician apprenticeship program, what were the participants’ perceptions of being successful in advancement within the workforce as a …

Use Of Fdm Components For Ion Beam And Vacuum Applications, Eric Miguel Tridas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on novel approaches to the modeling and construction of devices used in ion beam and vacuum systems. Turbulent computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed to model the air flow into an ion funnel system. The results of these simulations were coupled one-way with electrodynamics simulations of the fields generated by the ion funnel. Using the turbulence kinetic energy (k), a spatially varying estimation of the fluctuating component of the velocity field was calculated. These resulting simulations more accurately predicted the ion transmission through the system. Using fused deposition modeling (FDM) novel construction methods for the ion funnel …

Modeling Alphabet Skills As Instructive Feedback Within A Phonological Awareness Curriculum, Arnold Olszewski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the use of instructive feedback for modeling early literacy skills. Instructive feedback is defined as the presentation of additional information during the positive feedback phase of learner trials. Thus, it is a way of modeling additional information when students respond to a trial correctly. Previous studies have demonstrated that instructive feedback can facilitate students’ observational learning of skills, such as sight words, numerals, and vocabulary. Instructive feedback has yet to be investigated when modeling early literacy skills.

A modified version of an evidence-based early literacy intervention, PAth to Literacy, was used. Studies examining the efficacy of …

A Comparative Study Of Formal Verification Techniques For Authentication Protocols, Hernan Miguel Palombo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Protocol verification is an exciting area of network security that intersects engineering and formal methods. This thesis presents a comparison of formal verification tools for security protocols for their respective strengths and weaknesses supported by the results from several case studies. The formal verification tools considered are based on explicit model checking (SPIN), symbolic analysis (Proverif) and theorem proving (Coq). We formalize and provide models of several well-known authentication and key-establishment protocols in each of the specification languages, and use the tools to find attacks that show protocols insecurity. We contrast the modelling process on each of the tools by …

Acceptance And Commitment Training To Enhance A Behavioral Parent Training With Parents Of Children With Autism, Jillian Defreitas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) is an effective teaching package that is often used to teach new parenting skills. While BPT has been established as efficacious in teaching parenting skills, performance often returns to baseline levels. There may be myriad reasons for this; however, it is possible that competing contingencies in difficult behavioral interactions, and long histories of practices that solve behavioral issues in the short term, affect parents’ ability to implement what they were taught. This study sought to impact parental treatment integrity of a common set of parent training practices via an Acceptance and Commitment Training protocol. Parents were …

Comparison Of Otolith-Based Growth Rates And Microchemistry In Red Drum Before, During, And After The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Brock Charles Houston

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon blowout reached the Gulf of Mexico coast in the summer of 2010 and potentially exposed species living in those areas to toxic chemicals. The purpose of this study is to examine otoliths from Red Drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) for evidence of oil exposure that could be related to reduced growth rates. Because otolith growth and somatic growth are directly related, differences in annulus measurements can indicate differences in annual somatic growth, which is a good indicator of overall fish condition, and translates into changes in survival and lifetime reproductive potential. This study assessed variation …

Using Behavioral Skills Training And A Warning Sticker To Teach Children Household Poison Safety Skills, Jackalynne Jean Delong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess if Behavioral Skills Training (BST) can be used to train a sticker to function as a discriminative stimulus (Sᴰ) for engaging in household poison safety skills and assess whether this skill generalized to untrained household chemicals that bear the Sᴰ in the form of a sticker. Three typically developing children ages 3 and 5 and their parents participated in this study which took place in their homes. BST effectively taught children to engage in household poison safety skills when they come into contact with the trained household poison(s) labeled with the sticker …

Development Of Truck Route Choice Data Using Truck Gps, Mohammadreza Kamali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few decades, the value and weight of freight shipments have grown steadily in both developed and developing countries. A recent statistic in the U.S. reveals that weight of shipments increased from 18,879 to 19,662 million tons between 2007 and 2012 (1). It is also expected that this amount will increase to 28,520 million tons by 2040 (1). It is worth mentioning that 67 percent of shipments are shipped by truck mode in 2012. The monetary value of freight is expected to escalate even faster than weight. This value is estimated to rise from US$ 882 per ton …

