Digital Commons Network^™

Do Mess With Texas ... ? Why Rolling Easements May Provide A Solution To The Loss Of Public Beaches Due To Climate Change-Induced Landward Coastal Migration, Carolyn Ginno

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

This paper explores the viability of rolling easements in California as well as how they might be implemented. California has the opportunity to use rolling easement doctrine to fill the public policy vacuum created by the Severance decision. By messing with Texas; precedent, California could utilize rolling easements to preserve public access to its beaches in the wake of coastal inundation resulting from climate change.
Determining whether and how rolling easements might be used in California requires an understanding of climate change as a man-made phenomenon and the impacts it has on coastal property. The next sections will outline this …

Tools For Anti-Microbial Peptide Editable Database, Sunandha Sharma Acharya

Open Access Master's Theses

The goal of this thesis is to create tools for Anti-Microbial Peptide Database AMPed, developed by Professor Lenore Martin’s microbial peptide research group at University of Rhode Island. The database is for Researchers and Biologists, as they will be the main users. To develop a functioning and efficient database there should be tools that are relevant to the users of the database. In our case, the primary users are biologists, needing to calculate specific results or to visualize their data. The tools that are developed as a part for this thesis are the MIC (Minimal Inhibitory Concentration) and MLC (Minimal …

Concomitant Use Of Central Nervous System Stimulants And Depressants Prescribed In Rhode Island, Aram Babcock

Open Access Master's Theses

Background: Risks of morbidity and mortality may arise when prescription stimulants are used in combination with prescription central nervous system (CNS) depressants. The RI Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) captures all prescriptions for schedule II to IV, as well as information on certain schedule V medications.

Objective: This study examines the pattern of using a combination of controlled substance prescription CNS stimulants with CNS depressants in RI. We also seek the predictors of concomitant use of these two drugs classes in patients.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study using de-identified data from the RI PDMP in 2015. …

From Loving Mother To Welfare Queen To Drug Addict: Lebron V. Secretary Of Florida Department Of Children And Families And The Evolving Public View Of The Poor As A Class Of Sub-Humans With Sub-Rights, Nikita Mcmillian

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Critical Race Theory Intervention Into The Cultural Defense Debate, Phoebe Shen

Scripps Senior Theses

The cultural defense is an informal term that describes the use of cultural information to mitigate criminal responsibility, often used in conjunction with traditional defense strategies such as provocation or insanity. Arguments for the cultural defense include respecting cultural practices under the liberal narrative that frames the United States as a multicultural and pluralistic society. Advocates of the cultural defense recognize the harmful effects of the false universalism of the law. However, the cultural defense has been criticized as essentialist and harmful as it has been used in high profile cases to justify violence against women of color. The cultural …

Meat Consumption And Health Outcomes: The Economic Risk Factors Of Non-Communicable Disease, Alley Bellack

Scripps Senior Theses

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are the most prominent cause of adult mortality, killing 38 million people each year and on the rise^[1]. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases are responsible for 82% of NCD-related illness and death. These four diseases, along with mental illness, are estimated to cost the developing world $21 trillion over the next two decades.^[2]

Given the substantial health and economic detriments of NCDs, policy makers, government officials, and enterprises around the globe have begun to focus efforts on better understanding and preventing the proliferation of these diseases. Lifestyle factors, including increased inactivity, …

"She's Not A Real Monster": Orphan Black's Helena And The Monstrous-Feminine, Natalie Eisen

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the idea of the “monstrous-feminine,” or the idea that female monsters of television and film are linked to their femininity in a way that male monsters are not linked to their masculinity. Using the work of scholars such as Barbara Creed, Shelley Stamp Lindsey, and Jane M. Ussher, the thesis covers various facets of women’s lives as seen through the distorted lens of the monstrous. The character of Helena from the television show Orphan Black is used as a concrete example of the stages of the monstrous-feminine: the girl-child, menstruation and puberty, sexuality, and motherhood.

Culture As A Tool Of Exclusion: An Analysis Of Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, Abigail Maccumber

Scripps Senior Theses

Using the film La Haine (1995), directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, as an object of analysis, this paper explores culture as a tool of exclusion in France through sociological, architectural, and political contexts. It investigates La Haine as one of the first representations of the banlieue to mainstream French audiences, as well as the ways in which the film reveals how immigrants and children of immigrants struggle to find personal, cultural, and national identity in France.

