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Intraocular Pressure Sensing And Control For Glaucoma Research, Simon Antonio Bello

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Animal models of ocular hypertension are important for glaucoma research but come with experimental costs. Available methods of intraocular pressure (IOP) elevation are not always successful, the amplitude and time course of IOP changes are unpredictable and irreversible, and IOP measurement by tonometry is laborious. This dissertation focuses on the development and implementation of two novel systems for monitoring and controlling IOP without these limitations. The first device consists of a cannula implanted in the anterior chamber of the eye, a pressure sensor that continually measures IOP, and a bidirectional pump driven by control circuitry that can infuse or withdraw …

Phasor Measurement Unit Data-Based States And Parameters Estimation In Power System, Hossein Ghassempour Aghamolki

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation research investigates estimating of power system static and dynamic states (e.g. rotor angle, rotor speed, mechanical power, voltage magnitude, voltage phase angle, mechanical reference point) as well as identification of synchronous generator parameters. The research has two focuses:

i. Synchronous generator dynamic model states and parameters estimation using real-time PMU data.

ii.Integrate PMU data and conventional measurements to carry out static state estimation.

The first part of the work focuses on Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data-based synchronous generator states and parameters estimation. In completed work, PMU data-based synchronous generator model identification is carried out using Unscented Kalman Filter …

Experimental And Computational Study On Fracture Mechanics Of Multilayered Structures, Hai Thanh Tran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many devices in electronics are in the form of multilayered structures. These structures can fail catastrophically if they contain defects or cracks. Enhancing their fracture properties is therefore critical to improve the reliability of the systems. The interface-dominated fracture mechanics of multilayered structure was studied using experiments and finite element (FE) modeling by considering two examples: thin films on polymer substrates in flexible electronics and Cu leadframe/epoxy molding compound (EMC) in micro-electronics packaging.

In the first example, aluminum-manganese (Al-Mn) thin films with Mn concentration up to 20.5 at.% were deposited on polyimide (PI) substrates. A variety of phases, including supersaturated …

Behavioral Modeling And Fpga Synthesis Of Ieee 802.11n Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (Ofdm) Scheme, Ragahv Sharma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the field of communications, a high data rate and low multi-path fading is required for efficient information exchange. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a widely accepted IEEE 802.11n (and many others) standard for usage in communication systems operating in fading dispersive channels. In this thesis, we modeled the OFDM algorithm at the behavioral level in VHDL/Verilog that was successfully synthesized/verified on an FPGA. Due to rapid technology scaling, FPGAs have become popular and are low-cost and high performance alternatives to (semi-) custom ASICs. Further, due to reprogramming flexibility, FPGAs are useful in rapid prototyping. As per the IEEE …

Development Of A Forecast Process For Meteotsunami Events In The Gulf Of Mexico, Leilani D. Paxton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to provide a better understanding of meteotsunamis over the eastern Gulf of Mexico along the west coast of Florida and to develop a process for forecasting those events. Meteotsunami waves develop from resonant effects of strong pressure perturbations greater than 1 hPa, moving in excess of 10 m s^-1, over water areas up to around 100 m in depth. Meteotsunami events over 0.3 m in height, as measured by three primary NOAA coastal tide gauges at Cedar Key, Clearwater Beach, and Naples, from 2007-2015, impact the Florida Gulf coastline several times per …

Baiting Sustainability: Collaborative Coastal Management, Heritage Tourism, And Alternative Fisheries In Placencia, Belize, Eric Koenig

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Local coastal fishers in Belize are adapting novel strategies to manage, exploit, and market marine and coastal resources in an effort to promote fishing livelihoods and coastal environmental sustainability. These resilience strategies respond to diminished fishing stocks, fisheries and environmental policies and regulations, climate change, shifting seafood markets, and expanding tourism development. With growing foreign investment and nationally-directed infrastructure improvement projects on the Placencia Peninsula in recent years, tourism development is shifting toward mass tourism, and local residents are seeking avenues to sustain their livelihoods. In Placencia, the need for effective monitoring and management of Marine Protected Areas, fisheries, and …

A Habitat Analysis Of Estuarine Fishes And Invertebrates, With Observations On The Effects Of Habitat-Factor Resolution, Brianna Michaud

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Between 1988 and 2014, otter trawls, seine nets, and plankton nets were deployed along the salinity gradients of 18 estuaries by the University of South Florida and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI, a research branch of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission). The purpose of these surveys was to document the responses of aquatic estuarine biota to variation in the quantity and quality of freshwater inflows that were being managed by the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD).

