American Studies Commons^™

A Game Theoretic Framework For Dynamic Task Scheduling In Distributed Heterogeneous Computing Systems, Vasanth Kumar Ramesh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Heterogeneous Computing (HC) systems achieve high performance by networking together computing resources of diverse nature. The issues of task assignment and scheduling are critical in the design and performance of such systems. In this thesis, an auction based game theoretic framework is developed for dynamic task scheduling in HC systems. Based on the proposed game theoretic model, a new dynamic scheduling algorithm is developed that uses auction based strategies. The dynamic scheduling algorithm yields schedules with shorter completion times than static schedulers while incurring higher scheduling overhead. Thus, a second scheduling algorithm is proposed which uses an initial schedule generated …

Biomechanical Evaluation Of Injury Severity Associated With Patient Falls From Bed, Bonnie E. Bowers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The incidence of falls in the elderly population is a growing concern in the healthcare industry as associated morbidity is high, particularly morbidity associated with falls from bed. Bedrails were implemented as a device intended to reduce the incidence of falls from bed; however, recent evidence may indicate that bedrails contribute to adverse events including entrapment and entanglement. As such, efforts have been made to reduce the use of bedrails and implement alternatives including height adjustable beds and floor mats. An instrumented anthropomorphic test dummy was used in the current study to measure the deceleration profiles of the head, thorax, …

Experience And Inquiry In John Dewey’S Contextualism, Christopher C. Kirby

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper will focus on two elements, viz. experience and inquiry, which are central to John Deweys philosophy and their relation to the movement known as pragmatism. Although each of these concepts has received extensive treatment by other schools of thought, the pragmatists, and particularly Dewey, did much to redefine each in hopes of alleviating the tension between conflicting philosophical viewpoints. An explication of Deweys view on experience is the first step in understanding his application of the pragmatic method towards reconstructing philosophical thinking. Therefore, this paper will explore the meaning that Dewey gave to each and how that meaning …

“They Say That This Clinic Is For Migrants”: Cultural Sensitivity In A Rural Health Center, Nadine I. Ohlinger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The growing number of minority populations living in the United States makes it mandatory that all health care organizations seek to be culturally sensitive. There is no consensus on the definition of the term cultural sensitivity. The goal of this thesis is to define what cultural sensitivity means in a rural health center, from the perspective of the staff as well as the Hispanic patient. Anthropological methods, such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival data analysis, show that the qualities that Hispanic patients value in a clinic are 1) attention, 2) availability of Spanish language, 3) financial assistance, 4) …

General Education Teachers And Classroom-Based Interventions: Knowledge, Training, And Building-Level Influences, Jenine M. Sansosti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Intervention assistance (IA) programs have been developed as a mechanism for avoiding costly special education referrals and for supporting teachers in their instruction of students with varying needs within the general education classroom (Safran and Safran, 1996). Although IA programs are designed to be consultative, multidisciplinary approaches to assisting teachers, some studies report that teachers conduct the majority of classroom-based interventions for a given student on their own prior to referring students to an IA team (Wilson, Hagen, Gutkin, and Oats, 1998). It is important to determine what interventions or strategies teachers commonly consider and what factors are associated with …

Association Between Area Socioeconomic Status And Hospital Admissions For Childhood And Adult Asthma, Tomas Tamulis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite an improved understanding of the disease, the prevalence of asthma and asthma-related morbidity continue to rise, particularly among minority and inner-city populations. Despite the growing epidemic of asthma, the surveillance of disease at the state or even local levels is very limited. Such information is very important to identify high-risk population groups and to design more effective community-based preventive interventions or risk management programs that may modify these trends.

The study provided important information about spatial differences by the geographical area of residence and changes in asthma hospital admissions over time in the selected area. Environmental exposure to ambient …

Fantastic Visions: On The Necessity Of Feminist Utopian Narrative, Tracie Anne Welser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Works of feminist utopian literature project longing for and predict political change while confronting current social inequities. Often, they effectively interrogate Western models of citizenship and the institutions which reify them, suggesting alternate models. Here, I define Western citizenship as determined by the maintenance of the nation-state through gendered social roles that restrict women to the private sphere and men to the public. This thesis asserts that feminist utopian literature, like politically conscious music, art, and other forms of feminist praxis, is a politically necessary component of feminist consciousness because it facilitates much-needed visions of a more equitable future for …

