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The Impacts Of Cost-Reducing Technology In The Gold And Oil Industries, Mark Alan Simonson

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

This thesis explores the question of what drives the development of cost-reducing technology. It will also explore this question in the gold and oil industries. It will integrate Paul Romer’s idea that investment in technology is an endogenous factor in the econometric testing. This matters because while a time lag may exist between investment in a commodity and one’s return on such investment, the role of changes in price and elasticity aid in driving such investment.

Treatment Of Industrial Wastewater Derived Organic Pollutants Using Electrochemical Methods Through Optimization Of Operation Parameters., Swati Sharma

Agribusiness and Biosystems Engineering

Industrial operations produce a notable amount of wastewaters with high concentration of chemical oxygen demand (COD), mostly consisting of organic carbon compounds. The treatment performance of electrochemical methods for organic removal and the effects of process parameters are the subject of this research. Three research tasks were performed. The first task was the removal of organic pollutants from three different industrial wastewaters using two different electrochemical methods; combined electrocoagulation + electrooxidation (EC+EO) and b) electrochemical peroxidation (ECP). Using only EC process was found to be significantly successful in removing suspended and colloidal pollutants and could remove more than 90% COD …

Advanced Evapotranspiration Measurement For Crop Water Management In The Red River Valley, Ali Rashid Niaghi

Agribusiness and Biosystems Engineering

As the main component of terrestrial energy and water balance, evapotranspiration (ET) moves a large amount of water and energy in the form of latent heat flux from bare soil and vegetated surfaces into the atmosphere. Despite the development of many methods and equations through past decades, accurate ET estimation is still a challenging task, especially for the Red River Valley of the North (RRV) that has limited updated information on ET either for landscape or agricultural water management. The overall objective of first study was to evaluate the ASCE-EWRI reference ET (ETo) method by developing an accurate crop coefficient …

Reflection: The Las Vegas Strip - Introducing Big Data Into Project Planning For User Informed Design, Evan Lecy

Landscape Architecture Theses

Every world class city has a landmark, in Vegas it is “The Strip." Yet, this important gateway to Las Vegas venues is little more than a 10 lane downtown street controlled by stop lights. Reminiscent of 1970’s streets in downtown Atlanta, LA or Dallas. Many public review platforms such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, we8there, Foursquare, Google places, etc. have collected an increasing amount of feedback in the form of unstructured user reviews. These reviews are self-posted, volunteer created text about user experiences with products and services which differs from surveys asking targeted questions. Studies show that the Hospitality industries adoption of …

Combined Trajectory, Propulsion, And Battery Mass Optimization For Solar-Regenerative High-Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aircraft, Nathaniel S. Gates, Kevin R. Moore, Andrew Ning, John D. Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Combined optimization of propulsion system design, flight trajectory planning and battery mass optimization for solar-regenerative high-altitude long endurance (SRHALE) aircraft through a sequential iterative approach yields an increase of 20.2% in the end-of-day energy available on the winter solstice at 35 deg N latitude, resulting in an increase in flight time of 2.36 hours. The optimized flight path is obtained by using nonlinear model predictive control to solve flight and energy system dynamics over a 24 hour period with a 15 second time resolution. The optimization objective is to maximize the total energy in the system while flying a station-keeping …

Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Films Dip-Coating By Colloidal Nanocrystals Bilayer Films, Amal Altayyar

Materials and Nanotechnology

A wrinkling approach was used to study the mechanics of hybrid nanotube/nanocrystal coatings adhering to soft polymer (PDMS) substrates. We focused on three thicknesses: 10 nm, 30 nm, and 40 nm. The approach we used is the Strain-Induced Elastic Buckling Instability for Mechanical Measurements (SIEBIFMM) technique, which allows measurement of the SWCNT film mechanics by the buckling wavelength and the film thickness by inducing a compressive stress in the films at different strains; 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%, and 12%. In this thesis, dip-coating method with colloidal nanocrystals was used to enhance the rigidity of the carbon nanotube films by …

