Digital Commons Network^™

Relationship Between The Built Environment, Physical Activity, And Chronic Disease Among Individuals With Disabilities In Rural Communities, Nicholas F. Tanner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Increased risk for chronic disease is closely associated with individual nutrition, tobacco use, and physical inactivity. This thesis focuses on physical activity as a means of preventing select chronic diseases. A major barrier preventing engagement in physical activity is the built environment. Populations residing in rural environment are not afforded the abundance of opportunities for physical activity prevalent in most urban networks. Of the demographic living in rural environments, individuals with disability face additional barriers to physical activity than those without disability. This leads to a higher prevalence of chronic diseases associated with sedentary lifestyles among populations with disability. Few …

Stillbirth: A Phenomenological Exploration Of The Clinical Encounter For Couples, Michael Q. King

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

With approximately 65 stillbirths occurring each day in the United States, a significant number of parents are left to navigate a difficult grieving process. An event like stillbirth presents many individual and relational challenges. For this study, researchers focused on the hospital experience for couples following notification of stillbirth. Interviews were held with 8 couples that had experienced stillbirth within the past 10 years. Researchers wanted to know what similarities and differences existed in how mothers and fathers described the clinical encounter.

The data for this study were collected through interviews. Couples were encouraged to share as much or as …

Changing The World Through The Word: Developing Critical Consciousness Through Multicultural Children’S Literature With Critical Literacy In An Elementary Classroom, Hyekyoung Lee

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to explore how fifth graders develop critical consciousness regarding the self and the world through critical literacy approaches using multicultural children’s literature. I employed Lewison, Flint, and Van Sluys’ four dimensions of critical literacy. I used a qualitative case study to design, frame and conduct this study in order to collect data and examine students’ cultural patterns including values, beliefs, behaviors, and language that they enacted in the critical literacy practices. I collected data through classroom observations, semi-structured students and teacher interviews, informal conversation, researcher’s reflective journal entries and field notes, and student-made artifacts. …

Evidence-Based Practices For The Design Of Inclusive Playgrounds That Support Peer Interactions Among Children With All Abilities, Courtney L. Fernelius

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Play is necessary for the social, emotional, intellectual, and physical development of all children. Although playgrounds are designed to support the play of children, children with disabilities are often unable to fully participate in play on playgrounds. In part due to the lack of awareness of evidence-based practices supporting the play of children with disabilities, playground designers continue to perpetuate this disparity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the evidence-based practices for inclusive playground design that support peer interaction between children of all abilities, and to demonstrate how they can be implemented into a playground design.

A …

Rancher Perceptions Of Ecosystem Services From Rangelands Of The Intermountain West, Elisabeth C. York

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Rangelands within the Great Basin are responsible for the provision of multiple resources that humans depend on for a variety of reasons. Ranchers in this region are dependent on public lands to remain economically viable in their cattle operations. As a majority of land in this region is publically owned, there are varying interests at play in what should and could be the focus of management. Ranchers are charged with implementing strategies aimed at conserving these landscapes and their motivations for what to manage may significantly influence resource provision from Intermountain West ecosystem.

In this study, I sought to understand …

Extracting And Visualizing Data From Mobile And Static Eye Trackers In R And Matlab, Chunyang Li

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Eye tracking is the process of measuring where people are looking at with an eye tracker device. Eye tracking has been used in many scientific fields, such as education, usability research, sports, psychology, and marketing. Eye tracking data are often obtained from a static eye tracker or are manually extracted from a mobile eye tracker. Visualization usually plays an important role in the analysis of eye tracking data. So far, there existed no software package that contains a whole collection of eye tracking data processing and visualization tools. In this dissertation, we review the eye tracking technology, the eye tracking …

Genetic Differentiation Of Two Species Of Buckwheat (Eriogonum), Jenessa Blotter Lemon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Limestone mining in the San Franicso Mountain Range of west central Utah threatens the survival of a rare endemic species of buckwheat (Eriogonum soredium). This species is an edaphic endemic, only found growing on the outcrops of the Ordovician limestone mines in the area. Eriogonum soredium is a candidate for governmental protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, a common, widespread buckwheat (Eriogonum shockleyi) appears to be closely related to the narrow endemic. The genetic relatedness of the rare and and common species will greatly influence the decision of United States Fish and Wildlife Service …

Impacts Of Distributions And Trajectories On Navigation Uncertainty Using Line-Of-Sight Measurements To Known Landmarks In Gps-Denied Environments, Ryan D. Lamoreaux

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Unmanned vehicles are increasingly common in our world today. Self-driving ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as quadcopters have become the fastest growing area of automated vehicles research. These systems use three main processes to autonomously travel from one location to another: guidance, navigation, and controls (GNC). Guidance refers to the process of determining a desired path of travel or trajectory, affecting velocities and orientations. Examples of guidance activities include path planning and obstacle avoidance. Effective guidance decisions require knowledge of one’s current location. Navigation systems typically answer questions such as: “Where am I? What is my orientation? …

