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An Atrial Activity Based Algorithm For The Single-Beat Rate-Independent Detection Of Atrial Fibrillation, Steven J. Ladavich Jr.

Theses

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and is the cause of 15% of all ischemic strokes in the United States. In many cases, AF is episodic and/or asymptomatic and as a result, there is a strong need for algorithms capable of quickly and reliably detecting AF, even in cases where the heart rate is controlled through medication or with a pacemaker. Current RR interval (RRI)-based algorithms do not directly target atrial activity, cannot detect AF when the heart rate is controlled, and analyze relatively long intervals of the electrocardiography (ECG) to make an AF determination. This work …

Lack Of Equivalence In The Elemental And Stable Isotope Chemistry Within The Sagittal Otolith Pair Of The Summer Flounder, Paralichthys Dentatus, Antranik Kajajian, Jason J. Schaffler, Cynthia M. Jones

OES Faculty Publications

In fish that are not bilaterally symmetrical, the left and right sagittae are often not symmetrical, exhibiting divergent growth patterns and mass, and may have differences in chemical composition. We investigated this in the asymmetrical summer flounder Paralichthys dentatus, collected from different nursery habitats along the US east coast. Significant differences were detected in otolith mass, δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, Li:Ca, Mg:Ca, and Sr:Ca, and overall chemical signatures. These results refute the hypothesis of left-right equivalence that is prevalent for bilaterally symmetrical fishes. We tested whether a specific side was better suited for classification. The best models …

Can We Predict The Future: Juvenile Finfish And Their Seagrass Nurseries In The Chesapeake Bay, Cynthia M. Jones

OES Faculty Publications

The importance of estuarine seagrass beds as nurseries for juvenile fish has become a universal paradigm, especially for estuaries that are as important as the Chesapeake Bay. Yet, scientific tests of this hypothesis were equivocal depending on species, location, and metrics. Moreover, seagrasses themselves are under threat and one-third of seagrasses have disappeared worldwide with 65 of their losses occurring in estuaries. Although there have been extensive studies of seagrasses in the Chesapeake Bay, surprisingly few studies have quantified the relationship between seagrass as nurseries for finfish in the Bay. Of the few studies that have directly evaluated the use …

Women In Science 2014, Clark Science Center's Summer Research Fellows Program

SURF Abstracts (Women in Science)

Women in Science 2014 summarizes research done by Smith College’s Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) Program participants. Ever since its 1967 start, SURF has been a cornerstone of Smith’s science education. In 2014, 150 students participated in SURF (141 hosted on campus and nearby eld sites), supervised by 61 faculty mentor-advisors drawn from the Clark Science Center and connected to its eighteen science, mathematics, and engineering departments and programs and associated centers and units. At summer’s end, SURF participants were asked to summarize their research experiences for this publication.

Aho! All My Relations: Native Identity And Its Relationship To Psychological Well-Being, Jamie Ramsey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is the first known study to examine the relationship between Native identity and psychological well-being, which is defined by Ryff in positivePsychology as existential strengths. It is also the first known study to investigate the relationship between Native identity and blood quantum through quantitative measures. Overall, 199 Natives from two American Indian Centers, three Indiana powwows, and online from Facebook participated by completing the Ryff's Scales of Psychological Well-being, Phinney's Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, and demographic information. The main hypothesis was to explore whether any of the psychological well-being subscales (positive relations, autonomy, mastery of environment, self-acceptance, personal growth, …

Effect Of Low-Level Laser Therapy On Muscle Fatigue, Connor Barnes

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pitching is one of the most demanding movements in all of sport. When muscles fatigue from pitching the mechanics of the pitcher change thus resulting in a higher chance of injury. Pitchers are always looking for ways to improve their performance by delaying fatigue. Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) has been shown to decrease muscle fatigue and limit next day soreness. The purpose of this study was to see if a LLLT treatment of the external rotators of the shoulder would increase time to fatigue using a fatiguing protocol. 13 participants volunteered for this study. Each participant would have two testing …

