Digital Commons Network^™

Project Management Of High School Shadow And Building An Engineer Day, Andrea M. Carroll

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Building an Engineer Day and High School Shadow are semi-annual outreach events hosted by Cal Poly’s Society of Women Engineers section during fall and spring quarters. The events focus on encouraging women and minorities to take an interest in engineering. These events are the two largest outreach events hosted by The Society of Women Engineers and need to run smoothly in order to provide student attendees with a meaningful experience.

Building an Engineer Day and High School Shadow are currently un-organized and un-planned, which leads to problems with officer retention, increase in expediting process and a low attendance rate at …

Screening For Social Emotional Difficulties Among Elementary Students: A Comparison Of Screening Methods And Teacher Perceptions, Megan R. Kirk

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Energy Prices And The Real Exchange Rate Of Commodity-Exporting Countries, Magali Dauvin

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

This paper investigates the relationship between energy prices and the real effective exchange rate of commodity-exporting countries. We consider two sets of countries: 10 energy-exporting and 23 non-fuel commodity-exporting countries over the period 1980-2011. Estimating a panel cointegrating relationship between the real exchange rate and its fundamentals, we provide evidence for the existence of "energy currencies". Relying on the estimation of panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) models, we show that there exists a certain threshold beyond which the real effective exchange rate of both energy and commodity exporters reacts to oil prices, through the terms-of-trade. More specifically, when oil price …

Agpt Registrar Satisfaction Survey 2013, Rebecca Taylor, Hamish B. Coates

Higher education research

The General Practice Education and Training Limited (GPET) Registrar Satisfaction Survey (RSS) is used for ensuring continuous improvement in the training of doctors in General Practice. Designed by the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) in conjunction with GPET and advisors from the Association of Chief Executives (ACE), the RSS gauges the level of registrar satisfaction with the quality of their training, with training providers, and with career progression. It was designed and implemented to help ensure that professional training programs delivered by Regional Training Providers (RTPs) meet the standards and requirements of both the Royal Australian College of General …

Vol. 5 No. 1, Fall 2013; Table Of Contents & Masthead, Northern Illinois University Law Review Online Supplement, Northern Illinois University Law Review Online Supplement

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

No abstract provided.

Vol. 5 No. 1, Fall 2013; Debtors Deserve The Dischargeability Of Tax Liability To Be "Honest And Reasonable", Robert Finegan

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

The most current version of the Bankruptcy Code, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), is considered one of the most technical and comprehensive reforms to the Bankruptcy Code. Facing a dramatic increase in consumer bankruptcies and fearing an increase in abuse of the system, Congress included stricter guidelines and rules to try and prevent debtor abuse in BAPCPA. Another addition that BAPCPA added, and at the heart of this Comment, was the addition of a hanging paragraph to the Bankruptcy Code section 523(a). The issue of whether a person can discharge their tax liability through a Chapter …

A Long-Term Hydrologically Based Dataset Of Land Surface Fluxes And States For The Conterminous United States: Update And Extensions, Ben Livneh, Eric A. Rosenberg, Chiyu Lin, Bart Nijssen, Vimal Mishra, Kostas M. Andreadis, Edwin P. Maurer, Dennis P. Lettenmaier

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering

This paper describes a publicly available, long-term (1915–2011), hydrologically consistent dataset for the conterminous United States, intended to aid in studies of water and energy exchanges at the land surface. These data are gridded at a spatial resolution of latitude/longitude and are derived from daily temperature and precipitation observations from approximately 20 000 NOAA Cooperative Observer (COOP) stations. The available meteorological data include temperature, precipitation, and wind, as well as derived humidity and downwelling solar and infrared radiation estimated via algorithms that index these quantities to the daily mean temperature, temperature range, and precipitation, and disaggregate them to 3-hourly time …

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program And Food Insecurity, Christian Gregory, Matthew P. Rabbitt, David C. Ribar

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This chapter reviews recent theory and empirical evidence regarding the effect of SNAP on food insecurity and replicates the modelling strategies used in the empirical literature. The authors find that recent evidence suggesting an ameliorative effect of SNAP on food insecurity may not be robust to specification choice or data. Most specifications mirror the existing literature in finding a positive association of food insecurity with SNAP participation. Two-stage least squares and control function methods do show that SNAP reduces food insecurity, but effects are not consistent across sub-populations and are not always statistically significant.

