Digital Commons Network^™

Van Der Waals Epitaxy Of Ultrathin Early Transition Metal (Ti & V) (Di)Selenides: Charge And Magnetic Order In The Ultrathin Limit, Manuel Bonilla Lopez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the isolation of graphene in 2004, two-dimensional (2D) layered materials, specially the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), have attracted immense interest from theoreticians and experimentalist due to the diversity of properties presented in this family of materials. The main reason for the interest in such materials has been the observation of emergent properties as a consequence of the reduced dimensions, i.e. the monolayer regime. Initially the monolayer regime was obtained via the scotch-tape method. The implementation of exfoliation techniques was successful since layered 2D materials are composed of stacked layers held together by weak van der Walls forces that permits …

A Case Study On Black Twitter’S Reactions To The Framing Of Blacks In Dove’S 2017 Facebook Advertisement, Shereena Farrington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Insensitivity to racial issues has long been one of the main causes of controversy in the marketing field. Among many brands to have caused outrage across social media, is the notable brand, Dove. The criticism that the veteran brand received has shown that even experienced marketers can still find themselves being accused of insensitivity or even racism (Ma, 2018). The gaffe of an advertisement released by Dove in 2017, serves as the impetus for the need for diversity in brands. Given today’s complex society, the purpose of this study is to identify themes that emerged in Black Twitter’s responses to …

An Analytical Approach To Information And Communication Technologies, Sahir Hismiogullari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The twentieth century was a century of scientific and technological development. Especially the fact of information and communication technologies, beyond being a technological leap, has led to different levels of development and changes / transformations. Therefore, developments, possibilities, changes and problems emerging in the Internet and other digital contexts have attracted the attention of communication scientists, sociologists, historians and philosophers, and have become a field of research that leads to interdisciplinary studies. Along with the mass media developed for the last two centuries (from the spread of newspapers to the invention of the internet), every social development or transformation is …

Biogeochemical Cycling Of Nutrients And Carbon In Subtropical Wetlands, Lauren N. Griffiths

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As human development intensifies, ecosystems around the word are being exponentially destroyed and degraded. Wetlands have the capacity to mitigate some of the possible problems by retaining nutrients and carbon, keeping them from harming downstream ecosystems or being released into the atmosphere. This project focuses on the processes that make wetlands successful by studying two unique ecosystems: 1) a created urban stormwater treatment wetland and 2) mangrove wetlands in Florida and Puerto Rico that were affected by hurricanes in 2017.

The first phase of this study investigates the role of sedimentation and vegetative and algal uptake of nutrients to retain …

Polychlorinated Biphenyls, Organochlorine Pesticides, And Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons In Snapper (Family Lutjanidae) From Cuba And The Wider Gulf Of Mexico, Brigid E. Carr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Snapper species assemblage is economically and environmentally important to all three countries bordering the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were investigated in seven snapper species located in the GoM, with a specific focus on the those caught along the northwestern coast of Cuba. Hepatic samples were processed using QuEChERs extraction methodology and analyzed using gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). Nearly all fish included in this study contained detectable amounts of all three groups of these contaminants, regardless of location, and across all regions of the Gulf, indicating …

Exploring A Boundary-Spanner's Beliefs, Tensions, And Decision-Making As A Methods Course Instructor And University Supervisor: A Self-Study, Wendy Baker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High quality teacher preparation is essential for the future of education. Researchers have examined the connection of theory and practice as an imperative to prepare preservice teachers. Methods course instructors and university supervisors are key players in bridge theory and practice, but rarely does the same individual get to be both methods course instructor and university supervisor. While it is important for teacher education programs to consider how to connect theory and practice, it is equally important to understand how to support preservice teachers when the same person acts as methods course instructor and university supervisor. Using self-study, the purpose …

Bayesian Reliability Analysis For Optical Media Using Accelerated Degradation Test Data, Kun Bu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) 10995:2011 is the inter-national standard providing guidelines for assessing the reliability and service life of optical media, which is designed to be highly reliable and possesses a long lifetime. A well-known challenge of reliability analysis for highly reliable devices is that it is hard to obtain sufficient failure data under their normal use conditions. Accelerated degradation tests (ADTs) are commonly used to quickly obtain physical degradation data under elevated stress conditions, which are then extrapolated to predict reliability under the normal use condition. This standard achieves the estimation of the lifetime of recordable media, …

Water Quality And Sustainability Assessment Of Rural Water Systems In The Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, Panama, Corbyn Cools

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the last four decades significant progress has been made on providing people access to improved drinking water. The Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) estimates that 6.7 billion people have access to at least basic drinking water services. In spite of this great achievement 785 million people still lack even basic services and eighty percent of which live in rural areas. To further complicate matters, those with access to services experience interruptions or non-functionality for handpumps and piped system long before the intended design life of the system. In the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé province in Panama there is very little information on …

