Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating The Ecological Status Of The Introduced Nile Monitor (Varanus Niloticus) In Florida: Forecasting Presence And Population Expansion Using Computational Geographic Information Systems, Noah G. Cohen

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

The Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) is a large, carnivorous lizard that has become a notorious invasive species in Florida, USA. Initially released in the 1980s from the pet trade, the species has since established at least three breeding populations and spread throughout much of southern Florida. While current control efforts have failed to eradicate V. niloticus, it is important to attain a better understanding of its invasive dynamics to guide and inform better control strategies. In this study, available georeferenced records of V. niloticus in Florida were compiled and linked to a habitat classification map to evaluate ecotype preferences. Factored …

Optimal Design And Control Of An Electromechanical Transfemoral Prosthesis With Energy Regeneration, Farbod Rohani, Hanz Richter, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present the design of an electromechanical above-knee active prosthesis with energy storage and regeneration. The system consists of geared knee and ankle motors, parallel springs for each motor, an ultracapacitor, and controllable four-quadrant power converters. The goal is to maximize the performance of the system by finding optimal controls and design parameters. A model of the system dynamics was developed, and used to solve a combined trajectory and design optimization problem. The objectives of the optimization were to minimize tracking error relative to human joint motions, as well as energy use. The optimization problem was solved …

Design And Simulation Of A Miniature Cylindrical Mirror Auger Electron Energy Analyzer With Secondary Electron Noise Suppression, Jay A. Bieber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the nanoscale metrology industry, there is a need for low-cost instruments, which have the ability to probe the structrure and elemental composition of thin films. This dissertation, describes the research performed to design and simulate a miniature Cylindrical Mirror Analyzer, (CMA), and Auger Electron Spectrometer, (AES). The CMA includes an integrated coaxial thermionic electron source. Electron optics simulations were performed using the Finite Element Method, (FEM), software COMSOL. To address the large Secondary Electron, (SE), noise, inherent in AES spectra, this research also included experiments to create structures in materials, which were intended to suppress SE backgound noise in …

Context-Based Human Activity Recognition Using Multimodal Wearable Sensors, Pratool Bharti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the past decade, Human Activity Recognition (HAR) has been an important part of the regular day to day life of many people. Activity recognition has wide applications in the field of health care, remote monitoring of elders, sports, biometric authentication, e-commerce and more. Each HAR application needs a unique approach to provide solutions driven by the context of the problem. In this dissertation, we are primarily discussing two application of HAR in different contexts. First, we design a novel approach for in-home, fine-grained activity recognition using multimodal wearable sensors on multiple body positions, along with very small Bluetooth beacons …

Comparison Of Lithium-Ion Anode Materials Using An Experimentally Verified Physics-Based Electrochemical Model, Rujian Fu, Xuan Joe Zhou, Hengbin Fan, Douglas Blaisdell, Ajay Jagadale, Xi Zhang, Rui Xiong

Electrical & Computer Engineering Publications

Researchers are in search of parameters inside Li-ion batteries that can be utilized to control their external behavior. Physics-based electrochemical model could bridge the gap between Li+ transportation and distribution inside battery and battery performance outside. In this paper, two commercially available Li-ion anode materials: graphite and Lithium titanate (Li4Ti5O12 or LTO) were selected and a physics-based electrochemical model was developed based on half-cell assembly and testing. It is found that LTO has a smaller diffusion coefficient (Ds) than graphite, which causes a larger overpotential, leading to a smaller capacity utilization and, correspondingly, a shorter duration of constant current charge …

Reviews And Syntheses: On The Role Of Trees In Building And Plumbing The Critical Zone, Susan L. Brantley, David M. Eissenstat, Jill A. Marshall, Sarah E. Godsey, Zsuzsanna Balogh-Brunstad, Diana L. Karwan, Shirley A. Papuga, Joshua Roering, Todd E. Dawson, Jaivime Evaristo, Oliver Chadwick, Jeffrey J. Mcdonnell, Kathleen C. Weathers

