Digital Commons Network^™

Juvenile Report, December 2021, Tennessee. Department Of Correction.

Juvenile Reports

No abstract provided.

Tennessee Felon Population Update, December 2021, Tennessee. Department Of Correction.

Felon Population Reports

No abstract provided.

Annual Report On Energy-Efficient Purchasing, Central Procurement Office, Fy 2020-2021, Tennessee. Department Of General Services.

Energy-Efficiency Reports

No abstract provided.

2020 Tennessee Census Of Fatal Occupational Injuries, The Survey Of Occupational Injuries And Illnesses, Tennessee. Department Of Labor & Workforce Development.

Occupational Injuries

No abstract provided.

Enhanced Drought Resistance Of Vegetation Growth In Cities Due To Urban Heat, Co2 Domes And O3 Troughs, Peng Fu, Leiqiu Hu, Elizabeth A. Ainsworth, Xiaonan Tai, Soe W. Myint, Wenfeng Zhan, Bethany J. Blakely, Carl J. Bernacchi

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Sustained increase in atmospheric CO2 is strongly coupled with rising temperature and persistent droughts. While elevated CO2 promotes photosynthesis and growth of vegetation, drier and warmer climate can potentially negate this benefit, complicating the prediction of future terrestrial carbon dynamics. Manipulative studies such as free air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments have been useful for studying the joint effect of global change factors on vegetation growth; however, their results do not easily transfer to natural ecosystems partly due to their short-duration nature and limited consideration of climatic gradients and potential confounding factors, such as O3. Urban environments serve as a useful …

Genomic Epidemiology Of Methicillin-Resistant And -Susceptible Staphylococcus Aureus From Bloodstream Infections, Joshua T. Smith, Elissa M. Eckhardt, Nicole B. Hansel, Tahmineh Rahmani Eliato, Isabella W. Martin, Cheryl P. Andam

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: Bloodstream infections due to Staphylococcus aureus cause significant patient morbidity and mortality worldwide. Of major concern is the emergence and spread of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) in bloodstream infections, which are associated with therapeutic failure and increased mortality. Methods: We generated high quality draft genomes from 323 S. aureus blood culture isolates from patients diagnosed with bloodstream infection at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, New Hampshire, USA in 2010–2018. Results: In silico detection of antimicrobial resistance genes revealed that 133/323 isolates (41.18%) carry horizontally acquired genes conferring resistance to at least three antimicrobial classes, with resistance determinants for aminoglycosides, beta-lactams …

Estimating And Modeling Transpiration Of A Mountain Meadow Encroached By Conifers Using Sap Flow Measurements, Simon Joseph Marks

Master's Theses

Mountain meadows in the western USA are experiencing increased rates of conifer encroachment due to climate change and land management practices. Past research has focused on conifer removal as a meadow restoration strategy, but there has been limited work on conifer transpiration in a pre-restoration state. Meadow restoration by conifer removal has the primary goal of recovering sufficient growing season soil moisture necessary for endemic, herbaceous meadow vegetation. Therefore, conifer water use represents an important hydrologic output toward evaluating the efficacy of this active management approach. This study quantified and evaluated transpiration of encroached conifers in a mountain meadow using …

The Brown Bear Gut Microbiome: A Novel Tool For Conservation & Management, Sarah M. Trujillo

All NMU Master's Theses

Gut microbiomes (GMBs), complex communities of microorganisms inhabiting the gastrointestinal tracts of their hosts, perform countless micro-ecosystem services such as facilitating energy uptake and modulating immune responses. While scientists increasingly recognize the role GMBs play in host health, the role of GMBs in wildlife ecology and conservation has yet to be realized fully. Here, I use brown bears (Ursus arctos) as an ecological model to investigate (1) how both extrinsic and intrinsic factors influence GMB community membership and structure; and (2) the correlation between GMB membership and brown bear health metrics. To achieve these aims, I subsampled archived …

Trophic Ecology Of Juvenile Lean And Siscowet Lake Trout (Salvelinus Namaychush) From U.S. Waters Of Lake Superior, Will Otte

All NMU Master's Theses

In this study, I investigated the spatial overlap, diet similarity, and isotopic niches of juvenile Lean and Siscowet Lake Trout ecotypes across six ecoregions of Lake Superior. Spatially, Lean and Siscowet were observed in overlapping depth distributions. Leans were most abundant in shallow waters (60m). The greatest levels of cohabitation were observed in waters from 40-60m. Trophic position (as measured by δ 15N) was similar for both ecotypes at small sizes (mm), but Siscowet exhibited a higher trophic position than Lean Lake Trout at larger sizes (>400mm) and older ages (>5 years). Base of production (as measured by …

