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Non-Energy Circular Economy Potential Of Rice Husks: A Techno-Eco-Environmental Assessment, Winfred Oppong Yeboah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The non-energy circular bioeconomy potential of rice husks was examined via sustainability assessments, namely life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle impact cost assessment (LCICA), and techno-economic assessment (TEA). The study was conducted with three objectives. The first objective was to review previous studies on the non-energy utilization potential of rice husks by the method of meta-analysis. This review followed a systematic approach where research papers were collected following a defined set of criteria. The study revealed 16 key utilization pathways, all of which showed promising results. However, a comprehensive sustainability assessment was lacking in all of the pathways. The second …

Securing Rice Safety Through Innovative Radiative Heat Treatment And Proper Storage, Faith Achieng Ouma

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Securing the microbial safety of rice is a rising priority within the food industry, especially when used as an ingredient to manufacture ready-to-eat, minimally-processed products. Mold contamination is typically the most problematic for rice because certain species of Aspergillus produce toxic secondary metabolites known as aflatoxins, rendering the grain unfit for human and animal consumption. The objectives of this study are to: (1) investigate the effectiveness of using high-power (915 MHz frequency), short-duration microwaves (MWs) to inactivate microbes on rough rice; (2) use a three-level screening design to determine which storage factors, such as temperature, relative humidity (RH), storage duration, …

Presentation Matters: Effects Of Presentation Order Of Personality Feedback And Need For Structure On Participant Response To Feedback, Alita Marie Mobley Tu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Psychological assessment plays a vital role in differential diagnosis, treatment planning, and measurement of treatment effectiveness. Insufficient or ineffective feedback to the client can limit the utility of psychological assessment. Finn and Tonsager (1997) advise that assessment feedback will be best received when the feedback content is ordered to start with information that is most consistent with the client’s existing self-concept to information that is the most discrepant from their self-concept. There is minimal empirical support for this practice recommendation. The current study investigates the relationship between presentation order of personality feedback and participant response to feedback (i.e., feedback evaluations, …

Role Of Hospital Leadership In Pandemic Preparedness: Experience At A Tertiary Hospital In Kenya During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lucy Mwangi, William Macharia, Benjamin Wachira, Jemimah Kimeu, Boniface Mativa, Lukoye Atwoli

Paediatrics and Child Health, East Africa

Introduction: Pandemic preparedness refers to being ready for, responding to and recovering from public health crises, and is integral for health security. Hospital leadership is a critical building block of an effective healthcare system, providing policy, accountability and stewardship in a health crisis.

Objectives and methods: We aimed to describe the leadership and governance structures put in place at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi, a private not-forprofit tertiary healthcare facility, following the COVID-19 pandemic. We reviewed over 200 hospital documents archived in the COVID-19 repository including those received from the Kenya Ministry of Health, emails, memos, bulletins, meeting minutes, …

Visual Complexity Of The Time-Frequency Image Pinpoints The Epileptogenic Zone: An Unsupervised Deep-Learning Tool To Analyze Interictal Intracranial Eeg, Sarvagya Gupta

Graduate Masters Theses

Epilepsy, a prevalent neurological disorder characterized by recurrent seizures, continues to pose significant challenges in diagnosis and treatment, particularly among children. Despite substantial advancements in medical technology and treatment modalities, localization of the part of brain that causes seizures (Epileptogenic Zone) remains a difficult task. Intracranial EEG (iEEG) is often used to estimate the epileptogenic zone (EZ) in children with drugresistant epilepsy (DRE) and target it during surgery. Conventionally, iEEG signals are inspected in the time domain by human experts aiming to locate epileptiform activity.

Visual scrutiny of the iEEG time-frequency (TF) images can be an alternative way to review …

Lidar Monitoring Of Annual And Storm-Driven Episodic Erosion At Rainsford Island, Alan H. Bartels

Graduate Masters Theses

Boston Harbor and its thirty-four islands are subject to erosion, driven by rain, winds, and waves. Climate change threatens to increase erosion over time as sea levels rise and the frequency and intensity of storms increase. Understanding the dynamics of coastal erosion is key to guiding the design of coastal shoreline protections, the research of which a goal of Stone Living Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Boston. To better understand the impact of both annual weather and episodic severe storms, the high-resolution Riegl VZ400i LiDAR was deployed four times over 14 months from July 22, 2021 to October 19, …

No Injustice So Peace: The Interaction Between Race-Related Stress, Colorblind Racial Attitudes, And Resistance And Empowerment Against Racism, Kaela A. Yamini