Allowing The Untellable To Visit: Investigating Digital Folklore, Ptsd And Stigma, Geneva Harline

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the introduction of 2012 issue of The Journal of Folklore Research, Diane Goldstein and Amy Shuman issue a “call to arms for folklorists … to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized.” (Goldstein and Shuman, 2012:116). Drawing on this call to arms, this thesis investigates how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is portrayed in social media through memes and captioned images. I argue that the genres of memes and captioned images in digital folklore work to help mitigate the stigma of PTSD because the veneer of anonymity in the digital world allows people with PTSD to be willing …

Water Surface Impact And Ricochet Of Deformable Elastomeric Spheres, Randy Craig Hurd

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Soft and deformable silicone rubber spheres ricochet from a water surface when rigid spheres and disks (or skipping stones) cannot. This dissertation investigates why these objects are able to skip so successfully. High speed cameras allow us to see that these unique spheres deform significantly as they impact the water surface, flattening into pancake-like shapes with greater area. Though the water entry behavior of deformable spheres deviates from that of rigid spheres, our research shows that if this deformation is accounted for, their behavior can be predicted from previously established methods. Soft spheres skip more easily because they deform significantly …

Advancing The Cyberinfrastructure For Integrated Water Resources Modeling, Caleb A. Buahin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Like other scientists, hydrologists encode mathematical formulations that simulate various hydrologic processes as computer programs so that problems with water resource management that would otherwise be manually intractable can be solved efficiently. These computer models are typically developed to answer specific questions within a specific study domain. For example, one computer model may be developed to solve for magnitudes of water flow and water levels in an aquifer while another may be developed to solve for magnitudes of water flow through a water distribution network of pipes and reservoirs. Interactions between different processes are often ignored or are approximated using …

Bidirectional Three-Phase Ac-Dc Power Conversion Using Dc-Dc Converters And A Three-Phase Unfolder, Weilun Warren Chen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Strategic use of energy storage systems alleviates imbalance between energy generation and consumption. Battery storage of various chemistries is favorable for its relatively high energy density and high charge and discharge rates. Battery voltage is in dc, while the distribution of electricity is still predominantly in ac. To effectively harness the battery energy, a dc-ac inverter is required.

A conventional inverter contains two high-frequency switching stages. The battery-interfacing stage provides galvanic isolation and switches at high frequency to minimize the isolation transformer size. The grid-interfacing stage also operates at high frequency to obtain sinusoidal grid currents and the desired power. …

The Rcep: New Asian Regionalism And The Global South, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article provides an up-to-date examination of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is poised to become the world’s largest free trade agreement (FTA). It argues that the 16-country mega-FTA will galvanize the paradigm shift in Asian regionalism and build a normative foundation for the Global South in international economic law. Based on intertwined theoretical and substantive claims, this article opens an inquiry into the assertive legalism of developing nations in the new regional economic order. By analyzing the converging policies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China and India, the article first demonstrates the status of …

Trade Strategies Of The Tpp-11 Countries: Asian Regionalism In Turbulent Times, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Pacific Partnership (TPP) in January 2017 hasprompted the remaining countries to pursue alternative trade strategies. Australia andJapan have pushed for effectuating the TPP without US participation. The currentefforts focus on seeking consensus on the scope of suspensions over the originalagreement. The TPP-11 countries expect to reach an agreement in principle during theAsia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November 2017. Critical factors that willinfluence the TPP also include negotiations for the 16-country RegionalComprehensive Economic Partnership and China’s new trade initiatives. Hence, EUpolicy on trade and investment agreements with the Asia-Pacific ought to consider thechanging dynamics of …

Motives Of Corporate Political Donations: Industry Regulation, Subjective Judgement And The Origins Of Pragmatic And Ideological Corporations, Nicholas M. Harrigan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What motivates corporate political action? Are corporations motivated by their own narrow economic self-interest; are they committed to pursuing larger class interests; or are corporations instruments for status groups to pursue their own agendas? Sociologists have been divided over this question for much of the last century. This paper introduces a novel case - that of Australia - and an extensive dataset of over 1,500 corporations and 7,500 directors. The paper attempts to understand the motives of corporate political action by examining patterns of corporate political donations. Using statistical modelling, supported by qualitative evidence, the paper argues that, in the …

Kiasu And Creativity In Singapore: An Empirical Test Of The Situated Dynamics Framework, Chi-Ying Cheng, Ying-Yi Hong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article investigates how Singaporeans' creativity is influenced by Kiasu, an indigenous construct corresponding to fear of losing out. We examine the impact of Kiasu on creativity, both as a personal value and a shared cultural norm in four studies. Study 1 showed that Singaporeans' Kiasu value endorsement predicts lower individual creativity. Study 2 demonstrated that this negative relationship is mediated by a self-regulatory focus on prevention. Study 3 further showed the impact of Kiasu as a personal value and a cultural norm by finding a significant three-way interaction effect of Kiasu prime, personal Kiasu value endorsement, and need for …

