Digital Commons Network^™

Theoretical And Practical Aspects Of Compact Data Structures For Range And Membership Queries In Sparse Sets, Pablo Montes Arango

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

There is an increasing need for data structures that efficiently manipulate huge amounts of data. When the data to be represented does not fit into main memory all at once, data structures designed without taking this constraint into account fail to perform as expected. Data structures conceived specifically for this purpose fall into two, not necessarily exclusive, categories. The first consists of data structures designed and analyzed under a model of computation where the cost is given by the amount of data transferred between external and internal memory. The second comprises data structures that make the most out of the …

Gpu-Acceleration Of X-Ray Photon Scattering Simulation, Jaewoo Pi

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

Computed Tomography is widely used in numerous fields. To facilitate the development of an algorithm while avoiding additional radiation dose to the patient, the simulation of the CT imaging process is required. The scattering effect of X-ray photons impact on quality of output images. Thus, modeling the scattering is an important task to predict and eliminate the effects on energy. However, the simulation has been challenging task. Two approaches, deterministic and Monte Carlo method has been widely used, but both methods have to undergo trade-off between speed and sampling rate. In this research, the new algorithm which exploits Bi-directional ray …

Efficient Implementation Techniques For Block-Level Cloud Storage Systems, Dilip Nijagal Simha

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

A fundamental building block for an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) cloud service such as Amazon's EC2 is a storage virtualization system that provides block-level storage services to individual virtual machines over the network. This dissertation addresses four major problems in such a block-level cloud storage system, in the context of an end-to-end IaaS solution called ITRI Cloud OS. First, to effectively eliminate redundancies in stored data blocks, we propose a scalable block-level deduplication engine called Sungem, which uses both sampling and prefetching to minimize the performance overhead of fingerprint accesses, and features a storage block garbage collection algorithm whose run- time overhead …

The Role Of Developmental Mode And Population-Level Processes In Shifting Distributions: A Study Of Calyptraeid Gastropods, Abigail Eileen Cahill

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

In benthic marine invertebrates with complex life cycles, dispersal happens primarily during the larval stage: sedentary, benthic adults produce larvae that live in the water column for a period of hours to months. The larval life stage is therefore critical to the ability of a species to expand or shift its range, including in response to climate change. Species with planktonic larvae are expected to show greater dispersal and gene flow than those with direct development. In contrast, reduced gene flow among populations of directly developing species increases the potential for local adaptation. Understanding not only larval traits, but population-level …

Reconfigurable Architecture For Mixed Processing Elements With Buffer Based Representation, Sumit Suresh Tiwari

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

Modern reconfigurable logic devices are often multi-core and multi-processor architectures with complex intra-processor logic. To fully utilize the raw power of these devices is an arduous task; mapping design data-flows to such devices in a way that will maximize their performance involves careful consideration of a number of parameters, and is the subject of a good amount of research. This thesis presents a novel design, which uses the technique of buffer-based dataflow, a representation technique for realizing data-centric applications in reconfigurable platforms, to map complex logic systems with multiple processing elements to a reconfigurable target architecture having multi-core processors or …

A Teacher's Response To Response, Karen Larson Buechner

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

This study is an examination of instructional practices teachers implement during the drafting and revision process and contends that armed with knowledge of how a student responds emotionally and intellectually to these comments, a teacher can have a lasting impact on a writer's development. To that end, it is critical for the teacher to possess deep knowledge of response protocols and conferencing techniques in order for students to generate and refine their ideas. Areas of investigation include the relationship between response methods and writing improvement, the type and mode of comments that facilitate improvement, measurement of the effect of response …

Canonical Forest, Yu-Chuan Chen

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

In this dissertation, we propose a new classification ensemble method named Canonical Forest. This new ensemble method uses canonical linear discriminant analysis (CLDA) and bootstrap resampling method to create more accurate and diverse classifiers in an ensemble. Although CLDA is commonly used for dimension reduction, we note here CLDA serves as a linear transformation tool rather than a dimension reduction tool. Since CLDA will find the transformed space that separates the classes farther in distribution, classifiers built on this space will be more accurate than those on the original space. To further diversify the classifiers in an ensemble, CLDA is …

