Digital Commons Network^™

Visual Images And The Rhetoric Of Environmental Advocacy, Collin Syfert

Open Access Master's Theses

This project investigates visual representations of staged environmental protests that are produced and distributed by the environmental-activist organization Greenpeace, and broadcast through international news media. By examining eight images taken from four separate Greenpeace image campaigns, this thesis shows how these demonstrations generally, and images of them more specifically, draw attention to climate change issues through their rhetorical capacity to challenge dominant cultural values that have enabled climate-changing human activities to persist. As such, the rhetorical capacity of these images further demonstrates Kevin DeLuca’s image event theory, which suggests how visual demonstrations can be designed to attract mass media attention …

Rising Tides And Changing Attitudes: Community Adaptive Planning And Behavior Change In North Kingstown, Rhode Island, Clara Rubin

Open Access Master's Theses

The consequences of global climate change in the form of sea level rise and more frequent intense storms are likely to cause significant impacts on coastal ecosystems and critical infrastructure in vulnerable coastal municipalities. This could result in major economic losses and social disruption unless these communities proactively plan for the impacts of a changing climate. As a small state with a large coastal population, Rhode Island is highly vulnerable to impacts from climate change, thus the state is positioned to act as a potential leader in a national movement towards proactive adaptation. It is clear that actions must be …

Detection Of Diffuse Seafloor Venting Using Structured Light Imaging, Clara J. Smart

Open Access Master's Theses

A systematic detection process capable of locating and quantifying diffuse seafloor venting using remote technology does not currently exist. Such venting is difficult to detect as it is characterized by both low temperature and low flux rates which cannot be distinguished using current remote acoustic or chemical sensors. Therefore the lack of understanding with regard to the distribution of active sites prevents a good estimation of the contribution of diffuse flow to thermal and chemical patterns within the broader ocean system.

Data collected over active vent fields have indicated that a structured light laser sensor, also used for high resolution …

Improving Performance Of Data-Parallel Applications On Cpu-Gpu Heterogeneous Systems, Ronald Duarte

Open Access Master's Theses

Using two full applications with different characteristics, this thesis explores the performance and energy efficiency of CUDA-enabled GPUs and multi-core SIMD CPUs. Our implementations efficiently exploit both SIMD and thread-level parallelism on multi-core CPUs and the computational capabilities of CUDA-enabled GPUs. We discuss general optimization techniques and cost comparison for our CPU-only and CPU-GPU platforms. Finally, we present an evaluation of the implementation effort required to efficiently utilize multi-core SIMD CPUs and CUDA-enabled GPUs. One of the applications, seam carving, has been widely used for content-aware resizing of images and videos with little to no perceptible distortion. The gradient kernel …

An Inversion Scheme For Shear Wave Speed Using Scholte Wave Dispersion, Jennifer L. Giard

Open Access Master's Theses

Acoustic propagation in littoral waters is greatly affected by seafloor sediment properties. Shear properties of sediments are also directly related to the strength of sediments for geotechnical applications. These factors emphasize the importance of estimating shear wave speeds in semi-consolidated shallow water sediments. One of the most promising approaches to estimate shear speed is to invert the shear speed profile using the dispersion of seismo-acoustic interface (Scholte) waves that travel along the water-sediment boundary. The propagation speed and attenuation of Scholte waves are closely related to the shear wave speed and attenuation over a depth of 1-2 wavelengths into the …

The Impact Of Data Complexity On Privacy Management Resulting From Vehicular (V2x) Applications, Andre Zierfuss

Open Access Master's Theses

In recent years, privacy management has become one of the most complex processes in the connected world. Fundamental technologies like GPS, cellular communications, and the Internet have become mandatory equipment in the modern vehicle. Subsequently, the vehicle became part of this connected world, wherein data are constantly sent and received. Accordingly, it became inevitable to introduce data security to vehicular communication. Hence, the development of location based and other connected services, introduced a new level of data complexity. In scenarios where GPS data are tied to certain entities or databases consisting of entire personal profiles, data cannot be treated separately …

First Principles, Unstructured, Dynamic Model For Regulating Co2 And Ph In Bicarbonate Buffered Perfusion Bioreactor, Ashish Gaurav Airan

