Digital Commons Network^™

Developing A Thesis And Utilizing Supporting Evidence, Leah Kind

Writing Bootcamp Unit

Allow students more experience with formulating a thesis statement and drawing on specific textual evidence to support it. Students can utilize any reading they are familiar with—this familiarity allows them to already have knowledge of the piece’s content, and ability to use the most appropriate points as support. This activity assumes some prior exposure to and practice with thesis statements.

The Design And Modification Of A Sputter System For Dc Reactive Sputtering Of Alumina And Zirconia Thin Films, Diane Van Ho

LSU Master's Theses

Yttria-stabilized zirconia (7% YSZ) is the most used material for thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) to reduce the conductive heat transfer on turbine blades, but it is not resistant to infrared radiation. In order to reduce radiation heat transfer, alternating materials, such as alumina and zirconia, can be used to fabricate multi-layer coatings in which each layer is optimized to reflect a targeted range of wavelength. This research aims to fabricate these multi-layer coatings by reactive magnetron sputtering. Reactive magnetron sputtering is the sputtering of an elemental target in the presence of a reactive gas that will react with the target …

Fault Detection In Process Control Plants Using Principal Component Analysis, Vamshi Krishna Kandula

LSU Master's Theses

The aim of this thesis is to use a statistical method (principal component analysis) to detect a fault in a system. PCA is a dimensionality reduction technique that is used here. First the PCA algorithm was implemented on a simple two dimensional random data to reduce its dimensionality. Then the algorithm was implemented on a three dimensional data from a linear first order process and introduce some white noise later on and compare the results with that under normal operating conditions, thus determining the presence of a fault. Then data from a real time plant is considered for testing. This …

Smart Access Control System With Behavioral Profiling And Dynamic Pin Concept, Lohit Penubaku

LSU Master's Theses

Since ancient time, an access control device has been used for securing valuable properties as well as lives from threatening peoples. The most representative security device is Lock/Key. Recently, those security device technologies have been improved tremendously and provided various types of security methods. Nevertheless, these methods are not individually perfect to provide optimal security so that in recent years many such methods have been combined and used together to provide the required level of security. However, such combination can enhance security for limited number of users only but very difficult to provide scalable security with the number of users …

Interpretation Of Power Phenomena In Three Phase Systems With Neutral Using Instantaneous Reactive Power P-Q Theory, Rahul Anil Kantharia

LSU Master's Theses

The Instantaneous Reactive power (IRP) p-q theory considered as a major power theory as well as a primary fundamental for switching compensator control in three-phase systems, is analyzed in order to verify its ability to describe and identify the power properties or power phenomena in a 3pN system with asymmetrical and non-sinusoidal voltages along with unbalanced loads. This analysis is an outcome of the misinterpretations of power phenomena in three-wire circuits shown by IRP p-q theory under non-sinusoidal conditions. Different load and supply conditions such as balanced, unbalanced and Harmonic generating loads along with asymmetrical and non-sinusoidal voltages are assumed …

The Design Of A Computer System To Determine The Causes Of Edema Using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Carl Allen Fink

LSU Master's Theses

Diabetes is a growing problem in the U.S.A., closely linked to the current obesity epidemic. Two common complications of diabetes, osteomyelitis of the foot, and Charcot's joint, are impossible to differentiate via traditional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The background of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, which transforms the time-domain MRI signal into the frequency domain spectrum, is explored, and its use to aid in this differentiation is proposed. Artificial Neural Networks can be employed to evaluate the MRS data and to automate the process.

