Digital Commons Network^™

Energy Based Control System Designs For Underactuated Robot Fish Propulsion, Daniel Roper

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

In nature through millions of years of evolution fish and cetaceans have developed fast efficient and highly manoeuvrable methods of marine propulsion. A recent explosion in demand for sub sea robotics, for conducting tasks such as sub sea exploration and survey has left developers desiring to capture some of the novel mechanisms evolved by fish and cetaceans to increase the efficiency of speed and manoeuvrability of sub sea robots. Research has revealed that interactions with vortices and other unsteady fluid effects play a significant role in the efficiency of fish and cetaceans. However attempts to duplicate this with robotic fish …

Cymodocea Nodosa As A Bioindicator Of Coastal Habitat Quality: An Integrative Approach From Organism To Community Scale., Vasillis Papathanasiou

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) has encouraged considerable research on the development of water quality bioindicators. Seagrasses, that are highly sensitive to direct and indirect anthropogenic stress, and specified as quality elements from the WFD, have been at the center of this effort. In this study the use of Cymodocea nodosa, a widely distributed angiosperm in the Mediterranean Sea, as a bioindicator of anthropogenic stress was tested. Key biotic features of two meadows growing in locations of contrasting ecological status in the N. Aegean Sea, Greece, were sampled and analysed following a hierarchical designed approach. Plants from the degraded …

An Investigation Into The Effects Of Traditional Neuromuscular Training Vs Rider Specific Training On Novice Rider Position, Eleanor Boden

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

The equine industry and within it, the competition rider community, is increasingly acknowledging that rider strength and fitness is vital in achieving the best results in competition. The sport of horse riding is described as unique in its posture and motion patterns and cannot be easily be compared to the actions of any other athletic endeavour. There are several factors that cause a horse to not move correctly, the most common being an unbalanced rider. Other sporting disciplines are more aware of the potential of the utilisation of additional methods to improve performance, for example Pilates is commonly used to …

Optimisation Of Shot Peening For 12cr Steel In Steam Turbine Blade Applications, Mark Newby

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Power generation in thermal stations typically relies on large steam turbines. The corrosion resistant steel blades used in the last stage of a typical low pressure rotor set are approximately 1m long and experience high centrifugal loading during service. They operate in a wet steam environment, at approximately 60°C while rotating at 3000rpm, and failure modes include high and low cycle fatigue, stress corrosion cracking or corrosion fatigue. The blades are retained by a fir tree root which is normally shot-peened to generate compressive residual stresses that resist crack initiation. Finite element (FE) modelling has indicated that, in the absence …

The Effects Of Ageing, Individual Differences And Limited Resources On Consumer Decision Making, Jennifer Marie Kerss

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

This thesis presents six original experiments investigating the relationship between age-related gains and losses in cognitive and emotional abilities and consumer decision making. Novel tasks designed to closely resemble real consumer decisions were used to assess how older and younger adults fare when making everyday decisions. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the relationship between consumer decision making and measures of fluid intelligence, crystallised intelligence and numeric ability in older and younger adults. The data revealed that numeric ability and fluid intelligence independently predicted consumer decision making in older adults. In Experiment 1, participants made factual and inferential decisions about utility …

The Dynamics Of Suspended Particles In A Seasonally Stratified Coastal Sea, Jaimie Cross

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

A comprehensive investigation into the relationship between physical forcing and sus- pended particles in the shallow shelf region of the Western English Channel has been conducted, in order to evaluate the temporal dynamics of suspended particle populations. Measurements were taken across tidal cycles and seasons at station L4, part of the Western Channel Observatory (WCO), using the combination of a free-fall microstructure profiler and holographic imaging. Confirmation that L4 is weakly stratified is given, and that the formation of the seasonal thermocline is substantially altered by the spring-neap cy- cle. Stratification is variable and prone to periodic and partial erosion …

Conceptualizing The Use Of Cognitive Interventions Among Persons With Intellectual Disabilities Who Experience Depression, Abdoulaye Diallo, Shawn P. Saladin, Darlene A.G. Groomes, Jerome Fischer, Sandra Hansmann

School of Rehabilitation Services & Counseling Faculty Publications

Depression can affect the lives of all persons and can have especially profound implications on those with cognitive limitations; however, depression need not be an insurmountable roadblock to employment for persons with intellectual disabilities. Cognitive interventions - such as life story approach, socio-cognitive, and rational emotive behavior therapy-can be effective for litigating problems with depression among those with cognitive limitation including employment-related barriers due to depression. This article reviews how counselors can use cognitive interventions' behavioral and cognitive components to assist those with intellectual disabilities with depression.

