Digital Commons Network^™

Moving Lab-Based In-Person Training To Online Delivery: The Case Of A Continuing Engineering Education Program, Catherine Maware, David M. Parsley Ii, Kun Huang, Gerry M. Swan, Nelson Akafuah

Institute of Research for Technology Development Faculty Publications

Background: Online learning has recently surged due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Because of the pandemic, many universities were forced to move to online learning, and various online teaching and learning environments emerged, both asynchronous and synchronous.

Objective: This study explores how a large university in the Southeastern United States of America converted an in-person Lean Manufacturing professional course into synchronous online learning for industry participants.

Method: The study analysed the performance of 212 in-person and 43 online industry participants and examined the views of online participants about the training. Paired t-tests, one-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), and univariate …

Why Reach Codes: Local Players Driving Statewide Building Standards, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry, Gabriela Yamhure

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

Reach codes are local energy ordinances that employ various technologies, strategies, and integrated systems that go above California Building Standards Code (CA Building Code, Title 24) standards and support greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts. A reach code is a mandated energy performance requirement for the built environment, typically incorporated as part of a city’s climate action plan, local hazard mitigation plan, or climate adaptation plan. Not only do reach codes help local jurisdictions remain in compliance with state mandates, they enable local climate leadership by signaling support for the future direction of state Building Code standards. This blog provides a …

Volleyball Media Guide 2023, Wofford College. Departmet Of Athletics

Media Guides

No abstract provided.

Distribution And Habitat Associations Of The Georgia Satyr (Neonympha Areolatus) In Arkansas, Kristi Patterson

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

The Georgia satyr (Neonympha areolatus) is a small sedentary butterfly that is rare in Arkansas. Currently, the exact locations of this butterfly in Arkansas are unknown, along with the habitat characteristics associated with their presence. In order to determine these unknowns, I completed 104 surveys across seven different wildlife management areas in southern Arkansas. Pollard-Yates transects were conducted at each study site, and weather variables were recorded before each survey. Vegetation surveys were also completed at each site, and where each Georgia satyr was identified. Generalized linear models (GLM) were created to identify what parameters are important for …

A Predictive Flood Model For Urban Karst Groundwater Systems, Trayson Lawler

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Urban karst environments are often plagued by groundwater flooding, which occurs when water rises from the subsurface to the surface through the underlying caves and other karst features. The heterogeneity and interconnectedness of karst systems often makes them very unpredictable, especially during intense storm events; urbanization exacerbates the problem with the addition of many impervious surfaces. Residents in such areas are frequently disturbed and financially burdened by the effects of karst groundwater flooding. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers limited protection to citizens living near flood-prone areas as they primarily focus on the areas near surface bodies of water. …

A Comparison Of Computational Perfusion Imaging Techniques, Shaharina Shoha

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Dynamic contrast agent magnetic resonance perfusion imaging plays a vital role in various medical applications, including tumor grading, distinguishing between tumor types, guiding procedures, and evaluating treatment efficacy. Extracting essential biological parameters, such as cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV), and mean transit time (MTT), from acquired imaging data is crucial for making critical treatment decisions. However, the accuracy of these parameters can be compromised by the inherent noise and artifacts present in the source images.

This thesis focuses on addressing the challenges associated with parameter estimation in dynamic contrast agent magnetic resonance perfusion imaging. Specifically, we aim …

A Robust Model Reduction For The Optimal Boundary Feedback Stabilization Of Magnetizable Piezoelectric Beams, Md Rafi As Sadeq Ibn Emran

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The one-dimensional Partial Differential Equation (PDE) model of the wave equation, which describes wave dynamics of a wide-range of controlled mechanical systems, with a state feedback controller at its boundary is known to have exponentially stable solutions. Moreover, it is also reported that the several model reductions of the wave equation by the standard Finite Differences and Finite Elements approximations suffer from the lack of exponential stability (and exact observability without a state feedback controller) uniformly as the discretization parameter tends to zero. This is due to the loss of a uniform gap among the high-frequency eigenvalues as the discretization …

College For What . . . How Middle School Students From Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds Perceived Post-Secondary Education, Michelle Patrick

Dissertations

This study examines the attitudes and perceptions of middle school students from low socioeconomic backgrounds about attending post-secondary institutions. As research continues to explore the experiences of traditional high school students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and students' attendance into post-secondary institutions, research concerning middle school students from low socioeconomic backgrounds preparedness for college attendance has been limited. Using a phenomenological research design to obtain the study's results from fifteen students and thirteen parent interviews provided insight into the “lived experience” of the students’ and parents' attitudes and perceptions regarding college attendance. The study found that regardless of the parents’ and …

