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Gilded Age Visual Media As The Impetus For Social Change: Jacob Riis's Reform Photography And The Antecedents Of Documentary Film, Denitsa Yotova

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the birth and evolution of the social documentary genre in visual media. It proposes that a mixture of ideology, technology, and social awareness are necessary for a successful social reform. Its review and study of related primary and secondary sources determines that despite the limitations of technology during the nineteenth century, social documentaries were produced long before they were part of the genres of photography and film. By focusing on the work of Danish photographer Jacob Riis and tracing the emergence of the film medium through time, this thesis demonstrates a strong connection between documentary film and …

Jack Kerouac's Artistic Apprenticeship And The Discovery Of His Authentic Voice, Nathaniel Botsis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Few novels so clearly dramatize an artist's discovery of his authentic voice as does Kerouac's On the Road. The publication of the writing that Kerouac did before On the Road, and particularly the writing he did before The Town and the City, offers almost unprecedented opportunity to study his artistic apprenticeship and trace his development as an artist. To study Kerouac's apprenticeship is to witness him learning how to liberate himself in order to be that which he would become. In addition to shedding light on this unexamined aspect of Kerouac's career, I hope this study might inspire similar breakthroughs …

No Prejudice Here: Racism, Resistance, And The Struggle For Equality In Denver, 1947-1994, Summer Marie Cherland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study chronicles a story of civil rights that has been left untold until now. Recent scholarship contributing to the history of the "long civil rights movement" has reframed our understanding of civil rights beyond the years of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition, it has also demonstrated that civil rights activity occurred in regions other than the South. However, most work on the long civil rights movement demonstrates that activism among blacks began much earlier than the Brown v. Board Supreme Court case and instead, was a part of a longer freedom struggle that, in many ways, …

Langmuir Probe Instrument Suite For Mesosphere Turbulence Experiment Mission, Adam Blake

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The Langmuir probe technique is the predominant in-situ plasma diagnostic technique, and is arguably the only measurement technique that is universally own on every sounding rocket investigation. Earth's mesosphere region (80-120 km) is a host of many dynamic phenomena such as the noctilucent clouds, breaking gravity waves, inversion layers, settlement of mesospheric smoke particles, etc. As such it is critical to have a comprehensive suite of plasma diagnostics that can unambiguously measure various plasma parameters.

This thesis deals with the development and testing of three different Langmuir probe implementations suitable for investigation of the mesosphere which are to be launched …

Characterization Of Electron Number Density Of Rocket Exhaust Plumes Through Microwave Transmissions, Jorge Torres

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Charged rocket plumes generally exceed the length of their source vehicles, and offer lightning a favorable path to ground. Rocket plumes enhance the induced transient currents in flight electronics, and increase the risk of vehicle failure. The affinity of lightning to the plume can be associated with the plume's electrical properties, which are coupled to plasma characteristics including the electron number density. However, the electron number density of rocket plumes is not well-known. In this study, the electron number density is characterized through data from static rocket firings. A model of the plume in finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations …

Experimental Validation Of A New Distributed Cooperative Control Algorithm For Multi-Agent Systems With Switching Communication Topologies And Time-Delays, Junzhen Shao

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

In this thesis, we present practical experimental results to demonstrate a control law for consensus of multiagent systems with switching topologies and time delays. The nonlinear control law utilizes discontinuous cooperative control gains and uses contraction mapping to achieve consensus of multiagent systems. The testing platform we used consists of a number of mobile robots and software simulations both in Matlab and Microsoft Studio C++. We present the effectiveness of the control law design by Aria mobile robots with applications in distributed cooperative formation control. Computer simulations and hardware experiments presented include point consensus control and formation control, both with …

Human Behavior During Spaceflight: Evidence From An Analog Environment, Kenny Mikael Arnaldi

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Spaceflight offers a multitude of stressors to humans living and working in space, originating from the external space environment and the life-support system. Future space participants may be ordinary people with different medical and psychosocial backgrounds who may not receive the intense spaceflight preparation of astronauts. Consequently, during a mission, a space participant’s mood and behavior could differ from a trained astronaut. This study was an exploratory research project that used an artificial habitat to replicate an orbital environment and the activities performed by humans in space. The study evaluated whether the type of environment affects mood and temperament. Two …

Social Networking Site Use Among Caregivers Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Murad Moqbel, Lauren Little