Evaluating The Undesired Outcomes Of Response Interruption And Redirection, Nicole Lafoille

All NMU Master's Theses

Stereotypy is commonly defined as “frequent repetition of the same, typically purposeless movements, gestures, vocal sounds or utterances”, (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, n.d.) and is a common perseverative behavior that is observed among children with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. Stereotypy may result in interference with educational and therapeutic activities for the child. The present study sought to determine if the punishment procedure, response interruption and redirection (RIRD), is effective in reducing stereotypy during natural environment training without demonstrating other undesired behaviors that are associated with punishment procedures, including aggression, avoidance of staff, etc. Results of this study indicated …

Post-Processing And Characterization Of Additive Manufactured Carbon Fiber Reinforced Semi-Crystalline Polymers, Patricia Revolinsky

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The aim of this work is to study the effect of post-processing on additive manufactured (AM) continuous carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) performance. As-printed AM CFRPs do not perform as well as conventionally manufactured CFRPs with the same composition. Possible improvements to AM CFRP performance include annealing and applying uniaxial pressure with elevated temperature. Samples were subjected to pressure and temperature treatments and annealing at a constant temperature. Treated materials were subjected to three-point bending tests, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to characterize and assess sample performance. Results were assessed for flexural strength, …

The Disrupt: A Measure Of Parent Distraction With Phones And Mobile Devices And Associations With Depression, Stress, And Parenting Quality., Brandon T. Mcdaniel Phd

Health Services and Informatics Research

Abstract

The landscape of modern parenting has shifted as an increasing number of parents have and utilize smartphones and other mobile devices throughout the day. A validated measure of parent distraction with these devices is needed in the field. It is important to have a validated measure of parent distraction with mobile devices (e.g., phubbing, technoference), as this distraction can be common at times and could negatively impact the quality of parenting that children receive. In the current study, I developed a brief, parent-reported survey measure of parent distraction (DISRUPT), examined its reliability and validity (convergent, divergent) in two survey …

Concise Mercurial Subvector Commitments: Definitions And Constructions, Yannan Li, Willy Susilo, Guomin Yang, Tran Viet Xuan Phuong, Yong Yu, Dongxi Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Vector commitment and its variants have attracted a lot of attention recently as they have been exposed to a wide range of applications in blockchain. Two special extensions of vector commitments, namely subvector commitments and mercurial commitments, have been proposed with attractive features that are desirable in many applications. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, a single construction satisfying all those attractive features is still missing. In this work, we analyze those important properties and propose a new primitive called mercurial subvector commitments, which are efficiently updatable, mercurial hiding, position binding, and aggregatable. We formalize the system model and …

Broadcast Authenticated Encryption With Keyword Search, Xueqiao Liu, Kai He, Guomin Yang, Willy Susilo, Joseph Tonien, Qiong Huang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The emergence of public-key encryption with keyword search (PEKS) has provided an elegant approach to enable keyword search over encrypted content. Due to its high computational complexity proportional to the number of intended receivers, the trivial way of deploying PEKS for data sharing with multiple receivers is impractical, which motivates the development of a new PEKS framework for broadcast mode. However, existing works suffer from either the vulnerability to keyword guessing attacks (KGA) or high computation and communication complexity. In this work, a new primitive for keyword search in broadcast mode, named broadcast authenticated encryption with keyword search (BAEKS), is …

Degree Doesn't Matter: Identifying The Drivers Of Interaction In Software Development Ecosystem, Amrita Bhattacharjee, Subhajit Datta, Subhashis Majumder

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large scale software development ecosystems represent one of the most complex human enterprises. In such settings, developers are embedded in a web of shared concerns, responsibilities, and objectives at individual and collective levels. A deep understanding of the factors that influence developers to connect with one another is crucial in appreciating the challenges of such ecosystems as well as formulating strategies to overcome those challenges. We use real world data from multiple software development ecosystems to construct developer interaction networks and examine the mechanisms of such network formation using statistical models to identify developer attributes that have maximal influence on …

Statistical Moderation: A Case Study In Grading On A Curve, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There is a negative perception about “grading on a curve,” because of the feeling that the cohort strength may skew the final grades one way or another. However, given the difficulties in ensuring absolute uniformity in assessment across the years, especially when taught and assessed by different instructors under different settings, grading on a curve may be a necessary evil. Once we accept this type of statistical moderation as the last line of defense in standardizing the final scores so that student cohorts from different terms or sections or schools may be compared, we have to implement it well. In …

Context-Aware Graph Convolutional Network For Dynamic Origin-Destination Prediction, Juan Nathaniel, Baihua Zheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A robust Origin-Destination (OD) prediction is key to urban mobility. A good forecasting model can reduce operational risks and improve service availability, among many other upsides. Here, we examine the use of Graph Convolutional Net-work (GCN) and its hybrid Markov-Chain (GCN-MC) variant to perform a context-aware OD prediction based on a large-scale public transportation dataset in Singapore. Compared with the baseline Markov-Chain algorithm and GCN, the proposed hybrid GCN-MC model improves the prediction accuracy by 37% and 12% respectively. Lastly, the addition of temporal and historical contextual information further improves the performance of the proposed hybrid model by 4 –12%.

