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As The Creek Trickles: Land Use Debates In The Rock Creek Drainage, Carly Christine Phillips

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rural areas in Montana are increasing in population as more and more people move to or buy second homes in these areas in search of scenic amenities and a better quality of life. Academics, policy makers, and the general public are concerned that such development pressure may have negative consequences for important habitat, ecosystems, rural communities, people’s livelihoods, and social networks. Rock Creek, Montana is a small, rural area that has seen a large increase in population in the last twenty years. Population increase and development pressure in the area has led to many debates about proper land use on …

Design Of An Integrated Starter-Alternator For A Series Hybrid Electric Vehicle: A Case Study In Axial Flux Permanent Magnet Machine Design, Jessica L. Colton

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis details the design of an electric machine to perform as both a starter and alternator in a series hybrid electric vehicle. The focus of the work is on practical design aspects specific to single-sided axial flux permanent magnet machines with non-overlapped windings. First, a characterization of the rotor losses in these machine types is presented through experimental validation of finite element analysis estimates. The approaches taken to model the axial flux geometry, especially in two-dimensions, are detailed, and the difficult issue of validating the finite element analysis estimates with experimental data is addressed with a prototype 24-slot, 20-pole …

Modeling Biological Structures Via Abstract Grammars To Solve Common Problems In Computational Biology, David J. Russell

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Grammars are generally understood to be the set of rules that define the relationships between elements of a language. However, grammars can also be used to elucidate structural relationships within sequences constructed from any finite alphabet. In this work abstract grammars are used to model the primary and secondary structures present in biological data. These grammar models are inferred and applied to efficiently solve various sequence analysis problems in computational biology, including multiple sequence alignment, fragment assembly, database redundancy removal, and structural prediction.

The primary structures, or sequential ordering of symbols, of biological data are first modeled with Lempel-Ziv (LZ) …

Growth And Characterization Of Silicon Carbide Thin Films Using A Nontraditional Hollow Cathode Sputtering Technique, James Huguenin-Love

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Silicon carbide (SiC) is considered a suitable candidate for high-power, high-frequency devices due to its wide bandgap, high breakdown field, and high electron mobility. It also has the unique ability to synthesize graphene on its surface by subliming Si during an annealing stage. The deposition of SiC is most often carried out using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques, but little research has been explored with respect to the sputtering of SiC.

Investigations of the thin film depositions of SiC from pulse sputtering a hollow cathode SiC target are presented. Although there are many different polytypes of SiC, techniques are discussed …

Experimental Investigation Of Dielectric Barrier Impact On Breakdown Voltage Enhancement Of Copper Wire-Plane Electrode Systems, Elham Foruzan, M. Ziaee-Nezhad, A. A. Shayegani-Akmal, K. Niayesh

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Non-pressurized air is extensively used as basic insulation media in medium / high voltage equipments. An inherent property of air-insulated designs is that the systems tend to become physically large. Application of Dielectric barrier can increase the breakdown voltage and therefore decrease the size of the equipments.

In this paper, the impact of dielectric barrier on breakdown voltage enhancement of a copper wire-plane system is investigated. For this purpose, the copper wire is covered with different dielectric materials. Depending on the air gap and dielectric strength of the barrier the breakdown can be initiated in the solid or gas dielectric. …

Building A Community Of Shalom: What The Bible Says About Multicultural Education, Heekap Lee

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

Multicultural education is a highly controversial topic in which it has been the center of contentions and conflicts as it has evolved for the last couple of decades. Several concerns and problems existed in the field of multicultural education will be addressed in this article. In addition, a new framework of multicultural education, called the shalom model, which is drawn from the Bible is presented, along with the characteristics of the model. The goal of multicultural education, according to this model, is to build a community of shalom, an image that is clearly described in Isaiah 11:6. In order to …

Special Education And Spiritual Formation, David W. Anderson

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

Faith-learning integration is a complex and sometimes challenging issue for university faculty, and something which our students have not likely engaged in. Rather than “integration,” emphasis will be on how Christian thought informs educational practice, and contributes to our spiritual formation, igniting flames of faith-learning and helping prepare caring and competent teachers.