Pervasive Sensing And Computing For Natural Disaster Mitigation, Daniel H. Quintela

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research proposed the use of state-of-the-art wireless communications and networked embedded systems technologies to provide environmental sensing for the early detection of natural disasters. The data is acquired, processed and transmitted, from the location where the disaster originates, to potentially threatened conurbations in order to promptly notify the population. The acquired data is transformed from its raw form into information that can be utilized by local authorities to rapidly assess emergency situations and then to apply disaster management procedures. Alternatively, the system can generate alerting signals without human intervention. Furthermore, recorded historical data can be made available for scientists …

More Than Man’S Best Friend: A Look At Attachment Between Humans And Their Canine Companions, Samantha E. Kennedy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, there are currently more than 60 million pet dogs in the United States. This is an increase of nearly eighteen percent since 1991, coinciding with a growing area of research on human’s relationships with companion animals and companion animals’ place in society.

For years dogs have been thought of as “man’s best friend” because of their loyalty and faithfulness. The increasing popularity of activities such as canine daycare and puppy school suggests that dogs have become more than a best friend to some and even an integral part of the American family unit. …

Cognitive Load Theory And Programmed Instruction, Michael L. Brazas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Programmed Instruction was a dominant force in educational research during the 1960’s and early 1970’s. During this period a new cognitively oriented psychology of education arose that eventually replaced the behaviorally driven research into programmed instruction. For some reason little work was done on integrating these two approaches. This study was designed to test a programmed instructional system based on the intrinsic programmed instructional technology of Crowder (1961) but incorporating design elements derived from cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988). Specifically, this study tested a multimedia programmed instructional system (CLT-PI) based on work by Mayer (2001) against a text based system …

Comparison Of Hatching Failure In A Wildland And Suburban Population Of The Florida Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma Coerulescens), Sonya Christine Leclair

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Egg hatchability has been correlated with many factors, including clutch size, presence of helpers, timing of breeding and predation risk. Hatching failure is higher in a suburban population of Florida Scrub-Jays than in a wildland population, but the reasons for this pattern are unclear. An analysis of long-term demographic data on scrub-jays in both habitats revealed the factors that best explained variation in hatching failure, and an experiment tested whether two potential site factors, ambient temperature and predation risk, could increase hatching failure in the suburbs.

Although a global model was best supported by the data for occurrence of partial …

Creative Performance On The Job: Does Openness To Experience Matter?, Victoria L. Pace

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Finding what is alike among the personalities of creative people has been a dream of many researchers. No single personality type has been discovered as prototypical, yet the promise of common attributes among creative people remains enticing. This study examines one of these promising characteristics - Openness to Experience, a personality factor from the Five-Factor Model. This factor has been shown to correlate positively with creativity in past studies. In the present study this relationship was partially confirmed in a sample of employees whose jobs require technical problem solving, by correlating the employees self-rated Work-specific Openness to Experience and NEO …

Hope In The Face Of Empire: Failed Patriotism, Civil International Publicity, And Patriotic Peacebuilding, Gary M. Simpson

Faculty Publications

The patriotism of empire is a failed patriotism that longs for empire as the way to achieve security. America needs instead a repenting patriotism, in the tradition of Lincoln, that recognizes public accountability and moves toward peacebuilding.

The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 2005, The John Muir Center For Environmental Studies

Muir Center Newsletters (1981-2015)

OHN NEWi r^' T/W ______ TEE UNIVERSITY OF THE ET JO>A «^ KTON, fc* Volume 15, Number 2 SPRING 2005: A Wealth of Muir on Wealth by Michael Wurtz Archivist, Holt-Atherton Special Collections University of the Pacific Library (/ gf>9 a life km mm o^i-iL., Perhaps one of John Muir's earliest understandings about the measurement of wealth may have come as he heard his father calling down the well to him, "get in the bucket!" This fateful moment had come about because his father would not spend the money for a professional well digger and blaster. Why hire …

Equality News (Spring 2005), Rodney Mondor

Equality news / EqualityMaine (2004-2008)

No abstract provided.

