Digital Commons Network^™

Community Participation In Post-Tsunami Redevelopment In Aceh: The Process And Community Members' Perceptions And Preferences, Ichsan Ichsan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation research is to examine the process of community participation and community members' perceptions of and preferences for the participatory approaches in Aceh post-tsunami redevelopment. The research questions are: (1) How has the process of community participation been implemented in the redevelopment of Aceh Province after the tsunami disaster? (2) What are community members' perceptions of community participation in the redevelopment efforts after the Aceh tsunami? (3) What are community members' preferences for the community participation approaches in the redevelopment efforts after the Aceh tsunami?

I employed qualitative and quantitative methods in this study. The four …

Design And Fabrication Of Nanofluidic Systems For Biomolecule Characterizations, Orain Ansel Hibbert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nanofluidic channel systems were designed and fabricated by combining MEMS microfabrication with AFM nanolithography. In the fabrication process flow, photolithography was first utilized to pattern microfluidic channels and reservoirs on a 4" Pyrex substrate. Subsequently, atomic force microscopy (AFM) based nanolithography was used to mechanically fabricate nanochannels to connect the microreservoirs which formed the inlet and outlet of the nanofluidic system. A Tap190 Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) AFM tip with a force constant of 48 N/m and a radius of less than 15 nm was used as the nanolithography tool. The resultant nanochannel ranges from 20 to 80 µm in length …

Synthesis Of Zinc Oxide Nanorods And Use In Biosensor Applications, Anishkumar Manoharan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The main aim of this research was to develop a nanorod based biosensor for biomedical applications. In this project I use zinc oxide nanorods as the bio-material for biosensor. I fabricated these nanorods using a solution-based technique. Initially I coated a zinc oxide seed layer as the base. This seed layer was then annealed at 350 degrees for almost 1 hour. As a next step, interdigitated electrodes were fabricated on the top of the seed layer using a lift off process. The zinc oxide nanorods were then grown at 90 degrees for almost 4 hours along the electrodes. In this …

Geospatial Tools And Techniques For Watershed Management Using Swat 2009, Naresh Pai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, geospatial tools and techniques were developed to support specific aspects of watershed pollution management, such as quantifying land-use change (LUC) impacts, prioritizing subwatersheds, and communicating field-scale impacts, using the soil and water assessment tool 2009 (SWAT 2009) model.

For the land-use change objective, a geospatial tool titled SWAT2009_LUC was developed that enables SWAT modelers to prepare specific input files for simulating concurrent land-use changes during the SWAT 2009 model simulations. Testing of the tool for the Illinois River Drainage Area in Arkansas (IRDAA) watershed showed that the tool accurately represented temporal land-uses within the model. Model simulations …

Modeling And Characterization Of P-Type Silicon Carbide Gate Turn Off Thyristors, Osama Shihadeh Saadeh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor devices have emerged in the past decade as the most promising technology for next generation power electronic applications ranging for electric vehicles to grid-connected power routing and conversion interfaces. Several devices have been developed, and even some have been released commercially, including diodes, MOSFETs, JFETs, thyristors, gate turn-off thyristors, and IGBTs. The model development, characterization and experimental validation of SiC p-type Gate Turn-off Thyristors (GTO) is presented in this work. The GTO device in this work is being used as part of a SiC-based solid-state fault current limiter under development at the University of Arkansas' …

The Final Transfer Of Power In India, 1937-1947: A Closer Look, Sidhartha Samanta

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The long freedom struggle in India culminated in a victory when in 1947 the country gained its independence from one hundred fifty years of British rule. The irony of this largely non-violent struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi was that it ended in the most violent and bloodiest partition of the country which claimed the lives of two million civilians and uprooted countless millions in what became the largest forced migration of people the world has ever witnessed. The vivisection of the country into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan did not bring the hoped for peace between the two neighbors. The …

Defining, Executing And Visualizing Representative Workflows In A Retail Domain, May Zeineldin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Our lives are filled with routine activities that we do more or less on auto-pilot such as driving to work and cooking. This thesis explores a workflow representation as a way to represent such activities of daily living. The domain of a retail store environment is used. Workflows are initially expressed in a structured English representation, then translated into a Petri net notation and implemented in mix of Petri nets, Lua, and C so that the resulting workflows can be displayed as the actions of collections of avatarbots (avatars controlled by programs) in a 3D virtual world, Second Life. One …