Uncertain Skies: Forecasting Typhoons In Hong Kong Ca. 1874-1906, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the conceptualisation of «uncertainty» in late nineteenth- century meteorological thought. By investigating the story of meteorological forecasting in nineteenth and early twentieth century Hong Kong, it considers the changing ways in which forecasting was judged historically. In the early nineteenth century forecasting the weather was considered impossible. By the end of the century, it was confidently expected that the much improved understanding of weather patterns would lead to the ability to better predict them. During the intervening period «uncertainty» competed with «certainty» and «prediction» was mistaken for «predictability». The shift in perception was driven by various factors, …

Volatility Spillovers And Linkages In Asian Stock Markets, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

Diebold–Yilmaz spillover indexes are computed for weekly return volatilities based on daily benchmark stock indexes of the US, the UK, and 10 Asian countries. We found (i) the strengthening of overall volatility spillovers is not a temporary surge but persisted after the crisis; (ii) the susceptibility of individual Asian stock markets to inward volatility transfers is linked to its degree of openness; and (iii) the Asian bourses are becoming more important emitters of financial shocks since the crisis. Rolling regressions on volatility linkages reveal the relative dominance of the US over the Japanese and Chinese bourses, and the level of …

When Leaders Are Not Who They Appear: The Effects Of Leader Disclosure Of A Concealable Stigma On Follower Reactions, Gary A. Adams, Jennica R. Webster

Management Faculty Research and Publications

Two studies examined follower reactions to disclosure of concealable stigma (i.e., transgender identity) by a leader. Using 109 employed participants, Study 1 showed followers rated leaders disclosing a stigma less likable and effective. This effect was both direct and indirect through relational identification with the leader. Using 206 employed participants, Study 2 found when a leader's stigma was involuntarily found out and disclosed later they received lower ratings of likability and effectiveness compared to leaders who voluntarily came out and disclosed earlier. Method (found out vs. came out) and timing of disclosure (later vs. earlier) had direct relationships with ratings …

Policy Gradient With Value Function Approximation For Collective Multiagent Planning, Duc Thien Nguyen, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Decentralized (PO)MDPs provide an expressive framework for sequential decision making in a multiagent system. Given their computational complexity, recent research has focused on tractable yet practical subclasses of Dec-POMDPs. We address such a subclass called CDec-POMDP where the collective behavior of a population of agents affects the joint-reward and environment dynamics. Our main contribution is an actor-critic (AC) reinforcement learning method for optimizing CDec-POMDP policies. Vanilla AC has slow convergence for larger problems. To address this, we show how a particular decomposition of the approximate action-value function over agents leads to effective updates, and also derive a new way to …

A Selective-Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm For Solving A Class Of Orienteering Problems, Aldy Gunawan, Vincent F. Yu, Perwira Redi, Parida Jewpanya, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study addresses a class of NP-hard problem called the Orienteering Problem (OP), which belongs to a well-known class of vehicle routing problems. In the OP, a set of nodes that associated with a location and a score is given. The time required to travel between each pair of nodes is known in advance. The total travel time is limited by a predetermined time budget. The objective is to select a subset of nodes to be visited that maximizes the total collected score within a path. The Team OP (TOP) is an extension of OP that incorporates multiple paths. Another …

Analyzing The E-Learning Video Environment Requirements Of Generation Z Students Using Echo360 Platform, Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As with any other generational cohort,Generation Z students have their own unique characteristics that influencetheir approach to learning process. They are the future workforce and severalefforts are undertaken by Government and education institutes to consider thecharacteristics of Gen-Z in developing the curriculum and teaching environmentsuitable for these students. E-learning plays a key role in students learningprocess and has been widely adopted by many education institutions. Inparticular, videos play a major role in the learning process of Gen-Zstudents. The purpose of this paper isto focus the on requirements of Gen-Z students and to provide suggestions forhow to create a e-learning video …

Multi-User Multi-Keyword Rank Search Over Encrypted Data In Arbitrary Language, Yang Yang, Ximeng Liu, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multi-keyword rank searchable encryption (MRSE) returns the top-k results in response to a data user's request of multi-keyword search over encrypted data, and hence provides an efficient way for preserving data privacy in cloud storage systems while without loss of data usability. Many existing MRSE systems are constructed based on an algorithm which we term as k-nearest neighbor for searchable encryption (KNN-SE). Unfortunately, KNN-SE has a number of shortcomings which limit its practical applications. In this paper, we propose a new MRSE system which overcomes almost all the defects of the KNN-SE based MRSE systems. Specifically, our new system does …