Treatment Effects Of Attention Process Training For An Individual With Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease, Erin Renee' Guillory

LSU Master's Theses

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by a degeneration of the substantia nigra, resulting in a loss of dopaminergic neurons. Cognitive impairments, evident in 72% of people with PD (PWP) are indicated by deficits in visuospatial capacity, memory, executive functioning, and attention (Cooper, Sagar, Jordan, Harvey, & Sullivan, 1991; Duffy, 2005). Unfortunately, to date, there is little research that demonstrates improvement of these cognitive processes, particularly those affecting memory recall and attentional skills. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of utilizing Attention Process Training (APT; Sohlberg & Mateer, 2005), a therapeutic protocol designed for individuals who have …

Effect Of Sediment Slurry Application On Selected Aspects Of Sulfur, Iron, And Manganese Biogeochemistry In A Coastal Louisiana Marsh, Martin Kyle Maxwell

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal wetlands, long recognized to be among the most productive ecosystems on the planet, are being lost at a disturbingly high rate in coastal Louisiana due to both eustatic sea-level rise and land subsidence. A number of approaches have been proposed for reducing wetland loss and restoring deteriorated wetlands, among which the addition of sediment to increase marsh surface elevation is promising. However, little is known about how the added sediment affects the biogeochemistry of marsh sediment. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of sediment slurry addition on sulfur, iron, and manganese biogeochemistry in a subsiding …

Testing And Characterization Of Second-Order Differential Microphones, Joshua H. Merlis

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The focus of this thesis is the testing and characterizing of directional microphones, designed based on the ear of the fly Ormia ochracea. The response of these microphones is modeled as a linear combination of the gradients of the sound field. A least squares approach is employed in order to determine the transfer functions between the response and these gradients. Knowledge of these complex transfer functions is crucial in understanding the nature and quality of the response of these microphones.

Once determined, these transfer functions are used to simulate the plane wave response of differential microphones. This process is invaluable …

Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions About Teaching Mathematically Talented Students: Comparative Examples From Canada And Israel, Mark Applebaum, Viktor Freiman, Roza Leikin

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this paper we analyze prospective mathematics teachers' conceptions about teaching mathematically talented students. Forty-two Israeli participants learning at mathematics education courses for getting their teaching certificates, and fifty-four Canadian pre-service (K-8) teachers participating in mathematics didactics course were asked to solve a challenging mathematical task. We performed comparative analysis of problem-solving strategies, solution results and participants' success. Based on the discussion with 25 Israeli participants we composed an attitude questionnaire, in which prospective teachers were asked to express their degree of agreement with statements expressing different beliefs about education of mathematically talented students. The questionnaire was presented to 56 …

Mathematical And Didactical Enrichment For Pre-Service Teachers: Mentoring Online Problem Solving In The Casmi Project, Manon Leblanc, Viktor Freiman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In order to teach successfully, future teachers should not only be educated about students’ conceptions, but also about different forms of knowledge and classroom culture. In our research, we examined whether the participation in the Internet-based challenging problem solving community CASMI contributes to the development of the aforementioned awareness and understanding in order to meet the needs of all students including the gifted ones. The results obtained enabled us to note that the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the project as a source of enrichment are mainly positive. However, analyzing schoolchildren’s strategies, the participants preferred to use pre-determined criteria instead of …

Disrupting Gifted Teenager’S Mathematical Identity With Epistemological Messiness, Paul Betts, Laura Mcmaster

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Mathematics is widely perceived as a universal and uncontested discipline, contrary to the philosophy of mathematics literature. Other researchers have considered the potential role of philosophy in school, but there is little work with gifted students engaged with issues concerning the nature of mathematics. We developed a philosophy of mathematics unit intended to enlarge gifted students’ perceptions of the nature of mathematics by exposing the uncritical and tidy rendering of mathematics within school math. Using a narrative methodology, we attended to gifted student’s students’ stories of relationship with mathematics, based on the premise that a person’s relationship with mathematics is …

Gifted Students And Advanced Mathematics, Edward J. Barbeau

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The extension to a wide population of secondary education in many countries seems to have led to a weakening of the mathematics curriculum. In response, many students have been classified as “gifted” so that they can access a stronger program. Apart from the difficulties that might arise in actually determining which students are gifted (is it always clear what the term means?), there are dangers inherent in programs that might be devised even for those that are truly talented.