Environmental Science and Geology Faculty Research Publications

Trees, the most successful biological power plants on earth, build and plumb the critical zone (CZ) in ways that we do not yet understand. To encourage exploration of the character and implications of interactions between trees and soil in the CZ, we propose nine hypotheses that can be tested at diverse settings. The hypotheses are roughly divided into those about the architecture (building) and those about the water (plumbing) in the CZ, but the two functions are intertwined. Depending upon one’s disciplinary background, many of the nine hypotheses listed below may appear obviously true or obviously false. (1) Tree roots …

Oer Awareness, Advocacy, And Adoption: An Institutional Approach, Jaya Kannan, Chelsea Stone, Zachariah Claybaugh

Librarian Publications

Sacred Heart University’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Task Force, an entity composed of the Office of the Provost, the Office of Digital Learning (ODL), Sacred Heart University Library, and faculty from across campus, has worked for the past two years to integrate OER into the educational culture of the university. To accomplish this we’ve employed a process that focuses on building awareness, identifying campus units for building strategic partnerships, assisting faculty in locating relevant resources, and, through pilot programs, onboarding OER into courses for trial.

Unh Partners With Code.Org To Advance K-12 Computer Science Education In Nh, Unh Communications And Public Affairs

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Fort Hays State University Tiger Weekly, November 17, 2017, University Relations

Tiger Weekly Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Investigating Marine Resources In The Gulf Of Mexico At Multiple Spatial And Temporal Scales Of Inquiry, Joshua Paul Kilborn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The work in this dissertation represents an attempt to investigate multiple temporal and spatial scales of inquiry relating to the variability of marine resources throughout the Gulf of Mexico large marine ecosystem (Gulf LME). This effort was undertaken over two spatial extents within the greater Gulf LME using two different time-series of fisheries monitoring data. Case studies demonstrating simple frameworks and best practices are presented with the aim of aiding researchers seeking to reduce errors and biases in scientific decision making. Two of the studies focused on three years of groundfish survey data collected across the West Florida Shelf (WFS), …

The Performance Of Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (Msem) In Comparison To Multilevel Modeling (Mlm) In Multilevel Mediation Analysis With Non-Normal Data, Thanh Vinh Pham

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The mediation analysis has been used to test if the effect of one variable on another variable is mediated by the third variable. The mediation analysis answers a question of how a predictor influences an outcome variable. Such information helps to gain understanding of mechanism underlying the variation of the outcome. When the mediation analysis is conducted on hierarchical data, the structure of data needs to be taken into account. Krull and MacKinnon (1999) recommended using Multilevel Modeling (MLM) with nested data and showed that the MLM approach has more power and flexibility over the standard Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) …

18f-Fdg Pet/Ctct-Based Radiomics For The Prediction Of Radiochemotherapy Treatment Outcomes Of Cervical Cancer, Badereldeen Abdulmajeed Altazi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cervical cancer remains the third most commonly diagnosed gynecological malignancy in the United States and throughout the world despite being potentially preventable. Patients diagnosed with cervical cancer may develop local recurrence in the cervix and surrounding structures (vaginal apex, parametrial, or paracervical), regional recurrence in pelvic lymph nodes, distant metastasis, or a combination of all. The management of such treatment outcomes has not been subject to rigorous investigation. Therefore, there is a need for studies and clinical trials that focus on decision making to support the choice of the best treatment modality that leads to the minimal number of adverse …

Imaging Wetland Hydrogeophysics: Applications Of Critical Zone Hydrogeophysics To Better Understand Hydrogeologic Conditions In Coastal And Inland Wetlands And Waters, Christine Marie Downs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three projects utilizing electric and electromagnetic (EM) methods to better understand critical-zone hydrogeologic conditions in select Florida wetlands and waters.

First, a time-lapse electrical resistivity (ER) survey was conducted in section of mangrove forest on a barrier island in southeast Florida to image changes in pore-water salinity in the root zone. ER data show the most variability in the root zone over a 24-hour period, and, generally, the ground is more resistive during the day than overnight.

