Digital Commons Network^™

Improving The Accuracy Of Middle School Students' Self-Assessment, Peer Assessment, And Mathematics Achievement., Elizabeth Popelka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the documented advantages of formative assessment (FA) strategies in elevating student achievement, much of the relevant research is dated and undermined by questionable design and inattention to K-12 settings. In order to fill these voids, this quantitative study tested the effect of a self- and peer-assessment-training instructional sequence, developed with recommendations from past research and employing explicitly described assessment measures and criteria, on middle school students’ assessment accuracy and subsequent mathematics achievement. The researcher hypothesized a correlation between measurable growth in assessment accuracy and gains in achievement, as well as a reciprocal effect of self- and peer-assessment ability. The …

Exclusive-Or Preprocessing And Dictionary Coding Of Continuous-Tone Images., Takiyah K. Cooper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The field of lossless image compression studies the various ways to represent image data in the most compact and efficient manner possible that also allows the image to be reproduced without any loss. One of the most efficient strategies used in lossless compression is to introduce entropy reduction through decorrelation. This study focuses on using the exclusive-or logic operator in a decorrelation filter as the preprocessing phase of lossless image compression of continuous-tone images. The exclusive-or logic operator is simply and reversibly applied to continuous-tone images for the purpose of extracting differences between neighboring pixels. Implementation of the exclusive-or operator …

Application Of The Aeroacoustic Analogy To A Shrouded, Subsonic, Radial Fan., Bryan Buccieri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A study was conducted to investigate the predictive capability of computational aeroacoustics with respect to a shrouded, subsonic, radial fan. A three dimensional unsteady fluid dynamics simulation was conducted to produce aerodynamic data used as the acoustic source for an aeroacoustics simulation. Two acoustic models were developed: one modeling the forces on the rotating fan blades as a set of rotating dipoles located at the center of mass of each fan blade and one modeling the forces on the stationary fan shroud as a field of distributed stationary dipoles. Predicted acoustic response was compared to experimental data. The blade source …

Commencement Program 2015 December: College Of Liberal Arts, The University Of Texas At Arlington

Commencement Programs, Photos, and Video

No abstract provided.

Current Status And Long-Term Trends In Water Quality And Living Resources In The Virginia Tributaries And Chesapeake Bay Mainstem From 1985 Through 2014, Daniel M. Dauer, Todd A. Egerton, John R. Donat, Michael F. Lane, Suzanne C. Doughten, Cindy Johnson, Monika Arora

Status and Trends for Virginia Chesapeake Bay

The period prior to the implementation of the Chesapeake Bay Monitoring Program was characterized by a marked decline in the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. The disappearance of submerged aquatic vegetation in certain regions of the Bay, declines in the abundance of some commercially and recreationally important species, increases in the incidence of low dissolved oxygen events, changes in the Bay's food web, and other ecological problems have been related to the deteriorating water quality (e.g. USEPA, 1982,1983;Officer et al.,1984; Orth and Moore, 1984). The results of concerted research efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s stimulated the …

Automatic License Plate Recognition Using Deep Learning Techniques, Naga Surya Sandeep Angara

Electrical Engineering Theses

Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems capture a vehicles license plate and recognize the license number and other required information from the captured image. ALPR systems have number of significant applications: law enforcement, public safety agencies, toll gate systems, etc. The goal of these systems is to recognize the characters and state on the license plate with high accuracy. ALPR has been implemented using various techniques. Traditional recognition methods use handcrafted features for obtaining features from the image. Unlike conventional methods, deep learning techniques automatically select features and are one of the game changing technologies in the field of computer …

Virtual Electronics Laboratory For Visualized Education And Training, Sreelatha Aihloor Subramanyam

Electrical Engineering Theses

On-line education is utilized extensively and has been found to be effective in a multitude of subject areas, including engineering education. However, for on-line education to be fully effective in engineering education, a means must be developed to provide on-line students with laboratory experiences that achieve the same learning outcomes as face-to-face laboratories. To address this need, a pilot computer program, Project VELVET (Virtual Electronics Laboratory for Visualized Education and Training), for a virtual electronics laboratory is being developed. VELVET operates on Windows-based computers in a real-time environment. It presents to its user a virtual breadboard into which components may …

