Digital Commons Network^™

Contour Extraction Of Drosophila Embryos Using Active Contours In Scale Space, Soujanya Siddavaram Ananta

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Contour extraction of Drosophila embryos is an important step to build a computational system for pattern matching of embryonic images which aids in the discovery of genes. Automatic contour extraction of embryos is challenging due to several image variations such as size, shape, orientation and neigh- boring embryos such as touching and non-touching embryos. In this thesis, we introduce a framework for contour extraction based on the connected components in the gaussian scale space of an embryonic image. The active contour model is applied on the images to refine embryo contours. Data cleaning methods are applied to smooth the jaggy …

An Exploratory Study Of Teacher Empowerment And Technical Education In Kentucky, Lee Ann Wall

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of empowerment and principal use of power within career and technical education in Kentucky. The researcher posits that, with the continual process of educational reform, principals need to understand what empowers teachers to perform as additional expectations and responsibilities are being mandated.

The researcher used a mixed methods design to examine power bases that career and technical education teachers perceived were used by their principals to identify teachers’ perceived empowerment, as well as influencers and barriers. Data were collected with a survey and two open-ended questions from …

Spelling In The Classroom, Sue Ellen Yeiser, Allen Ehredt, Margaret Haydon

Applied Behavior Analysis (SPED 432) and Intervention Strategies for Literacy (SPED 431)

This poster introduces research based information for teaching spelling in the classroom. The focus of the poster further explains “Why is spelling important?” and “How spelling can be effectively implemented into the classroom?” Research was conducted by examining multiple media sources such as textbooks, journal articles, and online databases using the keywords: spelling, strategies, and interventions. The reviewed research showed that spelling correlates with reading, writing, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Research-based strategies that are effective in the primary classroom include weekly spelling stories, spelling magnet boards, and various spelling games. Incorporating fun word games into a daily or weekly routine …

Teaching Errorless Learning With Fidelity, Garrett Stone, Kory Ray

Applied Behavior Analysis (SPED 432) and Intervention Strategies for Literacy (SPED 431)

Scholarly sources were reviewed to determine different strategies to teach students with minimizing negative interactions. Errorless learning is a research-based strategy that minimizes errors with few or no responses to the negative stimulus. Time-Delay and prompting are two types of errorless learning techniques examined in this presentation. Time delay is exhibited during activities where a response is required. The duration between the cue and the response can be constant or progressive. Constant time delay has a constant amount of time between cue and response, where progressive time-delay increases duration of time before scaffolding is provided. If no response or an …

Phonemic Awareness: Do You Hear What I Hear?, Jennifer Timberlake, Brittany Mahler, Alexander Michael Miller

Applied Behavior Analysis (SPED 432) and Intervention Strategies for Literacy (SPED 431)

This poster, created by undergraduate students, was designed to illustrate the importance of employing research based strategies when providing phonemic awareness instruction. This research explored why phonemic awareness is important for beginning readers or students who are at risk and the resources that support instruction. The authors reviewed research based articles, textbooks, and websites in order to obtain strategies, and activities proven to be beneficial in the classroom. The research suggested that phonemic awareness skills are essential for word decoding, word identification, and reading fluency. Additionally, the research indicates that the use of small groups, technology, and interactive activities enhance …

Teleconnective Influences On The Strength Of Post-Tropical Cyclones, Jeremy Young

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Over the 1951-2009 time period, 47% of all tropical systems in the Atlantic Basin transitioned to post-tropical storms. These storms are capable of producing hurricaneforce winds, torrential, flooding rains and storm surge that floods coastal areas. This study adds to previous climatological work by completing a case-study of Hurricane Ike (2008) and examining how teleconnections such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) contribute to the strength of a transitioning post-tropical storm. T-tests performed show strong statistical relationships between an increase (decrease) in post-tropical storm …

New Dentist News (December 2012), Ada Committee On The New Dentist

New Dentist News

New Dentist News offers timely information on scientific, social, educational, political and economic developments affecting new dentists. This collection is historical and items may not reflect current standards. For up-to-date information contact the ADA. The New Dentist News was alternately titled ADA Lifeline, 1997-June 2001.

