Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Enterprise Risk Management Framework To Design Pro-Ethical Ai Solutions, Quintin P. Mcgrath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effective use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has immediate business benefits for an organization and its stakeholders through efficiency and quality gains, and the potential to explore and implement new business models. However, there are risks of unintended ethical consequences. Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) focuses on managing risk while maximizing business value from exploiting opportunities. Using applied ethics as a basis and the perspective that ethics includes both enabling human flourishing and not violating accepted norms, I argue that greater business value is achieved when an organization simultaneously targets the maximization of benefits and the minimization of harms for the …

Interdisciplinary Communication By Plausible Analogies: The Case Of Buddhism And Artificial Intelligence, Michael Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Communicating interdisciplinary information is difficult, even when two fields are ostensibly discussing the same topic. In this work, I’ll discuss the capacity for analogical reasoning to provide a framework for developing novel judgments utilizing similarities in separate domains. I argue that analogies are best modeled after Paul Bartha’s By Parallel Reasoning, and that they can be used to create a Toulmin-style warrant that expresses a generalization. I argue that these comparisons provide insights into interdisciplinary research. In order to demonstrate this concept, I will demonstrate that fruitful comparisons can be made between Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence research.

Assessing Changes In Actual Air Quality And Public Perceptions Of Air Quality In Kathmandu Valley Nepal Pre And Post Covid-19 Lockdown, Robin Margherita Rives

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Air pollution is a global concern. Cities around the world fail to meet air quality standards set by the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines, which has a significant impact on public health. As the capital city and largest metropolitan region of Nepal, Kathmandu is a hotspot for urban pollution in South Asia. Nepal faces emissions from both internal and external sources. External sources include emissions from Nepal’s neighboring countries of India and China and emissions resulting from tourism. Internal sources of pollution in the country include brick and cement factories, consumption of energy from traditional sources such as biomass, …

Pad Beyond The Classroom: Integrating Pad In The Scrum Workplace, Jade S. Weiss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The “story” format used in Scrum ticket writing is confusing to developers and leadsto insufficient ticket content, which lends to miscommunication between team members and administrators, and disrupts workflow from the bottom up. A burgeoning methodology in Technical Writing, Purpose, Audience, Design (PAD) is an alternative ticket format that is easier to teach developers and improves the aforementioned conditions than the existing “story” format. The goal of this paper is to lay out why and how PAD can benefit developers on smaller Scrum teams who are tasked with writing their own tickets. This paper does not offer solutions for …

Designing A Health Coach-Augmented Mhealth System For The Secondary Prevention Of Coronary Heart Disease, Avijit Sengupta

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents research that employs design science research (DSR) methodology to develop and evaluate a high-fidelity prototype of a home-based cardiac rehabilitation (HBCR) system to support self-management of chronic cardiovascular diseases like coronary heart disease (CHD) and to offer secondary prevention against other chronic diseases with similar risk factors. While the population of coronary heart disease (CHD) patients requiring cardiac rehabilitation (CR) continues to expand, lack of access and other barriers to center based cardiac rehabilitation (CBCR) presents a huge challenge. A mobile phone and wearable device based technological system can offer an HBCR program for CHD. By following …

Ware And Tear In Ancient Tampa Bay: Ceramic Elemental Analyses From Pinellas County Sites, Mckenna Loren Douglass

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research tested a null hypothesis on whether ceramics from a variety of archaeological sites around the Pinellas County peninsula were sourced locally for their materials. The sites in this study include Weeden Island (8PI1-5-6-A/B/C/D), Bayshore Homes (8PI41), Yat Kitischee (8PI1753), and Maximo Point (8PI19). Since there were multiple sites that I assessed in the Tampa Bay, Florida area, I focused on one cultural period, Safety Harbor (AD 900-1500), and the ceramics created during it at the various locations. My research questions included: Were materials locally sourced for ceramic production at each of these sites? If not, what is the …

Montage Music Videos: Racial Utopianism Vs. Abstract Cowboys And The Question Of Cultural Montage, Alan E. Blanchard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Along with the explosion of consumer goods in America over the past century came the human impulse to alter these objects to produce new meanings the manufacturers never intended: commercial products become amateur artists’ raw material. We see this with custom cars and the curious blending of clothes. Inevitably, digital commercial products, like music videos, would undergo a similar treatment as seen in DJ Cummerbund’s “mashup” videos “Old Staind Road” and “Blurry in the USA” where he is painting with audio tracks and sculpting with video clips to create new digital art with new meanings uncoupled from industry’s original intent …

The Early Medieval Transition: Diet Reconstruction, Mobility, And Culture Contact In The Ravenna Countryside, Northern Italy, Anastasia Temkina

