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A Unicorn's Tale: Examining The Experiences Of Black Women In Engineering Industry, Monique S. Ross

Open Access Dissertations

Black women have recently been identified as the most educated demographic in the United States, and yet they are grossly underrepresented in engineering. They comprise 6.4 % of the U.S. population and only 0.72 % of engineering industry. Meanwhile, engineers have been identified as the key to the United States’ ability to maintain its prominence and leadership in a competitive global economy due to their contribution to maintaining and improving our infrastructures and standard of living. This significance to society has spawned national initiatives geared towards broadening participation in engineering. This research study was designed to explore the experiences of …

Adaptive Sampling Trust-Region Methods For Derivative-Based And Derivative-Free Simulation Optimization Problems, Sara Shashaani

Open Access Dissertations

We consider unconstrained optimization problems where only “stochastic” estimates of the objective function are observable as replicates from a Monte Carlo simulation oracle. In the first study we assume that the function gradients are directly observable through the Monte Carlo simulation. We propose ASTRO, which is an adaptive sampling based trust-region optimization method where a stochastic local model is constructed, optimized, and updated iteratively. ASTRO is a derivative-based algorithm and provides almost sure convergence to a first-order critical point with good practical performance. In the second study the Monte Carlo simulation is assumed to provide no direct observations of the …

Convicted By Memory: Automatically Recovering Spatial-Temporal Evidence From Memory Images, Brendan D. Saltaformaggio

Open Access Dissertations

Memory forensics can reveal “up to the minute” evidence of a device’s usage, often without requiring a suspect’s password to unlock the device, and it is oblivious to any persistent storage encryption schemes, e.g., whole disk encryption. Prior to my work, researchers and investigators alike considered data-structure recovery the ultimate goal of memory image forensics. This, however, was far from sufficient, as investigators were still largely unable to understand the content of the recovered evidence, and hence efficiently locating and accurately analyzing such evidence locked in memory images remained an open research challenge.

In this dissertation, I propose breaking from …

Modeling The Impact Of Land Surface Feedbacks On Post Landfall Tropical Cyclones, Subashini Subramanian

Open Access Dissertations

The land surface is an important component of numerical models. The land surface models are modules that control energy partitioning, compute surface exchange coefficients and form the only physical boundary in a regional scale numerical model. Thus, an accurate representation of land surface is critical to compute surface fluxes, represent the boundary layer evolution and affect changes in weather systems. Land surface can affect landfalling tropical cyclones in two ways: (i) when the cyclone is offshore and land can influence cyclones by introducing dry (or moist) air that can weaken (or strengthen) the organized convective structure of cyclones, and (ii) …

Differentially Private Data Publishing For Data Analysis, Dong Su

Open Access Dissertations

In the information age, vast amounts of sensitive personal information are collected by companies, institutions and governments. A key technological challenge is how to design mechanisms for effectively extracting knowledge from data while preserving the privacy of the individuals involved. In this dissertation, we address this challenge from the perspective of differentially private data publishing. Firstly, we propose PrivPfC, a differentially private method for releasing data for classification. The key idea underlying PrivPfC is to privately select, in a single step, a grid, which partitions the data domain into a number of cells. This selection is done using the exponential …

Dynamic Holography In Semiconductors And Biomedical Optics, Hao Sun

Open Access Dissertations

Three-dimensional scanning and display are rapidly-advancing new technologies with important commercial drivers such as 3D printing and remote imaging for big data applications. Holography is a natural approach to recording and displaying three-dimensional information because it uses phase-sensitive interferometry to record interference patterns when a reference beam encounters coherent light arriving from an object. The 3D information is contained in the values of wave optics. Holography is a broad field that goes beyond recording and displaying. For instance, holographic optical elements, which take advantage of holographic imaging principles, perform the functions of lenses, gratings or mirrors. Holographic interferometry is also …

Characterizing The Effects Of Repetitive Head Trauma In Female Soccer Athletes For Prevention Of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Diana Otero Svaldi