What Do Developers Search For On The Web?, Xin Xia, Lingfeng Bao, David Lo, Pavneet Singh Kochhar, Ahmed E. Hassan, Zhenchang Xing

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Developers commonly make use of a web search engine such as Google to locate online resources to improve their productivity. A better understanding of what developers search for could help us understand their behaviors and the problems that they meet during the software development process. Unfortunately, we have a limited understanding of what developers frequently search for and of the search tasks that they often find challenging. To address this gap, we collected search queries from 60 developers, surveyed 235 software engineers from more than 21 countries across five continents. In particular, we asked our survey participants to rate the …

D-Watch: Embracing “Bad” Multipaths For Device-Free Localization With Cots Rfid Devices, Ju Wang, Jie Xiong, Hongbo Jiang, Xiaojiang Chen, Dingyi Fang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Device-free localization, which does not require any device attached to the target, is playing a critical role in many applications, such as intrusion detection, elderly monitoring and so on. This paper introduces D-Watch, a device-free system built on the top of low cost commodity-off-the-shelf RFID hardware. Unlike previous works which consider multipaths detrimental, D-Watch leverages the ''bad'' multipaths to provide a decimeter-level localization accuracy without offline training. D-Watch harnesses the angle-of-arrival information from the RFID tags' backscatter signals. The key intuition is that whenever a target blocks a signal's propagation path, the signal power experiences a drop which can be …

What Happens Online Stays Online? Segment-Specific Online And Offline Effects Of Banner Advertisements, Lara Lobschat, Ernst C. Osinga, Werner J. Reinartz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many firms allocate increasing parts of their advertising budgets to banner advertising. Yet, for firms that predominantly sell offline, existing research provides little guidance on online advertising decisions. In this study, the authors analyze the impact of banner advertising on consumers' online and offline behavior across multiple distinct campaigns for one focal firm, which predominantly sells through the offline channel. Results suggest that banner and TV advertising increase website visit incidence for consumers who had not visited the focal firm's website in the previous four weeks (non-recent online consumers). For these consumers, banner and TV advertisements indirectly increase offline sales …

On Modeling Sense Relatedness In Multi-Prototype Word Embedding, Yixin Cao, Juanzi Li, Jiaxin Shi, Zhiyuan Liu, Chengjiang Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To enhance the expression ability of distributional word representation learning model, many researchers tend to induce word senses through clustering, and learn multiple embedding vectors for each word, namely multi-prototype word embedding model. However, most related work ignores the relatedness among word senses which actually plays an important role. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to capture word sense relatedness in multi-prototype word embedding model. Particularly, we differentiate the original sense and extended senses of a word by introducing their global occurrence information and model their relatedness through the local textual context information. Based on the idea of …

Inferring Social Media Users’ Demographics From Profile Pictures: A Face++ Analysis On Twitter Users, Soon-Gyo Jung, Jisun An, Haewoon Kwak, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this research, we evaluate the applicability of using facial recognition of social media account profile pictures to infer the demographic attributes of gender, race, and age of the account owners leveraging a commercial and well-known image service, specifically Face++. Our goal is to determine the feasibility of this approach for actual system implementation. Using a dataset of approximately 10,000 Twitter profile pictures, we use Face++ to classify this set of images for gender, race, and age. We determine that about 30% of these profile pictures contain identifiable images of people using the current state-of-the-art automated means. We then employ …

Towards Tightly Secure Deterministic Public Key Encryption, Daode Zhang, Bao Li, Yamin Liu, Haiyang Xue, Xianhui Lu, Dingding Jia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we formally consider the construction of tightly secure deterministic public key encryption (D-PKE). Initially, we compare the security loss amongst the D-PKE schemes under the concrete assumptions and also analyze the tightness of generic D-PKE constructions. Furthermore, we prove that the CPA secure D-PKE scheme of Boldyreva et al. (Crypto’08) is tightly PRIV-IND-CPA secure for block-sources. Our security reduction improves the security loss of their scheme from O(nc∗) to O(1). Additionally, by upgrading the all-but-one trapdoor function (TDF) in the construction of Boldyreva et al. to all-but-n TDF defined by Hemenway et al. (Asiacrypt’11), we give general …

Enterprise Social Media Use And Impact On Performance: The Role Of Workplace Integration And Positive Emotions, Murad Moqbel, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Organizations struggle to find ways to improve employees’ performance. To date, little research has empirically examined the relationship between enterprise social media use and knowledge workers’ performance. Using social capital theory and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions as our theoretical framework, we investigate the relationship between enterprise social media use and knowledge workers’ performance. We tested our research model by collecting data from employees working for a large information technology firm in the Midwestern United States and analyzing the data using a structural equation modeling approach. The results suggest that enterprise social media use can increase workplace integration, which …