Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Evaluating The Potential Of A Geospatial/Geostatistical Methodology For Locating Rain-Derived Infiltration And Inflow Into Wastewater Treatment Systems In The Minneapolis/St. Paul Metropolitan Area, Minnesota, Usa, Vinson Aaron Williams

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

A significant issue facing municipal wastewater treatment infrastructure (WWTI) is how to manage infiltration and inflow (I/I). I/I of rain and ground water permeate into WWTI after precipitation events, periods of groundwater table rise, and percolation from surrounding surface waters. This can create discharges above the infrastructure's flow capacity, increase costs for processing the wastewater and add undesired stress to aging wastewater networks. In an attempt to assess this problem cost and time inefficient approaches have commonly been applied. This study utilizes a new and more radical methodology to try and make WWTI management more efficient. This study applies ArcGIS …

Assessing Patient And Caregiver Intent To Use Mobile Device Videoconferencing For Remote Mechanically-Ventilated Patient Management, Brian R. Smith

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The Michigan Medicine adult Assisted Ventilation Clinic (AVC) supports patients with neuromuscular disorders and spinal cord injuries and their caregivers at home, helping them avoid expensive emergency department visits, hospitalization, and unnecessary or excessive treatments. Mobile device videoconferencing provides an effective capability for remote mechanically-ventilated patient management but must rely upon an unknown infrastructure comprising patient and caregiver mobile device ownership, connectivity, and experience—and intent to use the service if provided. The purpose of this study was to measure the extent of this infrastructure and the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and intent to use this mobile device …

Development Of The Framework For A Lean, Energy Efficient, And Environmentally Friendly Port: Umm Qasr Port As A Case Study, Safaa A.J. Alfayyadh

World Maritime University Ph.D. Dissertations

The research focus is to examine rigorously how the implementation of Lean within the Umm Qasr Port improves the operation processes and to explore the Lean impact on environment improvement and energy efficiency management. In this research, the ROPMEE model has been developed by the researcher to evaluate the service quality in the cargo delivery process in the Port of Umm Qasr as it covers all the functional and non-functional areas in the cargo delivery process compared to other quality dimensions. The findings confirm that the process quality dimension is the most influential factor in service quality in the Port …

Proactive It Incident Prevention: Using Data Analytics To Reduce Service Interruptions, Mark G. Malley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The cost of resolving user requests for IT assistance rises annually. Researchers have demonstrated that data warehouse analytic techniques can improve service, but they have not established the benefit of using global organizational data to reduce reported IT incidents. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to examine the extent to which IT staff use of organizational knowledge generated from data warehouse analytical measures reduces the number of IT incidents over a 30-day period, as reported by global users of IT within an international pharmaceutical company headquartered in Germany. Organizational learning theory was used to approach the theorized relationship …

Reducing Technology Costs For Small Real Estate Businesses Using Cloud And Mobility, Linda Anne-Marie Mcintosh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Increased client accessibility strategies, awareness of technology cost, and factors of third-party data security capabilities are elements small real estate business (SREB) owners need to know before adopting cloud and mobility technology. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies SREB owners use to implement cloud and mobility products to reduce their technology costs. The target population consisted of 3 SREB owners who had experience implementing cloud and mobility products in their businesses in the state of Texas. The conceptual framework of this research study was the technology acceptance model theory. Semistructured interviews were conducted and …

Evaluating Sociotechnical Factors Associated With Telecom Service Provisioning: A Case Study, Fahad Iqbal

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Provisioning Internet services remains an area of concern for Internet service providers. Despite investments to improve resources and technology, the understanding of sociotechnical factors that influence the service-provisioning life cycle remains limited. The purpose of this case study was to evaluate the influence of sociotechnical factors associated with telecom service provisioning and to explore the critical success and failure factors, specifically in the telecommunication industry of Kuwait. Guided by sociotechnical systems theory, this qualitative exploratory case study approach examined a purposeful sample of 19 participants comprising of managers, engineers, and technicians who had the knowledge and experience of the service-provisioning …

Security Strategies For Hosting Sensitive Information In The Commercial Cloud, Edward Steven Forde

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

IT experts often struggle to find strategies to secure data on the cloud. Although current security standards might provide cloud compliance, they fail to offer guarantees of security assurance. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the strategies used by IT security managers to host sensitive information in the commercial cloud. The study's population consisted of information security managers from a government agency in the eastern region of the United States. The routine active theory, developed by Cohen and Felson, was used as the conceptual framework for the study. The data collection process included IT security manager …