Linear Algebra For Computer Science, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This textbook introduces the essential concepts and practice of Linear Algebra to the undergraduate student of computer science. The focus of this book is on the elegance and beauty of the numerical techniques and algorithms originating from Linear Algebra. As a practical handbook for computer and data scientists, LA4CS restricts itself mostly to real fields and tractable discourses, rather than deep and theoretical mathematics.

Racial/Ethnic Disparities In Mental Health Diagnosis Of Maltreated Youth, Shadie Burke

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Racial/ethnic marginalized youth are more likely to receive a misdiagnosis of a mental health disorder than their White peers. Misdiagnosis contributes to existing disparities for racial/ethnic marginalized groups by leading to longer durations of untreated and worsening mental health symptoms. For maltreated youth, receiving a misdiagnosis can lead to a failure to connect with appropriate mental health services, medication regimens, therapeutic foster homes, and academic and developmental resources. To date, very few empirical studies have identified disparities in mental health diagnosis among racial/ethnic marginalized maltreated youth. The present study examined two key research questions: (1) what racial/ethnic disparities in diagnoses …

From Language Comprehension Towards General Ai, Binay Dahal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Language comprehension or more formally, natural language understanding is one of the major undertakings in Artificial Intelligence. In this work, we explore a few of the problems in language understanding using fixed deep learning models. Specifically, first, we look into question generation. Asking questions relates to the cognitive ability of language comprehension and context understanding. For that reason, making progress in question generation is significant. We introduce a novel task called “question generation with masked target answer” and propose various models and present the baseline result for the task. Next, we extend on the question generation task and develop a …

Monitored Compression Therapy: Using Smart Technology To Optimize The Treatment Of Lower Extremity Swelling, James Skelly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI) and Venous Stasis Ulcers (VSUs) are symptoms which stem from diabetes – a disease effecting over 34 million people in the United States alone as of 2020. This Thesis details the design of a pressure-sensing garment used to enhance the treatment of CVI. The garment uses small force sensors (four levels: the insole of the foot, the lower leg, the lower calf, and the upper calf) to sense the pressure applied by a compression stocking. The sensed data is transmitted wirelessly via Bluetooth to a smartphone application that was developed to display the data and interface …

Dreams Of Molecular Beams: Indium Gallium Arsenide Tensile-Strained Quantum Dots And Advances Towards Dynamic Quantum Dots (Moleculare Radiorum Somnia: Indii Gallii Arsenicus Tensa Quanta Puncta Et Ad Dinamicae Quantae Puntae Progressus), Kevin Daniel Vallejo

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Through the operation of a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) machine, I worked on developing the homoepitaxy of high quality InAs with a (111)A crystallographic orientation. By tuning substrate temperature, we obtained a transition from a 2D island growth mode to step- ow growth. Optimized MBE parameters (substrate temperature = 500 °C, growth rate = 0.12 ML/s and V/III ratio ⩾ 40) lead to growth of extremely smooth InAs(111)A films, free from hillocks and other 3D surface imperfections. We see a correlation between InAs surface smoothness and optical quality, as measured by photoluminescence spectroscopy. This work establishes InAs(111)A as a platform …

A Wireless, Multi-Channel Printed Capacitive Strain Gauge System For Structural Health Monitoring, Kshama Lakshmi Ranganatha

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Structural health monitoring of soft structural textiles plays a key role within the space industry to ensure the safety and integrity of space habitats, parachutes, and decelerator systems. Strain monitoring could be an effective means to evaluate structural integrity, but conventional monitoring systems are not suitable because they are intended for large, rigid structures. To overcome the limitations of rigid sensors, we recently proposed using printed capacitive strain gauges (CSGs) on flexible substrates to monitor the structural health of soft structure materials. Here, we present a strategy and implementation of a wireless, multi-channel readout system for distributed monitoring of soft …

Fair And Efficient Consensus Protocols For Secure Blockchain Applications, Golam Dastoger Bashar

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In blockchain technology, consensus protocols serve as mechanisms to reach agreements among a distributed network of nodes. In this work, we propose three novel protocols for permissioned, healthcare, and supply chain blockchain.