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research project evaluates the effects of increased mobility and culture contact on dietary practices, and on dietary variation among people buried at two northern Italian sites, Chiunsano di Ficarolo and Chiesazza di Ficarolo, located near the ancient Roman capital of Ravenna and dating 4th to 7th century CE. The Early Medieval period was a time of change, political instability, migration and invasion of the “barbarian” tribes, and diet was not unaffected. In particular, it is hypothesized that a new staple crop, millet, was introduced and that meat consumption had increased. The goal of this research is to use stable …

Archaeology And Seasonality Of Stock Island (8mo2), A Glades-Tradition Village On Key West, Ryan M. Harke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Later Glades-period cultures (ca. 500–1760 CE) of south Florida and the Florida Keys are understudied and thus poorly understood, especially those that pre-date the arrival of Spaniards to the New World. Recent archaeological models of their sociopolitical organization suggest that by the Glades I-II transition (750/800 CE), south Florida peoples were organized into what appear to be regional population centers (e.g., Pineland and Mound Key, Granada, Turner River) and smaller hinterland towns in the Everglades (e.g., Cane Patch, Bear Lake) and the Florida Keys (e.g., Stock Island, Clupper Site). Smaller towns are hypothesized to be sedentary, heterarchically-organized, simple chiefdoms from …

The Communicative Constitution Of Environment: Land, Weather, Climate, Leanna K. Smithberger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My project examines the communicative constitution of environment: how we mediate environment in discursive practice, and arrange chaotic and complex timeplaces into organized relationships of agents and objects which act and are acted upon. Climate scholars across disciplines are calling for a paradigm shift in how we understand, study, inhabit, and relate to Earth’s varied environments. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how communication practices do the work of constituting the environment as we know it, and therefore conclude with the hopeful suggestion that these same practices can be used to do the work of a paradigm shift — that is, …

Characterizing Childhood And Diet In Migration Period Hungary, Kirsten A. Verostick

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates children, childhood and diet of two different Migration Period (4^th-8^th century AD) populations, the Gepids and the Avars, in the Great Hungarian Plain. The main goal was to assess whether there are differences in treatment of children and differences in breastfeeding and weaning practices in these distinct sites and populations. Secondarily, this research also focused on characterizing diet for the Gepids and the Avars at four different sites from the Migration Period, to understand how the migration and settling into the region and the assimilation of other groups into the two populations affected their …

Humanistic Climate Philosophy: Erich Fromm Revisited, Nicholas Dovellos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given the current juncture in history, humanity is faced with the herculean task of adapting to a tumultuous present and a gimmer future. Should climate projections be accurate, there is little time to waste. This work makes the claim that we are not only in a political gridlock but also in an academic one. Researching climate philosophy from its inception, the concluding view is that no major progress, outside of a standardized descriptive analysis, has been achieved. Thus, the work evaluates an array of climate philosophers e.g. Stephen Gardiner, James Garvey, Peter Singer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, etc., with specific emphasis on …

Understanding The Complex Ethical Landscape Of Artificial Intelligence Adoptions, Chrissann R. Ruehle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) has existed since the 1950’s, it has experienced a series of expansions and declines over the years. Currently, AI is on an upward trajectory and has prompted the fourth industrial revolution as many scientists have noted. Some firms have rapidly embraced this technology and experienced growth while others have been slow to adopt. Naturally, this expansion often has societal impacts. The aim of this study is to explore ethical considerations that arise during the adoption of this technology. This research addressed three questions: 1. How do market and regulatory forces reportedly shape Artificial Intelligence adoptions? 2. …

Climate Change And Liberation In Latin America, Ernesto O. Hernández

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to propose the liberation movements in Latin America as alternative philosophical frameworks to the crisis of climate change. These movements have provided the grounds to identify inequities and injustices and have practiced ethical methodologies to overcome them. Additionally, the movements seek to represent and reflect the value of non-traditional philosophical agents in Latin America. The work focuses on four major Latin American ecological liberation movements; theology, philosophy, pedagogy, and feminism. Eco-Theology advances the role of Religion as the practice of Religação, reexamination, and resetting our relationship with nature by reconnecting with it. Eco-Philosophy of …

Elemental Climate Disaster Texts And Queer Ecological Temporality, Laura Mattson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis approaches climate disaster texts as an opportunity to challenge constructions of the body, space, and time. Developed from embodied experiential knowledge about hurricanes, my work will explore how climate disasters can teach us to reimagine human-nature relationships. In my two analysis chapters, I use critical textual analysis and autoethnography to challenge particular representations of the human-nature relationship as a binary between nature and culture. By intervening in the nature-culture binary, I theorize queer ecological temporality as an opportunity to reveal and challenge constructions of nature and time. Working at the intersections of queer and ecocritical theory, this thesis …

