Digital Commons Network^™

A Narrative Study Of Chaldean Refugees And The Myth Of Return: From Chaldean Babylon To The New World, Joseph James Byle

Wayne State University Dissertations

With the removal of Saddam following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, life for all Iraqis changed for the worse, especially for minorities such as Christians, including Chaldeans. Considering the powerful push factors that have compelled Chaldean Refugees in the Detroit area to leave Iraq, the idea of returning to the homeland would seem like a remote possibility, however, these Chaldeans present an intriguing case, due to the fact that they are among the indigenous people in Iraq. Do their deep rooted ties to the homeland contribute to a desire to return? This research examines this possibility through an in-depth …

Maternal Employment, Quality Time And Children Outcomes, Ahlam El Yaman

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this paper, I explore two relationships using the three waves of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In the first model, I assess the effect of maternal employment on the quantity and quality of time spent with the child. I use child and family fixed estimation and I also look at whether this relationship varies according to the mother’s educational attainment, the gender and the age of the child. In the second model, I estimate child production functions to examine the effects of quantity and quality of mother-child time on children’s behavioral and cognitive …

The Effectivness Of Advisory Pograms With Teachers And Learning Disabled African-American Students In Urban High Schools, Camelia Ramona Gligor

Wayne State University Dissertations

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVISORY PROGRAMS WITH TEACHERS AND LEARNING DISABLED AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENTS IN URBAN HIGH SCHOOLS

By

Camelia Ramona Gligor

ABSTRACT

This is a study that investigated the effects of Advisory program on African American high school students with specific learning disabilities. In this qualitative study the advisory program is examined through the lenses of teachers and students from a Mid East Metropolitan Area (MEMA).

Three research questions guided this dissertation: (1) How do secondary school teachers perceive inclusive advisory in urban schools; (2) How do African-American SLD students value their experiences in advisory; (3) What are the secondary teachers’ …

Automated Refinement Of Hierarchical Object Graphs, Mohammad Ebrahim Khalaj

Wayne State University Dissertations

Object graphs help explain the runtime structure of a system. To make object graphs convey design intent, one insight is to use

abstraction by hierarchy, i.e., to show objects that are implementation details as children of architecturally-relevant objects from the application domain. But additional information is needed to express this object hierarchy, using ownership type qualifiers in the code. Adding qualifiers after the fact involves manual overhead, and requires developers to switch between adding qualifiers in the code and looking at abstract object graphs to understand the object structures that the qualifiers describe. We propose an approach where developers express …

The Effects Of Various High School Scheduling Models On Student Achievement In Michigan, Russell Edward Pickell

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study reviews research and data to determine whether student achievement is affected by the high school scheduling model, and whether changes in scheduling models result in statistically significant changes in student achievement, as measured by the ACT Composite, ACT English Language Arts, and ACT Math scores. The high school scheduling models included in this study are: six period semester (SPS), five period trimester (FPT), seven period semester (VPS), standard 4x4 block (SB), and alternate day block (ADB). Supportive and non-supportive research are discussed in regard to the impact of the student scheduling model on student achievement.

Horizontal And Vertical Integration Of Bio-Molecular Data, Tin Chi Nguyen

Wayne State University Dissertations

Modern biomedical research lies at the crossroads of data gathering, interpretation, and hypothesis testing. Due to noise, study bias, or too small changes in biological signals between disease and healthy, individual studies often fail to identify the true phenomenon. Data integration is the key to obtaining the power needed to pinpoint the biological mechanisms of disease states. Given this, we tried to make important contributions in both horizontal and vertical integration of high-throughput data; the former is meta-analysis of independent studies, while the latter is the integration of multi-omics data.

For horizontal meta-analysis, we developed two frameworks: DANUBE and the …

Robustness And Power Of The Student T, Welch-Aspin, Yuen, Tukey Quick, And Haga Tests, Dong Li

Wayne State University Dissertations

Classical parametric statistic procedures are widely used in the research community. However, for classical tests to produce accurate results, the assumptions underlying them must be sufficiently satisfied. When the assumptions are not met, the results of the analysis may be due to the violation of the assumptions, instead of the true pattern of the data. The assumptions are rarely met when analyzing real data. The use of classic parametric methods with violated assumptions may lead to substantive errors in the interpretation of data. As an alternative to normal theory statistics, nonparametric statistical procedures do not make assumptions about the underlying …

Pathetic Politics: An Analysis Of Emotion And Embodiment In First Lady Rhetoric, Stephanie Lynn Wideman