Understanding The Effects Of Disgust And Political Ideology On Moral Judgment Through Photography, Xijia Yuan

Scripps Senior Theses

Feelings of disgust may have effects on one’s moral judgment; specifically that experience of disgust has linked to increased severity of moral judgments. Additionally, one’s political beliefs may also affect one’s moral judgment, such as conservatives tend to make harsher judgment toward moral situations and behaviors. A 2 x 2 x 2 factorial quasi-experiment has been proposed to study 420 participants, legal adults from both conservative and liberal neighborhoods, randomly assigned to one of two conditions, disgust-eliciting versus neutral. Participants will view either four disgust-eliciting photographs or four neutral photographs, and then complete survey questions on disgust rating, moral judgment, …

Cmos Approach To Compressed-Domain Image Acquisition, Javad Ghasemi, Manish Bhattarai, Glauco R.C. Fiorante, Payman Zarkesh-Ha, Sanjay Krishna, Majeed M. Hayat

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

A hardware implementation of a real-time compressed-domain image acquisition system is demonstrated. The system performs front-end computational imaging, whereby the inner product between an image and an arbitrarily-specified mask is implemented in silicon. The acquisition system is based on an intelligent readout integrated circuit (iROIC) that is capable of providing independent bias voltages to individual detectors, which enables implementation of spatial multiplication with any prescribed mask through a bias-controlled response-modulation mechanism. The modulated pixels are summed up in the image grabber to generate the compressed samples, namely aperture-coded coefficients, of an image. A rigorous bias-selection algorithm is presented to the …

Detection Theory For Accurate And Non-Invasive Skin Cancer Diagnosis Using Dynamic Thermal Imaging, Sebastian E. Godoy, Majeed M. Hayat, David A. Ramirez, Stephen A. Myers, R. Steven Padilla, Sanjay Krishna

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States with over 3.5M annual cases. Presently, visual inspection by a dermatologist has good sensitivity (> 90%) but poor specificity (< 10%), especially for melanoma, which leads to a high number of unnecessary biopsies. Here we use dynamic thermal imaging (DTI) to demonstrate a rapid, accurate and non-invasive imaging system for detection of skin cancer. In DTI, the lesion is cooled down and the thermal recovery is recorded using infrared imaging. The thermal recovery curves of the suspected lesions are then utilized in the context of continuous-time detection theory in order to define an optimal statistical decision rule such that the sensitivity of the algorithm is guaranteed to be at a maximum for every prescribed false-alarm probability. The proposed methodology was tested in a pilot study including 140 human subjects demonstrating a sensitivity in excess of 99% for a prescribed specificity in excess of 99% for detection of skin cancer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest reported accuracy for any non-invasive skin cancer diagnosis method.

Human Performance Modelling In Manufacturing: Mental Workload And Task Complexity, Maria Chiara Leva, Lorenzo Comberti, Micaela Demichela, Rebecca Duane

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

No abstract provided.

Moving Between Automated And Manual Driving: Mental Workload And Performance Implications, Totsapon Butmee, Terry C. Lansdown

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

Automated driving has been predicted to take-over from manual vehicle control in the near future. The driver’s role may then change from active operator to passive observer. Such technology offers the tantalising promise of improving driving safety. However, many studies have presented findings suggesting potentially adverse effects from automated driving systems, e.g., reduced situation awareness. Mental workload is also a key issue of concern for researchers in this area. Excessive mental workload has repeatedly been shown to be associated with degraded driving performance. Previously, most traffic psychology studies on mental workload have focused the manual driving task. However, a shift …

Reducing Peak Workload In The Cockpit: A Human In The Loop Simulation Evaluating New Runway Selection Tool, Tanja Bos, Rolf Zon, Wilfred Rouwhorst

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

In efforts to increase safety and reduce peak workload situations in the cockpit, a tool with a different interaction style was developed for use in case of a runway change instructed by Air Traffic Control during approach. In an experiment a workload comparison was made between the new tool and the conventional cockpit. Workload was measured by means of a self-rating after each experiment run, as well as eye blink frequency during each run. Results show that the self-rated workload decreases with the new tool for one of the two crew members and the blink frequency suggests a workload decrease …

Smart Workload Balancing, Ferdinand Coster

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

The cognitive workload of operators working with automated systems should neither be too high nor too low. A static level of automation is unable to cope with systems that produce large fluctuations in cognitive workload, therefore a method for adaptive automation is proposed that could balance workload by intelligently choosing what to automate and when. To this end the concept of the Cognitive Workload Value factor is introduced, which takes into account both workload and situation awareness. This initial work introduces a possible framework for categorizing and using different workload and situation awareness measures.