Genetic Contributions To Susceptibility And Resistance To Learned Helplessness, Craig Scott Garafola

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

Depression is a disease with a complex etiology that is only beginning to be studied from a genetic perspective. A selectively bred line of rats, susceptible to the learned helplessness model of depression, presents an opportunity to search for genes affecting either the depressive symptoms or the predisposition towards developing the disease. A microarray revealed a small set of genes with altered expression in the hippocampus of the congenitally helpless rats. We selected one of these genes, a member of the γ -protocadherin family, for further study to determine the basis for the change in expression. Helpless animals demonstrated an …

Observability-In-Depth: An Essential Complement To The Defense-In-Depth Safety Strategy In The Nuclear Industry, Francesca Favaro, Joseph Saleh

Faculty Publications

Defense-in-depth is a fundamental safety principle for the design and operation of nuclear power plants. Despite its general appeal, defense-in-depth is not without its drawbacks, which include its potential for concealing the occurrence of hazardous states in a system, and more generally rendering the latter more opaque for its operators and managers, thus resulting in safety blind spots. This in turn translates into a shrinking of the time window available for operators to identify an unfolding hazardous condition or situation and intervene to abate it. To prevent this drawback from materializing, we propose in this work a novel safety principle …

Climate Change Enhances The Negative Effects Of Predation Risk On An Intermediate Consumer, Luke P. Miller, Catherine M. Matassa, Geoffrey C. Trussell

Faculty Publications, Biological Sciences

Predators are a major source of stress in natural systems because their prey must balance the benefits of feeding with the risk of being eaten. Although this 'fear' of being eaten often drives the organization and dynamics of many natural systems, we know little about how such risk effects will be altered by climate change. Here, we examined the interactive consequences of predator avoidance and projected climate warming in a three-level rocky intertidal food chain. We found that both predation risk and increased air and sea temperatures suppressed the foraging of prey in the middle trophic level, suggesting that warming …

Nutrition-Related Conditions Among Children Of Migrant And Seasonal Farmworkers In The United States: Causes And Solutions, Rebecca Halvorson

Food Science and Nutrition

The purpose of this literature review is to determine the prevalence of nutrition-related conditions among children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) compared to national averages, as well as effectiveness of strategies for minimizing any health discrepancies. MSFW live under harsh conditions, engage in long hours of physically demanding labor, and receive insufficient income. Compounding demographic characteristics create insurmountable barriers to quality health care and nutrition education resulting in disproportionately unhealthy children within the MSFW population as compared to the greater US population. The prevalence of overweight, obesity, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and numerous infections is higher among MSFW children. …

Flow Compressibility Effects Around An Open-Wheel Racing Car, J. Keogh, G. Doig, S. Diasinos

Aerospace Engineering

A numerical investigation has been conducted into the influence of flow compressibility effects around an open-wheeled racing car. A geometry was created to comply with 2012 F1 regulations. Incompressible and compressible CFD simulations were compared-firstly with models which maintained Reynolds number as Mach number increased, and secondly allowing Mach number and Reynolds number to increase together as they would on track. Results demonstrated significant changes to predicted aerodynamic performance even below Mach 0·15. While the full car coefficients differed by a few percent, individual components (particularly the rear wheels and the floor/ diffuser area) showed discrepancies of over 10% at …

The Relationship Between Tort Reform And Medical Utilization, Kevin T. Kavanagh, Lindsay Calderon, Daniel Saman

Biological Sciences Faculty and Staff Research

NTRODUCTION: The hidden cost of defensive medicine has been cited by policymakers as a significant driving force in the increase of our nation's health-care costs. If this hypothesis is correct, one would expect that states with higher levels of tort reform will have a decrease in Medicare utilization and that medical utilization will decrease after tort reform is enacted.

METHODS: State-level reimbursement data for years 1999 to 2010 (the last year available) was obtained from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. Medical tort rankings for the 50 states were obtained from the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and correlated with state …

December 1st 2014, Csusb

Coyote Chronicle (1984-)

No abstract provided.

