Digital Commons Network^™

Expert Elicitation Regarding Effectiveness Of Recent North Atlantic Right Whale Protection Agreement, Jessica Marie Hiltz

Open Access Master's Theses

With the rise of offshore wind energy in the United States, there has been increasing concern about how offshore wind turbine installation and operation is affecting benthic and pelagic marine life (Bailey et al. 2010). Increased, localized ocean noise resulting from project-related activities, such as vessel traffic, surveying, and turbine installation, has the potential to disturb or injure nearby marine life. Increased vessel traffic heightens the probability of a vessel strike occurring, and noise produced during the turbine installation phase, in which pile-driving is used to hammer and secure turbines to the seafloor, is significantly loud and widespread. This noise …

Predictors Of Epi Procolon Utilization, Eric Lamy

Open Access Master's Theses

Background: According to the American Cancer Society, despite being one of the most preventable forms of cancer, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fourth most common type of cancer and is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States (US). The 2020 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System estimates that around one quarter of the US population aged 50 to 75 and over one half of those in their early 50s remain unscreened despite being at risk. In 2016, the United State Food and Drug Administration approved a blood test for CRC screening called Epi proColon. Epi proColon …

Coastal Inundation Due To Sea Level Rise And Its Impact On The Barrington Bridge, Bristol County, Ri, Laura Meyer

Open Access Master's Theses

Climate change is a problem that has intensified in recent years. With the great increase in global electricity consumption, the peak in carbon-based fuel combustion in conjunction with deforestation is leading to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Carbon dioxide traps heat near the Earth's surface, causing global warming. This leads to more frequent and intense storms, heat waves, and rising sea levels. Coastal communities and infrastructure are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

The scope of the project is to develop an assessment of the impact of climate change such as sea-level rise in combination …

Life Cycle Assessment Of Energy Retrofitting Strategies For Residential Buildings In Rhode Island, Moritz Mussotter

Open Access Master's Theses

Retrofitting existing buildings has been identified as an essential strategy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the building sector. This study examines the environmental and financial performance of different retrofitting strategies that aim to reduce the GHG emissions of a model single-family building in Rhode Island using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

The LCA shows that retrofitting strategies can reduce the GWP by up to 41 % over the remaining service life while saving more than $ 28,000 over that period. This can be achieved through installing programmable thermostats and scheduled temperature setpoints, air sealing the building, installing a more …

Modeling Rhode Island Food Production Potential Under Different Production Scenarios, Nina Oberg

Open Access Master's Theses

Food sovereignty emphasizes the rights of people to have control over their food system. Relocalizing food production and limiting dependence on global industrial supply chains is necessary to increase food sovereignty in regions dominated by conventional food systems. In the US, the New England region aims to relocalize production by producing 50 percent of food consumed in the region by the year 2060. Rhode Island can contribute to this goal by expanding production and strengthening local food systems, thus serving as a model for New England and other urbanizing regions globally. For this study, a site suitability analysis was performed …

Analyzing Land Cover And Land Use Changes Detection In The Brahmaputra River Basin, Darya Shahidi Masouleh

Open Access Master's Theses

The Brahmaputra River basin (BRB) is one of the largest in Asia, spread over the countries of China, Bhutan, India, and Bangladesh, having a total area of 5,73,000 Sq.km. It is one of the last major free-flowing rivers in the world, and the river and its tributaries provide important social, environmental, cultural, and economic services to more than 60 million people for their livelihood in Bangladesh, northeastern India, Bhutan, and China. The BRB is undergoing rapid environmental changes in recent decades. One of the most important drivers of this change is Land Use, and Land Cover (LULC) changes in this …

A Proteomic Approach To Understanding Regulatory Pathways In Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (Nafld), Teresa Sierra

Open Access Master's Theses

Background and Objectives:Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) encompasses the progressive hepatic pathologies from steatosis, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis, and irreversible cirrhosis in populations with little to no alcohol consumption. The disease is prevalent in societies dominated by Western dietary patterns and is associated with obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, type-2 diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome. The pathogenesis of NAFLD is multifaceted and not completely understood. A proteomic analysis of a human liver tissue repository (n = 106) was used to gain insight into dysregulated pathways and significantly altered protein expression in NAFLD without or with fibrosis as well as NAFLD and diabetes …