The Role Of Controversial Issues In Moral Education: Approaches And Attitudes Of Christian School Educators, Samuel J. Smith

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

This study investigated the approaches and attitudes of Christian school teachers as they addressed controversial issues in moral education. Thirteen teachers from four schools were interviewed extensively. A hermeneutic phenomenological methodology was implemented. Participants conveyed that they attempted to remain pedagogically neutral in matters relating to denominational differences among Christian churches. While acknowledging that indoctrinative techniques may alienate students, teachers chose to indoctrinate selectively, especially in matters critical to the Christian faith. Issues impacting the classrooms included abortion, sex, doctrine, homosexuality, evolution, etc. Teachers rarely chose to remain neutral on controversial issues unless by doing so they sensed that they …

Teacher Vital Signs: A Two-Country Study Of Teacher Vitality, Delta Cavner Ed.D.

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

Defining teacher vitality as the vigor, energy, passion, and joy teachers bring to their classroom, students and colleagues; this article describes an international, comparative, qualitative, phenomenological study of teachers’ lived experiences to determine the elements influencing teacher vitality. This is a two-country, multiple-case study of twenty-one middle and high school teachers who had taught ten to twenty years. In order to serve as a confirmation of the universality of the elements of teacher vitality, the study was not only conducted in two different schools in Idaho, but also was replicated in two different schools in Austria. In each of the …

Prevalence, Nature, Context And Impact Of Alcohol Use In India: Recommendations For Practice And Research, S. Prabhu, David A. Patterson Silver Wolf (Adelv Unegv Waya) Phd, Catherine N. Dulmus Phd, K. S. Ratheeshkumar

Brown School Faculty Publications

Presently alcohol policy in India takes a moral stand rather than a scientific approach towards understanding and dealing with the problem of alcoholism. To effectively address this social problem in India, public policy must take into account the nature, extent of the problem and the context in which it occurs. This literature review examines the nature, prevalence and impact of alcohol use and misuse in India, within its historical and cultural contexts, as a beginning step to inform policy. Recommendations for practice and future research directions are suggested.

Vulnerability And Disability In Darfur, Maria Kett, Jean-Francois Trani

Brown School Faculty Publications

The difficulties faced by persons with disabilities throughout the displacement process contribute to their increased vulnerability.

Faculty Governance, Volume 1, Issue 4, Unm Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Documents

No abstract provided.

Hslic Annual Report Fy2009-10, Health Sciences Library And Informatics Center

HSLIC Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Personnel File Of Fr. John Candido Rodriguez, Catholic Church. Archdiocese Of Santa Fe (N.M.)

Personnel Files

No abstract provided.

Resource Nationalism And Energy Security In Latin America: Implication For Global Oil Supplies, David R. Mares

Latin American Energy Dialogue, White Papers and Reports

Energy policy is usefully characterized by the degree to which resource nationalism and energy security are pursued. The balance achieved between these two key concepts dramatically affects global energy supplies. Over the past century, both of these ideas have played particularly significant roles in Latin America, where the oil industry first developed outside the US, and an area that continues to draw the attention of the world market. Because Latin America is a growing source of hydrocarbons for the world market, its energy policies are of increasing importance. The challenge is to understand why a country works with or against …

Fusion Of Imprecise Qualitative Information, Florentin Smarandache, Xinde Li, Xianzhong Dai, Jean Dezert

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper, we present a new 2-tuple linguistic representation model, i.e. Distribution Function Model (DFM), for combining imprecise qualitative information using fusion rules drawn from Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) framework. Such new approach allows to preserve the precision and efficiency of the combination of linguistic information in the case of either equidistant or unbalanced label model. Some basic operators on imprecise 2-tuple labels are presented together with their extensions for imprecise 2-tuple labels. We also give simple examples to show how precise and imprecise qualitative information can be combined for reasoning under uncertainty. It is concluded that DSmT can deal …

Fusion Of Sources Of Evidence With Different Importances And Reliabilities, Florentin Smarandache, Jean Dezert, J.M. Tacnet

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper presents a new approach for combining sources of evidences with different importances and reliabilities. Usually, the combination of sources of evidences with different reliabilities is done by the classical Shafer’s discounting approach. Therefore, to consider unequal importances of sources, if any, a similar reliability discounting process is generally used, making no difference between the notion of importance and reliability. In fact, in multicriteria decision context, these notions should be clearly distinguished. This paper shows how this can be done and we provide simple examples to show the differences between both solutions for managing importances and reliabilities of sources. …

