Digital Commons Network^™

Open Educational Resource Policy Considerations And Recommendations: Arguments For Library Involvement, Aisling Coyne, Robert Alfis

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to provide great benefit to those both in, and outside of, higher education. With financial pressure existing for both students, and libraries, OER could be uniquely positioned to alleviate some of this strain. This paper examines the role OER policy plays in the development and use of OER in the context of the 2019 UNESCO OER recommendations for Ireland as well as the impact policy, or lack thereof can have on an institutional level. Librarians and the librarian skill such as in knowledge and experience in navigating copyright, licensing issues, intellectual property, rights …

Every Day Is A School Day: Educators Experiences Of Utilising An Integrative Framework Within Social Care Education In Ireland, Jennifer Mcgarr, Margaret Fingleton, Noel Molloy, Gillian Larkin, Marian Connell, Ailish Jameson, Anne Marie Shier

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Within an evolving regulatory context, this paper identifies some of the emergent challenges and opportunities for social care education in Ireland. The paper discusses the potential offered by the Integrative Framework for Practice Teaching to address some of these contextual demands and examines the pedagogy underpinning this approach. A number of educators’ experiences of using this framework are provided, demonstrating how they innovatively integrated the framework with commonly used teaching and assessment strategies within social care education, such as mind-mapping, problem-based learning and the use of creative media. These experiences are offered to other educators who may wish to utilise …

Tissue Engineering And The Effect Of Volumetric Muscle Loss On Muscle Performance, Alex Pemberton

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Trauma, for so many people, creates life altering injuries. One of the major injuries that results from trauma is volumetric muscle loss (VML), which is the loss of muscle tissue that cannot be naturally regenerated and results in chronic loss of function. When a small amount of damage is done to a muscle, but the underlying extracellular matrix of the cell is still intact, the muscle can regenerate much of its volume and function. If the injury damages the extracellular matrix, the injury site is instead filled with scar tissue, which cannot regenerate muscle mass or function. Seen widely in …

Bargaining For Integration, Shirley Lin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Using Iphone Significant Location Data To Improve Air Pollution Exposure Estimation, Elizabeth Eastman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

An accurate estimation of human exposure to ambient air pollution is crucial for air pollution health studies. Time-activity patterns may introduce substantial uncertainties in exposure estimation. As smartphones are becoming increasingly popular and their ownership is becoming ubiquitous in the US. Virtually all smartphones can collect location data, and such data is continuously somewhere. Therefore, it is clear that such stored location data has the potential to be used for characterizing an individual's time-activity patterns for air pollution health studies. However, studies on the accuracy and feasibility of using a smartphone's location data in air pollution exposure estimation are still …

Utilizing High Throughput Computing Techniques For The Predictions Of Spectroscopic Properties Of Astrophysically Relevant Molecules, Brian Ferrari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Here, we utilize Quantum Chemistry (QC) approaches to predict the structures, vibrational frequencies, infrared intensities and Raman activities of unusual molecular species using the General Atomic and Molecular Structure System (GAMESS(US)) package. A Python-based software, AutoGAMESS, was developed to automate the workflow and take advantage of High Throughput Computing (HTC) techniques enabling the automated generation of spectroscopic data from hundreds of calculations. This approach was utilized to determine these properties for a series of carbon oxides (C2On; n = 3 to 4), anticipated to be produced during the radiation of pure carbon dioxide ices, under conditions relevant to the interstellar …

High Spectral Brightness, Broad Area Quantum Cascade Lasers, Enrique Sanchez Cristobal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Quantum cascade lasers are unipolar semiconductor lasers that offer a unique combination of compact size, high efficiency, high optical power, and flexibility to achieve a targeted emission wavelength with the same laser core material composition, employing so-called bandgap engineering. Since their invention in 1994, watt-level CW power with 5 to 20 % wallplug efficiency was demonstrated for QCLs throughout the entire 4 to 12 µm range, which makes QCLs very attractive for a number of practical applications. Our earlier work on broad-area QCLs emitting in the 4.6 µm to 5.7 µm spectral range demonstrated that CW power scaling with lateral …