Bard Free Press, Vol. 15, No. 4 (December 2013), Bard College

Bard Free Press - All Issues (2000-2018)

No abstract provided.

Anticancer Properties Of Distinct Antimalarial Drug Classes, Rob Hooft Van Huijsduijnen, R. Kiplin Guy, Kelly Chibale, Richard K. Haynes, Ingmar Peitz, Gerhard Kelter, Margaret A. Phillips, Jonathan L. Vennerstrom, Yongyuth Yuthavong, Timothy N. C. Wells

Journal Articles: Pharmaceutical Sciences

We have tested five distinct classes of established and experimental antimalarial drugs for their anticancer potential, using a panel of 91 human cancer lines. Three classes of drugs: artemisinins, synthetic peroxides and DHFR (dihydrofolate reductase) inhibitors effected potent inhibition of proliferation with IC50s in the nM- low µM range, whereas a DHODH (dihydroorotate dehydrogenase) and a putative kinase inhibitor displayed no activity. Furthermore, significant synergies were identified with erlotinib, imatinib, cisplatin, dasatinib and vincristine. Cluster analysis of the antimalarials based on their differential inhibition of the various cancer lines clearly segregated the synthetic peroxides OZ277 and OZ439 from the artemisinin …

Sustain Southern Maine Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment, Greater Portland Council Of Governments

Publications

This document presents a compilation of work to assess vulnerability to coastal flooding for the Sustain Southern Maine (SSM) region. The SSM Region (Figure 1) extends from Brunswick to Kittery along the coast, and inland to Raymond, Standish, and Acton. This assessment is based on information provided by organizations including the Maine Geological Survey, Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission (SMPDC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Casco Bay Estuary Partnership (CBEP), the Greater Portland Council of Governments (GPCOG), and various other municipal and federal entities.

Chromatin-Induced Spindle Assembly Plays An Important Role In Metaphase Congression Of Silkworm Holocentric Chromosomes, Hiroaki Mon, Jae Man Lee, Kazuei Mita, Marian R. Goldsmith, Takahiro Kusakabe

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The kinetochore plays important roles in cell cycle progression. Interactions between 4 chromosomes and spindle microtubules allow chromosomes to congress to the middle of the 5 cell and to segregate the sister chromatids into daughter cells in mitosis. The chromosome 6 passenger complex (CPC), composed of the Aurora B kinase and its regulatory subunits 7 INCENP, Survivin, and Borealin, plays multiple roles in these chromosomal events. In the 8 genome of the silkworm, Bombyx mori, which has holocentric chromosomes, the CPC 9 components and their molecular interactions were highly conserved. In contrast to 10 monocentric species, however, the silkworm CPC …

Reproducibility Of Ambulatory Blood Pressure Changes From The Initial Values On Two Different Days, Garrett I. Ash

Open Access Author Fund Awardees' Articles

OBJECTIVE: We tested the reproducibility of changes in the ambulatory blood pressure (BP) from the initial values, an indicator of BP reactivity and cardiovascular health outcomes, in young, healthy adults. METHOD: The subjects wore an ambulatory BP monitor attached by the same investigator at the same time of day until the next morning on two different days (day 1 and day 2) separated by a week. We compared the ambulatory BP change from the initial values at hourly intervals over 24 waking and sleeping hours on days 1 and 2 using linear regression and repeated measures analysis of covariance. RESULTS: …

Merging And Creating Culturally Relevant Pedagogy In Public Schools, Sunni Ali, Ryan Murphy

Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies Faculty Publications

During the last fifty years, numerous individuals have sought new strategies for students, such as African Americans, whom the public schools have historically underserved. Not only are some parents of these students seeking change, but also researchers, politicians, and local groups. Nevertheless, it is clear that these efforts have posed several dilemmas, which (a) limit the voice and personal choice of learners, (b) standardize the value of learning, and (c) connote a hegemonic discourse. Therefore, this Best Practices essay is based on the theory that a culturally value-driven framework (CVD) of learning will allow African Americans and other students of …

Non-Termination Analysis And Cost-Based Optimization For Logic Programs, Senlin Liang

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

Rule systems have seen an upsurge of interest in the past decade, as many in the academia and industry started to discover more applications for rules such as the Semantic Web, policy management, and program analysis. In response, high-level logic languages such as Flora-2 and SILK have been invented as tools for developing complex knowledge bases by knowledge engineers who are not programmers. The knowledge bases that are created by this type of users are typically complex and they stress the engine capabilities. Therefore, there are new challenges in order for logic engines to be able to process these knowledge …