Non-Thermal Plasma Synthesis Of Luminescent Silicon Nanocrystals From Cylclohexasilane, Todd Andrew Pringle

Materials and Nanotechnology

In this report we establish cyclohexasilane (CHS) as a reliable precursor for non-thermal plasma synthesis of high quality photoluminescent silicon nanocrystals (SiNCs). We demonstrate that this synthesis approach can produce high quality, size tunable silicon quantum dots with quantum yields exceeding 60% as synthesized (subsequent work in our group has measured over 70% quantum yield after density gradient ultracentrifugation size purification).After a brief background on non-thermal plasma synthesis, the characterization methods used in this study, and an overview of CHS, we report at length on our development of the apparatus used, and our exploration of the controllable processing parameters of …

Causes Of Dull Brown Color In Durum And Traditional Semolina Pasta, Patricia Alejandra Cabas Lühmann

Plant Sciences

Bleaching of durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum [Desf.] Husn.) was evaluated by determining the effect of grain moisture content, temperature, and wet/dry cycles with bulk water and with high relative humidity on the hydration of durum wheat grain and their effect on some physical grain quality parameters. Low initial grain moisture, high temperature, and wet/dry cycles increased water gain. Scanning electron microscopy and light microscopy showed that the germ and ventral surface of grain were important for water absorption. A single exposure to moisture (bulk water or high relative humidity) seems to be enough to cause a decline …

Using Organic Amendments To Stabilize Sand-Based Athletic Fields During Turfgrass Establishment Period, Thomas Drietz

Plant Sciences

Athletic field rootzones are often sand-based for improved drainage. Sand-based rootzones may have stability issues if turfgrass is not fully established. Our objective was to use organic amendments to improve the stability of sand-based fields during the turfgrass establishment period and avoid overuse of inorganic materials, which have negative effects. We tested coconut coir, peat and wheat straw at 1% organic material, peat at 2% organic material, and an inorganic stabilizing fiber, StaLok, in the top 10 cm of the rootzone. Surface hardness, volumetric water content, traction, penetration resistance and visual quality were measured 2 to 4 months after construction …

Vacuum Steam Pasteurization Of Hard Red Spring Wheat, Jane Mae Snelling

Plant Sciences

Vacuum steam pasteurization (VSP) is a promising technology for pasteurization of low moisture foods. Recent outbreaks traced to wheat flour, a low moisture food, have created demand in the milling industry for a process that reduces pathogens in wheat while maintaining its functional properties. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of VSP on Hard Red Spring (HRS) wheat. First, HRS wheat samples were pasteurized at 65, 70, 75, and 85°C for 4 and 8 minutes. Significant changes in dough and baked product functionality were observed in treatments ≥70°C suggesting gluten denaturation occurred. After determining that 65°C …

Dual-Functionalized Liposomes For Gene Delivery To Brain To Prevent And Treat Alzheimer’S Disease, Bruna Dos Santos Rodrigues

Pharmacy

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common age-related neurodegenerative disorder which lacks effective disease-modifying therapies. We have investigated the therapeutic potential of pDNA encoding apolipoprotein E2 (ApoE2), or nerve growth factor (NGF) by transporting pDNA across the blood brain barrier (BBB) and expressing the ApoE2 or NGF into brain, using brain-targeted liposomal nanoparticles for treatment of AD. We explored the neuroprotective functions of ApoE2 and survival-promoting properties of NGF through gene therapy as potential disease-modifying therapies for AD. We designed brain-targeted gene delivery systems with prolonged systemic circulation and enhanced cellular penetration by conjugating transferrin (Tf) ligand and cell-penetrating peptide …

