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The Role Of Behavior In The Effectiveness Of Indoor Air Pollution Interventions: Results From The Artis Study, Madison J. Cole

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using panel data from a randomized placebo-controlled trial of a wood stove changeout and air filter interventions, this study addresses the role of behavior in the efficacy of air quality interventions. The effectiveness of an intervention in improving air quality depends on how households respond to and use them. Two important responses are whether the target population complies with the requirements of the intervention and whether users adjust other behaviors that can affect air quality.

This paper’s results are consistent with prior studies in finding that in the absence of interventions, a number of behaviors can affect indoor air pollution, …

Environmental Hazard Identification, Assessment And Control For A Sustainable Maritime Transportation System, Lizzette Marie Pérez Lespier

Doctoral Dissertations

"A demand exists to contribute towards the widening awareness of the need for sustainable maritime development and for coordinated maritime policies worldwide. Maritime shipping is considered the most eco-efficient mean of transportation and yet, is responsible for negative environmental impacts.

This dissertation focuses on developing data-driven decision support tools to evaluate the sustainable performance of MTS by focusing on the elements of the MTS that place stress on the environment. The first research contribution is a System Dynamics simulation model that examines the MTS resiliency after an extreme event and determines the sequence needed to restore the ocean-going port to …

Design And Theoretical Analysis Of Advanced Power Based Positioning In Rf System, Lei Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

"Accurate locating and tracking of people and resources has become a fundamental requirement for many applications. The global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) is widely used. But its accuracy suffers from signal obstruction by buildings, multipath fading, and disruption due to jamming and spoof. Hence, it is required to supplement GPS with inertial sensors and indoor localization schemes that make use of WiFi APs or beacon nodes. In the GPS-challenging or fault scenario, radio-frequency (RF) infrastructure based localization schemes can be a fallback solution for robust navigation. For the indoor/outdoor transition scenario, we propose hypothesis test based fusion method to integrate …

Remote Sensing And Localization Of Smart Rocks With Orientation-Controlled Magnets For Real-Time Monitoring Of Bridge Scour And Riprap Effectiveness, Yan Tang

Doctoral Dissertations

"This study aims to develop and implement a novel smart rock technology for real-time monitoring of the maximum scour depth and the effectiveness of riprap mitigation measures. A smart rock is one or more stacked magnets encased in concrete that can automatically roll to the deepest point of a scour hole around a bridge pier and provide its location through remote measurement over time. Once integrated into a riprap measure, the smart rock moves together with natural rocks and is thus a potential indicator of the effectiveness of the riprap measure. Therefore, the localization and movement of smart rocks were …

Community-Based Advance Care Planning Seminars: Increasing Knowledge In Decisional Adults, Molly Kuehl

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Practice Innovation Projects

Healthcare workers care for patients with many comorbidities- many of whom enter the system without a clear understanding of their values and preferences. Private discussions about advance directives (ADs) are effective, but cost-prohibitive. Community-wide education campaigns may result in improved quality of life (QOL) (Blackford & Street, 2012a; Bomba & Orem, 2015; Pecanac, Repenshek, Tennenbaum, & Hammes, 2014; Wilson, Kottke, & Schettle, 2014). The purpose of this project was to determine whether community-based seminars about advance care planning (ACP) increase knowledge in decisional adults 18 and older. This project combined discussion format with an ACP presentation. The presentation was delivered …

Characterizations Of Families Of Rectangular, Finite Impulse Response, Para-Unitary Systems, Daniel Alpay, Palle Jorgensen, Izchak Lewkowicz

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We here study Finite Impulse Response (FIR) rectangular, not necessarily causal, systems which are (para)-unitary on the unit circle (=the class U). First, we offer three characterizations of these systems. Then, introduce a description of all FIRs in U, as copies of a real polytope, parametrized by the dimensions and the McMillan degree of the FIRs.

Finally, we present six simple ways (along with their combinations) to construct, from any FIR, a large family of FIRs, of various dimensions and McMillan degrees, so that whenever the original system is in U, so is the whole family.

