A Novel Framework To Determine Physiological Signals From Blood Flow Dynamics, Prashanth Chetlur Adithya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that more than 11.2 million people require critical and emergency care in the United States per year. Optimizing and improving patient morbidity and mortality outcomes are the primary objectives of monitoring in critical and emergency care. Patients in need of critical or emergency care in general are at a risk of single or multiple organ failures occurring due to a traumatic injury, a surgical event, or an underlying pathology that results in severe patient hemodynamic instability. Hence, continuous monitoring of fundamental cardiovascular hemodynamic parameters, such as heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, …

Computational Discovery Of Energetic Polynitrogen Compounds At High Pressure, Brad A. Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High-nitrogen-content energetic compounds containing multiple N-N bonds are an attractive alternative towards developing new generation of environmentally friendly, and more powerful energetic materials. High-N content translates into much higher heat of formation resulting in much larger energy output, detonation pressure and velocity upon conversion to large amounts of non-toxic, strongly bonded N2 gas. This thesis describes recent advances in the computational discovery of group-I alkali and hydrogen polynitrogen materials at high pressures using powerful first-principles evolutionary crystal structure prediction methods. This is highlighted by the discovery of a new family of materials that consist of long-sought after all-nitrogen N􀀀 5 …

A Study Of Flight Simulation Training Time, Aircraft Training Time, And Pilot Competence As Measured By The Naval Standard Score, Aaron D. Judy

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationships between US Navy T-45C flight simulation training time, actual aircraft training time, and intermediate and advanced jet pilot competence as measured by the Naval Standard Score (NSS). Examining the relationships between US Navy T-45C flight simulation time and actual aircraft flight time may provide further information on flight simulation training versus actual aircraft training to aviation authorities, flight instructors, the military aviation community, the commercial aviation community, and academia. The study was non-experimental, correlational, causal-comparative with an emphasis upon the establishment of mathematic and predictive relationships using archival data from …

Implementation Of Systems-Level Learning In A Community College Mechatronics Program, Margie N. Porter

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This is a qualitative case study of the complete implementation of systems-level learning (SLL) pedagogy throughout a mechatronics engineering department in a community college in the United States. SLL was developed from the German engineering apprenticeship model, resulting in engineering graduates with what our German counterparts call Handlungskompetenz. Graduates of these programs have the flexibility to quickly adapt to new engineering systems and situations in a self-directed way without months of on-the-job training. This skill is related to adaptive expertise and is not the type of skill traditionally taught to engineering students.

Chronological and descriptive analyses were performed on semi-structured …

Influential Factors In Consumer's Adoption Of Innovative Products, Mahdokht Kalantari

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the challenges involved with the process of diffusion of innovations in the contexts of innovative educational materials and technological innovations.

Chapters 2 and 3 discuss building and using Online Brand Communities (OBCs) to disseminate innovative math educational materials. OBCs are known to be important platforms where consumers can communicate with the brand as well as other consumers. Through the effective use of these platforms, brands could accelerate the process of diffusion of their innovations. However, OBCs will not survive if consumers do not get engaged and participate in these communities. The purpose of this section of the …

Scope Management Strategies For Engineering Leaders To Improve Project Success Rates, Kevin Lee Ramage

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Civil engineering projects undertaken without successful implementation of scope management strategies by project leaders are approximately 10% more likely to fail than projects undertaken with scope management strategies. Using scope management theory, the purpose of this single case study was to explore scope management strategies used by some project leaders in the engineering field to improve project success rates. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with 3 purposefully selected project leaders in Georgia, and a review of project completion reports, budget reports, government proposals, and scope management documents. Data analysis occurred using Yin's 5-step process of compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, …

Gender Effects Of Robotics Programs On Stem-Related Self-Efficacy Of High School Students, Sandra Hall-Lay

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Lack of STEM-related self-efficacy has impeded the growth of women in STEM fields. Out of school (OST) robotics programs and other STEM-related OST programs provide secondary students with opportunities to work in groups, brainstorm, and formulate ideas that require communication and teamwork. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to compare STEM-related self-efficacy scores among male and female students who participated in OST robotics programs or other OST STEM-related programming. Independent variables were type of OST STEM program and gender. The dependent variable was students' STEM-related self-efficacy as measured by the Coping Self-Efficacy Scale. Responses from 149 students in …

Administrative Cost Reimbursement Online, Luciano Mogorovic

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Administrative Cost Reimbursement (ACR) is a program funded by the state of Ohio that reimburses non-public elementary and high schools for having employees perform a series of mandated activities. ACR Consultants is a company that collects data from schools that contains the amount of time each teacher spent on any of the mandated activities. The president of ACR Consultants is a neighbor and longtime family friend. Currently, to collect the time data, the company goes to each school it services and gives each teacher a large paper spreadsheet for them to fill in with the amount of time they spend …

