Digital Commons Network^™

Osteoblast Precursors Respond To Cyclic Mechanical Compressive And Tensile Strains At The Bone-Implant Interface, Andrew Phillip Noblett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Stromals cells, W-20-17, were subjected to daily 30 minute doses of 800microstrain at 1Hz for six consecutive days on a commercially pure titanium substrate with a custom 4-point-bend cell strain system to simulate the bone-implant interface in vivo. The loading schemes include continuous and intermittent (15minutes of strain, 15 minutes of rest, 15 minutes of strain) dosing in both compresssive and tensile strain. Cell lysates and media were collected after 12hrs on the plate and after 1, 3, and 6 days of straining. DNA, total protein, and ALP concentrations were assayed to assess the results of the different strains. Overall …

Improving Reading Comprehension Through Prior Knowledge Acquisition Via Digital Game Based Learning, Julie Hooker Forbess

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

As a result of the Tennessee Diploma Project, Tennessee students must meet ACT standards in order to achieve high school graduation. However, the reading level of the ACT is beyond that of many average students enrolled in high school. The reading section of the ACT in fact, utilizes many excerpts from classic literature. Classic literature is also included on the reading lists of most school systems across Tennessee as well as the entire country. Many students are unable to connect to the characters and contexts of classic literature because they lack the necessary prior knowledge to make this type of …

Signal Conditioning And Feature Estimation For Profiling Sensor Systems, Jeremy Benjamin Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This paper presents techniques for signal conditioning and feature estimation to be used for profiling sensors which perform broad scale classifications. Methods for improving existing feature estimation techniques for linear array profiling systems are provided. A 360 profiling system and the accompanying algorithms used for signal conditioning and feature estimation are presented. The algorithms are validated by demonstrating classification results for the broad scale human, animal, and vehicle three class problem for the linear array, and the human and animal two class problem for the 360 profiling sensor.

Modeling Light-Dark Cycle Memory In The Mammalian Scn, Benjamin L. Coffey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN), the principal mammalian circadian oscillator, contain several thousand clock neurons that oscillate spontaneously with ~24-hour periods in its ventrolateral region. Without light, this network synchronizes through action potentials releasing VIP, compromising on a free-running period near 24 hours. We entrained Siberian hamsters to various light-dark cycles and tracked their activity into constant darkness showing that they retain memory for a particular light-dark cycle to which they were entrained before returning to their own free-running period. Using Leloup-Goldbeter mammalian clock neurons, we model the ventrolateral SCN network and show that light acting weakly upon a strongly rhythmic …

Emove: Movement Detection And Classification For Tagged Assets On Embedded Platforms, Bhagavathy Krishna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Most of the existing real-time asset tracking systems involves frequent communication of a device placed on the object to be tracked with a fixed infrastructure, which rapidly depletes the battery of the tag, due to the high energy demand of communication. This thesis presents emove, a system implemented on a low cost tag node that can be attached to assets. An emove tag autonomously detects and classifies movement of assets while being in deep sleep mode for most of its life. It communicates with the infrastructure only when it confirms the movement detected is of interest. Our design emphasizes energy-efficient …

The Press And Democracy Building: Journalism Education And Training In Eastern And South-Eastern Europe During Transition, Michael Foley

Masters

Media assistance to the former communist countries of Eastern Europe from 1989 became an important part of the transformation of that part of Europe from a socialist command economy to a democratic, liberal market economy. The media was seen as an important ideological weapon of the previous regimes and so was to be transformed in order to change society. The exact amount of media aid is unknown, so much of it was hidden under such headings as aid to civil society and democracy building, but it is known to account for hundreds of millions of euro. Most was spent on …

Seismic Anisotropy Beneath The Afar Depression And Adjacent Areas: Implications For Mantle Flow, Stephen S. Gao, Kelly H. Liu, Mohammed G. Abdel Salam

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Shear wave splitting is a robust tool to infer the direction and strength of seismic anisotropy in the lithosphere and underlying asthenosphere. Previous shear wave splitting studies in the Afar Depression and adjacent areas concluded that either Precambrian sutures or vertical magmatic dikes are mostly responsible for the observed anisotropy. Here we report results of a systematic analysis of teleseismic shear wave splitting using all the available broadband seismic data recorded in the Afar Depression, Main Ethiopian Rift (MER), and Ethiopian Plateau. We found that while the ~450 measurements on the Ethiopian Plateau and in the MER show insignificant azimuthal …

