Digital Commons Network^™

The Virtual Guru And Beyond: The Changing Role Of Teacher In North Indian Classical Music, Wallace Harvey

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

This project, which encompasses both written and performed aspects, is an exploration of the North Indian classical music tradition as it is taught in twenty-first century California, and a de-exoticization of a musical style that most Americans are unacquainted with. A brief overview of the basic theory, history, and practice of North Indian classical music is followed by a comparison of oral and written musical traditions. A specific composition from the North Indian classical tradition is included as an example of the form and how that form is transmitted. Emerging modes of transmission include multimedia and network technologies; their use, …

Creating Safe Spaces: Bergson, Affirmation, And The Constitution Of Lgbtq Identity, Timothy Ross Johnston

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

The central claim of this dissertation is that the ability to feel comfortable, both in terms of your identity and in your fluid movement through the world, is the result of what I call affirmative feedback loops. When your environment affirms and reflects your identity back to you, you become comfortable with yourself and in that environment. This affirmation can be as direct as someone explicitly affirming you (for example, when you come out) or it can be as subtle and quotidian as being able to display photos of loved ones in your workspace. I argue that caring for other …

The Chinese Equity Risk Factor Model Based On Heavy Tailed Distributions, And Its Application In Risk Management And Portfolio Optimization, Tianyu Lu

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

In financial risk and portfolio management, the heavy tailed distributions of one-dimensional asset returns and complex dependence structure among multi-dimensional asset returns are two widely discussed problems. Various distributions, which share the desired properties, such as heavy tails, skewness and kurtosis, have been introduced and applied into practice. On the other hand, factor modeling as a technique of dimension reduction, has been used in multivariate statistical analysis and econometric model building, especially in high-dimensional world of financial risk management In this dissertation, we study these two popular problems in risk and portfolio management. The findings are empirically examined through their …

Two Essays In Financial Econometrics, Yang Yu

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

This dissertation research explores two interesting problems in financial econometrics. In part one, we considers the problem of pricing European options in the presence of proportional transaction costs when the underlying stock price follows a jump-diffusion process. Based on utility maximization approach, the option pricing and hedging can be reformulated as a singular stochastic control problem. And furthermore, the value functions of the problem are the solutions of a free boundary problem, in particular, a partial integro-differential equation, under different boundary conditions. And we develop a coupled backward induction algorithm which is based on the connection between the free boundary …

Targeted Design Of Dual Kinase Inhibitors For Breast Cancer, Yulin Huang

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

Abstract of the Dissertation Targeted Design of Dual Kinase Inhibitors for Breast Cancer by Yulin Huang Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry and Structural Biology Stony Brook University 2013 In this dissertation, several projects for kinase drug design are presented. These projects employ computational techniques to study binding specificity and resistance of kinase inhibitors with breast cancer target proteins through structural and energetic analysis. In Chapter 1, an introduction to molecular targeted therapeutics for breast cancer and computational techniques for structure-based drug discovery is described. ErbB family members and IGFIR are important targets for breast cancer. In Chapter 2, we have …

Algorithms And Structures For Covariance Estimates With Application To Finance, Tengjie Jia

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

Factor analysis is an important statistical tool used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables which are called factors. Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) has been popular for fitting factor analysis. Among variety of iterative methods that can be used to perform MLE, the EM algorithm is probably one of the most stable in terms of monotonely increasing the likelihood and the easiest to implement. However, in the real world, the rate of convergence of EM could be painfully slow in factor model estimation. In this dissertation, we study two popular …

Error Reduction In Parameter Estimation With Case Studies In Risk Measurement And Portfolio Optimization, Xiaoping Zhou

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

Parameter estimation is an important step in probabilistic and statistical modeling. Maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) are the classical parameter estimators. However, in the real world, for small samples or ill-posed problems maximum likelihood estimates may be difficult to find through direct numerical optimization, and are unstable and sensitive to outliers. In this dissertation, we study two popular problems in financial risk management and portfolio selection. The first problem is operational risk modeling. Data insufficiency and reporting threshold are two main difficulties in estimating the loss severity distributions in operational risk modeling. We investigate four methods including MLE, expectation-maximization (EM), penalized …

Volumetric Focus+Context Visualization Techniques, Xin Zhao

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

This thesis introduces new techniques and applications for volumetric visualization. Focus+context visualization and interaction techniques are used to navigate and interact with objects in information spaces. They provide in-place magnification of a region of the display without consequently losing any context representation. Diverse focus+context visualization techniques are of broad use in different application domains, such as geovirtual environments, navigation and visualization of large graphs or hierarchies, as well as the volume rendering (e.g. | for medical applications). However, how to accurately represent and highlight the focus objects while maximally keeping all the important context information (e.g. | shape features and …

Active Learning Using Model-Eliciting Activities And Inquiry-Based Learning Activities In Dynamics, Jeffrey Phillip Georgette