Managing Operator Mental Workload With Standards Based Decision Support, Maurice Wilkins

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

H-Workload 2017: The first international symposium on human mental workload, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, June 28-30.

Facing Human Workload: The Resilient Ego: A Psychoanalytic Point Of View, Glauco Maria Genga, Maria Gabriella Pediconii

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

The paper aims to show new connections among Human Factors, Human Workload and Resilience. We intend: 1) to highlight the role of subject in facing the human workload, inflected as demanding tasks and emergency situations; 2) to show how psychoanalysis can provide novel insights, not only into human errors, but also into human resilience. They have a common denominator, at least in part: the role of subjective contributions even in demanding situations. Human workload includes a work for satisfaction. We recall also the case study of US Airways Flight 1549 water landing (the so called “Miracle on the Hudson”), which …

Online Measuring Of Available Resources, Enrique Munoz-De-Escalona, José Juan Canas

H-Workload 2017: Models and Applications (Works in Progress)

This paper present a proposal for measuring available mental resources during the accomplishment of a task. Our proposal consists in measuring emotions provoked by perceived self-efficacy in the execution of the task. Self-efficacy is one of the most important factors that affect the resources that a person puts at the disposal of the execution of the task. When a person perceives that he/she is not being effective he/she will activate more resources to improve his performance. This self-efficacy will be reflected in the emotions that the person experiences. A good efficacy will provoke positive emotions and a bad efficacy negative …

The Changing Role Of The University: A Discursive Analysis Of Good Teaching And Positioning Of Academics And Students In Improving The Quality Of Teaching And Learning In Europe’S Higher Education Institutions, Fiona Mcsweeney

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Using the approach of critical discourse analysis this paper presents an examination of the notion of good teaching as constructed in the strategy document Improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe’s higher education institutions. The aim is to draw attention to, and question how the language used in educational policy documents constructs particular meanings and purposes to concepts such as teaching and learning, as well as creating a particular version of the social relations within educational institutions. This in turn positions teachers and students in particular ways, constructing and limiting who they are and what they do. While …

Community-Based Learning: A Primer, Zeinab Bedri, Ruairí De Fréin, Geraldine Dowling

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Employers are increasingly demanding graduates with industry-ready communication, leadership, emotional intelligence and social ethics skills. Community-based learning (CBL) is a pedagogical approach which has tremendous potential to produce graduates with these attributes. However, for many early-career lecturers, distilling the insights from the teaching and learning literature, and then producing a well-designed CBL module, can be an intimidating task. What is missing is a primer which presents the core ideas of CBL in a way that is independent of subject-specific jargon. Ideally, this primer should provide the reader with the means of either drafting an initial project plan or, at the …

Exploring The Use Of Computer Based Exams For Undergraduate Accounting, Anne Hurley

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

This paper explores the use of computer-based exams (CBEs) for undergraduate accounting. The primary objective of writing this paper was to establish whether CBEs should be integrated with paper-based exams as a summative assessment in undergraduate accounting modules. Professional accounting organisations and universities and colleges in Ireland were contacted to establish whether CBEs had been adopted and, if so, to take relevant lessons from their experience. The literature reviewed the experiences of students, academics, institutions and professional accounting organisations using CBEs worldwide. Findings from this desk-based research indicated an overall positive experience with CBEs. The professional accounting organisations are continuing …

Emission, Education, And Politics: An Empirical Study Of The Carbon Dioxide And Methane Environmental Kuznets Curve, Cody Williamson

The Park Place Economist

This study will estimate carbon dioxide and methane emissions of 181 countries in 2012 through the use of a quadratic function of per capita GDP. Several variables will be used as controls; with GDP per capita, mean years of education, and government regime being the most important. This study estimates the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane because the EPA states that these two gasses account for roughly 92% of the worlds greenhouse gasses, thus making it vital that we have a strong understanding of both gases. Also, no literature known to the author has looked into the evidence of …

Impact Of Institutional And Political Variables On Foreign Direct Investment In Developing Countries, Hang Phung

The Park Place Economist

Literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) has been focusing on its traditional determinants for a long time and lack of attention to institutional and political variables. However, in recent years, the pattern of the world FDI flows is observed to show a shift away from developed countries towards developing countries. Such shift is argued to be the result of the improvement in institutional qualities and political stability in developing countries to make investment climate more appealing to foreign investors. The impact of institutional qualities on FDI flows, however, have not been investigated by many studies in the field of FDI. …

