Digital Commons Network^™

Philosophia Soteria: How Occupational Safety And Health Professionals Influence Decision Makers, Daniel Jay Snyder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify ideas about how occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals influence decision-makers on matters impacting occupational health and safety management systems. A modified nominal group technique was used that involved 67 participants in ten nominal groups and identified the most important ideas about how OSH professionals can influence workplace safety and health decision making. The research produced themes of communication, scientific, professionalism, leadership, adaptability, and business acumen that resulted in six domains of occupational safety and health professional influence.

Exercise Engagement And Longitudinal Change In Alzheimer's Disease Biomarkers, Regional Brain Structure, And Cognitive Functioning, Marta Stojanovic

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Washington Park Cemetery: The History And Legacies Of A Sacred Space, Terri Williams

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Washington Park Cemetery (WPC) is an historically African American cemetery that has struggled to endure countless years of mistreatment and negligence. It is important to identify not only the cemetery itself as sacred, but also the legacies and stories of those who are laid to rest in the space. Provided is a comprehensive history of the once prominent African American cemetery that examines its origins, various controversies, and current physical state. Since the history of this cemetery has never been collected and compiled into a comprehensive document, this research serves as a historical tool that allows individuals to learn about …

Analysis Of The Cis-Regulatory Element Lexicon In Upstream Gene Promoters Of Arabidopsis Thaliana And Oryza Sativa, Belan Khalil

Dissertations

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF BELAN M. KHALIL, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Plant Biology, presented July 11, 2018, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: ANALYSIS OF THE CIS-REGULATORY ELEMENT LEXICON IN UPSTREAM GENE PROMOTERS OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA AND ORYZA SATIVA. MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr Matt Geisler Gene expression in plants is partly regulated through an interaction of trans-acting factors with the promoter regions of the gene. Trans-acting factor binding sites consist of short nucleotide sequences most often present in the upstream promoter region. These binding sites, the cis-regulatory elements (CREs), vary in structure, complexity and function. In …

Bayesian Estimation Of Mixture Irt Models Using Nuts, Rahab Al Hakmani

Dissertations

The No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) is a relatively new Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that avoids the random walk behavior that common MCMC algorithms such as Gibbs sampling or Metropolis Hastings usually exhibit. Given the fact that NUTS can efficiently explore the entire space of the target distribution, the sampler converges to high-dimensional target distributions more quickly than other MCMC algorithms and is hence less computational expensive. The focus of this study is on applying NUTS to one of the complex IRT models, specifically the two-parameter mixture IRT (Mix2PL) model, and further to examine its performance in estimating model parameters …

The Evaluation Of Attitudes Towards Individuals With Mental Illness Among Counselors In Training, Randall Boen

Dissertations

Negative attitudes and stigma associated with mental illness have a profound impact on individuals who experience them. Researchers have defined stigma as the attribution of a deviant characteristic to members of a particular group. Persons with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI) face many difficulties that impact their full participation in social life. Although attitudinal reactions to individuals with SPMI have improved considerably over the last few decades, there are still areas for improvement. Limited research has been conducted to evaluate attitudes and stigma associated with individuals with SPMI among human service professionals-in-training (HSPs). For this study HSPs were defined …

Design And Analysis Of Binary Driven Coherent M-Ary Qam Transmitter For Next Generation Optical Networks, Naji Albakay

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work presents a design for a binary driven optical square M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) transmitter for high speed optical networks. The transmitter applies tandem quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulators to eliminate the need for linear broadband amplifiers and high-resolution digital to analog converters (DACs), which are both required by conventional transmitters. The transmitter design could be scaled to any order of square M-ary QAM by simply adding more QPSK modulators in tandem. It also provides a Gray coded symbol constellation, insuring the lowest bit error rate possible during symbol recovery. We also provide the design for the …

Improving Detection Of Dim Targets: Optimization Of A Moment-Based Detection Algorithm, Shannon R. Young

Theses and Dissertations

Wide area motion imagery (WAMI) sensor technology is advancing rapidly. Increases in frame rates and detector array sizes have led to a dramatic increase in the volume of data that can be acquired. Without a corresponding increase in analytical manpower, much of these data remain underutilized. This creates a need for fast, automated, and robust methods for detecting dim, moving signals of interest. Current approaches fall into two categories: detect-before-track (DBT) and track-before-detect (TBD) methods. The DBT methods use thresholding to reduce the quantity of data to be processed, making real time implementation practical but at the cost of the …