Anti-Microbial Peptide Database, Anusha Singamaneni

Open Access Master's Theses

The goal of this thesis is to re-design and re-implement a functioning and efficient database with uniformity, coherence and most importantly transparency which clearly explains the system needs, methods and procedures openly to the users. The main users of the database are researchers, biologists, biochemists and engineers. We also developed a tool called MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) for the users of the database by which, researchers can upload their lab data, perform the calculation for average peptides with timepoints and see results using graphical visualizations.In addition, we developed a user-friendly web interface to support transparency. We revisited the normalization of …

Parent-Child Attachment, Parenting Practices And Their Effects On Adolescent Social Competence: The Mediating Role Of Income Among Vulnerable Families, Margaret Stark

Open Access Master's Theses

Parent-child attachment has been found to be a powerful predictor of children's social competence later in life (Bowlby, 1989; Weinfield, 1997). Additionally, Swanson et al. (2011) found that negative parenting practices, too, are predictive of adolescent social competence. However, less is known about the impact of positive parenting practices on social competence outcomes. Several studies have identified the importance of social competence as it enables individuals to interact with others in various environments, and serves as a protective factor to engaging in risky behavior, such as substance use (Griffin et al., 2001; Romppanen et al., 2021). The current study examined …

Foundation And Structural Dynamics Of The Block Island Wind Farm, Maeve Clare Story

Open Access Master's Theses

Even with growing interest in developing an offshore wind industry off the east coast of the United States, there is little publicly available data for offshore wind structures. Combined with the wealth of knowledge in the US from the oil and gas industry, data from an offshore wind farm off the east coast could provide invaluable information for validating or updating policy as this new industry forms. The objective of this research was to compare the predictions of foundation and structural dynamics of the Block Island Wind Farm (BIWF) to measured values obtained from an on-going structural health monitoring program …

Unmasking Covid-19: The Pandemics Effect On Mental Health Through The Lens Of Social Media, Jamie Vittoria Swanberg

Open Access Master's Theses

This study examined the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health through the lens of social media. This study content analyzed user posts related to depression on Twitter during 2019 and 2020 to determine if there was an increase in tweets about depression due to the pandemic. A total of 2,000 tweets were randomly selected using the keyword or hashtag “depressed” and “depression”. A sample of 1,000 tweets from April 18 to December 31, 2019, and another sample of 1,000 tweets from April 18 to December 31, 2020, were analyzed. Using the Uses and Gratifications Theory as a framework, …

Addition Of Nanoparticles To Enhance The Ionic Conductivity Of A Peo-Based Polymer Electrolyte, Caroline Willuhn

Open Access Master's Theses

Although advantageous in many regards, solid polymer electrolytes have the major disadvantage of low ionic conductivity, preventing commercial utilization. Amorphous polymers have a higher lithium-ion conductivity than crystalline polymers. This is why many attempts are made to decrease their crystallinity. The integration of nanoparticles has been shown toeffectively reduce a polymer's degree of crystallinity, thus enabling faster Li-ion transport.This work studies the integration of carboxyl-terminated carbon black (CB) and bariumtitanate nanoparticles into a PEO/LiTFSI polymer electrolyte (PE) with the final goal of enhancing its Li-ion conductivity. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was carried out and showed a decrease in glass transition …

Home Grown: An Experimental Analysis Of Home-Methods Of Mold Removal On Textile Substrates, Paige Bailey

Open Access Master's Theses

When seeking information on how to clean away mold from clothing and textiles, searching the internet can lead to an overwhelming amount of confusing and vague information. A lack of reputable references and consistent measurements across methodologies makes attempting to clean textiles, valuable or not, potentially damaging to the textile itself. As such, the objective of this experiment was to select a handful of these cleaning methods and test them with the expectation that the results will contribute to reliable information on what methods could possibly work for certain textiles. It is the hope that this information will be made …

Trade-Offs Among Signal Correlation, Snr, And Number Of Snapshots For Direction Of Arrival Estimation Using Sparse Arrays, Kevin Beshara-Flynn

Open Access Master's Theses

Arrays can be designed as a full array of sensors or a sparse array of sensors with an equivalent aperture. Reductions in cost, size, weight and power consumption are important factors to consider when designing an array of sensors. Sparse arrays can provide a reduction in these factors. It is important to observe the performance of sparse arrays in relation to full arrays to see if they are able to achieve similar performance. The ability for the full and sparse arrays of sensors to accurately estimate the direction of arrival (DOA) of plane waves impinging them is observed in this …

The Home Literacy Environment's Effect On Language And Literacy Outcomes In Monolingual And Bilingual First And Second Grade Students, Sarah Carney