Understanding Climate Change And Sea Level: A Case Study Of Middle School Student Comprehension And An Evaluation Of Tide Gauges Off The Panama Canal In The Pacific Ocean And Caribbean Sea, Juan Carlos Millan-Otoya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study had two main objectives. The first was to determine the degree of understanding of climate change, sea level and sea level rise among middle school students. Combining open-ended questions with likert-scaled questions, we identified student conceptions on these topics in 86 students from 7^th and 8^th grades during 2012 and 2013 before and after implementing a Curriculum Unit (CU). Additional information was obtained by adding drawings to the open-ended questions during the second year to gauge how student conceptions varied from a verbal and a visual perspective. Misconceptions were identified both pre- and post-CU among …

The Development Of A Fluorescence-Based Reverse Flow Injection Analysis (Rfia) Method For Quantifying Ammonium At Nanomolar Concentrations In Oligotrophic Seawater, William Abbott

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis was to adopt a reverse flow injection analysis (rFIA) technique to the fluorometric analysis of the reaction o-phthaldialdehyde (OPA) with ammonium, allowing accurate measurements of ammonium concentrations lower than the detection limit of the widely used indophenol blue (IPB) colorimetric method while accounting for the background fluorescence of seawater. Ammonium is considered an essential nutrient for primary productivity, especially in the nutrient depleted surface ocean where as the most reduced form of dissolved inorganic nitrogen, it is readily assimilated via metabolic pathways. Challenges in the quantification of ammonium require more sensitive analytical techniques for …

Characterization Of Noise Exposure For High-Volume Restaurant Workers, Desiree Gladieux

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Occupational hearing loss resulting from noise exposures encountered in the workplace affects millions of workers and costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually in Workers’ Compensation costs in the United States alone. Some industries have been well studied, and the presence of hazardous noise in the work environment established and documented. The restaurant industry is one in which little current data exists, but in which there may be cause for concern.

This work sought to quantify noise exposures for cooks, servers, and dishwashers and to determine whether or not any of these workers are at risk for Noise Induced Hearing …

At The Intersection Of Human Agency And Technology: Genetically Modified Organisms, James Libengood

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the Neolithic period and the rise of agriculture along Mesopotamia’s “Fertile Crescent,” greater societies have formed thus requiring laws and governance to ensure their continued preservation. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi is one such example of how agricultural technologies directly created new social and institutional structures in codifying slavery into law, or how mercantile transactions are to be conducted. Similarly, GMOs are the result of modern agricultural technologies that are altering laws and society as a result of their implementation. This transformation informs the central inquiries of my research question: Why are GMOs necessary, and what influences do they …

Effect Of Mineral And Chemical Admixtures On Durability Of Cementitious Systems, Victor Tran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mineral and chemical admixtures are used today in almost all concrete mixtures to improve concrete fresh and hardened properties, and to enhance concrete durability. In this study, four mineral and four chemical admixtures were investigated: namely, metakaolin (MK), silica fume (SF), Class F fly ash (FA), blast-furnace slag (BFS), two high-range water reducers (SP), water reducer/retarder (WRD), and air-entrainer (AEA). The objective of this study is to assess the effects of commonly used mineral and chemical admixtures on the durability of the cementitious system. Two durability issues were addressed in this study: the potential of the cementitious system to generate …

North American River Otter (Lontra Canadensis) Presence And Habitat Analysis In Florida As Compared To Historical Data, Samantha Wilber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

North American river otters are considered common in the state of Florida, but their populations have not been studied since the 1980’s. Since that time, Florida’s human population has more than doubled, and many natural areas of Florida have been developed. The aim of this study was to determine the presence or absence of river otters at locations in Florida which they historically inhabited. Forty-six sample sites where otters were historically found were obtained from the Florida Museum of Natural History Mammals Master Database (FMNH MMD). These sites were condensed to two focus areas, in and around Alachua and Collier …

Ensemble Learning Method On Machine Maintenance Data, Xiaochuang Zhao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the industry, a lot of companies are facing the explosion of big data. With this much information stored, companies want to make sense of the data and use it to help them for better decision making, especially for future prediction. A lot of money can be saved and huge revenue can be generated with the power of big data. When building statistical learning models for prediction, companies in the industry are aiming to build models with efficiency and high accuracy. After the learning models have been developed for production, new data will be generated. With the updated data, the …