Digital Commons Network^™

Thermo-Fluid System Level Modeling For The Crome And Crome-X Ground Propellant System Using Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program, Mariano Mercado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A recent resurgence of interest in space exploration has given rise to a number of newcomers in the space industry. A number of private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance have joined the likes of NASA with the goal to expand the current capabilities of space travel and exploration. Perhaps the most ambitious of these goals is a manned mission to Mars. In order to achieve this goal, many of these companies have taken a keen interest in liquid oxygen and methane engine technologies. Engines like the Raptor by SpaceX and the Blue Origin BE-4 already run …

Amplification Vs The Natural Ear: A Test On The Effectiveness Of The Natural Ear On Adults Ability To Match Pitch In Song, Celeste Orozco

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Singing is a natural enjoyment of life; however, individuals tend to isolate themselves from this enjoyment due to their inability to match pitch accurately. A new technology, the Natural Ear provides altered auditory feedback to the user while singing. It is hypothesized that this feedback may aid in the userâ??s ability to match pitch.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of the Natural Ear to amplification and no amplification conditions on pitch matching accuracy in song.

Study Design: This study used a complex counterbalance within-subjects design.

Methods: 50 adults from the El Paso Metropolitan …

An Alternative Method Of Calibration And Prediction For The Theta-Projection Model, Jimmy Jesus Perez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The combustion induced high temperature-stress conditions of industrial gas turbines used in power generation causes turbine blades to wear and break after prolonged use. The need to predict turbine blade service life is ever increasing, leading to the development of several constitutive prediction models. It is necessary to design components for high-temperature/high-stress service such that creep failure does not occur during service life. For this reason, it is important to accurately predict creep life and understand the behavior of creep deformation leading to rupture. Several models have been expanded upon to improve their effectiveness for use with particular parametric data. …

Socialization Agents That Puerto Rican College Students Use To Make Financial Decisions, Enid Alvarez, Steven Tippins

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Using consumer socialization theory as theoretical framework, the purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental, cross-sectional study was to identify the information sources that Puerto Ricans college students use to gather financial knowledge. A sample of 198 Puerto Rican college students answered a portion of the College Student Financial Literacy Survey. The research question addressed the preference of four financial information sources, including parents, peers, media, and school. A combination of descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance, repeated-measures analysis of variance, and multiple linear regression confirmed that participants preferred to gather financial knowledge from parents. Researchers, educators, and policymakers may use this …

Computational Model Of Negotiation Skills In Virtual Artificial Agents, Daniela Pacella

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Negotiation skills represent crucial abilities for engaging in effective social interactions in formal and informal settings. Serious games, intelligent systems and virtual agents can provide solid tools upon which one-to-one training and assessment can be reliably made available. The aim of the present work is to fill the gap between the recent growing interest towards soft skills, and the lack of a robust and modern methodology for supporting their investigation. A computational model for the development of Enact, a 3D virtual intelligent platform for training and testing negotiation skills, will be presented. The serious game allows users to interact with …

Transparent Authentication Utilising Gait Recognition, Hind K Al-Obaidi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Securing smartphones has increasingly become inevitable due to their massive popularity and significant storage and access to sensitive information. The gatekeeper of securing the device is authenticating the user. Amongst the many solutions proposed, gait recognition has been suggested to provide a reliable yet non-intrusive authentication approach – enabling both security and usability. While several studies exploring mobile-based gait recognition have taken place, studies have been mainly preliminary, with various methodological restrictions that have limited the number of participants, samples, and type of features; in addition, prior studies have depended on limited datasets, actual controlled experimental environments, and many activities. …

Fatigue Crack Growth Of Recycled Rubber In Natural Rubber/Butadiene Rubber Blends, Dayang Habibah Binti Abang Ismawi Hassim

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Ground rubber from waste tyres may be added to elastomers to provide economic and environmental benefits. Both untreated and treated fillers have been investigated in different types of virgin rubber matrix. A principal concern is their crosslinked structure and large particle sizes. These additional fillers introduce flaws corresponding to micro-crack initiation sites especially under dynamic loading. Smaller particles, incorporated at a suitable concentration, may alleviate reduction of key mechanical properties. Many studies involving recycled rubber powder (RRP), untreated or treated materials, focus mainly on the quasi-static mechanical properties; generally few works examine the fatigue life and fracture morphology. In this …