Comprehensive Sequencing With Surface Tagmentation Based Technology, Kuan Feng

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Next-generation sequencing technologies (NGS) have undergone extensive improvements since the invention of the 454 sequencing system in 2005. With tremendous progress in throughput, speed and a dramatic reduction in per-base cost, DNA sequencing is widely used in basic science as well as translational research. However, it is still a challenge to acquire a complete human genome. The long-range information is often missing due to the short length of NGS reads, which leaves many gaps in between scaffolds rather than an entire piece for each chromosome. Moreover, without the long-range information, haplotype-resolved genome sequencing and structural variant detection can be difficult, …

Investor Sentiment And Advertising Expenditure, G. Mujtaba Mian, Piyush Sharma, Ferdinand A. Gul

All Works

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. A strategic issue facing marketing managers is ‘how much and when’ to spend on advertising. We argue that investor sentiment in the stock market may influence advertising expenditure by affecting firms’ ability to raise new funds. We show that during periods of low (high) investor sentiment, firms decrease (increase) their advertising expenditure, even though the effectiveness of advertising is greater (lower) during such periods. We also find that these results are stronger for financially constrained firms that rely more on external financing. Our findings suggest that marketing managers can improve the efficiency of their advertising expenditure …

Active Matting, Xin Yang, Ke Xu, Shaozhe Chen, Shengfeng He, Baocai Yin, Rynson Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Image matting is an ill-posed problem. It requires a user input trimap or some strokes to obtain an alpha matte of the foreground object. A fine user input is essential to obtain a good result, which is either time consuming or suitable for experienced users who know where to place the strokes. In this paper, we explore the intrinsic relationship between the user input and the matting algorithm to address the problem of where and when the user should provide the input. Our aim is to discover the most informative sequence of regions for user input in order to produce …

An Architectural Design And Evaluation Of An Affective Tutoring System For Novice Programmers, Hua Leong Fwa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Affect is prevalent in learning and it influences students’ learning achievement. This paper details the design and evaluation of an Affective Tutoring System (ATS) that tutors student in computer programming. Although most ATSs are purpose built for a specific domain, making adaptation to another domain difficult, this ATS is architected for adaptability and extensibility. This study also addresses a lack of research exploring the theories and methods of integrating affect and learning within the learning process by proposing methods of regulating the negative affect of students. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used for evaluation of the effectiveness of the …

Privacy-Preserving Remote User Authentication With K-Times Untraceability, Yangguang Tian, Yingjiu Li, Binanda Sengupta, Robert H. Deng, Albert Ching, Weiwei Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Remote user authentication has found numerous real-world applications, especially in a user-server model. In this work, we introduce the notion of anonymous remote user authentication with k-times untraceability (k-RUA) for a given parameter k, where authorized users authenticate themselves to an authority (typically a server) in an anonymous and k-times untraceable manner. We define the formal security models for a generic k-RUA construction that guarantees user authenticity, anonymity and user privacy. We provide a concrete instantiation of k-RUA having the following properties: (1) a third party cannot impersonate an authorized user by producing valid transcripts for the user while conversing …

Towards Scalable Characterization Of Noisy, Intermediate-Scale Quantum Information Processors, Travis Luke Scholten

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

In recent years, quantum information processors (QIPs) have grown from one or two qubits to tens of qubits. As a result, characterizing QIPs – measuring how well they work, and how they fail – has become much more challenging. The obstacles to characterizing today’s QIPs will grow even more difficult as QIPs grow from tens of qubits to hundreds, and enter what has been called the “noisy, intermediate-scale quantum” (NISQ) era. This thesis develops methods based on advanced statistics and machine learning algorithms to address the difficulties of “quantum character- ization, validation, and verification” (QCVV) of NISQ processors. In the …

Utility And Accuracy Of Primary And Secondary Ultrasonographic Signs For Diagnosing Acute Appendicitis In Pediatric Patients, W. Akhtar, Mujtaba Z. Naveed, Kumail Khandwala

Department of Radiology

Introduction Making an accurate diagnosis of acute appendicitis (AA) is vital to prevent the morbid complications associated with untreated AA. This is challenging in up to 30% of pediatric patients which is a significantly high number. Ultrasound (US) has been generally used as the initial mode of imaging in pediatric patients due to the lack of ionizing radiation. Given its variable accuracy, adjuvants such as secondary signs can be used to aid the radiologist in making an accurate diagnosis. Materials and methods Patients between the ages of two and sixteen years with acute abdominal pain suspicious for AA, who underwent …

Higher Education Institutions And The Performance Management, Muhammad Tanveer, Dr. Asif Mahbub Karim

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose: The most prominent change that is seen now is that higher education institutions are under pressure prove their usefulness, objectives, and methods of achieving these objectives. They are also asked for details related to the allocation of their resources and priorities and are also asked to fulfill their social responsibilities. Everyone, from prospective students to the general public, now wants data and proof in favor of the effectiveness and necessity of these institutions. Because of this, higher education institutions are now more involved in the race of securing funding and win over potential customers. In this race, they …