Family Affairs Newsletter 2005-04-01, Jean Vermette

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

On Bill V. Mullen's Afro-Orientalism, Graham Barnfield

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For two decades Edward Said's Orientalism has occupied a significant place in how we think through the cultural relations between what we now call ‘North’ and ‘South’. Conceived in the 1970s, Said’s model mounted a challenge to readers in the west, suggesting they should unlearn what they know of the east. Despite its influence, one weakness of this approach was the underlying suggestion that orientalism was a one-way street, constituting a fixed set of perceptions or timeless discourses. In and without the Orientalist imagination, what is to be done with those in ‘the Occident’ who find themselves treated …

On Bill Brown's A Sense Of Things And Things, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

If he were not already well-established within the academic world (George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, co-editor of Critical Inquiry), Bill Brown’s 2003 and 2004 might begin to look like Jacques Derrida’s 1967. A Sense of Things comes equipped with jacket praise from Simon During of Johns Hopkins, Alan Trachtenberg of Yale University, Julia Stern of Northwestern University, and Michael Taussig of Columbia University. Not surprisingly, two of these individuals (in addition to Bill) appear in the edited volume Things, based on a Critical Inquiry special issue devoted to the topic. …

On Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'S Player Piano, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

I always get suspicious when a book I'm looking for is hard to find. If I'm feeling paranoid in a post-Patriot Act sort of way, I imagine vast memory holes being stuffed with the writings of people like George Orwell and Philip K. Dick by legions of aspiring yuppies-- fit, good-looking, and totally uninterested in anything that requires reading. A gaggle of Cheneyesque men do a walkthrough, to make sure that they are destroying our intellectual heritage efficiently, and to remind them all that if they destroy enough knowledge, they might get promoted (even as the suits make …

Uwb And Wlan Coexistence: A Comparison Of Interference Reduction Techniques, Nikhil Vijay Kajale

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ultra Wideband (UWB) is an emerging technology for use in the indoor wireless personal area networks and ad hoc networks. The more common form of UWB which uses sub-nanosecond pulses without any form of carrier signal is considered in this research. UWB signals have a large bandwidth with allocated frequency spectrum from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz and maximum power restricted to -41dBm/MHz. The IEEE 802.11a is a popular standard for high data rate wireless local area networks (WLANs). The operating frequency of the IEEE 802.11a WLAN is 5 GHz which is right inside the allocated UWB frequency spectrum.

One …

The Influence Of Local Rivers On The Eastern Cariaco Basin, Venezuela, Laura Lorenzoni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two oceanographic cruises were conducted during September 2003 and March 2004 in the eastern half of the Cariaco Basin. Specific objectives were to examine the hydrography of the seasonal upwelling plume characteristic of this region, the spatial distribution of particles in the area, and to help determine the source and relative importance of in situ particle production vs. terrigenous particles delivered laterally from the coast.

During September 2003, average surface salinities within the basin were higher (36.6) relative to Caribbean Sea waters outside the basin (35.6). Salinity patterns indicated that the Orinoco and Amazon River plumes did not enter or …

Two Models Of Consensus, Sudarsan Padmanabhan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation titled Two Models of Consensus is based on five arguments. 1. Consensus is asymmetrical. 2. Consensus is partial or limited unanimity. 3. Consensus and democracy do have a concomitant relation. 4. Consensus is not organic to political systems. 5. Consensus depends upon civil society, subsidiarity, and the dominant cultural paradigm of society.

In the first chapter titled "Historical Specificity of the Western Conception of Civil Society" I argue that concept of civil society evolved under certain conditions in a liberal democratic tradition such as shared social imaginaries. As an example of how diversity could lead to hypostatization of …

Teaching Inclusivity: Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions Of Their Knowledge, Skills And Attitudes Toward Working With English Language Learners In Mainstream Classrooms, Philip C. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effect of one semester of ESOL education on preservice teachers by examining their perceived knowledge and skill in working with English Language Learner (ELL) students, their attitude toward having ELL students in their mainstream classrooms, and what classroom methods they perceive as effective in their ESOL preservice education courses.

Data for this study were collected from pre- and post-course attitudinal surveys during one semester of course work, from participants at two specific points in their educational experience; participants in the (1) introductory and (2) final TESOL course.

