Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Importance Of A Pictorial Medical History In Assisting Medical Diagnosis Of Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities: A Telemedicine Approach, Grace Bonanno

CCE Theses and Dissertations

When face-to-face physical medical exams are not possible, virtual physical exams, in the form of a pictorial medical exam/history, can be substituted, and telemedicine can be the means to deliver these virtual exams. The goal of this work was to determine if presence in the form of a visual and/or pictorial medical history can be of benefit to clinicians in the diagnosis of medical conditions of individuals with developmental disabilities (DDs) and/or intellectual disabilities (IDs), in particular those who cannot, because of their cognitive and/or physical disabilities, verbally relate their illness to a clinician. Virtual exams can also be useful …

Locating Potential Aspect Interference Using Clustering Analysis, Brian Todd Bennett

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Software design continues to evolve from the structured programming paradigm of the 1970s and 1980s and the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s. The functional decomposition design methodology used in these paradigms reduced the prominence of non-functional requirements, which resulted in scattered and tangled code to address non-functional elements. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) allowed the removal of crosscutting concerns scattered throughout class code into single modules known as aspects. Aspectization resulted in increased modularity in class code, but introduced new types of problems that did not exist in OOP. One such problem was aspect interference, in which aspects …

Nitrous Oxide And Methane Dynamics In A Coral Reef Lagoon Driven By Pore Water Exchange: Insights From Automated High‐Frequency Observations, Chiara O'Reilly, Isaac R. Santos, Tyler Cyronak, Ashly Mcmahon, Damien T. Maher

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Automated cavity ring down spectroscopy was used to make continuous measurements of dissolved methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide in a coral reef lagoon for 2 weeks (Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef). Radon (²²²Rn) was used to trace the influence of tidally driven pore water exchange on greenhouse gas dynamics. Clear tidal variation was observed for CH₄, which correlated to ²²²Rn in lagoon waters. N2O correlated to ²²²Rn during the day only, which appears to be a response to coupled nitrification‐denitrification in oxic sediments, fueled by nitrate derived from bird guano. The lagoon was …

Dissipation Rate Of Turbulent Kinetic Energy In Diel Vertical Migrations: Comparison Of Ansys Fluent Model To Measurements, Cayla Whitney Dean, Alexander Soloviev, Amy Hirons, Tamara M. Frank, J. D. Wood

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures

Recent studies suggest that diel vertical migrations of zooplankton may have an impact on ocean mixing, though details are not completely clear. A strong sound scattering layer of zooplankton undergoing diel vertical migrations was observed in Saanich Inlet, British Colombia, Canada by Kunze et al. (2006). In this study, a shipboard 200- kHz echosounder was used to track vertical motion of the sound scattering layer, and microstructure profiles were collected to observe turbulence. An increase of dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy by four to five orders of magnitude was measured during diel vertical migrations of zooplankton in one case …

14th Annual Undergraduate Student Symposium, Farquhar Honors College

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The Undergraduate Student Symposium, sponsored by the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, presents student projects through presentations, papers, and poster displays. The event serves as a “showcase” demonstrating the outstanding scholarship of undergraduate students at NSU. The symposium is open to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Projects cover areas of student scholarship ranging from the experimental and the applied to the computational, theoretical, artistic, and literary. They are taken from class assignments and independent projects. The projects do not have to be complete; presentations can represent any stage in the concept’s evolution, from proposal and literature review to fully …

Estimating Growth And Mortality In Elasmobranchs: Are We Doing It Correctly?, Brian J. Moe

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

The instantaneous mortality rate (M) is an important parameter in elasmobranch management and conservation, but is difficult to estimate directly. Thus, indirect estimates based on relatively easily obtained life history parameters are commonly used. Many indirect methods incorporate one or more parameters from the von Bertalanffy growth model (VBGM), which is often criticized for its inability to describe changes in growth associated with maturity. The Lester growth model (LGM) is a biphasic alternative to the VBGM that incorporates trade-offs between reproduction, growth, and survival, and may therefore more accurately estimate M. I used published data from 29 …

Land-Based Coral Nurseries: A Valuable Tool For Production And Transplantation Of Acropora Cervicornis, Keri L. O'Neil

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Coral nurseries have become a popular and successful method to produce coral fragments for reef-restocking and restoration projects worldwide. Numerous in-situ coral nurseries have been established and many studies have focused on the most effective way to produce coral fragments in offshore nurseries. In contrast, production of coral fragments in land-based nurseries is rarely studied despite a growing knowledge of coral husbandry and coral aquaculture. Little data exist on the success of tank-raised corals when transplanted back into reef environments. This thesis presents the results of a study designed to assess the use of land-based coral nurseries in production of …

Image Enhancement Of Cancerous Tissue In Mammography Images, Richard Thomas Richardson