Employee's Participation: A Critical Success Factor For Justice Perception, Wai Kwan (Elaine) Lau

Accounting Faculty Research

The present study proposed and tested a model that examines the relationship between leadership style, employee’s participation, and justice perceptions. The paper extended the literature of the justice by connecting three major research areas (leadership style, employee’s participation, and organizational justice), and examined the influences of leadership style and employee’s participation in shaping employee’s perception of justice. Results indicated that transactional, transformational, and dynamic leadership have positive impact on distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Moreover, the effect of leadership style on organizational justice was indirect through employee’s participation. This study synthesized previous leadership studies and argued that leadership style can …

The Ubiquity Of Hermeneutics, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

To understand Nietzsche in the context of hermeneutics is to understand not only Nietzsche’s philosophy of interpretation (Figl 1982a, 1984) but his perspective on perspective (Cox 1997) or “perspectivalism” (Babich 1994: 116f). In turn, given his background familiarity with hermeneutic methodology, this also corresponds to Nietzsche’s own approach as an interpreter of texts and antiquity as of the life, the culture, the history of ancient Greece (see the range of contributions to Jensen and Heit 2014 as well as Ugolini 2003; Figl 1984; and Pöschl 1979). And to do this, just to the extent that Nietzsche specifically reflects on interpretation …

Libyan Graduate Students Encounter English-Writing Difficulties While Attending U.S. Universities, Abdelsalam A. Mustafa El Raggas

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the writing difficulties that Libyan graduate students encounter while attending universities in the United States. Libyan graduate students have difficulties in writing effective paragraphs and essays. Most of their academic writing tasks have numerous grammatical errors and their writing style appears elementary-like. The main purpose of this study was to diagnose writing issues such as grammar, unity, style, diction, and language interference that the students encounter and find solutions for existing problems. A mixed-methods approach was employed in this study. One hundred Libyan graduate students studying at U.S. universities were sought as participants. Data were collected by …

A Study Of Effective Characteristics Most Valued In Superintendents By Principals, Camille Goldman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effective characteristics of superintendents through the principal’s perception. The perceptions of principals were compared to those of superintendents. A one-way ANOVA was used to interpret and analyze the data for this study. All superintendents and principals in public schools in Indiana were invited to participate in this study. This study was conducted by administering a survey to public school district superintendents and principals in Indiana. The Effective Characteristics of Superintendents survey was developed by me to quantitatively measure the perceptions of superintendents and principals with research from the ISLLC standards, theorists, …

The Essence Of A Gentleman: A Phenomenological Study Of Honor And Masculinity In Wabash College’S Gentleman’S Rule, Jacob Isaacs

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examined how college men at Wabash College understand good behavior and masculinity while living under a subjective honor code: the Gentleman’s Rule. This included how students learned about and talk about the honor code and particular behaviors that students would identify as exemplifying the Gentleman’s Rule in action. To unearth this information, 12 current Wabash students were each individually interviewed for roughly an hour. Contributions from respondents were subjected to a phenomenological analysis to determine the essence of students’ experiences related to the Gentleman’s Rule. The study found that students typically learned about the Gentleman’s Rule as prospective …

How High Achieving Elementary Schools Improve Struggling Readers, Kimberly C. Hartlage

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore educational elements that explain how high-achieving elementary schools improve struggling readers. The perceptions of the principals and teachers in three high achieving elementary schools were investigated in three areas of interest: (a) student achievement as it relates to literacy instruction, (b) early intervention leading to success, and (c) the role of school leaders who build a culture for success through change. All three schools that participated in the study were located in the state of Indiana. The topics of the related literature reviewed included a connection of reading instruction to student …

The Balanced Approach To Literacy Instruction In Middle Schools, Tenicia Rae Helmberger

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if the frequency with which middle school teachers implement research-based literacy strategies serves as a predictor of success on the English/language arts portion of ISTEP+. The study looked at research-based strategies in fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Teachers of English, language arts, social studies, science, and a combination of the above subjects were surveyed. Seven questions from each area were posed relating to the frequency of implementation per quarter. The study was split into two groups, high-poverty schools and low-poverty schools. Of those teachers surveyed, teachers in low-achieving, low-poverty schools reported using research-based …