Stochastic Processes And Multi-Resolution Analysis: A Trigonometric Moment Problem Approach And An Analysis Of The Expenditure Trends For Diabetic Patients, Isaac Nwi-Mozu

Computational and Data Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

This dissertation is divided into two distinct parts. The main theme of the first part is to study stochastic processes (and related signal processing questions) using tools in wavelet analysis, functional analysis (we use in particular the trigonometric moment problem), the theory of realization of rational functions, and reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. A novel form of multiresolution analysis is formulated in the discrete case that is used to study some stochastic processes. Using the trigonometric moment problem, we associate with a vector-valued wide-sense stationary process a multiresolution of a new kind. The notion of realization of rational functions was used …

Dinitroxides In Rapid Scan Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Imaging, Lukas B. Woodcock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Local tissue physiology is an important parameter in understanding disease behavior. Rapid Scan (RS) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) offers a unique, non-invasive tool for investigation of these so-called microenvironments through EPR Imaging (EPRI). Research into advancement of EPRI falls into many categories. Not least among those are advances in instrumentation and methodology. Presented here are updates to a benchtop EPRI instrument operating at 1 GHz targeted at pre-clinical EPRI applications. Newly developed methods for reducing RS-EPR background through inversion of the magnetic field are also demonstrated. EPR applications are limited in native biological systems due to the miniscule concentration of …

Unilinear Residuated Lattices, Xiao Zhuang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We characterize all residuated lattices that have height equal to 3 and show that the variety they generate has continuum-many subvarieties. More generally, we study unilinear residuated lattices: their lattice is a union of disjoint incomparable chains, with bounds added. We give the characterization of all unilinear residuated lattices. By presenting the constructions and axiomatizations for different classes of unilinear residuated lattices, we conclude that the study of unilinear residuated lattices can be reduced to the study of the ⊤-unital ones. Using the classification of unilinear residuated lattices, the idempotent unilinear residuated lattices are studied and amalgamation property and strong …

Towards Deposition Of Iron & Nickel Onto Cadmium Selenide/Cadmium Sulfide Nanorods, Rajib Nath

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Metal-semiconductor hybrids have been studied extensively as photocatalysts for the watersplitting reaction to generate hydrogen gas and oxygen gas to use as a renewable energy source. The semiconductor component converts light into electrochemical energy, while the metal component provides a site for chemical reactions with water. Here, the choice of metal can have a significant impact on the efficiency of the catalyst. Platinum efficiently catalyzes the watersplitting reaction and is therefore commonly used in metal-semiconductor hybrids to generate hydrogen. Platinum is very expensive, which motivates research into improving less costly metals like iron or nickel that do not have nearly …

The Words. Or Holes. Or Both: Writing As An Integrative Methodology For Trauma, Daniel A. Castle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to identify methods authors have used to integrate their traumatic experiences. My work will analyze the genre of War Literature and specific authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Kurt Vonnegut to explore the way writers describe the trauma of combat. Using insights from neuroscience and psychology, I will expand the field of Cognitive Literary Studies from a focus on the reader to a focus on the writer by linking neurological functions with narrative tools.

Mechanisms Behind The Chaperone Activity Of Nucleic Acids, Theodore J. Litberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the interplay between nucleic acids and protein aggregation is integral to the understanding of proteostasis, aging, and neurodegenerative disease progression. Nucleic acids are known to modulate the aggregation of PrP, tau, ⍺-synuclein, and other disease relevant proteins. Although the interactions between misfolded protein and nucleic acids can play a role in disease, this interaction may potentially be beneficial as well. Our group and others have shown nucleic acids can be powerful chaperones. Previous work has shown both RNA and DNA can prevent protein aggregation and RNA can pass off protein clients to the heat shock protein (Hsp) system. Here …

Consensus-Based Active And Reactive Power Control And Management Of Microgrids, Shruti Singh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microgrids incorporating distributed generation and renewable energy sources offer potential solutions to the energy crisis while modernizing traditional grids. Despite cost-effectiveness in some technologies, financial support remains crucial for expensive ones like PV, fuel cells, and storage technologies. Microgrids bring economic benefits, efficiency, reduced emissions, and improved power quality. Their success hinges on cost reductions in renewables, storage, reliability, and energy management systems, enabling operation both with and without the utility grid.