Rear-Flank Outflow Dynamics And Thermodynamics In The 10 June 2010 Last Chance, Colorado Supercell, Curtis J. Riganti

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On 10 June 2010, the second Verification of the Origins of Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX2) armada observed the non-tornadic phase of a supercell thunderstorm near Last Chance, Colorado. Tempest unmanned aircraft system (UAS) data collected in the rear-flank outflow revealed what appeared to be an elevated outflow head, turbulent wake, and a cold secondary outflow surge. Surface thermodynamic and kinematic data collected by StickNets and mobile mesonets suggested that the outflow wake may have extended to or very near the surface, perhaps cutting off the leading edge of the outflow at times. Single-Doppler data collected by the NOAA X-Pol Mobile Polarimetric …

Sequence Stratigraphic Framework Of Carbonate Diagenesis Within Neogene Glaciomarine Sandstones Of The Victoria Land Basin, Antarctica: Insights Into Reservoir Quality In Polar Settings, Daniel P. Dunham

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The controls on reservoir quality of most clastic sedimentary deposits are well-documented and understood. However, comparatively little is known about the reservoir potential of glaciogenic and glaciomarine deposits. This study investigates the Neogene strata of the AND-2A core recovered by the ANDRILL-Southern McMurdo Sound Project in the Victoria Land Basin, Antarctica, as an analog for assessing controls on reservoir quality in glaciomarine deposits. A petrographic analysis was conducted on 60 sandstone samples from various depths throughout the core, and carbonate diagenetic phases and morphologies were documented. Four sequences were examined in detail. Point counting on all samples was done to …

Estimation Of Deep Drainage Differences Between Till And No-Till Irrigated Agriculture, Justin P. Gibson

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Deep drainage was monitored under two center pivot irrigation sites located in south-central Nebraska during the 2013, and part of the 2014, growing seasons. Both fields underwent similar land management except for tillage practice: no-till in one and disk till in the other. Long term deep drainage rates were also estimated from chemical analysis of extracted soil cores, with the aid of the chloride mass balance equation. Mechanisms underpinning differences in deep drainage between the two fields were investigated through the use of unsaturated zone numerical modeling.

Deep drainage estimates from field monitoring indicated that a greater amount of deep …

Evaluating Count Outcomes In Synthesized Single-Case Designs With Multilevel Modeling: A Simulation Study, Kirstie L. Bash

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Complex statistical techniques such as multilevel modeling (MLM) ideally require substantial sample sizes in order to avoid assumption violations. Unfortunately, large between-subjects sample sizes can be impractical and, in some cases, impossible in real-world applications. The use of single-case designs (SCD) allow researchers to overcome this issue. The ability to handle non-normal outcomes appropriately in such single-case designs, however, remains unclear, especially when the outcome reflects recurrent event (count) data.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the utility of MLM for evaluating recurrent event outcomes in synthesized single-case designs. More specifically, this study seeks to determine the effects …

Discomfort Glare From Small, High Luminance Light Sources In Outdoor Nighttime Environments, Yulia I. Tyukhova

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The overarching goal of this research was to examine humans’ subjective and physiological responses to small, high luminance light sources in outdoor nighttime environments. Currently, discomfort glare is rarely calculated in lighting practice (Remaking Cities Institute (RCI) 2011), partly, because it is not known which metric predicts glare most accurately in the given application.