Open Access Master's Theses

Since its inception, the biotechnology industry has faced the problem of pH control and CO₂ management. This research paper explores the challenges of developing a first principles, unstructured, dynamic, nonlinear mathematical model to maintain pH and control carbon dioxide levels in an aerobic Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell culture in a perfusion bioreactor. Perfusion bioreactor is an extremely complex bioreactor to model because the cells grow in a quasi-steady state system. Cell growth, feed, substrate consumption, by-product formation and product formation are all time dependent, equations for which can only be solved through numerical methods. Added complexity comes from …

Using The Press Clause To Amplify Civic Discourse Beyond Mere Opinion Sharing, Akilah N. Folami

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The First Amendment unambiguously proclaims that “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The First Amendment’s Speech Clause primarily bears the deliberative weight of protecting and maintaining the discursive space of America’s self-governing democracy. It has done so by indiscriminately protecting a broad array of expression from government intrusion. As a result, the Speech Clause has democratically legitimized such expression in America’s civic discourse. This legitimization is essential to a more deliberative democracy. The Speech Clause’s legitimizing function, however, has not helped to advance another essential element for a well-functioning deliberative democracy, namely, democratic …

Naxos Music Library Mobile Application [Review], Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This review evaluates a free mobile application provided by the streaming audio database Naxos Music Library.

Establishing Twenty-First-Century Information Fluency, Jennifer Sharkey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

In an effort to infuse information fluency into programming and curriculum, consideration of the learning environment and methods for integrating technology is essential.

Are Student Affairs Professionals “Educators?:” Student Affairs And The Scope Of The Educational Exemption Of Copyright Law, Dallas Long

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Copyright is a critical, emerging issue in American higher education. Copyright restricts how educators use copyrighted materials in teaching activities. Although the fair use doctrine and the educational exemption in U.S. copyright law provide exceptions for educators, student affairs professionals might not meet the standards of the educational exemption. This paper serves as a primer on U.S. copyright law, the fair use doctrine, and the educational exemption. Analyses of case law suggest student affairs professionals should rely on the fair use doctrine rather than the educational exemption when using copyrighted materials for educational purposes.

Library Challenges In Latin America: The Digital Context, Chloe Vicente

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Part of Global Perspectives, Jim Agee, Column Editor.

Column Editor’s Note. As the Column Title indicates, this column brings Global Perspectives to the Journal of Library Administration. Library administrators in different types of libraries share case studies, research, reports, or articles from a wide variety of geographic locations outside of North America.

Virtual Reference And In-Depth Assistance Using Shared Workspaces, David Stern

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The article describes the use of shared workspace to manipulate multiple media materials and demonstrate more sophisticated search methods that facilitate mastery of more advanced tools and techniques. It cites the availability of free reliable cross-platform options with tools that enhance remote reference services via interactive media. It indicates that shared workspace collaboration tools that enhance interaction options help alleviate the frustrations of librarians and researchers alike.

Surviving Slis: A Guide To Getting Through Library And Information Studies Graduate School, Eric Willey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This is a short book about getting into, getting through, and getting what you can out of library graduate school. Most of it is drawn from my experience in a library and information studies graduate program, some of it from a history graduate program, and the rest from conversations with fellow students, colleagues, and instructors.

Transfer Of Residues In Fingerprints, Morgan A. Turano

Open Access Master's Theses

In today’s society, it has become necessary to not only identify a terrorist participating in an attack, but determine what explosive was used and what the locations of the terrorist were prior to the attack. Such knowledge helps law officials determine if there are other credible threats, and link terrorists to each other and thereby identify potential terrorist cells.

Much of forensic science depends on Locard’s Exchange Principle, which states that when two objects contact each other there is a transfer of material between them. It is therefore expected that when terrorists handle explosives, explosive materials will be transferred first …

Myostatin And Tgf-Β Function In The Regulation Of Myogenesis In Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus Mykiss), A Basal Teleost, Ian Morrison Jaffe

Open Access Master's Theses

Myogenesis in vertebrates is a complex and intricately regulated process, various mechanisms of which have been alternately conserved or lost throughout the course of vertebrate evolution. Mammalian myogenesis is highly regulated by myostatin, a member of the Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF-β) family of cytokines, however, a similar role for myostatin in fish currently remains the subject of inquiry. Myostatin initiates signal transduction by means of the activin type IIb receptor, and shares considerable sequence and structural homology across vertebrate taxa, though its functional homology remains unclear. Two families of transgenic (TG) rainbow trout (RBT), one in which myostatin was inhibited …

Analysis Of University Historic Clothing And Textile Websites, Catherine Murphy

Open Access Master's Theses

Many universities with historic textile and costume collections do not have websites promoting their collections. The websites not only increase awareness about the collections, they also allow the institutions to become worldwide research facilities, while simultaneously promoting the historic textile and costume field.

