Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling Of Oversaturated Conditions On Arterial Networks, Abhishek Acharya

All ETDs from UAB

Oversaturated conditions on arterial networks are a concern for both transportation agencies and the traveling public. The cost of construction, right-of-way constraints, and a variety of environmental, political, and other social issues often prohibit facility expansion and place extra emphasis on optimizing the operations of existing facilities. One of the options available to urban planners and transportation professionals for handling recurring and non-recurring oversaturation conditions in arterial networks is traffic signal optimization. The objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of traffic signal system performance in oversaturated conditions. The case study reported in this research focuses on …

Thermal Stability Of Defects In Strontium Titante Substrates For Multiferroic Materials, Shehnaz Jeddy

All ETDs from UAB

In this investigation we studied the thermal stability of defects in as-received (100) strontium titanate substrate during isochronal and isothermal anneals in vacuum and oxygen ambients. Using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, our purpose was to correlate the responses of the Fe+3Vo associate defect to either oxygen movement in substrates or to changes in the charge states of the Fe+3Vo defect. Isochronal vacuum anneals at T < 600 0C show increases in the relative EPR intensity of Fe+3Vo, implying increases in oxygen vacancies, but the decreases at T > 600 0C are not as yet clear. Isochronal oxygen anneals were conducted to compare/contrast responses of Fe+3Vo to thermal treatments in different ambients. Vacuum and oxygen anneals produced surprisingly similar results, suggesting that similar effects …

Engineering Methodology For Considering Permanent Metal Deck Forms For Stability Of Bridges During Construction, Shekhar S. Patil

All ETDs from UAB

Lateral-torsional buckling is a significant consideration in the design of steel bridge girders during construction. Because I-girders have inherently weak torsion resistance, designers provide cross-frames and/or diaphragms at close spacing intervals to minimize the susceptibility of individual girders to instability during construction. A recent increase in fatigue problems around discrete brace connections, along with the costs of fabrication, erection, and inspection associated with cross-frames, has prompted the removal of the minimum spacing requirement from bridge specifications and created great interest in identifying alternative construction bracing approaches. Although permanent metal deck forms (PMDF) are widely used in the construction of steel …

The Ghost Of Godwin: Intertextuality And Embedded Correspondence In The Works Of The Shelley Circle, James C. Stewart

All ETDs from UAB

The members of the Shelley Circle attempted to live their lives by and produce works consistent with an arguably unrealistic and utopian political value system. Thematically, the writers show remarkable similarity in attempting to render the ideal real. During the period between 1816 and 1819, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and William Godwin were struggling with living their ideals in a harsh reality. I examine two major works from each author: Godwin’s Political Justice and Caleb Williams, Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mathilda. In each case (with the exception of Godwin), when moving from …

Perioperative Music And Its Effects On Anxiety, Hemodynamics, And Pain In Women Undergoing Mastectomy, Pamela Gail Binns-Turner

All ETDs from UAB

The study purpose was to examine the effects of a perioperative music intervention on changes in mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), anxiety, and pain in women with a diagnosis of breast cancer undergoing mastectomy surgery. The convenience sample included 30 women between the ages of 42 and 70 who were undergoing mastectomy in a large urban hospital in the southern United States. Exclusion criteria included male gender, psychiatric disorder, use of psychotropic medications, cognitive mental disability, and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) status 4 or greater. In a quasiexperimental, repeated measures design, participants were randomized equally into music …

Human-Centered Semantic Retrieval In Multimedia Databases, Xin Chen

All ETDs from UAB

The research described in this dissertation has proposed a human-centered retrieval framework that can automatically retrieve multimedia data based on their semantic content. In particular, the framework queries and searches images and videos in a multimedia database according to their visual content. In order for computers to understand the semantic contents of images and videos, human guidance is necessary. By incorporating the user’s Relevance Feedback (RF) on the retrieval results into the learning and retrieval mechanism, the semantic gap between humans and computers can be gradually bridged. High-dimensional feature vectors of multimedia data can cause a dramatic increase in computation …

Developmentally Appropriate Practice And No Child Left Behind: A Phenomenological Study Of Teachers' Experiences, Linda Marie Hogue

All ETDs from UAB

The authorization of The Elementary and Secondary Act—No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 provided new federal guidelines for accountability in the United States. As a result, schools are required to provide statistical data through standardized test scores to measure adequate yearly progress benchmarks set by each state. The agenda of the federal government was to force school equity for all children. Since the inception of NCLB, teachers have begun the struggle of meeting the demands of federal, state, and local guidelines that impose harsh penalties if benchmarks are not attained by their students. The National Association for the …

