Digital Commons Network^™

Building Dupont: Capitalism, Manufactures, And Place In Early America, 1800-1820, Christopher Manning

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Though there is a rich literature dealing with the DuPont Company, the historiography remains dedicated to studies of the family’s life, corporate methods, working-class culture, and technological know-how. Rarely do studies engage the company’s wider economic position or regional influence in early America. This study analyzes the way early American culture guided and influenced DuPont’s growth and success. It also examines the company’s efforts to promote manufactures, create markets, and shape its surrounding landscape. As in other parts of the world, the development of industrial capitalism, and the wider acceptance of domestic manufacturers and large-scale industry in the United States …

Dynamic Distributed Programming And Applications To Swap Edge Problem, Feven Z. Andemeskel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Link failure is a common reason for disruption in communication networks. If communication between processes of a weighted distributed network is maintained by a spanning tree T, and if one edge e of T fails, communication can be restored by finding a new spanning tree, T’. If the network is 2-edge connected, T’ can always be constructed by replacing e by a single edge, e’, of the network. We refer to e’ as a swap edge of e.

The best swap edge problem is to find the best choice of e’, that is, that e which causes the new spanning …

Learning With Animation And The Illusion Of Understanding, Eugene Sam Paik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A controlled experiment was conducted on the effects of two types of animation - motion and highlighting - on learning. The treatment consisted of a 3.5 minute multimedia presentation that described the workings of a flushing toilet tank. A 2x2 factorial design ({motion, no-motion} x {highlight, no-highlight}) was employed with two dependent measures of learning (retention and transfer). Participants consisted of 65 undergraduates. Highlighting animation had a positive effect on both retention and transfer while motion animation had a negative effect on transfer. No significant interaction was detected between motion and highlighting.

In addition, the experiment tested the illusion of …

Analyzing The Impact Of Reactive Transport On The Repository Performance Of Triso Fuel, Gregory Schmidt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

One of the largest determiners of the amount of electricity generated by current nuclear reactors is the efficiency of the thermodynamic cycle used for power generation. Current light water reactors (LWR) have an efficiency of 35% or less for the conversion of heat energy generated by the reactor to electrical energy. If this efficiency could be improved, more power could be generated from equivalent volumes of nuclear fuel. One method of improving this efficiency is to use a coolant flow that operates at a much higher temperature for electricity production. A reactor design that is currently proposed to take advantage …

Self-Stabilizing Leader Election In Dynamic Networks, Hema Piniganti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The leader election problem is one of the fundamental problems in distributed computing. It has applications in almost every domain. In dynamic networks, topology is expected to change frequently. An algorithm A is self-stabilizing if, starting from a completely arbitrary configuration, the network will eventually reach a legitimate configuration.

Note that any self-stabilizing algorithm for the leader election problem is also an algorithm for the dynamic leader election problem, since when the topology of the network changes, we can consider that the algorithm is starting over again from an arbitrary state. There are a number of such algorithms in the …

Evaluating The Energy And Carbon Footprint Of Water Conveyance System And Future Water Supply Options For Las Vegas, Nevada, Eleeja Shrestha

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Water production requires the use of energy to transport water from distant locations, pump groundwater from deep aquifers and treat water to meet stringent drinking water and wastewater regulations. Energy production based on its source involves the emission of greenhouse gases also known as carbon footprint, which is the leading cause of global warming and climate change. Because of growing concerns of global warming due to these emissions, water providers are required to analyze the energy and associated carbon footprint of existing water production facilities and future water supply options. A system dynamics model is developed to estimate the energy …

Parameterizable Network-On-Chip Emulation Framework, Jaya Suseela

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) have been proposed as a promising solution to complex on-chip communication problems. But there is no public accessible HDL synthesizable NoC framework which connects industrial level cores and runs real applications on them. Moreover, many challenging research problems remain unsolved at all levels of design abstraction; design exploration of NoC architecture for applications, scheduling and mapping algorithms, evaluation of switching, topology or routing algorithm for efficient execution of application and optimizing communication cost, area, energy etc Solution to solve the above problem calls for the development of synthesizable, parameterizable NoC Framework that would evaluate and implement the above …

A Mathematical Approach For Optimizing The Casino Slot Floor: A Linear Programming Application, Kasra Christopher Ghaharian

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Linear programming is a tool that has been successfully applied to various problems across many different industries and businesses. However, it appears that casino operators may have overlooked this useful and proven method. At most casino properties the bulk of gaming revenues are derived from slot machines. It is therefore imperative for casino operators to effectively manage and cultivate the performance of this department. A primary task for the casino operator is planning and deciding the mix of slot machines in order to maximize performance.