Second, a suite of three-dimensional forward models, based on varying lateral boundaries and conductivities typical of a coastal wetland, …

L2 Motivation In Japanese Elementary Efl Classrooms: A Review Of The Literature, Cassandra Brown

University Honors Theses

In their formal education systems, East Asian nations began to actively incorporate English lessons around the turn of the 21 st century. For Japan, perhaps the most controversial reform was introducing compulsory English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction at the primary school level in 2011. A central policy goal specifies guidelines for encouraging positive affect and long-term motivation toward the language. In this literature review, I discuss empirical studies from within the past five years which explore Japanese elementary EFL students’ motivation and engagement in class. Researchers framed their inquiry within the self-determination theory (SDT) framework, a dominant theory …

California's Paradigm Shift From Los To Vmt As A Transportation Impact Metric: Policies, Politics, And Possibilities, Robert Liberty, Lynn Peterson

PSU Transportation Seminars

As part of California's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the state has passed a law leading to a radical shift in how it analyzes the traffic impacts of new land use developments and transportation projects. SB 743's goal is to "more appropriately balance the needs of congestion management with statewide goals related to infill development, promotion of public health through active transportation, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

The new measure of transportation impacts will be based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) instead of level of service (LOS). This ground shift has broad implications for lead agencies, planners, MPOs, …

Assessing The Impact Of Land Use And Travel On Carbon Dioxide Emissions In Portland, Oregon, Zakari Mumuni

Dissertations and Theses

The negative consequences of sprawling metropolitan regions have attracted attention in both academia and in practice regarding how to better design settlements and alter travel behavior in a quest to curtail vehicle emissions. Studies that have attempted to understand the nexus between land use, travel and vehicle emissions have not been able to address the issue of self-selection in a satisfactory manner. Self-selection occurs when households choose their residential location based, in part, on expected travel behavior. This non-random experience makes the use of traditional regression frameworks that strongly rely on random sampling, unsuitable. This replication study's purpose was to …

Predicting Speech Recognition Using The Speech Intelligibility Index (Sii) For Cochlear Implant Users And Listeners With Normal Hearing, Sung Min Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Although the AzBio test is well validated, has effective standardization data available, and is highly recommended for Cochlear Implant (CI) evaluation, no attempt has been made to derive a Frequency Importance Function (FIF) for its stimuli. In the first phase of this dissertation, we derived FIFs for the AzBio sentence lists using listeners with normal hearing. Traditional procedures described in studies by Studebaker and Sherbecoe (1991) were applied for this purpose. Fifteen participants with normal hearing listened to a large number of AzBio sentences that were high- and low-pass filtered under speech-spectrum shaped noise at various signal-to-noise ratios. Frequency weights …

Global Association Of Aerosol With Flash Density Of Intense Lightning, Orit Altaratz, Beata Kucienska, Alexander Kostinski, Graciela B. Raga, Ilan Koren

Department of Physics Publications

A global scale study of the association between aerosol loading and lightning production was conducted, using a full year’s data for 2012 (as well as seasonal data) of the cloud-to-ground lightning record from the world wide lightning location network and aerosol optical depth measured by MODIS. 70% of all grid squares examined and 94% of the statistically significant ones had higher flash densities under polluted conditions than the clean ones. This trend is evident for large continental regions in North, Central and South America, Europe, southern Africa and north-east Australia. A detailed examination of the link to the meteorology was …

Wearete: A Scalable Wearable E-Textile Triboelectric Energy Harvesting System For Human Motion Scavenging, Xian Li, Ye Sun

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

In this paper, we report the design, experimental validation and application of a scalable, wearable e-textile triboelectric energy harvesting (WearETE) system for scavenging energy from activities of daily living. The WearETE system features ultra-low-cost material and manufacturing methods, high accessibility, and high feasibility for powering wearable sensors and electronics. The foam and e-textile are used as the two active tribomaterials for energy harvester design with the consideration of flexibility and wearability. A calibration platform is also developed to quantify the input mechanical power and power efficiency. The performance of the WearETE system for human motion scavenging is validated and calibrated …