Reading Teachers' Attitudes Toward Scripted Reading Programs: A Multiple Case Study, Holly G. Morgan

All ETDs from UAB

In the aftermath of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2002), reading teachers have been faced with new challenges and pressures, including reading curricula. Many schools have scrambled to purchase materials that are labeled as being scientifically researched (Vogt & Shearer, 2007). As a result of the influx of scripted reading programs, the educational field has been flooded with primarily quantitative research that was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific program. In addition, much of this research regarding the effectiveness of scripted reading programs has been promoted by the publishing companies themselves. The reading teachers’ attitudes toward …

Žižek And The Real Hegel, David J. Gunkel

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Žižek's reading of Hegel is, as he and many of his readers explicitly recognize, distinctly unorthodox. Efforts to appraise these readings often make reference to and mobilize the "real Hegel," a recognized standard and authorized understanding of Hegelian philosophy against which a particular interpretation may be compared and evaluated. This concept of "the real" is rooted in fundamental ontological assumptions that are at least as old as Plato. Žižek's critical interventions in the ontology of the real expose these assumptions and contest their procedures and outcomes. In doing so, Žižek not only questions the metaphysical foundations of traditional forms of …

Establishing A High-Technology Knowledge Transfer Network: The Practical And Symbolic Roles Of Identification, Edward U. Bond Iii, Mark B. Houston, Yihui Tang

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Knowledge transfer networks (KTNs) are composed of interconnected firms, government entities, and research organizations that play a critical role in the funding, development, and dissemination of knowledge in high-technology industries. Despite the common use of KTNs in situations that require technology inputs spanning multiple firms, little research has examined the start-up of KTNs and the marketing literature has essentially ignored them. Using social network, social identity, and relevant attribution and motivation theories, the authors build a conceptual model that explains key outcomes of start-up KTNs. A preliminary empirical investigation of a UK-wide KTN start-up finds evidence that social identification with …

How Are Preferences Revealed?, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent's observed actions. Normative preferences represent the agent's actual interests. It sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences. But there are many cases where this assumption is violated. We identify five factors that increase the likelihood of a disparity between revealed preferences and normative preferences: passive choice, complexity, limited personal experience, third-party marketing, and intertemporal choice. We then discuss six approaches that jointly contribute to the identification of normative preferences: structural estimation, active decisions, asymptotic choice, aggregated revealed preferences, reported preferences, and informed preferences. Each …

Mozart Effect: Exploring The Relationship Between Classical Music And Improvement In The Spatial-Temporal Cognitive Abilities Of Elementary School Children, Michael J. Ader

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

The purpose of this study was to learn if classical music stimuli can be used to enhance the thinking abilities of children as measured by a cognitive testing instrument. A comparison of classical music exposure and student achievement was conducted to specifically ascertain if music of varying types had an effect on measurable intelligences (especially spatial-temporal intelligence), as measured by the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT). An exploration of the theoretical and empirical literature regarding the improvement of cognitive abilities of elementary school aged children was examined to identify if exposure to arts education produced measurable gains which could facilitate …

Vof/Navier-Stokes Numerical Modeling Of Surface Waves Generated By Subaerial Landslides, Stéphane Abadie, Denis Morichon, Stephan Grilli, Stéphane Glocker

Ocean Engineering Faculty Publications

Landslide generated waves are studied using a numerical model based on Navier-Stokes equations, with a VOF algorithm to track the interfaces. Unlike most earlier simulations of this problem, our model implicitly describes the coupling between slide and water. Simulations are first compared with earlier measurements of a solitary wave generated by a rigid bloc falling down in a shallow water flume. We then perform simulations to evaluate the role of slide deformation on the characteristics of generated waves. Results highlight both the importance and complexity of slide deformation on wave characteristics. Hence, we recommend to consider slide rheology in tsunami …

The Papua New Guinea Tsunami Of 17 July 1998: Anatomy Of A Catastrophic Event, D. R. Tappin, P. Watts, Stephan T. Grilli

