Digital Commons Network^™

Parental Absence, Benjamin Brainsby

Theses

The two short stories presented herein feature wildly different narratives operating under a common thematic umbrella; absent fathers.

While not always the central focus of the narrative, or the principle motivation of the protagonists, the fathers' absence in both stories casts a long shadow that defines their sense of happiness. Characters in both_ stories suffer from a feeling of incompleteness that is rooted in the longing for the absent father.

1n both cases the father's absence is beyond the protagonist's control and as such they must react to the affect it has on their lives and the situations that it, …

Development Of A Three-Axis Mems Accelerometer, Jacob Leveto

Theses

While originally developed to deploy air bags for the automotive industry, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) based accelerometers have found their way into everything from video game controllers to cells phones. As prices drop and capabilities improve, it is expected that the use of accelerometers will further expand in the coming years. Accelerometers currently have the second highest MEMS sales volume, trailing only pressure sensors [1]. In this work several single and three-axis accelerometers are designed, fabricated, and tested under a variety of conditions. The designed accelerometers are all based off of the piezoresistive effect, where the value of a resistor changes …

Integrated Circuit Implementation For A Gan Hfet Driver Circuit, Bo Wang, Jason D. Bakos, Antonello Monti

Faculty Publications

This paper presents the design and implementation of a new integrated circuit (IC) that is suitable for driving the new generation of high-frequency GaN HFETs. The circuit, based upon a resonant switching transition technique, is first briefly described and then discussed in detail, focusing on the design process practical considerations. A new level-shifter topology, used to generate the zero and negative gate-source voltages required to switch the GaN HFET, is introduced and analyzed. The experimental measurements included in this paper report the results of tests carried out on an IC designed and fabricated as part of the multiproject die in …

Beyond The 'Chilling Effect': Immigrant Worker Behavior And The Regulation Of Occupational Safety & Health, Jayesh Rathod

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article forms part of a broader scholarly project that seeks to understand the root causes of immigrant worker injury and fatality trends in the U.S., and the ways in which legal norms and regulatory practices shape these trends. This particular contribution examines the broad range of attributes and experiences that influence immigrant worker behavior relating to occupational safety and health -- in the context of interactions with employers and regulatory bodies, and relating to the choices that workers themselves make about how to perform their work.

Drawing upon scholarship from multiple disciplines, the article encourages a more robust understanding …

The Merits Of ‘Merits’ Review: A Comparative Look At The Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Jeffrey Lubbers, Michael Asimow

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article compares several systems of administrative adjudication. In the U.S., adjudication is typically performed by the same agency that makes and enforces the rules. However, in Australia, almost all administrative adjudication is performed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), a non-specialized adjudicating agency, and several other specialized tribunals that are independent of the enforcing agency. These tribunals (which evolved out of concerns about separation of powers) have achieved great legitimacy. In the U.K., recent legislation (the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act) merged numerous specialized tribunals into a single first-tier tribunal with much stronger guarantees of independence than previously existed. …

Preserving A Political Bargain: The Political Economy Of The Non-Interventionist Challenge To Monopolization Enforcement, Jonathan Baker

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The antitrust rules governing exclusionary conduct by dominant firms are among the most controversial in U.S. competition policy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, they were debated in three arenas, involving legal policy, economic policy, and politics. In each arena, the dispute mainly arose as criticism of traditional standards by advocates of less intervention. Viewed through a political economy lens, the controversy can be understood as a potential challenge to an informal political bargain reached during the 1940s by which competition was adopted as national economic policy in preference to regulation or laissez-faire. From this perspective, and applying …

Moving Global Health Law Upstream: A Critical Appraisal Of Global Health Law As A Tool For Health Adaptation To Climate Change, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The relatively new discipline of global health law is a potentially powerful tool for promoting health adaptation to climate change. Unfortunately, global climate change will intensify exactly those health threats that have not been adequately addressed by multilateral cooperation with respect to health in the past, which has been dominated by security-based and treatment-focused approaches. Recent focus on biosecurity concerns such as the global spread of emerging infectious diseases and biological terrorism has further entrenched a security-based approach to global health law and policy that has origins in the earliest attempts at international health cooperation and is currently embodied in …

Preempting Justice: Precrime In Fiction And In Fact, Mark Niles

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Copyright Principles Project: Directions For Reform, Michael W. Carroll, Pamela Samuelson, Members Of The Cpp