This dissertation describes a parametric experiment evaluating the effects of three glare source luminances (20,000; 205,000; 750,000 cd/m²), two source positions (0°, 10°), two source sizes (10^-5, 10^-4 sr), and three background luminances (0.03; 0.3; 1 cd/m²) on the …

Identification Of Color Properties Of Mangos Using Image Analysis, Md Towfqur Rahman

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this project work carried out the application of a simple machine vision system was used to measure the different color properties of mango fruit surface for grading operation. In the context of agricultural post-harvest activity, labor shortage and timeliness of operation, manual grading of fruits and other agricultural products are laborious and costly. Now-a-days non-destructive machine vision technology is used to process various post harvest operation of biological products according size, shape, defects, etc. A CCD camera with fluorescent lighting system is used to capture the mango images into the visible light region. Then the images were analyzed by …

Effects Of Wind Turbine Noise On Male Greater Prairie-Chicken Vocalizations And Chorus, Cara E. Whalen

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Wind energy facilities are constructed without full knowledge of their effects on birds, and the noise generated by wind turbines is a particular concern. I investigated the effects of wind turbine noise on male Greater Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus) vocalizations and chorus near Ainsworth, NE, USA in 2013 and 2014. I studied 14 leks located in the area surrounding a 36-turbine wind energy facility. I used two main approaches in this study. First, I recorded Greater Prairie-Chicken boom, cackle, whine, and whoop vocalizations at each of the study leks and measured the duration, sound pressure level, peak frequency, …

Occupancy Analysis And Density Estimation Of Kori Bustards (Ardeotis Kori) And Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida Meleagris) For Use In Landscape Conservation Planning In The Northern Tuli Game Reserve, Botswana, Kathryn R. Mccollum

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

For understudied species, more informed conservation planning and decision-making on both the local and landscape levels may be attained through the use of occupancy and abundance estimations. Here, we focus on two iconic bird species in eastern Botswana, kori bustards (Ardeotis kori) and helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris). The overall goal of this project was to better understand the hierarchy of factors that influence occupancy (ψ) and density of kori bustard and helmeted guineafowl populations within the Northern Tuli Game Reserve and how these factors may interact to affect landscape conservation and usage. We performed distance sampling …

Toward The Probing Of Dhqs Activity By Protein Engineering Through The Introduction Of Unnatural Amino Acids And The Selection Of Trna/Trna Synthetase Pairs, Shaina E. Ives

Department of Chemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Protein engineering is a valuable tool that allows scientist to explore how an enzyme works by mutation of key residues. This method has been used to improve function or stability of enzymes, thus allowing their use in both the lab and in industry to be expanded. Genetic incorporation of unnatural amino acids (unAA) can be used with protein engineering to exceed the current limitations, due to the limited number of functional groups of the 20 common amino acids.

The majority of this thesis will discuss the progress on incorporating the various unAA into the active site of the enzyme, Dehydroquinate …

An Evaluation And Exploration Of Nutrition Education In Elementary Schools, Elisha M. Hall

Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Childhood obesity is a significant problem in the United States. Obese children suffer from a variety of physical, emotional, and social consequences. To curb or reduce this problem, school-based nutrition education interventions have become more common. However, little research has been conducted concerning nutrition-related socioeconomic disparities in behavior change constructs for low and high income children, which is integral to forming appropriate theory-based interventions and allocating resources appropriately. Research into classroom teachers’ perspectives is also an area in need of strengthening to better inform interventions. Finally, the School Enrichment Kit Program (SEKP), a current interactive, classroom-based, nutrition and physical activity …

A Study On Evaporative Cooling For Data Centers & Artificial Neural Network Modeling, Pritam Karmokar

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

This study mainly aims at exploring how, one of the best “Green” solutions for IT equipment cooling aka Evaporative Cooling, can be optimized for better future deployment. Also, this study focuses on ways to deploy Artificial Neural Network models to Dynamic Systems. Today, SERVERS are one of most important devices that our technology driven world cannot do without. Efficiently cooling these delicate yet highly power dense beasts, while being environment friendly is one of our prime concerns. This study is a combination of two deceptively divergent works. First, on exploring the workings of this technique by investigating one such Evaporative …

Computational Model For Steady State Simulation Of A Plate-Fin Heat Exchanger, Ajit Rajesh Desai

