Digital Commons Network^™

Destroying Man: Philosophically Situating C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition Of Man, Anna Elizabeth Tarpley

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Lewis’ central argument in The Abolition of Man explains the philosophical consequences of extending assumptions implicit within scientific methodologies and originally used to treat Nature to include a treatment of humans. This thesis elucidates Lewis’ philosophical concept of man’s “Power Over Nature” by providing the historical and philosophical context out of which it developed. Multi-disciplinary research relying on primary source documentation, secondary academic literature, biographical material, and philosophical text was used to synthesize a descriptive philosophical narrative in two parts. The first part consists in the historical basis for the shift in ideas involved in Lewis’ argument as manifest in …

A Proposed Approach For Testing An Educational Virtual Reality Simulation For End-Of-Life Care, Jasmine Hyder

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming more popular with the continuous introduction of newer and more capable technology. Specifically, VR educational simulations can provide training on complex situations that may be difficult to carry out in real life. In an attempt to improve the quality of end-of-life care knowledge among nursing students, a VR simulation is in development that presents related scenarios nurses may face. Rigorous testing of this simulation is essential to produce effective results that separates itself from 2D simulations or other educational methods. A testing framework and plan is proposed here that can be extended to future VR …

Proposal For Uta-Downtown Arlington Bike Network, Anna Laura Harmjanz

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Bicycling offers great benefits for cities including sustainable, efficient, and affordable transportation, improved health and wellness, and creating vibrant communities. Universities offer a good starting point for young adults to form sustainable transportation habits. This study explores how the University of Texas at Arlington’s community perceives existing bike infrastructure, services, and amenities on campus and off-campus to create a well-connected and safe bike network. An online survey was used to collect feedback from students and employees on commuting patterns, cycling experience and barriers, perceived safety on various bike facilities, and suggestions. Based on survey responses, a bike network analysis was …

United Nations Peacekeepers, The Use Of Sexual Exploitation And Abuse, And Feminist Theory, Corrina Marie Sullivan

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Why do United Nations peacekeepers enact sexual harm against the very populations they are meant to protect? Given that the purpose of United Nations peacekeepers is to promote peace in a country following a period of unrest and/or violence, acts of sexual exploitation and abuse are antithetical to their purpose. These acts also inflict trauma on populations meant to be protected. Finally, this behavior undermines the general trust in the United Nations. Therefore, when peacekeepers engage in acts of sexual exploitation and abuse, these acts have larger implications for not only the peacekeeping force but the United Nations as a …

A Study Of Algorithmic Bias With A Focus On Mitigation Practices And An Analysis Of Discrimination Conscious Data Mining, Ashni Walia

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Algorithmic bias is a moral error within computer systems that is often left undetected due to a lack of set procedures. The aim of this study was to find the source of this bias leading to possible procedural solutions that can be applied widely. A meta- analysis, case study, and sample interview statistics are used to understand the multiplication of such bias into generated outputs. The study concluded that lack of diverse data leads to bias in output, in addition to a lack of awareness about the existence of such bias. This ignorance is amplified by the myth surrounding deep …

The Effect Of Depression, Anxiety, And Length Of Stay In Neonatal Intensive Care Upon Maternal-Infant Bonding, Tori Shavon Young

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Bonding is important to establish an early relationship but a challenge to mothers with infants in NICU. The aim of this study was to determine if a longer length of time an infant requires NICU admission is associated with impaired maternal-infant bonding. A secondary goal explored associations and effects of maternal depression and anxiety upon bonding via the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ), Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), and a subscale of the EPDS for anxiety. A descriptive design was used to explore mental health and bonding among 45 NICU mothers who were at least 18 years old and could speak, …

Appllication Of Convolutional Neural Network Towards Image Upscaling Demonstrated Via Chest X-Ray Dataset, Murtaza Aliasgar Khokhar

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Light Field Microscopy is a 3D imaging technique that sacrifices spatial resolution to capture angular information. A neural network was developed to increase the resolution of images captured. The objective of this study is to show the application of the developed convoluted neural network towards other topics. A dataset containing chest x-ray images will be used to train, test, and analyze the neural network. The neural network will be trained by converting the images to low-resolution and using it as training data. The original high-resolution data will be used as ground truth. PSNR, SSIM and visual tests will be used …

