Digital Commons Network^™

Diffractive Light And Solar Sails, Prateek Ranjan Srivastava

Theses

In the realm of space exploration, humanity has achieved remarkable feats like landing humans on the moon. However, our progress in venturing beyond our solar system has been limited. Light sails, which utilize photon momentum from laser or solar radiation, o↵er a promising propulsion technology. Unlike traditional rockets, light sails carry no fuel and can achieve high velocities and precise orbital maneuvers. In this research, we propose using an elementary space variant di↵ractive film to design passively stable light sails propelled by laser radiation. We also explore applying this concept to solar sails, enabling spiral trajectories and high orbital inclination …

A Privacy Safeguarding Framework For The Smart Grid, Gaurav Shivaji Wagh

Theses

The smart grid is an outcome of integrating communication technologies with traditional electrical systems. This enables the collection of granular metering data from the customer domain for providing grid and billing functionalities. However, the data collection process exposes the grid to various cyberattacks, posing a significant threat to customer privacy. This is a critical concern for the smart grid community and has hindered the global adoption of the smart grid technology. Although aggregation-based frameworks show promise for sharing metering data with the Electrical Service Provider while maintaining customer privacy, existing aggregation-based frameworks have several limitations. Some of these limitations include …

The Internet Of Things (Iot) In Healthcare: Taking Stock And Moving Forward, Abderahman Rejeb, Karim Rejeb, Horst Treiblmaier, Andrea Appolloni, Salem Alghamdi, Yaser Alhasawi, Mohammad Iranmanesh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Recent improvements in the Internet of Things (IoT) have allowed healthcare to evolve rapidly. This article summarizes previous studies on IoT applications in healthcare. A comprehensive review and a bibliometric analysis were performed to objectively summarize the growth of IoT research in healthcare. To begin, 2,990 journal articles were carefully selected for further investigation. These publications were analyzed based on various bibliometric metrics, including publication year, journals, authors, institutions, and countries. Keyword co-occurrence and co-citation networks were generated to unravel significant research hotspots. The findings show that IoT research has received considerable interest from the healthcare community. Based on the …

Engaging Young Female Students In Digital Technology Programs: Part One, Sarah Buckley, Syeda Kashfee Ahmed, Kristy Osborne, Celia Mcneilly, Shani Sniedze, Rachel Felgate

Digital learning research

This report is part of a larger project commissioned by CSIRO and designed to highlight the enablers and barriers to young female students engaging with digital technology. By addressing this function, the report will thereby aid CSIRO to increase the participation of young female students in the digital technology programs offered by CSIRO’s Education and Outreach (CEdO) unit. CSIRO’s Digital Careers team have developed activities and resources to enhance and extend students’ computational thinking skills and to develop other integral skills such as teamwork, critical and creative thinking, and problem solving. In collaboration with industry partners, CEdO are responsible for …

Mentoring Experiences Of Undergraduate Students And Faculty Members In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics, Pamela Martínez Oquendo

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

I present a comprehensive view of mentoring experiences of undergraduate students and faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In Chapter 1, I describe a brief outline of this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I present an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of former STEM undergraduate mentors of the Nebraska STEM For You (NE STEM 4U) afterschool mentoring program. In Chapter 3, I describe how the ramifications of faculty mentorship influence the science pipeline using a qualitative synthesis. In Chapter 4, I describe how the STEM faculty-student mentoring engagement involves a strong psychological support component using a …

The Effects Of Temperature And Flooding Duration On The Structure And Magnitude Of A Floodplain Prey Subsidy, Ryan J. Rezek, Jordan A. Massie, James A. Nelson, Rolando O. Santos, Natasha M. Viadero, W. Ryan James, Ross E. Boucek, Jennifer S. Rehage

Marine Science

Riverine floodplains serve as an important link between terrestrial and aquatic systems, as the rising and falling of water drive spatial food web subsidies that are critical to the functioning and stability of ecosystems. As these systems are increasingly impacted by hydrological alterations and climate change, it is important to understand how floodplain spatial food web subsidies may respond to changing environmental conditions.