A key role is …

Improving Academic Decision-Making Through Course Evaluation Technology, Adam Marks, Maytha Al-Ali, Munir Majdalawieh, Anoud Bani-Hani

All Works

The objective of this study is to offer a broad understanding of how end of course evaluations can be used to improve the academic outcomes of a higher education institute. This paper presents the key findings from a study conducted using twenty-three academic degree-programs, regarding their use of end of course evaluation technology. Data was collected from an online survey instrument, in-depth interviews with academic administrators, and two case studies, one in the US and another in the UAE. The study reveals that while historically end of course evaluations were primarily used to gauge the performance of instructors in the …

Environmental Vibration Reduction Utilizing An Array Of Mass Scatterers, A. T. Peplow, L. V. Andersen, P. Bucinskas

All Works

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Ground vibration generated by rail and road traffic is a major source of environmental noise and vibration pollution in the low-frequency range. A promising and cost effective mitigation method can be the use of heavy masses placed as an array on the ground surface near the road or track (e.g. concrete or stone blocks, specially designed brick walls, etc.). This work concerns the effectiveness of such "blocking" masses. A semi-analytical lumped-parameter method is utilized, assuming that the blocks are point masses situated on an elastic half-space. The work is enhanced by examples …

Positive Bias In Bird Strikes To Engines On Left Side Of Aircraft, Richard A. Dolbeer, William J. Barnes

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Previous studies have indicated more birds collide with communication towers equipped with red warning lights than with towers equipped with lights of shorter wavelengths. We used the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s National Wildlife Strike Database to determine if a similar relationship exists for turbine-powered jet aircraft with 2 underwing- or fuselage-mounted engines and bird strikes. We compared bird strikes reported to engine #1 (left side = red lighting) or to engine #2 (right side = green lighting) using chi-square tests (α = 0.05). For both underwing- and fuselage-mounted engines, more (P ≤ 0.04) strikes were reported for engine #1 compared …

Public Geospatial Datasets As An Approach To Maximizing Efficiency In The Collection Of Site Covariates In Wildlife–Vehicle Collision Studies, James A. Vance, Walter H. Smith, Gabrielle L. Smith

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Wildlife–vehicle collisions (WVCs) are a major research focus because of increasing human health and safety concerns and the potential for biological impacts on wildlife. A key component of both understanding the causes of WVCs and designing mitigation measures is the collection and analysis of environmental and roadway data at WVC sites. However, collecting these site data can be logistically challenging and potentially dangerous to researchers. We studied the feasibility and accuracy of using public geospatial datasets, particularly Google Earth and Street View, as an alternative approach to assessing WVC onsite covariates. We randomly selected 50 sites from a larger WVC …

Cities, Inclusion And Exactions, Audrey Mcfarlane, Randall K. Johnson

Articles

Cities across the country are adopting mandatory inclusionary zoning. Yet, consensus about the appropriate constitutional standard to measure the propriety of mandatory inclusionary zoning has not been fully reached. Under one doctrinal lens, inclusionary zoning is a valid land use regulation adopted to ensure a proper balance of housing within the jurisdiction. Under another doctrinal lens, challengers seek to characterize inclusionary zoning as an exaction, a discretionary condition subject to a heightened standard of review addressing the specific negative impact caused by an individual project on the supply of affordable housing in a jurisdiction. Drawing from the experience of Baltimore, …

Piece By Piece Review Of Digitize-And-Lend Projects Through The Lens Of Copyright And Fair Use, Michelle M. Wu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Digitize-and-lend library projects can benefit societies in multiple ways, from providing information to people in remote areas, to reducing duplication of effort in digitization, to providing access to people with disabilities. Such projects contemplate not just digitizing library titles for regular patron use, but also allowing the digitized versions to be used for interlibrary loan (ILL), sharing within consortia, and replacing print copies at other libraries. Many of these functions are already supported within the analog world (e.g., ILL), and the digitize-and-lend concept is largely a logical outgrowth of technology, much like the transitioning from manual hand duplication of books …

Property In The Anthropocene, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Human-induced climate change threatens perilous risks for our physical homes and also poses a serious challenge to our legal institutions. Several scholars already have remarked on the disruption climate change has brought to specific legal areas, such as tort, standing, and national security. This essay argues that climate change will also disrupt fundamental ideas about real property. It maintains that the growing need for human management of dynamic natural forces, distorted by greenhouse gas emissions, will erode the foundations of physical stability and owner autonomy that shape basic doctrines of property law.