Open Access Master's Theses

The Home Literacy Environment (HLE) is well researched to support early literacy development in children (e.g., Niklas et al., 2020; Inoue et al., 2018). The majority of research has investigated how the HLE supports children’s preschool literacy development and skills upon entry to kindergarten; however, few research studies have addressed how the HLE contributes to vocabulary, phonological awareness, and reading scores in Spanish-English bilingual first and second grade students. Our present study aims to answer two questions; if Parental Occupation Education (POE) and the HLE affect performance on inside out (phonological awareness and decoding) and outside in (language and vocabulary) …

Transnational Construction Site: Building American/Buying Chinese At The Panama Canal, 1885-1887, Jenny Elkus

Open Access Master's Theses

This thesis is a case study in ethnic relations and identity formation. It attempts to problematize Jewish American immigration history by examining the actions and personal development of one 19th century Jewish immigrant, not through the literature of Jewish American immigration, but through the history and literature of the Chinese migrants with whom he interacted. In 1885, Dr. Felix A. Bettelheim launched a year-long venture to obtain 5,000 Chinese contract laborers to work on the construction of the Panama Canal. This thesis is an attempt to understand how, as a migrant and a member of a persecuted minority himself, Bettelheim …

Treprostinil Improves Hepatic Cytochrome P450 Metabolism During Renal Ischemia Reperfusion Injury, Daniel Kelly

Open Access Master's Theses

Background: Renal ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) causes acute kidney injury, as well as liver injury resulting in altered hepatic metabolism. Decreased hepatic cytochrome P450 levels can impact drug clearance and increase the risk for adverse drug reactions. Currently, there is no treatment available to improve liver cyp450 metabolism during renal IRI. Treprostinil (Remodulin®) is a FDA approved prostacyclin analog that our lab has shown to have hepatoprotective effects during renal IRI. This study investigates the efficacy of treprostinil on improving hepatic cyp450 metabolism during renal IRI in vivo.

Methods: Male Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to 45 minutes of …

Using Centered Kernel Alignment For Understanding And Pruning Neural Networks, Alex Lachance

Open Access Master's Theses

Understanding neural networks has been challenging since their inception. Neural networks are non-linear and learn representations without the user defining them, making the internal workings obscure. Methods for understanding networks have been researched for many years. This study uses centered kernel alignment (CKA) to measure the similarity between the representations of data between layers in a network. The method is invariant to invertible orthogonal transformation, invariant to isotropic scaling, and exhibits behavior demonstrating its superiority over other methods.

The similarity results enable understanding of how architecture choices impact learning and network representations. Depth and width changes of MLPMixer, a neural …

Predicting Morphodynamic Long-Term Changes Along The Southern Rhode Island Shoreline In The Next Decades, Alexa Leone

Open Access Master's Theses

Shoreline recession presents a real threat to coastal communities. Both the Napatree spit and the Ninigret-Trustom Ponds (NTP) barrier system in Rhode Island are at risk of erosion from physical morphodynamic processes and increases in sea level. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the ability of a new numerical model, ShorelineS, to predict the long-term shoreline position along the southern Rhode Island coast over the next 50 years. The 1-D shoreline model, ShorelineS, was calibrated and validated at these sites based on historical observations. Calibration at Napatree explicitly displayed the shoreline to be relatively static over the past …

Staying In The 90s: The Process Of Nostalgic Consumption Through A Terror Management Framework, Daniel O. Nilsen

Open Access Master's Theses

Nostalgic product marketing is as popular as ever in today’s age. Many companies are offering retro styled products in an attempt to appeal to generations such as millennials. These products can range from food items, to memorabilia, toys and more. However, there is a gap in research in regards to studying the nostalgic product consumption process, leading from the psychological need, to purchase intention in millennials. Prior literature suggests death anxiety and the need to belong are correlated with nostalgic proneness, which are used as foundation for the study. To add data to this area of study, prior literature regarding …

An Exploration Of Instagram As An Active Learning Tool For Gaining New Political Knowledge, Sarah Olearnick

Open Access Master's Theses

This paper seeks to explore the way that Instagram can be an active learning platform for the political landscape. By surveying URI students this study looks at the various ways that students use Instagram for politics, their attitudes towards the platform as a political source, and their general interest in politics. The survey showed that those who have a higher interest in politics use various sources. The survey also showed that those who have a positive perception of Instagram as a political source do not use various other sources. This study serves as an extremely valuable launching point for additional …

A High-Resolution Temperature-Indicating Paint System For Ceramic Matrix Composite Gas Turbine Engine Components, Panagiotis Panoutsopoulos

