Digital Commons Network^™

The Flex Representation Method: Versatile Modeling For Isogeometric Analysis, Christopher David Whetten

Theses and Dissertations

The Flex Representation Method (FRM) leverages unique computational advantages of splines to address limitations in the process of building CAE simulation models from CAD geometric models. Central to the approach is the envelope CAD domain that encapsulates a CAD model. An envelope CAD domain can be of arbitrary topological and geometric complexity. Envelope domains are constructed from spline representations, like U-splines, that are analysis-suitable. The envelope CAD domain can be used to approximate none, some, or all of the features in a CAD model. This yields additional simulation modeling options that simplify the model-building process while leveraging the properties of …

Fairness And Privacy In Machine Learning Algorithms, Neha Bhargava

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

Roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated daily in this digital era. Manual processing of such huge amounts of data to extract useful information is nearly impossible but with the widespread use of machine learning algorithms and their ability to process enormous data in a fast, cost-effective, and scalable way has proven to be a preferred choice to glean useful insights and solve business problems in many domains. With this widespread use of machine learning algorithms there has always been concerns about the ethical issues that may arise from the use of this modern technology. While achieving high accuracies, …

Decreasing Trash In Local Creeks: A Program Evaluation Of The City Of San Jose’S Direct Discharge Trash Control Program, Lakeisha Bryant

Master's Projects

The entire San Francisco Bay was once a navigable waterway in the 1850s during the Gold Rush era. Large amounts of sediment from upstream erosion and mining flowed to the bay resulting in the downsizing of the bay’s square miles (Environmental Protection Agency, 2022). As a result of intense development on the bay shores and adjacent lands, the bay faces several challenges that affect its water quality and threatens aquatic ecosystems. Pesticides, mercury, metals, and pathogens are just a few substances in the bay that cause unhealthy conditions for aquatic life and threaten human health. California’s Water Resources Control Board …

Two Substellar Survivor Candidates; One Found And One Missing, T. Von Hippel, N. Walters, J. Farihi, T.R. Marsh, E. Breedt, P.W. Cauley, J.J. Hermes

Publications

This study presents observations of two possible substellar survivors of post-main sequence engulfment, currently orbiting white dwarf stars. Infrared and optical spectroscopy of GD 1400 reveal a 9.98 h orbital period, where the benchmark brown dwarf has ��2 = 68 ± 8 MJup, ��eff ≈ 2100 K, and a cooling age under 1 Gyr. A substellar mass in the lower range of allowed values is favoured by the gravitational redshift of the primary. Synthetic brown dwarf spectra are able to reproduce the observed CO bands, but lines below the bandhead are notably overpredicted. The known infrared excess towards PG 0010+281 …

Newsroom, Georgia Southern University

Newsroom (2006-2023)

• A Graduate of Firsts: Honors College Double Major and Navy Intelligence Analyst Emma Williams Crosses New Frontiers
• ‘Instead of Retiring, I’m Refiring,’ Says Public Health Advocate Who Earns Georgia Southern Doctoral Degree this Week
• From Georgia Southern to Aerojet Rocketdyne: December Graduate Finds Her Wings
• Georgia Southern Graduate Finds Career at Top Cybersecurity Consulting Firm
• Aspiring Lawyer Becomes Georgia Southern Graduate at 17
• ‘It’s Like Something from a Movie’ for a Pair of Graduating Eagle Singers

Leading From Within The Shadow Of Doubt: A Servant-Leader's Approach To Conceptualization And Foresight, Michael T. Von Behren

International Journal of Servant-Leadership

The fifty-four mile march from Selma to Montgomery through rural Alabama holds sacred space both geographically as well as on the list of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Thanks to the ongoing public service of Rep. John Lewis, who as a young man aided in organizing that march, the route is now a National Historic Trail offering interpretive centers and recreation areas for those seeking to learn from the trail blazing leaders of this country’s struggle for equity (National Park Service, 2020). Two marches bookend the trail’s history. The first, better known …

Next Generation Leadership: The Rise Of The Robot Servant-Leaders?, Jan G. Langhof, Stefan Güldenberg

International Journal of Servant-Leadership

People have always dreamed of a selfless servant, a machine that serves humans (Domaine, 2008; Mayor, 2020), a helper who frees people from heavy labor. This dream has inspired the common notion and understanding of the role which robots take in our society: The robot is humans’ servant. The origin of the English word robot lies in the Czech word robota, which can be translated as “servitude” or “compulsory labor”, describing the compulsory service in the context of a feudal system (Launius & McCurdy, 2012). Technological change progressed rapidly in the last few decades (Avadikyan et al., 2016). We have …

Latent Heterogeneity In High School Academic Growth: A Comparison Of The Performance Of Growth Mixture Model, Structural Equation Modeling Tree, And Forest, Amal Alhadabi