Here, we examine the interannual variation in the structure of a sunfish (Lepomis spp.) prey subsidy from freshwater marshes into the mangrove-lined creeks of Rookery Branch in the Florida Coastal Everglades that occurs during seasonal dry downs. …

On The Variability Of In Situ Surface Layer Refractivity Measurements, Douglas M. Pastore, Ryan T. Yamaguchi, Qing Wang, Erin E. Hackett

Marine Science

Direct measurements of profiles of atmospheric properties near the ocean surface and within the marine atmospheric surface layer often contain a large degree of variability. The variability observed can be explained by numerous technical and natural reasons such as the temporal variability over the time span a profile is measured (unsteadiness in the mean), spatial variations (inhomogeneity), turbulent fluctuations, and measurement uncertainty. In this study, we explored the observed variability in vertical distributions of refractive index measured with a tethered-balloon-based marine atmospheric profiling system (MAPS). MAPS profiled the atmosphere from approximately 0.5 to 50 m, with instantaneous (order 1 s) …

An Analysis Of The Suitability Of Philosophy As A Core K-12 Public School Subject, Mark Christopher Blythe

Doctor of Education (EdD)

In 2005 Michael Katz invited philosophers of education to reinvigorate the inquiry into what is required to provide a proper education for everyone to lead a productive life. In the literature review, I analyze the suitability of philosophy in teaching K-12 students how to think and reason logically—essential abilities for a productive life. I also examine the educational landscape through the philosophy of Nicholas Rescher’s Cognitive-Values Theory and address the value of learning philosophy. I present a Philosophical Dialectic that shows how epistemic diversity (aporetic clusters) justifies making philosophy a K-12 core subject while analyzing philosophers’ reasons for including philosophy …

Raising The Floor From The Back Door: Shareholder Proposals As A Mechanism For Raising Minimum Wage, Laura Carrier

Washington and Lee Law Review

When adjusted to reflect inflation, the federal minimum wage is almost 40 percent lower than it was in 1970. The Biden Administration tried and failed to legislatively raise the minimum wage, and political deadlock will continue to kill legislative change. The shareholder proposal, a nonbinding recommendation to management that shareholders can submit for a vote at a public corporation’s annual meeting, presents a path for improving the wages of many workers in the absence of federal legislation. This Note analyzes the best approach to crafting a shareholder proposal on minimum wage that will prompt an effective increase in the minimum …

Exploring The Impact Of Students Demographic Attributes On Performance Prediction Through Binary Classification In The Kdp Model, Issah Iddrisu, Peter Appiahene, Obed Appiah, Inusah Fuseini

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

During the course of this research, binary classification and the Knowledge Discovery Process (KDP) were used. The experimental and analytical capabilities of Rapid Miner's 9.10.010 instructional environment are supported by five different classifiers. Included in the analysis were 2334 entries, 17 characteristics, and one class variable containing the students' average score for the semester. There were twenty experiments carried out. During the studies, 10-fold cross-validation and ratio split validation, together with bootstrap sampling, were used. It was determined whether or not to use the Random Forest (RF), Rule Induction (RI), Naive Bayes (NB), Logistic Regression (LR), or Deep Learning (DL) …

Development And Testing Of A New Method For Velocity-Selecting White Dwarfs From Gaia By Galactic Population, Joseph Hammill

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The detailed processes by which spiral galaxies form remains an open question in modern cosmology. Observations of the current configuration of spiral galaxies including the Milky Way reveal thin and thick disk and halo populations which must all be accounted for in formation theories and likely have distinct ages. Using the Milky Way as an example to probe this question, we are studying the formation history of these structures.

This work details our approach to age-dating the galaxy, velocity-selecting targets from a sample of white dwarfs from the Gaia DR3 catalog that have also been age-analysed using BASE-9. BASE-9 uses …

Modeling, Control, And Hardware Development Of A Thrust-Vector Coaxial Uav, Andrew North

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This thesis introduces a unique thrust vector coaxial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) configuration and presents a comprehensive investigation encompassing dynamics modeling, hardware design, and controller development. Using the Newton-Euler method, a dynamic model for the UAV is derived to gain in-depth insights into its fundamental flight characteristics. A simple thrust model is formulated and modified by comparing it with data obtained from vehicle testing. The feasibility of manufacturing such a vehicle is assessed through the development of a hardware prototype. Finally, a linear state feedback controller is designed and evaluated using the non-linear dynamics model. The results demonstrate successful validation …

In-Flight Testing & Verification Of An Adaptive Distributed Fault-Tolerant Control Architecture, Michael Budihartono

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The interest in utilizing multi-agent systems (MAS) has increased in the aerospace industry. Its scalability, efficiency, robustness, fault tolerance, and cost-effectiveness make it ideal for performing real-world missions that require more than one agent. However, in completing the tasks, the multi-agent systems are still vulnerable to environmental disturbances, cyber-attacks, and hardware failures. Therefore, an adaptive distributed fault-tolerant control architecture is needed to minimize the impacts of the previously stated circumstances and ensure the mission can continue successfully.