In the present analyses, four community types collected by these gears were compared with a diversity of habitat …

Evaluation Of Search And Rescue Planning Tools On The West Florida Shelf, Benjamin O'Loughlin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Coast Guard conducts over 20,000 search and rescue cases a year with approximately 5% of them occurring within the coastal waters of the West Florida Shelf (WFS). Each search effort is planned using the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System (SAROPS) which uses model inputs to create composite probability distributions based on the results of Monte Carlo projections of thousands of particle trajectories. However, SAROPS is limited by the quality of model inputs and their associated errors. This study utilizes observations from three surface drifter deployments on the WFS to evaluate the effectiveness of available surface current …

Pepper Mild Mottle Virus As A Surrogate For Enteric Viruses: Implications For Assessing Water Quality, Erin Michelle Symonds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Less than 10% of the world’s domestic wastewater is disinfected prior to discharge into surface waters; therefore, human exposure to diverse wastewater-related pathogens results in millions of cases of illness each year. Among the enteric pathogens, viruses represent an important group of emerging pathogens and are frequently the cause of food- and water-borne outbreaks of illness. Although the World Health Organization and many government agencies mandate the use of bacterial indicators to identify poor microbial water quality, it is well known that these indicators poorly correlate with fecal pollution contamination events and risk of disease. The field of public health-related …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Novel Polyurethanes And Polyimides, Kenneth Kull

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Four novel high performance soft thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers utilizing methylene bis(4-cyclohexylisocyanate) as a hard segment, 1,4 butanediol as a chain extender and modified low crystallinity carbonate copolymer as a soft segment were synthesized. The samples were characterized by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), tensile, elongation, hardness, abrasion resistance and atomic force microscopy (AFM). SAXS data shows evidence of an interdomain "center-to-center" distance of 45Å. DSC traces show evidence of one glass transition temperature and a weak melting region. DMA analysis reveals a low temperature secondary relaxation and the glass to rubber transition followed by a rubbery plateau. All samples demonstrated the ability …

Comparing Game Simulation To Concept Models For Student-Centered Learning In Biology, Margaurete Romero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Science education research continues to demonstrate improved learning with active-learning techniques compared to lectures. However, the question of which active-learning methods are the most effective for learning complex scientific principles in various context still remains. Models are commonly used in activities that allow students to simplify complex systems and understand how components interact. I investigated the outcomes for student learning and engagement of two model-based activities - concept models and game simulations. The activities were conducted in an introductory biology course in sixteen discussion sections. Eight sections were assigned to the concept model activity and eight to the simulation activity. …

Whiting Events Off Southwest Florida: Remote Sensing And Field Observations, Jacqueline Long

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Whiting” is a term used to describe a sharply defined patch of water that contains high levels of suspended, fine-grained calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). These features are named for their bright (at times white) appearance when compared to surrounding waters, and have been found to occur globally, persisting for multiple consecutive days. Although whitings have been widely studied using chemical, biological, geological, and physical techniques, there has been little effort to document their spatio-temporal distributions in a systematic way, not to mention the lack of consensus on what generates whitings and allows them to persist for days to weeks …

Automatic Pain Assessment From Infants’ Crying Sounds, Chih-Yun Pai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Crying is infants utilize to express their emotional state. It provides the parents and the nurses a criterion to understand infants’ physiology state. Many researchers have analyzed infants’ crying sounds to diagnose specific diseases or define the reasons for crying. This thesis presents an automatic crying level assessment system to classify infants’ crying sounds that have been recorded under realistic conditions in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) as whimpering or vigorous crying. To analyze the crying signal, Welch’s method and Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) are used to extract spectral features; the average and the standard deviation of the frequency …

Hidden Markov Chain Analysis: Impact Of Misclassification On Effect Of Covariates In Disease Progression And Regression, Haritha Polisetti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Most of the chronic diseases have a well-known natural staging system through which the disease progression is interpreted. It is well established that the transition rates from one stage of disease to other stage can be modeled by multi state Markov models. But, it is also well known that the screening systems used to diagnose disease states may subject to error some times. In this study, a simulation study is conducted to illustrate the importance of addressing for misclassification in multi-state Markov models by evaluating and comparing the estimates for the disease progression Markov model with misclassification opposed to disease …

Analysis Of Managerial Decision-Making Within Florida’S Total Maximum Daily Load Program, Justin Barthle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water quality has evolved legislatively from protection of navigation routes and quantity of sources to more emphasis on impairments on water quality for surface and groundwater sources. Nonpoint or diffuse sources of impairments represents a major challenge for management due to the complexity of its sources and difficulty in tracking.

