Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Toward A More Scientifically Literate Public, Michael Bass

UCF Forum

As a society we do a terrible job of educating our children to become scientifically literate. Sure, we have STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs throughout the country, and with some justification we can brag about the successes of students that are in or who have graduated from such learning experiences.

Integrating Freight Into Livable Communities, Kristine M. Williams, Alexandria Carroll

TREC Final Reports

Where livability is a goal of the planning process, freight runs the risk of not being considered except as an afterthought or as something to be excluded. Yet, freight is an integral part of local economic development. Because economic prosperity is a key characteristic of livable communities, freight must be incorporated into the planning process. This study explores the relationship between freight and livability through a comprehensive literature review and case study research. The final report includes a menu of strategies and case study perspectives that highlight the importance of transportation and land use integration, interagency coordination, and context-sensitivity in …

Information Seeking Behaviour Of Petroleum Engineers In Niger Delta Region Of Nigeria: A Survey, Edonkumoh Victor Ebiye (Mlis), Ngwuchukwu M. N (Phd), Emmanuel Agyo (Mlis)

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The success of the petroleum industry at all levels depend largely on petroleum engineers’ awareness and access to relevant information for making sound Exploration and Production decisions. This study investigated the information seeking behaviour of Petroleum Engineers in selected companies in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. A survey design was adopted using questionnaire as the instrument for collecting primary data from 250 petroleum engineers randomly selected from four oil companies. Data gathered were analysed using frequencies, simple percentages and mean score count. Results showed that petroleum engineers spent time seeking health and safety information, oil and gas E&P information, …

Next-Generation Mrna Sequencing Reveals Pyroptosis-Induced Cd4+ T Cell Death In Early Simian Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Lymphoid Tissues, Wuxun Lu, Andrew J. Demers, Fangrui Ma, Guobin Kang, Zhe Yuan, Yanmin Wan, Yue Li, Jiangqing Xu, Mark Lewis, Qingsheng Li

Nebraska Center for Biotechnology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Lymphoid tissues (LTs) are the principal sites where human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replicates and virus-host interactions take place, resulting in immunopathology in the form of inflammation, immune activation, and CD4+ T cell death. The HIV-1 pathogenesis in LTs has been extensively studied; however, our understanding of the virus-host interactions in the very early stages of infection remains incomplete. We investigated virus-host interactions in the rectal draining lymph nodes (dLNs) of rhesus macaques at different times after intrarectal inoculation (days postinoculation [dpi]) with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). At 3 dpi, 103 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected using next-generation …

National Study Of Brt Development Outcomes, Arthur C. Nelson, Joanna Ganning

TREC Final Reports

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is poised to become the “next big thing” in public transit. From virtually no systems a generation ago, there are now 19 lines operating with at least seven under construction and more than 20 in the planning stages. BRT is gaining popularity because of its combination of low capital cost and potential for high levels of benefits. But are BRT systems effective in attracting development?

To answer this and many more trending BRT questions, the Metropolitan Research Center (MRC) reviewed multiple studies using data from the United States Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics, and CoStar data …

Predicting Public Bicycle Adoption Using The Technology Acceptance Model, Benjamin T. Hazen, Robert E. Overstreet, Yacan Wang

Faculty Publications

Bicycle sharing programs provide a sustainable mode of urban transportation. Although cities across the globe have developed these systems for their citizens and visitors, usage rates are not as high as anticipated. This research uses the technology acceptance model as the basis to understand one’s intention to adopt bicycle sharing programs. Using survey data derived from 421 participants in Beijing, China, the proposed covariance-based structural equation model consisting of perceived quality, perceived convenience, and perceived value is found to predict 50.5% of the variance in adoption intention. The findings of this research contribute to theory and practice in the burgeoning …

Towards Effective Design Treatment For Right Turns At Intersections With Bicycle Traffic, David Hurwitz, Mafruhatul Jannat, Jennifer Warner, Christopher M. Monsere, Ali Razmpa

