Digital Commons Network^™

Scalable Stochastic Reachability: Theory, Computation, And Control, Abraham Puthuvana Vinod

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Guaranteeing safety and performance are crucial components in any control system, and particularly relevant in light of growing interest in reliable autonomy. In safety-critical applications like biomedical devices, spacecraft applications, and self-driving cars, the cost of failure can be severe. Verification provides these guarantees by characterizing the ``good'' initial states or configurations from which a state can be driven to remain within a collection of pre-specified safe sets, while respecting the system dynamics, bounds on control authority, and additive uncertainties. We also wish to design controllers to achieve this objective. This dissertation proposes novel theory and scalable algorithms for tractable …

Assessing Moment-Based Boundary Conditions For The Lattice Boltzmann Equation: A Study Of Dipole-Wall Collisions, S Mohammed, D Graham, T Reis

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

The accuracy of moment-based boundary conditions for no slip walls in lattice Boltzmann simulations is examined numerically by using the dipole-wall collision benchmark test for both normal and oblique cases. In the normal case the dipole hits the wall perpendicularly while in the oblique case the dipole hits the wall at an angle of 30° to the horizontal. Boundary conditions are specified precisely at grid points by imposing constraints upon hydrodynamic moments only. These constraints are then translated into conditions for the unknown lattice Boltzmann distribution functions at boundaries. The two relaxation time (TRT) model is used with a judiciously …

Preparing School Leaders For Special Education: Old Criticisms And New Directions, David Dematthews, D. Brent Edwards, Jr.

School Leadership Review

In the context of accountability and high-stakes testing, professors of educational administration in Texas and across the nation are under tremendous pressure to develop innovative principal preparation programs that produce effective school leaders, especially as research methodologies emerge to disaggregate the effects of such programs. One area few programs adequately address, including more innovative programs, is special education - despite the fact that principals struggle with accountability for all students, but particularly those principals in schools and districts with limited resources and limited professional development opportunitie~ (Bays & Crocket, 2007; Wakeman, Browder, Flowers, & Ahlgrim-Delzell, 2006). Principals have long reported …

Insight For Teacher Preparation Program Administrators: Enhancing Pre-Service Educators' Lntercultural Sensitivity And Deep Proficiency In Culturally Responsive Teaching Through Short-Term Study Abroad, Gloria Gresham, Paula Griffin, Tracy Hasbun, Vikki Boatman

School Leadership Review

Teacher preparation program administrators face the issue of expanding curricula to prepare teacher candidates for the diverse population of students they will encounter {Trent, Kea, Oh, 2008). Globalization demands that teacher candidates grasp how to function in a more integrated and interdependent society (McGrew, 2005). According to Smith-Davis (2004) students from non-English speaking countries compose the fastest growing United States K-12 student population, and those identified as limited English proficient were over 10 million in 2004. The United States Census reported in the "New Census Bureau Report" the number of individuals five and older who speak languages other than English …

Response To Accountability Policies By Principals And Teachers Of Alternative Education: A Cross Case Analysis, Lynn M. Hemmer

School Leadership Review

National and state education policies continue to reflect a growing concern for educating the student at risk of dropping out of school. With the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 200I, it was expected that all ·public schools be held accountable in addressing remedies and preventative measures for dropouts. Since, 2001, backed by policy in thirty-three states, local education agencies have turned to alternative educational programs to decrease dropout and increase graduation rates (Jobs for the Future (JFF), 2009). While state policy, in general, gives districts latitude to develop these programs, it is often left to alternative school educators …

Creating A Computational Tool To Simulate Vibration Control For Piezoelectric Devices, Ahmet Ozkan Ozer, Emma J. Moore

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Piezoelectric materials have the unique ability to convert electrical energy to mechanical vibrations and vice versa. This project takes a stab to develop a reliable computational tool to simulate the vibration control of a novel “partial differential equation” model for a piezoelectric device, which is designed by integrating electric conducting piezoelectric layers constraining a viscoelastic layer to provide an active and lightweight intelligent structure. Controlling unwanted vibrations on piezoelectric devices (or harvesting energy from ambient vibrations) through piezoelectric layers has been the major focus in cutting-edge engineering applications such as ultrasonic welders and inchworms. The corresponding mathematical models for piezoelectric …

Consumption Profiles Of Illicit And Neuropsychiatric Drugs In Urban And Rural Communities In Kentucky Using Sewage Epidemiology, Tara Croft, Katelyn Foppe, Rhiannon Huffines, Bikram Subedi