How Effective Superintendents Select And Develop Principals, Rob Willman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine how effective superintendents select and develop principals. Through this qualitative study, the perceptions of four superintendents explored several areas: a) the process by which principals are selected which includes qualities desired, interviewing, education, and internal versus external candidates and b) the professional development that takes place after the principal has been selected. The superintendents in the study were located in the state of Indiana and met the study criteria outlined in Chapter 3. The topics of related literature reviewed included the characteristics of instructional leaders, succession management and studies of professional …

Heteroskedasticity Of Unknown Form In Spatial Autoregressive Models With Moving Average Disturbance Term, Osman Dogan

Economics Working Papers

In this study, I investigate the necessary condition for consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of spatial models with a spatial moving average process in the disturbance term. I show that the MLE of spatial autoregressive and spatial moving average parameters is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not considered in the estimation. I also show that the MLE of parameters of exogenous variables is inconsistent and determine its asymptotic bias. I provide simulation results to evaluate the performance of the MLE. The simulation results indicate that the MLE imposes a substantial amount of bias on both autoregressive and moving …

Finding The "T" In Lgbtq: Esl Educator Perceptions Of Transgender And Non-Binary Gender Topics In The Language Classroom, Teresa Lynn Witcher

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

While there is a “T” in the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), the focus in both academia and the real world often shifts solely to sexuality. Even though the real world discussion of sexuality (and perhaps academia’s as well) is also much lacking in both attention to all sexualities (not simply heterosexual and homosexual), there is also a distinct lack of awareness about subtleties all along both the sexuality and gender spectrums. Although sexuality can depend on gender to some extent, particularly where limiting prefixes related to the preference for a specific binary gender (such as …

Changes On Cran, Kurt Hornik, Achim Zeileis

The R Journal

New packages in CRAN task views

New contributed packages

Other changes

Redesign Of Talley Farm's "Fresh Harvest" Produce Program, Nicole Bordwell, John Rivera, Jared Toboni

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Fresh Harvest, a Central Coast Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program run by Talley Farms located in Arroyo Grande, CA, has a rapidly growing customer base. They harvest, package, and deliver boxes of fresh quality produce to almost 3000 subscribers. However, Talley Farms’ space for production and processing is limited and at times required for other aspects of business. This results in a problem where Talley Farms current processing system of produce for the Fresh Harvest program is not suitable for the forecasted growing demand. This report addresses the need to prepare for continued significant growth to the demand for Fresh …

Re-Evaluating Vfx Workflows: Animating Vehicle Dynamics, Charles Duong

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

No abstract provided.

Current, December 01, 2014, University Of Missouri-St. Louis

Current (2010s)

No abstract provided.

Ethics Is Not Rocket Science: How To Have Ethical Discussions In Your Science Class, Kelly C. Smith

Publications

The Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University seeks to encourage discussion on campus, in businesses, and in the community about how ethical decision-making can be the basis of both personal and professional success. In the last 15 years, our fellows have, among other things, served as Co-PI’s on a wide range of grants, produced Responsible Conduct of Research training for science and engineering graduate students and faculty, managed the ethics curriculum at a medical school, and produced video lectures on ethical thinking for undergraduate Biology majors. The crown jewel of our efforts to-date is our Ethics Across the Curriculum …

What About Boem? The Need To Reform The Regulations Governing Offshore Oil And Gas Planning And Leasing, Michael Levine, Andrew Hartsig, Maggie Clements

Alaska Law Review

The nature of offshore oil and gas activities is changing as companies are forced into difficult and remote areas, including the U.S. Arctic Ocean. As evidenced by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy and Shell's error-plagued efforts to drill exploration wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in 2012, the rules governing whether and under what conditions to allow offshore drilling in frontier areas have not kept pace with environmental and technical changes. These rules were implemented in 1979 and have remained substantively the same since. Recent changes to at the Department of the Interior to disband the Minerals Management Service, …