The Systems Of Post And Post Algebras: A Demonstration Of An Obvious Fact, Daviel Leyva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1942, Paul C. Rosenbloom put out a definition of a Post algebra after Emil L. Post published a collection of systems of many–valued logic. Post algebras became easier to handle following George Epstein’s alternative definition. As conceived by Rosenbloom, Post algebras were meant to capture the algebraic properties of Post’s systems; this fact was not verified by Rosenbloom nor Epstein and has been assumed by others in the field. In this thesis, the long–awaited demonstration of this oft–asserted assertion is given.

After an elemental history of many–valued logic and a review of basic Classical Propositional Logic, the systems given …

Complex Tripartite Hydro Politics Of River Ganges, Muttaki Bin Kamal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper studies if the Flagship Namami Gange program of Cleaning the river Ganges in India aligns with the transcendental discourse on the river. Web contents as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter along with Indian English daily newspaper reports are used here as the source of data. The study shows that the program aligns with the transcendental discourse on river Ganges as the Mother Goddess and reaching out to her devotees.

More Than Just Empty Space: Integrated Geoarchaeological Investigations Of The Crystal River Site (8ci1) Plaza, Alexander C. Delgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Crystal River (8CI1) is a Woodland period archaeological site on the west-central Gulf Coast of Florida, famous for its diverse suite of exotic artifacts typical of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, as well as its monumental shell mounds which surround a central plaza. Historically, these plazas are utilized as spaces for cultural expression, daily interactions between members of the community, economic exchanges, and discourse of all types. They also serve as a symbolic space, embodying social and political relations that are critical to the formation and maintenance of cultural identity. These spaces are challenging to study using conventional archaeological techniques since …

Cybersecurity: Stochastic Analysis And Modelling Of Vulnerabilities To Determine The Network Security And Attackers Behavior, Pubudu Kalpani Kaluarachchi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Development of Cybersecurity processes and strategies should take two main approaches. One is to develop an efficient and effective set of methodologies to identify software vulnerabilities and patch them before being exploited. Second is to develop a set of methodologies to predict the behavior of attackers and execute defending techniques based on attacking behavior. Managing of Vulnerabilities and analyzing them is directly related to the first approach. Developing of methodologies and models to predict the behavior of attackers is related to the second approach. Both these approaches are inseparably interconnected. Our effort in this study mainly focuses on developing useful …

Pollen Forecasting In Sarasota, Florida, Daniel J. Gessman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current predictions of pollen levels rely strictly on historical Averages, regardless of environmental factors that might affect the timing of pollen release by different plants. For this thesis, the goal was to develop a statistical model that will accurately forecast pollen levels by correlating those daily counts to atmospheric and meteorological conditions. This project used ARIMA modeling on IBM’s SPSS Statistics 24 of daily pollen count information for multiple allergenic pollens in the Sarasota County, Florida area over a 11-year period. The pollen species in question for this project are oak and cypress trees, grass, and ragweed pollens; and Alternaria …

(Dis)Enchanted: (Re)Constructing Love And Creating Community In The, Shannon A. Suddeth

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a queer fan community for the television show Once Upon a Time (OUAT) that utilizes the social networking site Tumblr as their primary base of fan activity. The Swan Queen fan community is comprised of individuals that collectively support and celebrate a non-canon romantic relationship between two of the female lead characters of the show rather than the canonic, heterocentric relationships that occur between the two women and their respective male love interests. I answer two research questions in this study: First, how are members of the Swan Queen fan community developing counter narratives of …

Forging Blockchains: Spatial Production And Political Economy Of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Code/Spaces, Joe Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are increasingly used, implemented and adapted for numerous purposes; people and businesses are integrating these technologies into their practices and strategies, creating new political economies and spaces in and of everyday life. This thesis seeks to develop a foundation of geographic theory for the study of spatial production within and surrounding blockchain technologies focusing on acute studies of Bitcoin as cryptocurrency, Ethereum as digital marketplace, and their conditions of possibility as decentralized autonomous organizations. Utilizing concepts from Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space, this thesis situates blockchain technologies within the wider discussion about the political economy of …

Material Expertise: Applying Object-Oriented Rhetoric In Marine Policy, Zachary Parke Dixon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation applies object-oriented rhetorics and posthuman philosophies to environmental policy deliberation in order to help bridge gaps between policy makers, scientists, and citizens. For environmental policy scholars the non-credentialed expertise of local, or indigenous stakeholders is valued as possessing technical, objective merit that can improve the development and implementation of environmental policies. However, the utilization of stakeholder expertise in environmental policy faces serious challenges in terms of finding common grounds for communication within complex techno-social systems, of overcoming deep cultural differences and perceptions, and grave ethical issues of access and power. This dissertation develops two case studies of marine …