Development Of A Single Photon Detector For Fluorescent Spectrometry, Dmytro Gudkov

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

I present a novel multichannel single photon detector based on PMT sensor (32-channel Hamamatsu H7260-20) with unique linearity range for applications in life sciences. My extensive study of pulse characteristics of the PMT sensor showed that maximum linearity range obtained with 32-channel PMT could not exceed 108 counts/sec due to distortions of photon pulses at high input optical power. Due to a novel, highly advanced analog/digital circuitry operating in GHz range, the developed 32-channel detector has a unique performance: it supports detection of up to 108 photons/sec per channel, data acquisition rate at up to 106 frames/sec, data transfer via …

Machine Learning, Evolutionary Algorithms, And The Inference Of Mathematical Truths, Asher Hensley

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

In this thesis we set out to find whether the true data generating formula behind a set of data points can be automatically inferred from the data points alone. We start with the topic of machine learning and quickly realize that black box models can only approximate the real world which creates the motivation to move on to evolutionary algorithms as a vehicle to implement symbolic regression. Through a series of experiments we discover that the mean-squared error cost function is easily fooled by decoy solutions and is unable to make use of all the information presented in the training …

Gaze Behavior Detection System Based On The Object Image, Yunkai Huang

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

This thesis presents a design methodology of a low-cost noninvasive gaze tracking system to detect gaze behavior when user is browsing internet or reading material on computer. The user's face image is captured and processed in real-time. By means of C++ and OpenCV library, the system detects face, eye region with Haar feature-based cascade classifier. Eye center is detected by contouring dark area in eye region and finding the center of largest area among contoured dark areas. The detected eye center is mapped to gaze point on computer screen after four point calibration. The average angular error is 1.96 degree, …

Development Of Narrow Gap Semiconductor Materials And Devices For Optoelectronic Applications, Ding Wang

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

Mid-wave to long-wave infrared (3~12 μ m in wavelength) optoelectronic devices have broad applications in gas sensing, molecular spectroscopy, imaging, environmental, industrial monitoring, etc. This work aims to explore new III-V materials and heterostructures to develop light emitting devices and detectors for the infrared spectral region. Optical properties of dilute nitride GaSbN and InAsN materials were investigated. We observed strong bandgap reduction with increasing nitrogen incorporation. GaSbN with 1.4% of nitrogen showed 300 meV narrower bandgap than GaSb; for InAsN the bandgap energy was reduced by 150 meV with nitrogen incorporation up to 2.25%. The carrier lifetimes within the picoseconds …

Generation Of Customized Time Domain Fir Filter Hardware, Yujie Wu

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

Although finite impulse response (FIR) filtering is a well-known technique, it is still difficult to implement efficiently as hardware because the designer must choose from many application-specific design options, and it is difficult to choose those that best fit the requirements of the system. This thesis describes two design and simulation tools which enable easy implementation and optimization of time-domain FIR filters. The first generates hardware (as synthesizable Verilog) for a designer-specified FIR filter and the second provides a fixed-point simulation environment for the design space (using MATLAB). Both tools are customized based on the user's choices across a parameterized …

When The Personal Became Political: First-Person Fictions And Second-Wave Feminism, Megan Elizabeth Behrent

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

Second-wave feminism made famous the slogan, " The personal is political." This dissertation explores the relationship between the personal and political in fictional narratives associated with the development of second-wave feminism in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. Deeply engaged with the political movements that arose amidst this turbulent period in American history, these narratives reflect--in both form and content--the political discourses that dominated both the women's liberation movement and the New Left. The first-person fictions of feminist writers that emerge in this period traverse, and subvert, the boundaries between truth and fiction as well the personal and …

Comparing The Effectiveness Of Debriefing Methods In High Fidelity Simulation In A Nursing Baccalaureate Program, Jihad Jawad Kadhim

Nursing Master Theses

The experiential learning process is a key concept in gaining and analyzing knowledge, which involves participation in those experiences. In nursing education, these experiences can occur through high-fidelity simulation. The most important component of this learning process is the post-experience critical analysis or debriefing. During the debriefing phase, students must reflect upon the experiences, identify key points, and discuss the main concern related to patient care. The debriefing phase helps students to be able to develop and refine knowledge and experiences. Methods of debriefing include verbal feedback or video-assisted verbal discussion that allows students to reflect and discuss on what …

