Investigating Consistency Of Landscape-Scale Green Infrastructure In Local Government Policy, Anna Wilson

All Theses

Planning for Climate Change is multifaceted and requires effort across all scales. Green Infrastructure networks of green spaces, natural lands, reserves, working lands, core habitat, riparian corridors, parks, open spaces, private conservations lands, and other complementary land uses work together to support life on earth and human existence through the ecosystem services provided. Clean air, clean water, carbon sequestration, food production, recreation, pollination, and spiritual and cultural benefits are only a few of the services that natural lands provide society. With climate change occurring due to human actions such as land use, development, and energy use, to name a few, …

An Investigation Of How Lighting And Rendering Technology Affects Filmmaking Relative To Arnold’S Transition To A Gpu-Based Path-Tracer, Mohammad Saffar

All Theses

Computer Graphic (CGI) technology enables artists to explore a broad spectrum of

approaches and styles, from photorealistic to abstract, expanding the boundaries of traditional aesthetic choices.

Recent years have witnessed of 3D-CGI production shift towards greater physical fidelity driven by technological developments as well as consumer demand for realistic visuals; this trend can be found across various creative fields like film, video games, and virtual reality experiences with high-quality textures, lighting, rendering, and physics simulations providing enhanced levels of immersion for users.

Arnold is one of the famous rendering engines assisting artists to be more creative while producing photorealistic images. …

Examining Pedestrian Accessibility To Opportunities In Four New Deal Villages, Maral Shemirani

All Theses

This study focuses on accessibility as an essential performance factor in city planning and urban development. The automobile-oriented designs that characterize and organize most modern United States cities, since the 1950s, have degraded pedestrian mobility and accessibility, causing people to be largely dependent on cars rather than walk, bike, and/or use public transit to reach essential and complementary daily destinations. This pervasive condition not only hinders community and sense of place, but also negatively affects people’s health and environment. We as planners should not forget that cities should be designed to serve people rather than cars. The more our …

Quantum Artificial Intelligence Supported Autonomous Truck Platooning, Pronab Kumar Biswas

All Theses

Truck platooning can potentially increase the operational efficiency of freight movement on U.S. corridors, improving commercial productivity and economic vibrancy. Predicting each leader vehicle trajectory in the autonomous truck platoon using Artificial Intelligence (AI) can enhance platoon efficiency and safety. Reliance on classical AI may not be efficient for this purpose as it will increase the computational burden for each truck in the platoon. However, Quantum Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used in this scenario to enhance learning efficiency, learning capacity, and run-time improvements. This study developed and evaluated a Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTM) model and a hybrid quantum-classical …

Visualizing Project Life-Cycle Data In A Hybrid Dashboard For Federal Capital Projects, Prajakta Bapat

All Theses

Capital project owners face several challenges in extracting meaningful information from large and complex data sets generated throughout the life cycle of a construction project. Capital projects must strike a balance between intuition-driven and data-driven decision-making due to their sensitive and change-averse nature. The main objective of this study is to improve the structure, clarity, and interpretation of the construction data, and enhance the decision-making processes for federal capital projects. To achieve this goal, this study developed a hybrid dashboard tailored to the federal agencies’ requirements of performance assessment. This study is a sub-section of broader research – the Federal …

An Economic Perspective On Self-Reported Happiness In Taiwan, Shih Yu Sung

All Theses

Happiness research has become a topic of interest in recent years. The OECD's "Better Life Index," the U.N.'s "World Happiness Report," and Taiwan's "National Happiness Indicator" are examples of initiatives to understand better and evaluate the well-being of people. After the well-known "Easterlin Paradox" was proposed, more and more economists started researching the economics of happiness. Economists studied the relationship between reported happiness and income and the relationship between reported happiness and socioeconomic factors and demographic factors. In this study, I use data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey of 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015 to analyze potential factors …