Anomaly Detection And Failure Prediction In Gas Turbines, Vipul Goyal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This study is based on time-series data taken from the combined cycle heavy-duty utility gas turbines. For analysis, first, a multi-stage vector autoregressive model is constructed for the nominal operation of powerplant assuming sparsity in the association among variables, and this model is used as a basis for anomaly detection and prediction. This prediction is compared with the time-series data of the powerplant test data containing anomalies. Granger causality networks, which are based on the associations between the time series streams, can be learned as an important implication from the vector autoregressive modelling. This method suffers from the disadvantage that …

Wavelet Particle Hydrodynamics For Less Smooth Flow, Oddny Brun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The purpose of this research was to improve the smoothing operation in smoothed particle hydrodynamics, SPH, when the flow of matter is not smooth. Our main focuses are on the kernel selection, identifying the discontinuities in the sequences to be smoothed, and use of the Laplacian as opposed to artificial viscosity for improved physical accuracy. The results show that alternative kernels result in differences in how matter flows. These effects are explained by the kernels' gradient and Laplacian properties. Five alternative kernels were included in our analysis and our SPH-based simulation cases. Further, the sequences to be smoothed by the …

The Potential Of Location Data For Contact Tracing And Understanding Individual Mobility During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Marcus Figaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

In this study, we first review contact tracing methods used during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of different data collection and privacy protection methods. Our findings provide the benefits and drawbacks of using GPS versus Bluetooth for contact tracing, as well as the different data collection and storage methods and their effectiveness in protecting user privacy. We then analyze Twitter data to understand individual mobility behavior and sentiment by using a Natural Language Processing tool on text content of user tweets and Tweet coordinate data. Social media's ability to provide data on location …

December 1, 2021 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Map-Gan: Unsupervised Learning Of Inverse Problems, Brandon S. Campanella

Master's Theses

In this paper we outline a novel method for training a generative adversarial network based denoising model from an exclusively corrupted and unpaired dataset of images. Our model can learn without clean data or corrupted image pairs, and instead only requires that the noise distribution is able to be expressed analytically and that the noise at each pixel is independent. We utilize maximum a posteriori estimation as the underlying solution framework, optimizing over the analytically expressed noise generating distribution as the likelihood and employ the GAN as the prior. We then evaluate our method on several popular datasets of varying …

Medial And Lateral Tibiofemoral Contact Forces For Individuals With High Body Mass Index In Gait And Cycling Training, Reymil Fernandez

Master's Theses

The prevalence of knee osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease characterized by the degradation of articular cartilage, is correlated with the rise in obesity. The rising rates of obesity in children and adults highlight the need for identifying a sustainable physical activity that promotes fitness while mitigating initiation and progression of osteoarthritis. The objective of this study was to determine an effective rehabilitation and lifelong fitness sustainment exercise regimen that minimize risk of osteoarthritis in individuals with high body mass index (BMI). The aim was to examine knee medial and lateral contact forces in gait and cycling training. Gait at self-selected …

Triangular Cosserat Point Element Method For Reducing Soft Tissue Artifact: Validation And Application To Gait, Jake Edward Deschamps, Stephen Klisch

Master's Theses

Human motion capture technology is a powerful tool for advancing the understanding of human motion biomechanics (Andriacchi and Alexander, 2000). This is most readily accomplished by applying retroreflective markers to a participant’s skin and tracking the position of the markers during motion. Skin and adipose tissue move independently of the underlying bone during motion creating error known as soft tissue artifact (STA), the primary source of error in human motion capture (Leardini et al., 2005).

(Solav et al., 2014) proposed and (Solav et al., 2015) expanded the triangular Cosserat point element (TCPE) method to reduce the effect of STA on …

Developing A Light Curve Simulation Tool For Ground And Space-Based Observations Of Spacecraft And Debris, Andrew T. Ochoa

Master's Theses

A light curve is a plot of brightness versus time of an object. Light curves are dependent on orbit, attitude, surface area, size, and shape of the observed object. Using light curve data, several analysis methods have been developed to derive these parameters. These parameters can be used for tracking orbital debris, monitoring satellite health, and determining the mission of an unknown spacecraft.

