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The Influence Of Functional Weights On The Performance Of Least Squares Finite Element Formulation On Hybrid Meshes, Anirudh Rajagopal

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The Least-Squares Finite Element Method (LSFEM) is a numerical method for solving partial differential equations (PDE) approximately by minimizing the L-2 norm of the PDE residuals. Unlike the more common Galerkin approach, this method does not employ integration by parts to reduce the continuity requirements of the basis functions. Instead, the PDE is cast as a first-order system of differential equations, which allows for the solution of primary and secondary variables with the same order of accuracy. In addition, this approach always leads to a direct minimization problem and therefore not subject to the restrictive inf-sup condition and does not …

Shape Optimization Of Helical Coil Tube For Maximizing Heat Transfer, Venkat Manoj Kandukuri

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Many researchers have observed the enhancement of heat transfer in coiled tubes compared to straight tubes with the same diameter and length. It is known fact, that in a helical coil tube the maximum axial velocity shifted towards the outer wall of the pipe and imbalance between centrifugal forces and inertial loads to a secondary motion of the fluid in the cross-section of the tube. This secondary motion is responsible for improved transport of heat energy to/from the tube walls. Previous conducted Experimental and computational parametric studies show the relationship between the increased heat transfer and parameters such as pitch, …

Current Trends In Psychological And Educational Approaches For Training And Teaching Students With Autism In California, Trisha Sugita

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Within the United States, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has seen a dramatic increase over the past twenty years. As the prevalence rate of ASD increases, an increased need for expertise in the field of education has become apparent. Psychological and educational practices for training and teaching students with ASD continue to evolve in California however, a significant gap between theory and practice remains. This article provides a historical perspective of ASD and its prevalence rates. In addition, this article examines the current shifts in teacher training and provides an overview of evidence-based strategies to support students with ASD.

A Dollar A Day: Child Sponsorship And The Marketization Of Human Development, Taylor Hallett

Capstone Collection

Child sponsorship as a method of international development offers child sponsors a personal connection to the process of alleviating poverty in the global South. As a form of human development, child sponsorship is constituted by neoliberal principles of marketization and social entrepreneurship. How does child sponsorship, in this context, require us to rethink the ethics of international development in light of ongoing debates about neoliberalism? In this research, I argue that child sponsorship reifies the binary of the “developed” and “undeveloped” worlds. Through undertaking a content analysis of three organizations (Compassion International, World Vision, and UNICEF) and applying post-structural critique …

Navigation Paths To Adoption Through The Alaska Foster Care System: A Resource Guide For Potential Adoptive Parents, Tashina Duttle

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

Alaska has a higher than national average rate of adoption from foster care. While just over 20% of children in foster care nationally are discharged from state custody through adoption Alaska has nearly 30% of foster children discharged from state custody through adoption. There are a number of programs and resources available for foster parents and families interested in adopting through foster care in Alaska. However, there lacks a comprehensive single-point reference guide to explore the various paths. This research was conducted to identify resources available for families interested in learning about paths to adopt from foster care in Alaska …

Social Media: Enhancing The U.S. Military’S Communication With Its Target Audience, Lloyd Eldon Bedford

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this qualitative research analysis is to highlight the key changes over the last decade that influenced the U.S. Military to redirect its efforts of ignoring social media, to make it one of its major contributing asset to effective communication. I will examine my findings by answering the following questions to prove or deny that social media has enhanced the U.S. Military’s communication with its target audience. The first question is-Why did the U.S. Military change its strategy on using social media to manage communication? I am aiming to find out who or what events influenced this change …

Enhancing Engagement For Individuals With Physical Or Cognitive Decline Through The Use Of Multisensory Activities, Jodi Taylor

Dissertations - ALL

Traditional care models typically have a pre- schedule list of activities for elders to engage in, for the purpose of leisure, enjoyments and fun. However, there are questions remaining about the long term benefits of activities and how many residents participate. “RenewedMe” is a service design project with the goal of “Enhancing engagement in individuals with cognitive or physical decline through multi-sensory activities. This project was inspired by the Montessori method principles of education that foster development, engagement and relationships through developmentally appropriate activities. My approach was to create an “environment” that fosters/sustains individualism, builds confidence and sensorial input and …

