Digital Commons Network^™

Dynamic Analysis Of Hollow Tapered Isotropic And Composite Shafts Using Finite Element Techniques, Lindsay Larocca Parslow

Theses

Finite element techniques were used to analyze the dynamic characteristics of hollow tapered isotropic and composite shafts. Mathematical models of hollow tapered isotropic and composite shafts were developed, which were then discretized using Galerkin's Method to produce standard vibration equations. The solutions to the standard vibration equations were coded into two com puter programs, which can be used to calculate the torsional dynamic characteristics of an isotropic rotor system, and the coupled axial-torsional dynamic characteristics of a composite shaft. Several examples using each computer program are presented, illustrating their ability to predict natural frequencies and mode shapes of torsional systems.

Self-Directed Work Teams: Do They Impact Employee Motivation And Accountability To Reduce, Melissa Noyes

Theses

This thesis attempted to tie Self-Directed work teams (SDWT) to safety performance through research, employee surveys and statistical analysis. The ultimate focus of the thesis was to answer two related research questions. To answer the questions required a trip down a road that is not, at this time, traveled frequently by safety professionals or other management. It is not to say that managers throughout the world are unaware of SDWT, but because SDWT are not used in many companies, it was difficult to obtain information to fully attack the problem. However, the focus remained on answering the problem, and defining …

The Consideration Of Camera Testing For Accurate Color Reproduction Within Museums And Institutions, Natalie Russo

Theses

The need for color accurate digital images for fine art reproduction is a reality faced by art museums and institutions around the world. It is the goal of most institutions to replace old, sometimes used and abused, transparency archives with digital image archives; many institutions have already begun this work. A number of different imaging systems with varied workflows, some idiosyncratic, are being used for this work. There is, therefore, an urgent need for the development and sharing of working methods that will ensure efficient, consistent, and color accurate results. These workflows must use camera systems to their fullest capability. …

Assessing The State Of Web Accessibility, Laura Cook

Theses

People with disabilities continue to be at a disadvantage in terms of opportunities on the Web. Federal laws and state policies help govern website design for federal and state agencies, but their impact thus far is unclear. This thesis addresses the issue of web accessibility and examines the compliance of state websites. A sample of state websites was evaluated for accessibility with two different methods: (1 ) using two automated accessibility validation checkers (Bobby and Entre), and (2) using a process of gradually degrading the web pages down to a text-only page. A survey was developed and administered to web …

Graph Reconstruction Numbers, Brian Mcmullen

Theses

The Reconstruction Conjecture is one of the most important open problems in graph theory today. Proposed in 1942, the conjecture posits that every simple, finite, undirected graph with more than three vertices can be uniquely reconstructed up to isomorphism given the multiset of subgraphs produced by deleting each vertex of the original graph. Related to the Reconstruction Conjecture, reconstruction numbers concern the minimum number of vertex deleted subgraphs required to uniquely identify a graph up to isomorphism. During the summer of 2004, Jennifer Baldwin completed an MS project regarding reconstruction numbers. In it, she calculated reconstruction numbers for all graphs …

Charismatic Revival And The Mission Of The Church, J. Edward Crenshaw

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Missional Potential Of International Churches : A Case Study Of Capital City Baptist Church, Mexico City, Ernest Eugene Klassen

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Evolutionary Computation Approach To Optimization Of Isoelectric Point Prediction In Proteins, Chris Parkin

Theses

Computational biology has attacked the problem of isoelectric point prediction with little success, achieving a rough accuracy level of only 30%. In 2005, Matthew Conte performed a study focused on the relationship between sequence characteristics and isoelectric point prediction accuracy. Results indicated that charges between adjacent amino acids could have a significant impact on the overall predicted pi for the protein. In this study we introduce an evolutionary computation approach aimed at accounting for these problem dipeptides. For each possible dipeptide involving charged amino acids (7 chargeable groups -> 49 possibilities), the algorithm predicts a pKa value that, when included …

The Endorsement Court, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1986, when William H. Rehnquist was confirmed as the sixteenth Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court has virtually rewritten the entire law regarding the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. With respect to the Free Exercise Clause, the Court, in its 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, reversed years of jurisprudence and held that the First Amendment does not entitle religious believers to exemptions from neutral laws of general application. On the Establishment Clause side, the Court recently overturned a series of its earlier decisions on its way to creating a body of law quite amenable to the …

Risk Management, Ben J.M. Ale, Phil W.M. Brighton, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Risk management develops as the need arises. Usually after an accident people want “authorities” to do something. On the other hand, industry wants predictable behaviour of authorities to be able to judge the soundness of their investments. This led to an adaptive process involving many decision makers embedded in legal and cultural heritage. It was indeed as struggle to determine who should be responsible and how to have risk management done by competent party (i.e. (1) industry, (2) public (3) authorities).