Design And Data-Driven Identification Of A Quadruped Robot, Dakota Rufino

All Theses

The existence of nonlinearities and the lack of sufficient equations are fundamental challenges in modeling, analyzing, and controlling complex systems. However, recent developments revolutionizing the study of dynamical systems. An emerging method in nonlinear dynamical systems is the Koopman operator theory, which provides us with key advantages in performing the modeling, prediction, and control of nonlinear systems. The linear system representation allows us to leverage linear stability analysis. The first section of this thesis briefly covers the construction of a quadrupedal robot, a sufficiently complex nonlinear dynamical system, for the use of analyzing data-driven modeling techniques. The second section details …

Management Of Nematodes Associated With Tobacco And Sweet Potato Using Non-Fumigant Approach, Md Shah Alam

All Theses

Tobacco and sweet potato are attacked by several species of plant-parasitic nematodes leading to substantial yield losses. Because host-plant resistance is lacking in commercial cultivars and other common methods of nematode management either have low efficacy or pose adverse effects to the environment, controlled environment studies were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of non-fumigant chemical and biological nematicides against Meloidogyne enterolobii on tobacco and Rotylenchulus reniformis on sweet potato. Results suggest that fluensulfone was the most effective in suppressing M. enterolobii in tobacco, followed by oxamyl and fluopyram. The biological Burkholderia derived biological nematicide did not suppress the nematode population. …

Force Coefficients And Wind Loads For Wide Flange Section And Retrofitted Pipe Racks, Sovanroth Ou

All Theses

While relatively rare, the failures of steel structures occasionally occur due to extreme wind events such as hurricanes and tornadoes. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) provides well-defined guidelines for determining wind loads for regular buildings; nonetheless, the actual wind loads for complex open-frame steel structures are not as clearly understood by practicing engineers. Pipe bridges and pipe racks are open-frame structures, commonly used in many petrochemical plants. Over the years, additional pipes are often added to existing pipe racks or pipe bridges to accommodate changes in the operation needs of the petrochemical plant. The objectives of this study …

An Investigation Into The Origin And Molecular Mechanism Of Species-Specific Craniofacial Sexual Dimorphism In Lake Malawi Cichlids, Ashleigh Brandon

All Theses

Explaining the underlying source that generates the phenotypic diversity ubiquitous in nature has been a major goal of biologists since the time of Darwin. In addition to the phenotypic variation that exists between different species, another potent source of morphological diversity is found within a species, in the form of phenotypic differences that are specific to males and females, termed sexual dimorphism. The largest craniofacial bone, the mandible, exhibits such extreme sexual dimorphism that it may be used to forensically determine sex. This dimorphism occurs in most of the craniofacial complex and contributes to sex-biased disease frequencies, such as a …

Procedural City Generation With Combined Architectures For Real-Time Visualization, Griffin Poyck

All Theses

The work and research of this paper sought to build upon traditional city generation and simulation in creating a tool that both realistically simulates cities and their prominent features and also creates aesthetic and artistically rich cities using assets that combine several contemporary or near contemporary architectural styles. The major city features simulated are the surrounding terrain, road networks, individual buildings, and building placement. The tools used to both create and integrate these features were created in Houdini with Unreal Engine 5 as the intended final destination. This research was influenced by the city, town, and road networking of Ghost …

Network Effects Of Emergency Department Clinician Strain And Patient Congestion, Aisha Nelson

All Theses

We develop a discrete-event simulation model to study how staffing strain affects patient outcomes across a network of Emergency Departments (EDs). The aim is to observe how clinician staffing and transfers throughout the system affect the system’s behavior. We will study the network of the seven EDs in the Prisma Health-Upstate system. Patient acuity and resource need are stratified using the five-level Emergency Severity Index (ESI). Patient flow data within and between EDs are collected from EPIC, staffing data from ShiftAdmin, and environmental COVID-19 prevalence data from the Department of Health and Environmental Control. Time periods include the Omicron wave …

An Agricultural Literacy Assessment Of Social Studies Teachers In South Carolina, Walker Reid