Economic Dispatch optimizes system costs, considering all constraints. Various methods tackle this problem, including quadratic convex functions, Lagrangian relaxation, and quadratic programming. For microgrids with distributed generators, seamless …

Controllable Language Generation Using Deep Learning, Rohola Zandie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The advent of deep neural networks has sparked a revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI), notably with the creation of Transformer models like GPT-X and ChatGPT. These models have surpassed previous methods in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. As the NLP field evolves, there is a need to further understand and question the capabilities of these models. Text generation, a crucial part of NLP, remains an area where our comprehension is limited while being critical in research.

This dissertation focuses on the challenging problem of controlling the general behaviors of language models such as sentiment, topical focus, and logical reasoning. …

Do-It-Together: Informal Transformative Sustainability Education, Derek Brannon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Climate Crisis is an urgent and inescapable reality students are thrust into. Learners must be prepared adequately for their futures, not only for their sakes but also because collective and transformative change is required. Transformative sustainability education provides one pathway to this transformation and focuses on radically altering students’ perceptions about the world and their agency in effecting change on ecological issues. The field of transformative sustainability education is emergent and thus is still fragmented, leaving gaps in the literature. Little research has been conducted on how informal and nonformal university spaces can be used to create transformative experiences …

Effects Of Using Behavioral Skills Training To Teach Interview Skills To College Students With Autism, Kimberly Degroot

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Unemployment and underemployment rates for college students with autism following graduation are higher than other college graduates. One area of need identified for students with autism is interview skill development. Therefore, it is important for them to improve their interviewing skills to help them better succeed in their search for employment. Currently, there are a variety of procedures used for improving interviewing skills with individuals with autism (e.g., video modeling, applied behavior analytic techniques, and virtual interviews). This study replicated the procedures of Stocco et al. (2017) and Roberts et al. (2021) who evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training …

Hydrological Dynamics Of Surface-Groundwater Interactions Between Major Springs Of Mammoth Cave And The Green River, Kentucky, Usa, Matthew Cecil

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Mammoth Cave is an iconic example of the cave and karst systems that underlie over 50% of the United States and provide around 13% of the world’s population with water resources. These environmental features are vulnerable to drought, pollution, and human impacts. The complex hydrological regime of the Mammoth Cave system has been studied in the past, but there are improvements and updates that can be made to the past research. The dynamics of the surface-groundwater system, particularly reversals of the Green River and how it backfloods into the cave, are some examples. Echo River and River Styx Springs provide …

Statistics Consulting Center, Greg Snow

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Statistical support for any university research

Strong Ultrafast Demagnetization Due To The Intraband Transitions, G. P. Zhang, Mitsuko Murakami

Symposium Projects

Demagnetization in ferromagnetic transition metals driven by a femtosecond laser pulse is a fundamental problem in solid state physics, and its understanding is essential to the development of spintronic devices. Ab initio calculation of time-dependent magnetic moment in the velocity gauge so far has not been successful in reproducing the large amount of demagnetization observed in experiments. In this work, we propose a method to incorporate intraband transitions within the velocity gauge through a convective derivative in the crystal momentum space. Our results for transition-element bulk crystals (bcc Fe, hcp Co and fcc Ni) based on the time-dependent quantum Liouville …

Activation Of The Renin–Angiotensin–Aldosterone System Is Attenuated In Hypertensive Compared With Normotensive Pregnancy, Robin C. Shoemaker, Marko Poglitsch, Hong Huang, Katherine Vignes, Aarthi Srinivasan, Cynthia Cockerham-Morris, Aric Schadler, John Anthony Bauer, John O'Brien

UK CARES Faculty Publications

Hypertension during pregnancy increases the risk of adverse maternal and fetal outcomes, but the mechanisms of pregnancy hypertension are not precisely understood. Elevated plasma renin activity and aldosterone concentrations play an important role in the normal physiologic adaptation to pregnancy. These effectors are reduced in patients with pregnancy hypertension, creating an opportunity to define the features of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) that are characteristic of this disorder. In the current study, we used a novel LC-MS/MS-based methodology to develop comprehensive profiles of RAAS peptides and effectors over gestation in a cohort of 74 pregnant women followed prospectively for the development …

Modeling Biphasic, Non-Sigmoidal Dose-Response Relationships: Comparison Of Brain- Cousens And Cedergreen Models For A Biochemical Dataset, Venkat D. Abbaraju, Tamaraty L. Robinson, Brian P. Weiser