Kitzmiller And The "Is It Science?" Question, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When Judge John E. Jones, III, a United States District Court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the Dover school board's intelligent design (ID) policy violated the Establishment Clause, ID opponents were ecstatic. They had good reason to be. The opinion was a comprehensive and complete victory for ID opponents. The decision held that the policy was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion when viewed both from a reasonable Dover student's perspective as well as from the perspective of a reasonable adult in the Dover community. It also held that the policy was adopted for a religious purpose, …

The Procedural Soft Law Of International Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The conference organizers set me the daunting task of exploring arbitration's “non-national instruments,” which is to say the guidelines of professional groups and non-governmental organizations related to evidence, conflicts of interest, ethics and the organization of arbitral proceedings. Frequently these procedural standards build on the lore of international dispute resolution as memorialized in articles, treatises and learned symposium papers. These guidelines represent what might be called “soft law,” in distinction to the harder norms imposed by arbitration statutes and treaties, as well as the procedural framework adopted by the parties through choice of pre-established arbitration rules.

The growth of procedural …

A Messaging System To Handle Semantic Dissonance, Ashish Rathod

Theses

Enterprises have been compelled to share their data internally and externally, but creating a consistent view of enterprise data has been challenging. Within a typical enterprise, each division uses its own domain specific data model and schema, and different enterprises obviously use their own data models and schema. Integrating these diverse data models and schemas, which have both syntactic and semantic differences, tends to be complex, slow, and inaccurate. Syntactic differences, i.e., differences in names or layout, have received substantial attention in research. Semantic dissonance simply means that the structure may be similar (or even the same) but the meaning …

Relationship Of Human Figure Drawing With Executive Functioning And Achievement, Julie M. Miller

Theses

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between aspects of children’s human figure drawings to their executive functioning and academic achievement. Participants consisted of 80 third and fourth graders, ages 8 to 10 years, along with their parents. Correlational analysis showed no relationship between the developmental scoring of the Goodenough-Harris or Koppitz with measures of executive functioning, as measured by the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF; Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000) and the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997). However, Koppitz’s emotional indicators were significantly correlated with all aspects of BRIEF and …

Examining Land Use Planning And Zoning Ethics From A Planner’S Perspective: Lessons For All Stakeholders In The Real Estate Game, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This article examines the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). Only two states, Michigan and New Jersey, license planners as a profession. This makes ability for planners to achieve certification from the AICP important and raises the prominence of the AICP Code of Ethics, since as a condition of membership, each AICP member agrees to abide by the Code.

Extraction And Interaction Analysis Of Foreground Objects In Panning Video, Raja Jain

Theses

In this work, moving foreground objects are extracted from video. The video camera can be either stationary or panning. The motion information extracted from consecutive frames of video is used for object segmentation, and an appearance model of the moving object is created. No assumptions are made concerning the object model, resulting in segmented objects of varying shapes and sizes. Finally, relationships between objects in the image are evaluated toward the goal of higher level understanding of videos.

A Biologically Plausible System For Detecting Saliency In Video, David Burlone

Theses

Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists credit the dorsal and ventral pathways for the capability of detecting both still salient and motion salient objects. In this work, a framework is developed to explore potential models of still and motion saliency and is an extension of the original VENUS system. The early visual pathway is modeled by using Independent Component Analysis to learn a set of Gabor-like receptive fields similar to those found in the mammalian visual pathway. These spatial receptive fields form a set of 2D basis feature matrices, which are used to decompose complex visual stimuli into their spatial components. A …

Application Of Shifted Delta Cepstral Features For Gmm Language Identification, Jonathan Lareau

Theses

Spoken language identifcation (LID) in telephone speech signals is an important and difficult classification task. Language identifcation modules can be used as front end signal routers for multilanguage speech recognition or transcription devices. Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM's) can be utilized to effectively model the distribution of feature vectors present in speech signals for classification. Common feature vectors used for speech processing include Linear Prediction (LP-CC), Mel-Frequency (MF-CC), and Perceptual Linear Prediction derived Cepstral coefficients (PLP-CC). This thesis compares and examines the recently proposed type of feature vector called the Shifted Delta Cepstral (SDC) coefficients. Utilization of the Shifted Delta Cepstral …

Implementation Of Image Processing Approach To Translation Of Asl Finger-Spelling To Digital Text, Divya Mandloi

Theses

This thesis describes the ongoing development of an image processing technique for the translation of American Sign Language (ASL) finger-spelling to text. The present analysis is the phase one of a broader project, the Sign2 Project, which is focused on a complete technological approach to the translation of ASL to digital audio and/or text. The methodology adopted in this analysis employs a gray-scale image processing technique to convert the American Sign Language finger-spelling to text. It attempts to process static images of the subject considered, and then matches them to a statistical database of pre-processed images to ultimately recognize the …