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Statistical Analysis Of Wastewater Remediation And Bio-Fuels Production Of Algae, Jay D. Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The Logan city wastewater treatment system consists of a series of seven large aerated ponds (460 acres) that biologically treats 15 million gallons per day of wastewater from Logan city and six other communities. Tighter regulations of allowed phosphorus levels in the effluent have recently been implemented due to environmental concerns of a downstream reservoir. The Biological Engineering program at Utah State University, the Bio-fuels Center, the Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) and the city of Logan are working together to remediate the wastewater treatment system using microalgae. Algal growth requires the uptake of phosphorus. Thus, phosphorus in the effluent …

Assessing North American Influenza Dynamics With Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Models, Jessica Anderson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We present a general statistical modeling framework to characterize continental-level influenza dynamics in the United States for the purposes of examining state-level epidemiological sources and sinks. The methods we describe depend directly on state-level influenza data that are updated weekly and available on the internet. Advances in search engine query analysis have provided powerful new tools for collecting epidemiological data and, when used in conjunction with sophisticated statistical models, allow for the identification and quantification of the flow of influenza across the continental United States. Our proposed methods, when conditioned on this comprehensive search query product, can provide unprecedented scientific …

A Comparison Of Prediction Methods Of Functional Autoregressive Time Series, Devin Didericksen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Functional data analysis (FDA) is a relatively new branch of statistics that has seen a lot of expansion recently. With the advent of computer processing power and more efficient software packages we have entered the beginning stages of applying FDA methodology and techniques to data. Part of this undertaking should include an empirical assessment of the effectiveness of some of the tools of FDA, which are sound on theoretical grounds. In a small way, this project helps advance this objective.

This work begins by introducing FDA, scalar prediction techniques, and the functional autoregressive model of order one - FAR(1). Two …

Extraction Of Metal Sensitizers Under Physiologically Relevant Conditions, Matthew G. Duling

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Metal and metal alloys are critical components of high-tech applications. Beryllium (Be), chromium (Cr), and nickel (Ni) are among the most economically important metals for high-tech applications because of their extraordinary physical properties. These metals pose two different problems for workers who work with them: (1) allergic contact dermatitis from exposure to Cr and Ni, which is widely accepted to account for a significant percentage of occupational skin irritations and (2) possible systemic sensitization from skin contact with airborne Be. Proper assessment of skin contact with allergenic metals during work is difficult. Current practices for the assessment of skin exposure …

The Europeanization Of French, German And British China Policies: The Case Of The Arms Embargo On China, Vivien L. Exartier

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study analyzes the impact of France, Britain and Germany on European Union sanction policy on China. The study argues that Britain, France and Germany affect the EU sanction policy on China through bottom-up and horizontal Europeanization due to their historic and strategic ties to the PRC and their predominance in the armament industry. The study specifically reviews the case of the handling of the lift of the arms embargo between 2003 and 2005, imposed on the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. The methodology combines a questionnaire, addressed to defense and foreign affairs officials from the three …

The Robust Optimization Of Non-Linear Requirements Models, Gregory Gay

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Solutions to non-linear requirements engineering problems may be "brittle"; i.e. small changes may dramatically alter solution effectiveness. Hence, it is not enough to just generate solutions to requirements problems---we must also assess solution robustness. This thesis aims to address two concerns: (a) Is demonstrating robustness a time consuming task? and (b) Is it necessary that solution quality be traded off against solution robustness?;Using a Bayesian ranking heuristic, the KEYS2 algorithm fixes a small number of important variables, rapidly pushing the search into a stable, optimal plateau. By design, KEYS2 generates decision ordering diagrams (in time experimentally shown to be O(N2)). …

Numerical Modeling Of Pressure Transient Behavior Of Fractured Coal Samples, Rupesh Kumar Gondle

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the current study the pressure transient behavior of various coal samples was investigated by using the finite element approach. Finite element analyses were performed on fourteen coal samples with different physical dimensions. Two pressure transients, namely Sine-6 and A-Spike pressure pulses, were used in the research study. Fluid compressibility values of CO2 and Argon were used to perform the analyses. A fracture width of 1mm was considered for each sample to investigate the influence of fluid type on coal permeability. The influence of elastic modulus of coal sample, fracture porosity, fracture width, and fluid compressibility were investigated. The finite …

Sulfur Tolerant Solid Oxide Fuel Cell For Coal Syngas Application: Experimental Study On Diverse Impurity Effects And Fundamental Modeling Of Electrode Kinetics, Mingyang Gong