A Comparison Of Internet Marketing Methods Utilized By Higher Education Institutions, Joseph Clayton Mccoy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Use of Internet marketing techniques in higher education to attract prospective students is relatively new. While the research is recent, there are several studies that identify what is most valuable to students seeking information on college web sites. Higher education is now facing increasing competition from for-profit schools and reduced funding from typical sources. This study examines how two different Carnegie classifications use Internet marketing techniques and identifies if there is a difference in how much they use these techniques. Content techniques and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques were examined for 56 higher education institutions in this study. Of the …

Visualizing The Spatial Localization Of Active Matrix Metalloproteinases (Mmps) Using Maldi Imaging Ms, Sasirekha Muruganantham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biomaterial implantation induces the foreign body response (FBR). Development of longer-term implants relies on the thorough understanding of the FBR. The progression of the FBR is regulated by a number of biomolecules including cytokines, chemokines, and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). The nature of the FBR requires the spatial and temporal regulation of these mediators. MMPs are an extremely large and diverse group of enzymes that play key roles in regulating the FBR. Precise spatiotemporal regulation of MMPs defines their proteolytic activities. The aim of this project is to develop a new bioanalytical method to visualize the localization of active MMPs at …

Investigation Of A Floating Load Buck Dc-Dc Switching Converter, Hong Tan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A floating load buck DC-DC switching converter was analyzed, simulated, designed and prototyped. The floating load buck converter is first compared to the conventional buck converter. It was found that both the floating load buck converter and conventional buck converter exhibit similar conversion characteristics despite the differences in the placement of their output inductors. A floating load buck converter was designed to be used as a high-voltage off-line light-emitting diodes (LEDs) driver using a Texas Instruments' TPS92001 controller. Finally, the characteristics of this floating load buck converter LED driver were experimentally examined.

Design Of A Low Noise Amplifier For Wireless Sensor Networks, Ting Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

CMOS technology becomes important in Radio Frequency (RF) communication systems which include both a receiver and a transmitter. In a high performance radio receiver, the Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) is the first circuit, and its noise performance dominates the entire receiver. Depending upon the system in which they are used, LNAs can be designed according to various topologies and structures. The LNA needs to have matched input impedance, and at the same time it should amplify the small amplitude input signal without adding too much noise and still have the minimal power consumption. It also needs a good interface with …

Application Of The Empirical Mode Decomposition On The Characterization And Forecasting Of The Arrival Data Of An Enterprise Cluster, Linh Bao Ngo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Characterization and forecasting are two important processes in capacity planning. While they are closely related, their approaches have been different. In this research, a decomposition method called Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) has been applied as a preprocessing tool in order to bridge the input of both characterization and forecasting processes of the job arrivals of an enterprise cluster. Based on the facts that an enterprise cluster follows a standard preset working schedule and that EMD has the capability to extract hidden patterns within a data stream, we have developed a set of procedures that can preprocess the data for characterization …

Cognitive Agendas And Legal Epistemology, Danny Marrero

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The domain of legal epistemology is defined from two alternative perspectives: individual epistemology and Social epistemology. Since these perspectives have different objects of evaluation, their judgments privilege and exclude different sets of information. While methodological individualism is concerned with justified beliefs of individual knowers, the Social angle focuses on the institutional conditions of knowledge. I will show that the information that is respectively excluded by both the individual and the Social concepts of legal epistemology weaken their respective evaluations. With this in mind, I will explore one new option of defining legal epistemology. This alternative is more comprehensive, in the …

High Performance Geospatial Analysis On Emerging Parallel Architectures, Seth Warn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Geographic information systems (GIS) are performing increasingly sophisticated analyses on growing data sets. These analyses demand high performance. At the same time, modern computing platforms increasingly derive their performance from several forms of parallelism. This dissertation explores the available parallelism in several GIS-applied algorithms: viewshed calculation, image feature transform, and feature analysis. It presents implementations of these algorithms that exploit parallel processing to reduce execution time, and analyzes the effectiveness of the implementations in their use of parallel processing.