Improving Texas With Green Roof Gardens: A Review Of Green Roof Garden Systems And Evidence-Based Design Proposal For The Cappa Building, Uta, Raul-Andres Morales

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Texas is home to some of the hottest summers, often reaching over 100o during the day. A few countries, like Canada and Germany, have created policies that mandated green roof garden systems for new and renovated buildings. Studies conducted by the American Society of Landscape Architects shows that green roofs can lower the temperature of a city as a whole anywhere between 0.2o and 1.4o F. The implementation of green roof gardens in Texas can aid in lowering heat islands, excessive rainwater run-off, and increase energy efficiency in buildings. With the research conducted, this project was a creative design proposal …

Increasing The Efficiency Of Universal Robot 5–By The Introductionof Fiducial Markers, Resha Adhikari

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Even though the UR5 robot was developed for industrial purposes, it has not been efficient enough to replace human workers in warehouses and factories. The main theme of this project is to increase the change the working practice of robot by detecting the fiducial markers and using it as a source to pick up the envelopes. Once the robot is able to detect the fiducial markers placed on the envelope, the robot will locate it and then move towards it, use suction to pick up the envelope and move it to another location as desired (a box in our case). …

Improving User Experience (Ux) Through Web Redesign, Jash Shah

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

This project aims to identify major factors of consideration for redesigning a website to improve the user experience (UX). We short-listed ten websites and reviewed them with the prospect of understanding the user experience. A short survey was also conducted to better understand usability, user satisfaction and for examining the user experience. This information was compared with the top three UX popular websites to help ascertain the major differences. The process allowed us to classify factors that would assist in enhancing the user experience, but it was discovered that these could vary depending on website type and use. Additionally, there …

The Arkansas Ll.M. Program: Forty Years Of Leadership, Susan A. Schneider

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The University of Arkansas School of Law has been a leader in agricultural law education for over forty years through its innovative LL.M. Program in Agricultural and Food Law. This essay memorializes the history of this signature Program and charts its progress through the decades as agricultural law issues evolved and the discipline expanded.

Agricultural Carbon: The Land, Landowner, And Farmer, Barclay Rogers

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Carbon is certainly a hot topic in agriculture. Across the countryside, farmers, landowners, agricultural service providers, and many others are trying to understand what carbon is about and what it may mean to them. One of the more interesting topics around agricultural carbon concerns the relationship between the landowner and tenant farmers on absentee-owned land (i.e., land that is farmed by someone other than the person who owns it). This article provides a brief background on the agricultural carbon opportunity and explores some ideas about how to pursue the opportunity on absentee-owned farmland.

Black-Owned Beef: Should Black Beef Producers Stake Space In Food Justice?, Shirah Dedman

Journal of Food Law & Policy

While there is growing interest in Black cowboys, the narrative is largely tethered to parades and urban and suburban saddle clubs, much like the fictional movie on Netflix, Concrete Cowboy. Missing from the narrative are today’s real Black cowboys: rural ranchers and farmers raising cattle for beef production and consumption.

The Broken Beef Cattle Industry: Cool, Covid And Cattletrace, Hayden L. Ballard

Journal of Food Law & Policy

While the Kansas City Stockyards themselves are gone, just like in the early 20th Century, a beef monopoly has once again found its way into the industry, and a way around the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 and is again suffocating the industry. While at the time of the act’s passage in 1921 five companies controlled the market, today the market is even more consolidated in the “Big Four,” as the four biggest meat packing companies in America are commonly known (Cargill, Tyson, JBS and National Beef/Marfrig), and are again arguably stifling the free-market. If Americans do not act …

Plantain Cultivation In Puerto Rico: Its Inclusion In The National Crop Table Of The United States Department Of Agriculture’S Farm Service Agency, And Its Loss Compensation In Disaster Programs, Javier A. Rivera-Aquino

Journal of Food Law & Policy

If justice is to provide each person what they deserve, it seems plantain producers in Puerto Rico did not relish a just compensation for their farm losses after Hurricane Maria in 2017. The main culprit? Stale data. Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Wildfire and Hurricanes Indemnity Program (WHIP) utilized plantain production data under the National Crop Table (NCT) 2017, which seemingly did not reflect up-to-date yield averages of Puerto Rico’s plantain farmers at the time of Hurricane Maria.