Sometimes students are moved ahead to more advanced mathematics. Elementary students might be taught algebra or even subjects like trigonometry and …

The Promise Of Interconnecting Problems For Enriching Students’ Experiences In Mathematics, Margo Kondratieva

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The interconnecting problem approach suggests that often one and the same mathematical problem can be used to teach various mathematical topics at different grade levels. How is this approach useful for the development of mathematical ability and the enrichment of mathematical experiences of all students including the gifted ones? What are the benefits for teachers’ and what would teachers need to implement this approach? What directions would further research on these issues take? The paper discusses these and closely related questions.

I propose that a long-term study of a progression of mathematical ideas revolved around one interconnecting problem is useful …

Creativity Assessment In School Settings Through Problem Posing Tasks, Ildikó Pelczer, Fernando Gamboa Rodríguez

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Research in math education on mathematical creativity relies on the idea that creativity is potentially within all students and it can be fostered by properly structured activities. The tasks most commonly used for its assessment are problem solving and problem posing. In our approach we use problem posing tasks to get insight into students’ creativity. Based on a qualitative analysis of the participants’ answers to the questionnaire that followed the task, we define algorithmic, combined and innovative creativity as constructs that can be put in correspondence with the types and level of knowledge involved in the problem posing task. We …

Forthcoming Tmme Vol8,No3 [August 2011: Special Section On The North Calotte Conference In Mathematics Education : Tromsø-2010], Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Tme Volume 8, Numbers 1 And 2

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Opening 2011’S Journal Treasure Chest, Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Vignette Of Doing Mathematics: A Meta-Cognitive Tour Of The Production Of Some Elementary Mathematics, Hyman Bass

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Mathematics educators, including some mathematicians, have, in various ways, urged that the school curriculum provide opportunities for learners to have some authentic experience of doing mathematics, opportunities to experience and develop the practices, dispositions, sensibilities, habits of mind characteristic of the generation of new mathematical knowledge and understanding – questioning, exploring, representing, conjecturing, consulting the literature, making connections, seeking proofs, proving, making aesthetic judgments, etc. (Polya 1954, Cuoco et al 2005, NCTM 2000 - Standard on Reasoning and Proof). While this inclination in curricular design has a certain appeal and merit, its curricular and instructional expressions are often contrived, or …

Transcriptions, Mathematical Cognition, And Epistemology, Wolff-Michael Roth, Alfredo Bautista

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The epistemologies researchers bring to their studies mediate not only their theories but also their methods, including what they select from their data sources to present the findings on which claims are based. Most articles reduce mathematical knowing to linguistic/mathematical structures, which, in the case of embodiment/enactivist theories, undermines the very argument about the special nature of mathematical knowing. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how different transcriptions of mathematics lessons are generally used to support different epistemologies of mathematical knowing/competence. As part of our third illustration, we provide embodiment/enactivist researchers with an innovative means of representing classroom …

Revisiting Tatjana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa’S (1931) “Uebungensammlung Zu Einer Geometrischen Propädeuse”: A Translation And Interpretation, Klaus Hoechsmann

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

New Perspectives On Identification And Fostering Mathematically Gifted Students: Matching Research And Practice, Viktor Freiman, Ali Rejali

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This special section of vol8,nos1&2 of The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast is a result of tremendous enthusiastic team work of many outstanding mathematics educators worldwide who are concerned with the issues related to mathematical giftedness and devoted to share with the international community their ideas, research results and best practices. The idea of the special issue on mathematical giftedness arose during the Topic Study Group 6 (TSG6) meeting at the 11th International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME-11) in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2009 led by Viktor Freiman and Ali Rejali in collaboration with Mark Applebaum, Pablo Dartnell, and Arne Mogensen. More than …

Problem-Based Learning In Mathematics, Thomas C. O'Brien, Chris Wallach, Carla Mash-Duncan

The Mathematics Enthusiast

A teacher of mathematics has a great opportunity. If he fills his allotted time with drilling his students in routine operations, he kills their interest, hampers their intellectual development, and misuses his opportunity. But if he challenges the curiosity of his students by setting them problems proportionate to their knowledge and helps them to solve their problems with stimulating questions, he may give them a taste for, and some independent means of, independent thinking.