Correction To Mitochondrial Free [Ca2+] Increases During Atp/Adp Antiport And Adp Phosphorylation: Exploration Of Mechanisms, Johan Haumann, Ranjan K. Dash, David F. Stowe, Age D. Boelens, Daniel A. Beard, Amadou K.S. Camara

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Face Of Felt Stigma: Experiences Of Puerto Ricans Living With Hiv In Allentown, Pa, M Reyes Ba, Julio Jiménez Md, Joseph L. Yozviak Do, Facp, Timothy J. Friel Md, D Adams Psyd, Cynthia Beitler, Eric J. Gertner Md, Mph, E Rivera Ba, L Santiago Phd

Department of Medicine

No abstract provided.

Aortic Coarctation: Recent Developments In Experimental And Computational Methods To Assess Treatments For This Simple Condition, John F. Ladisa, Charles A. Taylor, Jeffrey A. Feinstein

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Coarctation of the aorta (CoA) is often considered a relatively simple disease, but long-term outcomes suggest otherwise as life expectancies are decades less than in the average population and substantial morbidity often exists. What follows is an expanded version of collective work conducted by the authors' and numerous collaborators that was presented at the 1st International Conference on Computational Simulation in Congenital Heart Disease pertaining to recent advances for CoA. The work begins by focusing on what is known about blood flow, pressure and indices of wall shear stress (WSS) in patients with normal vascular anatomy from both clinical imaging …

Native American Students: Perceptions Of Lived Experiences Attending A Small Predominantly White University In The Upper Midwest, Dennis Richard Simons

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the lived experiences of Native American students when studying on a predominantly white campus at a small university in the Upper Midwest. Using a phenomenological approach, the researcher interviewed each of the eight participants for one hour, although there were two interviews that took longer. Two participants agreed to meet for a second interview and, again, the time taken was approximately one hour. The resulting audio-recorded interviews were then transcribed, coded, and analyzed.

Three themes emerged from the analysis of the data. Theme One: Participants depended on the support of …

Modeling A Longitudinal Relational Research Data System, Michelle D. Hunt Olsen

Theses and Dissertations

A study was conducted to propose a research-based model for a longitudinal data research system that addressed recommendations from a synthesis of literature related to: (1) needs reported by the U.S. Department of Education, (2) the twelve mandatory elements that define federally approved state longitudinal data systems (SLDS), (3) the constraints experienced by seven Midwestern states toward providing access to essential educational and employment data, and (4) constraints reported by experts in data warehousing systems.

The review of literature investigated U.S. government legislation related to SLDS and protection of personally identifiable information, SLDS design and complexity, repurposing business data warehouse …

Out Of The Blue: A Mother's Memoir Of Our Family's Transgender Experience, Roxanne Moore

Theses and Dissertations

OUT OF THE BLUE: A MOTHER'S MEMOIR OF OUR FAMILY'S TRANSGENDER EXPERIENCE is a memoir about what it has been like to discover that the baby girl I gave birth to almost forty years ago, now identifies as a female to male transgender person. He began his transformation both physically and legally over five years ago. Though it is a story about our entire family's transformation, it focuses mainly on what this has been like for me as a mother and the relationship I have with my first-born child.

Noted psychologist, Arlene Ishtar Lev states in Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines …

Air Traffic Controllers: Flying In The Face Of Danger? A Look Into The Effects Of The Time Of Day, Jason Boergerhoff

Theses and Dissertations

Since the events of September 11, this country has continued to grow and its commercial air travel along with it. As the number of passengers and planes increase, so must the skill and etermination of the air traffic controllers. They must be at their peak performance levels to ensure the flying public is handled safely and expeditiously. This study looks at the possible effects of the time of day. After defining time of day effects and giving some of the consequences of these effects, a look into the task of a controller was necessary. This study broke the task down …

Augmented Epa With Augmented Efie Method For Packaging Analysis, Zuhui Ma, Lijun Jiang, Wengcho Chew, Maokun Li, Zhiguo Qian

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

It is evident that the low frequency full wave electromagnetic modelling is necessary for IC packaging analysis. Considering the complexity, it is very difficult to solve the whole problem directly. Even though the domain decomposition method is a legitimate approach for these types of problems, the domain decomposition method based on the equivalence principle has the low frequency breakdown issue. In this paper, we developed a low frequency augmented equivalence principle algorithm (AEPA) with the augmented electric field integral equation (AEFIE) for packaging and IC analysis. On the equivalence surfaces, not only the electric current and the magnetic current, but …