There were 293 participants who took the pre-, and …

Strategies For Incident Management In An Urban Street Network, Vikramaditya Bhide

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this research the problem of incident congestion on surface street networks is addressed. Microscopic simulation is used to simulate incident scenarios on various corridors in the Tampa Bay area. The effect of the three factors, namely, network, speed and signal strategies on the traffic flow is studied. The network performance is based on Highway Capacity Manual specified measures of effectiveness prepared by the Transportation Research Board.

Three inherently different city corridors, high, medium and low volume, are used to test the strategies developed. The strategies investigated include varying speed limits during incidents and using pre-timed and semi-actuated signals that …

A Security Constrained Ac Economic Dispatch Framework For Allocation Of Balanced And Unbalanced Financial Transmission Rights, Balaji Rajan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a deregulated power market financial transmission rights (FTR) serve as a mechanism for protecting market participants from price variation resulting from network congestion. Possession of FTRs allows participants to recover congestion related losses resulting from unequal locational marginal prices that arise from out of merit dispatch. There exists different strategies for allocating FTR which are in use in the deregulated market. Designing a comprehensive framework for market specific FTR allocation that includes factors like unbalanced FTR, FTR for losses and AC-OPF is currently a major research issue in the deregulated power industry.

This thesis develops a method for allocation …

An Automatic Code Generation Tool For Partitioned Software In Distributed Computing, Neeta S. Singh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a large class of distributed embedded systems, most of the code generation models in use today target at object-oriented applications. Distributed computing using procedural language applications is challenging because there are no compatible code generators to test the partitioned programs mapped on to the multi-processor system. In this thesis, we design a code generator to produce procedural language code for a distributed embedded system. Unpartitioned programs along with the partition primitives are converted into independently executable concrete implementations. The process consists of two steps, first translating the primitives of the unpartitioned program into equivalent code clusters, and then scheduling …

Design And Fabrication Of A Re-Configurable Micromirror Array For An Optical Microspectrometer, Vandana Upadhyay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the design and fabrication of a re-configurable micromirror array which can be used as a component of an optical microspectrometer. In an optical microspectrometer, an array of mechanically positionable micromirrors can be implemented as a reconfigurable exit slit to selectively focus particular wavelengths of a diffracted spectrum onto the detector stage. The signal to noise ratio and response time of an optical microspectrometer can be vastly improved by this technique.

In the approach presented here, a hybrid bulk- and surface- micromachining process is demonstrated for fabrication of a 1XN array of micromirrors. The reconfigurable micromirrors presented here …

Lysogeny: Practical Applications And New Discoveries., Lauren Mcdaniel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Part 1:

Prophage induction has been demonstrated to be a sensitive indicator for a wide variety of toxic and mutagenic compounds and, as a consequence, has been utilized for biologically based carcinogen screenings. Fourteen marine bacterial isolates were screened for development into the Marine Prophage Induction Assay (MPIA), for marine samples. The selected isolate (P99-4S3) was identified by 16S rDNA sequencing as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This isolate demonstrated a log-linear response to increasing dose of mutagens, and sensitivity to known environmental contaminants. Field-testing of the assay over two years demonstrated the MPIA would be a useful screening tool for environmental …

Usfkad: An Expert System For Partial Differential Equations, Sami M. Kadamani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

USFKAD is an encoded expert system for the eigenfunction expansion of solutions to the wave, diffusion, and Laplace equations: both homogeneous and nonhomogenous; one, two, or three dimensions; Cartesian, cylindrical, or spherical coordinates; Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin, or singular boundary conditions; in time, frequency, or Laplace domain. The user follows a menu to enter his/her choices and the output is a LaTeX file containing the formula for the solution together with the transcendental equation for the eigenvalues (if necessary) and the projection formulas for the coefficients. The file is suitable for insertion into a book or journal article, and as a …

Improving Accuracy In Logarithmic Multiplication Using Operand Decomposition, Mahalingam Venkataraman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The arithmetic operations such as multiplication and division in binary number system are computationally complex in terms of area, delay and power. Logarithmic Number Systems (LNS) offer a viable alternative combining the simplicity of fixed point number systems and the precision of floating point number systems. However, the computations in LNS result in some loss of accuracy and thus, are limited to mostly signal processing applications; where in certain amount of error is tolerable. In LNS, the cost of computations can be tradeoff with the level of accuracy needed. The Mitchell algorithm proposed incite[mitchell], is a simple approach commonly used …