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

The Growth Mixture Model (GMM) is associated with several class enumeration issues. The contemporary advancement of automated algorithms presents two promising alternatives that merge confirmatory Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with exploratory data-mining algorithms: SEM Tree and SEM Forest. This study investigated the performance of the aforementioned three methods (i.e., the GMM, SEM Tree, and SEM Forest) to detect latent heterogeneity in academic growth across four high school grades using an illustrative subsample of the Longitudinal Study of High School of 2009. The findings showed remarkable differences in detecting latent heterogeneity across the three methods as indicated by a parsimonious number …

Increasing Collaboration To Improve Student Outcomes: Improvement Science, Cassandra Diane Thonstad

Dissertations and Theses

The aspiration of achieving equitable outcomes for all students is a focus of schools, districts, and communities but has largely remained unattainable with the top-down implementation of change ideas and directives that come and go as quickly as they are implemented. Too often the direct users, students and classroom staff, are left out of the conversations around what works best to improve student success, contributing to the achievement gaps experienced by our students of color, students receiving special education or English language services, or in the case of a hook discipline, young men. By utilizing Improvement Science through collaboration across …

Side-Channel Attacks And Countermeasures For The Mk-3 Authenticated Encryption Scheme, Peter Fabinski

Theses

In the field of cryptography, the focus is often placed on security in a mathematical or information-theoretic sense; for example, cipher security is typically evaluated by the difficulty of deducing the plaintext from the ciphertext without knowledge of the key. However, once these cryptographic schemes are implemented in electronic devices, another class of attack presents itself. Side-channel attacks take advantage of the side effects of performing a computation, such as power consumption or electromagnetic emissions, to extract information outside of normal means. In particular, these side-channels can reveal parts of the internal state of a computation. This is important because …

Tissue Registration And Exploration User Interfaces In Support Of A Human Reference Atlas, Katy Börner, Andreas Bueckle, Bruce W Herr 2nd, Leonard E Cross, Ellen M Quardokus, Elizabeth G Record, Yingnan Ju, Jonathan C Silverstein, Kristen M Browne, Sanjay Jain, Clive H Wasserfall, Marda L Jorgensen, Jeffrey M Spraggins, N Heath Patterson, Griffin M Weber

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Seventeen international consortia are collaborating on a human reference atlas (HRA), a comprehensive, high-resolution, three-dimensional atlas of all the cells in the healthy human body. Laboratories around the world are collecting tissue specimens from donors varying in sex, age, ethnicity, and body mass index. However, harmonizing tissue data across 25 organs and more than 15 bulk and spatial single-cell assay types poses challenges. Here, we present software tools and user interfaces developed to spatially and semantically annotate ("register") and explore the tissue data and the evolving HRA. A key part of these tools is a common coordinate framework, providing standard …

Aptitude Testing As A Racially Discriminatory And Class-Skewed Method Of Regulating College Admissions. How Did It Start And Who Profits From The Current Scheme?, Courtney Garrett

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Format Selection Of Media Content, Kevin Chen, Anil Vijendran, Jeremy Zhou, Rob Gaunt, Pawel Jurczyk, Chubing Zeng, Michael Smouha, Colin Whittaker

Defensive Publications Series

Disclosed herein is an improved mechanism for dynamic format selection of media content. The mechanism can use a machine learning model to select a format (e.g., a playback resolution) for providing media content based on information available at the time when the request for providing the media content is received. Such information can include, for example, location information (e.g., the geographic location of a user device that is presenting the media content), account information (e.g., previously selected media content items, watch time statistical information, subscription information, etc.), and/or network condition information (e.g., current egress traffic from one or more servers …

Cooperative Language Learning In Teaching Proficiency Through Reading And Storytelling, Jing Gao

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) is becoming widely recognized and implemented in K-12 language classrooms across the nation. Cooperative language learning structures interactive group work for learners’ language development. In communicative language classrooms, cooperative learning can be implemented in TPRS to encourage students’ interaction and communication in collaborative tasks. This article explores the application of cooperative language learning in the TPRS Chinese classroom. Specific teaching methods are discussed in each step of TPRS, including establishing meaning, story asking, and story reading. Cooperative language learning in TPRS increases students’ engagement and motivation in language learning and promotes their language …

Screencasting Information Literacy. Insights In Pre-Service Teachers’ Conception Of Online Searching, Luca Botturi, Chiara Beretta

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Information Literacy (IL) has been named a key competence for the twenty-first century and is being progressively introduced in many compulsory school curricula. Nonetheless, the actual implementation of effective IL education cannot be carried out without the sound preparation of teachers. This study explores the naïve, pre-instruction conceptions of online information searching of pre-service pre-primary and primary teachers through the structured qualitative analysis of participant-produced screencasts. The results indicate that teachers have a mainly technical view of IL, leading them to focus on basic computer literacy skills (e.g., how to use a search engine) and to overlook mental processes (e.g., …