This paper presents the task of optimizing the casino slot floor as a linear programming …

Improving Ensemble Streamflow Prediction Using Interdecadal/Interannual Climate Variability, Kenneth W. Lamb

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The National Weather Service’s (NWS) river forecast centers provide long-term water resource forecasts for the main river basins in the U.S. The NWS creates seasonal streamflow forecasts using an ensemble prediction model called the Extended Streamflow Prediction (ESP) software. ESP creates runoff volume forecasts by taking the current observed soil moisture and snowpack conditions in the basin and applying them to historical temperature and precipitation scenarios. The ESP treats every historic input year as a likely scenario of future basin conditions. Therefore improving the knowledge about how long-term climate cycles impact streamflow can extend the forecast lead time and improve …

Experimental And Computational Analysis Of An Energy Storage Composite Ankle Foot Orthosis, Michelle C. Hawkins

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Ankle Foot Orthotics (AFOs) are used by individuals presenting with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) to assist with improving gait. Mitch Warner, CPO, has developed a composite AFO made from woven carbon-Kevlar and carbon fiber lamina. The overall goals of the research are to characterize the HELIOS brace and to determine its effect on the gait of CMT subjects. Human motion analysis, experimental mechanical testing, and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) are used to gain a better understanding of how the materials and geometric design of the HELIOS AFO contribute to gait.

Human motion experiments are performed to determine the relationship between ground reaction …

Measurement System For High Pressure Characterizations Of Materials, Matthew K. Jacobsen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Thermoelectric materials have long been investigated for possible use as power sources. This application was recently put to use in the Voyager space program, powering the deep space probes. Despite the usefulness of these materials, the use of pressure to investigate the material properties has only recently become interesting. As such, the work in this document was to developing a system for concurrently measuring the necessary properties. This system is capable of measuring the electrical resistivity, thermal conductivity, and Seebeck coefficient in the pressure range from 0 - 10 GPa. The results for zinc, almandine garnet, and nickel are presented …

Computational Analysis For Improved Design Of An Sae Baja Frame Structure, Nagurbabu Noorbhasha

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Baja SAE is an intercollegiate competition to design, fabricate, and race a small, single passenger, off-road vehicle powered by a 10 HP Briggs & Stratton 4-Stroke gasoline engine. All Baja SAE vehicles for the competition are powered by a small engine, thus large part of vehicle performance depends on the acceleration and maneuverability of the vehicle which is proportional to the weight of the chassis and rollcage. As weight is critical to achieve the greater performance of the vehicle, a balance must be found between the strength and weight of the rollcage to ensure the safety of the driver.

The …

Design Standards Within Constructed Wetlands For The Reduction Of Mosquito Populations In Clark County, Nevada, Phillip C. Bondurant

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Wetlands are considered one of the most productive ecosystems in the world and provide many benefits to the environment. However, the slow moving and sometimes stagnant water created by the vegetation in the wetland creates an ideal environment for the proliferation of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are the most important insect disease vector worldwide. The presence of mosquitoes within wetlands increases the risk of disease transmission among workers and visitors creating a public health concern. Effective design standards aimed at reducing mosquito breeding habitat should be implemented during the construction and planning phase of wetland development to effectively reduce the mosquito populations. …

Pattern Extraction From The World Wide Web, Praveena Mettu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The World Wide Web is a source of huge amount of unlabeled information spread across different sources in varied formats. This presents us with both opportunities and challenges in leveraging such large amount of unstructured data to build knowledge bases and to extract relevant information.

As part of this thesis, a semi-supervised logistic regression model called “Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Extraction” proposed by Sergey Brin is selected for further investigation. DIPRE presents a technique which exploits the duality between sets of patterns and relations to grow the target relation starting from a small sample.

This project built in JAVA using …

The Role Of Creativity In Naturalistic Decision-Making Environments: A Systems Approach, Richard Hendrik Feenstra

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of creativity in
problem solving situations. Previous research suggested that both
background knowledge and the inability to transfer knowledge across
contexts are important factors in how a problem is ultimately resolved.
Given these findings, the researcher undertook a study on the role
creativity might play when individuals lacking sufficient background
knowledge are faced with a novel real world problem. A question raised
by the researcher whether an absence of background knowledge might
encourage novices to be more creative than their more experienced
counterparts in novel problem solving situations.