Does Setting Affect Achievement Of Students With Disabilities: Comparing Co-Teaching To Resource, Sarah Yvonne Mote

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This causal comparative study compared reading achievement of middle school students with disabilities (SWD) who were served in the resource class with the reading achievement of middle school SWD who were served in the co-teaching class. Reading achievement of SWD in grades six through eight was statistically analyzed to measure gains made by both groups of students. The learning outcomes were compared using reading assessment scores from the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) and student Lexile levels. The participants were 157 sixth through eighth grade SWD. The findings suggest that SWD may benefit equally from either instructional setting. Students from …

Number Line Estimation: The Use Of Number Line Magnitudes Estimation To Detect The Presence Of Math Disability In Postsecondary Students, Steven A. Mcdonald

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study arose from an interest in the possible presence of mathematics disabilities among students enrolled in the developmental math program at a large university in the Mid-Atlantic region. Research in mathematics learning disabilities (MLD) has included a focus on the construct of working memory and number sense. A component of number sense is the formation of a mental number line. This study looked at the mental representations of the number line in postsecondary developmental math students. It was found that the overall representation was linear, linear for three of four academic levels, and there were linear representations based upon …

Trade And Divergence In Education Systems, Pao Li Chang, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper presents a theory on the endogenous choice of a country's education policy and the two-way causal relationship between trade and education systems. The setting of a country's education system determines its talent distribution and comparative advantage in trade; the possibility of trade by raising the returns to the sector of comparative advantage in turn induces countries to further diferentiate their education systems and reinforces the initial pattern of comparative advantage. Specifically, the Nash equilibrium choice of education systems by two countries interacting strategically are necessarily more divergent than their autarky choices, although the difference is still less than …

The Wto Trade Effect, Pao Li Chang, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper reexamines the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Together, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification biases, allows general forms of heterogeneous treatment effects, and addresses potential hidden selection biases. This is in contrast to most conventional parametric studies on this issue. Our results suggest large GATT/WTO trade-promoting effects, robust to various restricted matching criteria, alternative indicators for GATT/WTO involvement, different matching methodologies, non-random incidence of positive trade flows, and inclusion of multilateral resistance terms.

Testing Structural Change In Partially Linear Models, Liangjun Su, Halbert White

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider two tests of structural change for partially linear time-series models. The first tests for structural change in the parametric component, based on the cumulative sums of gradients from a single semiparametric regression. The second tests for structural change in the parametric and nonparametric components simultaneously, based on the cumulative sums of weighted residuals from the same semiparametric regression. We derive the limiting distributions of both tests under the null hypothesis of no structural change and for sequences of local alternatives. We show that the tests are generally not asymptotically pivotal under the null but may be free of …

Micro-Level Estimation Of Child Undernutrition Indicators In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

One major limitation to addressing child undernutrition is a lack of the information required to target resources. This article extends the small-area estimation technique of Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw (2002, 2003) to jointly estimate multiple equations while allowing for individual-specific random errors across equations (in addition to cluster- and household-specific random errors). Estimates of the prevalence of stunting and underweight for children under age 5 in Cambodia from 17 Demographic and Health Survey strata are disaggregated into 1,594 communes by combining the Demographic and Health Survey data. The estimates are consistent with the surveyonly estimates at the aggregate and primary …

Xpath-Based Template Language For Describing The Placement Of Metadata Within A Document, Vijay Kumar Musham

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

In the recent years, there has been a tremendous growth in Internet and online resources that had previously been restricted to paper archives. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools can be used for digitalizing an existing corpus and making it available online. A number of federal agencies, universities, laboratories, and companies are placing their collections online and making them searchable via metadata fields such as author, title, and publishing organization. Manually creating metadata for a large collection is an extremely time-consuming task, and is difficult to automate, particularly for collections consisting of documents with diverse layout and structure. The Extract project …

Ibm Power Systems And Service Oriented Architecture At Bank Of America’S Foreign Items Systems Office, Keng Siau, D. Dewester