CCE Theses and Dissertations

This research presents a framework for enhancing and analyzing time-sequenced mammographic images for detection of cancerous tissue, specifically designed to assist radiologists and physicians with the detection of breast cancer. By using computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems as a tool to help in the detection of breast cancer in computed tomography (CT) mammography images, previous CT mammography images will enhance the interpretation of the next series of images. The first stage of this dissertation applies image subtraction to images from the same patient over time. Image types are defined as temporal subtraction, dual-energy subtraction, and Digital Database for Screening Mammography …

Affect And Online Privacy Concerns, David Charles Castano

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of affect on privacy concerns and privacy behaviors. A considerable amount of research in the information systems field argues that privacy concerns, usually conceptualized as an evaluation of privacy risks, influence privacy behaviors. However, recent theoretical work shows that affect, a pre-cognitive evaluation, has a significant effect on preferences and choices in risky situations. Affect is contrasted with cognitive issues in privacy decision making and the role of affective versus cognitive-consequentialist factors is reviewed in privacy context.

A causal model was developed to address how affect influences privacy concerns and …

Governance And Organizational Sponsorship As Success Factors In Free/Libre And Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Investigation Using Structural Equation Modeling, Aleksandr Blekh

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in information technologies and subsequent explosive growth of computer software use in practically all aspects of everyday life provide tremendous opportunities and benefits for improving people's lives. However, significant proportion of software projects represents cancelled, abandoned or otherwise failed projects. This situation exists not only in commercial software products or government information systems, but also in an increasingly popular and important domain of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS).

The problem of failures in software development projects requires identification and understanding of the factors of success and their interrelationships. Practice and previous research suggest that governance of software …

Immunology Inspired Detection Of Data Theft From Autonomous Network Activity, Theodore O. Cochran

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The threat of data theft posed by self-propagating, remotely controlled bot malware is increasing. Cyber criminals are motivated to steal sensitive data, such as user names, passwords, account numbers, and credit card numbers, because these items can be parlayed into cash. For anonymity and economy of scale, bot networks have become the cyber criminal’s weapon of choice. In 2010 a single botnet included over one million compromised host computers, and one of the largest botnets in 2011 was specifically designed to harvest financial data from its victims. Unfortunately, current intrusion detection methods are unable to effectively detect data extraction techniques …

Usable Security Using Goms: A Study To Evaluate And Compare The Usability Of User Accounts On E-Government Websites, Amran Din

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The term e-Government refers to providing citizens a series of services that can be conveniently conducted over the Internet. However, the potential to redefine and transform e-Government increasingly relies on citizens successfully establishing and managing a user account profile online. E-Government has not adequately addressed user-centric designs for social inclusion of all citizens on e-Government websites. There is a lack of research on the usability of user account management, and a clear lack of innovation in incorporating user-friendly authentication interfaces to accommodate a diverse user population given the wealth of existing research in web authentication techniques within Identity Management. The …

News Feeds Clustering Research Study, Haytham Abuel-Futuh

CCE Theses and Dissertations

With over 0.25 billion web pages hosted in the World Wide Web, it is virtually impossible to navigate through the Internet. Many applications try to help users achieve this task. For example, search engines build indexes to make the entire World Wide Web searchable, and news curators allow users to browse topics of interest on different structured sites. One problem that arises for these applications and others with similar goals is identifying documents with similar contents. This helps the applications show users documents with unique contents as well as group various similar documents under similar topics. There has been a …

Evaluation Of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals In The Florida Coastal Pelagic Fish Complex Following The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Event, Rachel Hickey

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill event, there was a critical need to assess the effects of the oil and dispersant chemicals on the coastal pelagic fish complex in the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits. The objective of this study was to determine if spilled crude oil and dispersant chemicals have posed an ecological risk to the coastal pelagic fish complex through the detection of vitellogenesis. Crude oil containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dispersant chemicals and other estrogen-mimicking compounds are suspected to induce vitellogenin production in male and immature female fish, normally only produced by sexually mature …

Histology And Ultrastructure Of Montastraea Cavernosa And Porites Astreiodes During Regeneration And Recruitment: Anthropogenic Stressors And Transplant Success, Dorothy-Ellen A. Renegar

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Corals combine photosynthesis and calcification in an intricate and delicately balanced relationship to form large biomineralized structures that are dominant features of tropical coastlines worldwide. Coral reefs have great scientific and economic importance but have recently experienced widespread decline attributed to increasing anthropogenic pressure on reef systems. Physical damage events, such as ship groundings, when coupled with existing nutrient stress and changing global climate present a poor outlook for successful natural recovery of reef communities. The main goal of the proposed research is to better understand how environmental factors, both local and global, affect the coral holobiont and influence overall …

Seasonal Warm-Water Refuge And Sanctuary Usage By The Florida Manatee (Trichechus Manatus Latirostris) In Kings Bay, Citrus County, Florida, Danielle C. Sattelberger