Implementation Of Sr Flip-Flop Based Puf On Fpga For Hardware Security, Sai Praneeth Sagi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) are used for authentication and key generation to obtain a unique signature and are widely used in hardware security applications. In this work, we propose Set-Reset Flip-flop (SRFF) based PUF for FPGAs. We exploit the race around condition of the SRFF to obtain a one-bit signature output which is a function of feedback path delays. In deep sub-micron technology node, delay variations on an FPGA device are significant due to manufacturing process variations. Thus, an SRFF output value is a function of its location on the FPGA device. We implement registers of various bit widths and …

Development Of An Organic Processor Assembly (Opa) For Sustainable Resource Recovery To Enable Long-Duration, Deep-Space Human Exploration (Loddshe), Talon James Bullard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Long-Duration, Deep-Space Human Exploration (LoDDSHE) missions demand robust and reliable technologies to ensure crew health, safety, and mission success. In situ food production will become essential for these missions for crew nutrition, morale, and in the event of delays or failures. At a current estimated cost $10,000/lb, mass and volume limitations will restrict necessary resources. For an anticipated thirty-month mission to Mars, these costs will increase due to more frequent resupply shipments and lengthened transit times, creating additional financial and logistical challenges (Pickett et al., 2019). Increased resource and waste recovery to achieve nearly closed-loop systems will mitigate many of …

İyo Luché!: Uncovering And Interrupting Silencing In An Indigenous And Afro-Descendant Community, Eileen Cecelia Deluca

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this applied project is to uncover and interrupt the silencing of memories through the production of public narratives, specifically, the documentation of heritage of members of an indigenous and Afro-descendant community in Waspán, Nicaragua. The project is informed by interviews with seven women ex-combatants in the Contra War (1980-1990). Oral histories, transcribed interviews, and field notes are the source for the content of a book of heritage stories that I produced as one output about the former combatants utilizing their own words. In this thesis, I argue that the values of the “conquering” group of Nicaragua (i.e. …

Using Observations From The Uaw-Ford Ergonomic Assessment Tool To Predict Low Back Musculoskeletal Disorders, Colins Nwafor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Musculoskeletal disorders of the low back are common injuries found in many work environments. Some of the risk factors that workers experience include the weight of object being lifted during a task, frequency, duration, posture, distance the object is lifted, how well the worker can grasp the object, and the degree to which the worker may have to twist and turn their body during a lift. There are many tools that have been developed that are used to assess risk of a worker developing low back pain. The purpose of this study is to determine if the UAW-Ford Ergonomic Surveillance …

Hyaluronic Acid Coated Targeted Lipid Micellar Nanoparticle As A Delivery Vehicle For Lapatinib And Ketoconazole In Egfr Mutated Lung Cancer, Nadia Tasnim Ahmed

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer was accountable for over 142,000 deaths in the USA in 2019. Common mutations related to lung cancer mainly occur in TP53, EGFR, and KRAS genes. Lapatinib is a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor which acts reversibly on both epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Overexpression of EGFR leads to increased production and signaling of proteins that cause upregulation of cellular proliferation, cholesterol synthesis and resistance to apoptosis. Ketoconazole is an imidazole antifungal agent which works principally by inhibiting the enzyme cytochrome P450 14α-demethylase (CYP51A1) …

Sentiment Analysis In Peer Review, Zachariah J. Beasley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sentiment analysis, a widely popular subfield of natural language processing, has recently been used in the classroom to predict student attrition or to determine the mood of students, teacher strengths and weaknesses, or student perception of internship experience. These are all helpful indicators for the enhancement of students' academic experience but none improve the information gathered from or the reliability of peer review. This is particularly important in large courses with complex assignments (e.g., essays, software projects, and presentations) where scalable grading is requisite. In this dissertation, we apply sentiment analysis not on an assignment itself, but on the meaningful …

Action Recognition Using The Motion Taxonomy, Maxat Alibayev

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last years, modern action recognition frameworks with deep architectures have achieved impressive results on the large-scale activity datasets. All state-of-the-art models share one common attribute: two-stream architectures. One deep model takes RGB frames, while the other model is fed with pre-computed optical flow vectors. The outputs of both models are combined to be used as a final probability distribution for the action classes. When comparing the results of individual models with the fused model, it is common to see that that latter method is more superior. Researchers explain that phenomena with the fact that optical flow vectors serve …