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet December 2012, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The December 2012 Monthly packet includes the December agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held November 2012

Der Exilant Thomas Mann Und Die Frage Der Deutschen, Joseph Hammett

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

With the National Socialists coming to power in Germany in 1933, ending the Weimar Republic, many artists and intellectuals were forced to leave Germany. One of the most influential of these German émigrés was Thomas Mann. While many of these émigrés lost their status and fell into oblivion in exile, Thomas Mann, because of his worldwide acclaim, came to be seen as a symbol for German culture in opposition to Nazi Germany and began a lecture series for the Library of Congress. In one of these lectures, “Germany and the Germans,” Mann discusses the extent and the origins of German …

Environmental Groups In Jordan: Cooperating To Avoid Disaster, Laurel Wolf

Student Foreign Language Research

No abstract provided.

La Fusione Tra La Scrittura E L’Arte Visiva: Adriano Spatola & La Poesia Visiva, Gina Mangravite

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

What is visual poetry? Is it categorized as literature or visual art? How does one interpret such a work? In this essay, I explore these fundamental questions through a case study of Italian poet, Adriano Spatola and his visual poetry, Zeroglifici. Similar to his visual poetry, Spatola himself tends to escape explicit classifications. Although he was a member of Group 63, in this essay I pose the question of whether Spatola and his works can truly be considered part of the neoavanguardia.

Where The Wild Things Were: A Chance To Keep Alaska’S Challenge Of The Roadless Rule Out Of The Supreme Court, Kirsten Rønholt

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Academics' Views On Personalised E-Learning In Higher Education, Eileen O'Donnell, Mary Sharp, Vincent Wade, Liam O'Donnell

Conference Papers

The challenges for academics in meeting the learning requirements of students are many and varied. This research focuses on the concept of personalised learning, where activities are specifically selected to suit the learning requirements of individual students. The creation of personalised learning activities to suit every student’s learning needs, are not easily achieved. A survey was conducted in June 2012 to determine academics awareness of, and views on, the ‘novel teaching approach’ of personalised e-learning in higher education. Forty academics participated in this study. 60% of academic respondents agreed with the statement: “There is a need to personalise e-learning to …

The Way Forward After Wal-Mart, George Rutherglen

Notre Dame Law Review

The article discusses the case Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, in which the U.S. Supreme denied class action certification in its ruling. It informs that the decision of Supreme Court was opposed by some people in liberal circles, also including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It presents information that the Justice agreed to a point that a class action certification is not possible under the Federal Rule of Civil procedure 23 (b) (2), which governs class actions in which injunctive relief.

Re-Opening A Dan’S Pet Supply Store In Hemet, California, Jeffrey Z. Harrison

Agribusiness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if Dan’s Feed & Seed should re-open a pet supply store in the town of Hemet, California. The goal was to satisfy three objectives including if Dan’s Feed & Seed could compete in the current market, if there was a demand in Hemet, California, and if Dan’s could be profitable within a two year period. Dan’s proved to be able to compete with the competition by having lower prices with two out of three competitors and could compete with the remaining competitor by providing high quality, name brand dog food that …

Strider: Manufacturing Processes, Michael Warren-Angelucci

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The goal of the Strider Project is to create a mobility device that can support a person with weakened leg strength and enable them to be supported and maintain a standing position. A prototype of the Strider was created by three Mechanical Engineering students as their senior project. The topic of this senior project was to analyze and create a manufacturing process for the manufacture of the Strider that will be ergonomic and cost effective.

There were many things that needed to be accomplished in order to create the manufacturing process. The first step was to verify that the prototype …

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

Washington Law Review

Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians “racial or political?” If the classification is political (i.e., based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This Article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories “tribe” and “tribal member” are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …

Huntsman Alumni Magazine, Fall 2012, Usu Jon M. Huntsman School Of Business

Huntsman Business Magazine

Alumni magazine for the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.