2016 James P. While Lecture On Legal Education: Legal Education Reconsidered, Judith C. Areen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The title of my talk, “Legal Education Reconsidered,” is not meant to suggest that legal education needs to be reconsidered. On the contrary, I will explore why the many criticisms of legal education made over the past six years combined with a significant decline in the legal job market have led many people—including many college students and recent graduates—not only to reconsider legal education, but to draw the conclusion that it is no longer a worthwhile investment. Even worse, a growing number of faculty and deans have become disheartened about their chosen life’s work and as a consequence have lost …

In Praise Of Richard Weisberg's Intransigence, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In early essays on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Richard Weisberg startled the literary and legal academic world with a novel claim: Captain Vere, he argued, far from being a tragic hero resigned to the moral and legal necessity of an unpopular act, as he had been commonly understood, was a murderer. His summary execution of Billy Budd, Weisberg showed, was neither required, excused, nor justified by law. Rather, Vere engineered an unreviewable conviction and death sentence, contrary to both the letter and spirit of the governing positive law, for personal gain. But why was Weisberg’s claim so novel? …

Law For The Platform Economy, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article: explores patterns of legal-institutional change in the emerging, platform-driven economy. Its starting premise is that the platform is not simply a new business model, a new social technology, or a new infrastructural formation (although it is also all of those things). Rather, it is the core organizational form of the emerging informational economy. Platforms do not enter or expand markets; they replace (and rematerialize) them. The article argues that legal institutions, including both entitlements and regulatory institutions, have systematically facilitated the platform economy's emergence. It first describes the evolution of the platform as a mode of economic (re)organization …

Who Runs The Internet?, Anupam Chander

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is no single answer to the question of who runs the Internet. Is it the United States, often seen as the hegemon of the Internet, home to so many of the world’s leading Internet enterprises? Is it China, which erects a “Great Firewall” to assert control over the portion of the Internet available in China? Is it the European Union, which extends its power globally through its data protection regime, designating countries as “adequate” or (implicitly) “inadequate” to receive its data? Is it ICANN, the California not-for-profit organization that controls how Internet addresses are allocated? Is it the World …

Attitudes Towards Face-To-Face Meetings In Virtual Engineering Teams: Perceptions From A Survey Of Defense Projects, Lawrence R. Blenke, Abhijit Gosavi, William Daughton

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modes of communication used in virtual defense projects have changed dramatically over the years with tools such as email and video-conferencing dominating face-to-face (FTF) meetings. We conducted a survey at a defense firm with an aim to test current attitudes towards FTF meetings – with respect to significant problems faced, project success, transfer of technical requirements, preference for FTF vis-à-vis virtual meetings, differences between virtual and co-located environments, criticality of various forms of communication, and whether FTF meetings were scheduled as often as desired. Our survey participants, about one hundred in number, were experienced engineers, technicians, and program managers – …

A Practical Approach To Evaluating The Economic And Technical Feasibility Of Led Luminaires, Sean M. Schmidt, Suzanna Long

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

LED roadway luminaires are currently under consideration for widespread implementation with departments of transportation, facilities managers, and city planners. This research focuses on a case study in Missouri and presents relevant research findings calculated by the authors as part of a project funded by the Missouri Department of Transportation. Although high-pressure sodium (HPS) luminaires have been the standard product for roadway illumination, advances in LED technologies have led many departments of transportation to consider them as viable options along state routes. For this case study, pilot sites were developed across the state of Missouri in sites assessed as moderately busy, …

Genetic Algorithms As A Viable Method Of Obtaining Branch Coverage, Jason Ross Frier

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Finding a way to automate the generation of test data is a crucial aspect of software testing. Testing comprises 50% of all software development costs [Korel90]. Finding a way to automate testing would greatly reduce cost and labor involved in the task of software testing. One of the ways to automate software testing is to automate the generation of test data inputs. For example, in statement coverage, creating test cases that will cover all of the conditions required when testing that program would be costly and time-consuming if undertaken manually. Therefore, a way must be found that allows the automation …

Social Networks Influence Analysis, Doaa Gamal

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2014, 74% of the Internet Users used social media, i.e., more than 2.4 billion users. With the growing popularity of social media where Internet users exchange their opinions on many things including their daily life encounters, it is not surprising that many organizations are interested in learning what users say about their products and services. To be able to play a proactive role in steering what user’s say, many organizations have engaged in efforts aiming at identifying efficient ways of marketing certain products and services, and making sure user reviews are somewhat favorable. …

A Multibiomarker Analysis Of Pollutant Effects On Atlantic Stingray Populations In Florida’S St. Johns River, John Whalen

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to examine the potential health effects of organochlorine (OC) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure on Atlantic stingray populations in Florida’s St. Johns River (SJR). Special emphasis was placed on identifying OC- and/or PAH-related effects in stingrays from areas of the lower (LSJR) and middle (MSJR) basins shown to possess elevated levels of these compounds, as well as characterizing baseline levels of pollutant exposure in the SJR shipping channel, which may be subjected to dredging in the near future, potentially resuspending and redistributing contaminated sediments and increasing pollutant-associated effects. To accomplish this, we measured …

Generating A Normalized Database Using Class Normalization, Daniel Sushil Sudhindaran