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation explores the theoretical and practical relationship between our understandings of emotion’s role in political decision-making. In this pursuit I seek a resurrection for pathos’s legitimacy in persuasive studies through the pursuit of the pathetic political realm. This work has three primary concerns: how may pathetic power be accessed, from where does this power originate, and how might political actors enact this power for their own political goals. I draw primarily from theories related to visual rhetoric and the body in order to provide perspective on how the body is politicized through the pathetic realm. Theoretical perspectives are drawn …

Self-Efficacy: Understanding African American Male Students Pathways To Confidence In Mathematics, Lisa Ann Williams

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is about the stories of African American male undergraduate students who have experienced success in mathematics. Bandura’s (1997) social cognitive theory and Tillman’s (2000) culturally sensitive research approach which promotes qualitative methods, recognizes ethnicity, and positions culture as central to the research were applied. Student interviews, parent interviews, teacher interviews, and mathematical autobiographies were used to investigate African American men self-efficacy, the sources of their beliefs, and societal factors that impacted their motivation and academic achievement in mathematics.

The descriptive portraits and the interviews revealed five broad themes: (1) college experiences, (2) K-12 experiences, (3) access and equity, …

Cascaded Converters For Integration And Management Of Grid Level Energy Storage Systems, Zuhair Muhammed Alaas

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

CASCADED CONVERTERS FOR INTEGRATION AND MANAGEMENT OF GRID-LEVEL ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS

by

ZUHAIR ALAAS

December 2017

Advisor: Dr. Caisheng Wang

Major: ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

This research work proposes two cascaded multilevel inverter structures for BESS. The gating and switching control of switching devices in both inverter typologies are done by using a phase-shifted PWM scheme. The first proposed isolated multilevel inverter is made up of three-phase six-switch inverter blocks with a reduced number of power components compared with traditional isolated CHB. The suggested isolated converter has only one battery string for three-phase system that can be …

Estimating The Variables Of The Nonlinear Dynamical Theory Of Acute Cell Injury, Fika Tri Anggraini

Wayne State University Dissertations

This Dissertation is the first to estimate the variables D and S of the nonlinear theory of acute cell injury in hippocampal regions CA1 and CA3 using a rat model of global brain ischemia and reperfusion (I/R). D was estimated by quantifying protein aggregates using ubiquitin Western blotting. S was estimated by quantifying changes in polysomal mRNAs as measured by microarray chips. D and S time courses were sampled at 0.5, 8, 16, 24, 48, and 72 hrs of reperfusion after 10 min brain ischemia. CA1 dies and CA3 survives. The theory predicts D will be larger in CA1 and …

Strain Rate Dependence And Impact Behavior Of Abs (Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene) Amorphous Thermoplastic, Mehmet Akif Dundar

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) is an extensively utilized amorphous thermoplastic in numerous engineering applications, such as marine, aerospace, automotive, electronic enclosures and housings because it offers many distinctive material properties, including good impact resistance, high toughness, high stiffness and high compressive strength. The most considerable material quality of ABS is its excellent impact resistance compared to other amorphous thermoplastics and this distinguished material ability makes the ABS very appealing for such unique engineering applications where a good impact resistance is highly needed. Nevertheless, the material behavior of ABS under impact loads is highly complex due to chaotically arranged chain macromolecules and randomly …

Developing A General Methodology For Evaluating Composite Action In Insulated Wall Panels, Jaiden Olsen, Salam Al-Rubaye, Taylor J. Sorensen, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Precast concrete sandwich wall panels(PCSWPs) have been in use for over 60 years. They provide a very efficient building envelope for many buildings. Characteristic PCSWPs comprise an outer and inner layer (or wythe) of concrete separated by an insulating material. To use all of the material as efficiently as possible, the layers are attached by connectors which penetrate through the insulating layer and are embedded in either concrete wythe. These connectors make it possible for both layers of the wall to work together when resisting loads. The connectors are made out of plastic, or FRP, to prevent heat transfer from …

Tightening The Loop On The Circular Economy: Distributed Plastic Recycling With An Open Source Recyclebot, Shan Zhong

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Following the goals of a circular economy, the growth of both plastic consumption and prosumer 3-D printing are driving an interest in producing 3-D printer filament from waste plastic. However, traditional recycling can have a significant environmental impact as it demands the collection and transportation of relatively low-density waste plastics to collection centers and reclamation facilities for separation and reconstruction. Compared to the traditional recycling, distributed recycling (where consumers directly recycle their own waste) has the potential to reduce energy consumption because it can save the energy for transportation needed in conventional recycling. A promising method of such distributed plastic …

Mse Annual Report 2017, Department Of Materials Science And Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Faculty and Staff News
• Faculty Research
• Student News
• Senior Design Teams
• Graduate Student News
• Outreach
• Alumni News
• By the Numbers
• Scholarships

Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Database And Metrics Data Of Global Surface Ozone Observations, Martin G. Schultz, Sabine Schroder, Oleg Lyapina, Owen Cooper, Ian Galbally, Irina Petropavlovskikh, Lynn Mazzoleni, Et Al.