Lexical/Semantic Organisation In Bilingual And Monolingual Infants, Rafalla Farag

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Abstract Previous studies show that bilingual infants are slower in developing phonology and tend to experience some difficulties in acquiring some grammatical rules. Furthermore, as compared to their monolingual peers, bilingual infants tend to have less vocabulary. This thesis set out to explore how bilingual infants organise the lexical information in their two languages. Specifically, we examined the lexical-semantic relationships between words within and across languages using a word-to-word priming paradigm. The thesis sought also to uncover any relationship between semantic priming effects and the size of vocabulary. Vocabulary measures such as the BPVS II, the SETK, and the Oxford …

The Effects Of Anthropometrical, Physiological And Environmental Factors On Surfing Performance, Matthew John Barlow

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

The aim of this thesis was to investigate how physiological and environmental factors affect surfing performance. Studies were performed that assessed the effect of anthropometric and physiological characteristics of surfers on rank and ability, the effect of creatine supplementation on surfing performance and the effect of wave size, wave period and the ability of surfers on physiological and performance indices of surfing. Study one investigated the effect of the anthropometric variables on rank and rating of ability. This was measured across a sample of 79 surfers ranging from intermediate to professional surfers. Significant correlations were found for endomorphy (r = …

The Dynamics Of Dense Water Cascades: From Laboratory Scales To The Arctic Ocean, Fred Wobus

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

The sinking of dense shelf waters down the continental slope (or “cascading”) contributes to oceanic water mass formation and carbon cycling. Cascading is therefore of significant importance for the global overturning circulation and thus climate. The occurrence of cascades is highly intermittent in space and time and observations of the process itself (rather than its outcomes) are scarce. Global climate models do not typically resolve cascading owing to numerical challenges concerning turbulence, mixing and faithful representation of bottom boundary layer dynamics. This work was motivated by the need to improve the representation of cascading in numerical ocean circulation models. Typical …

The Working Class On Holiday: British Comedy In Benidorm And Classed Tourism, Mark E. Casey

Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

In drawing from the popular TV comedy Benidorm this paper seeks to engage with research and discourses held around working class tourism. The paper will at first discuss Benidorm, focusing upon the characters within the show and asking how is social class presented and performed? And ask who or what are we really laughing at? The paper then moves to examine the background to the birth of the package holiday and the development of the mass tourism resort in Spain. It then draws on writing and research focused around social class and tourism, in particular the work of Andrews (2009, …

Learning, Self-Organisation And Homeostasis In Spiking Neuron Networks Using Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity, James Humble

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Spike-timing dependent plasticity is a learning mechanism used extensively within neural modelling. The learning rule has been shown to allow a neuron to find the onset of a spatio-temporal pattern repeated among its afferents. In this thesis, the first question addressed is ‘what does this neuron learn?’ With a spiking neuron model and linear prediction, evidence is adduced that the neuron learns two components: (1) the level of average background activity and (2) specific spike times of a pattern. Taking advantage of these findings, a network is developed that can train recognisers for longer spatio-temporal input signals using spike-timing dependent …

The Characterisation Of The Freezing Damage Response During Flowering In European And Middle Eastern Wheat Cultivars (Triticum Aestivum L), Mohammed Hamdan Edan Al-Issawi

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is occasionally exposed to low temperature during flowering and huge economic losses can occur especially in some key production countries such as Australia. Although it is generally predicted that there will be a rise in global temperature there are still predicted to be risks associated with low temperature for temperate crops. Post head emergence frost damage remains a major constraint to increasing wheat production. Five Iraqi varieties (Abu-Ghariab, Fatah, Sham6, IPA95 and IPA99) were screened for their frost hardiness (LT50). Abu-Ghariab was chosen for further investigations along with the European cv. Claire because the acclimated frost …

The Effect Of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy On Osteoclast And Osteoblast Function, Hadil Al-Hadi

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Bone remodelling, the process by which the skeleton adapts to environmental changes, is dependent on the actions of osteoclasts that resorb bone and osteoblasts which make new bone matrix. Aberrant remodelling underpins bone loss in several debilitating skeletal diseases such as osteoporosis, metastatic breast cancer and multiple myeloma. Changes in remodelling activity can also arise as a consequence of therapeutic intervention for instance intravenous bisphosphonate treatment is associated with osteochemonecrosis of the jaw and localised osteoradionecrosis is a common side effect of radiotherapy. Hyperbaric oxygen is often used as an adjunctive therapy in the treatment of these disorders. HBO involves …

Challenges And Potential Of Technology Integration In Modern Ship Management Practices, Suresh Bhardwaj