Findings of …

Classification Algorithms For Genomic Microarray, Rakesh Choudary Malepati

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The advent of new technologies like DNA micro-arrays provides scientists the ability to gather important information such as the expression levels of almost all the genes within a cell. As the collected data is huge, it is always necessary to use analytical methods to extract important information which can be useful in biological and medical applications. One of such applications is presented in (Van‟t Veer LJ 2002), where the authors used the gene expression values obtained from micro-arrays of breast cancer cells to predict the outcome of the disease. The prediction is based on a supervised classification. While the idea …

Synthesis, Characterization And Simulation Of Optical And Raman Properties Of Metal Nanoparticles, Sriteja Yamparala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Metal nanoparticles are of strong interest for their unusual optical and Raman properties with potential for new and improved device applications. Specifically, the significantly enhanced Raman Scattering enabled by Surface Plasmon Resonance on metal nanoparticles open up the potential for the implementation of very sensitive sensors. It has been demonstrated that Surface Plasmon resonance can be used for the detection of a single molecule. Out of the various metal nanoparticles that have been investigated, the most promising are that made of gold and silver. Metal nananoparticles of gold and silver show strong Raman enhancement in the visible spectral region, making …

Study Of Stemming Algorithms, Savitha Kodimala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Automated stemming is the process of reducing words to their roots. The stemmed words are typically used to overcome the mismatch problems associated with text searching.

In this thesis, we report on the various methods developed for stemming. In particular, we show the effectiveness of n-gram stemming methods on a collection of documents.

Evaluation Of Video Based Pedestrian And Vehicle Detection Algorithms, Varun Bandarupalli

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Video based detection systems rely on the ability to detect moving objects in video streams. Video based detection systems have applications in many fields like, intelligent transportation, automated surveillance etc. There are many approaches adopted for video based detection. Evaluation and selecting a suitable approach for pedestrian and vehicle detection is a challenging task. While evaluating the object detection algorithms, many factors should be considered in order to cope with unconstrained environments, non stationary background, different object motion patterns and the variation in types of object being detected.

In this thesis, we implement and evaluate different video based detection algorithms …

Dynamic Indexing, Viswada Sripathi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we report on index constructions for large document collections to facilitate the task of search and retrieval. We first report on classical static index construction methods and their shortcomings. We then report on dynamic index construction techniques and their effectiveness.

Structural Model Of Effects Of Cultural Factors On Escalation Of Commitment Through Antecedents, Agency, And Negative Framing Effects, Woo-Sik Danny Choi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to identify and measure the effects of Hofstede‟s cultural factors on escalation of commitment for hospitality managers among American and Chinese managers. Typical cultural factors include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity, and orientation. Escalation of commitment refers to making decisions in risky circumstances. First, the effect of cultural factors on escalation of commitment was measured through antecedents (mediator variables). Second, the first effect of antecedents on escalation of commitment was measured through agency and negative framing effects. Structural equation modeling (SEM) found significant relationships between cultural factors and mediator …

Management Research In The Hospitality And Tourism Industry, Xu Cheng

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to identify the current research trends and clarify the changing direction of scholarly studies on knowledge management. The context of this study is hospitality and tourism research with a focus on research publications between 2006 and 2010. Published scholarly studies within this period are examined through content analysis, using such keywords as knowledge management, organizational learning, hospitality, tourism, tourist destinations, travel industry, hotels, lodging, motels, hotel industry, gaming, casino hotel and convention to search scholarly research journals. All contributions found are then screened for a hospitality and tourism theme and KM as the main …

The Relationship Of Snowmobile Year, Track Length, And Riding Terrain To The Occurrence Of Musculosketetal Symptoms In Recreational Snowmobile Drivers, Erica L. Heisler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this retrospective study was to examine the occurrence of musculoskeletal symptoms in recreational snowmobile drivers and relate them to the manufacture year of the snowmobile, the length of the track, and/or the riding terrain. Participants included 186 males and 57 females (n=243), aged 18 years and older, and were all snowmobile drivers. Subjects were asked to complete either an online survey or a paper survey to gather information about the year of snowmobile they drove, the track length of that snowmobile, the typical riding terrain they drove on, and any musculoskeletal symptoms they developed from driving snowmobile. …