This thesis describes the development of an experimental setup for testing and validating an adaptive consensus algorithm and a bio-inspired health management architecture. …

Accreditation As A Framework For School Improvement: A Quantitavite Study, Michael A. Burroughs

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

This study investigated the perceptions of heads of schools from accredited schools concerning whether the accreditation process, as prescribed by the League of Christian Schools (LCS), leads to improvement in leadership capacity and the impact of instruction on the learning environment. The League of Christian Schools has developed an accreditation process that is based in systems theory as espoused by Senge (2006), which contributed to the theoretical framework for this study. Administrators in LCS member K12 schools provided 25 responses to an anonymous online survey. Quantitative data were collected and analyzed to determine perceptions regarding increased organizational capacities in the …

Characterization Of Antimicrobial Properties Of Excrement And Functional Microbiome Of Black Vultures (Coragyps Atratus), Bridgette Gray

Theses

Black vultures, Coragyps atratus, are obligate scavenging birds that consume and dispose of decaying carcasses and carrion. They fulfill a key ecological niche in the environments in which they live. It has been observed that these vultures sometimes excrete bodily waste onto their legs. This adaptive behavior could help aid them in controlling bacteria and other microbes they encounter while stepping into a carcass to eat. This study directly examined the antimicrobial properties of the excrement of black vultures across various bacterial species utilizing a zone of inhibition test and a nematode species utilizing a survival assay. The black vulture …

Moving Forward With Music To Promote Student Growth: A Mixed Methods Study With 9th-Grade Algebra 1 Students, Willie Mae Dean

Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate what effect music had on student achievement and student behavior during independent practice time for 9th-grade Algebra 1 students. Benchmark assessments from the participating district, a focus group of six students, and four in-person teacher interviews provided the data for this study. The beginning-of-year Galileo Algebra 1 benchmark assessment was used as a baseline for the study. Algebra 1 teachers were asked to participate in one of three ways, to play teacher-selected music, to allow students to listen to their own music, or allow no music to be played during …

Inclusivity In Introductory Stem Courses: A Guide To Improving Student (And Instructor!) Mindsets, Lou K. Charkoudian, Carla Fröhlich, Mike Hildreth

Books

Inclusivity in Introductory STEM Courses: A Guide to Improving Student (and Instructor!) Mindsets grew out of a Cottrell Scholar Collaborative project to help create more inclusive STEM learning spaces, in collaboration with FLAMENet, a national network of science faculty, psychologists, and education researchers working to develop and research interventions to promote resilience and tenacity among college-level STEM students. The book is a compilation of the specific approaches discussed in project mini-workshops, as well as a collection of contributions from individual Cottrell Scholars about various interventions they have implemented at their institutions.

Measuring Resilience To Sea-Level Rise For Critical Infrastructure Systems: Leveraging Leading Indicators, Lamis Amer, Murat Erkoc, Rusty A. Feagin, Sabarethinam Kameshwar, Katharine J. Mach, Diana Mitsova

Faculty Publications

There has been a growing interest in research on how to define and build indicators of resilience to address challenges associated with sea-level rise. Most of the proposed methods rely on lagging indicators constructed based on the historical performance of an infrastructure sub-system. These indicators are traditionally utilized to build curves that describe the past response of the sub-system to stressors; these curves are then used to predict the future resilience of the sub-system to hypothesized events. However, there is now a growing concern that this approach cannot provide the best insights for adaptive decision-making across the broader context of …

High Performance Scene Generator For Testing Of Imaging Sensors, Austin Modoff

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Since the invention of modern solid-state imaging sensors in the 1980s, considerable advancements have been made, improving aspects such as frequency response, dynamic range, resolution, and wavelength diversity, as well as inventing many different types of sensor architectures such as framing sensors and event sensors. While considerable improvements in this field are evolving every day, the methods by which to test and validate these systems remain unchanged. Many of these test platforms require specialized designs to test only one or two specific qualities. For example, a spinning disk in front of a black body source to measure the frequency response …

Intervention Playbook For Homeschool Families, Rebecca Huisman

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The growing trend of homeschooling has led to the rise of independent charter schools in California by providing families with the flexibility to tailor their children's education while aligning with state standards. This school improvement plan focuses on assisting educators at Blue Ridge Academy, an indepedent charter school in Los Angleles, California, by providing a toolkit of interventions to help homeschooled students achieve grade-level proficiency in language arts and mathematics. The intervention playbook, developed by using evidence-based research and action studies, simplifies interventions in ELA and math for early and upper elementary students. The aim of the playbook is to …

Incorporating Social-Emotional Learning Into Middle School Classrooms, Jessica Wolles

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This article is how the implementation of social-emotional learning in a middle school can improve behavior, academics, mental health, and social awareness amongst adolescents. This paper examines research from twenty research articles to communicate the need for social-emotional learning to be implemented in a middle school. This article outlines the school improvement plan for implementing a social-emotional learning curriculum.