Information Systems Faculty Publications

Caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience higher levels of stress relative to those of children with other developmental disabilities and typical development. To date, little research has empirically examined the relationship between social supports, social networking site (SNS) use, and stress among caregivers of children with ASD. Using the resiliency model of family stress, adjustment, and adaptation as a theoretical framework, we explore the links between perceived social supports, SNS use, and stress among caregivers of children with ASD. We do this by conducting a crosssectional research design and using a structural equation modeling statistical approach. Practical …

Optical Simulation Of Terahertz Antenna Using Finite Difference Time Domain Method, Chao Zhang

Theses

Terahertz science is a promising and rapidly developing research area. However, solid state terahertz detectors of high performance are still needed. An antenna within each pixel is needed in these detectors so as to couple more incident radiation into the detector. In this thesis, a software package called Lumerical FDTD Solutions is used to optimize the terahertz antenna design. The ultimate goal is to design broadband antennas that work efficiently over desired frequency bands.

The transmission/absorption characteristics of various bowtie antennas were modeled using the software. For absorption modeling, an equivalent resistor was added to load the antenna and absorb …

Nowhere: A Kinetic Typography Motion Graphic About The Pursuit Of Happiness, I-Cheng Lee

Theses

nowhere is a motion graphic project that expresses my personal journey of pursuing happiness. To be happy or not happy, people have the choices of their own lives and thoughts. This project shows that positive thinking could lead to better lives through my example.

A short poetic script on how I realized happiness in my life will be expressed in this project through visuals and composition. Every stylized sentence has a particular connection with the inspiring visuals and transitions. The intent of the piece is to install the viewer with the power of positive thinking by reading the poem with …

Mookkoori, Myungsuk Kim

Theses

Mookkoori is a 20-minute narrative film written and directed by Myungsuk Kim. The film was completed and shown in May 2014 at the RIT School of Film and Animation's Spring Screenings. The film's main character is Bora, who is the teenage daughter of a shaman in Korea. She is betrayed by Sunhee, her only friend in high school and she is being bullied and threatened by a gang. Bora's mother, who reveals herself to be quack shaman, blames Bora for getting involved in fighting. Fearing for her future, Bora reads her fortune at a shrine and sees three different ways …

Against The Grain : The Challenges Of Black Discourse Within Intercollegiate Policy Debate., Tiffany Yvonne Dillard-Knox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research uses the speech community model of analysis to illustrate how language is used to determine inclusion into and exclusion from Debate. This has been done by examining the use of four Black discourse types in Intercollegiate Policy Debate: signifying, call and response, tonal semantics, and narrative sequencing to show the ways in which current debate practices (un)intentionally exclude Blacks. Upon examination, one can see that there is educational value to the methods used by majority of the Black student population within Debate. In addition to being a tool of empowerment for this student population, these students can also …

Color Managing For Papers Containing Optical Brightening Agents, R. Scott Millward

Theses

The role of a color-managed inkjet proof is to predict and simulate the visual appearance of printed color. The proof-to-print visual match works well under different viewing conditions when the input ICC profile and the output ICC profile, built from characterization datasets, do not contain optical brightening agents (OBA).

OBAs influence printed color when measured for characterization and viewed. These brightening agents absorb UV wavelengths in the illuminant and fluoresce in the blue wavelengths. As more and more OBAs are used in printing paper production, the role of color proofing becomes more difficult. The difference in the amount of the …

A Flower In The Box, Xin Yin

Theses

A Flower In The Box is an animated graduate thesis film with a total timescale of 7 minutes and 13 seconds.

This is a film about my grandma and me. When I was young, I spent a lot of time with my grandma. She was a very important person to me in my life. She loved me very much and did many things for me. For example, she used to tell me a lot of stories before going to bed when I was very young. I still remember them today. They brought me a lot of imagination and inspiration. My …

The Dupe, Jiaqing Qiang

Theses

The story happens in the near future. Astronaut Patrick U7's mission is to find members of a space team who have been lost for two months on a Planet M-6 expedition. He travels alone in a spacecraft headed for Planet M-6. Patrick U7 will confront his own fears and mortality when he discovers the truth about the space team's fate and his real mission, which is linked to the deaths of the space team members.

