Digital Commons Network^™

How Does Climate Change Affect Coral Reefs?, Rachel Goff

Honors Theses

Climate change is a very real phenomenon that currently affects many of the ecosystems on Earth. Climate change occurs on a global scale and can be very detrimental to different environments. This occurrence can cause ocean warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and increased storm intensity. According to the EPA, the ocean's temperature has increased 1.4°F over the past century, and sea levels have risen 3.2 millimeters through the past 20 years. These changes to the oceans can greatly affect many of the ecosystems that reside in them. One of the main ecosystems that are being affected by climate change …

Former Mickey Leland Center Website (Lelandcenter . Org) Full Website For Center And Archives From 2001 To 2013 Including Images, Internship Applications, Links, Bibliography And History., Mickeyleland Archives

Series 15: The Mickey Leland Staff Files, 1978 - 1989

No abstract provided.

Network Burst Monitoring And Detection Based On Fractal Dimension With Adaptive Time-Slot Monitoring Mechanism, Hsiao-Wen Tin, Shao-Wei Leu, Shun-Hsyung Chang, Gene Eu Jan

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This study proposed an approach to measure the burstiness of network traffic based on fractal dimensions (FDs). By definition, burstiness is the degree of variation in network traffic. This study defined two types of FDs: (1) the FD of network traffic that describes the flow variation of network traffic, and (2) the FD of the range that describes the degree of flow dispersal. The proposed method uses an adaptive time-slot monitoring mechanism to monitor the network. The relevant FDs are derived from measurements obtained during each time slot in a monitoring window. This study conducted experiments using NS2 simulation data. …

The Least Squares Trefftz Method And The Method Of External Source For The Eigenfrequencies Of Waveguides, Hui-Ming Fang, Chia-Ming Fan, Yan-Cheng Liu, Sung-Shan Hsiao

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this study, the least squares Trefftz method (LSTM) is adopted for analyzing the eigenfrequencies problems governed by homogeneous Helmholtz equations. The Trefftz method, one kind of boundary-type meshless collocation methods, does not need mesh generation and numerical quadrature. Since the system of linear algebraic equations obtained by Trefftz method is highly ill-conditioned, the least squares method is adopted to stabilize the numerical scheme in this study. In the eigenproblem, the response amplitudes from an external source are used to determine the resonant frequencies. By adding an external source, the homogeneous boundary condition becomes inhomogeneous. Then we can employ the …

Newspaper Presidential Endorsements: Who Publications Support, Why Votes Change, And The Practice’S Sharp Decline, Jesse Rifkin

Honors Scholar Theses

Do newspapers tend to mirror the political preferences of their primary readership? In other words, do they actually matter? Do they matter only if they mirror public opinion? What if they lead public opinion? Why do some newspaper endorsements change over time? Why are a growing number of newspapers discontinuing presidential endorsements – will they soon be a thing of the past? This paper aims to answer those questions and more.

A few trends stand out, three in particular.

1) The long history of newspapers endorsing presidential candidates may be coming to an end. In recent years many have discontinued …

Commencement Convocation Program, St. Petersburg Campus, December 15, 2013, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

Regional Chancellor's Award for Civic Leadership - Honorable Rick Baker; Outstanding Graduate - Charles Matthew Hamm;

Alzheimer's Disease And Circadian Rhythms In A Drosophila Model, Lauren Alejo

Honors Theses

Sleep disorders are commonly reported in Alzheimer's disease, a debilitating, age-related neurodegenerative disorder that affects neurons in the brain. Recently, several studies have suggested a role for sleep abnormalities and the internal "body clock" known as the circadian system, in the disease onset and progression. Since most of the data has been collected from mammals with complex neural circuitry, the molecular and cellular mechanisms that integrate the two neural networks are still limited. This study examined the relationship between circadian rhythmicity and Alzheimer's Disease presentation using a Drosophila model. Flies were crossed using the GAL4-UAS system to display Alzheimer's disease …

Catching Companies Who Refuse To Go Green Red-Handed, Wylee Mcgreevy

Honors Theses

Recycling, planting trees, and bringing your own bags to the grocery store are some of the activities people regularly think about when it comes to sustainability. In the grand scheme of life, how much difference can one person make? What if there were stricter standards for corporations which accounted for their emission of pollutants? Environmental Accounting is a branch of accounting that is progressively gaining popularity and has the potential to redefine the standards of sustainability for companies. With integration of past proposals for a carbon tax and a cap and trade system, a new proposal could be formed that …