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

The largest Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) aggregation at a natural warm-water refuge occurs in Kings Bay, Crystal River, FL. Over the last 32 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the State of Florida have created a network of manatee protection areas within Kings Bay including a year-round refuge designation and seven Federal manatee sanctuaries during the winter manatee season (November 15 – March 31). Aerial survey data collected between 1983 and 2012 was used to examine the seasonal change in manatee distribution within Kings Bay in order to assess the effectiveness of current sanctuary sizes …

Formative Research On An Instructional Design Theory For Virtual Patients In Clinical Education: A Pressure Ulcer Prevention Clinical Reasoning Case, Manon Maitland Schladen

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Despite advances in health care over the past decades, medical errors and omissions remain significant threats to patient safety and health. A large number of these mistakes are made by trainees, persons who are just beginning to build the case-based experiences that will transform them from novices to expert practitioners. Clinicians use both intuitive and deductive problem-solving skills in caring for patients and they acquire expertise in applying these skills through interaction with many and varied cases.

The contemporary heath care environment, with decreased lengths of stay for patients and reduced duty hours for trainees, makes getting optimal patient exposure …

An Enhanced Mapreduce Workload Allocation Tool For Spot Market Resources, John Stephen Hudzina

CCE Theses and Dissertations

When a cloud user allocates a cluster to execute a map-reduce workload, the user must determine the number and type of virtual machine instances to minimize the workload's financial cost. The cloud user may rent on-demand instances at a fixed price or spot instances at a variable price to execute the workload. Although the cloud user may bid on spot virtual machine instances at a reduced rate, the spot market auction may delay the workload's start or terminate the spot instances before the workload completes. The cloud user requires a forecast for the workload's financial cost and completion time to …

The Impact Of Image Synonyms In Graphical-Based Authentication Systems, Jonathan William Sparks

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Traditional text-based passwords used for authentication in information systems have several known issues in the areas of usability and security. Research has shown that when users generate passwords for systems, they tend to create passwords that are subject to compromise more so than those created randomly by the computer. Research has also shown that users have difficulty remembering highly secure, randomly created, text-based passwords.

Graphical-based passwords have been shown to be highly memorable for users when applied to system authentication. However, graphical-based authentication systems require additional cognitive load to recognize and enter a password compared to traditional text-based authentication that …

An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Inquiry Into Facebook Newcomer Motivations For Participatory Activities, Kristin Raub

CCE Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study provided insight into the phenomenon of newcomers in social networking, in particular, to understand what role specific Facebook features play in motivating content sharing and contribution among newcomers. Research indicated that the first several months or years of social networking site (SNS) membership are the most crucial in terms of indicating long-term participation and commitment to the SNS. Long-term participation is specifically manifested through interactions with peers who are members of the same website and through interactivity such as content sharing and contribution. A number of quantitative studies have focused on motivations for user contribution in social …

Dynamics Of Marine Bacterial Community Diversity Of The Coastal Waters Of The Reefs, Inlets, And Wastewater Outfalls Of Southeast Florida, Alexandra Mandina Campbell, Jay Fleisher, Christopher D. Sinigalliano, James R. White, Jose V. Lopez

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Coastal waters adjacent to populated southeast Florida possess different habitats (reefs, oceanic inlets, sewage outfalls) that may affect the composition of their inherent microbiomes. To determine variation according to site, season, and depth, over the course of 1 year, we characterized the bacterioplankton communities within 38 nearshore seawater samples derived from the Florida Area Coastal Environment (FACE) water quality survey. Six distinct coastal locales were profiled – the Port Everglades and Hillsboro Inlets, Hollywood and Broward wastewater outfalls, and associated reef sites using culture-independent, high-throughput pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA V4 region. More than 227,000 sequences helped describe longitudinal taxonomic …

A Makeover For The Captured Lecture: Applying Multimedia Learning Principles To Lecture Video, Richard Alan Lamb

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Making video recordings of large classroom lectures and putting them online is increasingly common in distance and blended learning courses. However, the best way to use lecture video is not well understood. Using long streams of one-way communication is not consistent with best practices in online learning. During lectures, students assume a largely passive role. They think faster than instructors speak, so boredom and daydreaming are common. Yet, when complex or novel ideas are presented, students may have inadequate time to encode, organize, and integrate the input with prior experience. Especially for students with low prior knowledge of the subject …

A Catch Per Unit Effort (Cpue) Spatial Metric With Respect To The Western North Atlantic Pelagic Longline Fishery, Max Appelman

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Catch per unit effort (CPUE) is a quantitative method used to describe fisheries worldwide. CPUE can be presented as number of fish per 1000 hooks, number of fish per amount of fishing time, or with any unit of effort that best describes the fishery (e.g., search time, hooks per hour, number of trawls). CPUE is commonly used as an index to estimate relative abundance for a population. These indices are then applied within stock assessments so that fisheries managers can make justified decisions for how to manage a particular stock or fishery using options such as quotas, catch …