A Situational Analysis Of The Current Level Of Lecturers’ Engagement With Internationalisation Of The Curriculum In Ireland’S First Technological University, Deirdre Ryan, Fiona Faulkner, Dominic Dillane, Robert Flood

Journal Articles

The educational value of internationalisation in higher education is of critical importance for both domestic and international students. While national and institutional policies globally are increasingly prioritising internationalisation, the resultant consequences for the teaching and learning context are not adequately being explored. Understanding engagement with Internationalisation of the Curriculum from the lecturers’ perspective allows for a greater insight into the inherent implementation gap between the theory and practice of the process. This knowledge may then help inform strategies to address the gap. The present study details the current level of engagement between lecturers and Internationalisation of the Curriculum in Ireland’s …

Inverse Gaussian Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Applied To Modeling High Frequency Data, Emmanuel Kofi Kusi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With about 226050 estimated deaths worldwide in 2010, earthquake is considered as one of the disasters that record a great number of deaths. This Thesis develops a model for the estimation of magnitude of future seismic events.

We propose a stochastic differential equation arising on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes driven by Inverse Gaussian (a,b) process. Inverse Gaussian (a,b) Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes offer analytic flexibility and provides a class of continuous time processes capable of exhibiting long memory behavior. The stochastic differential equation is applied to geophysics and financial stock market by fitting the superposed Inverse Gaussian (a,b) Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model to earthquake and …

State Of Stem: Defining The Landscape To Determine High-Impact Pathways For The Future Workforce, Erin White, Ariana F. Shakibnia

Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (Archived)

This article attempts to address the workforce crisis with implications for economic competitiveness and national defense faced by America and the dichotomy of STEM needs and available employees. Businesses struggle to fill critical skilled roles in STEM occupations and thus suffer sluggish growth. In fact, some estimate up to 2.4 million STEM jobs go unfilled College graduates in STEM fields struggle to find jobs. STEM jobs have doubled as a proportion of all jobs since the industrial revolution. New jobs and entirely new fields are being created daily. Estimates suggest that 65 percent of children entering elementary school today will …

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson

Scholarly Works

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Towards Optimal Enforcement, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

In Private Enforcement in Administrative Courts, Professor Michael Sant'Ambrogio argues that a hybrid private/public enforcement model in agency proceedings may provide the best hope of achieving optimal federal law enforcement. In other words, a blunderbuss approach of choosing public enforcement or private enforcement (whether in judicial or agency proceedings) is unlikely to prove ideal. He identifies various tools--such as agencies' role in the review or initiation of proceedings, or the use of class-wide proceedings--that Congress or agencies can use to calibrate agency enforcement to its optimal design. I consider three additional tools that may optimize enforcement goals with hybrid public …

Law's Semantic Self-Portrait: Discerning Doctrine With Co-Citation Networks And Keywords, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

An apex court’s body of cases has an internal texture, continually augmented by recent citations to earlier, topically related cases. How can we best describe that texture? The citation network shows a path. Specifically, what past Supreme Court cases do more recent Supreme Court cases tend to cite together, as if a topical pair? Using a web of those oft-cited pairs, what noun phrases appear in a given cluster of cases more often, relative to the rate at which those phrases appear in writings more generally? To answer these questions is to map, in detail, a body of decisional law. …

State Of The University Annual Report - 2018-2019, Office Of The President, East Tennessee State University, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

Office of the President State of the University Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Leibniz Algebras As Non-Associative Algebras, Jorg Feldvoss

University Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper we define the basic concepts for left or right Leibniz algebras and prove some of the main results. Our proofs are often variations of the known proofs but several results seem to be new.

Critical Early Childhood Mathematics For Children Of Color, Melissa Adams Corral

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

Early Childhood mathematics education often focuses only on counting, cardinality, and pattern recognition. Through a university/school partnership, we detail how a veteran prekindergarten teacher of color, working in a school serving a community of color in the United States, utilized democratic and inquiry-based early childhood pedagogical frameworks to mathematically empower her 4 and 5-year-old students. In this project session, we focus on the impact that a critical approach to mathematics education had on this veteran teacher’s school and practice, with reflective discussion led by the teacher herself.