An "Interpretary" For The Is Discipline, A Compendium Of Interpretations Of Basic Is Concepts And Methods From Different Theoretical Perspectives, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This article proposes the development of an "interpretary," a compendium of interpretations of IS concepts and methods from different theoretical perspectives. Such an interpretary would recognize the importance of different theoretical perspectives while also moving toward an organized body of knowledge for the IS discipline. An idealized interpretary can be viewed as a two-dimensional concept interpretation matrix whose cells contain interpretations of specific concepts from specific theoretical perspectives. The first column is a list of important IS concepts. The other columns represent specific theoretical perspectives. Each cell contains an interpretation of a particular concept from a particular perspective Thus, the …

Optimal Warning Strategies: Punishment Ought Not To Be Inflicted Where The Penal Provision Is Not Properly Conveyed, Murat C. Mungan

Scholarly Publications

Law enforcers frequently issue warnings, as opposed to sanctions, when they detect first-time offenders. However, virtually all of the law and economics literature dealing with optimal penalty schemes for repeat offenders suggest that issuing warnings is a sub-optimal practice. Another observed phenomenon is the joint use of warnings and sanctions in law enforcement: person A may receive a sanction, whereas person B is only warned for committing the same offense. This situation can be explained through the use of hybrid warning strategies, a concept not yet formalized in the law enforcement literature, where law enforcers issue warnings to x% …

The R Journal (December 2013) 5(2): Complete Issue, The R Foundation

The R Journal

Editorial, Hadley Wickham

Contributed Research Articles

factorplot: Improving Presentation of Simple Contrasts in Generalized Linear Models, David A. Armstrong II

spMC: Modelling Spatial Random Fields with Continuous Lag Markov Chains, Luca Sartore

RNetCDF: A Package for Reading and Writing NetCDF Datasets, Pavel Michna and Milton Woods

Surface Melting Curve Analysis with R, Stefan Rödiger, Alexander Böhm and Ingolf Schimke

Performance Attribution for Equity Portfolios, Yang Lu and David Kane

ExactCIdiff: An R Package for Computing Exact Confidence Intervals for the Difference of Two Proportions, Guogen Shan and Weizhen Wang

rlme: An R Package for Rank-Based Estimation and Prediction in Random …

Developing, Refining, And Validating A Survey To Measure Stereotypes And Biases That Women Face In Industry, Erin D. Webb

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Almost any woman who has worked in a male dominated industry has faced a gender stereotype or bias of some type. Some of these women have even developed coping mechanisms to counteract these biases and make day-to-day interactions at work tolerable. Gathering information to reveal these stereotypes and biases can pose a distinctive challenge. Many women do not want to reveal the challenges that they have faced in their careers, and the vastness of types of challenges makes asking the correct questions very difficult. Through testing, this study has developed a valid data collection instrument that can be used to …

Educator Perceptions Of The Opitimal Professional Development Experience, Kent Lloyd Pettet

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Appropriateness Of Consolidation In Illinois: A Study Of The Impact Of Poverty, District Type, And Size On Expenditures And Achievement, James Dunlap

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Global Digital Elevation Model Accuracy Assessment In The Himalaya, Nepal, Luke G. Miles

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are digital representations of surface topography or terrain. Collection of DEM data can be done directly through surveying and taking ground control point (GCP) data in the field or indirectly with remote sensing using a variety of techniques. The accuracies of DEM data can be problematic, especially in rugged terrain or when differing data acquisition techniques are combined. For the present study, ground data were taken in various protected areas in the mountainous regions of Nepal. Elevation, slope, and aspect were measured at nearly 2000 locations. These ground data were imported into a Geographic Information System …

I'M Gonna Write That Down: Research On Bullying And Recognition Of Perception Toward Initiation Of Intervention A Whole-School Approach To Bringing All Stakeholders' Perceptions On Bullying In Line And Training Students To Distinguish Tattling From Reporting In Grades 3-6, Brad Tassell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research on whole-school bullying programs shows some effectiveness in creating awareness and a reduction in overall bullying with vigilant supervision. Roleplaying games repeatedly taught to students help them deal with bullying in specific situations, but all these interventions leave a great deal to be desired when conditions are not in line with the training, most of which most are not (Smith, Schneider, Smith, & Ananiadou, 2004). In addition, student perceptions can differ from the staff and administration. A wide gap exists between how students, parents, teachers, and administrators perceive bullying. Students remain confused and flounder in the moment when they …