(1) Proof of Queue (PoQ), for private blockchains, combines the lottery strategy of PoET with a specialized round-robin algorithm where each node has an equal chance to become a leader with equal access. PoQ is relatively scalable without any collision. Like PoET, PoQ uses Intel SGX, a Trusted Execution Environment, to generate a secure random waiting time to choose a leader and fairly distribute the leadership role to …

Fire Effects On Soil Properties: Amending Post-Fire Soils With Native Microbial Communities And Biochar To Improve Sagebrush Performance, Sabrina Marie Schuler

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Within the sagebrush steppe, fire has been shown to affect biogeochemical properties and the microbial community composition in soils. However, there is uncertainty about the magnitude and direction of these effects, since they vary by sites that differ in abiotic and biotic conditions. Moreover, differences in post-fire management strategies are likely to mediate the effect of fire on soil properties, thus further compounding this uncertainty. Any changes in soil biogeochemical properties following fire can prevent successful restoration of Artemisia tridentata sp. wyomingensis (sagebrush), leading to variable outcomes of restoration success in the sagebrush steppe. Previous research has shown that addition …

Water Quality Responses To A Semi-Arid Beaver Meadow In Boise, Idaho, Luise Bayer Winslow

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Beavers have been instrumental in shaping the North American riverine landscape. However, land use change and beaver trapping have caused large decreases in beaver populations, resulting in fundamental changes to river morphology, hydrology, and biogeochemical function. Effective river restoration and remediation of arid western rivers relies on a comprehensive interpretation of how beaver activity influences water quantity and quality. In this study, I compared two stream reaches with and without beaver dams in a semi-arid watershed, to quantify the effects of beaver activity on hydrology and biogeochemistry. Within each reach, I combined dilution gauging and stream tracer experiments to determine …

Using Differential Shear Strain Measurements To Monitor Crosstie Support Conditions In Railroad Tracks, D. Kody Johnson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis details a comprehensive numerical analysis of load determination, and crosstie support assessment and monitoring using strain gauges to measure differential rail shear strain in ballasted railroad tracks due to applied railcar wheel loads. These differential shear strain measurements can be related to applied wheel loading and crosstie support reactions through the geometric and constitutive properties of a given rail section. The basic theory behind the measurement technique was reviewed and investigated using finite element models of varying complexity. The impact of field conditions such as differential ballast and subgrade support, track stiffness, crosstie spacing, gauge installation location, and …

How To Recognize And Control Interfacial Phenomena That Hinder The Advancement Of Clean Energy Technologies, Corey Michael Efaw

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Nuclear energy and electrochemical energy storage, such as batteries, are key parts to the clean energy transition of critical infrastructure. This work aims to define, monitor, and modify interfacial layers that would improve the utility of materials in harsh environments seen in nuclear and energy storage applications. First, the studying of zirconium alloys, which is used as nuclear cladding, was done to better understand the degradation mechanisms within an extreme environment. High-resolution characterization techniques were used to correlate corrosion mechanisms to equivalent circuit models from novel in-pile electrochemical impedance spectroscopy sensors. Advancement in this sensor technology could provide further insight …

Investigating The Role Of The Skeletal Muscle In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Neuromuscular Junction Dysfunction, Agnes Badu-Mensah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Neuromuscular junction (NMJ) dysfunction has been identified as one of the earliest events in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) pathology. However, which tissue type induces NMJ disruption; be it the motoneurons (hMN), Schwann cells or skeletal muscle (hSKM) remains unresolved. While mechanisms by which ALS hMN contribute to NMJ dysfunction are well-described in literature, limited information exist on how the other tissue types in the tripartite synapse (hSKM and Schwann cells) induce and/or contribute to ALS NMJ disruption. A fair understanding of the role of each tissue type in NMJ dysfunction would help shape the trajectory of future ALS research and …

Water As A Weapon Of War In The Tigris-Euphrates Basin, Adam Krzymowski

All Works

The article’s scientific goal is to investigate the Weimar Triangle countries’ relations with the United Arab Emirates. Therefore, the author asks the research question. Are the Weimar Triangle states’ role and significance increasing in the external dimension of the European Union? Based on the example of the United Arab Emirates, the research adopted a hypothesis. It is the statement that after Brexit, the Weimar Triangle countries have a chance to improve their importance in the EU external activities. Apart from case studies, to revise the hypothesis, the author performed a meticulous comparative analysis. Moreover, the research implemented International Practice Theory …