Image Analysis For Lung Cancer Diagnosis And Superresolution Localization Microscopy, Xia Huang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the development of imaging analysis techniques, flurry of applications associated with it has been hatched. In this paper, image analysis on both organ and cellular levels will be demonstrated. For organ level images, a deep learning based computer aided lung cancer diagnosis based on computer tomography images is studied. Deep learning techniques have been extensively used in computerized pulmonary nodule analysis recent years. Many reported studies still utilized hybrid methods for diagnosis, in which convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are used only as one part of the pipeline, and the whole system still needs either traditional image processing modules or …

Time-Reflective Text Representations For Semantic Evolution Tracking And Trend Analytics, Roberto Camacho Barranco

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The extraction of significant, relevant, and useful trends from massive document collections, such as a streaming newswire or scientific publications, is a challenging and significant problem in many different fields, including intelligence analysis, recommendation systems, and scientific research. However, techniques that tackle trend analytics of such large text corpora are limited because research that addresses the temporal nature of these publications is still in its early stages. In this work, we first show that it is possible to capture the evolution of a story (or trend) by connecting the dots between different documents in a text corpus. The observed results …

Analyzing Teachers' Technological Pedagogical And Content Knowledge, Diana Minerva Camberos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative study analyzes the ways a professional development course entitled Sol y Agua helped teachers to acquire technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) and to implement technology in their classroom. This study also analyzes the experiences teachers had in the workshop and the recommendations they had to improve the workshop. TPACK is a framework which denotes that teachers have a deep understanding of how to represent content using technology, and that the technology is used effectively to teach the content knowledge. Technology is integrated as a component of the teacher content knowledge and the teaching topic, and not as …

Electronic Tuning Of Dimolybdenum Complexes Through Symmetry Manipulation Of Formamidinate Ligands In Their Second Coordination Sphere, Iván Alonso Cervantes Cervantes Martã­Nez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Alternative sustainable energy sources are required to decrease our dependence on carbon-based fuels. Small molecule activation is one of the most promising to fulfill global energy demand and maintain a sustainable world. Most of the industrial processes relevant for global energy supply and expenditure involves small molecules and metal catalysts. However, it is still required to gain fundamental insights on how these catalysts achieve such reactions. Dinuclear compounds, namely dimolybdenum complexes, may serve as a good experimental model to understand metal-metal cooperativity and its influence in catalysis.

In Chapter 2, three unsymmetric aryl formamidines were synthesized and characterized through 1H …

A Method For Iron Determination During Copper Electrometallurgy And Its Application To The Calculation Of Current Efficiency, Daniel Pedro Cruz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the objective of developing statistical models that describe iron kinetics under typical copper electrolytes as well as its effects on current efficiency and influence in cathodic and anodic behavior, a detailed electrochemical analysis is done in this work as a contribution to implement hydrometallurgical processes in the refining or winning process to produce high purity copper.

This Thesis evaluates the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) of the Fe3+/Fe2+ couple in the H2SO4-Fe2(SO4)3-FeSO4-H2O and H2SO4-CuSO4-Fe2(SO4)3-FeSO4-H2O systems, with addition of different copper concentrations and temperatures up to 70°, typically employed in the industry. This study further validates and expands a thermodynamic expression developed …

Stratigraphic Response Of The Differential Rise Of The Gypsum Valley Salt Wall, Jurassic Entrada Formation, Paradox Basin, Colorado, Rafael Andres Delfin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The effect of halokinetic processes on fluvial and marine depositional environments adjacent to salt diapirs have been well established through extensive research, however eolian systems in similar geologic settings have not been documented. This has left a void in our understanding of eolian depositional environments adjacent to salt diapirs. This study is aimed at providing new knowledge and a solid foundation on eolian systems and diapiric processes. Despite our limited understanding of theses interactions, there has been a recent interest in deep water prospectively in the Gulf of Mexico. Successful tests of the Norphlet Formation prove that eolian sandstones deposited …

Geophysical Studies Of The Three Sisters Andesite, West El Paso, Texas, Alexander D'Marco Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Three Sisters andesite intrusion is part of series of three small igneous bodies that crop out in western El Paso to the north of the more extensive intrusions found on the University of Texas at El Paso campus and at Mount Cristo Rey. These Oligocene age intrusions are believed to form part of a deeper, more extensive igneous body that may lie beneath much of western El Paso and the southern Mesilla Valley. I used several geophysical techniques to determine the size and shape of the Three Sisters intrusion to better understand its connection to other andesite outcrops and …

Manfreda Maculosa Leaf Extracts And Their Effects On Whole And Selected Myotoxic Components In Crotalid Venom, Charles Steven Gilbert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Manfreda spp have been used for the treatment of snakebite by several cultures in North and Central America (Austin & Honychurch, 2004, Johnson, 1999, Moerman, 2008, Verhoek, 1978a). There has been no systematic study of the genus Manfreda for its usefulness in the treatment of snakebite.