Fabrication Of Composite Nanomaterials For Thin Film Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells, Benjamin Seth Newton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A material with the precise combination of amorphous silicon and polycrystalline silicon would be able to take advantage of the high absorption capabilities of amorphous silicon and the electron transport capabilities of polycrystalline silicon. Polycrystalline nanostructures in the form of wires can also take advantage of other properties of light absorption, trapping and scattering inherent in nanowire structures. These properties of high absorption and electron transport in one device would lead to advances in the search for highly efficient low cost solar cells and sensors. In this work a thin film material composed of an array of polycrystalline silicon nanostructures …

Location-Aware Traffic Management On Mobile Phones, Sarath Krishna Mandava

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The growing number of mobile phone users is a primary cause of congestion in cellular networks. Therefore, cellular network providers have turned to expensive and differentiated data plans. Unfortunately, as the number of smartphone users keeps increasing, changing data plans only provides a temporary solution. A more permanent solution is offloading 3G traffic to networks in orthogonal frequency bands. One such plausible network is open Wi-Fi, which is free by definition. As Wi-Fi networks become ubiquitous, there are several areas where there is simultaneous Wi-Fi and 3G coverage. In this thesis, we study the feasibility of offloading 3G traffic to …

Army Transformation: What Does It Mean?, David Jerome

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The way in which senior U.S. Army leaders such as the chiefs of staff define transformative change is important, especially if the meaning of that term is to be interpreted as originally intended by Army field grade officers. An Army chief of staff is responsible for creating a vision and establishing goals for the future, and field grade officers are responsible for pursuing that vision and those goals by implementing objectives that endeavor to arrive at the desired ends. By using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research analyzes what each of the three chiefs of staff, who have served …

Portrait Of Hal: A Narrative Case Study That Illuminates The Transformative Influence Of Generativity And Life Stories On The Legacy Of An Adult Educator/Learner, Margaret Ann Voelkel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative narrative case study uses the Social science portraiture approach to explore how the learning experiences of a retired manufacturing manager have influenced his identity and his choice of an encore career in education. Hal B. is a retired manufacturing manager in his 70s who is now an instructor of leadership, management, and process improvement for working adults in a mid-south regional university. The portraiture approach to Hal's experience of a second career as an educator exemplifies the ways in which generativity, a person's need to care for and prepare future generations (Erikson, 1980), and storytelling are factors that …

Exploring First Generation African American Graduate Students: Motivating Factors For Pursuing A Doctoral Degree, Stephanie G. Adams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose for conducting the study was to examine the factors that motivate African-American first-generation students to pursue doctoral education at a four-year public university. There has been little research on the influence academic or non-academic factors have on first-generation graduate student motivation. Similarly, little research exists that explored how factors might vary by ethnicity. Based on the projected increase of post-baccalaureate enrollment each year (Aud, Hussar, Planty, Snyder, Bianco, Fox, Frohlich, Kemp, Drake, 2010), first-generation African-Americans will become more interested in attending graduate school. It is important to gain a better understanding of the factors and influences that impact …

Virtual Communities As Egalitarian Societies: Why Contributions Matter And What They Mean, Kristen E. Rodgers

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

This study involves a content analysis of participation and contributions within a virtual community message board. Research focuses on evaluating virtual communities as egalitarian societies and determining what benefits group members receive from participating in and contributing to these communities. Two message board virtual communities were selected for analysis using the methodological approach of netnography. Though many past studies have labeled virtual communities as egalitarian, no clear application of the social structure theory has been applied and analyzed against such a community; this study aims to fix that and identifies key components of egalitarian societies present in virtual communities. Furthermore, …

America Hates The Westboro Baptist Church: The Battle To Preserve The Funerals Of Fallen Soldiers, Kendra L. Suesz

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has gained national attention over the past several years with their fiery protests at the funerals of soldiers killed in action. Citizens outraged by the actions of the WBC pressured the lawmakers in 45 states to enact legislation curtailing the protesters’ access to funerals. Claiming that the laws infringe upon their First Amendment rights, the WBC has challenged these legislations in court, and will continue to do so. While the lawmakers are struggling to enact effective barriers against the WBC’s access to funerals, the American public has taken matters into their own hands. At many …

Nebraska's Traditional Cultural Properties In The Section 106 Process, Karen A. Steinauer

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Archeologists engaged in cultural resource management and compliance are charged with measuring “historic” properties against legal standards for purposes of federal protection. This thesis focuses on one kind of property, the Traditional Cultural Property (TCP), within the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Section 106 process, where sometimes in practice the terms TCP and sacred site are used interchangeably. This thesis strives to bring precision to TCPs, provide a concise reference, and, through inspection and analysis of four case studies of Nebraska properties, critique the present process for identifying and evaluating TCPs.

Circuit Court Interpretations Of Garcetti V. Ceballos And The Development Of Public Employee Speech, Thomas Keenan

Notre Dame Law Review

The article presents an analysis on the advancement of public employee speech and interpretations of the U.S. Supreme Court on Garcetti v. Ceballos. It discusses the similarities and error that exists among the federal circuit courts. It overviews the factors shared by circuits different to certain courts. It reflects on the First Amendment jurisprudence related to public employee speech. It also put forwards the defenses and criticisms of Garcetti.