Open Access Dissertations

As participation in women’s soccer continues to grow and the longevity of female athletes’ careers continues to increase, prevention of mTBI in women’s soccer has become a major concern for female athletes as the long-term risks associated with a history of mTBI are well documented. Among women’s sports, soccer exhibits the highest concussion rates, on par with those of men’s football at the collegiate level. Head impact monitoring technology has revealed that “concussive hits” occurring directly before symptomatic injury are not predictive of mTBI, suggesting that the cumulative effect of repetitive head impacts experienced by collision sport athletes should be …

Fracture Analysis In Biomimetic Bouligand Architectures, Nobphadon Suksanqpanya

Open Access Dissertations

The Bouligand structure, which is found in many biological materials, is a hierarchical architecture that features uniaxial fiber layers assembled periodically into a helicoidal pattern. Many studies have highlighted the high damage-resistant performance of Bouligand structures and its biomimetic materials. One of the outstanding species with the Bouligand structures is the smashing Mantis Shrimp, Odontodactylus Scyllarus, (or stomatopod) due to its capability of generating high speed, high acceleration blows using its raptorial appendage to defeat highly armored preys. The load-bearing part of this appendage, the dactyl club, contains an interior region, which is mainly characterized by the Bouligand structure. This …

Divide And Recombined For Large Complex Data: Nonparametric-Regression Modelling Of Spatial And Seasonal-Temporal Time Series, Xiaosu Tong

Open Access Dissertations

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I briefly introduce one type of nonparametric regression method, namely local polynomial regression, followed by emphasis on one specific application of loess on time series decomposition, called Seasonal Trend Loess (STL). The chapter is closed by the introduction of D\&R; (Divide and Recombined) statistical framework. Data can be divided into subsets, each of which is applied with a statistical analysis method. This is an embarrassing parallel procedure since there is no communication between each subset. Then the analysis result for each subset are combined together to be the final analysis outcome for the …

Policy Design Tool For Managing Indoor Residential Water Demand In Water-Scarce Regions, Mujahed M. Thneibat

Open Access Dissertations

In view of population growth; climate change; and economic evolution, water resources in numerous parts of the world have reached their natural capacities. Consequently, the ability of many countries to grow; meet the basic needs of inhabitants; and protect the environment will be endangered like never before unless water resources are smartly handled and managed. ^ In the past few decades, many developed and developing countries have suffered from water scarcity, and more are certain to follow. The water security dilemma is much more challenging in developing countries. Water utilities have had to follow regulatory plans to manage demand on …

Factors Influencing Teacher Instructional Practice In Mathematics When Participating In Professional Development, William S. Walker Iii

Open Access Dissertations

In this research, I investigated teachers’ interpretations of the goals of professional development and factors that contributed to enacted instructional practices. A multiple-case study design was used to examine the interpretations of four high school teachers participating in a year-long professional development program with a standards-based framework for mathematics education. Data collection included information about the professional development program, the intended and enacted curriculum (Stein et al., 2007), the teachers’ interpretations of the professional development goals, and context factors that influenced instructional planning and implementation. The data were used to create a description of the professional development, a case study …

An Examination Of Geographic Patterns Of Soil Climate And Its Classification In The U.S. System Of Soil Taxonomy, Hans Edwin Winzeler

Open Access Dissertations

Soil climate, the record of temporal patterns of soil moisture and temperature, is an important component of the structure of U.S. Soil Taxonomy. The U.S. Soil Survey has used the Newhall Simulation Model (NSM) for estimating soil climate from atmospheric climate records at weather stations since the 1970s. The current soil climate map of the U.S. was published in 1994 by using NSM runs from selected weather stations along with knowledge-based hand-drawn mapping procedures. We developed a revised soil climate mapping methodology using the NSM and digital soil mapping techniques.