Open Access Master's Theses

With the next generation of gas turbine engines under development,manufacturers require validation of the surface temperatures and surface temperature gradients experienced by SiC-SiC ceramic matrix composite (CMC) components used as the material to construct the combustion chambers of gas turbine engines. Prior developed thermal paints lack adhesion to the substrate on which they are applied and lack resolution due to qualitative interpretation by a technician. The thermal paint system developed here in this thesis uses quantitative methods to characterize the transition state of a sintered glass to determine temperature with excellent resolution, having an error on the order of single …

Rise Above: A Patient-Centered Web-Based Intervention For Reducing Internalized Stigma In People With Epilepsy, Sabah Ummie

Open Access Master's Theses

Telemedicine and e-health has grown significantly over the last few decades with the evolution of information and communication technology. The application and implementations of information technologies have given rise to the delivery of remote patient care and contactless online healthcare service, during the uncontrolled outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. Innovations in healthcare have proliferated during that period and enabled physicians to provide treatments for patients starting from primary care to cognitive disability.

Health related stigma, also known as internalized stigma, is a common cognitive illness in people with epilepsy (PWE), a neurological disorder that induces sudden unpredictable seizures within the human …

Characterizing Game-Play Styles In National Basketball Association, Zian Zheng

Open Access Master's Theses

Data analysis provides important insights to inform decision-making by discovering patterns and trends in datasets. With the increasing collection and availability of large datasets, data science has the potential to revolutionize decision-making in many fields. Basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world,and the application of data science in basketball has attracted a large amount of attention in recent years. Our research explores the dissimilarity and similarity of game-play characteristics through recent years within the National Basketball Association. We focused on the data analysis of basketball teams and player performance, analysis, and prediction of competition results. We …

The Structure, Constraints, And Suggestions Of The Indian Medical Textile Product Industry With A Focus On Fabric Manufacturers, Poonam Parab

Open Access Master's Theses

Medical textiles are specialty fabrics and products doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers use. These include bandages, surgical gowns, hospital sheets, artificial hearts, and hernia meshes. India has been a global textile manufacturing hub and has recently shifted its focus to medical textile/ textile products. However, there is no clear understanding of the basic structure of the Indian medical textile product industry related types of companies involved and their interactions with each other. The information about the industry needs to include categorization and depth, and there is no value chain-related information. A well-integrated value chain improves efficiency and effectiveness, which …

Satellite Investigation Of Drivers Of Phytoplankton Composition In A Continental Shelf Ecosystem, Somang Song

Open Access Master's Theses

Phytoplankton size classes (PSCs) play an important role in ecological and biogeochemical processes in marine ecosystems. Studying the dynamics of phytoplankton groups and the environment can inform how we manage marine resources, including fisheries, which are of critical importance in the Northeast U.S. continental shelf ecosystem. This study aims to shed light on phytoplankton community structure distribution and the environmental drivers of their variability in the Northeast U.S. continental shelf from a satellite remote sensing perspective, which has a captivating ability to view the global ocean and its dynamics on large spatial scales and long-term temporal scales. 23 years (1997 …

Design And System Identification Of A Low-Cost Usv For Coastal Observation, Roy Gilboa

Open Access Master's Theses

Monitoring areas near shore is often performed using unmanned surface vehicles but can be hampered by high cost and complexity. Existing vehicles can be expensive and difficult to operate. Recent development of consumer- and hobbyist-oriented marine hardware and control software have enabled the creation of vehicles that solve these problems. In this project, a low-cost, SUP-based USV was constructed and proved itself to be portable and capable of performing surveys at several sites in Rhode Island, with an approximate cost and vehicle mass of $3,500 and 20 kilograms respectively. It was also evaluated to determine its hydrodynamic properties and its …

Contributions Of Motility To Large-Scale Search And Navigation, Rory Baxter

School of Psychology Theses

Navigation and search are fundamental daily activities, however, their ubiquity belies their complexity. These behaviours are reliant upon multiple underlying cognitive processes including our ability to reliably employ viewpoint invariant allocentric and viewpoint dependent egocentric cues. The ability to use these sources of information have been studied extensively in the human spatial cognition literature, largely on desktop PC platforms. Whilst this provides researchers with an immense amount of experimental control, participants remain static, differing fundamentally to the demands of navigation and search in real-world contexts. This thesis presents a series of experiments that interrogate place learning and probabilistic cueing on …

What Does A Corporation Owe?: The Scope Of Obligations In International Investment Counterclaims, Kevin Crow, Lina Lorenzoni-Escobar

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Public Interest Through Intellectual Property Law: The Creative Approach Of Chinese Judges, Haochen Sun

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

No abstract provided.