Discerning (Dis)Information: Teacher Perceptions Of Critical Media Literacy, Jennifer K. Allen, Robert A. Griffin, Diana Mindrila

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Critical media literacy (CML) is vital for students to navigate the current proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. Despite what is known about the influence of teacher beliefs on classroom practice, little research to date has looked at what teachers perceive about the importance of CML. The researchers administered a survey to teachers throughout the U.S. (N = 362) on their perceptions of the importance of teaching CML as part of their instruction. Using quantitative methods, the researchers found CML as the primary factor underlying the survey data and a strong awareness of the importance of teaching CML to students. While …

The Synergistic Effect Of A Proposed Sport And Nutrition Suggested Program On Some Physiological And Physical Variables In Diabetic (Type Ii), Mosab Rashed, Ismail Zakarneh

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

The study aimed to identify the effect of sport and nutrition program on some physiological and physical variables among new patients with Type II diabetes. To achieve this aim, the researcher followed the experimental approach. The study sample consisted of 60 patients selected following the purposive sampling approach who were then divided into three groups. The first group was an experimental group of 20 individuals on whom the sport and nutrition program was applied. The second group was an experimental group of 20 individuals on whom the nutrition program was applied. The third group was the control group, which consisted …

Towards A Machine Learning-Based Digital Twin For Non-Invasive Human Bio-Signal Fusion, Izaldein Al-Zyoud, Fedwa Laamarti, Xiaocong Ma, Diana Tobón, Abdulmotaleb Elsaddik

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

Human bio-signal fusion is considered a critical technological solution that needs to be advanced to enable modern and secure digital health and well-being applications in the metaverse. To support such efforts, we propose a new data-driven digital twin (DT) system to fuse three human physiological bio-signals: heart rate (HR), breathing rate (BR), and blood oxygen saturation level (SpO2). To accomplish this goal, we design a computer vision technology based on the non-invasive photoplethysmography (PPG) technique to extract raw time-series bio-signal data from facial video frames. Then, we implement machine learning (ML) technology to model and measure the bio-signals. We accurately …

Fall 2022 Commencement Program, University Of Alabama In Huntsville

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Matemáticas Financieras Aplicadas, Odair Triana Calderón

Ciencias Administrativas, Económicas y Contables

Teniendo en cuenta que las matemáticas son una herramienta fundamental en las Ciencias Administrativas, especialmente en las finanzas. MATEMÁTICAS FINANCIERAS APLICADAS, busca dar solución a aquellos problemas de tipo económico y financiero que se presentan en una economía, organización o núcleo familiar, mediante la utilización de modelos matemáticos y la aplicación en Microsoft Excel.

El texto realiza un estudio de problemas de inversión y financiación, donde el cálculo de intereses con base en un capital y atendiendo a variables como el tiempo y las tasas de rendimiento, permite el desarrollo de casos utilizando el interés simple e interés compuesto.

Por …

Inline And Offline Particle Size Analysis In Emulsion Polymerization Processes, Usue Olatz Aspiazu, Shaghayegh Hamzehlou, Jose Ramon Leiza, Maria Paulis, Kimika Aplikatua Saila, Kimika Fakultatea

Polymer Reaction Engineering XI (2022)

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract.

Please click Download on the upper right corner to see the presentation.

Proposal For A Definitive Search For Gut-Scale Qcd Axions, L. Brouwer, S. Chaudhuri, H. M. Cho, J. Corbin, C. S. Dawson, A. Droster, J. W. Foster, J. T. Fry, P. W. Graham, R. Henning, K. D. Irwin, F. Kadribasic, Y. Kahn, A. Keller, R. Kolevatov, S. Kuenstner, A. F. Leder, D. Li, J. L. Ouellet, K. M. W. Pappas, A. Phipps, N. M. Rapidis, B. R. Safdi, C. P. Salemi, M. Simanovskaia, J. Singh, E. C. Van Assendelft, K. Van Bibber, K. Wells, L. Winslow, W. J. Wisniewski, Betty A. Young

Physics

The QCD axion is a leading dark matter candidate that emerges as part of the solution to the strong 𝐶⁢𝑃 problem in the Standard Model. The coupling of the axion to photons is the most common experimental probe, but much parameter space remains unexplored. The coupling of the QCD axion to the Standard Model scales linearly with the axion mass; therefore, the highly motivated region 0.4–120 neV, corresponding to a GUT-scale axion, is particularly difficult to reach. This paper presents the design requirements for a definitive search for GUT-scale axions and reviews the technological advances needed to enable this program.