Mentors' Perceptions Of A University-School Partnership Through A Student African American Mentoring Initiative, Amanda Gilman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The participants in this study were 10 African American male college mentors at Indiana State University who participated in the Indiana State University Student African American Male Mentor Program, one school counselor, and two members of the Student African American Brotherhood administration. The study examined potential benefits to mentors, such as an enhanced feeling of connection and motivation, alleviation of feelings of alienation or isolation, counteracting of negative peer impact, and increased attachment to the university. All participants took part in semi-structured interviews and three mentors took part in a focus group. Grounded theory was used to analyze the data …

The Relationship Between Social Media And Empathy, Franklin M. Collins

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The relationship between social media and empathy has not been explored extensively. Research on the expression of emotion and the association with empathy displayed on social media websites have been minimally explored. This study sought to support findings that chatting online leads to expressions of empathy (Rosen, 2012) and a positive relationship exists between conversing with others online and empathic expression (Ivcevic & Ambady, 2012. Empathic concern was hypothesized to show a positive relationship with one’s likelihood to chat, time on Facebook, and emotional connection to Facebook or Facebook usage. Empathic concern also was predicted to be greater among computer …

Practical Strategies That Work With Challenging Behavior!, Karen H. Barineau Mrs., Carli Ferris Harrell

Georgia Association for Positive Behavior Support Conference

This session will focus on the concept of “learning for all”. Each child, regardless of ability or disability, deserves to be an active participant in the learning process. Positive Behavior Support (PBS) is a process of systemic and individualized strategies for achieving important social and learning outcomes while preventing problem behavior with all students. The focus of this presentation is on understanding why a child engages in problem behavior and establishing a behavior support plan. This session will address problem behaviors that range from aggression, tantrums, property destruction, and social skills deficits within the school setting.

Educators must be creative …

An Architecture For Self-Healing Software Systems, Christopher J. Gardner

Theses

As computer languages gained the ability to reflect upon their running states, it should be possible for programs produced using those languages to detect and correct errors. In this thesis, I propose a system that is capable of accomplishing such a task. I created a system that is capable of detecting and correcting exceptional behavior within a running process. The system uses an aspect-oriented programming framework to inject advices into methods. These advices catch exceptional behavior, gather information about the state of the method, and pass the information to an external process for evaluation. Once the external process is able …

Software Component Metadata For Selecting And Verifying Model Compositions In Semi-Automated Forces Systems, Konstantinos Prapiadis

Theses

Research into a framework or methodology able to facilitate the integration or composition of existing software components into a new software system has a long history, both in software engineering in general and in modeling and simulation in particular. The potential benefits from the reuse of previously developed software components are well-known; they include reduction in both the cost and the time needed to develop a new system. In this thesis a methodology for the implementation of new simulation software systems using previously developed software components is developed and tested. The methodology is focused on semi-automated forces systems, an important …

Analysis Of Bi-Directional Reflectance Distribution Functions Of Structured Rough Surfaces, Amanda Black Clark

Theses

Details of experimental and modeled Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDFs) for rough aluminum surfaces are contained in this document. High energy lasers are of interest to the military for intersepting incoming threats. An issue with using high energy lasers in this way is that reflectance from the threat surface can irradiate objects not in the direct path of the laser and cause damage. BRDFs can be used to propagate reflected energy in any given geometrical scenario to determine irradiance on areas of interest. A gonioreflectometer was used to collect reflectance data from 6061 aluminum alloy sanded and structured machined samples. …

Multi-Core Object-Oriented Real-Time Pipeline Framework, Troy S. Wolz

Theses

Many real-time systems with requirements of low-latency and determinism are incapable of being implemented in software because software-based approaches using standard Operating Systems (OS) introduce unacceptable and unpredictable latencies. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are often used in place of software at the expense of ease of programmability and time of development because they provide constant run time. This thesis presents the MORPF framework which combines a highly parallelized software framework with a specialized OS to allow for determinism on the order of tens of microseconds in software. With MORPF, highly deterministic software can be written that is more flexible, …