Regenerative Shock Absorbers For Energy Harvesting From Vehicle Suspensions, Zhongjie Li

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

While the energy consumption around the world is keeping increasing, energy harvesting is more and more popular, especially in vehicle suspensions. The objective of this research is to design an electricity-harvesting shock absorber with high-power density and retrofittability to recover large amount of vibration energy traditionally dissipated in vehicle suspensions and to enhance vehicle dynamics for ride comfort and road safety at the same time. An introduction and overview of vehicle suspensions as well as regenerative shock absorbers is presented to help understand the motivation for the research. 100 to 400 Watts' energy is accessible in vehicle suspensions, which corresponds …

Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Examination Of Fear Generalization And Anticipation Of Affective Stimuli, Tsafrir Greenberg

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Despite increasing interest in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) it remains one of the least studied anxiety disorders and little is known about its neurobiology. The aim of the current research study was to investigate the neural basis of GAD from two perspectives: fear generalization and anticipation of affective outcomes. Thirty-two women with GAD (17 with and 15 without comorbid major depression disorder) and 25 healthy women underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while completing two tasks: a fear generalization task in which participants were presented with a conditioned stimulus (CS) that co-terminates with a brief electric shock, and generalization stimuli …

Pluralism, Democracy, And The `Empty Place Of Power': Using Lefort's Political Theory To Address The Problem Of Tolerance, Michael Roess

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Though widely adopted since the European wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries, liberal solutions to the problem of tolerance continue to face difficulties over issues, such as abortion and religious freedom, where deeply held values and matters of governance intersect. In this dissertation I provide a new argument for political tolerance that is supported by a Lefortian conception of democratic political legitimacy. In the first half of the dissertation I argue that two forms of liberalism, public reason liberalism and liberalism of conscience, fail to adequately address the difficulties posed by religious pluralism. In its Rawlsian form, …

Whoever Doesn't Hop Must Be Superior: The Russian Left-Periphery And The Emergence Of Superiority, Tatiana Scott

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This dissertation maps the left-periphery of the Russian language, presenting a new geometry of Russian main and subordinate clauses in order to account for a number of phenomena: single and multiple wh-constructions, sluicing constructions, and coordinate multiple wh-constructions (CMW), as well as to predict various occurring word-orders. Interestingly, the theory for these constructions comes from a proposed unique wh-unrelated category, the Higher Operator Phrase (HOP), located higher than CP, which allows the aforementioned phenomena to fall out of the proposed structure. The thesis claims that Russian exhibits `true' wh-movement and is similar to Bulgarian in Rudin's 1988 typology, with a …

Engineering Enhanced Piezoelectric Response In Ferroelectric Superlattices, John Sinsheimer

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The piezoelectric effect is a useful property of certain crystals where the application of pressure on a crystal produces a voltage, and conversely in the inverse piezoelectric effect, the size of the crystal changes with the application of voltage. Piezoelectricity is widely used in devices such as ultrasound machines and various sensors and actuators. This thesis presents the development of two artificially layered material systems with enhanced piezoresponse and techniques developed to accurately characterize functional properties. Large piezoelectric responses, such as those seen in PbZr_xTi_1-xO₃ in the vicinity of the compositional morphotropic phase boundary, can …

A Study Of The Extratropical Tropopause: Related To The Upper Tropospheric Relative Vorticity And The Distance From The Jet, Shu Meir Wang

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The extratropical tropopause is a familiar feature in meteorology; however, the understanding of the mechanisms for its existence, formation, maintenance and sharpness is still an active area of research. In order to examine the sharpness of the tropopause, Birner et al. (2002) proposed the concept of the TIL (Tropopause Inversion Layer), which is based upon the characteristics of the thermal profile. Bell and Geller (2008), believing that the resulting stability profile was more fundamental to dynamics and transport, defined the ESTL (Extratropical Stability Transition Layer) based on the stability characteristics. Wirth (2004) suggested that the cyclonic/anticyclonic asymmetry plays a large …