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

High performance heat transfer devices are critical components in hybrid power generation systems. The design of a Recuperator for 'waste heat recovery' is crucial for reducing the operating cost of a hybrid system. Plate-fin heat exchangers occupy a special position among high performance heat exchangers because of the compactness, efficiency and flexibility they offer. The performance of these heat exchange devices is typically very sensitive to fluid property variations, axial conduction and heat losses to environment. This thesis presents a numerical model of a plate fin heat exchanger in which fluid property variations including temperature driven changes in specific heat …

Terahertz Radiation From High-Temperature Superconducting Bscco Mesas Of Various Geometries, Daniel P. Cerkoney

HIM 1990-2015

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the radiation from high-temperature superconducting mesas of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+ (BSCCO). This is motivated by the need for coherent sources of continuous wave terahertz (THz) emission capable of radiating practically in the THz frequency band. As BSCCO has been shown to be tunable from 0.5–2.4 THz (i.e., through the entire socalled terahertz gap centered about 1 THz), and has a higher peak operating temperature near 1 THz than most alternative sources, it is a good candidate for imaging and spectroscopy device applications [1]. When a static DC voltage is applied to a BSCCO mesa, …

To Hydrate Or Chlorinate: A Regression Analysis Of The Levels Of Chlorine In The Public Water Supply, Drew A. Doyle

HIM 1990-2015

Public water supplies contain disease-causing microorganisms in the water or distribution ducts. In order to kill off these pathogens, a disinfectant, such as chlorine, is added to the water. Chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in all U.S. water treatment facilities. Chlorine is known to be one of the most powerful disinfectants to restrict harmful pathogens from reaching the consumer. In the interest of obtaining a better understanding of what variables affect the levels of chlorine in the water, this thesis will analyze a particular set of water samples randomly collected from locations in Orange County, Florida. Thirty water …

An Examination Of The Factors That Impact Elementary School Principal's Perceptions Of Their Leadership Role, Kathryn M. Kish

HIM 1990-2015

A growing body of research supports the idea that large-scale school reform efforts often fail to create sustained change within the public school sector. When implementing deep organizational change, both novice and veteran educators are challenged to learn new skills, reexamine their instructional practice and content knowledge, and re-shape their underlying beliefs and values about schools. This qualitative study explored principals’ perceptions of their leadership roles in the school system. Data collection was done through a series of three interviews with three elementary school principals in Central Florida. In addition to their perceptions, it also studied factors that may influence …

Coordination Chemistry In Biology And Medicine, Christopher Chu

Dissertations - ALL

PART I. Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Metal-Citrate Complexes and the Investigation of Metal-Citrate Transporters in Gram-Positive Bacteria

Abstract.

Syntheses of new barium, cadmium, calcium, cobalt, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, nickel, and strontium citrate complexes have been attempted using different methods such as room temperature slow evaporation and hydrothermal reactions to create new metal-citrate complexes. Crystallizations were conducted under conditions varying metal and ligand concentrations, solution pH, temperature, solvents, and the presence of coligands. All structures of crystals obtained were characterized by X-ray crystallography. A novel lead-citrate complex was synthesized with a formula of (Na)[Pb5(C6H5O7)3(C6H6O7)(H2O)] 8H2O. The structure is two-dimensional …

Effects Of An Expressive Writing Intervention Aimed At Improving Academic Performance By Reducing Test Anxiety, Stephanie Lauren Spielberger

Dissertations - ALL

This study examined the effectiveness of a brief, class-wide, expressive writing intervention aimed at improving academic performance and decreasing test anxiety. This study included 110 students from six undergraduate psychology classes. In the first phase of the study, students completed a trait test anxiety measure and a demographic survey. In the second phase of the study, students completed a pre-intervention state test anxiety measure, responded to a 10-minute writing prompt (expressive or neutral), and completed the same state test anxiety measure, and then were administered an in-class exam. Approximately half the students were randomly assigned to the expressive writing group, …