Department of Chemistry Publications

In support of the first Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) a relational database of global surface ozone observations has been developed and populated with hourly measurement data and enhanced metadata. A comprehensive suite of ozone data products including standard statistics, health and vegetation impact metrics, and trend information, are made available through a common data portal and a web interface. These data form the basis of the TOAR analyses focusing on human health, vegetation, and climate relevant ozone issues, which are part of this special feature.

Cooperation among many data centers and individual researchers worldwide made it possible to build …

Robotic Arts: Current Practices, Potentials, And Implications, Myounghoon "Philart" Jeon

Department of Psychology and Human Factors Publications

Given that the origin of the “robot” comes from efforts to create a worker to help people, there has been relatively little research on making a robot for non-work purposes. However, some researchers have explored robotic arts since Leonardo da Vinci. Many questions can be posed regarding the potentials of robotic arts: (1) Is there anything we can call machine-creativity? (2) Can robots improvise artworks on the fly? and (3) Can art robots pass the Turing test? To ponder these questions and see the current status quo of robotic arts, the present paper surveys the contributions of robotics in diverse …

Influences Of Visual And Auditory Displays On Aimed Movements Using Air Gesture Controls, Jason Sterkenburg, Steven Landry, Myounghoon Jeon

Department of Psychology and Human Factors Publications

With the proliferation of technologies operated via in-air hand movements, e.g. virtual/augmented reality, in-vehicle infotainment systems, and large public information displays, there remains an open question about if/how auditory displays can be used effectively to facilitate eyes-free aimed movements. We conducted a within-subjects study, similar to a Fitts paradigm study, in which 24 participants completed simple aimed movements to acquire targets of varying sizes and distances. Participants completed these aimed movements for six conditions – each presenting a unique combination of visual and auditory displays. Results showed participants were generally faster to make selections when using visual displays compared to …

Biom 4110/6110: The Science Of Medicine (Syllabus), Bradford D. Pendley

Biomedical Engineering Syllabi Archive

Course Description: Integration of fundamental principles from physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, and applications of these principles to solve problems in medicine.

Biom 3110: Medical Physiology (Syllabus), Bradford D. Pendley

Biomedical Engineering Syllabi Archive

Course Description: Basic principles of human physiology and how these are applied in medicine and biomedical engineering problem and devices; physiological principles using appropriate mathematical and engineering models to construct an understanding of how the body works as an integrated system.

Biomanufacturing Through Igem-An International Student Competition, Asif Rahman, Ryan J. Putman, Neal Hengge, Charles D. Miller

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

The foundations of synthetic biology are built on molecular biology and genetic engineering. One of the purposes of synthetic biology is to make biology easier to engineer by the creation of standardized biological parts and devices. There are a wide range of potential applications for synthetic biology and a variety of approaches to constructing parts and systems. Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students from around the world apply synthetic biology principles at the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition to demonstrate functioning biological systems created from standardized parts. The iGEM competition will continue to add to the …

Current Status Of Coral Reefs In Tioman Island, Peninsular Malaysia, Saad Shahbudin, Khodzori Fikri Akmal, Salleh Faris, Mohammad-Noor Normawaty, Yukinori Mukai

Turkish Journal of Zoology

The present study aimed to determine the current status of corals using the coral video transect (CVT) method in the east coast, west coast, and isolated areas of Tioman Island, Peninsular Malaysia. A total of 65 genera from 21 families of corals were identified, from which the scleractinian corals of Acropora, Montipora, and Porites were dominant in the coral assemblages. Nine reef sites were categorised as having 'good' (51.4%-60.3%) coral condition and four reef sites as having 'fair' (37.6%-49.2%) coral condition. This study concluded that the reefs around Tioman Island were in 'good' average coral condition and have high generic …

Macroinvertebrate-Based Biotic Indices For Evaluating Thewater Quality Of Kargı Stream (Antalya, Turkey), Melek Zeybek