The Proficiency Challenge: An Action Research Program On Teaching Of Gifted Math Students In Grades 1-9, Arne Mogensen

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The paper describes design and outcome of a 3-year action research program on the teaching mathematics to gifted students in grades 1-9 in mixed ability classes in Denmark 2003- 2006. The intention was to combine ideas and experience of many teachers with theories and suggestions of researchers to test and develop useful recommendations for future teaching.

A Content Analysis Of The Strategic Plans Of The Coalition Of Urban Serving Universities' Academic Libraries, Thomas Bielavitz

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

As academic libraries support the curricular mission of the university, the strategic plans of academic libraries often reflect the priorities and initiatives of the larger institution. Urban universities often incorporate concepts of community engagement in their mission. The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (http://www.usucoalition.org), a federation of 43 urban universities, has developed initiatives which seek to establish the university and city as partners. Using the publicly-accessible strategic plans of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) affiliated libraries as a data set, the research will perform a content analysis, using Atlas.ti software, to look for evidence that the libraries are …

Hydrogenation Of Magnesium Nanoblades: The Effect Of Concentration Dependent Hydrogen Diffusion, Bo Yang, Yuping He, Yiping Zhao

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

By assuming the H diffusion coefficient and H adsorption rate to be exponentially and linearly dependent on concentration, a physical model is developed to predict the hydrogenation process of Mg nanoblades. The predicted H uptake curves agree well with the experimental data from V-coated Mg nanoblades. The obtained H diffusion coefficients in MgHx between Mg and MgH2 have nearly three orders of magnitude variation. The characteristic time of H surface adsorption is longer than that of H diffusion in Mg but shorter than that in MgH2 for 100 nm thick nanoblades. A hydride shell is not formed during the hydrogenation.

A Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flash Observed From An Aircraft, D. M. Smith, Michael E. Splitt, Steven M. Lazarus

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

On 21 August 2009, the Airborne Detector for Energetic Lightning Emissions (ADELE), an array of six gamma-ray detectors, detected a brief burst of gamma rays while flying aboard a Gulfstream V jet near two active thunderstorm cells. The duration and spectral characteristics of the event are consistent with the terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGFs) seen by instruments in low Earth orbit. A long-duration, complex +IC flash was taking place in the nearer cell at the same time, at a distance of ∼10 km from the plane. The sferics that are probably associated with this flash extended over 54 ms and …

Measurement Of The Inclusive W And Z Production Cross Sections In Pp Collisions At √S = 7 Tev With The Cms Experiment, S. Chatrchyan, Marc M. Baarmand, B. Dorney, Samir Guragain, Marcus Hohlmann, Himali Kalakhety, Igor Vodopiyanov, The Cms Collaboration

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

A measurement of inclusive W and Z production cross sections in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV is presented. The electron and muon decay channels are analyzed in a data sample collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb−1. The measured inclusive cross sections are σ(pp → WX) ×  B(W→ℓν) = 10.31 ± 0.02 (stat.) ± 0.09 (syst.) ± 0.10 (th.) ± 0.41 (lumi.) nb and σ(pp → ZX) ×  B(Z→ℓ+ℓ−) = 0.974 ± 0.007 (stat.) ± 0.007 (syst.) ± 0.018 (th.) ± 0.039 (lumi.) nb, limited to the dilepton …

Graduate Catalog, 2011-2012, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg. Office Of Graduate Studies.

Graduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Shaping Demand And Practices To Improve Family Health Outcomes In Northern India: A Framework For Behavior Change Communication, Population Council

Reproductive Health

An initiative from the Population Council could help in developing a comprehensive communication strategy to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health, and nutrition outcomes in Uttar Pradesh and other northern states of India. The identification of key barriers to and facilitating factors for selected target behaviors that have a direct bearing on maternal and child health could go a long way in packaging specific messages for different stakeholders, such as women, husbands, elder family members, opinion makers in the community, and frontline health workers. One of the key deliverables of this publication is to fill an important knowledge gap …