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The overall goal of this research was to quantify the safety performance of alternative traffic control strategies to mitigate right-turning vehicle-bicycle crashes at signalized intersections in Oregon. The ultimate aim was to provide useful design guidance to potentially mitigate these collision types at the critical intersection configurations. This report includes a comprehensive review of more than 150 scientific and technical articles that relate to bicycle-motor vehicle crashes. A total of 504 right-hook crashes were identified from vehicle path information in the Oregon crash data from 2007-2011, mapped and reviewed in detail to identify the frequency and severity of crashes by …

Corps Efforts On Sea Level Rise In Hampton Roads, Greg Steele

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Panel Presentation: Regional Working Group, Regional Working Group

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Panel Presentation: Norfolk: Thriving With Water, Norfolk Working Group

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Whatsapp Network Forensics: Decrypting And Understanding The Whatsapp Call Signaling Messages, Filip Karpisek, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

WhatsApp is a widely adopted mobile messaging application with over 800 million users. Recently, a calling feature was added to the application and no comprehensive digital forensic analysis has been performed with regards to this feature at the time of writing this paper. In this work, we describe how we were able to decrypt the network traffic and obtain forensic artifacts that relate to this new calling feature which included the: a) WhatsApp phone numbers, b) WhatsApp server IPs, c) WhatsApp audio codec (Opus), d) WhatsApp call duration, and e) WhatsApp's call termination. We explain the methods and tools used …

A Computational Translation Of The Phaistos Disk, Peter Revesz

CSE Conference and Workshop Papers

For over a century the text of the Phaistos Disk remained an enigma without a convincing translation. This paper presents a novel semi-automatic translation method that uses for the first time a recently discovered connection between the Phaistos Disk symbols and other ancient scripts, including the Old Hungarian alphabet. The connection between the Phaistos Disk script and the Old Hungarian alphabet suggested the possibility that the Phaistos Disk language may be related to Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Ugric, or Proto-Hungarian. Using words and suffixes from those languages, it is possible to translate the Phaistos Disk text as an ancient sun hymn, possibly connected …

Understanding Interactions Between Drivers And Pedestrian Features At Signalized Intersections, Pei-Sung Lin, Achilleas Kourtellis, Zhenyu Wang, Rui Guo

CUTR Faculty Journal Publications

Florida experienced serious pedestrian safety problems and had the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the U.S. from 2008–2011. Pedestrian safety at signalized intersections is the most serious concern due to frequent and severe conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians. Pedestrian features directly related to pedestrian safety are used to increase driver compliance behaviors and reduce vehicle-pedestrian conflicts. This project aimed to explore driver behaviors at signalized intersections with four identified pedestrian features—“STOP HERE ON RED,” “NO TURN ON RED,” “TURNING VEHICLES YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS,” and “RIGHT ON RED ARROW AFTER STOP” signs—by using an innovative safety data source, the Strategic Highway …

Professor Frank Breitinger's Full Bibliography, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ogden College Of Science & Engineering Newsletter (Fall 2015), Cheryl Stevens, Dean

Ogden College of Science & Engineering Publications

No abstract provided.

A Computational Study Of The Evolution Of Cretan And Related Scripts, Peter Revesz

CSE Conference and Workshop Papers

Crete was the birthplace of several ancient writings, including the Cretan Hieroglyphs, the Linear A and the Linear B scripts. Out of these three only Linear B is deciphered. The sound values of the Cretan Hieroglyph and the Linear A symbols are unknown and attempts to reconstruct them based on Linear B have not been fruitful. In this paper, we compare the ancient Cretan scripts with four other Mediterranean and Black Sea scripts, namely Phoenician, South Arabic, Greek and Old Hungarian. We provide a computational study of the evolution of the three Cretan and four other scripts. This study encompasses …

Social Signal Processing For Real-Time Situational Understanding: A Vision And Approach, Kasthuri Jeyarajah, Shuchao Yao, Raghava Muthuraju, Archan Misra, Geeth De Mel, Julie Skipper, Tarek Abdelzaher, Michael Kolodny

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have established a collaborative research enterprise referred to as the Situational Understanding Research Institute (SURI). The goal is to develop an information processing framework to help the military obtain real-time situational awareness of physical events by harnessing the combined power of multiple sensing sources to obtain insights about events and their evolution. It is envisioned that one could use such information to predict behaviors of groups, be they local transient groups (e.g., protests) or widespread, networked groups, and thus enable proactive prevention of nefarious activities. This paper …

Don't Just Blindly Follow All 'Green' Trends -- Do Your Research First, Michael Bass

UCF Forum

Nowadays it is politically correct to be “green” – to say and do things that seem to minimize one’s impact on the environment and to preach to others to do the same.