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Departmental Research

Biphasic, non-sigmoidal dose-response relationships are frequently observed in biochemistry and pharmacology, but they are not always analyzed with appropriate statistical methods. Here, we examine curve fitting methods for “hormetic” dose-response relationships where low and high doses of an effector produce opposite responses. We provide the full dataset used for modeling, and we provide the code for analyzing the dataset in SAS using two established mathematical models of hormesis, the Brain-Cousens model and the Cedergreen model. We show how to obtain and interpret curve parameters such as the ED50 that arise from modeling, and we discuss how curve parameters might change …

Terrain And Adversary-Aware Autonomous Robot Navigation, Aniekan Ufot Inyang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In autonomous robot navigation, the robot is able to understand the environment around it for intelligent navigation. From its world model of this environment, it generates a global plan for navigation from a position to a goal based on different factors. This research aims to implement autonomous robot navigation by learning terrain affordances: traversability (moving quickly) and concealment (staying hidden from an adversary) using the Preference-based Inverse Reward Learning (PbIRL) methodology. The PbIRL methodology reduces the barrier of generating initial demonstration data to learn the terrain affordances by using a human expert’s preferences to learn individual weights over the terrain …

Generalized Double Statistical Convergence Sequences On Ideals In Neutrosophic Normed Spaces, Jeyaraman M., Iswariya S., Pandiselvi R.

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

In this present research, having view in the Neutrosophic norm (u, v, w), which we presented I2-lacunary statistical convergence and I2-lacunary convergence strongly, looked into interactions between them, and made a few findings regarding the respective categories. At least went further to look at how both of such case approaches relate to I2-statistical convergence within the relevant Neutrosophic normed space.

Ber Analysis Of Bpsk Modulation Scheme For Multiple Combining Schemes Over Flat Fading Channel, Zuhaib Nishtar, Jamil Afzal

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

Focus of the study was to provide error-free communication in mobile communication with higher data rates, spectral efficiency, and energy efficient. Basically, work was done to investigate the performance of the Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation technique for multiple combining schemes and the behavior of signal in wireless communication where multipath propagation and uncertainty in the system. We use the Multiple-input Multiple-output (MIMO) and antenna diversity to get many copies of the same signal; some of them were faded, but some had sufficient information. Then the next step was to combine or select the best signal to achieve the …

Topology Optimization For Artificial Neural Networks, Justin Mills

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis examines the feasibility of implementing two simple optimization methods, namely the Weights Power method (Hagiwara, 1994) and the Tabu Search method (Gupta & Raza, 2020), within an existing framework. The study centers around the generation of artificial neural networks using these methods, assessing their performance in terms of both accuracy and the capacity to reduce components within the Artificial Neural Network’s (ANN) topology.

The evaluation is conducted on three classification datasets: Air Quality (Shahane, 2021), Diabetes (Soni, 2021), and MNIST (Deng, 2012). The main performance metric used is accuracy, which measures the network's predictive capability for the classification …

New Insights Into The Tectonic Framework & Geologic Features Of The Bengal Basin, Bangladesh, Shahriar Bin Shahid

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this research, high-resolution SRTM-based NASA Digital Elevation Models (DEM) data and published literature have used to gain new insights regarding South-east Asian surficial geology, fluvial geomorphology, and tectonics, focusing on the Bengal Basin. Seismic databased discovery of shallow, down-warping and >30 km thick Indian crust challenges prior knowledge of crustal origin, which was thought to be oceanic rather than continental in origin due to high-angle subduction. Furthermore, the collapse of the Indian passive margin beneath the Shillong Plateau may have formed a 20 km thick Surma Basin on top and has led to substantial earthquake risks. To update the …

Teacher Perceptions Of Advanced Ability English Language Learners (Ell), Dena Redmond

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study explored teacher perceptions of English language learners and giftedness. High school content teachers participated in an interview identifying behaviors that indicate advanced abilities from a series of three vignettes about English language learners. A total of four participants were interviewed. The four emergent themes were (1) critical thinking (2) rate of language acquisition, (3) motivation, and (4) use of language. The themes were behaviors that teachers perceived as demonstrating potential or demonstrating limited potential for advanced learning in English language learners.

Giftedness In Dance: Equitable Audition Procedures & Program Development, Lauren Case

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study explored the perspectives of dance specialists and gifted and talented resource teachers in a large school district in the southeastern region of the United States. Six educators who teach dance, work in auditioning and identification of gifted and talented dancers, and provide service options for gifted and talented identified dance students were interviewed in this qualitative study which focused on best practices in gifted and talented dance identification. Dance specialists’ perspectives of audition structures and characteristics of dance giftedness were examined. Three themes emerged from interviewees in this field of education: audition structures, opportunities and access of dance …