I want to use science fiction as a mechanism for conveying a truth about the darker side human nature. Even though the main character is …

X, Xiaoyu Liu

Theses

"X" is an animated graduate thesis film. The entire animation including credits was 5 minutes 36 seconds long by the time of my thesis screening at SOFA, RIT. The story was initially developed to express the emotional side of robots (or intelligent machines) and finally was changed with a new idea to put the emotional elements into the robot program itself. The story takes place in a robot factory and the main character is a newly produced robot named "X-100". X-100, as the 100th robot product, is facing a crucial test determining his eligibility for being a qualified product. All …

Proof-To-Print Match: Effectiveness Of Substrate-Corrected Colorimetric Aims In Soft Proofing, Peng Cheng

Theses

Soft proofing is an effective solution for clients and printers that decreases production cost and cycle time. However, print buyers are increasingly specifying brighter papers, which contain optical brightening agents (OBAs). One potential concern facing adopters of soft proofing systems is that they fail to consider the influence of OBA when rendering color images. Proofing systems are largely based on existing published specifications and their ICC profiles. These specifications and ICC profiles -- such as SWOP 3 and GRACoL 2006-- do not account for the influence of OBA-loaded printing papers, and therefore could cause a mismatch between the soft proof …

The Homeless Bird: A Motion Graphics Narrative About Deforestation And Animals., Kyle Griffin

Theses

The Homeless Bird is a short animated story expressing the loss of homes for wildlife due to the destruction of habitats such as deforestation. With the loss of natural habitats each year, many animals have to migrate to areas that are unfit to provide for them. The main goal is to draw attention to this problem and to help encourage the audience to act.

The project concerns the combination of practicing motion graphics design theories and experimenting with available computer graphics integration technologies. The final piece is a 2:55 minute visual story that combines both a fantasy and realistic setting.

Forword: A Study On An Interactive Learning Environment In Foreign Language, Christina A. Curtis

Theses

With constant advances in technology, the world becomes a smaller community each day. In line with its reputation as a cultural melting pot, children of immigrants are the fastest growing student population in the United States today. It's clear that the U.S. needs a strong approach in language education; one that can keep pace with our potential and our lives. Technology can be used to foster student collaboration and shared learning experiences, thereby increasing learner interest, motivation and learning outcomes. ForWord aims to use interaction design in foreign language education to meet this need. ForWord has four main goals: provide …

Gesture Recognition Using Hidden Markov Models Augmented With Active Difference Signatures, Himanshu Kumar

Theses

With the recent invention of depth sensors, human gesture recognition has gained significant interest in the fields of computer vision and human computer interaction. Robust gesture recognition is a difficult problem because of the spatiotemporal variations in gesture formation, subject size, subject location, image fidelity, and subject occlusion. Gesture boundary detection, or the automatic detection of the onset and offset of a gesture in a sequence of gestures, is critical toward achieving robust gesture recognition. Existing gesture recognition methods perform the task of gesture segmentation either using resting frames in a gesture sequence or by using additional information such as …

A Computer Network Model For The Evaluation Of Moving Target Network Defense Mechanisms, Benjamin Fredrick Wheeler

Theses

In order to combat the increasing complexity of cyber attacks, a new category of cyber defense called dynamic cyber defense has been the focus of a significant amount of work. Dynamic cyber defense mechanisms aim to protect networks by modifying their attributes in order to confuse would-be attackers. Currently, the majority of the existing mechanisms are purely theoretical and have been the subject of minimal performance analysis. There has also been almost no effort to perform comparative analysis of different techniques. As a result, there is a great need for a method of modeling different mechanisms within a single system …

Using Motion For Educational Information Design Max’S Story: Teenagers With Type1 Diabetes, Wenyu Ouyang

Theses

Today, some younger people are suffering from chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, leukemia, and depressive disorder, which are some of the most significant concerns in the world. In spite of advancements made by modern science and technology, some chronic illnesses still last a lifetime, such as Type 1 Diabetes, known as T1D. In this situation, positive attitudes and correct understanding of the disease is extremely important in educating children how to manage their condition.

There are some excellent educational materials with a large quantity of text, which are good for parents to read. At the same time, there are picture …

Simorgh, Meghdad Asadilari

Theses

"Simorgh" is a 4 minutes and 30 second 3D animated graduate thesis film which is a personal interpretation of a traditional Persian poem "The Conference of the Birds" by "Farid ud-Din Attar" from 12th century.