Graduate Masters Theses

Past research has indicated that Black people are subjected to overt and covert forms of racism that can have a range of effects on emotional and psychological wellbeing. The current study sought to explore the how race-related stress and colorblind racial ideology impact Black people’s engagement in resistance and empowerment against racism. I hypothesized that higher endorsement of colorblind racial ideology would be associated with lower engagement in resistance and empowerment against racism. Additionally, I hypothesized that moderate levels of race-related stress would be associated with higher endorsement of resistance and empowerment against racism while low and high levels of …

Assessment Of Dicamba And 2,4-D Residues In Palmer Amaranth And Soybean, Maria Leticia Zaccaro-Gruener, Jason K. Norsworthy, Leonard B. Piveta, L. Tom Barber, Andronikos Mauromostakos

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Off-target movement of 2,4-D and dicamba is sometimes to blame as the cause of symptoms observed in weeds growing in production fields. Pesticide regulatory authorities routinely sample tissues of weeds or crops from fields under investigation for potential illegal use of auxin herbicides. This research aimed to determine if analytical tests of herbicide residue on soybean or Palmer amaranth vegetation treated with dicamba or 2,4-D could be used to differentiate between rates applied and how the residue levels decay over a 1-mo interval. Four rates of each herbicide (1X, 0.1X, 0.01X, and 0.001X) were applied, with a 1X rate of …

Human-Modified Landscapes Driving The Global Primate Extinction Crisis, Erik Joaquín Torres-Romero, Vincent Nijman, David Fernández, Timothy M. Eppley

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The world's primates have been severely impacted in diverse and profound ways by anthropogenic pressures. Here, we evaluate the impact of various infrastructures and human-modified landscapes on spatial patterns of primate species richness, at both global and regional scales. We overlaid the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) range maps of 520 primate species and applied a global 100 km2 grid. We used structural equation modeling and simultaneous autoregressive models to evaluate direct and indirect effects of six human-altered landscapes variables (i.e., human footprint [HFP], croplands [CROP], road density [ROAD], pasture lands [PAST], protected areas [PAs], and Indigenous …

Dual Function Molecular Imaging Probes For Breast Cancer, Christopher Denyse

Theses

Breast cancer (BrCa) is a pressing health concern, necessitating the development of effective imaging and therapeutic agents. To address this need, we designed and synthesized molecularly targeted imaging and therapeutic agents that combine visualization and treatment of tumors in real-time. Our approach involved the development of dual-modal agents, incorporating the fluorescent near infrared (NIR) dye, IRDye78, and a chlorin-based photosensitizer (PS) dye, Mesopyropheoborbide-a (mPPa), coupled to a BrCa-targeting peptide, "18-4." Additionally, we created a water-soluble, single-modal targeted PS probe for photodynamic therapy (PDT) of BrCa for use guided by other imaging methods. Our methodology was based on a modular approach, …

The Future Of Deep Fakes: Analyzing The Potential Future Consequences Of The Widespread Use Of Deepfakes On The Policing Sector, Maryam Salem Alshamsi

Theses

In today’s world there is a growing uncertainty in terms of the truthfulness of what we see and hear. People digest a great amount of information throughout the day using their devices, yet the quality and credibility of content is in question. People question if we are experiencing and perceiving the same reality at this point. This issue is not novel, however, it has progressed and developed to a level of realism that deceives people and affect their comprehension of information. Rapid technological advancement has raised the concern of what is referred to as “Deepfakes”, a machine learning technique that …

Characterizing And Detecting Software Attack Surface Components, Sara Moshtari

Theses

The notion of Attack Surface refers to the critical points on the boundary of a software system which are accessible from outside or contain valuable content for attackers. The ability to identify attack surface components of software system has a significant role in effectiveness of different security analysis approaches such as vulnerability analysis. Most prior works focus on the security analysis approach and use an approximation of attack surfaces. There have not been many attempts to create a comprehensive list of attack surface components. Although limited number of studies have focused on attack surface analysis, they defined attack surface components …

Generative And Implicit Methods For 3d Point Cloud Processing, Mohammad Samiul Arshad

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

3D point clouds are a popular form of data representation with many applications in computer vision, computer graphics, and robotics. As the output of range sensing devices, point clouds have gained popularity with the current interest in self-driving vehicles. More formally, point clouds are an unordered set of irregular points collected from the surface of an object. Each point consists of a Cartesian coordinate, along with additional information such as an RGB color value and surface normal estimate. However, deep learning methods fall short in the processing of 3D point clouds due to the irregular and permutation-invariant nature of the …