While the annual incidence of snakebite in the United States is relatively low (approximately 8,000 - 10,000), with a low mortality rate of 5 - 6 cases per year, there is still significant morbidity associated with snakebite (CDC - NIOSH, 2018, Springhouse Corp (eds), 2005). Worldwide numbers of the cases of snakebite can only …

Quasi-Harmonic And Anharmonic Entropies In Transition Metals, Bimal K C

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Density functional theory (DFT) employing the quasi-harmonic approximation (QHA) is a robust method for evaluating thermal properties of solids. In the case of transition metals however, the method yields high values of the thermal pressure when compared to experimental data or with more direct methods like quantum-molecular dynamics (QMD) simulations. Surprisingly, there has not been to date, a systematic study aimed at understanding the reasons for these large discrepancies, particularly at low temperature, i.e. below the Debye temperature of the solid. Using Tantalum as a test model for which a lot of experimental data exist, thermal properties were evaluated employing …

Phase Diagram Of Nuclear Matter, Adrian Gaytan Terrazas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nowadays it is well known that nuclear matter has a liquid and a gas phase, as well as a coexistence of phases region. Symmetric nuclear matter (same number of protons and neutrons) exhibit phase transitions from the gas phase to a liquid-gas mixture. A useful tool to represent such phases and transitions is through diagrams that show the necessary conditions of density and temperature to be in either of the phases.

Now the question is, what if we extend the traditional phase diagram for symmetric matter to the asymmetric

cases (different number of protons and neutrons)?

This study uses classical …

Modeling Correlated Data Via Copulas, Panfeng Liang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Copulas are widely used to model the dependency structure among components of multi- variate data sets. Elliptical copulas, such as Gaussian copula, are most popular copulas being used since many data sets follow elliptical distributions or meta-elliptical distribu- tions (Fang et al. (2002)). However, today's approaches and software packages require us to assume the specific category, such as Gaussian or Student's T, of the elliptical cop- ula before estimating it. In this Thesis, we will propose a Bayesian method using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to estimate the density function of elliptical copulas without specifying it is the copula …

Bayesian Analysis Of Variable-Stress Accelerated Life Testing, Richard Okine

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Several authors have over the years studied the art of modeling data from accelerated life testing and making inferences from such data. In this study, we consider a continuously varying stress accelerated life testing procedure which is the limiting case of the multiple stress-level discussed by Doksum and H´oyland [1]. We derive the likelihood function for the life distribution of the continuously increasing stress accelerated life testing model and consequently the Fisher's Information Matrix. We propose a Bayesian analysis for this distribution using the Gibbs Sampling Procedure. We conduct simulation studies and real data analysis to demonstrate the efficiency of …

Combination Of Resampling Based Lasso Feature Selection And Ensembles Of Regularized Regression Models, Abhijeet R. Patil

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In high-dimensional data, the performance of various classiers is largely dependent on the selection of important features. Most of the individual classiers using existing feature selection (FS) methods do not perform well for highly correlated data. Obtaining important

features using the FS method and selecting the best performing classier is a challenging task in high throughput data. In this research, we propose a combination of resampling based least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) feature selection (RLFS)

and ensembles of regularized regression models (ERRM) capable of handling data with the high correlation structures. The ERRM boosts the prediction accuracy with …

Fault Kinematics Of The Southern Rio Grande Rift: Exploring The Possibility Of Fault Reactivation, Georgina Rodriguez Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The region in and around the southern Rio Grande rift has experienced a long and complex tectonic history since the Precambrian era. In addition to recording extension directions due to the opening of the Rio Grande rift, faults can also possibly record contractional deformation related to the Laramide orogeny, extension along the boundary of the Mesozoic Chihuahua Trough, and possibly strike - slip movement since the Precambrian related to the Texas Lineament. The northern and central segments of the Rio Grande rift preserve mostly N - S-trending faults, whereas the southern segment preserves NW - SE-trending faults. The main hypoThesis …