Engineering Retention: Improving Inclusion And Diversity In Engineering, Sidney Martin

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The researcher sought further understanding for strategies and pedagogies employed to serve the diverse learning and engagement needs of underrepresented minorities (URMs) enrolled in academic engineering programs. The researcher defined for this study underrepresented minorities as women, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. There is a need for increased representation of URMs in both postsecondary education and the engineering profession. Underrepresented minorities are needed in the engineering profession to contribute to the complete solution and to provide improved ideas for consideration during the design process. The researcher discovered six factors utilized by engineering faculty and academic affairs in postsecondary education to …

Studying Facial Expression Recognition And Imitation Ability Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In Interaction With A Social Robot, Farzaneh Askari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience limited abilities in recognizing non-verbal elements of social interactions such as facial expressions [1]. They also show deficiencies in imitating facial expressions in social situations. In this Master thesis, we focus on studying the ability of children with ASD in recognizing facial expressions and imitating the expressions using a rear-projected expressive humanoid robot, called Ryan. Recent studies show that social robots such as Ryan have great potential for autism therapy. We designed and developed three studies, first to evaluate the ability of children with ASD in recognizing facial expressions that are presented to …

The Effects Of Emerging Technology On Healthcare And The Difficulties Of Integration, Skyler J. Pavlish-Carpenter

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Background: Disruptive technology describes technology that is significantly more advanced than previous iterations, such as: 3D printing, genetic manipulation, stem cell research, innovative surgical procedures, and computer-based charting software. These technologies often require extensive overhauls to implement into older systems and must overcome many difficult financial and societal complications before they can be widely used. In a field like healthcare that makes frequent advancements, these difficulties can mean that the technology will not be utilized to its full potential or implemented at all.

Objective: To determine the inhibiting factors that prevent disruptive technology from being implemented in conventional healthcare.

Methods: …

Can A Comprehensive Transition Plan To Barefoot Running Be The Solution To The Injury Epidemic In American Endurance Runners?, Michael A. Scarlett

CMC Senior Theses

Fossils belonging to the genus Homo, dating as far back as two million years ago, exhibit uniquely efficient features suggesting that early humans had evolved to become exceptional endurance runners. Although they did not have the cushion or stability-control features provided in our modern day running shoes, our early human ancestors experienced far less of the running-related injuries we experience today. The injury rate has been estimated as high as 90% annually for Americans training for a marathon and as high as 79% annually for all American endurance runners. There is an injury epidemic in conventionally shod populations that …

Profile Analysis Of Mobile Application Security, Adetunji A. Olunuga

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This thesis conducts profile analysis on the mobile application security using peer-review articles that were published from 2010 to 2018. From the analysis, we will identify prolific authors, intuitions, and geographic regions as well as the topics addressed by the articles. The profile analysis will reveal most frequently used research methods, research approaches (quantitative, qualitative and mixed), and theories used to study the field. This thesis reveals that none of the researchers have made significant contributions to the field, and researches are not collaborating to solve their research problems. The profile analysis shows that surveys and experiments are the …

Precise Energy Efficient Scheduling Of Mixed-Criticality Tasks & Sustainable Mixed-Criticality Scheduling, Sai Sruti

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, the imprecise mixed-criticality model (IMC) is extended to precise scheduling of tasks, and integrated with the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) technique to enable energy minimization. The challenge in precise scheduling of MC systems is to simultaneously guarantee the timing correctness for all tasks, hi and lo, under both pessimistic and optimistic (less pessimistic) assumptions. To the best of knowledge this is the first work to address the integration of DVFS energy conserving techniques with precise scheduling of lo-tasks of the MC model.

In this thesis, the utilization based schedulability tests and sufficient conditions for such …

A Methodology To Predict Community College Stem Student Retention And Completion, Jennifer Lynn Snyder

Doctoral Dissertations

"Numerous government reports point to the multifaceted issues facing the country's capacity to increase the number of STEM majors, while also diversifying the workforce. Community colleges are uniquely positioned as integral partners in the higher education ecosystem. These institutions serve as an access point to opportunity for many students, especially underrepresented minorities and women. Community colleges should serve as a major pathway to students pursuing STEM degrees; however student retention and completion rates are dismally low. Therefore, there is a need to predict STEM student success and provide interventions when factors indicate potential failure. This enables educational institutions to better …

Automated Optical Mark Recognition Scoring System For Multiple-Choice Questions, Murtadha Alomran

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Multiple-choice questions are one of the questions commonly used in assessments. It is widely used because this type of examination can be an effective and reliable way to examine the level of student’s knowledge. So far, this type of examination can either be marked by hand or with specialised answer sheets and scanning equipment. There are specialised answer sheets and scanning equipment to mark multiple-choice questions automatically. However, these are expensive, specialised and restrictive answer sheets and optical mark recognition scanners.

This research aims to design and implement a multiple-choice answer sheet and a reliable image processing-based scoring system that …