This paper discusses the development, verification, and utilization of a tool that simulates light curve data. This tool models ground-based observations, space-based observations, self-shadowing geometry, tumbling debris, and controlled spacecraft. The main output from the tool is …

An Analysis Of Camera Configurations And Depth Estimation Algorithms For Triple-Camera Computer Vision Systems, Jared Peter-Contesse

Master's Theses

The ability to accurately map and localize relevant objects surrounding a vehicle is an important task for autonomous vehicle systems. Currently, many of the environmental mapping approaches rely on the expensive LiDAR sensor. Researchers have been attempting to transition to cheaper sensors like the camera, but so far, the mapping accuracy of single-camera and dual-camera systems has not matched the accuracy of LiDAR systems. This thesis examines depth estimation algorithms and camera configurations of a triple-camera system to determine if sensor data from an additional perspective will improve the accuracy of camera-based systems. Using a synthetic dataset, the performance of …

Adopting Accessibility Guidelines For Videogames To Collectible Card Games, Cooper Biancur

Electrical Engineering Master’s Theses

The development of accessible video games has been discussed through multiple publications in the 21st century; however, little to no attention has been given to non-electronic gaming. Like video games, Collectible Card Games (CCG) have also gained massive popularity, but no accessible guidelines have been created to help the disabled better play them. The need for inclusion in gaming is critical because it can act as a medium for social interaction and a learning tool for teaching. Today offers numerous technologies that can help those with disabilities, such as microcomputers, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Text to …

Anticipatory Tonal Variations Can Facilitate Spoken-Word Recognition: A Visual World Eye-Tracking Study, Jeffrey Jack Green, Yan Sun, Chilin Shih

Faculty Publications

The acoustics of speech sounds can vary dramatically depending on phonetic context, yet listeners can reliably process spoken language in a rapid and seemingly effortless manner. Previous research suggests that acoustic variations in speech can actually facilitate, rather than disrupt, the processing of spoken language, and sometimes listeners can even use fine-grained acoustic cues in the unfolding speech signal to predict the sound(s) of an upcoming word. For example, it has been reported that listeners fixate their eyes on target words faster when the pre-target word contains compatible vowel-to-vowel coarticulation cues [1, 2]. Similarly, pitch accents have been found to …

Framing The Axis Of Evil: American Fear Of An Iranian Nuclear Attack, Sabrina Ghashehbaba

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Since 9/11, the American perception of Muslims, Islam, and Middle Eastern people and countries has shifted seemingly negatively. This paper will investigate American’s opinions on Iran and fears of a nuclear strike by Iran while examining American fear of Muslims, party identification, 2020 election voting, news media representations of Iran, social media usage, fears of immigration, fears of falling victim to a terrorist attack, and fears of whites not being the majority. I predict the more Republican one is, the more they will fear an Iranian nuclear attack because of the conservative rhetoric used. I also expect those who voted …

(R1504) Second-Order Modified Nonstandard Runge-Kutta And Theta Methods For One-Dimensional Autonomous Differential Equations, Madhu Gupta, John M. Slezak, Fawaz K. Alalhareth, Souvik Roy, Hristo V. Kojouharov

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

Nonstandard finite difference methods (NSFD) are used in physical sciences to approximate solutions of ordinary differential equations whose analytical solution cannot be computed. Traditional NSFD methods are elementary stable but usually only have first order accuracy. In this paper, we introduce two new classes of numerical methods that are of second order accuracy and elementary stable. The methods are modified versions of the nonstandard two-stage explicit Runge-Kutta methods and the nonstandard one-stage theta methods with a specific form of the nonstandard denominator function. Theoretical analysis of the stability and accuracy of both modified NSFD methods is presented. Numerical simulations that …

Effect Of Cyclic Heat Stress On Feeding-Related Hypothalamic Neuropeptides Of Three Broiler Populations And Their Ancestor Jungle Fowl, Giorgio Brugaletta, Elizabeth S. Greene, Travis Tabler, Sara K. Orlowski, Federico Sirri, Sami Dridi