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

With demand over green energy economy, fuel cells have been developed as a promising energy conversion technology with higher efficiency and less emission. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) can utilize various fuels in addition to hydrogen including coal derived sygas, and thus are favored for future power generation due to dependence on coal in electrical industry. However impurities such as sulfur and phosphorous present in coal syngas in parts per million (p.p.m.) levels can severely poison SOFC anode typically made of Ni/yttria-stabilized-zirconia (Ni-YSZ) and limit SOFC applicability in economically derivable fuels. The focus of the research is to develop strategy …

Extracellular Matrix Mediated Cartilage Regeneration: A Novel Three-Dimensional In Vitro Microenvironment To Facilitate Cell Expansion And Chondrogenesis, Fan He

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Joint articular cartilage is vulnerable for degenerative disease after trauma due to the limited self-healing ability. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered a promising source for cartilage repair and regenerative medicine because of their excellent capacities of self-renewal and multipotent differentiation. Conventional in vitro expansion system, however, limits the utilization of MSCs for cartilage regeneration because in monolayer culture MSCs rapidly lose their self-renewal ability and differentiation potential. The lack of proper microenvironment in the current two-dimensional expansion system is attributed to the loss of self-renewal and multipotent differentiation in MSCs. Three-dimensional (3D) cell-deposited extracellular matrix (ECM) provides a novel …

Investigation Of Egr And Fuel Property Effects On Advanced Combustion Strategies Using In-Cylinder Combustion Analyses, Jason D. Ice

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Advanced combustion has progressively become a topic of interest as government regulations have stringently reduced the allowable limits of engine-out emissions from internal combustion engines. Advanced combustion can typically be classified as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) or premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI). In HCCI combustion, a well mixed fuel and air solution is spontaneously combusted, thus providing a homogeneous burn throughout the combustion process. By having an evenly distributed, homogeneous burn, fuel economy is not only significantly increased, but both oxides of nitrogen (NO x) and particulate matter (PM) can drastically be reduced from that of conventional combustion. HCCI …

Leadership Standards: Professional Development Schools Versus Non-Professional Development Schools, David L. Lancaster

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study compares the perceptions of two groups of West Virginia school principals through a survey instrument built in alignment with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards. The perceptions of principals affiliated with Professional Development Schools (PDS) are compared to the perceptions of principals who are not affiliated with Professional Development Schools (non-PDS). The 587 principals in the state of West Virginia with active e-mail addresses were asked to participate in an online survey. The survey instrument contained six domains with 31 items aligned with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium's (ISLLC) six national standards on leadership. Two …

An Investigation Of Hydrogen Supplementation On Combustion And Emissions Of Heavy-Duty Diesel Engines, Chetmun Liew

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Hydrogen (H2) has long been recognized as a carbon-free fuel having excellent combustion characteristics compared to hydrocarbon fuel. This research investigated the effects of H2 addition on the performance, combustion, and emission characteristics of two turbocharged heavy-duty diesel engines. The effects of H2 addition, engine load, engine speed, and diesel fuel flow rate on the brake thermal efficiency (BTE), cylinder pressure, combustion process, and exhaust emissions of Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx), Particulate Matter (PM), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Unburned Hydrocarbon (HC), and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) were explored. The engine load was varied from 10 to 100% with H2 concentration in the …

Surgical Repair Of A Biceps Tendon Rupture: A Systematic Review, Josh Nelson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Objective. To evaluate the methodological quality of Bicep tendon rupture surgical repair studies found in the current literature. Data sources. Pubmed (1950--2009), CINAHL (1985--2009), SPORTdiscus (1987--2009), MEDLINE, Google Scholar, SCIENCE DIRECT (1980--2009) from December 2009 to January 2009 were searched using the terms Distal biceps tendon, Proximal Biceps tendon, Long head of the biceps tendon individually. Second the term biceps tendon rupture was combined with each of the following words: anatomy, surgical treatment, conservative treatment, imaging, conservative treatment, biomechanics, etiology, and epidemiology. Third, Citations were cross-referenced from studies to include literature not found in the original search. Study selection . …

Synthesis, Structural And Magnetic Properties Of Copper Doped Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles, Savan Suri