Fault Tolerant Electric Machine Concept For Aircraft Propulsion With Pm Rotor And Dc Current Stator Dual-Stage Excitation, Donovin D. Lewis, Oluwaseun A. Badewa, Ali Mohammadi, Matin Vatani, Dan M. Ionel

Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Research

The development of electrically propelled aircraft requires electric machines that are fault-tolerant, compact, and efficient at multiple operating points. This paper proposes a novel machine topology combining a coreless Halbach PM array axial flux unit and a PM-less synchronous hybrid excited radial flux unit. Both units are coupled on the same shaft to take advantage of the opportunities available in the unique usage profile for aviation. The machines can be used simultaneously for the take off and altitude climbing stage or used individually during the cruising stage. The coreless axial flux PM (CAFPM) motor unit consists of two Halbach array …

Coreless Axial Flux Halbach Array Permanent Magnet Generator Concept For Direct-Drive Wind Turbine, Matin Vatani, Ali Mohammadi, Donovin Lewis, John F. Eastham, Dan M. Ionel

Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Research

This paper proposes a concept for a coreless axial flux permanent magnet (CAFPM) generator with a double sided Halbach array rotor for direct-drive offshore wind turbine applications. The application of printed circuit board (PCB) technology is explored as applied to a concentrated winding stator due to its high reliability, repeatability, and fast mass production. A double-sided Halbach array rotor is employed to intensify the airgap flux density and to enable the elimination of the rotor back iron, decreasing the generator’s total active mass. The effect of the Halbach array rotor pole number and magnet-to-magnet (M2M) gap on the airgap flux …

Evaluation Of Covid-19 Crisis Management Practices In The Context Of City Hotels: The Case Of Aksaray, Mehmet Umur, Busra Sener

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

This study examines the extent to which city hotels operating in Aksaray are affected by the COVID-19 crisis, what strategy the managers follow in the face of this situation, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of operating as a city hotel and being located in Aksaray. Since no similar study was found in the region as a result of the literature review, it is thought that the study will contribute to the literature. The research data were obtained by semi-structured interview technique from 14 managers who worked as general manager, department manager and department chief in city hotels operating …

Leisure Activity And Place Requirement For A Better Life In Slow City Ahlat, Selin Kama, Nurullah C. Agbay

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

In this study, the types of activities and places that contribute to the improvement of the living conditions analysed within the example of the residents living in a slow city. The population of the study consists of the local people living in Ahlat (Bitlis, Turkiye), which was declared as a slow city in 2019. The data of the research were collected between 30 May and 15 June 2022. Three questions were asked to the participants about the kinds of activities the residents were engaged in, the activities they dreamed of doing and the kind of recreational places they needed to. …

The Effect Of Sound Atmosphere On Emotion From A Travel Motivation Perspective, Esref Ay, Semra Gunay

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Travel constitutes the dynamic structure of tourism. It is not possible to speak of tourism without travel activity. Since travel motivation is known as a psychological driver of a certain tourism behavior, it is extensively studied in tourism research. The travel motivations of people have changed in the historical course. Accordingly, a change is observed in the quality of the tourism market. It is important to know the changing travel motivations in order to survive in the tourism market where there is intense competition between businesses and destinations and to get more shares from the market. In this study, the …

Capturing The Personal And Pedagogical Experiences Of Faculty During Emergency Response Teaching At A Research University In Abu Dhabi, David Dalton, Asli Hassan, Sami Mejri, Amani Omer

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Gender Disparity In Chinese Academia: A Conceptual Analysis Through Organizational Theory Lens, Sanfeng Miao

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Report On Odu Findings From The Virginia Course Materials Survey Fall 2021, Karen Vaughan

Libraries Reports and Documents

From Introduction:

From October 1-December 31, 2021, the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) conducted a survey of students at Virginia colleges and universities. More than 5,600 valid student responses from 41 institutions were received, reflecting an overall response rate of 10%. The largest response (58.5%) was from doctoral institutions, with private, two-year, and four-year institutions responding at 12-14%. A random sample of ODU students produced 287 responses (see Appendix A for ODU demographics). The survey aimed to answer these questions:

• What is the impact of course material costs on educational equity among Virginia students?
• What course content materials do students …

Characteristics Of Refractivity And Sea State In The Marine Atmospheric Surface Layer And Their Influence On X-Band Propagation, Douglas Matthew Pastore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Predictions of environmental conditions within the marine atmospheric surface layer (MASL) are important to X-band radar system performance. Anomalous propagation occurs in conditions of non-standard atmospheric refractivity, driven by the virtually permanent presence of evaporation ducts (ED) in marine environments. Evaporation ducts are commonly characterized by the evaporation duct height (EDH), evaporation duct strength, and the gradients below the EDH, known as the evaporation duct curvature. Refractivity, and subsequent features, are estimated in the MASL primarily using four methods: in-situ measurements, numerical weather and surface layer modeling, boundary layer theory, and inversion methods.