Ocean Engineering Faculty Publications

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) tsunami of July 1998 was a seminal event because it demonstrated that relatively small and relatively deepwater Submarine Mass Failures (SMFs) can cause devastating local tsunamis that strike without warning. There is a comprehensive data set that proves this event was caused by a submarine slump. Yet, the source of the tsunami has remained controversial. This controversy is attributed to several causes. Before the PNG event, it was questionable as to whether SMFs could cause devastating tsunamis. As a result, only limited modelling of SMFs as tsunami sources had been undertaken, and these excluded slumps. …

Refinement Of Reduced-Models For Dynamic Systems, Huajun Li, Min Zhang, Sau-Lon James Hu

Ocean Engineering Faculty Publications

A refinement procedure for the reduced models of structural dynamic systems is presented in this article. The refinement procedure is to “tune” the parameters of a reduced model, which could be obtained from any traditional model reduction scheme, into an improved reduced model. Upon the completion of the refinement, the improved reduced model matches the dynamic characteristics – the chosen structural frequencies and their mode shapes – of the full order model. Mathematically, the procedure to implement the model refinement technique is an application of the recently developed cross-model cross-mode (CMCM) method for model updating. A numerical example of reducing …

Wavelet-Based Regression And Classification For Longitudinal Diffusion Tensor Imaging Data, William R. Prucka

All ETDs from UAB

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique capable of in vivo characterization of the spatial and angular dependence of free water diffusion in tissue. By studying intra- and extra-cellular water mobility, inference can be made about the surrounding medium. The non-uniform angular dependence of diffusion, known as anisotropy, is evident in fibrous tissues, which exhibit greater diffusion parallel versus perpendicular to the fiber orientation. DTI’s sensitivity to anisotropy makes it an effective tool for measuring the integrity of fibrous myelinated white matter tracts in the brain. For demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), DTI has …

Fast Domain Wall Motion In Nanostripes With Out-Of-Plane Fields, Andrew Kunz, Sarah C. Reiff

Physics Faculty Research and Publications

Controlling domain wall motion is important due to the impact on the viability of proposed nanowire devices. One hurdle is slow domain wall speed when driven by fields greater than the Walker field due to nucleation of vortices in the wall. We present simulation results detailing the dynamics of these vortices including the nucleation and subsequent fast ejection of the vortex core leading to fast domain wall speeds. The ejection is due to the reversal of the core moments by an out-of-plane field. The technique can be used to produce domain walls of known orientation, independent of the initial state.

The Poetics Of Paraphrase: The Positivist Postmodernism In Mikhail Gasparov’S “Experimental Translations”, Heinrich Kirschbaum

Russian Language Journal

Two years before his death, Mikhail Gasparov (1935-2005) published his “Ėksperimental’nye perevody” (2003, “Experimental Translations,” or ETs), an anthology of translated works by authors from different time periods and literary traditions. The ETs are experimental in many ways: in some of his condensed translations, Gasparov shortens the originals drastically, in some cases by 80 percent. However, the ETs are not only experimental due to Gasparov’s new “technique of translation,” but also thanks to the choice of the originals to be translated. In addition to Hölderlin and Kavafis, Gasparov translates Pushkin and Lermontov from Russian to Russian, shortening and paraphrasing them …

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: January 2008, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2008

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from January 4 and 18, 2008.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: January 2008, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2008

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from January 2008.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Fourier-Transform Microwave Spectroscopy Of Cyclopropylmethylgermane And Van Der Waals Complexes Of Fluorinated Methanes, Michal M. Serafin

Masters Theses

Background theory and instrumentation utilized in the Fourier-transform microwave spectroscopy technique is first introduced followed by the structural and dynamic determination of cyclopropylmethylgermane and two weakly bound van der Waals complexes (difluoromethane-OCS, and fluoromethane-OCS). The minimum energy configuration has been determined for cyclopropylmethylgermane molecule, which has been shown to be the gauche configuration. Internal rotation parameters have been obtained from the rotational spectra of cyclopropylmethylgermane. The rotational spectra have been acquired for difluoromethanecarbonyl sulfide and fluoromethane-carbonyl sulfide and experimental structures have been determined for these weakly bound complexes. Evidence for a very low barrier to internal rotation has been observed …

Synthetic Studies Towards The Stellettins, Tung Yin Lin

Masters Theses

The synthesis of the stellettins, differing in the side chain at the C-13 position of the tricyclic region, was attempted by attaching the C-ring to a Wieland-Miescher ketone core using 1,3-bisphosphonoacetone. The decalin precursor was prepared in 35% from condensing ethyl acetate with acrolein, and a MnO2 oxidation, but too little material was obtained to cyclize this into the decalin. An alternative route involving a 2-step Robinson annulation of 2-methyl-1,3 cyclohexanedione with ethyl or methyl vinyl ketone and L-phenylalanine catalysis, followed by protecting C-9 carbonyl with acetal, gave 29% and 14% yields respectively.

