Digital Commons Network^™

The First Year Foreign Language Program In An Elementary School, Sean Hengst

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a first year elementary school foreign language curriculum, so that appropriate objectives and activities could be planned for the second year of the program. The intern selected a sample of ten students from each grade level. He used oral and written assessments to measure content mastery and conducted interviews to determine student attitudes toward the program. The intern also analyzed the French teacher's lesson plans to determine the amount of time spent teaching each objective and what teaching strategies were successful. After analyzing the data, the intern …

Protection Against Ischemia And Reperfusion Injury, Peter R. Oeltgen, Paul D. Bishop, Mark S. Kindy, Juan A. Sanchez

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Faculty Patents

A compound and method for using the compound to reduce injury associated with ischemia and reperfusion of mammalian organs such as the heart. The compound, either Deltorphin A and/or Dermorphin H, may be administered as part of a preconditioning strategy which reduces the extent of injury and improves organ function following cessation and restoration of blood flow. The compound may be used in preparation for planned ischemia or in a prophylactic manner in anticipation of further ischemic events.

Disproportionate Representation Of Minority Students In The Special Education Program At The Kingsway Regional School District, Anthony J. Fitzpatrick

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to (a) determine the proportion of representation of minority students in special education programs on a federal, state, and district-wide level; and (b) determine the needs of the Kingsway Regional School District in addressing any disproportionate representation that exists. The subject sample was the special education population in the United States as determined by IDEA. The sample population would be studied to ascertain the proportion of representation and the determination standards used to classify them. It was concluded that Kingsway did not have a problem with disproportionate representation but rather an issue with consistent …

Sparklines As Effective Graphics, George Francy

Theses

This research explores a method of graphical display called a sparkline. Sparklines are a valid method to convey statistical information, supported by an easy familiarity among users and a desire, expressed by information design expert Edward Tufte, for greater density in data display. The subject is examined in light of the broader concept of the integration of pictures and text, tracing this tradition back to medieval illuminated texts, through history to Galileo, and to such diverse modem techniques as emoticons. The historical perspective is expanded upon through an examination of perception theory and implications for data graphics. Ethical issues of …

Stereo Vision Algorithm Using Propagation Of Correspondences Along An Array Of Cameras, Danyan Ganjali

Theses

One well known problem in stereo vision is the trade-off between precision and accuracy.

In a conventional two camera model, as the baseline separating the two cameras becomes smaller, the images that both cameras produce become more identical. This results in a more accurate set of correspondences, however at the same time causing less precise depth measurement due to the small angle used for triangulation. Similarly, in a larger baseline model, the depth measurement is more precise while the correspondences are not as accurate as of the shorter baseline model. This thesis proposes a method that promises to solve the …

Ambulatory Biopotential Measurement, Lakshmi Chitra Penugonda

Theses

Biopotential signals measure the electrical activity of different parts of the body. Conventional bedside monitors only provide information about the body under restricted conditions. Observation and documentation of biopotential signal during daily activities and the relation to patient symptoms may be important factors for clinical decision-making. Ambulatory monitoring helps to monitor the biopotential signal of a patient in the natural environment. The effective ambulatory system can help a physician to diagnose the patient's abnormality.

In this project, a low cost and flexible ambulatory biopotential system, compared to the commercially available systems, was designed and tested. Concurrently a software program was …

Difference-Expansion Based Reversible Data Hiding And Its Steganalysis, Guangsen Tian

Theses

A novel reversible data embedding method was reported in a recent IEEE journal article. The method was based on difference expansion (DE) technique. It used redundancy in digital images to achieve a high embedding capacity, while keeping visual distortion of the stego-image low. In this thesis, this technique was studied and experimentally evaluated. An effective steganalysis scheme for this DE-based reversible data embedding method was proposed, which used 12-dimensional feature vectors and a Bayes Classifier. The proposed steganalysis scheme steadily achieved a correct classification rate of 99%.