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

This thesis explores the challenges and potential of technology integration in current ship management practices. While technology advancements were designed to be contributing to minimising task complexity, issues such as fatigue, increased administrative burden and technology assisted accidents still plague the industry. In spite of the clearly recognisable benefits of using modern technology in the management of ships, in practice its application appears lacking by a considerable margin. The main driver of the study was to appreciate the cause of this disparity. The study first reviewed a wide body of literature on issues involving the use of technology which included …

Extended Notation. The Depiction Of The Unconventional, Christian Dimpker

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

Most extended instrumental playing techniques are still deprived of a conventional method of notation. In order to facilitate the utilisation of these unconventional musical elements, a coherent and consistent notation system is developed in this thesis. It comprises chapters on string instruments, wind instruments, percussion instruments, plucked instruments and keyboard instruments. A systematic notation of unconventional instrumental playing techniques has not yet been attempted, nor have all tech-niques subject to this work yet been explained in detail. In order to coherently depict unconventional playing techniques, a set of criteria is defined. These criteria postulate that all developments are supposed to …

Sayre: Undergraduate Catalog 2013-2014, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Undergraduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Plan Dose Evaluation Of Three Dimensional Conformal Radiotherapy Planning (3d-Crt) Of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (Npc): Experience Of A Tertiary Care University Hospital In Pakistan, Ahmed Nadeem Abbasi, Asim Hafiz, Nasir Ali, Khurshid Ahmed Khan

Department of Radiation Oncology

Background: Radiation therapy is the mainstay of treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Importance of tumor coverage and challenges posed by its unique and critical location are well evident. Therefore we aimed to evaluate our radiation treatment plan through dose volume histograms (DVHs) to find planning target volume (PTV) dose coverage and factors affecting it.MATERIALS AND Methods: This retrospective study covered 45 histologically proven nasopharyngeal cancer patients who were treated with definitive 3D-CRT and chemotherapy between Feb 2006 to March 2013 at the Department of Oncology, Section Radiation Oncology ,Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan. DVH was evaluated to find numbers of …

Adhd And Positive Smoking Expectancies The Role Of Peer Influence As A Moderating Factor, Lauren Dattilo

Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated considerable links between symptoms of ADHD and negative outcomes such as increased risk for cigarette use, which, despite an overall decline, remains a serious public health concern. Cigarette use is often associated with positive expectancies, or ideas about the effects of smoking. While some work on ADHD symptoms has focused on alcohol expectancies, no work has investigated how they might be related to smoking expectancies Other factors, such as susceptibility to peer influence, also remain shallowly explored. The present study is the first to examine interrelations among ADHD symptoms, smoking expectancies, and susceptibility to peer influence. It …

El Círculo Familiar Bilingüe De Libros / The Bilingual Family Book Club: Creating Translanguaging Spaces With Latin@ Picture Books, Kelli Edenfield Criss

Theses and Dissertations

The study employed a bilingual family book club framework to group parents and children together during bilingual literature discussion and response. Employing a qualitative design and constant comparative analysis, the researcher examined what happened when a bi-monthly bilingual family book club, involving seven emergent bilingual children, their parents, and a researcher/facilitator, was initiated and sustained over a five month period. The study's context was a Florida panhandle elementary school's media center and a public library branch. Through analysis of book club session and interview transcripts, the researcher discovered that students and parents employed their repertoires of linguistic and cultural practices. …

An Evaluation Of Check-In/Check-Out With Accountability Tracking For At-Risk Students In A High-Need Elementary School, Ashley Lauren Barber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A multi-tiered system of supports offers a comprehensive model for the prevention of academic and behavior problems in schools. To date, research has emphasized the impact of universal and intensive interventions. However, the need for research on secondary or targeted group interventions (Tier 2) for those students who do not respond to the universal level of support is growing. This study evaluated CICO, a Tier 2 intervention, in improving student behavior when it is used with three elementary students from a high-need population and in conjunction with student accountability tracking, designed to promote parental involvement. Functional assessments indicated that all …

Supply Chain Optimization Of Blood Products, Serkan Gunpinar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Major challenges in the management of blood supply chain are related to the shortage and wastage of the blood products. Given the perishability characteristics of blood which can be stored up to a limited number of days, if hospitals and blood centers keep an excessive number of blood units on inventory, wastages may occur. On the other hand, if sufficient number of blood units are not stored on inventory, shortages of this resource may cause the cancellations of important activities and increase the fatality rates at hospitals. Three mathematical models have been developed with the goal to improve the efficiency …

Utilizing Tagteach To Enhance Proficiency In Dance Movements, Mallory Joanne Quinn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate TAGteach as a training procedure to increase the fluency of three dance movements in a multiple baseline across behaviors design with 4 students of dance. Target behaviors included a pirouette/turn, kick, and a leap/jump, respective of the level of the class. A dance instructor was trained to implement the TAGteach procedure by the primary researcher. The targeted dance movements remained at a stable level during baseline and improved sequentially for each participant following the introduction of the TAGteach training. Implications for future research are discussed.