A Binary Instrumentation Tool Suite For Capturing And Compressing Traces For Multithreaded Software, Albert R. Myers

Theses

Program execution traces are widely used in program debugging, workload characterization, performance analysis, and trace-driven architecture simulation. A number of research efforts have been dedicated to tracing in single-threaded software. Multi-cores that integrate a number of processor cores on a single chip and execute multithreaded software have become the standard in embedded, desktop, and server computer systems. In this research we develop and evaluate a suite of software tools for capturing and compressing traces for multithreaded software called mTrace, which we believe is the first set available. mTrace incorporates the following tools: (i) mcfTrace that captures and compresses control-flow traces, …

Efficient Particle-In-Cell Simulation Of Auroral Plasma Phenomena Using A Cuda Enabled Graphics Processing Unit, Stephen Sewell

Theses

This thesis introduces a software framework that effectively utilizes low-cost commercially available Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to simulate complex scientific plasma phenomena that are modeled using the Particle-In-Cell (PIC) paradigm. The software framework that was developed conforms to the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), a standard for general purpose graphic processing that was introduced by NVIDIA Corporation. This framework has been verified for correctness and applied to advance the state of understanding of the electromagnetic aspects of the development of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. For each phase of the PIC methodology, this research has identified one or more …

Design Of Experiment To Analyze Effect Of Input Parameters On Thermal Stress And Deformation In Overhanging Part Features Created With The Slm Additive Manufacturing Process, Albert E. Patterson V

Theses

Selective laser melting (SLM) is a very advanced and promising additive manufacturing process which is beginning to take root in the US manufacturing scene. Unfortunately, it is not fully developed as of yet and still suffers from problems; the most serious of these is the tendency of the process to trap residual stresses within the parts during the process. Overhanging and delicate features suffer particularly from this. A full-factorial experiment was designed and performed as a tool to explore this problem and provide insight into ways to deal with this problem in engineering design. The experiment utilized a simple simulation …

Incorporating Size Effect Into A Micromechanical Model For Brittle Materials, Wm. Patrick Roush

Theses

This research addresses computational modeling of the size effect in brittle materials, a phenomenon commonly seen in laboratory tests but has not been adequately accounted for in computational models for such materials. Size effect is accounted for in this research by extending a damage model for brittle materials (the DCA model), which is based on the consideration of micromechanics of defects in the materials. In particular, the statistical distribution of the defects in a brittle material is assumed to vary with the size of the material sample under consideration. The idea has been numerically implemented in the DCA model and …

Modal Analysis And Acoustic Transmission Through Offset-Core Honeycomb Sandwich Panels, Adam Dustin Mathias

Theses

The work presented in this thesis is motivated by an earlier research that showed that double, offset-core honeycomb sandwich panels increased thermal resistance and, hence, decreased heat transfer through the panels. This result lead to the hypothesis that these panels could be used for acoustic insulation. Using commercial finite element modeling software, COMSOL Multiphysics, the acoustical properties, specifically the transmission loss across a variety of offset-core honeycomb sandwich panels, is studied for the case of a plane acoustic wave impacting the panel at normal incidence. The transmission loss results are compared with those of single-core honeycomb panels with the same …

Perceived Stimuli Size And Font Size Influences On Judgments Of Learning, Kelsey M. Mcelroy

Theses

Prior research has shown that people perceive heavier items and those presented in larger fonts as more memorable than lighter items presented in smaller fonts. This occurs despite the fact that weight and font size have been found to not impact actual recall performance. The present study examined how the physical size of the items represented in unrelated word pairs interacted with font size to influence younger adult participants' judgments of learning (JOLs; i.e., ratings regarding the likelihood of remembering an item) and actual recall performance. Results indicated that participants not only gave higher JOLs to large stimuli word pairs …

Examining The Role Of Incomplete Information On Tornado Warning Response, Kimberly T. Beam