Interrupting The Interaction Of Intercellular Adhesion Molecule-1 And Respiratory Syncytial Virus For Prevention And Treatment Of Infection, Shyam S. Mohapatra, Aruna Behera, Hiroto Matsuse, Mukesh Kumar

USF Patents

There is provided a method of preventing a respiratory infection by administering an effective amount of an agent for regulating ICAM-1 expression. Also provided is a composition for the prevention of respiratory infection including an agent which regulates ICAM expression. method of preventing RSV infection by administering an effective amount of an agent that interferes with the binding of RSV to ICAM-1. A method of preventing RSV infection by administering an effective amount of an agent that down regulates the expression of ICAM-1, thereby decreasing RSV binding to ICAM-1 is also provided. There is provided a method of treating RSV …

Personal Evolution: Reflections On A Journey To Self-Understanding, Michelle K. Morgan

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This synthesis is a reflective narrative scaffolded by three years of living and learning in a culture of thinking. I designed it to function as a record of my personal thinking evolution that I can refer back when I need inspiration months or years from now, as it defines where I was when I arrived, includes salient highlights from my three years in the program and ends with future directions. I came to CCT as a discouraged teacher confused about my future in education and frustrated with the rigorous demands of preparing students for high stakes testing. Learning to employ …

Next Steps In The Journey Toward Self-Fulfillment Through Critical And Creative Thinking, Charles Rauscher

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This work addresses the need for organizational change in the workplace. Too often businesses and companies ignore the advantages of critical and creative thinking. This project first explores some of my thinking patterns relative to designing a synthesis project. What are my interests and what effect do these have in determining a direction for this synthesis paper? Next, I discuss the concepts and ideas surrounding critical and creative thinking from both an individual and organization point of view. Theories and ideas are presented from key critical and creative thinking researchers. My introspection of what I deem to be important aspects …

The Age Bomb And The Age Of Globalisation, Hans Selberg

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

As the library world we have known is changing rapidly around us, we are all getting older. At the NTNU Library 69 people out of a staff of about 145 are aged 55 or more. During this year alone 22 staff members will become eligible for retirement, if they should so choose. The coming ten years will show a massive changing of the guard in our library. This means a severe loss of competent staff members. On the other hand: Even though the Library Board has ordered staff reductions during the past few years, we shall now be able to …

Enabling Cost Aware Routing With Auctions In Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks, Ali Yuksel

Theses

Battery power is a precious resource in wireless ad-hoc networks, and most routing protocols that have been proposed so far do not generate cost efficient routes. In this thesis, a novel auction-based cost-aware routing scheme, called CARA, is presented. CARA is designed as an extension of the MAC layer, and is shown to improve the cost efficiency of existing ad-hoc routing protocols through dynamic power control, while introducing only minimal additional overhead. The MAC layer at each node is given the capability to run local sealed-bid second-price auctions for the user data packets that need to be transmitted, and to …

Relationship Between The Autonomic Nervous System And The Recovering Heart Post Exercise Using Heart Rate Variability, Pierre Asselin

Theses

The goal of this thesis is to determine if a relationship exists between the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the speed of heart rate recovery post maximal exercise. The parasympathetic branch of the ANS was assessed during rest by obtaining the high frequency (HF) component of the heart rate variability (HRV) frequency spectrum. The recovery time was estimated by fitting an exponential curve to the heart rate post exercise where the exponent was used to calculate the time constant to indicate recovery time. A regression was then performed on the HF and recovery time in order to …

Spider Heuristics, Fiona R. Cross, Robert R. Jackson

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Simple heuristics may help explain how even a spider, despite its minute brain, can be disturbingly intelligent. Hutchinson and Gigerenzer suggest that the generalist-specialist distinction (or more accurately the predictability-unpredictability distinction) may be related to a species' level of reliance on simple heuristics, and spider behaviour may present some especially instructive opportunities for investigating these ideas. Daniel Dennett's distinction between Darwinian, Skinnerian and Popperian animals might be useful for discerning the different contexts in which optimality considerations and individual decision making are relevant. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hotline Press Newspaper- May 31,2005 Vol 22 No 45, Hotline Press Newspaper

Hotline Press Newspaper 2005

No abstract provided.