The new methodology is called Grid Element Newhall Simulation Model …

Unraveling The Fingerprints Of Nox Using Stable Isotopes: Implications For Nox Source Partitioning And Oxidation Chemistry, Wendell William Walters

Open Access Dissertations

The nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) stable isotope composition (δ15N & δ18O) of nitrogen oxides (NOx )may be a useful tool for constraining NOx emission sources as well as for understanding the atmospheric oxidation pathways responsible for its removal if various NOx sources and sink processes exhibit characteristic isotopic compositions (“fingerprints”). However, this requires (1) an accurate and complete inventory of δ15N(NOx) values from major emission sources, (2) an assessment of the kinetic and equilibrium isotope effects that can impact δ15N and δ18O values of NOx, (3) and test these assumptions by conducting accurate in situ δ15N and δ18O measurements …

Preparative Mass Spectrometry Applications In Nanomaterials And Organic Synthesis, Michael Wleklinski

Open Access Dissertations

Preparative mass spectrometry was traditionally a vacuum based experiment where mass selected ion beams were deposited onto surfaces; however, recently ions have been manipulated in the open air to perform accelerated synthesis. The work of this dissertation focuses on the generation of charged ions from microdroplets and their use in organic synthesis and the preparation of atomically precise metal nanoclusters. First the mechanism for charging in the zero volt paper spray will be presented. This works builds a computational model based on the statistical fluctuation of positive and negative charges based on the theory of Dodd. It is found through …

Matrix-Free Time-Domain Methods For General Electromagnetic Analysis, Jin Yan

Open Access Dissertations

Many engineering challenges demand an efficient computational solution of large-scale problems. If a computational method can be made free of matrix solutions, then it has a potential of solving very large scale problems. Among existing computational electromagnetic methods, the explicit finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is free of matrix solutions. However, it requires a structured orthogonal grid for space discretization. In this work, we develop a new time-domain method that naturally requires no matrix solution, regardless of whether the discretization is a structured grid or an unstructured mesh. No dual mesh, interpolation, projection and mass lumping are needed. Furthermore, a time-marching …

Surface Water Infiltration In Loess Soils Of The Lower Mississippi River Valley: An Emphasis On Land Use, Matthew Thompson

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Alluvial Aquifer is the shallowest and most heavily used groundwater aquifer in the Lower Mississippi River Valley, particularly in the Delta region of eastern Arkansas. However, the Alluvial Aquifer is being depleted faster than the rate of recharge, primarily due to excessive withdrawals for irrigated crop production. Since extensive irrigation in the highly agriculturally productive Delta region of eastern Arkansas has been a main culprit in the groundwater depletion issues the region faces, a better understanding of how ecological factors and/or agricultural best management practices could possibly increase infiltration, to consequently increase recharge, are needed in order to either …

Magnetic Massive Stars As Progenitors Of ‘Heavy’ Stellar-Mass Black Holes, V. Petit, Z. Keszthelyi, R. Macinnis, D. H. Cohen, R. H. D. Townsend, G. A. Wade, S. L. Thomas, S. P. Owocki, J. Puls, A. Ud-Doula

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

The groundbreaking detection of gravitational waves produced by the inspiralling and coales- cence of the black hole (BH) binary GW150914 confirms the existence of ‘heavy’ stellar-mass BHs with masses >25 M . Initial characterization of the system by Abbott et al. supposes that the formation of BHs with such large masses from the evolution of single massive stars is only feasible if the wind mass-loss rates of the progenitors were greatly reduced relative to the mass-loss rates of massive stars in the Galaxy, concluding that heavy BHs must form in low-metallicity (Z ,:S 0.25 0.5 Z ) environments. However, strong …

The Learned Hand Unformula For Short-Swing Liability, Andrew Chin

Washington Law Review

Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 allows for the recovery of short-swing profits realized by certain insiders from trading in a corporation’s stock within a period of less than six months. Three generations of corporate law students have been taught the “lowest-in, highest-out” formula that is intended to maximize the disgorgement of short-swing profits under section 16(b). Arnold Jacobs’s 1987 treatise presented two hypothetical examples where the formula fell short of the intended maximum, but courts, commentators, and practitioners have largely ignored these theoretical challenges to the formula’s validity. This Article identifies Gratz v. Claughton as the …