Using Hydroxyapatite From Fish Scales To Prepare Chitosan/Gelatin/Hydroxyapatite Membrane: Exploring Potential For Bone Tissue Engineering, Yi-Cheng Huang, Hao-Wen Chu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Concerns have recently been raised about the treatment and use of hydroxyapatite, an important component of fish scale. The goal of this investigation is to evaluate the feasibility of using hydroxyapatite extracted from fish scale (FHAP) for bone tissue engineering. FHAP or sintered FHAP (sFHAP) was added to chitosan/gelatin (CS/GEL) mixture to prepare membrane. The effect of FHAP and sFHAP on the physical and chemical properties of the membrane and their affinities towards MG63 cells were studied. Accordingly, the prepared CS/GEL/FHAP membrane was characterized by FTIR (ATRFTIR) and SEM. Following sintering at 800°C for 4 h, the CS/GEL/sFHAP membrane had …

Ba/Ca Ratios In Otoliths Of Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus Maccoyii) As A Biological Tracer Of Upwelling In The Great Australian Bight, Yu-Ting Lin, Chia-Hui Wang, Chen-Feng You, Wann-Nian Tzeng

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) is a longlived, large, and highly migratory marine fish in the Indian Ocean. They can live up to 40 years and migrate to the Great Australian Bight in the summer when 1-4 years old. The Great Australian Bight is characterized as the most productive coastal upwelling zone in southern Australia and is the largest area of cool-water carbonate sedimentation in the world. The barium (Ba) level is poor in the open ocean but rich in the upwelling area. This study used otolith Ba/Ca ratios as a natural tag to confirm that southern bluefin tuna …

Seasonal Variation On General Composition, Free Amino Acids And Fatty Acids In The Gonad Of Taiwan's Sea Urchin Tripneustes Gratilla, Yu-Chun Chen, Tai-Yuan Chen, Tze-Kuei Chiou, Deng-Fwu Hwang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The seasonal variation of chemical composition in sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla gonad from Taiwan is investigated. The level of both gonad index (GI) and body weight in the sea urchins showed seasonal variations and were higher during spring and summer. The main saturated fatty acids (SFA) of sea urchin gonad were C14:0 and C16:0, and both varied with season. Arachidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid were the dominant poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), while C16:1, C18:1 and C22:1 were the predominant monoenoic fatty acids (MFA). The levels of total fatty acids were higher in summer, and decreased to the lowest in December …

A Multi-Agent, Connectionist Model Of Metonymy Production, Robert J. Powers

Honors Scholar Theses

Metonymy, like metaphor, has received much attention in cognitive linguistics literature (Croft, 1993; Kövecses & Radden, 1998; Panther & Radden, 1999). Most experimental work focuses on comprehension. However, why a speaker would choose to produce a metonym in some cases and not others is not fully understood. Connectionist models are well-suited to deal with the partialsemantic/partial-syntactic information which is characteristic of metonymy. Moreover, thesemodels can capture some of the complex, time-varying dynamics of language development. Here, a model is presented in which dyads of artificial agents (each a recurrent neural network based on Rogers, et al., 2004) were trained in …

Mortality In The Ocean - With Lessons From Hydrothermal Vents Off Kueishan Tao, Ne-Taiwan, Hans-Uwe Dahms, Jiang-Shiou Hwang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

There is evidence of plankton mortality and extinction at various temporal and spatial scales induced by man-made pollution, or by natural causes (ageing, competition, predation, diseases, natural pollution). If mortalities take place at large scale they might become of environmental concern and may impact other biotic compartments including fisheries substantially. Such mortalities are a consistent phenomenon at time scales from geological mass extinctions to regularly occurring HABs, that appear to be increasing on a global basis. Several mass mortalities might have escaped our notice for their patchy and erratic occurrences. This also holds for mortalities caused by hydrothermal vents (HVs) …

An Effective Illumination Compensation Method For Face Recognition, Yea-Shuan Huang, Chu-Yung Li

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Face recognition is very useful in many applications, such as safety and surveillance, intelligent robot, and computer login. The reliability and accuracy of such systems will be influenced by the variation of background illumination. Therefore, how to accomplish an effective illumination compensation method for human face image is a key technology for face recognition. Our study uses several computer vision techniques to develop an illumination compensation algorithm to processing the single channel (such as grey level or illumination intensity) face image. The proposed method mainly consists of three processing modules: (1) Homomorphic Filtering, (2) Ratio Image Generation, and (3) Anisotropic …

Automatic Location For Multi-Symbology And Multiple 1d And 2d Barcodes, Daw-Tung Lin, Chin-Lin Lin

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Multi-symbology barcode location is a practical and challenging issue. Image-based barcode recognition techniques are robust and extendable approaches for reading versatile one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) barcodes. Most methods may work for a single 1D or 2D barcode or rely on a unique pattern to locate a single 1D or 2D barcode. This work proposes a general localization framework for extraction of real barcodes under complex backgrounds when multiple symbology types exist in the same snapshot for 1D barcodes, 2D barcodes, or both. There are five steps of the proposed algorithm: image grayscale conversion, adaptive thresholding, application of a modified …