Designing Bio-Ink For Extrusion Based Bio-Printing Process, Md Ahasan Habib

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Tissue regeneration using in-vitro scaffold becomes a vital mean to mimic the in-vivo counterpart due to the insufficiency of animal models to predict the applicability of drug and other physiological behavior. Three-dimensional (3D) bio-printing is an emerging technology to reproduce living tissue through controlled allocation of biomaterial and cell. Due to its bio-compatibility, natural hydrogels are commonly considered as the scaffold material in bio-printing process. However, repeatable scaffold structure with good printability and shape fidelity is a challenge with hydrogel material due to weak bonding in polymer chain. Additionally, there are intrinsic limitations for bio-printing of hydrogels due to limited …

Review Of Carbonaceous Annealing Effects On O2 And Co2 Coal Reactivity, Troy Michael Holland, Thomas H. Fletcher, Osvalda Senneca

Faculty Publications

Coal is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, a critical energy production resource. Advanced models of coal conversion behavior in air and oxy-coal environments enhance the boiler operational efficiency and design optimization. Although coal conversion models have continuously improved over decades of research, not all aspects of coal particle heating and conversion have received equal treatment. Coal particle annealing is one aspect of the coal conversion process that is simultaneously highly sensitive to the conversion environment, exceptionally impactful on coal chemistry, and frequently neglected in coal models. However, the current body of literature has explored numerous aspects of coal …

Pyrolysis Kinetics Of Live And Dead Wildland Vegetation From The Southern United States, Elham Amini, Mohammad-Saeed Safdari, David R. Weise, Thomas H. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

The fundamental combustion behavior of live wildland vegetation is not fully understood. Since the combustion process during wildland fire starts with pyrolysis, there is a need for better understanding of pyrolysis to develop improved wildland fire models. The kinetics of pyrolysis of live and dead wildland vegetation has not been explored in detail. In this study, the pyrolysis kinetics were determined for 14 different plant species (live and dead) which are all native to the forests in the southern United States. Pyrolysis experiments were carried out in a Thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) under inert conditions at 5 different heating rates ranged …

Automated Speech Recognition In Adult Stroke Survivors: Comparing Human And Computer Transcriptions, Tyson G. Harmon, Adam Jacks, Katarina L. Haley, Gary Bishop

Faculty Publications

Objective: Speech sound errors are common in people with a variety of communication disorders and can result in impaired message transmission to listeners. Valid and reliable metrics exist to quantify this problem, but they are rarely used in clinical settings due to the time-intensive nature of speech transcription by humans. Automated speech recognition (ASR) technologies have advanced substantially in recent years, enabling them to serve as realistic proxies for human listeners. This study aimed to determine how closely transcription scores from human listeners correspond to scores from an ASR system. Patients and Methods: Sentence recordings from 10 stroke survivors with …

Expectations And Challenges Of Non-Native University Writers At The Outset Of Discipline-Specific Study, K. James Hartshorn, Norman W. Evans

Faculty Publications

Little is known about how best to prepare non-native students matriculated at universities in the United States to succeed in discipline-specific writing. Whilesome studies have suggested differences in the types and volumes of writing across disciplines, such studies have compared very few disciplines simultaneously and have not always examined the disciplines most commonly studied by international students. Thus, this study seeks to fill an important gap in the literature by examining the perspectives of university professors regarding their expectations and purposes for student writing as well as their observations about the greatest writing challenges their students face within five of …

Pain Or Gain? How Business Communication Students Perceive The Outlining Process, Matt Baker

Faculty Publications

This study investigates how students perceive the outlining process. Students in two business communication sections completed a survey regarding outlining perceptions and reasons for outlining or not. Using qualitative content analysis and qualitative coding, the researcher and an independent coder analyzed 34 students’ responses regarding outlining process, use, and reasons for outlining or not. Results indicate that students perceive outlining as more useful if their outlining process includes both organization and content exploration and less useful if it excludes organization or content exploration. Notable reasons for not outlining include concern for outlining time and difficulty generating content for the outline.

Using Case-Method Pedagogy To Facilitate Audience Awareness, Vincent D. Robles

Faculty Publications

Introduction: Technical and professional communication (TPC) instructors value audience awareness, using peer- and client-based projects to facilitate it. We explore how students’ audience awareness is facilitated by the case method, which presents students with a professional communication task within a workplace scenario.