Examining Social Network Site Usage By Older Adults: A Phenomenological Approach, Betsy Baugess

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The Internet has infiltrated our daily lives in many ways. Social networking on the Internet is a great example of how the Internet has expanded interpersonal communication. Many individuals have made social networking sites, like FaceBook and Twitter, an essential part of their lives and use these platforms to communicate daily. Until recently, young people have been the primary participants in this fast-growing phenomenon, and older adults' participation in the Internet, specifically social networking sites, has lagged far behind. However, in recent years, there has been a noteworthy increase in the number of older adult participants. The increase in older …

3d Dynamics Of Freshwater Lenses In The Near-Surface Layer Of The Tropical Ocean, Alexander Soloviev, Cayla Whitney Dean, Atsushi Fujimura

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Convective rains in the Intertropical Convergence Zone produce lenses of freshened water on the ocean surface. Due to significant density differences between the freshened and saltier seawater, strong pressure gradients develop, resulting in lateral spreading of freshwater lenses in the form of gravity currents. Gravity currents inherently involve three-dimensional dynamics. As a type of organized structure, gravity currents may also interact with, and be shaped by, the ambient oceanic and atmospheric environment. Among the important environmental factors are background stratification and wind stress. Under certain conditions, a resonant interaction between a propagating freshwater lens and internal waves in the underlying …

Dihydrolipoic Acid Conjugated Carbon Dots Accelerate Human Insulin Fibrillation, Sheba J. Kuruvilla, Shanghao Li, Lorenzo Sansalone, Blake Fortes, Ian Zheng, Patricia Blackwelder, Cyrus Pumilia, Miodrag Micic, Jhony Orbulescu, Roger M. Leblanc

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Protein fibrillation is believed to play an important role in the pathology and development of several human diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and type 2 diabetes. Carbon dots (CDs), as a new type of nanoparticle have recently been extensively studied for potential biological applications, but their effects on protein fibrillation remain unexplored. In reality, any application in biological systems will inevitably have “contact” between proteins and CDs. In this study, human insulin was selected as a model protein to study the effects of CDs on protein fibrillation, as proteins may share a common mechanism to form fibrils. Hydrophobic …

Migration Strategies Vary In Space, Time, And Among Species In The Smallfish Metacommunity Of The Everglades, J. Matthew Hoch, Eric R. Sokol, Aaron D. Parker, Joel C. Trexler

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Spatial ecology and movement strategies of aquatic organisms may limit their response to human-caused drying of wetland habitats. We characterized the movement strategies of the most abundant species of fish in the wetlands of the Everglades (USA) to better understand how they cope with annual fluctuations in aquatic habitat size. Over a six-year period, we used a sampling method designed to measure the density, activity levels, and movement direction of small fishes. We estimated changes in displacement speed and directional bias to identify patterns of movement that different fishes use to disperse over the gradient of disturbance in this environment. …

Computer Modeling The Incursion Patterns Of Marine Invasive Species, Matthew W. Johnston

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Not Available.

Biogeochemical Analysis Of Ancient Pacific Cod Bone Suggests Hg Bioaccumulation Was Linked To Paleo Sea Level Rise And Climate Change, Maribeth S. Murray, C. Peter Mcroy, L. K. Duffy, Amy Hirons, J. M. Schaaf, Robert P. Trocine, John Trefry

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Deglaciation at the end of the Pleistocene initiated major changes in ocean circulation and distribution. Within a brief geological time, large areas of land were inundated by sea-level rise and today global sea level is 120 m above its minimum stand during the last glacial maximum. This was the era of modern sea shelf formation; climate change caused coastal plain flooding and created broad continental shelves with innumerable consequences to marine and terrestrial ecosystems and human populations. In Alaska, the Bering Sea nearly doubled in size and stretches of coastline to the south were flooded, with regional variability in the …

Water Column Productivity And Temperature Predict Coral Reef Regeneration Across The Indo-Pacific, Bernhard Riegl, Peter W. Glynn, Evie A. Wieters, Samuel J. Purkis, C. D'Angelo, Joerg Wiedenmann

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Predicted increases in seawater temperatures accelerate coral reef decline due to mortality by heat-driven coral bleaching. Alteration of the natural nutrient environment of reef corals reduces tolerance of corals to heat and light stress and thus will exacerbate impacts of global warming on reefs. Still, many reefs demonstrate remarkable regeneration from past stress events. This paper investigates the effects of sea surface temperature (SST) and water column productivity on recovery of coral reefs. In 71 Indo-Pacific sites, coral cover changes over the past 1-3 decades correlated negative-exponentially with mean SST, chlorophyll a, and SST rise. At six monitoring sites …