Environmental Relocation Policy As Experienced By One Eastern Missouri Dioxin-Contaminated Community, Susan Annette Olsen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research on environmental relocation is scant and narrow, focusing on a few aspects of permanent relocation and social impacts of natural disasters. As a result, little is known about the long term social impacts of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) environmental relocation policy. A combined conceptual and theoretical framework of Walter's placeways; Ullberg's disaster memoryscapes; Richardson's remembrance and memorialization; Dynes' social capital; and, Norris, Stevens, Pfefferbaum, Wyche, and Pfefferbaum's work on community resilience guided this phenomenological study with the purpose of better understanding competing and complementary roles of each of these constructs in the context of environmental relocation of one …

Information Communication Technology Management As A Gdp Growth Contributor Within Arab League Nations, Jamal Alexander Thompson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The general problem addressed in this study was Arab League nations' over-reliance on fossil fuels as a gross domestic product (GDP) growth driver. Arab League nations that depend primarily on fossil fuel production lack alternative resources for growth in times of fossil fuel usage or price decline. Overdependence on fossil fuels has led to minimal development in other economic sectors, primarily in skilled domestic labor, and to a high dependency on foreign skilled labor for skilled domestic jobs. The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent information communication technology (ICT) management can be a viable GDP growth …

Relationship Between Corporate Governance And Information Security Governance Effectiveness In United States Corporations, Robert Elliot Davis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Cyber attackers targeting large corporations achieved a high perimeter penetration success rate during 2013, resulting in many corporations incurring financial losses. Corporate information technology leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to implement information security domain processes that effectually address the challenges for preventing and deterring information security breaches. Grounded in corporate governance theory, the purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between strategic alignment, resource management, risk management, value delivery, performance measurement implementations, and information security governance (ISG) effectiveness in United States-based corporations. Surveys were used to collect data from 95 strategic and tactical leaders of the 500 …

Urban Dwellers Experiences Regarding Loss Of Natural Environments Due To Rapid Urbanization, Erica Montanye

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Little is known about how residents of rapidly growing cities are impacted by the loss of natural environments. Large cities are expanding at an exponential rate, reducing the presence of, and access to, natural environments for urban dwellers. Many benefits to human health regarding the presence of natural environments near where people live and work are known, but impacts of the loss of natural environments for urban dwellers are unknown. The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to understand residents' experiences regarding the loss of natural environments and related impacts. Attention restoration theory and place attachment were the theoretical lenses …

Household Water Consumption In El Paso, Texas: Perceptions And Behaviors Towards Water In Urban Households, Diego Armando Sanchez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main objective of this research is to determine perceptions and behaviors of household water consumption and to examine how those may affect the patterns of water use and consumption levels in households of El Paso, Texas.

I conducted a qualitative exploratory research to collect important data that is often left unexplored in quantitative research. The collected data is a mixture of qualitative and quantitative. I do report the quantitative data using descriptive statistics, which help the reader see basic patterns in the study.

Qualitative data can help to understand the reasons that impact water consumption perceptions and behaviors in …

Advancing High Spatial And Spectral Resolution Remote Sensing For Observing Plant Community Response To Environmental Variability And Change In The Alaskan Arctic, Sergio Armando Vargas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Arctic is being impacted by climate change more than any other region on Earth. Impacts to terrestrial ecosystems have the potential to manifest through feedbacks with other components of the Earth System. Of particular concern is the potential for the massive store of soil organic carbon to be released from arctic permafrost to the atmosphere where it could exacerbate greenhouse warming and impact global climate and biogeochemical cycles. Even though substantial gains to our understanding of the changing Arctic have been made, especially over the past decade, linking research results from plot to regional scales remains a challenge due …

Environmental And Climate Justice Along The Brahmaputra River In Northeast India, Costanza Rampini

Faculty Publications, Environmental Studies

The glaciers of the Himalayas are the source of all of Asia’s major rivers and are crucial to Asia’s water supply, economies, and livelihoods. The Himalayan region is uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of anthropogenic climate change, while also becoming one of the most dammed regions in the world. This case study explores the unequal distribution of the impacts of climate change and dam building along the Brahmaputra River in Northeast India. It examines how the combined impacts of these two processes negatively affect local communities and explores environmental and climate justice issues. In discussing climate change impacts and hydropower …

Human-Centered Authentication Guidelines, Jeremiah Still, Ashley Cain, David Schuster

Faculty Publications

PurposeDespite the widespread use of authentication schemes and the rapid emergence of novel authentication schemes, a general set of domain-specific guidelines has not yet been developed. This paper aims to present and explain a list of human-centered guidelines for developing usable authentication schemes.Design/methodology/approachThe guidelines stem from research findings within the fields of psychology, human–computer interaction and information/computer science.FindingsInstead of viewing users as the inevitable weak point in the authentication process, this study proposes that authentication interfaces be designed to take advantage of users’ natural abilities. This approach requires that one understands how interactions with authentication interfaces can be improved and …