Single Valued Neutrosophic Sets, Haibin Wang, Florentin Smarandache, Yanqing Zhang, Rajshekhar Sunderraman

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Neutrosophic set is a part of neutrosophy which studies the origin, nature, and scope of neutralities, as well as their interactions with different ideational spectra. Neutrosophic set is a powerful general formal framework that has been recently proposed. However, neutrosophic set needs to be specified from a technical point of view. To this effect, we define the settheoretic operators on an instance of neutrosophic set, we call it single valued neutrosophic set (SVNS). We provide various properties of SVNS, which are connected to the operations and relations over SVNS.

Between Return And Resettlement: The Formation Of Iraqi Refugee "Communities" In Cairo And Amman, Emilie K. B. Minnick

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether or not there is community formation among Iraqi refugees living in Amman, Jordan and Cairo, Egypt. These two countries were chosen as case studies because they offer an opportunity to analyze how different host country conditions in the Global South have an impact on the process of community formation. While Egypt is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and Jordan is not, access to rights in both countries is similarly restrictive. Furthermore, whereas there has been a long history of forced migration from Iraq to Jordan and Iraqi social networks …

Workshop Report From Web2se: First Workshop On Web 2.0 For Software Engineering, Christoph Treude, Margaret-Anne Storey, Kate Ehrlich, Arie Van Deursen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, tags and feeds have been adopted and adapted by software engineers. With Web2SE, we provide a venue for pertinent work by highlighting current state-of-the-art research, by identifying research areas, and by discussing implications of Web 2.0 on software engineering. This paper reports on the paper presentations and the discussions among participants at Web2SE 2010 as well as on future directions of the Web2SE community.

Representations Of Keypoint-Based Semantic Concept Detection: A Comprehensive Study, Yu-Gang Jiang, Jun Yang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Based on the local keypoints extracted as salient image patches, an image can be described as a "bag-of-visual-words (BoW)" and this representation has appeared promising for object and scene classification. The performance of BoW features in semantic concept detection for large-scale multimedia databases is subject to various representation choices. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive study on the representation choices of BoW, including vocabulary size, weighting scheme, stop word removal, feature selection, spatial information, and visual bi-gram. We offer practical insights in how to optimize the performance of BoW by choosing appropriate representation choices. For the weighting scheme, we …

Information Technology Diffusion With Influentials, Imitators, And Opponents: Model And Preliminary Evidence, Hasan Cavusoglu, Nan Hu, Yingjiu Li, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information technology (IT) innovations follow a diverse set of diffusion patterns. Early diffusion models explaining technology diffusion patterns assumed that there is a single homogeneous segment of potential adopters. It was later shown that a two-segment model considering two groups of adopters explains variations in diffusion patterns better than the existing one-segment models. While the two-segment model considers a group of adopters promoting adoption by exerting a positive influence on prospective adopters, it does not consider the members of society who aim to inhibit the adoption process by exerting a negative influence on prospective adopters. In fact, most IT innovations …

A Review Of The Professionalization Of The Software Industry: Has It Made Software Engineering A Real Profession?, Heng Ngee Mok

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Every industry strives to be called a "profession", and software engineering is no exception. This paper attempts to define "profession" from three different perspectives and provides a chronological narration of the professionalization efforts of major IT bodies such as the IEEE Computer Society, Association of Computing Machinery and British Computer Society to promote software engineering from "occupation" to "profession". The outcome of this professionalization process is then examined against the three vastly different definitions of "profession" to qualitatively gauge the success of the professionalization process.