The most cited sections on public policy analysis focuses on the overall process agencies employ to understand the results the program yields. Often overlooked are finer details and mechanisms, such as decision-making and priority setting, which have a great impact on the overall process. To investigate these factors, we need …

Why Consumers Disclose Their Tourism Experiences On Tourism Social Networking Sites: Multiple Theoretical Perspectives, Junshu Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tourism social networking sites (SNSs) are websites that provide users with templates for describing their travel experiences and an infrastructure to share such travel posts with a network of like-minded individuals. Tourism SNSs represent an important advertising channel for the tourism industry, as they may assist travelers in selecting destinations and planning vacations on the basis of other travelers’ experiences, which may further stimulate travel and generate income for the tourism industry (Yazdanifard & Yee, 2014). User-generated content (UGC) in the form of travel posts is the core offering and key success factor of tourism SNSs. Travel posts constitute a …

Metal-Organic Frameworks As Potential Platforms For Carbon Dioxide Capture And Chemical Transformation, Wenyang Gao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission into the atmosphere, mainly through the combustion of fossil fuels, has resulted in a balance disturbance of the carbon cycle. Overwhelming scientific evidence proves that the escalating level of atmospheric CO₂ is deemed as the main culprit for global warming and climate change. It is thus imperative to develop viable CO₂ capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to reduce CO₂ emissions, which is also essential to avoid the potential devastating effects in future. The drawbacks of energy-cost, corrosion and inefficiency for amine-based wet-scrubbing systems which are currently used in industry, …

Voltage Droop Analysis And Mitigation In Sttram-Based Last Level Cache, Radha Krishna Aluru

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Preferred especially for a Last Level Cache (LLC) due to its high retention and tolerance capabilities, Spin-Transfer Torque Random Access Memory (STTRAM) is an emerging and a promising Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) technology. To switch the magnetization of a Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ), the amount of current needed is very high (~100μA per bit). For a full cache line (512-bit) write, this extremely high current results in a voltage droop in the conventional cache architecture. Due to this droop, the write operation fails especially when the farthest bank of the cache is accessed. In this thesis, we perform an analysis of …

Scalable Clustering Using The Dempster-Shafer Theory Of Evidence, Alireza Chakeri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clustering large data sets has become very important as the amount of available unlabeled data increases. Single Pass Fuzzy C-Means (SPFCM) is useful when memory is too limited to load the whole data set. The main idea is to divide dataset into several chunks and to apply fuzzy c-means (FCM) to each chunk. SPFCM uses the weighted cluster centers of the previous chunk in the next data chunks. However, when the number of chunks is increased, the algorithm shows sensitivity to the order in which the data is processed. Hence, we improved SPFCM by recognizing boundary and noisy data in …

Asymmetric Transformations Catalyzed By Chiral Binol Alkaline Earth Metal Phosphate Complexes, Sri Krishna Nimmagadda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Small molecule hydrogen bond donors have emerged as versatile catalysts in asymmetric synthesis. Within this class, chiral BINOL phosphoric acid is regarded as one of the pioneer catalysts used in several asymmetric transformations. The ability of the catalyst to activate the substrates could be controlled in two different ways. (1) Dual activation/bifunctional activation of substrate by hydrogen bond interactions or ion pairing with phosphoric acid or (2) By forming chiral BINOL phosphate metal complex that could significantly alter the interactions in chiral space. In particular, chiral alkaline earth metal phosphate complexes have unique advantages as catalysts owing to the ubiquitous …

Examining Content Validity Of The Nurse Competence Scale In The United States, Jessica B. Shearer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nursing competence is a necessity as it affects public health, safety and welfare; however there are very few reliable and valid tools that measure nursing competence. The Nurse Competence Scale has been used in many different countries outside of the United States and is based on Benner’s Novice to Expert theory. The purpose of this study was to examine the content validity of the Nurse Competence Scale using a mixed methods approach. Descriptive statistics were used to report results of the frequency of use scale and the critical to practice scale. Nursing faculty indicate Prioritizing My Activities Flexibility According to …

Pedestrian Detection In Low Quality Moving Camera Videos, Saurabh Hinduja

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pedestrian detection is one of the most researched areas in computer vision and is rapidly gaining importance with the emergence of autonomous vehicles and steering assistance technology. Much work has been done in this field, ranging from the collection of extensive datasets to benchmarking of new technologies, but all the research depends on high-quality hardware such as high-resolution cameras, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and radar.

For detection in low-quality moving camera videos, we use image deblurring techniques to reconstruct image frames and use existing pedestrian detection algorithms and compare our results with the leading research done in this area.