This study evaluated private and public university historic textile and costume collections in the United States to determine how the websites were constructed and what material was included. Upon completion of website analysis, I contacted specific universities for further study based on how well the websites matched a list of components for a valuable website developed from …

Auras, Adele Ball

Scripps Senior Theses

Auras is a series of illustrations of Carlos Fuentes’s novella, Aura, a horror love story about memory, obsession, desire, corporeality and immortality. Defying narrative conventions, the story is told through second person. You are the protagonist, Felipe Montero, and are employed by a 109-year old widow to edit her husband's memoirs. Inside the pitchblack house, you fall in love with her beautiful and bizarre green-eyed niece, Aura. The gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion.

The story seems to take place within the confines of the …

Future Digital Advertising Trends: Finding A Balance Between Privacy And Personalization, Madison L. Shove

Scripps Senior Theses

As consumers spend more and more time online and using mobile devices, they leave an extensive data trail that can be captured; that information can be used to their benefit but might also be perceived as invasive. Technology advancements, such as data mining, are becoming more sophisticated and are delivering detailed personal information to the advertiser. Retailers, both off and online, such as Target, Safeway, and Amazon, will be inclined to maximize their sales by manipulating the data and targeting individuals. This has not always been the case—in the last twenty years advertising has shifted dramatically with the advent of …

The Last Rites Of Public Campaign Financing?, James Sample

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article asserts the current predicament of public campaign financing is this: options that are still on the table under the Court's First Amendment jurisprudence are, with only rare and idiosyncratic exceptions, fiscal and political non-starters. Conversely, options that would be, and indeed previously had been, fiscally and politically viable, are now, even after years of their routine practice in varied jurisdictions, no longer constitutional. It is, in short, simultaneously a legal and practical dilemma. Short of highly unlikely swings of the Supreme Court pendulum, and absent an even more unlikely constitutional amendment, cities, states, and federal government actors, who …

Hedonic Trademarks, Irina D. Manta

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

A number of scholars have recently critiqued the traditional search-costs model of trademark infringement doctrine and have proposed alternatives driven by consumer decision-making theories and contractarian understandings of trademarks. While I agree that the search-costs model is problematic in parts, some of the other suggested frameworks suffer from difficulties of their own. For one, these alternative approaches draw up a dichotomy between “pure” experiences of trademarked goods as opposed to “altered” experiences, with the latter representing the mindsets of consumers after trademark owners have influenced them via advertising and other devices in an effort to build up goodwill. This Article …

Policing, Protestors, And Discretion, Alafair Burke

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

An essay is presented on protestors' policing and police discretion in enforcing criminal law against protestors. It offers a history of Occupy Wall Street or Occupy protests, which reflects upon the unlawful actions of the New York Police Department (NYPD). It also sheds light on the impact of discretion in the policing of protests, with special focus on both overenforcement and underenforcement of criminal law.

Unprotected Sex: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act At 35, Deborah L. Brake, Joanna L. Grossman

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Thirty-five years ago, Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to overturn a Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize pregnancy discrimination as a form of discrimination based on sex. Now, three and a half decades later, women whose work lives are impacted by pregnancy are again finding themselves unprotected from discrimination. Lower court rulings have eviscerated the Act’s protections at the same time that an expansion of worker rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act should redound to the benefit of pregnant women by expanding the pool of comparators who receive accommodations. By following trends in discrimination law generally - equating …

Effect Of Hydrodynamic Force On Microcantilever Vibrations: Applications To Liquid-Phase Chemical Sensing, I. Dufour, E. Lemaire, B. Caillard, H. Debeda, C. Lucat, Stephen M. Heinrich, Fabien Josse, O. Brand