May 31, 2005, The Daily Mississippian

Daily Mississippian (all digitized issues)

No abstract provided.

May 30 2005 Reporter, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

eReporter (campus newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Utilizing End User Knowledge In The Designing Of Intelligent Workwear, Jukka Mäyrä, Riikka Matala, Petra Falin

Nordes Conference Series

This article contributes in the field of design to the overall knowledge of the utilization of the end users’ expertise in design and product development processes and adds to the knowledge of designing complex and highly technical products. The article describes the ways of utilizing end user knowledge and expertise in a process of designing and evaluating an intelligent workwear concept. The special focus of the article is on the methods and models for collecting and utilizing the end user knowledge. The article also maps the motives and consequences of the utilization of the user knowledge in the case and …

Energy Objects: Reflection Through Interaction, Mattias Ludvigsson

Nordes Conference Series

Energy consumption and personal objects both play important roles in young people’s everyday life and influence their behaviour in many different ways, although often unconsciously. This article investigates how interaction design and speculative re-design of personal objects can be used as a means for raising young people’s awareness of energy consumption. The concept of energy objects acts to make energy visible and tangible in order to stimulate reflection and reaction through the interaction with a collection of conceptual design proposals. Initial user feedback indicates that the presented collection of re-designed objects can be seen as an adequate tool in order …

Inspirational Patterns For Embodied Interaction, Jonas Löwgren

Nordes Conference Series

The concern of this work is how knowledge based on design experience can be developed, disseminated, ar- ticulated and acquired. We propose the notion of in- spirational patterns, or i-patterns, which refers to abstractions of core ideas and essential elements from a class of coherent examples, pointing to promising re- gions in the design space. Most current work on pat- terns concentrates on proven solutions to recurring problems; i-patterns, on the other hand, are oriented towards the innovative and inspirational. The design domain of interest to us is interaction design, which can be roughly defined as design with digital materials. …

Rumpelstiltskin In Traditional And New Digital Media, Christine Blaney

Nordes Conference Series

The article documents 10 months of work focusing on the process of creating a childrenís book which develops new ways to utilise digital media alongside traditional methods and techniques such as mark making, drawing, painting and collage. The work aims to promote and develop language and literacy development within an innovative contemporary illustration context. The work makes use of research into specific learning methods (such as cloze procedure, semantic and syntactic evaluation, word identification and phonics) and embeds them within a traditional fairytale narrative. The aim of the book is to stimulate and motivate learners through use of tested learning …

Pulsart – It, Salt And Water For Family Awareness, Maiken Hillerup Fogtmann, Henrik Sommer Poulsen, Jonas Fritsch

Nordes Conference Series

Recent years have seen a growing interest in considering the domestic household as a new and important domain for interaction design. In this article we present pulsArt - a physical and digital installation designed for the home to represent different family members’ level of activity by water running down blocks of salt based on a real-time reading of the individual family member’s pulse. We describe how pulsArt explores novel ways of looking at the interaction between the physical, the social and the digital and how it acts as a context-aware artefact, amplifying the domestic setting to provide a new kind …

Design As Seven Steps Of Deterritorialization, Erik Werner Petersen

Nordes Conference Series

The purpose to this article is two-fold: First, to draw a map of the birth and development of design from the specific point of view: the concept of deterritorialization. Second, to address the present day situation of design through the deleuzian concept of “abstract machines”. The aim is respectively to more precisely specify the ultimate state of deterritorialization, and more importantly to uncover how these machines can advance the potentials of design by constituting becomings.