An Ambient And Surfactant-Less Synthesis Of Segmented Palladium/Gold Multi-Functional Nanowires, Zhibo Tan

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Segmented noble metal nanowires (NWs) represent an exciting, multifunctional one-dimensional structural architecture with a variety of potential applications. However, currently available methodologies for preparing these systems require either rigorous reaction conditions or expensive equipment. An example of such a conventional protocol is electrodeposition. These strict requirements have limited the potential for these systems to be produced on a large scale, since this protocol is costly and requires complex processes and caustic reaction media. Given the inherent limitations of such methodologies, we report for the first time an ambient, surfactantless template-based approach for the reliable production of Pd/Au segmented nanowires that …

An Efficient Framework For High-Quality Low-Dose Ct Reconstruction And Reference-Based Image Restoration, Wei Xu

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

CT imaging procedures have been shown to considerably increase the medical radiation dose to patients, giving rise to cancer. As a result, low dose imaging modalities have gained much attention recently. However, this renders traditional CT reconstruction processes no longer sufficient. Iterative reconstruction algorithms using numerical optimization paradigms are better suited, but they suffer from (1) expensive computation, (2) problems with the selection of optimal parameters to simultaneously optimize speed and (3) poor reconstruction quality. To cope with these problems, we have made several contributions to low-dose CT. First, we have devised a GPU-accelerated ordered subset iterative CT reconstruction algorithm …

Optimization Techniques For Memory Virtualization-Based Resource Management, Jui-Hao Chiang

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Memory virtualization abstracts the physical memory resources in a virtualized server in such a way that offers many resource management advantages, such as consolidation, sharing, compression and migration. The main goal of this dissertation project is to develop optimization techniques to resource management schemes based on memory virtualization. Although migration of virtual machine (VM) memory state is a standard feature of most modern hypervisors, migration of physical machine memory state is largely non-existent. We applied the standard VM migration technique to building the first known physical machine state migration system for Linux servers, which significantly increases the system management flexibility …

Quantitative Computational And Biophysical Investigation Of Multivalent Proteins, Vadim Patsalo

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The valency of a biological molecule is the number of interactions that it is able to make with other molecules. Multivalency arises in proteins which oligomerize or contain tandem repeats, and commonly involves the binding of carbohydrates. Biological processes which rely on multivalency include surface interactions (e.g. virus-cell adhesion and cell-cell binding) or de-mixing phenomena. The energetics of multivalent interactions can be significantly enhanced relative to their monovalent counterparts, and numerous multivalent inhibitors of viral infection have been identified. In this dissertation, we present computational and biophysical investigations of several multivalent proteins related to human viral pathogens. The bivalent lectin …

How Does Climate Influence Speciation: Theoretical And Empirical Perspectives, Xia Hua

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Many people are now familiar with the idea that climate change can cause extinction. Here, I show how climate change may also lead to the origin of new species. I explore two major aspects of how climate influences speciation. First, variation in climatic conditions over space and time can be a direct driver of speciation, via two mechanisms. Climate may drive allopatric speciation when a geographic barrier that consists of suboptimal climatic conditions for a species divides the species range and climatic niche conservatism of the species limits its adaptation to the climatic conditions, preventing gene flow between the two …

Exploring The Benefits Of A Parent Partner Mentoring Program In Child Welfare, Robin Leake, Laricia Longworth-Reed, Natalie Williams, Cathryn Potter

Journal of Family Strengths

Parent partner mentoring programs are an innovative strategy for child welfare agencies to engage families in case planning and service delivery. These programs recruit and train parents who have been involved in the system and have successfully resolved identified child abuse or neglect issues to work with families with current open cases in the child welfare system. Parent partner mentors can provide social and emotional support, advocacy, and practical advice for navigating this challenging system. Insofar as parent partners share similar experiences, and cultural and socioeconomic characteristics of families, they may be more successful in engaging families and building trusting …