1,3-Bisphosphonoacetone was prepared m a 3-step synthesis …

Sir Francis Galton, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Cousin to Charles Darwin and a talented statistician, Sir Francis Galton had an influence on social science that was profound. His major contributions to mathematical statistics included the initial development of quantiles and linear regression techniques. Along with F. Y. Edgeworth and Karl Pearson, he developed general techniques of multiple regression and correlation analysis, statistical devices that serve as substitutes for experiments in social science. Galton had a major impact on economics, and with W. R. Greg, was instrumental in creating the “science” of eugenics.

Ay 2007/2008 Sec Meeting Minutes, 2008-07-11, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Archives

No abstract provided.

Judges, Juries, And Scientific Evidence, Valerie P. Hans

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Federal Renewable-Energy Research And Development Funding And Innovation, Darrin B. Johnson

Masters Theses

Energy is the largest industry on the planet and necessary for the sustainability of life. As the world's stores of nonrenewable-energy begin to deplete at an increasing rate, the research on feasible sources of renewable-energy becomes essential. The objective of this study is to evaluate the relationship between federal funding for activities of energy research and development for renewable-energy sources and the resulting number of renewable-energy patent applications. Panel and ordinary least squares estimations are applied. Data consists of nineteen countries spanning the years from 1985 through 1997. Results indicate a weak and statistically insignificant relationship between federal renewable-energy R&D …

A Survey Of Carrion And Burying Beetles (Coleoptera:Silphidae) In Mchenry County, Illinois, David Suhrbur

Masters Theses

This study compared the occurrence of beetles in the family Silphidae using historical collection records with that of field collections from five different sites within McHenry County. The five sites include: Glacial Park, Woodstock, Silver Creek, Rush Creek, and Coral Woods. Historically, 11 known silphid species have been found in McHenry County, compared with seven species found during this study' collection period.

Percentages of silphid species at each site was calculated, as well as total number of individuals sampled, and two indices of diversity (Shannon-Weiner and Simpson's) were applied to both current and historical collection data. The historical collection (when …

A Comparison Of Filtering Approaches For Aircraft Engine Health Estimation, Daniel J. Simon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Different approaches for the estimation of the states of linear dynamic systems are commonly used, the most common being the Kalman filter. For nonlinear systems, variants of the Kalman filter are used. Some of these variants include the LKF (linearized Kalman filter), the EKF (extended Kalman filter), and the UKF (unscented Kalman filter). With the LKF and EKF, performance varies depending on how often Jacobians (partial derivative matrices) are updated. In other words, we see a tradeoff between computational effort and filtering performance. With the unscented Kalman filter, Jacobians are not calculated but computational effort is typically high due to …

Differences Among Students With Or Without Severe Discrepancy Between Predicted And Actual Achievement: Does Severe Discrepancy Matter?, Melissa (Bergan) Mcclelland

Masters Theses

This study investigated the differences between students with severe discrepancy and those without according to the Reynolds ( 1984) regression-based discrepancy formula. The sample included 264 students who were referred for an initial special education evaluation of !earning problems. Differences between these two groups were examined across gender, age, cognitive variables, and achievement. Results revealed that no significant gender or age differences were found in the presence of a severe discrepancy. However, statistically significant negative correlations were found between Full Scale IQ, and all of the differences between predicted and actual achievement scores with small to medium effect sizes (-1 …

Teacher Perceptions Related To Technology Tools For Curriculum Alignment: A Survey Of Teachers' Response To A Curriculum Mapping Tool, Julie A. Mathiesen

Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this descriptive study was to build understanding about the tools, methods and theory behind teacher use of a technology-based tool and process to align K-12 curriculum with state standards. A shift to a standards-driven education policy has created conditions in which teachers are encouraged to align classroom instruction to designated content standards but currently educators lack methods, guidance and appropriate strategies to accomplish this task. Curriculum mapping software is one tool that has been developed to aid in this endeavor. Data from an existing survey instrument was utilized to analyze subsets of teacher perception data and to …