Physical Models For Simulating Ship Stability And Hydrostatic Motions, Shyh-Kuang Ueng

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this paper, efficient physics models are presented for simulating ship hydrostatic motions caused by sea waves, cargoes and flooding water. Based on the stability theory of ship, a ship is regarded as a floating body whose stability is indicated by its gravity, buoyancy and meta centers. These stability centers are influenced by cargoes, sea waves, flooding water and the ship mass. Variations of these stability centers create torques and forces which cause the ship to heave, pitch and roll. Because of the irregularity of the ship shape, analytical solutions of these stability centers do not exist. In this work, …

Functional Response Of Venus Flytraps (Dionaea Muscipula), Amber D. Martin

Honors Theses

The feeding response of Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) is widely studied, and many studies have considered the selectivity of prey capture in D. muscipula (Lichtner and Williams, 1977; Hutchens and Luken, 2009). The consumption rate of an organism relative to the abundance or availability of its food is known as that organism's functional response (Jeschke et al., 2004). In this study, a functional response curve will be constructed for D. muscipula based on its response to increasing availability of small prey in the laboratory. Knowledge of functional responses is important for various fields of biology including population biology, evolutionary biology, …

Seed Bank Study Of The Effect Of Land Use On Vegetation Diversity In Carolina Bays, Maeve Snyder

Honors Theses

The intent of my honors thesis is to conduct a comparative analysis of seed banks between Carolina bays of high and low human impact. My study will use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to characterize types of land use within Carolina bays and in 250-m buffer zones. Representative bays from high-impact and low-impact classifications will be chosen as study sites, and seed bank samples will be collected and germinated. While it is beyond the scope of my study to identify a mechanism by which it occurs, I will investigate the presence of a relationship between land use and bay vegetation biodiversity.

Shark Community Structure In Winyah Bay, Sc, Keenen Fryman

Honors Theses

Assessments of local shark stocks are vital to understand population trends and their causes. Local data are incomplete despite many studies over many years. The first published study listed all of the shark species found off the coast of SC (Bearden 1965). Following Bearden's work, Schwartz (2003) used a 30 year data set to describe the elasmobranchs found in NC and SC. In 2004, a survey of coastal habitats in southeast NC helped to identify the nursery habitat for C. acronotus, C. brevipinna, C. limbatus, C. obscurus, C. plumbeus, M. canis, R. terraenovae, S. tiburo, and S. lewini (Thorpe et …

Oxford Icon Leaves Major Support To Strengthen Um Library Resources, Lena Anderson

University of Mississippi News

No abstract provided.

Effectiveness Of Gaming Systems On Balance In Older Individuals, Mary E. Anderson

Honors Theses

Balance training using gaming systems, called exergaming, is a rising trend for reducing fall risk in older individuals. Previous studies have conducted research pertaining to gaming systems and traditional balance training, however there is a lack of comparison between gaming systems. This study was performed to determine the effectiveness of two gaming systems, the Wii Fit and Xbox Kinect, as compared to traditional balance training. This study was performed with subjects (N=5) over the age of 65, in good health, randomly placed in one of the three balance training groups: Wii Fit (n=2), Xbox Kinect (n=2), and Traditional balance training …

Speech And Language Interventions, Holly Hajnal

Honors Theses

In this review of literature, authors examined the effects of speech and language impairments and how to correct them. 15 studies were review that compared when interventions should be implemented, what the best types of interventions are and how speech and language impairments affected children's development. The overall question is, How do interventions assist in correcting speech and language impairments? In order to answer this question, the questions, What are speech and language impairments? Do speech and language impairments affect children's psychological attitude? Do speech and language impairments affect children's behavior? Do speech and language impairments affect children's ability to …

What Variables Affect The United States Decision On The Level Of Involvement During An International Crisis?, Britany Higdon

Honors Theses

The question being researched is what variables can better explain the level of involvement by the United States in an international crisis? This research question will better explain why the United States decides to use military force in some international crises while in others, they are not involved in at all. Answering this question will help predict if the United States will use military force in future international crises. This research will also show the importance of domestic politics in decisions made on an international level. To test this question, there will be a set of variables used to compare …

Prey Capture In Response To Removing Cilia From Venus Flytraps, Emily Marchini

Honors Theses

Carnivorous plants are able to attract, trap, and digest insects. Different types of traps target different prey. There are sticky traps, pitfall traps, and active steel traps (Gibson, 1991). Although this may seem to be a rare modification it appears that there are six origins of carnivorous plants in different groups of angiosperms (Albert et al., 1992). These results indicate that not only were there multiple origins of carnivorous plants, there were also multiple origins of the same trapping mechanism; for example, the flypaper trap has five origins and the pitcher trap has three (Albert et al., 1992). Multiple origins …