Lava Flow Hazard Assessment For The Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, And Pocatello, Idaho, U.S.A., Elisabeth Gallant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study presents a probabilistic lava flow hazard assessment for the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the cities of Idaho Falls and Pocatello, Idaho. The impetus of this work is to estimate the conditional probability that a lava flow on the eastern Snake River Plain (ESRP) will impact the areas of interest given the formation of a new volcanic vent in the region. A list of 288 eruptive events, derived from a previously published inventory of 506 surface and 32 buried vents, was created to reduce the biasing of spatial density maps towards eruptions with multiple dependent vents. Conditional probabilities …

The Role Of Partial Surface Charge Compensation In The Properties Of Ferroelectric And Antiferroelectric Thin Films, Elena Glazkova

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ferroelectric and antiferroelectric ultrathin films have attracted a lot of attention recently due to their remarkable properties and their potential to allow for device miniaturization in numerous applications. However, when the ferroelectric films are scaled down, it brings about an unavoidable depolarizing field. A partial surface charge compensation allows to control the residual depolarizing field and manipulate the properties of ultrathin ferroelectric films. In this dissertation we take advantage of atomistic first-principles-based simulations to expand our understanding of the role of the partial surface charge compensation in the properties of ferroelectric and antiferroelectric ultrathin films.

The application of our computational …

Design And Development Of Peptidomimetic Ligands For Targeting Radiopharmaceuticals, Imaging Probes, And Immunotherapeutics In Oncologic Disease, Michael Lawrence Doligalski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world. While much has been learned about these diseases in the last few decades, one of the main barriers to widespread advancement is the heterogeneity of cancer biology. A growing body of evidence supports the idea that certain protein receptors are overexpressed on the surface of tumor cells as compared to normal tissues. These extracellular biomarkers provide a unique opportunity to selectively target the tumor with both imaging and therapeutic modalities. The research in this dissertation focuses on targeting proteins on the tumor cell surface with peptidomimetic ligands. …

Abundance Of Archaias Angulatus On The West Florida Coast Indicates The Influence Of Carbonate Alkalinity Over Salinity, Sean Thomas Beckwith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Archaias angulatus, a large symbiont-bearing foraminifer (Order Miliolida) that produces a Mg-calcite shell, is common throughout the Caribbean and warm western Atlantic region. This species lives abundantly in seagrass beds along the Springs Coast of northwest Florida (up to 4 adults per gram of sediment) where spring-fed rivers emerge from a limestone aquifer, and in Florida Bay to the southeast (25 adults/g) where the sediment is primarily biogenic carbonate. In contrast, live specimens are seldom found in the seagrass beds along the central-west coast of Florida, where barrier islands are dominated by quartz sand. My working hypothesis is that substratum …

Parallelization Of Push-Based System For Molecular Simulation Data Analysis With Gpu, Iliiazbek Akhmedov

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern simulation systems generate big amount of data, which consequently has to be analyzed in a timely fashion. Traditional database management systems follow principle of pulling the needed data, processing it, and then returning the results. This approach is then optimized by means of caching, storing in different structures, or doing some sacrifices on precision of the results to make it faster. When it comes to the point of doing various queries that require analysis of the whole data, this design has the following disadvantages: considerable overhead on traditional disk random I/O framework while reading from the simulation output files …

Protocol Guided Trace Analysis For Post-Silicon Debug Under Limited Observability, Yuting Cao Cao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the problem of reconstructing system level behavior of an SoC design from a partially observed signal trace. Solving this problem is a critical activity in post-silicon validation, and currently depends primarily on human creativity and insights. In this thesis, we provide algorithms to automatically infer system level flows from incomplete, ambiguous, and noisy trace data. This thesis also demonstrates the approach on two case studies, a multicore SoC model developed within the within the GEM5 environment, and a cycle accurate register transfer level model of a similar SoC design.

Effect Of Void Fraction On Transverse Shear Modulus Of Advanced Unidirectional Composites, Jui-He Tai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In composite materials, transverse shear modulus is a critical moduli parameter for designing complex composite structures. For dependable mathematical modeling of mechanical behavior of composite materials, an accurate estimate of the moduli parameters is critically important as opposed to estimates of strength parameters where underestimation may lead to a non-optimal design but still would give one a safe one.

Although there are mechanical and empirical models available to find transverse shear modulus, they are based on many assumptions. In this work, the model is based on a three-dimensional elastic finite element analysis with multiple cells. To find the shear modulus, …

Hope, Expectation, Math Anxiety, And Achievement In College Algebra Students: Examining An Instructional Strategy Using Multi-Level Modeling, Kathleen A. Gibson-Dee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

American students no longer lead the world in quantitative skills. This decline in mathematical ability has potentially significant negative national and personal consequences. Math anxiety, low self-efficacy in relation to math, and a sense of hopelessness about math are all possible barriers to being successful in learning and using math, not only in school but ultimately in many aspects of adult life. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between hope, expectation, math anxiety (positive and negative affect related components), and students’ final course scores in College Algebra within the context of an instructional strategy intended to …