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on a year-long project of implementing active learning in undergraduate dynamics courses at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from 2012-2013. The purpose is to increase conceptual understanding of critical dynamics concepts and to repair misconceptions of the students. Conceptual understanding in Dynamics is vital to understanding the big picture, building upon previous knowledge, and better understanding the behavior of engineering systems. Through various hands-on activities, students make predictions, test their conceptions, and solve real world problems. These active learning methods allow students to improve their learning of Dynamics concepts. Education research on active learning is present in …

Measuring The Counter/Assumption Model's Effect On Argumentation Quality, Evan D G Ovadia

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a new platform called See the Reason, built upon a tree- structured argumentation model called the Counter/Assumption model. In the Counter/Assumption model, a topic is posted first, then under that topic, reasons for and against, and for each reason, counterarguments, and for any counterargu- ment, more counterarguments. The model enables us to systematically determine whether a claim is “tentatively true” or “tentatively false,” in an effort to motivate people to make their side’s claims tentatively true and the opposing side’s claims tentatively false, thus encouraging conflict. Research suggests that debates with more conflict are better, so this …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Superintendents’ And Principals’ Experiences In A Shared Professional Development Process, John R. Severson

Dissertations

For this qualitative study, I explored and described how superintendents and principals interpreted and experienced a sustained professional development process focusing on instruction and student learning, a form of Elmore’s Superintendents in the Classroom (SITC) Network. Specifically, I examined how the addition of principals in the SITC learning model experience changed the superintendents’ and principals’ knowledge and beliefs as well as their behavior in three areas: their individual experiences, the working relationship between superintendent and principal, and the way they now think about and encourage student learning.

For this phenomenological study, superintendents and principals were selected and individually interviewed from …

Magic Squares Of Squares Of Order 4 Over Certain Finite Fields, Drew O’Neill

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

A magic square of order n over a commutative ring R is an n x n matrix such that all the rows, columns, and the two diagonals add up to a fixed sum, which is called the magic sum. If all of the numbers in a magic square are perfect squares in R, it is called a magic square of squares. The rings under consideration in this thesis are either Z or Zp where p is a prime. In this thesis I present methods of constructing magic squares of squares of order 4 from selected ones of order 3. A …

Molecular Dynamics Simulations Using Advanced Sampling And Polarizable Force Fields, Tugba Kucukkal

All Dissertations

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were carried out for aqueous dipeptides, water over self-assembled monolayer (SAM) surfaces, and the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) ion channel. The main goal is to use advanced methods to increase the accuracy of molecular dynamics simulations while seeking solutions to problems relevant to chemistry, biophysics and materials science. In addition, activation energies of several cyclodimerization reactions were studied quantum mechanically. The simulations of the aqueous dipeptides and SAM surfaces involve modeling and detailed analysis of interfacial water, which is of interest to a range of fields from biology to materials science. For example, water has a …

Offshore Wind Energy Study And Its Impact On South Carolina Transmission System, Tingting Wang

All Dissertations

As one of the renewable resources, wind energy is developing dramatically in last ten years. Offshore wind energy, with more stable speed and less environmental impact than onshore wind, will be the direction of large scale wind industry. Large scale wind farm penetration affects power system operation, planning and control. Studies concerning type III turbine based wind farm integration problems such as wind intermittency, harmonics, low voltage ride through capability have made great progress. However, there are few investigations concerning switching transient impacts of large scale type III turbine based offshore wind farm in transmission systems. This topic will gain …

Uncertain Growth And The Value Of The Future, Jaume Masoliver, Miquel Montero, John Geanakoplos, J. Doyne Farmer

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

For environmental problems such as global warming future costs must be balanced against present costs. This is traditionally done using an exponential function with a constant discount rate, which reduces the present value of future costs. The result is highly sensitive to the choice of discount rate and has generated a major controversy as to the urgency for immediate action. We study analytically several standard interest rate models from finance and compare their properties to empirical data. From historical time series for nominal interest rates and inflation covering 14 countries over hundreds of years, we find that extended periods of …

Uniform Consistency Of Nonstationary Kernel-Weighted Sample Covariances For Nonparametric Regression, Degui Li, Peter C.B. Phillips, Jiti Gao

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We obtain uniform consistency results for kernel-weighted sample covariances in a nonstationary multiple regression framework that allows for both fixed design and random design coefficient variation. In the fixed design case these nonparametric sample covariances have different uniform convergence rates depending on direction, a result that differs fundamentally from the random design and stationary cases. The uniform convergence rates derived are faster than the corresponding rates in the stationary case and confirm the existence of uniform super-consistency. The modelling framework and convergence rates allow for endogeneity and thus broaden the practical econometric import of these results. As a specific application, …

A Case Study Investigating How Art Education Fosters Collaboration In An Urban Environment Through The Lens Of Public Pedagogy, Tracy Fox

Art Education Projects

This case study examines how one particular after-school arts program in an urban environment bridges the gap between a university campus and the community it serves, creating opportunities for collaboration via the arts. The study was conducted at a community center run by Buffalo State.