Improving Operator Situational Awareness With Wide Area Geographic Data View Displays Of The Electric Power Grid, Esa M. Rantanen, Limor Hochberg, Diego Klabjan, Mingyang Di

Articles

To reduce clutter on wide-area geographic data view displays of electric power systems, substations in geographically compact areas should be spread out and line overlaps and intersections minimized. Such pat- terns optimized with respect to given constraints can be modeled as a multicommodity flow problem. Due to the size of the developed model, we developed two clustering-based iterative algorithms to decompose the global network into smaller regions and then iteratively solve the subproblem in each region by readjusting some values. Three solutions were selected for experimental evaluation. The experimental results were somewhat inconclusive, due to naïve participants, simple task, and …

Bugg, Becky (Fa 815), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 815. Paper titled “ Process of Milling: Case Studies,” prepared by Becky Bugg a folk studies student at Western Kentucky University. Bugg documents flour mills in Mercer County and Meade County, Kentucky.

Designing Bus Transit Services For Routine Crowd Situations At Large Event Venues, Jianli Du, Shih-Fen Cheng, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We are concerned with the routine crowd management problem after a major event at a known venue. Without properly design complementary transport services, such sudden crowd build-ups will overwhelm the existing infrastructure. In this paper, we introduce a novel flow-rate based model to model the dynamic movement of passengers over the transportation flow network. Based on this basic model, an integer linear programming model is proposed to solve the bus transit problem permanently. We validate our model against a real scenario in Singapore, where a newly constructed mega-stadium hosts various large events regularly. The results show that the proposed approach …

Practical Guidance For Integrating Data Management Into Long-Term Ecological Monitoring Projects, Robert D. Sutter, Susan Wainscott, John R. Boetsch, Craig Palmer, David J. Rugg

Library Faculty Publications

Long-term monitoring and research projects are essential to understand ecological change and the effectiveness of management activities. An inherent characteristic of long-term projects is the need for consistent data collection over time, requiring rigorous attention to data management and quality assurance. Recent papers have provided broad recommendations for data management; however, practitioners need more detailed guidance and examples. We present general yet detailed guidance for the development of comprehensive, concise, and effective data management for monitoring projects. The guidance is presented as a graded approach, matching the scale of data management to the needs of the organization and the complexity …

A Rolling Horizon Auction Mechanism And Virtual Pricing Of Shipping Capacity For Urban Consolidation Centers, Chen Wang, Hoong Chuin Lau, Yun Fong Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A number of cities around the world have adopted urban consolidation centers (UCCs) to address challenges of last-mile deliveries. At the UCC, goods are consolidated based on their destinations prior to their deliveries into city centers. Typically, a UCC owns a fleet of ecofriendly vehicles to carry out such deliveries. Shippers/carriers that make use of the UCC’s service hence no longer need to be restricted by timewindow and vehicle-type regulations. As a result, they retain the ability to deploy large trucks for the economies of scale from the source to the UCC which is located outside the city center. Furthermore, …

Development Of A Pedestrian Demand Estimation Tool, Kelly Clifton, Patrick Allen Singleton, Christopher D. Muhs, Robert J. Schneider

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Most research on walking behavior has focused on mode choice or walk-trip frequency. In contrast, this study is one of the first to analyze the destination choice behaviors of pedestrians. Using about 4,500 walk trips from a 2011 household travel survey in the Portland, OR, region, we estimated multinomial logit pedestrian destination choice models for six trip purposes. Independent variables included terms for impedance (walk-trip distance); size (employment by type, households); supportive pedestrian environments (parks, a pedestrian index of the environment variable called PIE); barriers to walking (terrain, industrial-type employment); and traveler characteristics. Unique to this study was the use …