Analyzing Nation Branding Through Public Relations Lenses-- The Case Of The 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony, Ruoshi Li

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

Studies across several disciplines, including marketing, political science and culture studies, have already touched on the concept of nation branding. Different experts with distinct academic backgrounds look at nation branding from different angles. This paper first takes a critical review of the conceptualizations of nation branding and then revisits the public relations theories, followed by a synthesis of public relations concepts with nation branding in a case study of the Beijing 2008 Opening Ceremony. It also seeks to open a conversation within the field of communication and public relations on the trend of nation branding. With an aim of …

Kinetics Of Ketone Hydrogenation Over Supported Ru Catalysts, Omar Abdelrahman Ali Abdelrahman

Dissertations - ALL

A kinetic investigation of the production of y-valerolactone (GVL) via the aqueous phase hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA) over supported Ru catalysts was carried out, in order to understand how to better design a hydrogenation catalyst for such biomass catalytic strategies. At temperatures representative of biomass processing, the reaction proceeds first through the reduction of the LA ketone group to its corresponding alcohol, 4-hydroxypentanoic acid (HPA), which subsequently produces GVL via intramolecular esterification in solution. The governing kinetics of LA hydrogenation were found to be insensitive to the identity of the support material on which Ru catalysts were prepared. Conversely …

Sensor Management For Localization And Tracking In Wireless Sensor Networks, Nianxia Cao

Dissertations - ALL

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are very useful in many application areas including battlefield surveillance, environment monitoring and target tracking, industrial processes and health monitoring and control. The classical WSNs are composed of large number of densely deployed sensors, where sensors are battery-powered devices with limited signal processing capabilities. In the crowdsourcing based WSNs, users who carry devices with built-in sensors are recruited as sensors. In both WSNs, the sensors send their observations regarding the target to a central node called the fusion center for final inference. With limited resources, such as limited communication bandwidth among the WSNs and limited sensor …

Brothers In Blood: The Significance Of Land And Loss In The Creation Of Jewish And Native American Ethnic And Religious Identity, Michael Eron Chaness

Dissertations - ALL

Volunteering at the Onondaga Nation School and collaborating with Chief Jacobs has exposed me to a new and subversive underbelly of American political and religious life. Working on sovereign Native land also provided valuable on the ground experience in Onondaga language and Haudenosaunee culture - food, humor, lacrosse, art, ceremony, government, education etc. Throughout my tenure at Onondaga I have used comparison as the backdrop for my experiences collaborating with Native peoples as well as the methodological backbone for this dissertation project.

My dissertation project, Brothers in Blood: the Significance of Land and Loss in the Creation of Jewish and …

Neuromorphic Learning Systems For Supervised And Unsupervised Applications, Qiuwen Chen

Dissertations - ALL

The advancements in high performance computing (HPC) have enabled the large-scale implementation of neuromorphic learning models and pushed the research on computational intelligence into a new era. Those bio-inspired models are constructed on top of unified building blocks, i.e. neurons, and have revealed potentials for learning of complex information. Two major challenges remain in neuromorphic computing. Firstly, sophisticated structuring methods are needed to determine the connectivity of the neurons in order to model various problems accurately. Secondly, the models need to adapt to non-traditional architectures for improved computation speed and energy efficiency. In this thesis, we address these two problems …

The Role Of Icts In Social Movements: The Case Of The Honduran National Front Against The 2009 Coup, Fatima K. Espinoza Vasquez

Dissertations - ALL

There is an important academic conversation happening about how social movements adopt, use, and configure Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for political participation. This dissertation contributes to that conversation by taking a holistic look at ICTs, throughout a social movement's emergence and development, while considering its context, its organizational structures and sense-making processes.

