Business Commons^™

A Cost-Differential Analysis Of Local Soybean Processing In East Tennessee: Roast Or Crush?, Rachel Lauren Eatherly

Masters Theses

East Tennessee soybean producers currently have limited local markets and processing options. Most soybeans produced in the region are transported for processing or export to Guntersville or Decatur, Alabama. High transportation costs cut into profit margins and limit local economic impact. With the demand for processed soybeans from the local beef and dairy industries, local processing technology options ought to be investigated. This study will assist soybean farmers in decision-making between hauling to current processing plants or seeking out alternative local processing. Local processing points could allow local beef and dairy farmers additional options of including processed soybeans in least-cost …

Extending Time Series Forecasting Methods Using Functional Principal Components Analysis, Isaac Michael Wagner-Muns

Masters Theses

"Traffic volume forecasts are used by many transportation analysis and management systems to better characterize and react to fluctuating traffic patterns. Most current forecasting methods do not take advantage of the underlying functional characteristics of the time series to make predictions. This paper presents a methodology that uses Functional Principal Components Analysis (FPCA) to create smooth and differentiable daily traffic forecasts. The methodology is validated with a data set of 1,813 days of 15 minute aggregated traffic volume time series. Both the FPCA based forecasts and the associated prediction intervals outperform traditional Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) based methods"--Abstract, …

Impact Of Framing And Priming On Users' Behavior In Cybersecurity, Kavya Sharma

Masters Theses

"This research examines the impact of framing and priming on users' behavior (i.e., action) in a cybersecurity setting. It also examines perceptual outcomes (i.e., confidence, perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, trust, and fear) associated with the users' cybersecurity action. The research draws on prospect theory in the behavioral economics literature and instance-based learning theory in the education literature to generate the hypotheses for the research. A between-subject experimental design (N=129) was used. The results suggest that priming users to cybersecurity risks reduces their risk-taking behavior associated with cybersecurity whereas negative framing of messages associated with cybersecurity has no significant effect on …

Leveraging Knowledge At Startups, Amruta Anil Ranade

Masters Theses

"Startups contribute to the economy and job creation in the United States. One of the primary assets of startups is tacit knowledge of the employees of the startup. Technical communicators can help startups capture, share, and leverage the tacit knowledge at startups. Technical communicators could benefit from learning how knowledge management initiatives at startups work. The current study is an ethnographic case-study that was conducted at a fast-growing startup in California.

The data for the study was collected through observations, informal and semi-structured formal interviews with participants, and feedback from customers of the startup. The collected data was analyzed based …

Sentiment Analytics: Lexicons Construction And Analysis, Bo Yuan

Masters Theses

"With the increasing amount of text data, sentiment analysis (SA) is becoming more and more important. An automated approach is needed to parse the online reviews and comments, and analyze their sentiments. Since lexicon is the most important component in SA, enhancing the quality of lexicons will improve the efficiency and accuracy of sentiment analysis. In this research, the effect of coupling a general lexicon with a specialized lexicon (for a specific domain) and its impact on sentiment analysis was presented. Two special domains and one general domain were studied. The two special domains are the petroleum domain and the …