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The drug overdose deaths in the USA increased by ~20% from 2015 to 2016 to the total >63,600 drug overdose deaths in 2016. Kentucky is among the highest rate of drug overdose death states in the USA. The current estimates of the prevalence of substance abuse are based on the self-reported surveys, overdose/toxicological reports, and drug-related crime statistics. Survey-based conventional approaches are not only cost and time-intensive but also underestimate the actual consumption of drugs. As “wastewater never lie,” the drug residues in raw wastewater collected from the centralized wastewater treatment plants were utilized to determine the consumption rate of …

As-858-18 Resolution On Course Criteria For Gwr-Certified Upper-Division Courses Across The Curriculum, Dawn Janke, Dianna Winslow, Brenda Helmbrecht, Greg Bohr

Academic Senate Resolutions

That voting members of the GWR Advisory Board shall include the Writing and Rhetoric Center director, who serves as the GWR Coordinator; the TT /tenured English Department faculty member, who serves as first-year composition coordinator; a faculty representative from each of the six colleges; one representative from Professional Consultative Services; and one ASI student representative or designee. The Ex Officio non-voting member shall be the CTLT writing instruction specialist or designee; and be 69 it further that the Writing and Rhetoric Center director, who serves as GWR coordinator, acts as chair of the GWR Advisory Board; is the direct point …

An Interplay Between Photons, Canopy Structure, And Recollision Probability: A Review Of The Spectral Invariants Theory Of 3d Canopy Radiative Transfer Processes, Weile Wang, Ramakrishna Nemani, Hirofumi Hashimoto, Sangram Ganguly, Dong Huang, Yuri Knyazikhin, Ranga Myneni, Govindasamy Bala

School of Natural Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Earth observations collected by remote sensors provide unique information to our ever-growing knowledge of the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, retrieving information from remote sensing data requires sophisticated processing and demands a better understanding of the underlying physics. This paper reviews research efforts that lead to the developments of the stochastic radiative transfer equation (RTE) and the spectral invariants theory. The former simplifies the characteristics of canopy structures with a pair-correlation function so that the 3D information can be succinctly packed into a 1D equation. The latter indicates that the interactions between photons and canopy elements converge to certain invariant patterns quantifiable …

2018 November 14 - Computation And Research In Data Science (Cards) Minutes, Computation And Research In Data Science, East Tennessee State University

Computation and Research in Data Science (CaRDS) Board Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

The Missouri Miner, Ovember 14, 2018

The Missouri Miner Newspaper

No abstract provided.

Can The Desiccation Of Great Salt Lake Be Stopped?, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh, Craig Miller, Sarah E. Null, R. Justin Derose, Peter Wilcock

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, with its watershed in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. Like all terminal lakes, the water inflows are balanced only by evaporative loss from its surface—when inflows decrease the lake shrinks until evaporation matches that inflow.

Trend Analysis Of Las Vegas Land Cover And Temperature Using Remote Sensing, Haroon Stephen

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

The Las Vegas urban area expanded rapidly during the last two decades. In order to understand the impacts on the environment, it is imperative that the rate and type of urban expansion is determined. Remote sensing is an efficient and effective way to study spatial change in urban areas and Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA) is a valuable technique to retrieve subpixel landcover information from remote sensing images. In this research, urban growth trends in Las Vegas are studied over the 1990 to 2010 period using images from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP). The SMA …

The Impact Of Sample Size In Cross-Classified Multiple Membership Multilevel Models, Hyewon Chung, Jiseon Kim, Ryoungsun Park, Hyeonjeong Jean

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A simulation study was conducted to examine parameter recovery in a cross-classified multiple membership multilevel model. No substantial relative bias was identified for the fixed effect or level-one variance component estimates. However, the level-two cross-classification multiple membership factor variance components were substantially biased with relatively fewer groups.

Radionuclides In Rainwater And Their Impact On Background Radiation, Damien M. Milazzo

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Radioactive waste has accrued throughout the continental United States and in the Oceans surrounding the country. Significant quantities of the waste are poorly documented regarding their location and the radioisotopes contained in the waste. Locating the waste is not an easy matter, as its locations are not well documented, and its method of disposal may be covered with plants, soils, and sediments. A common tool used to locate the waste is a gamma spectrometer, which measure the gamma emissions spectrum of radionuclides. The effectiveness of this tool when utilized to locate gamma emitting waste may be reduced due to the …

Ohio’S Patton College Of Education Receives $2 Million Noyce Grant To Fund Master’S Program In Stem Education (November 14, 2018), University Communications And Marketing

OHIO News Articles Archive

No abstract provided.