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Relational databases are the most popular databases used by enterprise applications to store persistent data to this day. It gives a lot of flexibility and efficiency. A process called database normalization helps make sure that the database is free from redundancies and update anomalies. In a Database-First approach to software development, the database is designed first, and then an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) tool is used to generate the programming classes (data layer) to interact with the database. Finally, the business logic code is written to interact with the data layer to persist the business data to the database. However, in …

Security Analytics: Using Deep Learning To Detect Cyber Attacks, Glenn M. Lambert Ii

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Security attacks are becoming more prevalent as cyber attackers exploit system vulnerabilities for financial gain. The resulting loss of revenue and reputation can have deleterious effects on governments and businesses alike. Signature recognition and anomaly detection are the most common security detection techniques in use today. These techniques provide a strong defense. However, they fall short of detecting complicated or sophisticated attacks. Recent literature suggests using security analytics to differentiate between normal and malicious user activities.

The goal of this research is to develop a repeatable process to detect cyber attacks that is fast, accurate, comprehensive, and scalable. A model …

Extracting A Relational Database Schema From A Document Database, Jared Thomas Wheeler

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As NoSQL databases become increasingly used, more methodologies emerge for migrating from relational databases to NoSQL databases. Meanwhile, there is a lack of methodologies that assist in migration in the opposite direction, from NoSQL to relational. As software is being iterated upon, use cases may change. A system which was originally developed with a NoSQL database may accrue needs which require Atomic, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) features that NoSQL systems lack, such as consistency across nodes or consistency across re-used domain objects. Shifting requirements could result in the system being changed to utilize a relational database. While there are …

Security Analysis Of Ecc Based Protocols, Chanchal Khatwani

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is extensively used in various multifactor authentication protocols. In this work, various recent ECC based authentication and key exchange protocols are subjected to threat modeling and static analysis to detect vulnerabilities, and to enhance them to be more secure against threats. This work demonstrates how currently used ECC based protocols are vulnerable to attacks. If protocols are vulnerable, damages could include critical data loss and elevated privacy concerns. The protocols considered in thiswork differ in their usage of security factors (e.g. passwords, pins, and biometrics), encryption and timestamps. The threatmodel considers various kinds of attacks including …

Biometric Encryption System For Increased Security, Ranjith Jayapal

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Security is very important in present day life. In this highly-interconnected world, most of our daily activities are computer based, and the data transactions are protected by passwords. These passwords identify various entities such as bank accounts, mobile phones, etc. People might reuse the same password, or passwords related to an individual that can lead to attacks. Indeed, remembering several passwords can become a tedious task. Biometrics is a science that measures an individual’s physical characteristics in a unique way. Thus, biometrics serves as a method to replace the cumbersome use of complex passwords. Our research uses the features of …

Testing A Communal Goal Affordance Intervention For Increasing Women's S.T.E.M. Motivation, Dominic George Mercurio Iv

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current research aims to integrate previous research on the host of negative consequences associated with women’s experience of stereotype threat in a science context. Using an expectancy-value framework, the current research explores potential indirect effects of a communal goal affordance intervention on science motivation, via stereotype threat, state anxiety, communal goal affordances, and belonging in science. Building upon the previous literature, the current research attempts to link stereotype threat to science motivation via communal goal affordances and state anxiety’s effect on belonging in science. Additionally, the current research attempts to illustrate the efficacy of a communal goal affordance intervention …

Enhancing The Existing Microscopic Simulation Modeling Practice For Express Lane Facilities, Kelvin S. Machumu

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The implementation of managed lanes (MLs), also known as dynamically priced express lanes, to improve freeway traffic flow and personal throughput is on the rise. Congestion pricing is increasingly becoming a common strategy for congestion management, often requiring microscopic simulation during both planning and operational stages. VISSIM is a recognized microscopic simulation software used for analyzing the performance of managed lanes (MLs). This thesis addressed two important microscopic simulation issues that affect the evaluation results of MLs.

One of the microscopic simulation issues that has not yet been addressed by previous studies is the required minimum managed lane routing decision …

Degradation Resistant Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Substrates, Ryan D. Scherzer

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Raman spectroscopy is employed by NASA, and many others, to detect trace amounts of substances. Unfortunately, the Raman signal is generally too weak to detect when very small, but non-trivial, amounts of molecules are present. One way around this weak signal is to use surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS).

When used as substrates for SERS, metallic nanorods grown using physical vapor deposition (PVD) provide a large enhancement factor to the Raman signal, as much as 10¹². However, Silver (Ag) nanorods that give high enhancement suffer from rapid degradation as a function of time and exposure to harsh environment. …