The existing refractivity estimation techniques often assume …

Budget Recommendations Fy2024-25, Tennessee. Commission On Children And Youth.

Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Model Optimization And Applications In Deep Learning, Chengchen Mao

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: Machine learning refers to a machine or an algorithm that draws experience from data. A certain pattern is found to build a model, which is used to solve real problems. Deep learning, an important branch and extension of machine learning, employs a neural network structure containing multiple hidden layers. It learns critical features of the data by combining lower-level features to form more abstract higher-level representations of attribute categories or features. In this dissertation, deep learning network models were applied to sense-through-foliage target detection and extended with Rake structure. The deep learning network models had a large number of …

Wireless Investors & Apathy Obsolescence, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

This Article discusses how a subgenre of retail investors makes investors’ apathy obsolete. In prior work, we dub retail investors who rely on technology and online communications in their investing and corporate governance endeavors “wireless investors.” By applying game theory, this Article discusses how wireless investors’ global-scale online interactions allow them to circulate information and coordinate, obliterating collective action problems.

Acquisitions Unit Annual Report 2022-2023, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Annual Report of the Acquisitions Unit, University Libraries, University of Rhode Island for FY2023. Covers personnel, work flow, special projects, and serial, monograph, and e-resource acquisitions. Supplemental files include data on library materials expenditures by a number of variables as well as important working documents from the year.

Reimaging The Library Of The Future. From Social Condenser And Community Hub To Regenerative Design, Steffen Lehmann

Architecture Faculty Research

The primary objective of this article, an architectural forecasting opinion piece written by a design expert, is to investigate the various models of public library buildings and explore the continuous evolution of library design (presenting valuable information for anyone planning a library). The main question explored in this article is: What will be the design characteristics of the next-generation library? Methods used include precedent analysis, cases selected from an international list of 50 libraries built between 2010–2023 following a web search using the phrase “public library architecture” and analyzing these cases for repeated thematic similarities. Three similarities are identified.

Innovation Districts: Contributing Factors For Cities’ Prosperity, Equity Implications, And Planning Policy Solutions In Response To Placelessness, Ladan Mozaffarian

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Innovation is one of the most critical determinants of future success for cities. Urban policymakers and planners have developed a great interest in “innovation districts” as an impactful factor in enhancing cities' economic competitiveness and productivity. This planning policy has become very attractive to urban planners, urban economy specialists, and policymakers to the point that every city in the United States is trying to develop its version of an innovation district. Simultaneously, urban scholars have developed great attention to the most critical factors shaping innovation districts and affecting their prosperity. The literature identifies factors such as spatial clustering, mixed land …

Environment, Communication And Decision For Multiagent Systems, Lu Zhao

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: Multiagent systems (MAS) are ubiquitous in modern systems and have found broad applications, such as in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Environment, communication and decision are among the essential components of MAS. The realistic environment in which MAS operates is usually stochastic, and its modeling, identification and estimation are important to consider. The communication in MAS is also critical for decisions. For example, in ITS, to improve travel efficiency and reduce traffic accidents, scheduling schemes for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication need to be developed. MAS decisions also need to be robust to uncertainties. For example, in mixed-traffic autonomous driving, the decisions …

Addressing The Information Crisis: Understanding The Relationships Between Information Choices And Health And Academic Outcomes, Amber L. Morgan

Psychology Theses - Archive

In today’s society, the prevalence of the “share first, question later” mentality has become a norm. However, this approach to information can have severe consequences when it comes to information seeking behaviors, and health and academic outcomes. Previous research has already illustrated that people are not very good at evaluating information, they prefer to surround themselves with confirming viewpoints, and accepting health misinformation can adversely affect one’s health. Building upon this knowledge, the current study aimed to investigate whether people have preferences in the information they use and their potential implications for health and academic outcomes. Specifically, it was examined …