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Heat stress (HS) has been increasingly jeopardizing the sustainability of the poultry production. Moreover, modern high-performing chickens are far less able to withstand HS than their predecessors due to higher growth rate and metabolic rates. Performance losses caused by HS are mainly ascribed to decreases in feed consumption. Since feed intake is tightly controlled by the hypothalamic centers of hunger and satiety, we sought to determine the effect of chronic cyclic HS on the expression of feeding-related hypothalamic neuropeptides (FRHN) in unselected chickens (i.e., the ancestor junglefowl—JF) and three broiler lines from diverse stages of genetic selection (i.e., the slow …

Neuroimaging Association Scores: Reliability And Validity Of Aggregate Measures Of Brain Structural Features Linked To Mental Disorders In Youth, Luiza Kvitko Axelrud, André Rafael Simioni, Daniel Samuel Pine, Anderson M. Winkler, Pedro Mario Pan, João Ricardo Sato, André Zugman, Nadine Parker, Felipe Picon, Andrea Jackowski

School of Medicine Publications

In genetics, aggregation of many loci with small effect sizes into a single score improved prediction. Nevertheless, studies applying easily replicable weighted scores to neuroimaging data are lacking. Our aim was to assess the reliability and validity of the Neuroimaging Association Score (NAS), which combines information from structural brain features previously linked to mental disorders. Participants were 726 youth (aged 6–14) from two cities in Brazil who underwent MRI and psychopathology assessment at baseline and 387 at 3-year follow-up. Results were replicated in two samples: IMAGEN (n = 1627) and the Healthy Brain Network (n = 843). NAS …

Anti-Racist Pedagogy: A Practical Means Of Building Bonds Between Marginalized Students And Instructors In The Composition Classroom, Santa-Victoria Pérez

English (MA) Theses

Framed by the existing scholarship in anti-racist pedagogy, this thesis is inspired by Charise Pimentel and Octavio Pimentel’s dream of building coalitions with marginalized students, Steven Alvarez’s framework for academic biliteracy, and Marcos del Hierro’s advocacy for incorporating discussions about contentious social issues in the classroom. This research draws mainly from works by rhetoricians and compositionists of color who report that working through and pushing past the discomfort and tensions of politically charged topics in the classroom are crucial for an anti-racist writing program (Prendergast, 1998; Villanueva, 1999; Clary-Lemon, 2009; Inoue, 2015; García de Müeller and Ruiz, 2017). By reflecting …

Paleogenomics Illuminates The Evolutionary History Of The Extinct Holocene “Horned” Crocodile Of Madagascar, Voay Robustus, E. Hekkala, J. Gatesy, A. Narechania, R. Meredith, M. Russello, M. L. Aardema, E. Jensen, S. Montanari, C. Brochu, M. Norell, G. Amato

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Ancient DNA is transforming our ability to reconstruct historical patterns and mechanisms shaping modern diversity and distributions. In particular, molecular data from extinct Holocene island faunas have revealed surprising biogeographic scenarios. Here, we recovered partial mitochondrial (mt) genomes for 1300–1400 year old specimens (n = 2) of the extinct “horned” crocodile, Voay robustus, collected from Holocene deposits in southwestern Madagascar. Phylogenetic analyses of partial mt genomes and tip-dated timetrees based on molecular, fossil, and stratigraphic data favor a sister group relationship between Voay and Crocodylus (true crocodiles). These well supported trees conflict with recent morphological systematic work that has consistently …

Local Weather Explains Annual Variation In Northern Goshawk Reproduction In The Northern Great Basin, Usa, Allyson B. Bangerter, Eliana R. Heiser, Jay D. Carlisle, Robert A. Miller

Intermountain Bird Observatory Publications and Presentations

Weather is thought to influence raptor reproduction through effects on prey availability, condition of adults, and survival of nests and young; however, there are few long-term studies of the effects of weather on raptor reproduction. We investigated the effects of weather on Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis; henceforth goshawk) breeding rate, productivity, and fledging date in south-central Idaho and northern Utah, USA. Using data from 42 territories where we found evidence of breeding attempts in ≥1 yr from 2011–2019, we analyzed breeding rates using 315 territory–season combinations, analyzed productivity for 134 breeding attempts, and analyzed fledging date for 118 …

The Relationship Between Cognitive Functioning And Internalizing/Externalizing Behaviors In Children And Adolescents With Down Syndrome, Jessalin R. Good

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Introduction: Down syndrome (DS) is a developmental disorder caused by a complete extra copy of chromosome 21. This genetic error results in a variety of other symptoms related to a range of medical and cognitive challenges. Although it has been reported that a significant relationship exists between cognitive functioning and both internalizing and externalizing behaviors in typically developing (TD) individuals, the literature is severely limited in investigating this relationship in those with DS.