Digital Integration, Jacob C. Boccio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence is an emerging technology; something far beyond smartphones, cloud integration, or surgical microchip implantation. Utilizing the work of Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, and Steven Shaviro, this thesis investigates technology and artificial intelligence through the lens of the cinema. It does this by mapping contemporary concepts and the imagined worlds in film as an intersection of reality and fiction that examines issues of individual identity and alienation. I look at a non-linear timeline of films involving machine advancement, machine intelligence, and stages of post-human development; Elysium (2013) and Surrogates (2009) are about technology as an extension of the self, …

A Comparative Analysis Of Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry And Stable Isotopes In Assessing Ancient Coastal Peruvian Diets, Theresa Jane Gilbertson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores a cross-cultural analysis of the dietary signatures of four coastal cultures of prehistoric Peru. A combination of elemental analysis based on portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), testing trace elements presented in 209 individuals’ skulls representing the Nazca (38), Cañete (33), Lima (40), and Moche (98) valleys and/or cultures of the first millennium AD, is weighed in conjunction with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to analyze human bone collagen and bone apatite derived from a portion of the individuals represented in the Nazca, Cañete, and Lima cranial samples.

Evidence from the results of both tests are weighed using …

Relational Agency, Networked Technology, And The Social Media Aftermath Of The Boston Marathon Bombing, Megan M. Mcintyre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Agency is a foundational and ongoing concern for the field of Rhetoric and Composition. Long thought to be a product and possession of human action, rhetorical agency represents the most obvious connection between the educational and theoretical work of the field and the civic project of liberal arts and humanities education. Existing theories of anthropocentric rhetorical agency are insufficient, however, to account for the complex technological work of digitally enmeshed networks of humans and nonhumans. To better account for these complex networks, this project argues for the introduction of new materialist theories of distributed agency into conversations about agency within …

It's About Time: Dynamics Of Inflationary Cosmology As The Source Of The Asymmetry Of Time, Emre Keskin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is about the asymmetry of time. The main source of discontent for physicists and philosophers alike is that even though in every physical theory we developed and/or discovered for explaining how the universe functions, the laws are time reversal invariant; there seems to be a very genuine asymmetry between the past and the future. The aim of this project is to examine several attempts to solve this friction between the laws of physics and the asymmetry and provide a new proposal that makes use of modern cosmology. In the recent history of physics and in contemporary philosophy of …

Playing In Trelis Weyr: Investigating Collaborative Practices In A Dragons Of Pern Role-Play-Game Forum, Kathleen Marie Alley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This descriptive case study examined adolescents' and emerging adults' literate and social practices within the context of a role-play-game (RPG) forum, investigating the ways participants read and collaboratively composed within this space. As a researcher, I was interested in how this space functioned and how the interactions between members impacted their composing processes, with particular attention to the role of online spaces and popular culture in adolescents' motivation to engage in this forum. This study was guided by three research questions: (1) In what ways is Trelis Weyr, an RPG forum, organized as a virtual environment?; (2) In what ways, …

The Effects Of Fractures On The Occurrence And Distribution Of Arsenic In The Upper Floridan Aquifer During Aquifer Storage And Recovery, William Charles Hutchings

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) is used world-wide to supplement available water supplies by storing surplus water in aquifers and recovering it during periods of drought and increased demand. The use of ASR as an option for increasing available municipal irrigation and fresh water supplies is threatened as a result of the mobilization of arsenic in some aquifers during ASR. Arsenic is liberated from arsenic-bearing sulfide minerals as a result of the mixing of oxidizing injected water with reducing insitu groundwater. Fracture networks can have significant influence on the migration and distribution of arsenic in the Upper Floridan Aquifer …

Design, Synthesis, Processing, And Thermal Analysis Of Nanocomposites With Tunable Properties, Mu Seong Kim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polymer composites containing nanosized fillers have generated explosive interest since the early 1980's. Many recent studies have been conducted incorporating nano-fillers into polymer matrices to design and synthesize materials with tunable mechanical, thermal, and optical properties. Conventional filled polymers, where the reinforcement is on the order of microns, have been replaced by composites with discrete nanosized fillers. Gradually, theories that predicted that composite properties are independent of particle size in the micron range were challenged by nanocomposites. Rather, nanocomposite properties are greatly influenced by the surface area of the. All of this is complicated by the fact that nanoparticles are …