Composite Minimization: Proximity Algorithms And Their Applications, Feishe Chen

Dissertations - ALL

ABSTRACT

Image and signal processing problems of practical importance, such as incomplete

data recovery and compressed sensing, are often modeled as nonsmooth optimization

problems whose objective functions are the sum of two terms, each of which is the

composition of a prox-friendly function with a matrix. Therefore, there is a practical

need to solve such optimization problems. Besides the nondifferentiability of the

objective functions of the associated optimization problems and the larger dimension

of the underlying images and signals, the sum of the objective functions is not,

in general, prox-friendly, which makes solving the problems challenging. Many algorithms have been …

Butlers Of The Mohawk Valley: Family Traditions And The Establishment Of British Empire In Colonial New York, Judd David Olshan

Dissertations - ALL

Historians follow those tributaries of early American history and trace their converging currents as best they may in an immeasurable river of human experience. The Butlers were part of those British imperial currents that washed over mid Atlantic America for the better part of the eighteenth century. In particular their experience reinforces those studies that recognize the impact that the Anglo-Irish experience had on the British Imperial ethos in America. Understanding this ethos is as crucial to understanding early America as is the Calvinist ethos of the Massachusetts Puritan or the Republican ethos of English Wiggery. We don't merely suppose …

Ruthenium-Catalyzed Transformations For The Synthesis Of Conjugated Dienes, Lauren Kaminsky

Dissertations - ALL

A general description of transition metal catalysis of alkynes and alkenes for the formation of conjugated dienes is briefly discussed. Specifically, a synopsis of ruthenium-hydride catalysis for the formation of 1,3-dienes is presented.

The development of the trans-silylvinylation of internal alkynes with acrylates and vinyl boronates to form conjugated dienes is discussed. This transformation was accomplished via a recently developed tandem silylative coupling using RuHCl(CO)(PCy3)2. The reaction optimization, mechanistic hypothesis and substrate scope for the coupling with acrylates and vinyl boronates is described. The vinyl boronate scope and alkyne scope is presented, in addition to the selective derivatization of the …

Optimizing Acyclic Identification Of Aptamers, Caitlin M. Miller

Dissertations - ALL

The minimal human alpha-thrombin binding aptamer, d(GGTTGGTGTGGTTGG), has previously been successfully identified from a DNA library of randomized hairpin loop, m=15, with the High Throughput Screening of Aptamers (HTSA) technique, later termed Acyclic Identification of Aptamers (AIA). AIA eliminated the need for multiple cycles of in vitro evolution typically used for aptamer discovery by employing libraries with an over-representation of all possible sequences and high throughput sequencing. Although the method was successful at identifying the thrombin binding aptamer, improvements to partitioning and sample preparation inconsistencies encountered during replication attempts were necessary in order to maximize its value. Subsequent revisions and …

Understanding Disordered Systems Through Numerical Simulation And Algorithm Development, Sean M. Sweeney

Dissertations - ALL

Disordered systems arise in many physical contexts. Not all matter is uni-

form, and impurities or heterogeneities can be modeled by fixed random disor-

der. Numerous complex networks also possess fixed disorder, leading to appli-

cations in transportation systems [1], telecommunications [2], social networks

[3, 4], and epidemic modeling [5], to name a few.

Due to their random nature and power law critical behavior, disordered

systems are difficult to study analytically. Numerical simulation can help

overcome this hurdle by allowing for the rapid computation of system states.

In order to get precise statistics and extrapolate to the thermodynamic limit,

large …

Indoor Environmental Quality (Ieq) And Building Energy Optimization Through Model Predictive Control (Mpc), Korbaga Fantu Woldekidan

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation aims at developing a novel and systematic approach to apply Model Predictive Control (MPC) to improve energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality in office buildings. Model predictive control is one of the advanced optimal control approaches that use models to predict the behavior of the process beyond the current time to optimize the system operation at the present time. In building system, MPC helps to exploit buildings’ thermal storage capacity and to use the information on future disturbances like weather and internal heat gains to estimate optimal control inputs ahead of time.

In this research the major challenges …