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This is a teaching case on a real life scenario in an organization involving IT solution evaluation and selection. This case involves the Bank of America’s Foreign Items Systems office in Toronto. The officers from the Bank of America’s Foreign Items Systems office in Toronto were discussing how to respond to a Request for Proposal (RFP) from a major U.S. bank to provide foreign currency services. The case discusses three options: Standard J2EE Web Application Global Foreign Currency, Modified J2EE Web Application with Single Sign On, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) via Web Services. The case can be used to complement …

Chosen-Ciphertext Secure Bidirectional Proxy Re-Encryption Schemes Without Pairings, Jian Weng, Huijie, Robert Deng, Shengli Liu, Kefei Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Proxy re-encryption realizes delegation of decryption rights, enabling a proxy holding a re-encryption key to convert a ciphertext originally intended for Alice into an encryption of the same message for Bob. Proxy re-encryption is a very useful primitive, having many applications in distributed file systems, outsourced filtering of encrypted spam, access control over network storage, and so on. Lately, Weng et al. proposed the first unidirectional proxy re-encryption scheme without using bilinear pairs. However, Weng et al.'s construction does not possess collusion resilience, in the sense that a coalition of the proxy and the delegatee can recover the delegator's private …

Opportunistic Routing In Wireless Sensor Networks Powered By Ambient Energy Harvesting, Zhi Ang Eu, Hwee-Pink Tan, Winston K. G. Seah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Energy consumption is an important issue in the design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which typically rely on portable energy sources like batteries for power. Recent advances in ambient energy harvesting technologies have made it possible for sensor nodes to be powered by ambient energy entirely without the use of batteries. However, since the energy harvesting process is stochastic, exact sleep-and-wakeup schedules cannot be determined in WSNs Powered solely using Ambient Energy Harvesters (WSN–HEAP). Therefore, many existing WSN routing protocols cannot be used in WSN–HEAP. In this paper, we design an opportunistic routing protocol (EHOR) for multi-hop WSN–HEAP. Unlike traditional …

Review: Biribi: Les Bagnes Coloniaux De L'Armee Francaise, Leonard V. Smith

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Exploration Of Elementary School Counselors' Perceptions Of Students' Exposure To Violent Video Games, Tammy Lynn Woody

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study explored elementary school counselors' perceptions of working with students exposed to violent video games. Certified elementary school counselors participated in both an online survey and individual interviews, revealing their observations regarding elementary school children and the phenomenon of gaming. An emphasis was placed on information about violent video games and how playing these games appear to impact the students in their schools.;The study addressed the overarching question of whether or not elementary school counselors have concerns about student exposure to violent video games and how they respond to student generated discussions of playing violent video games. The study …

The Effect Of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Derived From Various Sources On Bone Metabolism In Growing Female Rats, Robin E. Lukas

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Bone loss may be lessened if bone mass and strength are increased by optimizing nutrition intervention. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (o-3 PUFAs) have been suggested to improve bone mineralization and microarchitecture by affecting mineral balance and lipid peroxidation. However, the sources of the o-3 PUFA differ in the types of o-3 PUFA, ratios, and structural form. Therefore, the study objective was to determine the effect of o-3 PUFAs from different sources on bone mineral and microarchitecture and explore potential associations. Growing (28 day) female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned (n=10/group) to a high fat 12% (weight) diet consisting of either …

Prediction For Resolution Time Of Software Defect, Da Wang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In practical software development projects, solving test issues efficiently during Software Development Life Cycle is critical to release software products on time. Different test environments, test resources and test requirements could result in different outcomes. Therefore, getting accurate prediction of the software defects' resolution time could be beneficial to the practical projects.;In our study, data mining techniques offer great promise in prediction of software defects' resolution time. Our research is conducted based on the NASA Metrics Data Program (MDP). We first calculate the resolution time for available projects. Using unsupervised discretization methods, we split resolution time into certain interval as …

Development And Evolution Of Higher Brain Centers In Insects, Xiangyi Zhao

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Brain structures within an individual can change during development through modification of individual neuron morphology together with alteration of neuron numbers. Differences in the same or analogous brain structures from different species can reflect behavioral pattern variation among these species fixed by natural selection. This study used insects from two different taxonomic groups to address such brain structure changes at these two time scales: developmental and evolutionary. Mushroom bodies, as an integrative sensory center involved in learning and memory in insects, were the main structure surveyed to illustrate changes in higher brain centers in both projects. In the developmental study, …