Digital Commons Network^™

Learning And Laboring : Student-Workers’ Networked Experiences Of Literacy, Agency, And Mobility In The Neoliberal University., Layne Porta Gordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rhetoric and composition has a well-established tradition of considering the connections between literacy education and the discourses and structures of political-economic institutions. This dissertation builds from this work and foregrounds the experiences of student-workers in the UPS Metropolitan College program through a qualitative study that is informed by institutional ethnography (Smith, 1987, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006). Institutional ethnography examines institutional texts and text-mediated discourses as coordinators of individual action. Therefore, I draw on primary data gathered from individual interviews with nine student-workers and one Metropolitan College administrator as well as supplemental data gathered from a survey administered to composition instructors, …

The Shape Study : The Survey Of Health And The Perceived Environment Study., Colette Patrice Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Few studies have considered how an individual’s perception of their built environment may be a risk factor for being overweight or obese. Adolescents may be particularly vulnerable in the context of “impoverished environments”, which they may perceive to be difficult, dangerous, resource deficient, and unaesthetic. This study aids in clarifying how the built environment influences the risk of obesity among adolescents residing in a neighborhood in Louisville, KY. Objective: The overall objective was to conduct a cross-sectional epidemiologic pilot study among adolescents aged 12-17 years residing in West Louisville, Kentucky to evaluate the association between perceptions of …

"Monogamish" : Constructing Shared Meaning Of Commitment And Marriage In Same-Sex Relationships., Brandon Michael Schmidt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this study I drew from 17 in-depth interviews with nine gay men and eight lesbian women who were in or previously had been in a committed same-sex relationship. My goal was to understand how cisgender women and men in a same-sex relationship define commitment in the era of marriage equality. I approached the research using standard principles of analytic induction. I drew from social construction theory and symbolic interactionism theory to help me make sense of the data. Emergent from the data were the themes for importance of constant open and honest communication within the relationship and negotiation of …

Different And The Same: A Comparison Of Vertical And Lateral Transfer Students., Joshua Harris Mckee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As more students evaluate their choice for higher education, the rate of transfer students continues to grow. The transfer population is often addressed broadly in research studies, and few examine differences among the population. This study was designed to analyze the differences in transfer shock and retention rates between students who transferred from a community college to a four-year institution (vertical) versus those who transferred from one four-year institution to another (lateral). Participants of this study consisted of 1,032 students who transferred to the University of Louisville during the fall 2014, 2015, and 2016 semesters. Results indicated, when controlling for …

School Entry Age And School Readiness., Robin Berry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beginning with the 2017-2018 school year, there was a change in School Entry Age (SEA) legislation. This dissertation analyzed the relationship between SEA and school readiness after the enactment of the new legislation. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to control for student demographics to ascertain the relationship between SEA and school readiness. Findings were as follows: older students scored significantly lower than younger students on the BRIGANCE Kindergarten Screen (BKS), students who had exposure to private child care outside of the home fared much better than students who were kept at home the year prior to kindergarten, and female students …

Doing Place : A Framework For Interpreting Young Adults' Commitments To Appalachian Kentucky., Jeanelle Susanne Sears

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Confronted with negative consequences of rural youth outmigration, many rural communities are interested in how to recruit and retain young adults. Yet, attention has largely been focused on those who leave. This study thus explores the experiences of young adults who make conscious commitments to improving the communities of Appalachian Kentucky despite many obstacles and pressures to leave. Two aims were established in this pursuit: 1) Understand and provide deep description of young adults’ experience of committing to stay and work in Appalachian Kentucky and the meaning they make of these decisions and 2) Develop a context specific framework for …

Hemoglobin A1c Levels And Sport Participation In Children With Type 1 Diabetes., Amy Kozerski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study’s purpose was to determine a possible difference in hemoglobin A1c levels and sport participation in children with type 1 diabetes. Patients with provided consent via an iPad electronic informed consent/assent (preamble) completed a physical activity and sport participation survey. The survey was linked to their medical chart including demographic and diabetes medical history (e.g. HbA1c). The analyses provided a sample of 120 participants, 40 in the no sport participation group and 78 in the sport participation group with 56 females and 64 males, with an average age12.94±2.8 years. An independent sample t-test, removing one outlier from the …