Electrospun Nanofibrous Membrane Based Glucose Sensor With Integration Of Potentiostat Circuit, Kavyashree Puttananjegowda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although wearable and portable biomedical devices are the pillar of modern and smart societies, a large portion the device infrastructure is still under development, operates with poor monitoring and automation, and lacks sufficient communication among components. Moreover, demand for wearable bio-medical devices is expected to increase in the coming years. This situation presents a unique opportunity for electrical engineers to design novel strategies that allow point-of-care diagnostics to satisfy the increasing demand of wearable bio-medical devices. For example, in the medical field there is a rising diabetic population base, high demand for miniature and low-power diagnostic devices, and the need …

Theory, Fabrication, And Characterization Of Perovskite Phototransistor, Fatemeh Khorramshahi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a significant interest in making electronic devices with low-cost techniques and materials for both industrial and medical applications. Methylammonium lead iodide perovskite (MAPbI3) is one of the novel materials which has drawn much attention owing to its outstanding optical and electrical properties along with inexpensive, simple, and easy fabrication methods. In this work, the feasibility of using microfluidic device fabrication techniques on making a perovskite phototransistor has been studied. The fabrication method well addresses challenges such as lead toxicity and instability.

In the first step, mechanical micromachining and laser engraving were employed to make …

Transcriptome Studies On The Toxicity Of Silica Nanoparticles, Shih-Yi Hsu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nanotechnology enables more precise harmony in health condition via reducing the dosage amount, improving the delivery of hydrophobic drugs, more specific targeting to the cancerous sites, and so on. Nevertheless, issues regarding the toxicity of nanotechnology have begun to call for attention several decades later after the innovation of nanotechnology. Tools about risk management of nanotechnology have been developed, but recently not much evidence recognizes the toxicity of nanoparticles (NPs) except for some animal studies, which demonstrated organ damage after the exposure to NPs. Toxicogenomic approach refers to the method utilizing gene expression to evaluate the chemical toxicity. Databases as …

Comprehensive Optimization Models For Voltage Regulation In Pv-Rich Multi-Phase Distribution Systems, Ibrahim Alsaleh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The distribution systems are increasingly challenged by the continued prevalence of distributed energy resources (DERs), signaling the need for new computational tools to systemize their involvement, coordinate their operation with existing control devices, and mitigate undesired actuation of expensive equipment. Co-optimized operation of the various control devices becomes possible with the advancement in the power system optimization algorithms and the increased deployment of advanced metering infrastructure, offering system awareness and two-way communication. The steady-state alternating-current optimal power flow (ACOPF) problem, being the most descriptive form of OPF, lies at the root of power system optimization, aiming to minimize an operating …

Automating The Classification Of Mosquito Specimens Using Image Processing Techniques, Mona Minakshi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According to WHO (World Health Organization) reports, among all animals, mosquitoes are responsible for the most deaths worldwide. Mosquito borne diseases continue to pose grave dangers to global health. In 2015 alone, 214 million cases of malaria were registered worldwide. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published in 2016, 62,500 suspected case of Zika were reported to the Puerto Rico Department of Health (PRDH) out of which 29,345 cases were found positive. The year 2019 was recorded as the worst for dengue in South East Asia. There are close to 4,500 species of mosquitoes (spread across …

Cancer Biomarker Detection In Human Plasma By Integrating Surface Acoustic Wave And Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence, Yuqi Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis includes data and discussion about the technique of metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF) to lower the detection limit of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The detection limit goes down to 100pg/mL level when using MEF substrate made by rapid thermally annealed silver film covered by silica, which has great promise in diagnosing certain types of cancer that uses CEA as detection biomarker, such as pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. To further address the issue of background noises from non-specifically bound proteins (NSB) in complex media, such as plasma, serum, urine and blood, MEF is integrated with surface acoustic wave (SAW) streaming in …

Privacy-Preserving And Functional Information Systems, Thang Hoang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Information systems generally involve storage and analytics of large-scale data, many of which may be highly sensitive (e.g., personal information, medical records). It is vital to ensure that these systems not only provide essential functionalities at large scale efficiently but also achieve a high level of security against cyber threats. However, there are significant research challenges in offering security and privacy for such information systems while preserving their original functionalities (e.g., search, analytics) effectively. Hence, there is a critical need for efficient cryptographic protocols that can address data privacy vs. utilization dilemma for real-life applications.