Situating the case: Case-method research suggests including a detailed audience and situation, multiple genres, and multimedia. Few studies have explored how case materials facilitate students’ audience awareness.

About the case: A 12-week case that was consistent with case-method research asked students to respond to an engineering firm’s internal problem with a proposal and report. How the case was …

Robotic Process Automation In Public Accounting, Lauren A. Cooper, D. Kip Holderness, Trevor L. Sorensen, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the adoption and use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software— often referred to as bots—in the public accounting industry. Accounting firms use RPA software to automate the input, processing, and output of data across computer applications in order to streamline repetitive and mundane business processes. We conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with 14 accounting professionals including at least two RPA leaders at each of the Big 4 accounting firms to gain insights into how RPA software is currently being used. Interviewees note that bots are implemented in all areas of the firm but have gained the most traction …

The Fog Of Warnings: How Non-Essential Notifications Blur With Security Warnings, Anthony Vance, David Eargle, Jeffrey Jenkins, C. Brock Kirwan, Bonnie Brinton Anderson

Faculty Publications

Adherence to security warnings continues to be an important problem in information security. Although users may fail to heed a security warning for a variety of reasons, a major contributor is habituation, which is decreased response to repeated stimulation. However, the scope of this problem may actually be much broader than previously thought because of the neurobiological phenomenon of generalization. Whereas habituation describes a diminished response with repetitions of the same stimulus, generalization occurs when habituation to one stimulus carries over to other novel stimuli that are similar in appearance.

Generalization has important implications for the domains of usable security …

Cognitive Checkpoint: Emerging Technologies For Biometric-Enabled Watchlist Screening, Svetlana N. Yanushkevich, Kelly W. Sundberg, Nathan W. Twyman, Richard M. Guest, Vlad P. Shmerko

Faculty Publications

This paper revisits the problem of individual risk assessment in the layered security model. It contributes to the concept of balancing security and privacy via cognitive-centric machine called an ‘e-interviewer’. Cognitive checkpoint is a cyber-physical security frontier in masstransit hubs that provides an automated screening using all types of identity (attributed, biometric, and biographical) from both physical and virtual worlds. We investigate how the development of the next generation of watchlist for rapid screening impacts a sensitive balancing mechanism between security and privacy. We identify directions of such an impact, trends in watchlist technologies, and propose ways to mitigate the …

A Strategy Of Truth: Andreas Feininger And The Creation Of Propaganda For The Office Of War Information, 1942, James Swensen

Faculty Publications

In 1942 photographer Andreas Feininger travelled across the United States documenting war industries for the Office of War Information, a New Deal agency. In the midst of world war, Feininger’s straightforward photographs of plane production, copper mining, and other key industries were carefully crafted propaganda designed to combat German rhetoric and bolster public support and confidence in the war effort. Feininger’s style, an admixture of modernist ideas and social detachment, found resonance within US ideological efforts that stressed data and facts, and became known as the ‘Strategy of Truth’.

Theory Of Experiential Career Exploration Technology (Tecet): Increasing Cybersecurity Career Interest Through Playable Case Studies, Justin Scott Giboney, Derek L. Hansen, Tanner Johnson, Desiree Winters, Jason K. Mcdonald, Jonathan Balzotti, Elizabeth Bonsignore

Faculty Publications

There is a large demand to fill cybersecurity jobs. To alleviate this need, it is important to generate interest in cybersecurity as a career. One way to do this is through job shadowing and internships. Using design science principles, we have built and tested a playable case study (PCS) where participants can act out a virtual internship and learn relevant cybersecurity skills. We ran a study with students in introductory university courses where they played through a simulated internship at a penetration testing company called CyberMatics. In the study we showed that a PCS format helps students 1) better understand …

Student-Centered Active Learning Environment For Undergraduate Programs (Scale-Up): Effective Tool For Biology?, Melissa Rae Stotz