Literature Review On Water Desalination Plant Production And Brine Disposal Methods, Grace Kollars

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Water scarcity is an issue all around the world because people have a lack of clean and available drinking water. One way this issue can be eased and people can have more access to water is implementing water desalination plants around the world. Since most of the water on earth cannot be drunk, there are ways to turn the over abundance of salty waters we have on this planet into fresh, drinkable water to ease the water insecurity. There are many methods out there that can be used for water desalination, most of them involving membrane technologies. The most efficient …

Complete Equitable Decompositions, Joseph Paul Drapeau

Theses and Dissertations

A well-known result in spectral graph theory states that if a graph has an equitable partition then the eigenvalues of the associated divisor graph are a subset of the graph's eigenvalues. A natural question question is whether it is possible to recover the remaining eigenvalues of the graph. Here we show that if a graph has a Hermitian adjacency matrix then the spectrum of the graph can be decomposed into a collection of smaller graphs whose eigenvalues are collectively the remaining eigenvalues of the graph. This we refer to as a complete equitable decomposition of the graph.

Developing A Quantitative Understanding Of U-Substitution In First-Semester Calculus, Leilani Camille Heaton Fonbuena

Theses and Dissertations

In much of calculus teaching there is an overemphasis on procedures and manipulation of symbols and insufficient emphasis on conceptual understanding of calculus topics. As such students to struggle to understand and use calculus ideas in applied settings. Research shows that learning calculus topics from a quantitative reasoning-perspective results in more powerful and flexible conceptions of calculus topics like integration. However, topics beyond introducing integrals and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, like u-substitution, have yet to be explored from a quantity-based perspective. In this study, I conducted a set of two clinical interviews where we discussed quantitative meanings of integrals, …

Testing Detrital Zircon Age Bias In Tectonic Provenance: Examples From Modern Alluvium In The South Island, New Zealand, Will Sparhawk Fisher

Theses - ALL

Detrital zircon (DZ) grains from 13 drainages across the South Island, New Zealand, were U-Pb dated to ascertain how accurately their ages reflect the geologic record of exposed bedrock. With the proliferation of inexpensive and easily accessible ion microprobes and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers, DZ dating has become the dominant chronometer for elucidating tectonic systematics. Zircon’s physical and chemical resilience makes it an ideal candidate for U-Pb geochronometry, but is also a potential source of bias. Zircon’s resilience in sedimentary systems means it rarely occurs as first order detritus. N = 966 zircon grains from Modern alluvium …

Teacher Perceptions Of Grades And Grading In A Pandemic, Michael V. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

A grade serves as the primary means of reporting feedback to teachers, students, and parents about the student's level of learning (Heflebower et al., 2014). Many schools have attempted to have teachers adopt standards-based grading, yet school leaders do not know teachers' perceptions about grades and grading. This quantitative study examines the perceptions of 1271 secondary teachers in one school district regarding grades and grading and how they may have changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collected from a survey reveals how changes in teacher perceptions about grades and grading may yield an opportunity for further standards-based …

A Machine Learning Approach For Identification Of Low-Head Dams, Salvador Augusto Vinay Mollinedo

Theses and Dissertations

Identifying Low-head dams (LHD) and creating an inventory become a priority as fatalities continue to occur at these structures. Because obstruction inventories do not specifically identify LHDs, and they are not assigned a hazard classification, there is not an official inventory of LHD. However, there is a multi-agency taskforce that is creating an inventory of LHD. All efforts have been performed by manually identifying LHD on Google Earth Pro (GE Pro). The purpose of this paper is to assess whether a machine learning approach can accelerate the national inventory. We used a machine learning approach to implement a high-resolution remote …

Interactive White Boards In A Secondary Mathematics Classroom, Leann Bolhuis

Mathematics Graduate Theses

"A Formal Portfolio Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS & COMPUTER SCIENCE In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MATHEMATICS".

Enhanced Structural Control Of Soft-Templated Mesoporous Inorganic Thin Films By Inert Processing Conditions, Maximilliano Jesus Jara Fornerod, Alberto Alvarez-Fernandez, Eric R. Williams, Miximillian W.A. Skoda, Beatriz Prieto-Simon, Nicolas H. Voelcker, Morgan Stefik, Marc-Oliver Coppens, Stefan Guldin

Faculty Publications

Mesoporous thin films are widely used for applications in need of high surface area and efficient mass and charge transport properties. A well-established fabrication process involves the supramolecular assembly of organic molecules (e.g., block copolymers and surfactants) with inorganic materials obtained by sol-gel chemistry. Typically, subsequent calcination in air removes the organic template and reveals the porous inorganic network. A significant challenge for such coatings is the anisotropic shrinkage due to the volume contraction related to solvent evaporation, inorganic condensation, and template removal, affecting the final porosity as well as pore shape, size, arrangement, and accessibility. Here, we show that …