This animation is a choreographic piece that incorporates Persian music, calligraphic art and ornament designs to tell the traditional Persian story of life that deals with the fragility of self worth.

The story centers around a few birds of different breeds, each representative of a particular human characteristic; ego, greed, avarice, etc. The birds are seemingly satisfied with their perceptions of self, but on a …

Virtual Mobility Domains - A Mobility Architecture For The Future Internet, Hasan Tuncer

Theses

The advances in hardware and wireless technologies have made mobile communication devices affordable by a vast user community. With the advent of rich multimedia and social networking content, an influx of myriads of applications, and Internet supported services, there is an increasing user demand for the Internet connectivity anywhere and anytime. Mobility management is thus a crucial requirement for the Internet today.

This work targets novel mobility management techniques, designed to work with the Floating Cloud Tiered (FCT) internetworking model, proposed for a future Internet. We derive the FCT internetworking model from the tiered structure existing among Internet Service Provider …

The Effect Of Optical Brightening Agent (Oba) In Paper And Illumination Intensity On Perceptibility Of Printed Colors, Changlong Yu

Theses

Widely utilized sanctioned color aims for commercial printing are based on paper substrates without optical brightening agents, also known as OBAs. However, in today's market, more and more paper is manufactured with OBAs. This could be problematic for commercial printers as OBAs influence not only paper conformity, but also the accuracy printed colors. This can lead to color mismatch between proofs and the final prints. Recognizing this condition, the objectives of this research were two-fold: first, to verify the perceived color difference between prints due to the presence of OBAs, and second, to study the perceptibility of color differences caused …

Preserving Han-Ok: Reimaging The Korean Traditional House For Today Using 3d Design, Haiden Park

Theses

The purpose of this thesis project was to preserve the traditional elements of Han-Ok in the modern architecture in Korea. I have integrated traditional Korean design elements into modern architecture. I also solved the problems that the Han-Ok currently faces. This topic is important because a lot of the traditional culture has been disappearing within the current Korean society. Of all the aspects of Korean traditional culture, the Han-Ok, the Korean traditional house itself, is very important. A lot of Korea's culture is represented in the Han-Ok, but people think this type of architecture is unnecessary and uncomfortable, and because …

Reflection, Vijay Chandrasekhar

Theses

"Reflection" is my animated graduate thesis film. The film is 6 minutes and 30 seconds long. The concept for the story was developed with a focus on character driven animation, acting and performance. I wanted to challenge myself animating a character type that I was not familiar with, something that I could not relate to on a personal level. I chose to animate a mother of 2 kids who is about 40 years old. I wanted her to go through a wide range of emotions throughout the film. I wanted it to be a silent film, so I could bring …

Re÷Belief, Raymond Mccarthy Bergeron

Theses

re÷belief, is a 3D Printed, hand crafted, zoetropic short-film that asks if recalling memories can break a cycle. re÷belief is a graduate student produced animated thesis, completed for the MFA in the School of Film and Animation at Rochester Institute of Technology. Much of this film is a personal story that recalls nine very specific instances of my life. These are memories that have repeatedly haunted me throughout my youth and adulthood. The memories regularly reflected times of bliss mixed with sullen, miserable moments.

Ultimately, the story thread focuses on cycles, and choosing 3D printed zoetropes as the metaphor and …

Exploring Cultural Identity: Learning Culture Through Effective Interactive Design, Augie Park

Theses

Culture defines groups of individuals by language, religion, art, or tools. In today's ever growing sector of computers, smart phones, and tablets, mobile technology is used as a means to discover a sense of individuality through wireless devices and essentially the Internet. This is a case study on how to design a better educational app designed to teach culture through visual exploration and user testing. This thesis also explores how design affects behavior through usability. Through an analysis of interdisciplinary subjects, Exploring Cultural Identity aims to provide a visual prototype to teach culture, specifically focusing on Korean art. The goal …

Social Networks As Command & Control Channels For Botnets, Adam St. Onge

Theses

The weakest link in detecting Botnets is typically the communication channel. What if there was a possibility to leverage existing high volume communication channels such as social networks for the command and control traffic of a botnet? Utilizing a social network such as Twitter, has many advantages over alternative methods, when done properly it is easier to hide in plain site due to the high volume of normal chatter, the protocol and traffic is already established as a known protocol to many security systems and antivirus software, and it is highly available across the globe. Twitter is aware of their …