Positive Behavioral Interventions And Supports And Student Behavior, Taylor Ahlers

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

In response to a growing number of behavior incidents and an overall increase in negative behavior, this school improvement plan has been developed in an effort to help support students, decrease negative student behavior, and create a positive school atmosphere. This school improvement plan has been developed based on an extensive literature review, current Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) interventions, and a district needs assessment. This school improvement plan consists of the development of a PBIS leadership team, professional development training sessions, weekly and bi-weekly meetings to assess data, and weekly school-wide assemblies to celebrate positive student behavior. This …

Improving Instruction, Social-Emotional Behavioral Health, And Attendance, Angela Keeney

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) requires all schools to ensure that all students are receiving a quality education. Multiple measures are used to evaluate the quality of instruction students receive. The Iowa Department of Education assigns a rating to a school based on students’ assessment scores, which measure students’ reading, math, science, and social studies proficiencies. Schools also receive percentages for components of a Conditions of Learning survey. Based on assessment data scores, Blue Grass Elementary score received a commendable rating. However, improvements can be made to improve instruction using differentiated instruction by implementing a multi-tiered system of support and …

Improving Math Fact Fluency In Students, Hilary Sprague

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Developing a solid math foundation is crucial for all students to ensure success. One of the foundational skills that students need to develop is the ability to find, recall and answer basic math facts accurately and effortlessly. Research has shown that students need to master their basic math facts to be successful in their math progression. Tier 2 interventions, educational math games, and computer-based math games were used to instruct, provide practice, and supplement core math instruction. The purpose of this school improvement project is to increase the proficiency scores of students with their basic math fact fluency. This school …

Multi-Tiered System Of Supports For Homeschool Families In A Home School Assistance Progra, Stacy Picard

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Systematic, explicit reading instruction including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension has been shown to be effective at teaching nearly all children to read. The Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework is used in schools for identifying students who need supplemental instruction and ascertaining their areas of weakness. It is also used for monitoring the progress of students and facilitating ongoing instructional decisions. Homeschool families typically do not have access to scholarly research about effective reading instruction or to tools for determining if their children are making adequate progress or if a change in instruction is needed. The Knoxville …

Effects Of Parental Involvement On Academics, Jessica Stamer

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

A child needs their parents to be involved in their educational experience to support social emotional growth and academic growth during the developmental years of their life. It is no surprise that there are many issues that come from little parental involvement. In order to have the optimal parental involvement, educators must encourage involvement through a variety of ways based on the needs to the families in their classroom. Districts must have set plans, support, and encouragement for staff in place to ensure this goal is being met.

Dong Qing Fang’S Musical Depiction Of Lin Chong: An Analysis Of Chinese Traditional Music Elements In His Cello Composition Of 2009, Congcong Bi

Doctoral Projects

Dong Qing Fang (b. 1981) is a prolific composer of cello music. His contribution includes twenty compositions, many of which have been performed around the world.[1] While Fang is the most famous composer in China as well as a leading figure of recent music, his compositions have not been recognized world-wide. This project focuses on his representative cello composition Lin Chong (2009). Lin Chong is a significant character in Chinese literature, known for his role in the classic novel, Water Margin (1524). Fang's musical portrayal of Lin Chong's life incorporates elements of Chinese traditional music.

The methodology for this …

Improving Discipline Practices With Restorative Justice: A School Improvement Project, Ryan Schultz

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Research indicates that punitive discipline practices, such as zero-tolerance policies and exclusionary approaches, have shown limited effectiveness and create potential harm in schools. In contrast, school discipline and culture based on restorative practices have shown great promise as an alternative. This school improvement project seeks to promote a change from a punitive, exclusionary discipline system to a research-based system rooted in restorative methods in a suburban public school district in the Midwest. The goal was to integrate restorative practices with a district's existing MTSS framework, emphasizing positive alternatives to exclusionary punishments, equity prioritization, and healthy relationships. By educating staff, students, …

Flammability Properties Of The Pyrolysis Gas Generated From Willow Wood, Maria Mitu, Domnina Razus, Dorin Boldor, Cosmin Marculescu

Faculty Publications

Willow wood presents a real interest for biomass pyrolysis due to its fast growth, renewability, and high energy density. Following the pyrolysis of willow wood in an inert atmosphere, a multi-fuel gaseous mixture was obtained, with the following composition (by volume): 38.20% CO/21.87% H2/17.44% CH4/1.15% O2/17.15% CO2/4.19% N2. The propagation of laminar premixed flames in these multifuel mixtures with air was investigated numerically for initial temperatures from 298 to 500 K, initial pressures from 1 to 20 bar, and fuel equivalence ratios between 0.60 and 2.00. The combustion of these gaseous mixtures as free laminar premixed flames was simulated by …

Legislative Brief, What Is Career And Technical Education In Tennessee?, Tennessee. Comptroller Of The Treasury.

Office of Research and Education Accountability

No abstract provided.