Selling Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis Of Attorney Advertisement In Las Vegas, Giselle Velasquez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I analyze how Las Vegas attorneys represent themselves, their associates and clients in televised law firm commercials. I use attorney commercials as a case to explore cultural beliefs in media representations. Using an inductive method, I analyze the textual, visual, and aural symbols that appear most frequently in television commercials to interpret how law firm advertisements convey themes of attorney expertise, knowledge, ethnic and gender stereotyping. I introduce this study with a historical evaluation of the rise of advertisement in the United States. I continue discussing how the media is an important realm of discourse that affects people's identity. Using …

Effects Of Environmental Prompts On Stair Usage, Lori Andersen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The objective of this study was to evaluate whether environmental prompts placed in two-story buildings on a university campus would increase stair usage. Three buildings were used. One served as a control, while the other two received an intervention. Participants of three buildings were observed taking the stairs and elevator for seven weeks. Baseline data was collected; signs were introduced, and then removed during this time period. Approximately 2700 observations were collected. Environmental prompts did not appear to increase stair usage. There were significant differences in the amount of stair users between buildings. The stair usage rates of this particular …

Self-Stabilizing Group Membership Protocol, Mahesh Subedi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we consider the problem of partitioning a network into groups of bounded diameter.

Given a network of processes X and a constant D, the group partition problem is the problem of finding a D-partition of X, that is, a partition of X into disjoint connected subgraphs, which we call groups, each of diameter no greater than D. The minimal group partition problem is to find a D-partition {G1, ... Gm} of X such that no two groups can be combined; that is, for any Gi and Gj, where i ≠ j, either Gi U Gj is disconnected …

Development Of Software To Estimate Pressures On The Residual Limbs Of Amputees By Means Of A Pylon Mounted Transducer, Malli K. Yalamanchili

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The alignment of prosthesis has been recognized as one of the main factors that determine successful prosthetic outcomes for trans-tibial amputees. Alignment is defined as the relative position and orientation of the prosthetic components. Misalignment can result in changes in the position and orientation of the joints of the leg and moments experienced by them during gait, increases in energy use, and discomfort or even tissue breakdown at the socket/stump interface. Hence it is very important to align the prosthesis in correct manner. Gait analysis can be used to examine the effects of incorrect alignment of the prosthesis during gait. …

Speciation And Spectroscopy Of The Uranyl And Tetravalent Plutonium Nitrate Systems: Fundamental Studies And Applications To Used Fuel Reprocessing, Nicholas A. Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation explores the use of UV-Visible spectroscopy and Time Resolved Laser Induced Fluorescence spectroscopy as near real time process monitors of uranium and plutonium concentrations in aqueous reprocessing trains. The molar absorptivities and linear ranges of these metals were investigated under total nitrate and acid concentrations similar to those found in current reprocessing systems. Concurrent to this, a new multiple wavelength monitor was derived that is capable of determining the total nitrate concentration spectroscopically. This method uses the uranium absorbance spectrum to calculate the nitrate concentration in solution. When used as part of an Advanced Safeguard suite, this technique …

Characterization Of Unsaturated Flow In Dual-Porosity Granular Media, Jeevan A. Jayakodilage

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A geological medium made up of uncemented coarse porous rock fragments may be described as a “dual-porosity granular medium” due to the presence of two types of pores; small pores within individual fragments and large pores between the fragments. Crushed stone found in heap leach piles, mine waste, backfills, rock drains, and engineered capillary barrier systems fit this description. Unsaturated flow in a dualporosity granular medium will occur both through the fragments (matrix flow), and on the fragment surfaces (film flow). The relative influence of gravity and capillary forces on these two flow regimes will be largely different. Therefore, unsaturated …

Effect Of Spatial And Temporal Variability Of Antecedent Moisture Content On Model-Generated Runoff From An Arid Watershed, William J. Meyer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Streams in the arid southwest are typically ephemeral, and stream gages are not commonly available. Consequently, runoff data from storm events is not available, and flood control facility design or other water resource related decisions are based on synthetic hydrographs. In the Mojave Desert region of Southern Nevada, the duration of storm used to develop these synthetic hydrographs is the 6 hour storm. The 6 hour storm is used to simulate high intensity summer storms. Additionally, soils information used in the calculations for these synthetic hydrographs is taken from maps that are generally developed for a broad range of issues …