In this dissertation, we introduce …

Exploring The Potential Of Nutrient Retention And Recycling With Wetlaculture Systems In Ohio With Physical And Landscape Models, Bingbing Jiang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Significant expansion of agricultural land use has been widely recognized for leading to global and regional negative environmental impacts, especially increased eutrophication of surface water systems for the last half-century. The landscape-scale environmental problem of overloading nutrients to lakes and streams by excessive fertilizer use and increased human-caused N-fixation is in urgent need of a sustainable landscape-scale solution. Wetlands have long been considered as an effective way to remove nutrients from surface water. However, the influence of regional seasonality and hydrologic conditions on agricultural runoff treatment wetlands still needs more investigation. A new approach, “wetlaculture,” has recently described as a …

Do Similar Exposure Groups (Seg) Differ From Air Force Base To Air Force Base? A Combat Arms Training And Maintenance (Catm) Noise Exposure Comparison Of Moody Afb And Macdill Afb., Miriam F. Escobar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Noise is a common hazard for the military. The Department of Defense has set an Occupational Exposure Limit for noise at 85 dBA. The Air Force manages exposures using similar exposure groups (SEGs) which are formed at each Air Force Base. The purpose of this study was to compare the noise levels in SEGs in two Air Force bases across distance and time, and to review the effectiveness of the Air Force Hearing Conservation Program over distance and time. The SEGs chosen were Combat Arms Training and Maintenance (CATM) at Moody Air Force Base and MacDill Air Force Base because …

Reimagining Bottom-Up Participatory Climate Change Adaptation In The Philippines, Emily Clark Nabong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While climate change trends indicate the progression towards more widespread and severe impacts across the world, current consequences of society’s climate inaction are already being felt by many vulnerable populations. Low-lying and coastal areas are particularly at risk from climate-related hazards such as sea level rise and increased intensity storms. In order to protect residents, countries and regional governments have begun to plan and implement adaptation strategies to minimize the impact of future climate change related disasters.

This thesis explores the current status of bottom-up participatory climate change adaptation planning in the Philippines and offers new insights into making this …

Identification Of Patterns And Disruptions In Ambient Sensor Data From Private Homes, Yan Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The world’s population is rapidly aging and the increasing demand for home and health care services from this aging population brings unprecedented challenges to the economy and society. Ambient-assisted smart homes, residences equipped with ambient sensors to monitor the resident’s daily activities in a continuous and unobtrusive way, present great potential to manage the growing care service needs of this older population segment, and enable them to age-in-place.

Despite growing research, using ambient sensor data from private homes to monitor daily activities, health and wellness still faces significant challenges. To study ambient sensor data from private homes where annotated data …

Design Of Support Measures For Counting Frequent Patterns In Graphs, Jinghan Meng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the popularity of graph datasets has grown rapidly. Frequent subgraph mining (FSM) from graphs becomes an important subject in computer science research. In this dissertation, we study single-graph as an effective model to represent information and its related graph mining techniques. In frequent pattern mining in a single-graph setting, there are two main problems: support measure and search scheme. We study the development of support measures, which are basically functions that map a pattern to its frequency count in a database. Our work is based on the hypergraph framework using the concept of occurrence/instance hypergraphs. We present …

Service Provisioning And Security Design In Software Defined Networks, Mohamed Rahouti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructures and systems are being widely deployed to support a broad range of users and application scenarios. A key trend here is the emergence of many different "smart" technology paradigms along with an increasingly diverse array of networked sensors, e.g., for smart homes and buildings, intelligent transportation and autonomous systems, emergency response, remote health monitoring and telehealth, etc. As billions of these devices come online, ICT networks are being tasked with transferring increasing volumes of data to support intelligent real-time decision making and management. Indeed, many applications and services will have very stringent Quality of …

Simulation And Verification Of Phase Change Materials For Thermal Energy Storage, Marwan Mosubah Belaed

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have a global impact on world economies and the ecosystem. Scientific assessment of GHG emissions is an issue that requires immediate action from key decision-makers and influencers. A comprehensive review of the impact of climate change and its dire consequences on daily life is illustrated in this dissertation. The most common technique to lower GHG emissions in the atmosphere is by switching GHG emission sources to zero-emission sources such as solar energy, wind energy, bioenergy, and geothermal power. Recently, all these technologies have made significant progress in lowering capital operation costs and their cycle efficiencies. This …

Investigation Of Navigation Systems For Size, Cost, And Mass Constrained Satellites, Omar Awad

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The feasibility of using radically inexpensive micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology for navigation of a nanosatellite is investigated with a focus on attitude estimation. Typically, larger satellites are equipped with star cameras, sun sensors, or Earth horizon sensors for attitude estimation. These sensors can provide very accurate attitude measurements. A nanosatellite is highly size, power, and cost constrained and cannot readily accommodate these sensors. Our mission is to design, build, and operate a radically inexpensive nanosatellite system. While there is no consensus on what constitutes a "radically inexpensive" satellite, our goal is a maximum cost of $10,000 per unit. This precludes …