User-Based Filter Utilization For Multicarrier Schemes, Zekeriyya Esat Ankarali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Multicarrier modulation is a transmission technique that is quite convenient for high data rates in wireless communication. Information symbols are partitioned and parallelly sent over multiple narrowband subchannels. Pulse shaping filters are critically important in multicarrier

modulation for determining the characteristics of signal in time and frequency domains. In this thesis, we propose a new pulse shaping approach for multicarrier schemes to increase spectral efficiency in multi-user scenarios. Conventionally, the time-frequency lattice and the prototype filter are designed considering the worst-case of time-varying multipath channel. However, this approach ignores to make use of multi-user diversity and leads to excessive spacings …

Classification Models In Clinical Decision Making, Eleazar Gil-Herrera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we present a collection of manuscripts describing the development of prognostic models designed to assist clinical decision making. This work is motivated by limitations of commonly used techniques to produce accessible prognostic models with easily interpretable and clinically credible results. Such limitations hinder prognostic model widespread utilization in medical practice.

Our methodology is based on Rough Set Theory (RST) as a mathematical tool for clinical data anal- ysis. We focus on developing rule-based prognostic models for end-of life care decision making in an effort to improve the hospice referral process. The development of the prognostic models is …

An Evaluation Of A Parent Implemented In- Situ Pedestrian Safety Skills Intervention For Individuals With Autism, Bethany Ann Harriage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated a parent implemented in-situ pedestrian safety skills intervention for three individuals with autism. Specifically, this study examined the utility of using a behavioral skills training (BST) to help parents implement the most-to-least prompting procedures in training their children with autism pedestrian safety skills in community settings. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess parent implementation of in-situ pedestrian training as well as child participants' independently performed correct skills. Results indicated that parents implemented most-to-least prompting procedures with high levels of accuracy across streets during intervention and fading of BST. All child participants improved their …

The Acquisition And Usage Of The Sodas Problem Solving Method Among Adults At-Risk For Homelessness, Collin Edward Streetman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals experiencing extended homelessness face multifaceted risks in physical health, nutrition, substance use, mental health, continuing unemployment, and incarceration. Some of these adults may benefit from learning a problem-solving decision-making method to assist them in dealing with everyday problems they encounter. This study taught three men with extensive histories of homelessness, but who were currently housed, the SODAS problem-solving decision-making method, and assessed their ability to learn it and guide another adult in the use of the method in simulated role-play problem situations. The acquisition of SODAS from behavioral rehearsal training was evaluated using a multiple-baseline design across participants' role …

Cognitive Processes Developed By Students When Solving Mathematical Problems Within Technological Environments, Fernando Barrera-Mora, Aarón Reyes-Rodríguez

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this paper we document and discuss how the use of digital technologies in problem solving activities can help students to develop mathematical competences; particularly, we analyze the characteristics of reasoning that students develop as a result of using Cabri Geometry software in problem solving. We argue that the dynamical nature of representations constructed with Cabri, and the availability of measure tools integrated to it are important elements that enhance students’ ability to think mathematically and foster the implementation of several heuristic strategies in problem solving processes.

Mathematical Problem Solving In Training Elementary Teachers From A Semiotic Logical Approach, Martín Socas, Josefa Hernández

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The aim of this article is to consider the professional knowledge and competences of mathematics teachers in compulsory education, and to propose basic tasks and activities in an initial training programme in the framework of a global proposal for “Immersion” in the curriculum of the educational phase which the trainee teacher would go on to work in. Problem-solving, in this context, is considered as being an inherent part of mathematics and this is described in terms of problem-solving, establishing connections between concepts, operations and implicit processes in the mathematical activity (conceptual field) and their relationships problem-solving; and it is assumed …

Becoming Aware Of Mathematical Gaps In New Curricular Materials: A Resource-Based Analysis Of Teaching Practice, José Guzman, Carolyn Kieran

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The study featured in this article, with its central focus on resources-in-use, draws upon salient aspects of the documentational approach of didactics. It includes an a priori analysis of the curricular resources being used by a teacher for the first time, followed by detailed in situ observations of the unfolding of her teaching practice involving these resources. The central mathematical problem of the lesson being analyzed deals with families of polynomial functions. The analysis highlights the teacher’s growing awareness of the mathematical gaps in the resources she is using, which we conjecture to be a first step for her in …