Over the course of the study, ten interviews were conducted with a variety of people connected to the Community Arts Center’s (CAC) arts programs, including partners in the public arts initiative. The data was collected and analyzed over the course of eight weeks through the lens of Henry Giroux’s public pedagogy, which focuses on educational …

Structural Characterization Of Super-Acid Oligomerized Fatty Esters., Esam Allehyani

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Fatty acid methyl esters can be oligomerized with very strong acid catalysts - superacids such as tetrafluoroboric or triflic acid with formation of dimer and trimer fatty acids at much lower temperature, such as 80-90 °C, than what is used presently. Insight into the reaction of polymerization of fatty esters/ acids can be obtained by structural characterization. This would determine the properties of the oligomeric products and their ability to substitute currently used materials. It was presumed that dimer fatty, trimer fatty acid esters, and oligomeric fatty acid esters are produced by polymerization of fatty acid methyl esters by a …

Phosphate Esters, Thiophosphate Esters And Metal Thiophosphates As Lubricant Additives, David W. Johnson, John E. Hils

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Phosphate esters, thiophosphate esters and metal thiophosphates have been used as lubricant additives for over 50 years. While their use has been extensive, a detailed knowledge of how they work has been a much more recent development. In this paper, the use of phosphate esters and thiophosphate esters as anti-wear or extreme pressure additives is reviewed with an emphasis on their mechanism of action. The review includes the use of alkyl phosphates, triaryl phosphates and metal containing thiophosphate esters. The mechanisms of these materials interacting with a range of iron and steel based bearing material are examined.

Synthesis Of Ferrocene Copolymers And Investigation Of Their Electrochemical Properties., Alzharani Ahmed

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Ferrocene is an organometallic compound. It is a classical metallocene consisting of two cyclopentadienyl rings bound on opposite sides of a central iron atom. Such organometallic compounds are also called sandwich compounds. Ferrocene copolymers have well known electrochemical capabilities. The main objective of this thesis is to synthesize vinyl ferrocene copolymers and test their electrochemical properties in aqueous solutions with different electrolytes (sodium nitrate, sodium perchlorate, and phosphate buffered saline). Vinylferrocene and 3-phenyl[5]ferrocenophane-1,5- dimethylene were synthesized using a Wittig reaction. Both ferrocene monomers were copolymerized with N-ethylmaleimide and N-phenylmaleimide and the resulting polymers were analyzed by Gel Permeation chromatography, IR …

In Perfect Xen, A Performance Study Of The Emerging Xen Scheduler, Ryan Hnarakis

Master's Theses

Fifty percent of Fortune 500 companies trust Xen, an open-source bare-metal hypervisor, to virtualize their websites and mission critical services in the cloud. Providing superior fault tolerance, scalability, and migration, virtualization allows these companies to run several isolated operating systems simultaneously on the same physical server. These isolated operating systems, called virtual machines, require a virtual traffic guard to cooperate with one another. This guard known as the Credit2 scheduler along with the newest Xen hypervisor was recently developed to supersede the older schedulers. Since wasted CPU cycles can be costly, the Credit2 prototype must undergo significant performance validation before …

Time Variation Of The Broad Hβ And Hα Emission Lines In Active Galactic Nuclei, Bryan R. Scott

Physics

High-quality Keck/LRIS long-slit spectra for a sample of 97 active galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (redshift between 0.02 & 0.1; Black Hole Mass approximately 10⁷ Solar Masses) were obtained between January 2009 and March 2010 in order to study the black hole (BH) mass scaling relation in the local universe. Typically, the width of the broad Hβ emission line is used to measure the mass of the black hole (MBH). However, signs of variability in the emission line profile are seen for eight objects: While broad Hβ emission lines had previously been observed in spectra from …

Heat Transfer Experiment: Energy Conservation, Ben Ward, Brett Wallace, Ryan Waltman

Mechanical Engineering

This proposal, prepared for the Mechanical Engineering Department by the HTEC design team will redesign and replace the current energy conversion lab that is inaccurate and out of date. The team will evaluate methods of energy conversion, specifically using braking systems, as well as existing labs in order to design an accurate and relatable experiment for this lab. The project team will work with Professor Kim Shollenberger in order to design an experiment that demonstrates energy conversion through the first law of thermodynamics while utilizing a common device that is practical in student’s lives. The final result of this project …

The Imperative Of Conserving California's Foothill Oak Woodlands, Lauren Phillips

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Exploring Human-Computer Interaction Through Bluetooth Low Energy Enabled Human Interface Devices, Tyler Durkin

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

No abstract provided.

Design And Development Of A Low-Cost Handheld Picoammeter, Malcolm Stagg

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Distribution Of Seaside Sparrows (Ammodramus Maritimus) During The Breeding And Nonbreeding Seasons, Bonnie J. Slaton

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Special Collection On Geology, Tectonics And Hydrocarbon Systems Of Se Asia, Peter D. Clift, Zhen Sun

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Consolidation And Suspension Of Mud From Lake Lery And Relevance To Wetland Restoration In Louisiana, Edward L. Lo

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Physical Activity Does Not Influence Obesity Risk: Time To Clarify The Public Health Message, Amy Luke, Richard S. Cooper

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.