Marriage Among U.S. International Students : Meanings And Aspirations., Assel Kuzembayeva

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although there exists a breadth of literature on Americans’ marital aspirations and experiences, there is a significant lack of research available on U.S. international students’ marital aspirations, specifically. In this study, transnational and gender theories are employed to analyze in-depth semi-structured interviews with 21 international students studying at a university located in a mid-size, midwestern city in the United States. The study reveals that the majority of international students maintain that marriage is important to them while they are living and studying in the United States. However, the study also finds that the cultural pressures of their home countries, including …

Relationship Among School Counselors' Perceptions Of Poverty, Color-Blind Racial Attitudes, And Multicultural Counseling Competencies : A Formula For Change Makers., Shaun M. Sowell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The relationship among school counselors’ attribution of poverty, color-blind racial attitudes, and self-perceived multicultural competence (knowledge and awareness) were examined in this dissertation. Additionally, the researcher reviewed the impact of having lived in low-income environments had on school counselors’ beliefs of poverty attribution. Lastly, the impact graduating from a CACREP accredited program had on poverty attribution was explored. Results, implications, and limitations are addressed.

The Emergent Matter Of Archives : A Rhetorical Investigation Of The Queer Formation Of The Williams-Nichols Archive., Richard Wysocki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly conversations across disciplines have asked researchers to consider archive as a site of power—often framed in terms of archives’ potential impact on history and practices of knowledge making more generally. This dissertation contributes to such conversations as they relate to queer archives and material rhetoric, exploring the Williams-Nichols Archive, an LGBTQ archive housed at the University of Louisville. I extend interdisciplinary scholarship to argue for approaching archives as rhetorical emergences rather than as containers or locations for discovery, a perspective that foregrounds the archive and archival practices as the subject of research. Drawing on archival research and oral history …

Marginal Staining Between Pressed Lithium Disilicate Ceramic Crowns And Direct Restorative Materials By Various Fluids : A Microleakage Study., Sarah Ann Jestel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When treating patients with existing restorations in which indirect restoration placement is indicated and crown lengthening surgery is contraindicated, dentists may choose to finish the crown margin on an existing restoration. The interface between the two dental restorations (resin composite and ceramic crown) may be more susceptible to microleakage and fluid staining, reducing restoration longevity. In this study, 80 extracted molars received indirect restoration margins finished on different direct restorative materials (resin-modified glass ionomer and conventional, flowable, and bulk fill nano-hybrid resin composite) and subjected to common staining fluids of coffee, tea, red wine, or Coca-Cola. If the clinician must …

Balancing Exploration, Exploitation, And Efficiency : A Framework Of Entrepreneurial Learning., Shaun Paul Digan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurial learning (EL), defined as “learning in the entrepreneurial process through which individuals acquire new knowledge, either vicariously or from direct experience, which has the potential to change the range of entrepreneurial actions”, is a key construct in the pursuit and development of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the field of entrepreneurship has yet to produce a theory of learning explaining under what conditions individuals engage in differing types of entrepreneurial learning. Further, the limited research within this line of inquiry is diverse and disconnected. In this research, I attempt to advance the literature on organizational and entrepreneurial learning through the examination …

Innovation And Equity In Public Health Research : Testing Arts-Based Methods For Trauma-Informed, Culturally-Responsive Inquiry., Tasha Golden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the field of Public Health has shifted from a biomedical paradigm to a social ecological approach, focusing on health equity and social determinants of health, it has increasingly acknowledged the roles of culture and trauma in health outcomes. The field has responded by modifying some research practices, but continues to prioritize conventional methodologies—with few options designed to foreground trauma- and cultural-responsiveness. Unfortunately, to the extent that conventional approaches require health to be defined, communicated, or valued according to dominant norms, they risk perpetuating inequities. Health equity therefore requires the development of research methodologies that increase inclusivity and access, elicit …

Student Perceptions And Persistence : Taking A Person-Centered Approach To Understand Undergraduate Engineering Retention., Brittany Flanery Crawford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many students are leaving their engineering programs as early as the first semester of their undergraduate studies. Although some of the factors related to engineering retention are largely academic, others are tied closely to students’ beliefs or perceptions. Student perceptions data are useful, but often overlooked by researchers who wish to take a person-centered approach to uncover profiles of student beliefs, both adaptive and maladaptive, when it comes to understanding engineering retention. The sample consisted of full-time undergraduate engineering students (N = 834) in the first semester of their undergraduate engineering programs. I used latent transition analysis (LTA) to …

A Two-Stage Approach To Ridesharing Assignment And Auction In A Crowdsourcing Collaborative Transportation Platform., Peiyu Luo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collaborative transportation platforms have emerged as an innovative way for firms and individuals to meet their transportation needs through using services from external profit-seeking drivers. A number of collaborative transportation platforms (such as Uber, Lyft, and MyDHL) arise to facilitate such delivery requests in recent years. A particular collaborative transportation platform usually provides a two sided marketplace with one set of members (service seekers or passengers) posting tasks, and the another set of members (service providers or drivers) accepting on these tasks and providing services. As the collaborative transportation platform attracts more service seekers and providers, the number of open …

A Study On Ultrasonic Energy Assisted Metal Processing : Its Correeltion With Microstructure And Properties, And Its Application To Additive Manufacturing., Anagh Deshpande

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Additive manufacturing or 3d printing is the process of constructing a 3-dimensional object layer-by-layer. This additive approach to manufacturing has enabled fabrication of complex components directly from a computer model (or a CAD model). The process has now matured from its earlier version of being a rapid prototyping tool to a technology that can fabricate service-ready components. Development of low-cost polymer additive manufacturing printers enabled by open source Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printers and printers of other technologies like SLA and binder jetting has made polymer additive manufacturing accessible and affordable. But the metal additive manufacturing technologies are still expensive …

An Assessment Of Sustainability In Jefferson County Public Schools (Kentucky)., Elizabeth Ann Ruhe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Schools play a vital role in preparing the next generation of citizens to be active, engaged, creative thinkers and problem-solvers. Schools are also large institutions in their communities, employing many people and spending large sums of money. What happens in schools has an impact on their surrounding communities. Human behaviors are having a significant impact on our planet and changes in our society are affecting the sense of safety and security of our citizens. These are aspects of sustainability that schools need to begin addressing. This research looks at sustainability practices in a large urban school district to document current …

Receptive Fields Optimization In Deep Learning For Enhanced Interpretability, Diversity, And Resource Efficiency., Babajide Odunitan Ayinde

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In both supervised and unsupervised learning settings, deep neural networks (DNNs) are known to perform hierarchical and discriminative representation of data. They are capable of automatically extracting excellent hierarchy of features from raw data without the need for manual feature engineering. Over the past few years, the general trend has been that DNNs have grown deeper and larger, amounting to huge number of final parameters and highly nonlinear cascade of features, thus improving the flexibility and accuracy of resulting models. In order to account for the scale, diversity and the difficulty of data DNNs learn from, the architectural complexity and …

Segmentation And Classification Of Lung Nodules From Thoracic Ct Scans : Methods Based On Dictionary Learning And Deep Convolutional Neural Networks., Mohammad Mehdi Farhangi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in the world. Key to survival of patients is early diagnosis. Studies have demonstrated that screening high risk patients with Low-dose Computed Tomography (CT) is invaluable for reducing morbidity and mortality. Computer Aided Diagnosis (CADx) systems can assist radiologists and care providers in reading and analyzing lung CT images to segment, classify, and keep track of nodules for signs of cancer. In this thesis, we propose a CADx system for this purpose. To predict lung nodule malignancy, we propose a new deep learning framework that combines Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and …

Treatment Of Electric Utility Wastewaters By Sol-Gel Solidification And Stabilization, Alex Kearns

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To meet the demands of new regulations on coal-fired power plants, many treatment scenarios require a zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) approach. Two revisions to regulations in 2015, the Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) and Coal Combustion Residuals (CCRs) rule, drastically changed the treatment approach for managing effluents at coal-fired plants. In some scenarios, coal-fired plants retired early deeming the capital cost for maintaining compliance too expensive. Traditionally, stabilization/solidification (S/S) ZLD technologies have fallen in two categories: cementitious and vitrification. However, neither approach offers the ideal solution for coal-fired power plants needing ZLD by S/S methods. In what follows, a novel sol-gel encapsulation …

Investigation Of Flexural Behavior Of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete And Steel Fiber Orientation Control During Construction, Maria Kolisnichenko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world, and its consumption has been increasing. The main benefits of concrete include its durability, availability of the components, and great strength in compression. Despite all these advantages, however, concrete is a brittle material with a relatively low tensile strength and deformation capacity. It is, therefore, vulnerable to cracking under tension, which can lead to sudden catastrophic failures of concrete structures. In order to control and reduce cracking, reinforcement of concrete is necessary.

The most commonly used reinforcement technique in structural application is the use of deformed steel bars. However, …

Multimodal Emotion Classification, Anurag Illendula, Amit Sheth

Publications

Most NLP and Computer Vision tasks are limited to scarcity of labelled data. In social media emotion classification and other related tasks, hashtags have been used as indicators to label data. With the rapid increase in emoji usage of social media, emojis are used as an additional feature for major social NLP tasks. However, this is less explored in case of multimedia posts on social media where posts are composed of both image and text. At the same time, w.e have seen a surge in the interest to incorporate domain knowledge to improve machine understanding of text. In this paper, …

Knowledge-Aware Assessment Of Severity Of Suicide Risk For Early Intervention, Manas Gaur, Amanuel Alambo, Joy Prakash Sain, Ugur Kursuncu, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Ramakanth Kavuluru, Amit Sheth, Randon S. Welton, Jyotishman Pathak

Publications

Mental health illness such as depression is a significant risk factor for suicide ideation, behaviors, and attempts. A report by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) shows that 80% of the patients suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have suicidal behavior, 5-10% of whom commit suicide. While multiple initiatives have been developed and implemented for suicide prevention, a key challenge has been the social stigma associated with mental disorders, which deters patients from seeking help or sharing their experiences directly with others including clinicians. This is particularly true for teenagers and younger adults where suicide is the second …

Development Of Robust Control Laws For Disturbance Rejection In Rotorcraft Uavs, Johannes Verberne

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Inherent stability inside the flight envelope must be guaranteed in order to safely introduce private and commercial UAV systems into the national airspace. The rejection of unknown external wind disturbances offers a challenging task due to the limited available information about the unpredictable and turbulent characteristics of the wind. This thesis focuses on the design, development and implementation of robust control algorithms for disturbance rejection in rotorcraft UAVs. The main focus is the rejection of external disturbances caused by wind influences. Four control algorithms are developed in an effort to mitigate wind effects: baseline nonlinear dynamic inversion (NLDI), a wind …

Cfd Study Of Taylor-Like Vortices In Swirling Flows, Sattar Panahandehgar

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Swirling flows are complex fluid motions that appear in various natural phenomena and man-made devices. Numerous engineering applications such as turbomachinery, jet engine combustion chambers, mixing tanks and industrial burners involve swirling flows. This wide range of applications is due to unique characteristics offered by swirling flows such as increase in mixing rate, heat transfer rate and wall shear stress. In this study the axisymmetric swirling flow behavior in the context of a hybrid rocket engine have been analyzed. While modeling the flow inside a cylindrical chamber using CFD, a similarity with the Taylor vortices instability has been observed. Similar …

Covering Shock Wave Induced Interfacial Mixing: Numerical Study And A Control Primer, Erik S. Proaño

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This document is aiming toward deepening the understanding of the phenomena of mixing and the effect of the initial conditions in the cylindrical & spherical Richtmyer-Meshkov and Rayleigh-Taylor Instabilities. This work is focused on identifying the most energetic structures of the ow in order to define a reduced order model intended for modeling the evolution of the mixing layer after reshocking the density interface. Initially, Simulations are implemented for the two dimensional case of a cylindrical shock wave convergently approaching an initially wave-like perturbed density discontinuity formed by a target of Sulfur Hexauoride immersed into unshocked air with Atwood number …

Hypervelocity Impact Analysis Of Hybrid Nanocomposite Sensors For Inflatable Space Structures, Yachna Gola

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Future space exploration requires easy-to-transport, and easy-to-build and deploy space habitats. NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have collaborated so that human habitation can be made safe and easy with inflatable space habitats (Litteken, 2017). One of the biggest threats faced by these structures in outer space is impact damage by micrometeoroid orbital debris (MMOD) traveling at velocities as high as 15 km/s (Lemmens, Krag, Rosebrock, & Carnelli, 2013). This work presents fabrication and testing of hybrid nanocomposites with carbon nanotubes (CNT) and coarse graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) as fillers and flexible epoxy matrix, that are proposed to be used for sensing the …

Space Image Processing And Orbit Estimation Using Small Aperture Optical Systems, David Zuehlke

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Angles-only initial orbit determination (AIOD) methods have been used to find the orbit of satellites since the beginning of the Space Race. Given the ever increasing number of objects in orbit today, the need for accurate space situational awareness (SSA) data has never been greater. Small aperture (< 0:5m) optical systems, increasingly popular in both amateur and professional circles, provide an inexpensive source of such data. However, utilizing these types of systems requires understanding their limits. This research uses a combination of image processing techniques and orbit estimation algorithms to evaluate the limits and improve the resulting orbit solution obtained using small aperture systems. Characterization of noise from physical, electronic, and digital sources leads to a better understanding of reducing noise in the images used to provide the best solution possible. Given multiple measurements, choosing the best images for use is a non-trivial process and often results in trying all combinations. In an effort to help autonomize the process, a novel “observability metric” using only information from the captured images was shown empirically as a method of choosing the best observations. A method of identifying resident space objects (RSOs) in a single image using a gradient based search algorithm was developed and tested on actual space imagery captured with a small aperture optical system. The algorithm was shown to correctly identify candidate RSOs in a variety of observational scenarios.

Applying Generative Adversarial Networks To Intelligent Subsurface Imaging And Identification, William Rice

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

To augment training data for machine learning models in Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) data classification and identification, this thesis focuses on the generation of realistic GPR data using Generative Adversarial Networks. An innovative GAN ar- chitecture is proposed for generating GPR B-scans, which is, to the author’s knowledge, the first successful application of GAN to GPR B-scans. As one of the major contri- butions, a novel loss function is formulated by merging frequency domain with time domain features. To test the efficacy of generated B-scans, a real time object classifier is proposed to measure the performance gain derived from augmented …

The Eternal Detective : Poe’S Creative And Resolvent Duality In The Hardboiled Era, Michael Cresci

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper traces the continuity of Edgar Allan Poe’s archetypal “creative and resolvent” detective from the nineteenth century’s classical detective fiction into the twentieth century’s hardboiled detective fiction. Specifically, this paper asserts that the duality first suggested by Poe in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) did not only define classical era detectives, but it also persisted into the radically different hardboiled era of American detective fiction. First, this paper examines the cultural contexts of each era and establishes the shared links between the resolvent—or analytical—traits and creative—or abstract and Romantic—traits of classical era detectives C. Auguste Dupin and …