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this thesis, synthesis, structural and magnetic properties of the undoped and copper doped cerium oxide nanoparticles have been investigated. The nanoparticles were prepared by sol-gel preparation method. Undoped samples were prepared with different particles sizes by annealing the as-prepared sample at different temperatures Ta = 200°C, 400°C, 550°C, 700°C, 800°C. The particle size varied from 3 nm to 42 nm with increasing annealing temperatures. Copper was doped into CeO2 by annealing the samples at 400°C in ultra high pure nitrogen. The nominal percentages of copper in doped cerium oxide were 2.5%, 5%, 7.5% and 10%.;Structural characterization of the nanoparticles …

Adaptive Production Planning And Scheduling For The Make-To-Order Dna Manufacturing System, Dan Song

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This thesis develops an adaptive production planning and scheduling system for the make-to-order plasmid (DNA) manufacturing system. The system, which has stochastic nature and random demand, was represented by a mathematical programming model first. Then in order to solve it, discrete-event simulation models were developed to generate a feasible schedule that maximizes the production throughput in the planning horizon in a mix-product type environment. A special heuristic order selecting and splitting procedure was designed to aid the production planning and scheduling process. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the algorithm and results are compared with those obtained by using four classic …

Exploration Of The Role Of Serum Factors In Maintaining Bone Mass During Hibernation In Black Bears, Rachel Marie Bradford

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Disuse osteoporosis is a condition in which reduced mechanical loading (e.g. bed-rest, immobilization, or paralysis) results in unbalanced bone turnover. The American black bear is a unique, naturally occurring model for the prevention of disuse osteoporosis. Bears remain mostly inactive for up to half a year of hibernation annually, yet they do not lose bone mechanical strength or structural properties throughout hibernation. The long-term goal of this study is to determine the biological mechanism through which bears maintain bone during hibernation. This mechanism could pinpoint new signaling pathway targets for the development of drugs for osteoporosis prevention. In this study, …

Stretching: Type And Timing For Optimal Benefits, Jessica Michelle Kijak

Health Nutrition and Exercise Science

It is known that stretching is able to increase the compliance of human tendons and as a result increase the capacity of the tendon to absorb energy. Sports involving "explosive" type skills, with many maximal stretch-shortening cycle (SSCs) movements, require a muscle tendon unit that is compliant enough to store and release a high amount of elastic energy. When an individual's muscle-tendon unit (MTU) is less flexible, there exists a predisposing factor for exercise related injuries since the tendon is unable to absorb enough energy, which may lead to tendon and/or muscle damage. Therefore, increasing the compliance of the muscle …

Speed Control For Simple Heat Engine, Kat Devirgilio

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Applying Hessian Curves In Parallel To Improve Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Hardware, F. B. Muhaya, Q. A. Al-Haijá, Lo'ai A. Tawalbeh

Computer Science Faculty Publications (Archived)

As a public key cryptography, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is well known to be the most secure algorithms that can be used to protect information during the transmission. ECC in its arithmetic computations suffers from modular inversion operation. Modular Inversion is a main arithmetic and very long-time operation that performed by the ECC crypto-processor. The use of projective coordinates to define the Elliptic Curves (EC) instead of affine coordinates replaced the inversion operations by several multiplication operations. Many types of projective coordinates have been proposed for the elliptic curve E: y2 = x3 + ax + b which is defined …

Challenges Of Utilizing E-Learning Systems In Public Universities In Jordan, M. Al-Shboul, Izzat M. Alsmadi

Computer Science Faculty Publications (Archived)

This research paper lists and discusses major challenges and barriers that may face faculty members at the public universities in Jordan in employing e-Learning systems authoring tools in their instructions. It also proposes several suggestions for the administrators in public universities in Jordan for what they could do to improve the utilization of e-Learning authoring tools at their campuses. E-Learning systems authoring tools allow instructors to easily create and deliver their e-contents and e-lectures. Furthermore, online course materials which uploaded by using such authoring tools could be viewed by any popular web browser system.

Performance Prediction Model For A Hybrid Pvt System, Md. Arif Hasan

Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics

Photovoltaic cells convert, depending on the cell type, 6-18% of the incoming solar radiation into electricity with a higher percentage converted into heat. The heat in turn affects the cell temperature which has direct impact on its efficiency. In literature, both water and air have been used for PV cooling through a thermal unit attached to the back of the module yielding a photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) system. But the use of water requires more extensive modifications to prevent leakage and corrosion. Hence, an air channel operating on forced convection that would substantially improve the heat transfer aspects was chosen. This study …