Rationale: Internalizing and externalizing behaviors have been shown to have a negative relationship with cognitive functioning in TD children and adolescents (Shankman et al., 2010; Wood et …

International Society Of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Caffeine And Exercise Performance, Nanci S. Guest, Trisha A. Vandusseldorp, Michael T. Nelson, Jozo Grgic, Brad J. Schoenfeld, Nathaniel D.M. Jenkins, Shawn M. Arent Ph.D., Cscs*D, Fissn, Facsm, Fnak, Jose Antonio, Jeffrey R. Stout, Eric T. Trexler, Abbie E. Smith-Ryan, Erica R. Goldstein, Douglas S. Kalman, Bill I. Campbell

Faculty Publications

Following critical evaluation of the available literature to date, The International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) position regarding caffeine intake is as follows:1.Supplementation with caffeine has been shown to acutely enhance various aspects of exercise performance in many but not all studies. Small to moderate benefits of caffeine use include, but are not limited to: muscular endurance, movement velocity and muscular strength, sprinting, jumping, and throwing performance, as well as a wide range of aerobic and anaerobic sport-specific actions.2.Aerobic endurance appears to be the form of exercise with the most consistent moderate-to-large benefits from caffeine use, although the magnitude of …

Kalman Filter Vs Alternative Modeling Techniques And Applied Investment Strategies, Heather E. Dempsey

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

This thesis examines the efficacy of alternative modeling techniques to predict stock market returns modeled with time-varying coefficients with the goal of developing and implementing a trading strategy that yields excess returns. First, we determine the modeling technique with the smallest forecast error using historical predictors: the differenced dividend-price ratio, lagged S&P 500 returns, and the change in implied volatility. The candidate modeling techniques include both constant and recursive ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methods and diverges from previous return forecast literature with the comparison of a state-space model (SSM) cast as a VAR(1) process to each OLS technique. The …

Legacy - December 2021, South Carolina Institute Of Archaeology And Anthropology--University Of South Carolina

SCIAA Magazine - Legacy & PastWatch

Contents:

Tommy Charles (January 3, 1932-July 30, 2021) Tribute

Director's Notes

Spanish Halberds in South Carolina?

The Mica House Revisited

Santa Elena Research Trip to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center

The Civil War at Santa Elena

Update on the Southeastern Paleoamerican Survey 2021

Maritime Research Division: A Year of Fieldwork in Review

A Legacy of Land: From Dynasty to Death: The Redistribution of Land and Wealth Explored Through the Lens of Genealogy

A Cosmic Impact Demolshed an Ancient Middle Eastern City and Everyone in It

Historic Archaeology: The St. Patrick's Day Flood

Annual Report 2021

ART/SCIAA Donors August 2020-January 2022

Teacher Preparation, Motivation, And Self-Efficacy: A Comparative Study Of New Teachers In Japan And The United States, Shaoan Zhang, Andromeda Hightower, Qingmin Shi

Teaching and Learning Faculty Research

Using the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, this study examines U.S. and Japanese new teachers’ initial teacher preparation (ITP), feelings of preparedness, motivations, and self-efficacy. The analysis of 355 U.S. and 433 Japanese new secondary teachers provided several findings. First, ITP in the U.S. more often included teaching in mixed-ability and multicultural settings, cross-curricular skills, and technology than Japan, and U.S. teachers felt more prepared than Japanese teachers in every category of preparation. Second, Japanese teachers were more likely to declare teaching as their first career choice and reportedly scored significantly higher on motivations to become a teacher …