Dns And Les Of Scalar Transfer Across An Air-Water Interface During Inception And Growth Of Langmuir Circulation, Amine Hafsi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of an initially quiescent coupled air-water interface driven by an air flow with free stream speed of 5 m/s have been conducted. The DNS solves a scalar advection-diffusion equation for dissolved gas (or scalar) concentration in order to determine the impact of the water-side turbulence on scalar (mass) transfer from the air side to the water side and subsequent vertical transport in the water column. Two simulations are compared: one with a freely deforming interface and a second one with a flat interface. In the first simulation, the deforming interface evolves in the form of gravity-capillary …

Resolving Chronological And Temperature Constraints On Antarctic Deglacial Evolution Through Improved Dating Methodology, Cristina Subt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to determine the timing of Antarctic ice sheet retreat and advance during the Late Quaternary, various tools are used to measure the age of marginal marine sediments. Carbonate 14C dating is a well-established approach, but requires foraminiferal microfossils, shells or other carbonate materials that are rare in most Antarctic regions, and may also suffer from vital effects, which can result in variability of up to 500 years in living organisms. Bulk acid insoluble organic (AIO) 14C dates are frequently as an alternative, but this approach works best where high productivity and sedimentation rates reign, and not too well …

Bayesian Inference On Quantile Regression-Based Mixed-Effects Joint Models For Longitudinal-Survival Data From Aids Studies, Hanze Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In HIV/AIDS studies, viral load (the number of copies of HIV-1 RNA) and CD4 cell counts are important biomarkers of the severity of viral infection, disease progression, and treatment evaluation. Recently, joint models, which have the capability on the bias reduction and estimates' efficiency improvement, have been developed to assess the longitudinal process, survival process, and the relationship between them simultaneously. However, the majority of the joint models are based on mean regression, which concentrates only on the mean effect of outcome variable conditional on certain covariates. In fact, in HIV/AIDS research, the mean effect may not always be of …

The Santa Clara, 2017-11-16, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

How Segregated Is Urban Consumption?, Donald R. Davis, Jonathan I. Dingel, Joan Monras, Eduardo Morales

Kreisman Working Paper Series in Housing Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Five Hundred And Forty-Third Report Of The Curricular Affairs Committee: Curricular Proposals, University Of Rhode Island Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Bills

No abstract provided.

Initial Mass Function Variability (Or Not) Among Low-Velocity Dispersion, Compact Stellar Systems, Alexa Villaume, Jean Brodie, Charlie Conroy, Aaron Romanowsky, Pieter Van Dokkum

Faculty Publications

Analyses of strong gravitational lenses, galaxy-scale kinematics, and absorption-line stellar population synthesis (SPS) have all concluded that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies within the massive early-type galaxy (ETG) population. However, the physical mechanism that drives variation in the IMF is an outstanding question. Here we use new SPS models to consider a diverse set of compact, low-velocity dispersion stellar systems: globular clusters (GCs), an ultra-compact dwarf (UCD), and the compact elliptical (cE) galaxy M32. We compare our results to massive ETGs and available dynamical measurements. We find that the GCs have stellar mass-to-light ratios (M/L) that are either …

Western News, November 16, 2017, Western Michigan University

Western News (1972-2018)

Story highlights: Scores of transformative ideas under review; Men’s soccer will go to the dance, host NCAA round; Emeritus continues to be key figure in sea’s resurrection; On Campus with Yumi Takahashi-Ede.

College Senate Minutes November 16, 2017, Bronx Community College Senate

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the College Senate on November 16, 2017.

Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access In A Mmwave Based Iot Wireless System With Swipt, Haijian Sun, Qun Wang, Shakil Ahmed, Rose Qingyang Hu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Research

This paper applies non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and relaying schemes in a mmWave based wireless heterogeneous system that aims to support Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The system consists of high power base stations, low-power relays, and low-power IoT devices. Due to the ad hoc deployment nature of low-power relays, they have very limited access to wireline power charging facilities. Furthermore, IoT devices normally have limited power and short battery life. The study assumes low-power relays and IoT devices are capable of energy harvest functionality. With the help of relays or IoT devices, downlink NOMA transmission consists of two phases. …

V. 85, Iss. 9, November 16, 2017

Archway (1946-2020)

No abstract provided.