Education

The Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) method incorporates active learning pedagogies into space designed to facilitate effective active learning. Methods predominately used to demonstrate the effectiveness of active learning in STEM fields do not generally account for differences in student characteristics; furthermore, there is a lack of data sources that measure student-centered educational practices. This study examined the impact of SCALE-UP on student achievement in introductory biology, as evidenced by course grades. A regression framework was used to account for student characteristics. Course syllabi, classroom observation data, and an instructor interview were examined to gain deeper understanding …

Enumeration Of Dense Modules In Networks, Yashwanth Goud Durgapathi

Computer Science

To analyze large networks in various research fields including biology, sociology, and web mining, detection of dense modules (a.k.a. clusters) is a crucial step. Though numerous methods have been proposed to this aim, they often lack mathematical rigor. Namely, there is no guarantee that all dense modules are detected. Here, a novel method for enumerating all dense modules is presented as well as a python program implementing this algorithm. Module detection plays a significant role in variety of modern systems to understand their functionality in depth for example in Biology. In Biology many data bases for the protein-protein interactions are …

Mobile Diabetes Application, Anusha Myneedi

Computer Science

In recent years, Diabetes is becoming a serious health challenge. The prevalence of diabetes has increased with accompanying increases in body weight and diminished physical activity and with increased automation. Effective blood glucose control is essential to maintain good health. However, to monitor blood glucose levels regularly one should go to healthcare center and it’s not possible because of all manner of real time interfaces. To ease this process in this paper, we propose an interactive self-management mobile application where you can monitor Blood Glucose and Blood Pressure values and check all your health-related activities regularly. MobiDiaBTs keeps track of …

Predictive Performance Evaluation Of Different Neural Networks Using Stock Prices, Deepika Nyavanandi

Computer Science

Forecasting stock market prices has been a challenging task due to its volatile nature and nonlinearity. Recently, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have become popular in solving a variety of scientific and financial problems including stock market price forecasting. ANNs have the ability to capture the underlying nonlinearity and complex relationship between the dependent and independent variables. This paper aims to compare the performance of various neural networks including Feed Forward Neural Networks (FNN), Vanilla Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks by forecasting stock market prices of three different companies. Empirical results show that the LSTM …

Scalable Particle Swarm Optimization And Differential Evolution Approaches Applied To Classification, Jamil Al-Sawwa

Computer Science

Applying the nature-inspired methods in the data mining area has been gaining more attention by researchers. Classification is one of the data mining tasks which aims to analyze historical data by discovering hidden relationships between the input and the output that would help to predict an accurate outcome for an unseen input. The classification algorithms based on nature-inspired methods have been successfully used in numerous applications such as medicine and agriculture. However, the amount of data that has been collected or generated in these areas has been increasing exponentially. Thus, extracting useful information from large data requires computational time and …

An Interactive System For Cow Herd Performance, Naqib Hossain

Computer Science

This paper explores the application-development phases for the Cow Herd Appraisal of Performance System (CHAPS). In 1985, North Dakota State University’s Dickinson Research Extension Center and the North Dakota Beef Cattle Improvement Association (NDBCIA) developed CHAPS as a management tool for cow producers. This was phase 1 development for the CHAPS application. CHAPS was initially built as a Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) program. In phase 2, CHAPS was converted from MS-DOS to a desktop application. The desktop application was named CHAPS 2000. The desktop application lacks modern features, produces error-prone reports, etc. In 2013, North Dakota State University’s Dickinson …

Dissertation Calculator Tool For Tracking And Managing Dissertation Progress For Graduate Students, Bat-Od Bat-Otgon

Computer Science

Dissertation Calculator is a tool for graduate students who are working towards their graduate degree at North Dakota State University to manage and track their dissertation progress. It is also a communication and feedback tool between students and their advisers. It was developed using ASP.NET Core Framework. This project is based on Model-View-Controller and Client-Server model. There are 3 different stakeholders which are student, adviser, and admin so each user has a different view. All the information that is created, modified, and deleted by the users is stored on a database and the host application manages the access to it …