Leveraging The Srtp Protocol For Over-The-Network Memory Acquisition Of A Ge Fanuc Series 90-30, George Denton, Filip Karpisek, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are common components implemented across many industries such as manufacturing, water management, travel, aerospace and hospitals to name a few. Given their broad deployment in critical systems, they became and still are a common target for cyber attacks; the most prominent one being Stuxnet. Often PLCs (especially older ones) are only protected by an outer line of defense (e.g., a firewall) but once an attacker gains access to the system or the network, there might not be any other defense layers. In this scenario, a forensic investigator should not rely on the existing software as it …

Dynamical Systems Modeling To Identify A Cohort Of Problem Drinkers With Similar Mechanisms Of Behavior Change, Kidist Maxwell, Rebecca Everett, Sijing Shao, Alexis Kuerbis, Lyric Stephenson, H. T. Banks, Jon Morgenstern

Publications and Research

One challenge to understanding mechanisms of behavior change (MOBC) completely among individuals with alcohol use disorder is that processes of change are theorized to be complex, dynamic (time varying), and at times non-linear, and they interact with each other to influence alcohol consumption. We used dynamical systems modeling to better understand MOBC within a cohort of problem drinkers undergoing treatment. We fit a mathematical model to ecological momentary assessment data from individual patients who successfully reduced their drinking by the end of the treatment. The model solutions agreed with the trend of the data reasonably well, suggesting the cohort patients …

Developing Conceptual Understanding And Procedural Fluency In Algebra For High School Students With Intellectual Disability, Andrew J. Wojcik

Theses and Dissertations

Teaching students with Intellectual Disability (ID) is a relatively new endeavor. Beginning in 2001 with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the general education curriculum integrated algebra across the K-12 curriculum (Kendall, 2011; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), and expansion of the curriculum included five intertwined skills (productive disposition, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and conceptual understanding) (Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001). Researchers are just beginning to explore the potential of students with ID with algebra (Browder, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Harris & Wakeman, 2008; Creech-Galloway, Collins, Knight, …

Understanding Community Character As A Socio-Ecological Framework To Enhance Local-Scale Adaptation: An Interdisciplinary Case Study From Rural Northwest Connecticut, Joanna Wozniak-Brown

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Around the world, municipalities are facing new challenges, not the least of which is climate change. This is especially true for rural communities that, for a variety of reasons, will be disproportionately affected by the climatic changes and accompanying policies or programs.

This dissertation, written in manuscript-style, integrates climate change and social-ecological scholarship to address the unique character of rural communities, to communicate the complexity of rural identity through the term "rural character"; and to empower rural communities to incorporate adaptation strategies into their daily municipal operations and planning.

Specifically, this dissertation seeks to answer the following questions: What is …

A Poetics Of Food In The Bahamas: Intentional Journeys Through Food, Consciousness, And The Aesthetic Of Everyday Life, Hilary B. Booker

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This research explores intentional food practices and journeys of consciousness in a network of people in The Bahamas. Intentional food practices are defined as interactions with food chosen for particular purposes, while journeys of consciousness are cumulative successions of events that people associate with healing, restoration, and decolonization personally and collectively. This research examines (1) experiences and moments that influenced people’s intentional food practices; (2) food practices that people enact daily; and (3) how people’s intentional food practices connect to broader spiritual, philosophical, and ideological perspectives guiding their lives. The theoretical framework emerges from a specific lineage of theories and …

A Day In The Life Of A Sim: Making Meaning Of Video Game Avatars And Behaviors, Jessica Stark

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

With video game usage--and criticism on its activity--on the rise, it may be helpful for the psychological community to understand what it actually means to play video games, and what the lived experience entails. This qualitative, phenomenological study specifically explores user behaviors and decisions in the simulated life video game, The Sims. Ten participants completed one- to two-hour long semi-structured interviews, and the data was transcribed, organized into 1,988 codes, which were clustered into 30 categories, and from which six themes ultimately emerged. These resulting themes are: self-representation; past, present, and future; purpose for play; self-reflection; co-creation; and familiarity. The …

Cognition-Based Approaches For High-Precision Text Mining, George John Shannon

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research improves the precision of information extraction from free-form text via the use of cognitive-based approaches to natural language processing (NLP). Cognitive-based approaches are an important, and relatively new, area of research in NLP and search, as well as linguistics. Cognitive approaches enable significant improvements in both the breadth and depth of knowledge extracted from text. This research has made contributions in the areas of a cognitive approach to automated concept recognition in.