Solicitation, Extortion, And The Fcpa, Joseph W. Yockey

Notre Dame Law Review

The article presents information on nature and frequency of bribe solicitation and extortion. It discusses the issues the firms of the U.S. are facing in maintaining agreement with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). It states that FCPA bans firms from paying bribes to foreign officials in order to retain or obtain business. It also discusses the problems it imposes on market participants. It suggests federal regulators to provide improved regulatory guidelines to understand FCPA.

Extrapolating Strategies For The Scientific And Technological Development Of Underdeveloped Societies From The Examples Of South Korea, Slovenia And Serbia, Vuk Uskoković, Dragan Uskoković

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

The recent history of scientific excellence of a society could be used as an indicator of its economic, cultural and communal prosperity. In this work, two examples of countries that successfully arose from the remnants of comparative poverty and established themselves as scientifically thriving societies, South Korea and Slovenia, are compared with the case of Serbia, a country that is presumably on the doorsteps of a similarly explosive developmental path. Guidelines for social progress in the direction of greater scientific and social prominence are outlined in the course of the discourse. It is concluded that the ideal model of growth …

Detection-Assisted Object Tracking By Mobile Cameras, Li He

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

Tracking-by-detection is a class of new tracking approaches that utilizes recent development of object detection algorithms. This type of approach performs object detection for each frame and uses data association algorithms to associate new observations to existing targets. Inspired by the core idea of the tracking-by-detection framework, we propose a new framework called detection-assisted tracking where object detection algorithm provides help to the tracking algorithm when such help is necessary; thus object detection, a very time consuming task, is performed only when needed. The proposed framework is also able to handle complicated scenarios where cameras are allowed to move, and …

Optical And Magnetic Properties Of Feni Slanted Columnar Thin Films Infiltrated With Pmma And Fe3O4 Nanoparticles, Dan Liang

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

In this thesis, dielectric polymer and magnetic nanoparticles were utilized to hybridize FeNi Slanted columnar thin films (SCTFs). Firstly Fe₃O₄ in PMMA matrix was prepared by physical blending process. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to investigate the dispersion of the nanoparticles in PMMA matrix and the preparation conditions were varied to optimize the dispersion. The hybridized materials were prepared by the infiltration of PMMA and 5 wt% Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles/PMMA to the voids of FeNi SCTFs. Spin-coating and annealing process were employed to reach an excellent infiltration.

The structural …

A 2-D Processor Array For Massively Parallel Image Processing, Anantha Krishna Nelliparthi

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

The concept of introducing image processing logic within the spatial gaps of an array of photodiodes is the key factor behind the presented work. A two-dimensional massively parallel image processing paradigm based on 8X8 pixel neighborhood digital processors has been designed. A low complexity processor array architecture along with its instruction set has been designed and fully verified on a FPGA platform. Various image processing tests have been run on the FPGA platform to demonstrate the functionality of a design that uses 12 parallel processors. The test results indicate that the architecture is scalable to support high frame rates while …

Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Transport In The Squid Giant Axon: Competition Between Cargo Motor Receptors, Jip-1, App-C, And Negative Charge, Pamela E. Seamster

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Transport of membrane-bound organelles is critical to neuronal cell function yet mechanisms hitching vesicles to transport machinery remain elusive. Here we test whether jun-kinase interacting protein (JIP-1), a peripheral membrane scaffolding protein that binds kinesin light chain, is sufficient to mediate cargo transport in axons and study its competition with amyloid precursor protein cytoplasmic domain (APP-) and negative charge, also known motor receptors. Fluorescent beads (100 nm diameter) exhibit sequence-specific fast anterograde transport (0.46μm/s instantaneous velocity) in the squid giant axon when conjugated to a 14- amino acid synthetic peptide derived from the carboxyl terminus of JIP-1. JIP-1- beads have …

Cross Media Hyperlinking For Search Topic Browsing, Song Tan, Chong-Wah Ngo, Hung-Khoon Tan, Lei Pang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the rapid growth of social media, there are plenty of information sources freely available online for use. Nevertheless, how to synchronize and leverage these diverse forms of information for multimedia applications remains a problem yet to be seriously studied. This paper investigates the synchronization of multiple media content in the physical form of hyperlinking them. The ultimate goal is to develop browsing systems that author search results with rich media information mined from various knowledge sources. The authoring enables the vivid visualization and exploration of different information landscapes inherent in search results. Several key techniques are studied in this …