Journal Of Food Law & Policy - Spring 2022, Journal Editors

Journal of Food Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Pestfacts Wa Issue 05 - May 2022, Jean Galloway, Cindy L. Webster, Steve Collins

PestFacts WA

PestFacts WA Issue 05 - May 2022 contents:

• Blackleg and the risk of sowing canola on canola
• Meet PestFacts WA team member – Steve Collins

Pestfacts Wa Issue 04 - May 2022, Svetlana Micic, Benjamin S. Congdon, Cindy L. Webster, Andrea Hills, Ravjit Khangura

PestFacts WA

PestFacts WA Issue 04 - May 2022 contents:

• Grasshoppers are hatching
• Aphid activity and turnip yellows virus detections
• Downy mildew and damping off in canola
• Nodorum blotch in wheat
• Plant disease webinar recording can now be viewed online

Interjurisdictional Abortion Wars In The Post-Roe Era, Maya Manian

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Supreme Court appears poised to overrule fifty years of precedent holding that pre-viability prohibitions on abortion are unconstitutional. In a leaked draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women Health Organization, Justice Alito proclaims that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey must be overruled and abortion left to the states to regulate. During oral argument in Dobbs, Justice Kavanaugh suggested that overturning Roe would return the Court to a postion of "neutrality" on abortion. Justice Kavanaugh's assertion falls in line with claims by anti-abortion jurists that reversing Roe would simplify abortion law by returning the issue to the …

From Head To Hilum: Angiosarcoma With Pulmonary Metastasis, Tanaz Salimnia, Lauren A. Abplanalp, Raashi Chawla, K Hughes, R Ghandchi, Matthew Weatherhead, Sanjay Dogra

Conference Presentation Abstracts

With an estimated five-year survival of less than 40 percent, angiosarcomas are rare and often misdiagnosed fataltumors originating from blood or lymphatic vessels with a predilection for the head and neck. They account for 1percent of all soft tissue sarcomas and are often mistaken for benign mimickers leading to the late-stage diagnosiswhen the body is already riddled with metastatic disease with the lung being the most common site of metastases.This case illustrates the myriad of pulmonary complications associated with this uncommon but fatal vasoformativemalignancy. The patient is a 73-year-old male diagnosed with angiosarcoma of the right scalp status post excision,reconstruction, …

An Exploratory Study On Refactoring Documentation In Issues Handling, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Anthony Peruma, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Christian D. Newman, Ali Ouni

Articles

Understanding the practice of refactoring documentation is of paramount importance in academia and industry. Issue tracking systems are used by most software projects enabling developers, quality assurance, managers, and users to submit feature requests and other tasks such as bug fixing and code review. Although recent studies explored how to document refactoring in commit messages, little is known about how developers describe their refactoring needs in issues. In this study, we aim at exploring developer-reported refactoring changes in issues to better understand what developers consider to be problematic in their code and how they handle it. Our approach relies on …

A Myth Of The Well-Stirred Model: Is The Well-Stirred Model Good For High Clearance Drugs?, Jin Dong, Miki S. Park

School of Pharmacy Faculty Articles

Understanding the rationale of the well-stirred model (WSM), borrowed from chemical engineering, has been ongoing through the history of pharmacokinetics (PK) as an independent discipline. Extensive arguments around the WSM and 1977′s lidocaine data re-emerged recently. It was proposed that Pang and Rowland's lidocaine data analysis was confounded by four intermingled confounding factors which may lead to contradictory conclusions or inconclusive dilemma. This re-visit of 1977′s lidocaine data analysis was challenged by Pang and coauthors. This commentary is our responses to their comments focusing on the lidocaine data analysis and the IVIVE by the WSM. In addition, the disadvantage of …

Creating A Multidisciplinary Collaboration Service-Learning Experience In Design Education, Sacha M. Joseph-Mathews, Marie A. Lee, N. Kreidler

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

The design process in most organizations is often collaborative and interdisciplinary in nature. Yet most institutions of higher learning do not offer students the opportunity to work in multidisciplinary teams. This study follows an experiential service-learning project over 3 years to explore the role of multidisciplinary project teams on design education outcomes. Findings suggest that the quality of designs improved over time and students consider experiential learning in multidisciplinary teams to be a valuable component in their education, increasing their job readiness upon graduation.