Not So Many Non-Disjoint Translations, Andrzej Roslanowski, Vyacheslav V. Rykov

Mathematics Faculty Publications

We show that, consistently, there is a Borel set which has uncountably many pairwise very non-disjoint translations, but does not allow a perfect set of such translations.

An Investigation Into The Learning Experiences Of Adolescents With Perceived Dual Exceptionalities Within Gifted And Special Education Middle Grades Settings, Whitney Bailey

Doctor of Education in Special Education Dissertations

Students who possess both a disability and characteristics of giftedness are referred to as students with dual exceptionalities. This paradoxical relationship of disability and giftedness creates a challenge for teachers and students, particularly in schools that do not have a specific program for students with dual exceptionalities. Most of these students typically receive the majority of their instruction either within a special education program, or a gifted education program. Students with perceived dual exceptionalities are often able to mask their disabilities with strengths in other major areas. The students in this investigation have all demonstrated strong talent in mathematics. They …

Exploring The ‘Spaces Between’: Teachers’ Perceptions Of Teacher Leadership Within Professional Networks, Cynthia B. Bauman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The enactment of teacher leadership can be challenged by both policy initiatives and school contexts (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). However, teachers can have a positive influence on each other and their broader school community by building capacity for leadership, innovation, and student achievement through the relationships, or networks, they develop and maintain (Baker-Doyle, 2015; Hovardas, 2016; Hunzicker, 2012; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2012). This single exploratory case study takes place in a Title I elementary school and uses a combination of Social Network Analysis and content analysis to uncover patterns in teacher professional networks, the context …

Perceived Roles Of Academic Advisors In Pursuing Internationalization At Public State And Community Colleges In Florida, Tony W. Long

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research study investigated the perceptions of academic advisors in the Florida College System (FCS) concerning globalization, internationalization, and their role in the process of internationalizing their colleges. Participants in the study included 54 academic advisors from 15 of the 28 colleges in the FCS. The sample was comprised primarily of female advisors with master’s degrees, who had been working in higher education for less than 13 years. This was a nonexperimental, quantitative study and analyses included descriptive statistics, ordinary least squares regression, and Pearson’s product moment correlations.

The results revealed that the responding advisors believe that globalization is inevitable …

Flowgraph Models For Clustered Multistate Time To Event Data, Kristin Hall

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Healthcare systems have multistate processes. Such processes may be modeled using flowgraphs, which are directed graphs. Flowgraph models support a variety of transition time distributions, easily handle reversibility between states and allow alternate paths to the event or state of interest to be taken. However, estimation of flowgraph and first passage time distribution parameters can lead to incorrect inferences when interdependent data are treated as independent.

In this dissertation, we expand the flowgraph model to accommodate nested and correlated data structures. We develop a framework to incorporate random effects into transition probability and transition time components of a flowgraph model. …

Optical Remote Sensing Of Oil Spills In The Gulf Of Mexico, Shaojie Sun

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Assessment of oil spills in the ocean using passive remote sensing (i.e., reflected sun light) faces two challenges: detect oil presence/absence and quantify oil volume. While the optical properties of oil allow it to be differentiated from the surrounding marine environment, sun glint can facilitate oil presence/absence detection because the oil-water spatial contrast is enhanced due to wave dampening. However, sun glint also modulates the magnitude and shape of the spectral reflectance of surface oil. In addition to this difficulty, the most critical challenge is how to quantify oil volume (or thickness) through remote sensing. To date, such quantifications have …

Water, Energy, And Carbon Footprints Of Bioethanol From The U.S. And Brazil, Mesfin Mekonnen, Thiago L. Romanelli, Chittaranjan Ray, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Adam Liska, Christopher M. U. Neale

Adam Liska Papers

Driven by biofuel policies, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase domestic energy supply, global production and consumption of bioethanol have doubled between 2007 and 2016, with rapid growth in corn-based bioethanol in the U.S. and sugar cane-based bioethanol in Brazil. Advances in crop yields, energy use efficiency in fertilizer production, biomass-to-ethanol conversion rates, and energy efficiency in ethanol production have improved the energy balance and GHG emission reduction potential of bioethanol. In the current study, the water, energy, and carbon footprints of bioethanol from corn in the U.S. and sugar cane in Brazil were assessed. The …

Reflecting On 1 October: Using Research To Inform Public Policy And Heal Our Community, Brookings Mountain West