A Methodology For Studying Design Cognition In The Real World, Bo Christensen

Nordes Conference Series

The in vivo research methodology holds promise to improve some of the limitations of typical design cognition methodologies. Whereas typical design cognition methodology use protocol analysis (utilizing special ‘think-aloud’ instructions and/or artificial settings) or retrospective analyses, in vivo research attempts to study design thinking and reasoning ‘live’ or ‘online’ as it takes place in the real world. No special instructions are used since the method relies on natural dialogue taking place between designers. By recording verbalizations at product development meetings (or other suitable objects of study), transcribing, and coding the data, it is possible to test hypotheses about design cognition …

If Everything Is Design, What Then Is A Designer?, Sara Ilstedt Hjelm

Nordes Conference Series

Design as an activity, a subject and an end product is expanding. Today we design everything from drugs to welfare systems. Society is an artefact where natural laws or science are no longer valid. But if everything is design and everyone designs what is then the particular competence of the practising professional in graphic, industrial or interior design? How can a design researcher contribute to the development of knowledge when it is argued that all research is design? The background for the discussion is pragmatic rather than ideological and is based in the authors own practice as a designer, researcher …

Interaction Design As Experienced By Practitioners, Ann Lantz, Henrik Artman, Robert Ramberg

Nordes Conference Series

In this article the questions `what is interaction design´ and `what does interaction design mean to interaction designers´, are posed. We both look at the way people from within university/academia discuss interaction design as well as how people who label themselves interaction designers understand the area and describe their own practice. The empirical material presented is based on an interview study and a series of workshops. In the data three perspectives on interaction design emerged. This study illuminates that people who label themselves interaction designers assume a more holistic view on their endeavour for making interactive systems usable, they also …

Educating Interaction Designers – How Are New Tools For Design Changing Learning Situations?, Annett Hillestad

Nordes Conference Series

Institutions for design education are creating new courses and study programs within the field of interaction design, in order to meet the challenges that arise with the changing role of the designer and the expansion of the object of design. The DesignEd project analyses how new tools for design work are changing learning situations and knowledge requirements in design education. In this article I will present the research topics that motivate the planned and ongoing work on the DesignEd project. Ethnographic case study research has been carried out in a class of master level interaction design students at the Oslo …

The Development Of A Visual Design Tool: Visionpool, Jannick Kirk Sørensen

Nordes Conference Series

Collectively creating a visual aesthetic product (e.g. a TV-programme) requires all involved to share same visions about content and its audiovisual expression in order to achieve a common understanding and a successful product. Today’s development of e.g. TV-programmes is subject to the influence of many stakeholders and can therefore be regarded as a classic collective design process, although the typical TV-development process currently is based on words as primary means of expression. The tool “VisionPool” facilitates the visual aspects of the collectively design process as a visual physical design tool. This tool has been developed during a number of ‘use-centred’ …

Prototypes In Pinkenba, Gary Doherty

Nordes Conference Series

This article will address the agency of prototypes as landscape design interventions that trigger other processes and events, through a planning and design methodology developed by Chora. Given that the network city challenges the case for a determinate master planning in favour of an indeterminate approach, I ask why do some projects trigger further reactions and others do not? The answer is in the level of contextual networking in a project. The Chora method describes a way of tapping into the rhizomatic and networked landscape and designing with it. The article describes a test of the Chora methodology, called the …

[Visklek] – Playing With Games, Kristina Lindström, Åsa Ståhl

Nordes Conference Series

We live in an anxious world where there is a lack of trust in the communication in public places. A common way forward is to design against crime and thereby attempt to create a feeling of safety. We have chosen a different approach: to create a non-anxious system that puts trust in the user and allows her to act and to communicate. The project [visklek] aims at creating a public place that allows for social interaction and an exchange of personal stories between strangers in Växjö, Sweden. Trough the use of a traditional children’s game, network technologies and other channels …