Di•As•Po•Ra: Displaced, Not Erased., Betty Álvarez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is based on my artistic endeavors and research founded in my culture, family, the history of the United States government’s intervention in El Salvador, and the current political climate Latin Americans face today in the United States. I work within multiple mediums to resurrect pieces of my culture that are being forgotten or left behind due to assimilation. I accomplish this through revisiting and reinterpreting traditions. I aim to bring awareness of the Latin experience in a racially divided United States through artistic expression and my own personal experiences. My works are made to feel whimsical and playful, …

Disorienting Object Oriented Ontology: Queer Landscapes And Ecological Bodies In Richard Siken And Harryette Mullen., Andrew N. Hutto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on a recent development within the study of metaphysics, known as object oriented ontology (OOO), and works out questions of being alongside contemporary poetry. Recognizing the post anthropocentric purchase afforded by OOO’s claim that everything is an object and that these objects are impossible to correlate with, this thesis will look at the use of objects in Richard Siken’s War of the Foxes and Harryette Mullen’s Recyclopedia. Drawing heavily from Sara Ahmed’s queer theory of disoriented objects and Timothy Morton’s ecological insights, this thesis will argue that despite OOO’s advancement, there are critical gaps to fill in …

2d Materials Based Heterostructure For Quantum Tunneling: A Lithography Free Technique., Ali Alzahrani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) systems have played a vital role in the development of superior electronic devices including tunnel junctions consisting of two such 2DEG systems. With the advent of the new 2D electronic material systems, it has opened a new route for 2D–2D tunneling in such extended systems. In this study, we have utilized a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique to directly deposit graphene (nanowalls) and h-BN on Si/SiO₂ substrates to construct two-dimensional material based, vertically stacked electron tunneling devices free of expensive and cumbersome microfabrication steps. In the first study, we fabricated direct quantum tunneling …

Internalized Racism Mediating The Effects Of Ethnic-Racial Socialization On Self-Esteem And Psychological Distress Among Asians And Asian Americans In The United States., Tianhong "Jojo" Yao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has indicated ethnic-racial socialization can influence one’s ethnic identity development including ethnic identity and internalized racism. However, there is limited empirical research directly examining the relation among ethnic-racial socialization, internalized racism, and psychological outcomes including self-esteem and psychological distress among Asian populations in the U.S. The current research explored the influences of the three dimensions of ethnic-racial socialization (cultural socialization-pluralism, promotion of mistrust, and preparation for bias) on two outcomes (i.e., self-esteem and psychological distress) through internalized racism as a mediator in a sample of 245 participants identified as Asian and Asian American adults currently residing in the U.S. …

Poly Camtracker, Nickolas W. Ogilvie, Shawn W. Thai

Electrical Engineering

With the onset of the post-pandemic virtual classroom world, more and more classes are attempting hybrid-style instruction. To accomplish that, recordings of lectures are widely used, with presentation-sharing & audio recording capability. However, video recordings of lectures, with the ability to see the board, lab equipment, and the professor, are the optimal way to give the virtual students the best experience. Right now, technology is readily available for static camera recordings of lecture halls, but this may not suffice when it comes to larger lecture halls and lab demonstrations, where directed shots of equipment or the whiteboard are needed in …

Wave Interactions And Energy Cascade, Bailey Downing

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Structural engineers design buildings and their components to withstand code-specified wind loads. The ASCE 7-16 manual sets the standards for calculating wind loads in the U.S. Depending on the velocity of wind, deflections may occur as wind passes through the building. The pressure reported from ASCE are based on wind tunnel measurements. The peak pressure from ASCE 7 is much less than what is measured from the field for a low-rise building. As an alternative economic tool, Computer modeling has been developed to help with this dilemma. Methods based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are used to calculate velocities and …

Stored Labor: Spatial Practice Of Migrant Worker Accomodation In Hong Kong, Kristabel Chung

Architecture Senior Theses

This project examines the relationship between domestic labor laws and the “spatial practices” of migrant domestic worker (MDW) spaces in Hong Kong. The project asks, how do the designed and spatial practices of domestic worker accommodations inform us about the hierarchy and future of domestic space in Hong Kong?

In 2003, Hong Kong issued a law requiring domestic workers to live with their employers. For apartments without designed servant spaces, makeshift accommodations have been created within those apartments to comply with the law. The research studies these modifications within the home and creates spatial abstractions through diagrams and models.

The …