Turkish Journal of Zoology

The aim of this study was to determine the water quality of Kargı Stream, Antalya, Turkey, in terms of physical and chemical parameters and biotic indices. For this purpose, macrozoobenthic invertebrates and water samples were taken from each of the selected seven stations seasonally. The Belgian Biotic Index, BMWP and ASPT indices, and species diversity indices were applied for determining the water quality by using the ASTERICS software program. With the identification of the collected organisms, a total of 126 taxa including 4 taxa from Gastropoda, 5 taxa from Oligochaeta, 1 taxon from Malacostraca, 84 taxa from Insecta, and 32 …

Identifying The Hotspots Of Wildlife-Vehicle Collision On The Çankırı-Kırıkkale Highway During Summer, Ali̇ Uğur Özcan, Nuri̇ Kaan Özkazanç

Turkish Journal of Zoology

In this study, we identified hotspots of mammal-vehicle collisions that occurred on the Çankırı-Kırıkkale highway between May and October 2014. We collected 58 records from 6 species. Sixteen casualties occurred on the part of the road with low traffic volume (1818 vehicles/day) and 42 casualties occurred on the part with moderate traffic volume (4680 vehicles/day). The two species with the highest number of records were hedgehog Erinaceus concolor (n = 27) and red fox Vulpes vulpes (n = 21). Hotspots of mammal-vehicle collisions were detected with the CrimeStat3 program using 750-m bandwidth. We identified two spots of high incidence of …

Silicate-Promoted Phosphorylation Of Glycerol In Non-Aqueous Solvents: A Prebiotically Plausible Route To Organophosphates, Maheen Gull, Brian J. Cafferty, Nicholas V. Hud, Matthew A. Pasek

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Phosphorylation reactions of glycerol were studied using different inorganic phosphates such as sodium phosphate, trimetaphosphate (a condensed phosphate), and struvite. The reactions were carried out in two non-aqueous solvents: formamide and a eutectic solvent consisting of choline-chloride and glycerol in a ratio of 1:2.5. The glycerol reacted in formamide and in the eutectic solvent with phosphate to yield its phosphorylated derivatives in the presence of silicates such as quartz sand and kaolinite clay. The reactions were carried out by heating glycerol with a phosphate source at 85 °C for one week and were analyzed by 31P-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy …

A Special Issue Of Geosciences: Mapping And Assessing Natural Disasters Using Geospatial Technologies, Ruiliang Pu

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

High Speed Imaging, Lightning Mapping Arrays And Thermal Imaging: A Synergy For The Monitoring Of Electrical Discharges At The Onset Of Volcanic Explosions, Damien Gaudin, Corrado Cimarelli, Sonja A. Behnke, Valeria Cigala, Harald E. Edens, Stephen R. Mcnutt, Cassandra M. Smith, Ronald J. Thomas, Alexa R. Van Eaton

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Volcanic lightning is being increasingly studied, due to its great potential for the detection and monitoring of ash plumes. Indeed, it is observed in a large number of ash-rich volcanic eruptions and it produces electromagnetic waves that can be detected remotely in all weather conditions. Electrical discharges in volcanic plume can also significantly change the structural, chemical and reactivity properties of the erupted material. Although electrical discharges are detected in various regions of the plume, those happening at the onset of an explosion are of particular relevance for the early warning and the study of volcanic jet dynamics. In order …

Mirabile Dictu: The Bryn Mawr College Library Newsletter 20 (2017)

Mirabile Dictu: Newsletter of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries

No abstract provided.

Scriptures With Pictures: Methodology, Unexamined Assumptions, And The Study Of The Book Of Abraham, Mark J. Johnson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Research on the origins and nature of the Book of Abraham and the accompanying facsimiles has long been hampered by faulty methodology. And while the last few years have seen a significant reexamination of the assumptions that represent the underpinning of our understandings of the Book of Abraham, some unexamined assumptions persist. This study addresses seven aspects of the Book of Abraham, which include a discussion of the sources, the process, the results, the content, the witnesses, and the historical background. For each of these aspects, this study identifies lingering assumptions and shows how a proper methodology can validate or …

"What Is It About This Place?": Truman Madsen, Religious Education, And The Mission Of Byu, Bruce C. Hafen

BYU Studies

Barnard (“Barney”) Madsen has written a readable, thoughtful, and well-informed biography about his charismatic father, Truman Madsen. Although Truman didn’t keep a conventional journal, he maintained “journal files”—“crucial journal entries or documents he preserved for his posterity.” Those files, along with Barney’s intimate and observant relationship with his father, have now yielded rich biographical resources.