Characteristics And Effects Of Muscular Dystrophy In Broiler Chickens, Kayla N. Smith

Honors Theses

Muscular dystrophy is very common among broilers, which are chickens raised specifically for meat production. When dystrophic chickens are mated, or when normal and dystrophic chickens are mated, it is very likely that at least fifty percent of the clutch will end up with muscular dystrophy since it is inherited as a co-dominant disorder (Fujiwara et al., 2009). For my study, eggs were obtained from a local farm, and allowed to hatch. Among these hatchings were chicks who exhibited some traits of muscular dystrophy. It is possible that the parents of the seemingly dystrophic chicks may carry the mutated WWP1 …

Prevention Of Increasing Burnout Levels Among Physicians Of Different Specialties And Doctoral Degrees, Taylor Lewis

Honors Theses

Burnout rates are steadily increasing among physicians all over the world (Sime, Quick, Saleh, & Martin, 2007). Burnout is defined as high levels of emotional exhaustion (EE), high levels of depersonalization (DP), and low levels of personal achievement (PA) (Ionita, Copotocan, & Copotoiu, S., 2011). These burnout rates are directly correlated with many factors, such as high levels of emotional exhaustion and stress (McManus, Winder, & Gordon, 2002), little experience in the medical field (Keswani, Taft, Coté, & Keefer, 2011), and long work hours which leads to sleep deprivation and fatigue (Jackson, 1999). These moderate to high levels of burnout …

A New Genus Of Hemigobius Generic Group Goby Based On Morphological And Molecular Evidence, With Description Of A New Species, Shih-Pin Huang, Jaafar Zeehan, I-Shiung Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Wuhanlinigobius, a new genus of Hemigobius generic group would been established and assigned from Mugilogobius polylepis Wu and Ni, 1985. Mugilogobius polylepis has been regarded as belong to genus Eugnathogobius based on lacking head pores and representing longitudinal sensory papillae in previous taxonomic study. However, we compared the osteological features of Mugilogobius polylepis Wu and Ni, 1985 and Eugnathogobius microps Smith, 1931 as well as the molecular phylogenetic analysis based on the mtDNA ND5, Cyt-b genes and D-loop region. The molecular phylogenetic tree including 9 related Hemigobius generic group reveal that this new genus represents an independent clade which is …

Does High Organic Matter Content Affect Polychaete Assemblages In A Shenzhen Bay Mudflat, China?, Li-Zhe Cai, Jiang-Shiou Hwang, Hans-Uwe Dahms, Su-Jing Fu, Xin-Wei Chen, Chen Wu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Coastal areas are the first marine systems being impacted by anthropogenic pollution and eutrophication. Organic matter poses a particularly negative impact on the environment due to its oxygen depleting and eutrophying effects. Shenzhen Bay mudflat contains rich organic matter. Here, we compare changes of polychaete assemblage parameters on seasonal data obtained from a Shenzhen Bay mudflat in a three-year study. The results based on the seasonal and spatial variations of polychaete species number, density and biomass, ShannonWiener diversity index, evenness index and richness index confirmed that high organic matter content impacted their distribution. A significant negative correlation between the density …

Adiponectin Inhibits Oxidative/Nitrative Stress During Myocardial Ischemia And Reperfusion Via Pka Signaling., Yanqing Zhang, Xiao-Liang Wang, Jianli Zhao, Ya-Jing Wang, Wayne Bond Lau, Yue-Xing Yuan, Er-He Gao, Walter J. Koch, Xin-Liang Ma

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

The cardioprotective effects of adiponectin (APN) against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury are well known. However, comprehension of the mechanisms mediating intracellular APN signaling remains incomplete. We recently demonstrate the antioxidant/antinitrative effects of APN are not dependent on AMPK. Protein kinase A (PKA) has been previously shown to be activated by APN, with uncertain relevance to APN cardiac protection. The current study determined whether the antioxidative/antinitrative effect of APN is mediated by PKA. Administration of APN (2 μg/g) 10 min before reperfusion significantly enhanced cardiac PKA activity, reduced oxidative stress, and decreased infarct size. Knockdown of cardiac PKA expression (PKA-KD) by …

Working Paper No. 32, Canada And The United States: A Comparison Of Their Philosophical Bases, Lorraine M. Hutton

Working Papers in Economics

Americans and Canadians seem similar in many ways; however, their dissimilar historical experiences have shaped very different attitudes and philosophies that underpin their institutions. Canadians promote equality and collective responsibility under a restrained, parliamentary state, whilst the Americans stress self-reliance, individualism and freedom. Canadians embraced the hierarchical structure of the British and French Empires and Americans revolted against all ties to it. What appear to be minor distinctions between the two countries and cultures are actually fundamental philosophies rooted in the past.