I explore the case of the Honduran National Front Against the Coup (NFAC), a relevant case due to its similarities with other movements, like the use of social media, the support from the international community and its geographically dispersed networks; but also, particular in its political and …

Selective Dynamic Analysis Of Virtualized Whole-System Guest Environments, Andrew William Henderson

Dissertations - ALL

Dynamic binary analysis is a prevalent and indispensable technique in program analysis. While several dynamic binary analysis tools and frameworks have been proposed, all suffer from one or more of: prohibitive performance degradation, a semantic gap between the analysis code and the execution under analysis, architecture/OS specificity, being user-mode only, and lacking flexibility and extendability. This dissertation describes the design of the Dynamic Executable Code Analysis Framework (DECAF), a virtual machine-based, multi-target, whole-system dynamic binary analysis framework. In short, DECAF seeks to address the shortcomings of existing whole-system dynamic analysis tools and extend the state of the art by utilizing …

Parameters That Affect Parallel Processing For Computational Electromagnetic Simulation Codes On High Performance Computing Clusters, Hongsik Moon

Dissertations - ALL

What is the impact of multicore and associated advanced technologies on computational software for science? Most researchers and students have multicore laptops or desktops for their research and they need computing power to run computational software packages. Computing power was initially derived from Central Processing Unit (CPU) clock speed. That changed when increases in clock speed became constrained by power requirements. Chip manufacturers turned to multicore CPU architectures and associated technological advancements to create the CPUs for the future. Most software applications benefited by the increased computing power the same way that increases in clock speed helped applications run faster. …

A Mediterranean Connection: French Ambassadors, The Republic Of Venice, And The Construction Of The Louisquatorzien State, 1662-1702, Sherrod Brandon Marshall

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

Historians of Louis XIV’s reign have debated evolutions in the king’s administration. Such studies, despite heterogenous conclusions, better define our understanding of absolutist authority in the ancien régime as manifested through a process of so-called bureaucratic centralization. Scholars debate to what extent the monarchy achieved centralization amid the interests of individuals and corporations suspended in traditional hierarchies and socio-cultural expectations. Recently, scholars have posited that Louis’s government accommodated the concerns of its ministers through gratifications and social advancement compelling obedience to the Bourbon dynastic state. This dissertation considers for the first time how a politics of accommodation characterized the …

Robust Kullback-Leibler Divergence And Its Applications In Universal Hypothesis Testing And Deviation Detection, Pengfei Yang

Dissertations - ALL

The Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence is one of the most fundamental metrics in information theory and statistics and provides various operational interpretations in the context of mathematical communication theory and statistical hypothesis testing. The KL divergence for discrete distributions has the desired continuity property which leads to some fundamental results in universal hypothesis testing. With continuous observations, however, the KL divergence is only lower semi-continuous; difficulties arise when tackling universal hypothesis testing with continuous observations due to the lack of continuity in KL divergence.

This dissertation proposes a robust version of the KL divergence for continuous alphabets. Specifically, the KL divergence …

Improving The Efficiency Of Energy Harvesting Embedded System, Yukan Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

In the past decade, mobile embedded systems, such as cell phones and tablets have infiltrated and dramatically transformed our life. The computation power, storage capacity and data communication speed of mobile devices have increases tremendously, and they have been used for more critical applications with intensive computation/communication. As a result, the battery lifetime becomes increasingly important and tends to be one of the key considerations for the consumers. Researches have been carried out to improve the efficiency of the lithium ion battery, which is a specific member in the more general Electrical Energy Storage (EES) family and is widely used …

Vocational And Life Skills Quarterly Report: Quarter 2 (October-December 2016), Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research, Johanna Peterson, Jordan Clark

Reports

The Vocational and Life Skills Program was created by Nebraska Legislative Bill 907 in 2014 with the goals of reducing recidivism and increasing employment for individuals who are incarcerated, who have been incarcerated within the prior 18 months or who are under parole or probation supervision. Participants must begin programming under these conditions, but they may continue programming as the program sees fit for his or her individual needs. Eight programs were funded in Grant Cycle 2 which runs from July 2016-June 2018. The NCJR evaluation was initiated in May 2016 with the primary goal of identifying types of programming …

Vocational And Life Skills Monthly Data Update: December 2016, Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research, Johanna Peterson

Reports

Grantees use an online data management system to submit data on participants served under their Vocational and Life Skills programming. This data is due monthly and reflects all services provided during the previous month to participants. Evaluators at the Nebraska Center for Justice Research work with grantees directly to correct any data errors on an ongoing basis during monthly update calls and site visits.