All Theses

Studies in the career development of youth identify middle school as the optimum time for career exploration, as it advances young adolescents’ self-awareness, knowledge of prospective careers, and goal setting. In South Carolina (SC), only 5% (13 of 248) of public middle schools provide agricultural education. The purpose of this study is to measure any increase in agricultural awareness and literacy of South Carolina 8^th-grade social studies teachers participating in a five-day study tour (SOCIAL tour) through mixed method procedures. A pre and post-tour survey given to participants indicated a significant increase in knowledge and perception of agriculture …

Was Jesus Christ Born A Jew Or Not? Luther And Protestant Anti-Judaism In Nazi Germany, Darian Sullivan

All Theses

Martin Luther’s role as the founder of German Protestantism placed him in a position where he was the hero for two opposing factions that formed within the German Evangelical Church in the wake of the Nazi party’s rise to power in 1933. The two factions were the pro-Nazi German Christians and the anti-Nazi Confessing Church. The two sides appealed to different aspects of Luther’s theology to defend their beliefs. Martin Luther’s theology, particularly his anti-Judaic beliefs was a crucial issue for the divided Protestant Church. Luther’s writings are crucial for determining how influential he was for both groups.

Nutrient Dynamics In Restored And Unrestored Urban Streams: A Study In The Southern Piedmont Ecoregion Of South Carolina, Emily Jordan

All Theses

The United States invests billions of dollars annually to perform stream restoration projects, yet few studies have investigated the effects ecological manipulation has on nutrient cycling and associated water quality. Water quality improvement remains a substantial motivation for mitigating catchment scale disturbances, especially in urban streams. Various land use practices impact the transfer and transport of nutrients such as ammonium (NH₄-N), nitrate plus nitrite (NO₃-N + NO₂-N) and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) from land into the flowing waters of a watershed. The uptake length (S_w), or the distance (m) a dissolved nutrient …

A Systematic Review Of Research On Treatment & Prevention Of The Neglected Tropical Disease Leishmaniasis, Aryn Akerberg

All Theses

Leishmaniasis is a life-threatening neglected tropical disease that is caused by the protozoa parasite, Leishmania. Over one million new human leishmaniasis cases occur each all over the world, affecting most the deeply impoverished regions of the world. The disease presents in three different forms: cutaneous leishmaniasis, mucocutaneous (mucosal) leishmaniasis, and visceral leishmaniasis. Symptoms can range from self-limiting lesion to more life-threatening conditions such as fever, kidney disease, and anemia. The Leishmania parasite is transmitted via the bite of the female phlebotomine sandfly and can infect many other mammals such as canines, rodents, bats, etc. The canine leishmaniasis epidemic is also …

Winter Cover Crop Performance In The Southern Piedmont Region Of South Carolina, Payton Davis

All Theses

Cover crops (CC) offer in-field and environmental benefits when integrated into cropping systems. Low CC adoption in the southern Piedmont of South Carolina is partially due to the lack of information on CC performance and benefits within the region. To address this, eight winter CC and a fallow/pigweed treatment were investigated for their influence on soil temperature, volumetric water content (VWC), percent cover, biomass, and the occurrence of soil water repellency (SWR). A randomized complete block design experiment was conducted in the fall and winter of 2021-2022 (EXP A) and repeated in 2022-2023 (EXP B). Cover crops minimally influenced soil …

Evaluation Of Zero-Net-Rate Pumping Tests, Austin Smith-Jones

All Theses

Accurately estimating the distribution of aquifer properties is key to understanding contaminant movement in the subsurface. The distribution of aquifer properties is typically addressed using slug or constant-rate well tests, and the pros and cons of these tests are well known. Slug tests are appealing because they avoid removing contaminated water, but their results are affected by well skin and the small volume of displaced water limits the volume of aquifer that can be evaluated. Constant-rate well tests have the disadvantage of requiring disposal of potentially contaminated water, but they can generate properties that are more representative than slug tests, …

Systematic Literature Review Of Roof Systems On Energy Efficiency Of A Building To Support An Ideal Study Framework, Ayushi Raj Dua