Examining The Progress Of Female Athletes In The Marathon, Nathan Atkins

The Park Place Economist

Unlike other sports such as baseball, basketball, football, and other team sports, the performance of a runner is not affected by the teammates around them or by an opponent’s defense. The only person that can impact the runner’s performance is the runner. At first glance, it may seem that elite marathon runners only come from African countries, but when digging deeper, the variable that makes an elite runner successful may surprise you. The purpose of this paper is to explore the variables that have the greatest impact on elite marathon runner’s performance. In addition to this, this paper attempts to …

Understanding The Influence Of Social Networks And Social Roles On Individuals With Developmental Disabilities: Providing Opportunities In Order To Assess Quality Of Life, Brianna Piro

Honors Projects

This study investigates the influence of social role opportunities on quality of life for individuals with developmental disabilities (DD). It also explores the impact of informal social networks on social capital for this population. This study analyzed the effects of newly created social role opportunities on quality of life for a small group of individuals with DD. The hypothesis suggested that those given a new social role would report a higher quality of life than those not given a new role. Pre-test/post-test interviews were administered and a 6 week intervention was implemented with participants of a local social group in …

Dynamical Systems Theory For Transparent Symbolic Computation In Neuronal Networks, Giovanni Sirio Carmantini

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

In this thesis, we explore the interface between symbolic and dynamical system computation, with particular regard to dynamical system models of neuronal networks. In doing so, we adhere to a definition of computation as the physical realization of a formal system, where we say that a dynamical system performs a computation if a correspondence can be found between its dynamics on a vectorial space and the formal system’s dynamics on a symbolic space. Guided by this definition, we characterize computation in a range of neuronal network models. We first present a constructive mapping between a range of formal systems and …

Geospatial Drivers Of The Groundwater Δ18o Isoscape In A Temperate Maritime Climate (Republic Of Ireland), S. Regan, R. Goodhue, O. Naughton, Paul Hynds

Articles

In recent years, the concept of “isoscapes” has been used to describe spatiotemporal stable isotope distributions within natural environments including groundwater systems at multiple scales. This study presents an updated groundwater δ18O isoscape for the Republic of Ireland and describes the climatic and geological drivers influencing 18O composition. In all, 142 geographically and geologically representative groundwater installations were sampled and analysed, in addition to 35 samples from six nested boreholes. Geospatially, Irish groundwater exhibits high δ18O values in southern and western coastal regions, becoming progressively depleted inland before reaching lowest measured values along the eastern coast, equating to a national …

An Overview Of Dissolved Organic Carbon In Groundwater And Implications For Drinking Water Safety, S. Regan, Paul Hynds, R. Flynn

Articles

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is composed of a diverse array of compounds, predominantly humic substances, and is a near ubiquitous component of natural groundwater, notwithstanding climatic extremes such as arid and hyper-arid settings. Despite being a frequently measured parameter of groundwater quality, the complexity of DOC composition and reaction behaviour means that links between concentration and human health risk are difficult to quantify and few examples are reported in the literature. Measured concentrations from natural/unpolluted groundwater are typically below 4 mg C/l, whilst concentrations above these levels generally indicate anthropogenic influences and/or contamination issues and can potentially compromise water safety. …

Application Of Artificial Intelligence For Detecting Derived Viruses, Omotayo Asiru, Moses Dlamini, Jonathan Blackledge

Conference papers

Computer viruses have become complex and operates in a stealth mode to avoid detection. New viruses are argued to be created each and every day. However, most of these supposedly ‘new’ viruses are not completely new. Most of the supposedly ‘new’ viruses are not necessarily created from scratch with completely new (something novel that has never been seen before) mechanisms. For example, most of these viruses just change their form and signatures to avoid detection. But their operation and the way they infect files and systems is still the same. Hence, such viruses cannot be argued to be new. In …

Reactive Power Control For Smarter (Urban) Distribution Network Management With Increasing Integration Of Renewable Prosumers, Arsalan Zaidi, Keith Sunderland, Massimiliano Coppo, Michael Conlon, Roberto Turri

Conference papers

Smart cities need to deliver reliable electric energy while utilizing every renewable energy source available in a sustainable manner. Increasing renewable electricity capacity, through Distributed Generation (DG) such as small wind and PV generation, causes difficulties for the distribution network operator (DNO) in sustaining adequate and appropriate power quality across the network. The positive impacts provided by such energy sources can be undermined by voltage increases and voltage balance issues. To overcome these problems, urban distribution networks need to transform ideally into smarter energy networks that can deliver renewable electricity locally, predictably and in a controllable and optimized manner. The …