Modeling Anticipatory Event Transitions, He Qi, Kuiyu Chang, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Major world events such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, wars, etc. typically progress through various representative stages/states in time. For example, a volcano eruption could lead to earthquakes, tsunamis, aftershocks, evacuation, rescue efforts, international relief support, rebuilding, and resettlement, etc. By analyzing various types of catastrophical and historical events, we can derive corresponding event transition models to embed useful information at each state. The knowledge embedded in these models can be extremely valuable. For instance, a transition model of the 1918-1920 flu pandemic could be used for the planning and allocation of resources to decisively respond to future occurrences of …

Do Online Reviews Reflect A Product's True Perceived Quality? An Investigation Of Online Movie Reviews Across Cultures, Noi Sian Koh, Nan Hu, Eric K. Clemons

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

When does the reported average of online ratings match perceived average assessment? We apply behavioral theory to capture intentions in rating online movie reviews in two dissimilar countries - China and the United States. We argue that consumers' rating behaviors are affected by cultural influences. Based on data collected from imdb.com and douban.com, we found significant differences across raters from these two different cultures. Additionally, we examined how cultural elements influence rating behavior for a hybrid culture - Singapore. Under-reporting bias occurs when consumers with extreme opinions are more likely to report their opinions than consumers with moderate reviews, resulting …

Dual Phase Learning For Large Scale Video Gait Recognition, Jialie Shen, Hwee Hwa Pang, Dacheng Tao, Xuelong Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accurate gait recognition from video is a complex process involving heterogenous features, and is still being developed actively. This article introduces a novel framework, called GC2F, for effective and efficient gait recognition and classification. Adopting a ”refinement-and-classification” principle, the framework comprises two components: 1) a classifier to generate advanced probabilistic features from low level gait parameters; and 2) a hidden classifier layer (based on multilayer perceptron neural network) to model the statistical properties of different subject classes. To validate our framework, we have conducted comprehensive experiments with a large test collection, and observed significant improvements in identification accuracy relative to …

Introducing Communication In Dis-Pomdps With Locality Of Interaction, Makoto Tasaki, Yuichi Yabu, Yuki Iwanari, Makoto Yokoo, Janusz Marecki, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Networked Distributed POMDPs (ND-POMDPs) can model multiagent systems in uncertain domains and has begun to scale-up the number of agents. However, prior work in ND-POMDPs has failed to address communication. Without communication, the size of a local policy at each agent within the ND-POMDPs grows exponentially in the time horizon. To overcome this problem, we extend existing algorithms so that agents periodically communicate their observation and action histories with each other. After communication, agents can start from new synchronized belief state. Thus, we can avoid the exponential growth in the size of local policies at agents. Furthermore, we introduce …

Teleoph: A Secure Real-Time Teleophthalmology System, Yongdong Wu, Zhou Wei, Haixia Yao, Zhigang Zhao, Lek Heng Ngoh, Robert H. Deng, Shengsheng Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Teleophthalmology (TeleOph) is an electronic counterpart of today's face-to-face, patient-to-specialist ophthalmology system. It enables one or more ophthalmologists to remotely examine a patient's condition via a confidential and authentic communication channel. Specifically, TeleOph allows a trained nonspecialist in a primary clinic to screen the patients with digital instruments (e.g., camera, ophthalmoscope). The acquired medical data are delivered to the hospital where an ophthalmologist will review the data collected and, if required, provide further consultation for the patient through a real-time secure channel established over a public Internet network. If necessary, the ophthalmologist is able to further sample the images/video of …

On The Potential Of Limitation-Oriented Malware Detection And Prevention Techniques On Mobile Phones, Qiang Yan, Robert H. Deng, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The malware threat for mobile phones is expected to increase with the functionality enhancement of mobile phones. This threat is exacerbated with the surge in population of smart phones instilled with stable Internet access which provides attractive targets for malware developers. Prior research on malware protection has focused on avoiding the negative impact of the functionality limitations of mobile phones to keep the performance cost within the limitations of mobile phones. Being different, this paper investigates the positive impact of these limitations on suppressing the development of mobile malware. We study the state-of-the-art mobile malware, as well as the progress …

Does Co-Opetition Change The Game? A Bayesian Analysis Of Participation Strategy In An Industry Standard-Setting Organization, Robert J. Kauffman, Benjamin B. M. Shao, Juliana Y. Tsai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Across different industries, we observe the emergence of industry standard-setting organizations (SSO) that focus on the creation of industry-specific process standards. Firms adopt a strategy of co-opetition, the combination of cooperation and competition, during standards development. We propose that a firm's co-opetition strategy is revealed to some extent by when it elects to participate in an industry SSO. Bayesian information updating offers an effective empirical modeling perspective for studying firms' participation strategies when managers' beliefs and uncertainties are factored into their decision-making. We analyze a panel data set of 73 U.S. public firms over a 20-year period. These firms are …