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

On October 1, 2017, Las Vegas joined a growing list of cities in the United States home to a mass shooting, including Blacksburg, Virginia; Newtown, Connecticut; San Bernardino, California; Orlando, Florida; Columbine, Colorado; Fort Hood, Texas; Parkland and Jacksonville, Florida and other locations. In the weeks following the tragedy, the nation and the Las Vegas community, including UNLV, responded with tributes to the victims, short- and long-term memorials to those killed and wounded, and calls to investigate the circumstances that led to this tragic event and to find ways to prevent future atrocities. Following the one-year anniversary of the 1 …

Ereserves, Annotations, And Registration: Copyright At The 11th Circuit, Stephen Wolfson

Presentations

This presentation discusses eReserves, the 11th circuit and copyright issues surrounding the Georgia State University case heard by Judge Evans in 2008.

Cteq-Tea Parton Distribution Functions With Intrinsic Charm, Marco Guzzi, Tie-Jiun Hou, Sayipjamal Dulat, Jun Gao, Joey Huston, Pavel Nadolsky, Carl Schmidt, Jan Winter, Keping Xie, C.-P. Yuan

Faculty Articles

We present a study in which the possibility of a (sizable) nonperturbative contribution to the charm parton distribution function (PDF) in a nucleon is investigated together with theoretical issues arising in its interpretation. The separation of the universal component of the nonperturbative charm from the rest of the radiative contributions is also discussed. We illustrate the potential impact of a nonperturbative charm PDF on LHC scattering processes. An estimate of nonperturbative charm magnitude in the CT14 and CT14HERA2 global QCD analyses at the next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) in the QCD coupling strength is given by including the latest experimental data …

Enhancement Of Rainfall-Triggered Shallow Landslide Hazard Assessment At Regional And Site Scales Using Remote Sensing And Slope Stability Analysis Coupled With Infiltration Modeling, Thilanki Maneesha Dahigamuwa Rajaguru Mudiyanselage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Landslides cause significant damage to property and human lives throughout the world. Rainfall is the most common triggering factor for the occurrence of landslides. This dissertation presents two novel methodologies for assessment of rainfall-triggered shallow landslide hazard. The first method focuses on using remotely sensed soil moisture and soil surface properties in developing a framework for real-time regional scale landslide hazard assessment while the second method is a deterministic approach to landslide hazard assessment of the specific sites identified during first assessment. In the latter approach, landslide inducing transient seepage in soil during rainfall and its effect on slope stability …

Rate-Determining Step And Active Sites Probing For Platinum-Group-Metal Free Cathode Catalyst In Fuel Cell, Yechuan Chen

Chemical and Biological Engineering ETDs

With the increasing demand on renewable energy, the fuel cell has attracted more and more interests because of its large power density and controllable size. However, the insufficiency of element abundance and unstable expensive price of conventional platinum-based electrocatalysts used in anode and cathode makes it essential to find their substitutes. As one of the most promising candidates to be used in cathode for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), iron-nitrogen-carbon (Fe-N-C) catalysts have been widely investigated and get commercialized recently, but still lacks comprehensive understanding on the kinetic mechanism.

This dissertation has been divided into three parts with a discussion on …

Development Of Functional Chemical Probes For The Study Of Viscosity, Fe(Ii), And Ferroptosis And Photo-Triggered Drug Delivery, Yongyi Wei

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

Small molecule probes are useful tools for the study of biology. In particular, the dye derived fluorescence probes enable to spatiotemporally monitor the events of analytes of interest. The noninvasive feature is particularly attractive for the biological studies in live cells. The challenge is to develop chemical probes capable of detection of the analyte of interest with high specificity.

Toward this end, my Ph. D. study centers on the development of novel chemical probes for the study and understanding of the alternation of important cellar contents and substances and their functions and relationship between normal and disease states. In the …

An Enhanced Mobility And Temperature Aware Routing Protocol Through Multi-Criteria Decision Making Method In Wireless Body Area Networks, Beom Su Kim, Babar Shah, Feras Al-Obediat, Sana Ullah, Kyong Hoon Kim, Ki Il Kim

All Works

© 2018 by the authors. In wireless body area networks, temperature-aware routing plays an important role in preventing damage of surrounding body tissues caused by the temperature rise of the nodes. However, existing temperature-aware routing protocols tend to choose the next hop according to the temperature metric without considering transmission delay and data loss caused by human posture. To address this problem, multiple research efforts exploit different metrics such as temperature, hop count and link quality. Because their approaches are fundamentally based on simple computation through weighted factor for each metric, it is rarely feasible to obtain reasonable weight value …