All Theses

A sustainable building envelope is a crucial element to build energy efficient structures that contribute towards sustainable communities. The demand for sustainable building envelopes has grown in response to a growing emphasis on sustainable living. The roofing system is an important component of a sustainable building envelope because it influences the building's energy consumption and indoor comfort levels. The current study focuses on roofing systems and associated solar reflectance and albedo values to document the impact on energy efficiency via cooling/heating energy usage, dollar savings and temperature (ambient and surface) reductions due to the roofing systems. Additionally, the study focuses …

Comparing The Economic Efficiency Of Payment Structures To Subsidize On-Farm Greenhouse Gas Abatement In Iowa, David Mansfield

All Theses

Abating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the agricultural sector can help
combat climate change and meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agree-
ment. The agricultural sector can sequester soil organic carbon and, by adopt-
ing conservation-driven land-use decisions, such as reducing or stopping tillage,
increase carbon storage in soil and reduce nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions.
This thesis will compare the cost of achieving different levels of GHG emis-
sions reduction through payments based on: 1) region averages for GHG emis-
sions by crop and practice, without considering additionality, 2) region averages
for GHG emissions by crop and practice …

Mapping Information Flows That Support Adaptive Capacity In The Sterile Processing Department (Spd), Jacob Hionis

All Theses

The Sterile Processing Department (SPD) is the part of the hospital that is responsible for decontaminating, assembling, and sterilizing surgical trays for use in the Operating Rooms (ORs). Errors in the SPD can lead to delayed surgeries or patient harm. The SPD is a complex system, with multiple interconnected subdepartments and roles. Complex systems require coordination between stakeholders. This study aims to discover how an organization can adapt to scale, and how information flows support these adaptations. In this study, observations, semi-structured interviews, and on-the-job interviews were conducted with members across the SPD and OR to elicit pressures, adaptations, and …

Detection And Microhabitat Use Of The Cryptic Patch-Nosed Salamander (Urspelerpes Brucei) In Three Occupied Streams, Chelsea Anderson

All Theses

Patch-nosed Salamanders (Urspelerpes brucei) are tiny (25.76 ± 0.17 mm [SE] snout-vent length) plethodontids endemic to headwater streams in a small (29 km² at the time of our study) geographic region of northeast Georgia (GA) and northwest South Carolina (SC). Due to its secretive nature and recent discovery (2007), little is known about U. bruceihabitat, life history, or potential threats. Though environmental DNA (eDNA), aquatic leaf litter bags, and opportunistic active searches are successful detection techniques for U. brucei, and other factors influencing detection are unknown. Additionally, while occupied U. brucei streams have been characterized …

Hibernating Tricolored Bats At A Southeastern Recreation Site: Microsite Use And Public Perceptions, Rebecca Brown

All Theses

High bat mortality from white-nose syndrome (WNS) has increased the need to manage hibernation sites. Management decisions should be based on science, and when sites are accessible to the public, also need to consider human dimensions. We used Stumphouse Tunnel, a recreation site and tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) hibernaculum in northwestern South Carolina, as a case study to understand potential conflicts between conservation and recreation. The population declined by 90% after the arrival of white-nose syndrome (WNS), followed by stabilization and slight increases. Because the increase was associated with more bats roosting in the publicly accessible section, a potential …

Immediate Response Of Bats To Prescribed Fire And Impact Of Experiences On Women's Self-Image In Natural Resources Professions, Zebria Hicks

All Theses

To inform use of prescribed fire management practice in the southeastern US, we studied its impact on bats, which are important and at-risk species. We evaluated if prescribed fire had a positive, neutral, or negative effect on bat activity in the two weeks following the burns. We recorded bat activity after prescribed burns in February and March 2022 in northwestern South Carolina in select hardwood and pine stands and control sites ≥ 500 m from burn boundaries. We measured insect abundance, canopy cover, basal area, and understory density at each site. We recorded 687 passes during our 45-day study period. …