Understanding And Constructing Ake Via Double-Key Key Encapsulation Mechanism, Haiyang Xue, Xianhui Lu, Bao Li, Bei Liang, Jingnan He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Motivated by abstracting the common idea behind several implicitly authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocols, we introduce a primitive that we call double-key key encapsulation mechanism (2-key KEM). It is a special type of KEM involving two pairs of secret-public keys and satisfying some function and security property. Such 2-key KEM serves as the core building block and provides alternative approaches to simplify the constructions of AKE. To see the usefulness of 2-key KEM, we show how several existing constructions of AKE can be captured as 2-key KEM and understood in a unified framework, including widely used HMQV, NAXOS, Okamoto-AKE, and …

Investigating The Electrodeposition Of Plutonium And Curium For Safeguarding The Electrorefiner, Chantell L. Murphy

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

This research investigated the electrochemical deposition behavior of plutonium (Pu) and curium (Cm) for safeguarding the electrorefiner (ER) in a pyroprocessing facility. The main goal of this investigation was to evaluate the feasibility of using a safeguards concept called the neutron balance method to account for Pu in the ER. The neutron balance method relies on a known Pu/Cm ratio and measures neutrons from Cm-244 coming into and leaving a unit operation to track Pu. The application of the neutron balance approach for pyroprocessing facilities requires that Pu and Cm remain together in all extraction, product recovery, and waste streams. …

Effects Of Performance Pressure On Response Inhibition Performance, Daniel N. Endres

All Theses

Previous research suggests that psychological pressure tends to exert detrimental effects on action-oriented cognitive tasks. However, the effect of psychological pressure on inhibitory cognitive processes has been relatively overlooked. Consequently, the goal of this study was to examine the effect of psychological pressure on response inhibition performance. Participants (N = 125) were assigned to either a time pressure condition or control condition, and then completed the Stop Signal Task, which tests response inhibition. Outcome variables of interest were stop accuracy, stop signal reaction time, and post error slowing. The results from the study indicated that time pressure significantly impaired stop …

Intermittent Estimation Of Volumetric Mass Transfer Coefficient Using Offgas Sensor Data For Continuous Our Estimation For Cho Cell Culture, Swadeel Deepak Gaad

All Theses

For the last several years drugs based on monoclonal antibodies have been manufactured using Chinese Hamster Ovaries (CHO) cells by the bio-pharmaceutical industries to treat cancer and other autoimmune diseases. Several control strategies are used to increase the productivity and efficiency in bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing. Cell growth can be controlled by adjusting the feed rate based on oxygen uptake rate of the cells in the bioreactor. Determining the volumetric mass transfer coefficient and oxygen saturation concentration is vital in correctly estimating oxygen uptake rate. Thus, a robust and efficient method to determine volumetric mass transfer coefficient and oxygen saturation concentration, which …

Numerical Analysis Of Scramjet Cavity Flameholders At Varying Flight Mach Numbers, Matthew Quinones

All Theses

Various types of air breathing engines are used as propulsion devices in aviation. At high flight velocities, the use of a ramjet or supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) may be preferred due to the natural compressibility of air at high speed. A scramjet, while similar to the ramjet, does not slow air to subsonic speeds prior to combustion, allowing it to operate at much higher flight velocities at very high altitude. For this reason, however, the residence time of air inside of the combustor is on the order of milliseconds, requiring rapid mixing and ignition of the fuel to generate adequate …

Implementation And Applications Of Art-Directable Ocean Simulation Tools, Jingcong Zhang

All Theses

Ocean effects are important aspects of the filmmaking. They help to establish emotions and dynamism via the behaviors of the oceans, and provides the different atmosphere for storytelling by creating various ocean scenarios. Gilligan is a prototype environmental scene simulator, whose core technique of the ocean simulation has been widely used in feature film productions. This thesis develops ocean simulation tools working with Maya and Houdini with the techniques provided by Gilligan. The Gilligan-Maya workflow executes ocean simulation methods in Gilligan to simulate oceans. The Gilligan-Houdini workflow integrates Gilligan into Houdini, containing a Houdini wrapper of Gilligan, along with a …

Examining The Perceptions Of Principals To Improve Professional Development Opportunities And Support From Central Office: A Program Evaluation, Noah Riley