Theses

This study is a partial replication of the Schultz et al. (2010) study, examining behavioral response to tornado warnings while driving. Prior experience with tornadoes was collected to examine its influence on response to the scenario and confidence ratings. Additionally, the effect of weather elements (hail and rain) and protective action recommendations were manipulated in scenarios after which participants were asked to choose their likely response. Lastly, confidence ratings were measured to test whether confidence ratings were influenced by participants' responses to the given scenario. Results indicated that prior experience did not influence responses given to the scenario. Results also …

Faculty Senate Librarian's Report-2014, Georgia Southern University

Faculty Senate: Librarian's Reports

No abstract provided.

Faculty Senate Minutes-2014

Faculty Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Faculty Handbook, Georgia Southern University

Faculty Handbooks

Faculty Handbook for Georgia Southern University for the 2014-2015 academic year. The Faculty Handbook is published online by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and archived in Digital Commons@Georgia Southern.

Strategic Decision Support System Using Heuristic Algorithm For Practical Outlet Zones Allocation To Dealers In A Beer Supply Distribution Network, Michelle Lee Fong Cheong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider a two-echelon beer supply distribution network with the brewer replenishing the dealers and the dealers serving the outlet zones directly, for multiple product types. The allocation of the outlet zones to the dealers will determine the quantity of products the brewer replenishes each dealer, which will in turn impact the total warehousing and transportation costs. The non-linear optimization model formulated is difficult to solve to optimality, and the model itself does not include practical business considerations in the distribution business. A heuristics algorithm is designed and easily implemented using spreadsheets with Visual Basic programming to effectively and efficiently …

Corruption Temptation, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In response to Professor Lawrence Lessig’s Jorde Lecture, I suggest that corruption is not the proper conceptual vehicle for thinking about the problems that Professor Lessig wants us to think about. I argue that Professor Lessig’s real concern is that, for the vast majority of citizens, wealth presents a significant barrier to political participation in the funding of campaigns. Professor Lessig ought to discuss the wealth problem directly. I conclude with three reasons why the corruption temptation ought to be resisted.

Mitt Romney, The 47% Percent, And The Future Of The Mass Income Tax, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tang Junyi’S Comparative Philosophy And The Spiritual Value Of Chinese Culture, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Tang Junyi (1909-1978) engaged in philosophical comparisons very early in his career. He always philosophized from a cultural perspective in his subsequent philosophical reflection on the development of the mind, the philosophy of life, the relation between culture and moral reason, and the spiritual value of Chinese culture.

The Labor Theory Of Justice, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions as truth is of systems ofthought. So John Rawls famously proclaimed in the beginning of hismasterwork, A Theory of Justice. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if untrue. Laws and institutions no matterhow efficient and well arranged must be reformed or abolished if unjust.Justice, perhaps unlike some other values, was not something we mightreadily trade a little of in exchange for other benefits.1In his critique ofRawls, Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen proposes to take justicemore seriously while at the same time conceding that justice might …

Utility Of Potential Misdiagnoses In Predicting Foodborne Outbreaks, Lucia Lucia, Artur Dubrawski, Lujie Chen

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To investigate utility of using inpatient and emergency room diagnoses to detect outbreaks of Salmonellosis in humans. To quantify the impact of including in the analysis cases diagnosed with conditions that may have physiological appearance similar to Salmonellosis.

Financial Reporting Opacity And Expected Crash Risk: Evidence From Implied Volatility Smirks, Jeong-Bon Kim, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The recent financial crisis has stimulated a renewed interest in understanding the determinants of stock price crash risk (i.e., left tail risk). Recent research shows that opaque financial reports enable managers to hide and accumulate bad news for extended periods. When the accumulated bad news reaches certain tipping point, it will be suddenly released to the market at once, resulting in an abrupt decline in stock price (i.e., a crash). This study extends this line of research by examining the impact of financial reporting opacity on perceived or expected crash risk. Prominent economists, such as Olivier Blanchard, argue that removing …