Universal Short-Circuit And Open-Circuit Fault Detection For An Inverter, Buck Brown

All Theses

Short-circuit and open-circuit faults of an inverter’s power device often lead to catastrophic failure of the entire system if not detected and acted upon within a few microseconds, particularly for emerging wide bandgap (WGB) power semiconductors. While a significant amount of research has been done on the fast and accurate protection and detection of short-circuit faults, there has been less success corresponding to the research on open-circuit faults. Common downfalls include protection and detection that are too application-specific, take longer than a couple of microseconds, and are not cost-efficient. This study proposes a new open-circuit fault protection and detection system …

The Effect Of Yearly Labor Earnings On Commute Time To Work In South Carolina, Peter Trela

All Theses

In this paper, I attempt to ascertain the effect of labor earnings on commute time to work for individuals in South Carolina by using ACS 1-year Public Use Microdata Sample Estimates. First, I use standard linear regression models with controls to determine the direction and magnitude of the association between yearly labor earnings and commute time to work. I later use standard linear regression models with limited controls to determine how the association between yearly labor earnings and commute time changes before and during the events of the COVID-19 pandemic. There exists a positive relationship between yearly labor earnings and …

Integrating Omim And Intact Data For The Analysis Of Gene-Phenotype Interactions In Complex Diseases: A Linux-Based Computational Tool For Network Analysis, Devin Keane

All Theses

The field of genetics is constantly evolving. New advances in bioinformatics and computational approaches are leading to exciting new developments in our ability to treat and prevent diseases. Computational genetics provides valuable insights into the complex mechanisms and layers of biological communication that shape an organism's phenotype. Understanding these mechanisms is critical to advancing human health.

The study of diseases in genetics requires a comprehensive understanding of the interactions between various biological processes, including gene expression, protein synthesis, RNA, metabolism, and cell-cell communication. To effectively address the root causes of such diseases, multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate information from different levels …

Disinfectant Efficacy Against Sars-Cov-2 Surrogates, Bovine Coronavirus And Human Coronavirus Oc43, On Hard And Soft Non-Porous Surfaces, Breanna Kimbrell

All Theses

The novel human coronavirus (HCoV), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged from Wuhan, China in the latter part of 2019. The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 amid the most recent COVID-19 pandemic forced countless foodservice establishments (FSEs) across the United States to close, taking a tremendous toll on the foodservice industry. Although primarily transmitted person-to-person, previous studies indicate that the duration of SARS-CoV-2 survival on different environmental surfaces provides adequate time for secondary transmission to occur. To prevent the further spread of SARS-CoV-2, effective disinfection of surfaces in FSEs is necessary. While disinfectants approved for use against SARS-CoV-2 are …

An Assessment Of Information And Education As A Factor Of Agricultural Development And Sustainability In South Carolina, George Strickland

All Theses

Across the Southeastern United States, producers in the agricultural industry wage a constant struggle between combating negative economic impacts and discovering economic opportunity. Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) represent a crisis with wide-ranging economic impacts. The management of HABs presents a critical challenge for addressing the level of knowledge (LOK) and adaptability of Extension agents. Conversely, the emergence of markets for local and organic produce represents a burgeoning economic opportunity for producers. The growing trend of including more kale in the everyday American diet demands an assessment of those opportunities for local producers.

To identify the WTP for organic and local …

The Modern Ncaa Landscape: An Analysis Of Early Implications And Trends For Ncaa Division 1 Fbs Football, Matthew Mcmahan

All Theses

Over the past few decades, NCAA Division 1-A FBS football has exploded in popularity and revenue generation. With recent TV rights deals for “Power Five” conferences inching into the yearly payout range of billions, the stakes have never been higher to compete and win at the highest level of collegiate football. Despite this growth in revenue and popularity, the NCAA football model and transfer rules remained largely stagnant until the rapid liberalization of its policies began in 2018. A more streamlined approach to the transfer process, reduced restrictions on eligibility requirements, and increased financial incentives for college athletes have changed …