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

At the microscale, cantilever vibrations depend not only on the microstructure’s properties and geometry but also on the properties of the surrounding medium. In fact, when a microcantilever vibrates in a fluid, the fluid offers resistance to the motion of the beam. The study of the influence of the hydrodynamic force on the microcantilever’s vibrational spectrum can be used to either (1) optimize the use of microcantilevers for chemical detection in liquid media or (2) extract the mechanical properties of the fluid. The classical method for application (1) in gas is to operate the microcantilever in the dynamic transverse bending …

Innovative Food Product Development Using Molecular Gastronomy: A Focus On Flavour And Sensory Evaluation, Mark Traynor

Doctoral

The primary goal of this research was to develop novel ice cream products using the principles of molecular gastronomy. An ice cream model system (emulsion) was developed, in which the effects of ingredient levels on stability and formation were investigated and optimised using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Two characteristic volatiles of banana (isoamyl acetate and furfuryl acetate) were added to the optimised emulsion, and their headspace emission was quantified using Solid Phase Microextraction with Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry. RSM was used to investigate the main and interactive effects of ingredient, salt and pH levels on the headspace emission of these …

High Sensitivity Fiber Refractometer Based On An Optical Microfiber Coupler, Lin Bo, Pengfei Wang, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell

Articles

An optical microfiber coupler-based refractive index sensor is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this letter. A microfiber coupler with a minimum diameter of 2.5 µm and a uniform waist with a length of 2 mm is fabricated and used for sensing surrounding refractive index. Both theoretical and experimental results have shown that the spectral response of the proposed microfiber coupler is highly sensitive to the surrounding refractive index over the range from 1.3340 to 1.3800. An average sensitivity of 2723 nm/RIU over this entire refractive index range has been achieved experimentally. Furthermore, for the refractive index range from 1.3340 to …

The Influence Of Light Beam Convergence On The Stop-Bands Of A One-Dimensional Photonic Crystal, Vladimir A. Tolmachev, Kevin Berwick, Tatiana S. Perova

Articles

The influence of beam convergence on the photonic band-gaps, or stop-bands (SBs), of onedimensional photonic crystals (1D PCs) is investigated. The investigation is based on an analysis of the gap map obtained from reflection spectra, calculated by the transfer matrix method for various angles of light incidence, φ, The calculated data is compared with reflection spectra taken using Fourier Transform Infrared microspectroscopy. It was found that the introduction of the parameter, Δφ to account for the focused light beam, for angles up to 20°, has little effect on the first, or lowest SB and the SBs adjacent to it. However, …

Image Authentication Using Stochastic Diffusion, Abdulrahman I. Al-Rawi, Jonathan Blackledge

Conference papers

This paper considers an approach to encrypted information hiding based on Stochastic Diffusion for encrypting digital images coupled with the application of a Least Significant Bit (LSB) method for information embedding. After providing a brief summary of various information hiding methods based on spatial and transform domain techniques, two new methods are introduced. The first of these considers a binary image watermarking algorithm for hiding an image in a single host image which is based on binarization of the encrypted data. The second method extends this approach to solving the problem of 24-bit image hiding in three host images which …

Cryptography Using Evolutionary Computing, Jonathan Blackledge, S. Bezobrazov, Paul Tobin, F. Zamora

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

Chapter Green Nanotechnology: Development Of Nanomaterials For Environmental And Energy Applications, Rachel Fagan, Changseok Han, Joel Andersen, Suresh Pillai, Polycarpos Falaras, Anthony Byrne, Patrick S.M. Dunlop, Hyeok Choi, Wenjun Jiang, Kevin O’Shea, Dionysios D. Dionysiou

Books/Book Chapters

This book chapter discusses the syntheses of various nanomaterials, for green nanotechnology applications in detail. Special attention is given to the development of emerging areas, such as environmental as well as energy materials. Various approaches for preparing nanostructured photocatalysts, such as titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, iron oxide, and metal sulfides, different conventional methods and novel methods, including sol-gel methods, hydrothermal methods, microwave-assisted methods and sonochemical methods are introduced. The use of nanomaterials as photocatalysts, supporting materials for solar cells, and disinfectants is reported for environmental remediation and energy applications. Advanced applications of nanomaterials for water detoxification, air purification, and the …