Improving Our Understanding Of Ocean Circulation: A Modeling Study, Nicole M. Flecchia

Senior Honors Projects

The Gulf Stream is not a rigidly contained ocean current; it curves and meanders in a manner that causes portions of it to go unstable, breaking off to form warm core rings. These rings travel west – due to the earth’s rotation - through the Slope Sea and onto the southern New England shelfbreak, affecting various physical parameters of our coastal waters as well as the biogeochemical and ecological properties (i.e. the ‘health’) of the those waters. Where a warm core ring lands along the east coast and the time of year it appears varies with each ring, causing each …

What We Know: Planning, Implementing, And Assessing A Media Literacy Themed Summer Camp, Philina Richardson, Nancy Garmer, Erin Mahaney, Lisa Petrillo, Rebecca Weber

Evans Library Publications

Information and media literacy are essential for today’s children and teens as they navigate an increasingly saturated information environment. Educators at all levels must seek to communicate and teach the skills that students need to evaluate, understand, and use information in engaging and innovative ways. This paper highlights such an effort by librarians and staff at Florida Institute of Technology in the planning and implementation of a camp called “What We Know: Understanding Media and Its Influence.” The camp was administered by five library staff and attended by ten teens between the ages of 12 and 16. Throughout the camp, …

A Comparison Of Online And Face-To-Face Achievement In Physical Science, Lisa F. Mozer

Doctor of Education in Instructional Technology Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This study provided a descriptive analysis of learning outcomes in both online and face-to-face grades 9-12 physical science courses. Archived data from a single school system were used for a comparative analysis of learning outcomes in high school physical science between students enrolled in online classes and students enrolled in face-to-face classes. The study compared two years of summative assessment scores of two student groups and, overall, found equality between the two learning environments. Online learning outcomes and face-to-face learning outcomes were similar for both school years, 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The overall comparison between learning environments was further examined …

The Role Of Nutrition Education And Active Choice To Increase Fruit And Vegetable Consumption Among Second Grade Students During Lunchtime, Robyn M. Cafiero

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Fruit and vegetable intake within the United States is considerably lower than the standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture. With this information, there is no surprise that these rates are especially low for school aged children. Although many studies have tried to incorporate programs that would effectively increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables among youngsters, many have fallen short with being able to sustain consumption over time. This study provided a way to increase fruit and vegetable consumption during lunchtime for second grade students by using a dual module of the Social Cognitive Theory and active …

A Century Of Grading Research: Meaning And Value In The Most Common Educational Measure, Susan M. Brookhart, Thomas R. Guskey, Alex J. Bowers, James H. Mcmillan, Jeffrey K. Smith, Lisa F. Smith, Michael T. Stevens, Megan E. Welsh

Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology Faculty Publications

Grading refers to the symbols assigned to individual pieces of student work or to composite measures of student performance on report cards. This review of over 100 years of research on grading considers five types of studies: (a) early studies of the reliability of grades, (b) quantitative studies of the composition of K–12 report card grades, (c) survey and interview studies of teachers’ perceptions of grades, (d) studies of standards-based grading, and (e) grading in higher education. Early 20th-century studies generally condemned teachers’ grades as unreliable. More recent studies of the relationships of grades to tested achievement and survey studies …

Marine Ecoregion And Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Affect Recruitment And Population Structure Of A Salt Marsh Snail, Steven C. Pennings, Scott Zengel, Jacob Oehrig, Merryl Alber, T. Dale Bishop, Donald R. Deis, Donna Devlin, A. Randall Hughes, John J. Hutchens, Whitney M. Kiehn, Caroline R. Mcfarlin, Clay L. Montague, Sean Powers, C. Edward Proffitt, Nicolle Rutherford, Camille L. Stagg, Keith Walters