14-12 Capacity Analysis Of Pedestrian Facilities Involving Individuals With Disabilities, Mohammad Sadra Sharifi, Keith Christensen, Anthony Chen

Transportation Research Center Reports

Walking facilities are important infrastructures that must be designed to accommodate the behavior of pedestrians in order to be effective. Heterogeneity in pedestrian composition is one important factor generally overlooked in walking facility design guidelines. Particularly, individuals with disabilities are often ignored due to lack of available data on their pedestrian behaviors. A controlled, large-scaled walking experiment involving individuals with disabilities was conducted at Utah State University to observe individual pedestrian behaviors in various walking facilities; these facilities include passageway and bottleneck formations. The purpose of this report is twofold: (1) to model time headway between different individual types using …

Simulation Modeling For Sustainability: A Review Of The Literature, Young B. Moon

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - All Scholarship

This article is a review of work published in various journals and conference proceedings on the topics of Simulation Modelling for Sustainability between January 2000 and May 2015. A total of 192 papers are reviewed. The article intends to serve three goals. First, it will be useful to researchers who wish to know what kinds of questions have been raised and how they have been addressed in the areas of simulation modelling for sustainability. Second, the article will be a useful resource for searching research topics. Third, it will serve as a comprehensive bibliography of the papers published during the …

Improved Safety Performance Functions For Signalized Intersections, Karen Dixon, Christopher Monsere, Raul Avelar, Joel Stephen Barnett, Paty Escobar, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

For this effort, the research team developed new safety performance functions (SPFs) for signalized intersections in Oregon. The modeling dataset consisted of 964 crashes from a total of 73 intersections that were randomly selected based on the presence of a traffic signal (identified through the crash data records). The SPFs were developed using a Poissonlognormal Generalized Linear Mixed model framework for total crashes and severe injury crashes (coded as KAB). Three SPFs were developed: 1) an SPF for total crashes, which relies on both major and minor AADTs to predict the expected number of crashes; 2) an SPF for KAB …

How Do Depression Medications Taken By Pilots Affect Passengers' Willingness To Fly? A Mediation Analysis, Stephen Rice, Scott R. Winter, Keegan Kraemer, Rian Mehta, Korhan Oyman

Publications

The mental health of airline pilots has been a concern for decades. In 2010, the United States Federal Aviation Administration began allowing four types of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to be used by pilots suffering from depression. After a procedural wait period, pilots may be awarded a special issuance of their medical certificates to maintain flight currency. Missing from the literature was any research on consumer’s perceptions of pilots taking antidepressants, along with some other approved medications. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine consumer’s willingness to fly once told that the pilot of their hypothetical …

Interdisciplinary Modeling For Water-Related Issues Graduate Course, Laurel Saito, Alexander Fernald, Timothy Link

All ECSTATIC Materials

The science and management of aquatic ecosystems is inherently interdisciplinary, with issues associated with hydrology, atmospheric science, water quality, geochemistry, sociology, economics, environmental science, and ecology. Addressing water resources issues in any one discipline invariably involves effects that concern other disciplines, and attempts to address one issue often have consequences that exacerbate existing issues or concerns, or create new ones (Jørgensen et al. 1992; Lackey et al. 1975; Straskraba 1994) due to the strongly interactive nature of key processes (Christensen et al. 1996). Thus, research and management of aquatic ecosystems must be interdisciplinary to be most effective, but such truly …

Toward A Spatial-Temporal Measure Of Land-Use Mix, Steven R. Gehrke, Kelly Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban planning and public-health research has long been interested in the connection between land-use mix and travel. Interest from urban planners stems from the potential of transportation efficiency gains achieved by an increased land-use mix and subsequent shortening of trip lengths; whereas, public-health research advocates an increased land-use mix as an effective policy for facilitating greater physical activity. Yet, despite the transportation, land-use, and health benefits related to improving land-use mix and the extent of topical attention given by researchers, no consensus has been reached regarding the magnitude of its effect on travel. This absence of agreement may largely be …