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The work of Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, and Anderson, (2010), Manna (2015), Leithwood and Azah (2016) validates that principals can have a powerful influence on instruction and learning in schools. Supporting principals’ growth with professional development, therefore, is critical to building principals’ competencies as instructional leaders. Although school districts are unique in internal and external conditions (e.g., educational, political, and financial); which may influence their approach to supporting principals, a useful place for all school districts to start is with an appraisal of principals’ perceptions of current support and professional development from central office; regardless of district internal and external …

Implementation Of Music In A Simulated Unmanned Aircraft System (Uas) Monitoring Task To Alleviate The Vigilance Decrement, Maria Chaparro

Theses and Dissertations

The vigilance decrement is a thoroughly researched phenomenon in psychological literature and has been identified in many monotonous tasks. Although the phenomenon has been recorded for approximately 80 years, no universal repair, or theory to account for its onset, has been identified. Jobs requiring monotonous task performance have been increasing as time has elapsed, in part due to the rise in automation. Furthermore, much of the vigilance literature does not address modern, more complex tasks, such as the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) monitoring task. A potential method that has been proposed to combat the vigilance decrement is the inclusion of …

Understanding Department Of Defense Employee Perceptions Of Performance Appraisals: Making A Connection Between Performance Appraisals And Motivation, Kenneth Dewayne Welch

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine employee perceptions of performance appraisals in the Department of Defense (DoD) and to examine potential connections between the performance appraisal process, employee motivation and ultimately turnover intent. There is a paucity of qualitative, interview-based research focused on DoD employee perceptions of DoD performance appraisal processes and potential impacts on their motivation and turnover intent. The research study findings revealed a potential gap between the DoD performance appraisal process as outlined in DoD regulatory guidance and the lived experiences of the performance appraisal process by DoD employees. The study did not find significant …

Barriers To Mentoring Women Of Color For Corporate Leadership: Implications For Organizations, Donna Marie Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Mentoring as a human capital development initiative is critical to leadership development for organizational sustainment. Previous research has identified that barriers to mentoring relationships for women of color in organizations exist, confirmed by the finding that a factor in barriers to corporate promotion for women is a lack of mentoring. This dissertation explores the implications that barriers to workplace mentoring relationships may have for organizations from the perspective of women of color. Findings suggest that barriers to mentoring relationships experienced and perceived by women of color have evolved in presentation or diminished since those found by previous research. This research …

Are We Safe Yet? Re-Evaluation Of The Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Safety (Pdc-Safety), Nelmar Jacinto Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the utility of the Performance Diagnostic Checklist- Safety (PDC-Safety) (Martinez-Onstott, Wilder, & Sigurdsson, 2016) by comparing the effectiveness of a PDC-Safety indicated intervention with a PDC-Safety nonindicated intervention. The interventions targeted participants’ hand washing behavior at a clinic serving children with intellectual disabilities. Failure to wash hands at appropriate times could pose health risks to both behavior technicians and clients, so efforts should be made to increase the likelihood of hand washing. The results of the PDC-Safety suggested that the antecedents and information domain was most problematic. First, a non-indicated intervention, which included access to additional materials …

Leveraging Stimulus Equivalence To Teach Piano To Children With Autism, Krystin Katherine Hussain

Theses and Dissertations

Music-based interventions have been shown to benefit individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by improving deficits such as social behaviors, communication, and vocalizations, as well as reducing behavioral excesses such as stereotypies (Hill, 2015). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) on acquisition of piano skills, novel piano performance, and generalization and maintenance of taught and untaught piano skills among children with autism. Training consisted of auditory-visual musical stimuli in a matching-to-sample format. Training was conducted using simultaneous matching in a one-to-many arrangement (relations between one stimulus are trained to multiple …

A Preliminary Examination Of The Effects Of Repeated Observation On Productivity As An Analog Of Micromanagement, Christopher Lytle

Theses and Dissertations

The current study evaluated the effect of repeated observation on work-related behavior in an analog setting. The goal was to determine the effects of repeated intrusive observation on productivity. The study was designed as an analog analysis of the effects of micromanagement in an organizational setting. Participants were 60 undergraduate psychology students at a private university in the southeastern United States. A between-subjects group design was used to evaluate the effects of observation. Participants were exposed to varying levels of observation, (nine, two, and zero instances per session), and their productivity and accuracy on a data entry task were measured. …

Norms For Baseline Concussion Tests, Kaci Lee Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: The present study was designed to establish Baseline concussion normative data for non-athlete students using the Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT-5), Rey Word Recognition Test (RWRT), The A Random Letter Test of Auditory Vigilance (A-Test) and the Rey Dot Counting Test (DCT). The study considers the comparative differences when the non-athletes are told to complete the task to the best of their ability, to those who are told to perform poorly on purpose, and those who are instructed how to perform badly. Method: Sixty non-athlete students at Florida Institute of Technology volunteered in the study using the university’s online …