Biology

Marine species with planktonic larvae often have high spatial and temporal variation in recruitment that leads to subsequent variation in the ecology of benthic adults. Using a combination of published and unpublished data, we compared the population structure of the salt marsh snail, Littoraria irrorata, between the South Atlantic Bight and the Gulf Coast of the United States to infer geographic differences in recruitment and to test the hypothesis that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to widespread recruitment failure of L. irrorata in Louisiana in 2010. Size-frequency distributions in both ecoregions were bimodal, with troughs in the distributions consistent …

Pass-Through And The Prediction Of Merger Price Effects, N. H. Miller, Marc Remer, C. Ryan, G. Sheu

Economics Faculty Works

We use Monte Carlo experiments to study how pass-through can improve merger price predictions, focusing on the first order approximation (FOA) proposed in Jaffe and Weyl [2013]. FOA addresses the functional form misspecification that can exist in standard merger simulations. We find that the predictions of FOA are tightly distributed around the true price effects if pass-through is precise, but that measurement error in pass-through diminishes accuracy. As a comparison to FOA, we also study a methodology that uses pass-through to select among functional forms for use in simulation. This alternative also increases accuracy relative to standard merger simulation and …

Creative Movement And Dance Integration: Their Connection To Learning Third Grade Math Concepts, Lashandria L. Redman

Master's Theses

In education, there are various methods of instruction used to engage students and strengthen learning of academic concepts. One method that can be used is arts integration. Arts integration is a pathway to learning that integrates an art form with another subject. Using movement and dance to help teach concepts that are part of an academic discipline is dance integration. This thesis involves dance integration and examines creating and presenting a movement and dance-integrated curriculum that teaches concepts that are part of the math discipline. The study explores how the movement and a dance-integrated curriculum affects student behavior and learning, …

The Conjugacy Problem For Automorphism Groups Of Countable Homogeneous Structures, Samuel Coskey, Paul Ellis

Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We consider the conjugacy problem for the automorphism groups of a number of countable homogeneous structures. In each case we find the precise complexity of the conjugacy relation in the sense of Borel reducibility.

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Scotts Bluff National Monument, 2016 Data Report, Molly B. Davis, Daniel J. Swanson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

This report presents the results of vegetation monitoring efforts in 2016 at Scotts Bluff National Monument (SCBL) by the Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (NGPN) and Northern Great Plains Fire Ecology Program (NGPFire).

During the sixth full year of field work, crew members from NGPN visited eight long-term monitoring plots on May 23-25, 2016 to collect data on the plant communities at SCBL. This is part of a long-term monitoring effort to better understand the condition of the vegetation at SCBL. NGPN staff captured data relating to species richness, herb-layer height, abundance of individual native and non-native …

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, 2016 Data Report, Aaron T. Rasor, Daniel J. Swanson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

This report presents the results of vegetation monitoring efforts in 2016 at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (AGFO) by the Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (NGPN).

During the sixth full year of field work, crew members from NGPN visited six long-term plant community monitoring (PCM) plots and the Northern Great Plains Fire Effects Crew (NGPFire) visited nine fire plant community monitoring (FPCM) plots to collect data on the plant communities at AGFO. This effort is part of a long-term monitoring program established to better understand the condition of the mixed-grass prairie, riparian, and upland regions in AGFO. …

Willingness To Pay For Irrigation Water Under Scarcity Conditions, Tyler Robert Knapp

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliance of Arkansas agricultural producers on groundwater for irrigation has led to depletion of the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer. Without intervention, consequences include insufficient groundwater to meet irrigation demand as well as drawdown of the deeper Sparta Aquifer, upon which communities in eastern Arkansas rely for non-agricultural use. Among proposed solutions to combat groundwater decline is the construction of off-farm surface water infrastructure to meet the irrigation needs of producers. Despite the importance of irrigated agriculture to Arkansas, there is little know about the economic value of irrigation water to producers. Thus, we implement a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent …