Digital Commons Network^™

Study Of The Effects Of Silver Ions And Silver Nanoparticles On Embryonic Development, Martha Sharisha Johnson

Biomedical Sciences Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the study of the toxicity of metal nanoparticles (NPs) and their ions on the development of zebrafish embryos, aiming to understand unique biological effects of NPs and ions, and design new in vivo assays to characterize the toxicity of these metal NPs and metal ions. Currently, the underlying molecular mechanisms of biological effects of nanomaterials are partially understood. Some studies assume that the toxic effects of NPs can be attributed to the release of their ions. We investigate the effects of silver NPs (Ag NPs) and silver ions (Ag+ ions) on the embryonic development of zebrafish …

Measuring And Modeling Bare Desert Wind Erosion From Steppe Grassland Of Northern China As Affected By Soil Moisture And Climate, Nicholas Morgan Potter

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Soil erosion by wind has been found to be negatively related to soil water content, as evidenced by that for a given area, such a soil erosion can be much less in a wet than a dry year. However, few studies have examined the functional relationship between wind erosion and soil moisture, primarily due to lack of field measured data. The objectives of this study were to: 1) measure wind erosion in field using a portable wind tunnel devised and made by the author; 2) use the measured data to calibrate/validate a wind erosion model previously developed by the author; …

A Utility Framework For Selecting Immersive Interactive Capability And Technology For Virtual Laboratories, Shuo Ren

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

There has been an increase in the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in the education community since VR is emerging as a potent educational tool that offers students with a rich source of educational material and makes learning exciting and interactive. With a rise of popularity and market expansion in VR technology in the past few years, a variety of consumer VR electronics have boosted educators and researchers’ interest in using these devices for practicing engineering and science laboratory experiments. However, little is known about how such devices may be well-suited for active learning in a laboratory environment. This …

Examining The Relationship Between Expectancy-Value Motivation, Barriers, And Physical Activity Engagement Among Adults With Visual Impairments, Tiffany Nicole Kirk

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

Despite the documented benefits associated with physical activity, adults with visual impairments tend to participate in insufficient physical activity for health promotion. Current literature suggests that barriers to physical activity, or factors that constrain participation in physical activity, may inform the physical activity participation of adults with visual impairments. The purpose of the first study was to develop and validate a brief scale designed to measure the magnitude of barriers to physical activity for use among adults with visual impairments. Expectancy-value theory may offer insight into physical activity by examining adults with visual impairments’ expectancy beliefs and subjective task values …

Sugartown, Emma Moore

English Theses & Dissertations

Ren Baggarly, the seventeen year old foster daughter of a local minister and his wife, goes missing the day of her boyfriend’s high school graduation. Sugartown is an examination of a small, strange, sometimes spiteful Southern town and its demons. It is told through the eyes of the three women who are inadvertently charged with piecing together the story Ren left behind.

Design And Manufacture Of An Inertial Cascade Impactor For Industrial Hygiene Purposes, Hector Joel Gortaire

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Inertial cascade impactors are devices commonly used for industrial hygiene and pharmaceutical studies. Their main purpose is to separate particulate matter suspended in aerosols according to their sizes, which can vary from over 10 µm to 0.5 µm. Their versatility and ease of operation make them suitable for on-site sampling; however, designing them requires a careful consideration of the different geometric parameters that characterize them.

In this thesis, a 5-stage inertial cascade impactor was designed, modelled, constructed, and tested. The main design parameter was the volumetric flow rate, 40 l/min, which was provided by a vacuum pump. By continuous iterations, …

Smart Solutions To Control Air Pollution In Dubai - Al Qouz Area, Anwar Alshamsi, Lateefa Almarzooqi

Theses

Air pollution is a major concern, both in industrial and developing countries. Measuring and monitoring air pollution is mandatory to have a smart and clean environment. By the recent developed technology such as Internet of Things (IoT), levels of poisonous gases (GHG) are measured and controlled, which will help in having healthier atmosphere and help people whose life are endangered from living near polluted areas. The project proposes to use smart sensors to sense and measure the percentage of polluted gases like CO, CO2, SO2 and NO2. Since Dubai aims to achieve the best results of having the least effect …

Creating A Safer Running Experience: Reducing Runner And Vehicular Traffic Incidents, Chad A. Cooper

Theses

A routine run can turn into a final run in a matter of seconds. Runners and drivers are exposed to a variety of distractions that hinder their ability to safely react to potential incidents. With the help of Augmented Reality and wearable technology, runners can help reduce traffic related incidents by staying focused on the road and their surroundings. This project looks to investigate how AR technology can be leveraged to offer the safest run without diminishing the running user-experience.

Improving Developer Profiling And Ranking To Enhance Bug Report Assignment, Andrew Distasi

Theses

Bug assignment plays a critical role in the bug fixing process. However, bug assignment can be a burden for projects receiving a large number of bug reports. If a bug is assigned to a developer who lacks sufficient expertise to appropriately address it, the software project can be adversely impacted in terms of quality, developer hours, and aggregate cost. An automated strategy that provides a list of developers ranked by suitability based on their development history and the development history of the project can help teams more quickly and more accurately identify the appropriate developer for a bug report, potentially …

Re-Imagining Downtown Rochester Creation Of An Equitable Urban Master Plan, Douglas Templeton

Theses

Downtown Rochester, New York has seen a renewed interest in the past decade. However, most of that interest and reinvestment has occurred within the eastern half of the downtown area. The western half, which is roughly bordered by the Genesee River to the east and Interstate 490 and the Inner Loop to the west, has only been lightly touched by developers. Most new building projects tend to center around creating residential apartments, many of which have price points that may exclude many populations in Rochester.

Additionally, street networks and connections tend to reinforce usage of private automobiles and dissuade the …

Tva: A Requirements Driven, Machine-Learning Approach For Addressing Tactic Volatility In Self-Adaptive Systems, Jeffrey Palmerino

Theses

From self-driving cars to self-adaptive websites, the world is increasingly becoming more reliant on autonomous systems. Similar to many other domains, the system's behavior is often determined by its requirements. For example, a self-adaptive web service is likely to have some maximum value that response time should not surpass. To maintain this requirement, the system uses tactics, which may include activating additional computing resources. In real-world environments, tactics will frequently experience volatility, known as tactic volatility. This can include unstable time required to execute the tactic or frequent fluctuations in the cost to execute the tactic. Unfortunately, current self-adaptive approaches …

Atomistic Simulation For Transition Metal Dichalcogenides Using Nemo5 And Medea-Vasp, Udita Kapoor

Theses

This thesis is an attempt to understand and delve into the realm of atomistic simulations, using it to understand a novel set of materials called Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs). We use NEMO5 and MedeA-VASP to calibrate and characterize a few selected TMDs and to validate our understanding of atomistic modeling we simulated a tunnel field-effect transistor with monolayer TMD as a channel using NEMO5. TFETs offer great advantages over MOSFET (metal oxide field-effect devices) like, sub-60 mV/dec sub-threshold swing, minimal leakage current, high switching speed, and small power requirements. Low drive current has prevented TFETs from becoming a mainstream device …

Improving Energy Efficiency Performance Of Existing Residential Building In Northern China, Zhengyu Kang

Theses

China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s largest consumer of energy. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD)’s latest data shows that China’s building sector accounts for around one-third of its final energy consumption (MOHURD, 2016). Particularly in northern China, the cold climate exerts pressure on its central heating system, which is responsible for a total energy consumption of about four hundred million tons of standard coal equivalent (TCE) (National Development and Reform Commission, 2017). Due to the growing population, economic development, and increasing standards of living, China expects that building energy use will escalate in the coming …

Performance And Durability Of High-Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells Operated On Propane Reformate, Yang Yue

Theses

As supplies of petroleum and natural gas are constrained in many regions, and the emissions associated with fossil fuel combustion appear to be strongly connected to climate change, the development of renewable energy systems has become one of the urgent research directions. Fuel cells, with extremely low CO2 emissions, high energy density, efficiency and reliability, are now being considered as one of the most important alternatives to fossil fuel-based energy systems. In the field of new power sources for automotive, portable and residential applications, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have gained more attention in the last decade due to …

Segmentation And Classification Of Multimodal Imagery, Sankaranarayanan Piramanayagam

Theses

Segmentation and classification are two important computer vision tasks that transform input data into a compact representation that allow fast and efficient analysis. Several challenges exist in generating accurate segmentation or classification results. In a video, for example, objects often change the appearance and are partially occluded, making it difficult to delineate the object from its surroundings. This thesis proposes video segmentation and aerial image classification algorithms to address some of the problems and provide accurate results.

We developed a gradient driven three-dimensional segmentation technique that partitions a video into spatiotemporal objects. The algorithm utilizes the local gradient computed at …

Utilizing Mobile Technology To Improve Accessibility For Museum Visitors With Autism, Felicia Dianne Swartzenberg

Theses

What if museums could provide an app that makes interaction easier for visitors with autism and allows them to enjoy the museum any day of the week like their neurotypical counterparts? This research discusses how museums can utilize downloadable apps for personal devices to provide easily accessible resources for children on the autism spectrum and their families to use so they can have a more inclusive and sensory-friendly museum experience. To determine the feasibility of this, I worked in collaboration with an app developer, Peter Laurin, to create a prototype-app called SenseEase: Strong Museum for the Reading Adventure Land exhibit …

The Role Of 3d Printed Facsimiles In Fulfilling Museum Visitors’ Desire To Touch, Elizabeth Carr

Theses

By nature, humans have a desire to touch the things they encounter in daily life. Museums are no exception to this desire, even though museum objects are rarely available for visitor handling. This thesis explores the question: “can accurate 3D printed facsimiles help fulfill the desire of visitors to touch museum objects?” For this project and case study, I selected, and 3D scanned a museum object, which was then recreated via 3D printing. The reproduction was then put on display alongside the original object, and a visitor study was conducted to see if interacting with the facsimile while seeing the …

Effects Of Ink, Substrate, And Target Line Width On The Quality Of Lines Printed Using A Dmp 3000 Inkjet Printer, Mihir R. Choudhari

Theses

This thesis is concerned with the image quality analysis of inkjet lines printed on substrates. ISO 24790 compliant lines are designed and printed on a substrate with a drop-on-demand inkjet printer. This study analyzes three print quality attributes of line: width, blurriness, and raggedness.

The research used cyan, magnetic and standard inks to print the same design on various substrates having differences in gloss and texture. The chosen inks were measured using a rheometer to determine a viscosity range. The effects of substrate structural parameters, such as texture, finishing, weight, and ink type on line quality, are discussed. The printed …

A Novel Processing-In-Memory Architecture For Dense And Sparse Matrix Multiplications, Andrew Robert Bear

Theses

Modern processing speeds in conventional Von Neumann architectures are severely limited by memory access speeds. Read and write speeds of main memory have not scaled at the same rate as logic circuits. In addition, the large physical distance spanned by the interconnect between the processor and the memory incurs a large RC delay and power penalty, often a hundred times more than on chip interconnects. As a result, accessing data from memory becomes a bottleneck in the overall performance of the processor. Operations such as matrix multiplication, which are used extensively in many modern applications such as solving systems of …

Behind The Door, Pengxu Cheng

Theses

Behind the Door is a three-minute, nineteen-second 2D animation film. This story is about three rabbits, a hunter and a wolf and is told in two segments. The first segment of the film tells a linear story of a hunter who hunts rabbits, but fails continuously. The second segment of the film is told from the angle of the rabbits and a wolf. The wolf wants to hunt the rabbits, but also fails to catch them. The hunter also hunts the wolf, but the wolf outsmarts him. Although the rabbits are small and vulnerable animals, in this story they work …

An Authentication Mechanism For Stateless Communication, Ana Valentina Rodriguez Sosa

Theses

Most of the applications we use on a daily basis are distributed systems that are composed of at least one client and server and are exposed to the Internet. This communication is based on an HTTP protocol, which is a stateless protocol. Because of its communication characteristics, developers are forced to implement a series of mechanisms to pursue user privacy, security as well as business features.

Modern social media applications such as Facebook have been using secure tokens as an authentication mechanism. These applications are relying on only one part of the approach, such as token mechanism generation. If the …

Enhanced Mppt Controllers For Smart Grid Applications, Mohamed Khallaf

Theses

Over the past years, the energy demand has been steadily growing and so methods of how to cope with this staggering increase are being researched and utilized. One method of injecting more energy to the grid is renewable energy, which has become in recent years an integral part of any country’s power generation plan. Thus, it is a necessity to enhance renewable energy resources and maximize their grid utilization, so that these resources can step up and reduce the over dependency of global energy production on depleting energy resources.

This thesis focuses on solar power and effective means to enhance …

Urban Infill – Revitalize Downtown Almaty, Kazakhstan, Madi Zhunussov

Theses

This design proposal would provide a solution for a specific area of downtown Almaty, Kazakhstan and is based on research and analysis of city information, as well as on the author’s own experiences that were gathered onsite.

Almaty is very car-dependent; the city contains 1.8 million people and sprawls across an area of 263 square miles. Low-height structures to accommodate seismic activity, long travelling distances, wide roads, and vehicular parking chaos can be observed within the city center of Almaty. Having similar population – Munich, Germany and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA were compared to Almaty, where Floor Area Ratio (FAR) showed …

Structural Studies Of Dna Repeats Implicated In Cancer, Deondre Jordan , '19

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

DNA replication is an essential process for the survival of all organisms. Errors can occur during the process that leads to replication stress, which can promote genomic instability, a hallmark of cancer. The Brown lab conducted a genome wide study to identify sites and sequences linked to replication stress. Tandem DNA repeats comprised the sequences identified in this study. One particular DNA repeat (CAGAGG)ₙ stood out due to being highly associated with replication stress. Repeats such as (CAGAGG)ₙ are believed to fold into fold into intramolecular structures that physically block DNA polymerase during replication. Understanding the structures of these problematic …

Diastereoselective Cyclizations Of Enantiopure Planar Chiral N-Oxazolidinoyl Diene Iron(0) Tricarbonyl Complexes, Colin C. Howell , '19

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

Iron(0) tricarbonyl diene complexes have long been established as effective stereodirecting groups due to their planar chirality and the steric bulk of the iron fragment. If initial diastereoselective complexation can be achieved, these molecules are therefore capable of acting as scaffolds for the stereoselective synthesis of architecturally complex products. The Paley laboratory uses chiral auxiliaries, most recently oxazolidinones, bound to acyclic dienes to assure diastereoselective complexation, before exploring the potential of diverse diastereomeric chemistry on the diene periphery. In this work we report progress on the development of an asymmetric, intramolecular rhodium(II)-catalyzed C-H insertion adjacent to the diene to form …

Securities Disclosure As Soundbite: The Case Of Ceo Pay Ratios, Steven A. Bank, George S. Georgiev

Articles

This Article analyzes the history, design, and effectiveness of the highly controversial CEO pay ratio disclosure rule, which went into effect in 2018. Based on a regulatory mandate contained in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the rule requires public companies to disclose the ratio between CEO pay and median worker pay as part of their annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The seven-year rulemaking process was politically contentious and generated a level of public engagement that was virtually unprecedented in the long history of the SEC disclosure regime. The SEC sought to minimize compliance costs by providing …

Pharmaceutical Industry Support Of U.S. Patient Advocacy Organizations: An International Context, So Yeon Kang, Ge Bai, Laura Karas, Gerard F. Anderson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Preface To Volume 10, Issue 2, Peter A. Carfagna

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Correlational Study Of Preadmission And Early Program Predictors Of Physician Assistant Certification Exam Scores, Jennifer Pack

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

As the physician assistant profession continues to grow, the number of physician assistant programs and the number of applicants to these programs are increasing dramatically. Programs should be diligent to choose students who are likely to be successful in the program and on passing the Physician Assistant National Certification Exam. In addition to selection processes that consider preadmission criteria, programs should also have processes in place to identify students at risk of failure to allow time to implement remediation plans. This study employed a correlational research design, attempting to demonstrate a predictive relationship between the predictor variables, undergraduate science GPA, …

A Content Analysis Of Disability Due Process Cases In Missouri From 2008-2018, Monica Erica Barnes

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Students with disabilities are significant members of the American population; consequently, provisions for their inclusion in the learning community as outlined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are relevant. The purpose of the study was to track disability trends in due process cases from 2008-2018 in Missouri for students in public schools from grades K-12. The researcher undertook a descriptive content analysis of archived data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Descriptive data collected for each case included the date of the case, the district case number, the age, gender, grade level, disability, and brief …