Europa: A Framework For Writing Reusable Automated Tests For C# Components, Christian Castillo

Theses

One of the main goals of software construction is reusability. Component-based (CB) development is a new paradigm that promises to facilitate the reuse of software elements. The component-based model attempts to create an analogy with computer hardware. The idea is that software applications should be developed by assembling existing components rather than reinventing solutions to problems that have already been solved. In this paradigm, a component consumer is faced with the problem of determining if a given component meets his expectations. Testing the component can help answer this question. The component consumer may have to apply the same test cases …

Mentoring In The Department Of Access Services At The National Technical Institute For The Deaf, Gayle Macias

Theses

Not provided.

What Do We Owe Each Other In The Global Economic Order?: Constructivist And Contractualist Accounts, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

No legal system deserving of continued support can exist without an adequate theory of justice. A world trade constitution cannot credibly exist without a clear notion of justice upon which to base a consensus. This paper examines two accounts of fairness found in moral philosophy, those of John Rawls and Tim Scanlon. The Rawlsian theory of justice is well-known to legal scholars. Scanlon's contractualist account may be less well-known. The aim of the paper is to start the discussion as to how fairness theories can be used to develop the tools for examining international economic policies and institutions. After elaborating …

Principles Of Fairness For International Economic Treaties: Constructivism And Contractualism, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

No legal system deserving of continued support can exist without an adequate theory of justice. A world trade constitution cannot credibly exist without a clear notion of justice upon which to base a consensus. This paper examines two accounts of fairness found in moral philosophy, those of John Rawls and Tim Scanlon. The Rawlsian theory of justice is well-known to legal scholars. Scanlon's contractualist account may be less well-known. The aim of the paper is to start the discussion as to how fairness theories can be used to develop the tools for examining international economic policies and institutions. After elaborating …

Developing A Student’S “Thought Monitor”, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Teaching Irac To First-Year Students, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Vanishing Trials: An English Perspective, Robert Dingwall, Emilie Cloatre

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This paper reviews the recent history of civil litigation in England and Wales. While previous work by Professor Kritzer has shown an absolute decline in trials over the last fifty years, with some fluctuation around this trend, this comment suggests that this may now have bottomed out. Given the evidence of a simultaneous, and continuing, decline in the number of claims filed, it may even be the case that trials are, at least temporarily, playing a larger part in the civil justice system than they have for many years. In contrast to the experience in the U.S., these changes seem …

When We Hold No Truths To Be Self-Evident: Truth, Belief, Trust, And The Decline In Trials, Lisa Blomgren Bingham

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article will explore the relationship between the "vanishing trial" and the changing ways in which we think about truth. First, it briefly overviews how we think about knowing what is true: epistemology and this history of philosophy. Second, it looks to the philosophy of science and history of social science for new theories and methods about how we ascertain and construct meaning and what we believe to be real and true. Third, it examines our changing relation to information in the face of the "information explosion": information is the evidence upon which we reach a conclusion about what is …

Vanishing Or Increasing Trials In The Netherlands, Carolien Klein Haarhuis, Bert Niemeijer

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In this article, we will address the question of whether something like vanishing trials exists in the Netherlands. This could be the case, as some of the causes of the decline in the number of trials advanced by Galanter are also observed in the Netherlands. ADR is gaining popularity, the costs of court procedures are on the rise, and there clearly exists a development toward "managerial justice."

Vanishing Trial, Vanishing Community - The Potential Effect Of The Vanishing Trial On America's Social Capital, Robert M. Ackerman

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This essay considers the communitarian implications of the vanishing trial phenomenon. Its language is tentative, because while we now have-thanks to Marc Galanter and his associates-a great deal of useful data on the vanishing trial, we have only some hints regarding its causes, and an even less concrete notion of its likely consequences.' The empirical data unearthed by Professor Galanter and others has debunked a number of myths regarding the litigiousness of our society and the extent to which the courts are employed to resolve disputes. Given the care that has been invested in this research, it would be reckless …

The Bender Ii And Its Relationship With Executive Functioning And Academics, Katharine A. Warsinske

Theses

The Bender-Gestalt Test and tests of executive functioning have been linked to academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the Bender II as compared to Koppitz's Developmental Scoring System (DSS), as well as to determine the relationship between the Bender II and executive functioning. A total of 82 children participated in this study. A significant correlation was found between the DSS and the Bender II, with the Bender II mean approximately 10 standard score points higher than the DSS. The Bender II was also significantly correlated with more scales on the BRIEF than the …