Data presented below is from the monthly data pulls. Because this data comes for an active database with live data being entered and updated daily, data, including previously submitted information, may fluctuate depending on changes made …

Challenges Facing First Year Chinese International Students In A California Private School, Shelby Bumgarner

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Mandarin speaking, mainland Chinese secondary students enrolled in grades nine through twelve make up almost 50% of America's international student population (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2015). According to the literature, these students face unique challenges in their education: learning core subjects in a non-native language before they have fully grasped the language, and sitting in classes that are taught by teachers with virtually no training in making the content comprehensible for international students. The purpose of this qualitative study is to acquire an in-depth understanding of the challenges that Mandarin speaking, mainland Chinese, international secondary students face in their …

Digital Citizenship In 21st Century Education, Aimee Green Logan

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Recent Federal Government initiatives have affected equitable public school funding, which prevents many schools from becoming compliant with the California Common Core Standards. Presently, public schools in California must adopt Common Core State standards, which require the integration of technology within the classroom, however, there are no specific standards and or guidelines within the CCCS that address how students should safely conduct themselves online. This has left students and teachers unprepared to adequately support the growing needs of students online, especially without standards addressing digital literacy. Students who go online face cyberbullying, predatory contact, identity theft and other consequences that …

2016 Winter Undergraduate And Graduate Commencement, Belleville Campus, Lindenwood University

Commencement Programs

Lindenwood University, Belleville commencement program.

2016 Winter Graduate & Undergraduate Commencement, Lindenwood University

Commencement Programs

Lindenwood University Commencement program.

North Mississippi Vista Project Seeks Recruits, Staff Report

University of Mississippi News

Sixth year of community-building program begins in January 2017

Lesley University Library Newsletter, Vol. 1(3), Office Of The Dean Of The Library

Library Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Alaska Army National Guard Construction Planning Process Improvement, Jeremy Nielson

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

The Alaska Army National Guard (AKARNG) is a jointly funded agency run under a cooperative agreement between the federal and state governments. Recognized as a state agency, the AKARNG reports to the governor for domestic response and trains for federal missions. With this relationship, the AKARNG receives funds from the National Guard Bureau (NGB) and the Alaska State Legislature for the execution of construction projects. Under the cooperative agreement, the AKARNG follows state procedures and uses the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT/PF) to manage projects. The AKARNG Construction and Facilities Maintenance Officer (CFMO) ensures federal oversight of …

Sensitivity To The Ferguson Effect: The Role Of Managerial Organizational Justice, Justin Nix, Scott E. Wolfe

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose

We argue that the police have been adversely impacted by Ferguson-related negative publicity in ways beyond the supposed increase in crime (e.g., reduced motivation and increased perception of danger). Further, we suggest that organizational justice is a key factor that influences officers' sensitivity to such Ferguson Effects.

Methods

We used a sample of 510 sheriff's deputies surveyed 6 months after the incident in Ferguson. We explored whether organizational justice is associated with deputies' sensitivity to several manifestations of the Ferguson Effect using OLS and ordered logistic regression models.

Results

The results demonstrated that deputies who believed their supervisors were …

News & Events

Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM)

No abstract provided.

‘Competent, But Not Allowed To Blossom’: Midwifery-Trained Registered Nurses’ Perceptions Of Their Service: A Qualitative Study In Sri Lanka, Sunethra Jayathilake, Vathsala Jayasuriya-Illesinghe, Rasika Perera, Himani Molligoda, Kerstin Samarasinghe

Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM)

Objective: To explore midwifery-trained registered nurses’ perceptions of their own profession as maternity care providers and how they identify their role, tasks, and responsibilities within a multi-professional team.
Design: An exploratory qualitative study using focus group discussions and qualitative content analysis.
Setting: Three selected tertiary care hospitals in the Capital Province in Sri Lanka.
Participants: Twenty-two midwifery-trained RNs working in intra-partum and postpartum units.
Findings: The overriding theme of the analysis was identified as ‘competent but not allowed to blossom fully in their practice’, based on two main categories: ‘provision of competent care’ and ‘working with disappointments’. Each main …