Cognitive approaches to search, also called concept-based search, have been shown to improve search precision. Given the tremendous amount of electronic text generated in our digital …

Development Of A Variogram Approach To Spatial Outlier Detection Using A Supplemental Digital Elevation Model Dataset, Zane Daniel Helwig

Masters Theses

"When developing a ground water model, the quality of the dataset should first be evaluated. Spatial outliers can lead to predictions which are not representative of actual conditions. In order to isolate misrepresentative points, a method is presented which examines the experimental variogram of a ground water elevation dataset. To define a threshold variance between pairs of ground water elevation measures, ground elevation values from a digital elevation model (DEM) are used to determine a maximum reasonable variance expected to occur on the experimental variogram. To determine appropriate DEM parameters, a separate study was also done which observed characteristic behavior …

Fine-Grained Sentiment Analysis Of Social Media With Emotion Sensing, Zhaoxia Wang, Chee Seng Chong, Landy Lan, Yinping Yang, Beng-Seng Ho, Joo Chuan Tong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social media is arguably the richest source of human generated text input. Opinions, feedbacks and critiques provided by internet users reflect attitudes and sentiments towards certain topics, products, or services. The sheer volume of such information makes it effectively impossible for any group of persons to read through. Thus, social media sentiment analysis has become an important area of work to make sense of the social media talk. However, most existing sentiment analysis techniques focus only on the aggregate level, classifying sentiments broadly into positive, neutral or negative, and lack the capabilities to perform fine-grained sentiment analysis. This paper describes …

The Making Of A Successful Analytics Master Degree Program: Experiences And Lessons Drawn For A Young And Small Asian University, Michelle L. F. Cheong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Singapore Management University’s School of Information Systems is a young school within a young and small university in Asia. Being young and small, establishing a successful analytics master degree program required extensive landscape research, assessment of its own strengths and weaknesses, having a committed team, and having a clear vision to meet the ever-changing needs of the industry. The Master of IT in Business (Analytics) program, established since 2011, has grown from an annual intake of 16 to 128 students in six years. This article attempts to describe the design process, challenges faced, decisions made, and the key actions taken, …

Discovering Historic Traffic-Tolerant Paths In Road Networks, Pui Hang Li, Man Lung Yiu, Kyriakos Mouratidis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Historic traffic information is valuable in transportation analysis and planning, e.g., evaluating the reliability of routes for representative source-destination pairs. Also, it can be utilized to provide efficient and effective route-search services. In view of these applications, we propose the k traffic-tolerant paths (TTP) problem on road networks, which takes a source-destination pair and historic traffic information as input, and returns k paths that minimize the aggregate (historic) travel time. Unlike the shortest path problem, the TTP problem has a combinatorial search space that renders the optimal solution expensive to find. First, we propose an exact algorithm with effective pruning …

Avoiding Zombies In Archival Replay Using Serviceworker, Sawood Alam, Mat Kelly, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

[First paragraph] A Composite Memento is an archived representation of a web page with all the page requisites such as images and stylesheets. All embedded resources have their own URIs, hence, they are archived independently. For a meaningful archival replay, it is important to load all the page requisites from the archive within the temporal neighborhood of the base HTML page. To achieve this goal, archival replay systems try to rewrite all the resource references to appropriate archived versions before serving HTML, CSS, or JS. However, an effective server-side URL rewriting is difficult when URLs are generated dynamically using JavaScript. …

Exploring Myths In Digital Forensics: Separating Science From Ritual, Gary C. Kessler, Gregory H. Carlton

Publications

Digital forensic methodology deviates significantly relative to the methods of other forensic sciences for numerous practical reasons, and it has been largely influenced by factors derived from the inception and evolution of this relatively new and rapidly changing field. Digital forensics methodology was developed more by practitioners in its early days rather than by computer scientists. This led to accepted best practices in the field that may not represent the best or, at least, tested, science. This paper explores some of these differences in the practice and evolution between digital and other forensic sciences, and recommends scientific approaches to apply …

A Multi-Method Exploration Of The Genetic And Environmental Risks Contributing To Tobacco Use Behaviors In Young Adulthood, Elizabeth K. Do

Theses and Dissertations

Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in both the United States and worldwide. Twin and family studies have demonstrated that both genetic and environmental factors are important contributors to tobacco use behaviors. Understanding how genes, the environment, and their interactions is critical to the development of public health interventions that focus on the reduction of tobacco related morbidity and mortality. However, few studies have examined the transition from adolescent to young adulthood – the time when many individuals are experimenting with and developing patterns of tobacco use. This dissertation thesis seeks to provide a comprehensive …

Hard Apple Cider In The New York Hudson Valley Region: A Tourism Study, Meghann Smith, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Hard apple cider production is an emerging industry in apple-growing regions of the United States due to the growing popularity of local craft products in the alcoholic beverage industry. This study strives to understand how hard cideries may affect local product promotion, rural tourism, and agriculture’s economic viability in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Tourism is evolving towards travelling for experiential value; the hard cider industry can offer an authentic environmentally and historically significant experience. By identifying the consumers and their expectations, the possibilities for building tourism specifically surrounding products with regional significance expand significantly. In this study, …