Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rural Pregnant Women’S Experiences With Substance Use Disorder: A Qualitative Study, Cami Weber

Dissertations

Rural pregnant women with substance use disorder (SUD) are an understudied vulnerable population that often experiences poor pregnancy outcomes (Higgins et al., 2019; Jumah, 2016; Kramlich et al., 2018; Shaw et al., 2015). Despite the high prevalence and high burden associated with SUD, rural women are less likely than non-pregnant women to seek addiction treatment and complete an outpatient treatment program during pregnancy (Shaw et al., 2015). This study aimed to give voice to rural Missouri women with SUD. The research questions explored the life experiences and motivations for seeking treatment using a qualitative, descriptive research design with grounded theory …

Crash Injury Severity Prediction With Artificial Neural Networks, Rima Abisaad

Dissertations

Motor vehicle crashes are one of our nation's most serious social, economic and health issues. They are the leading cause of death among children and young adults, killing approximately 1.35 million people each year. Providing a safe and efficient transportation system is the primary goal of transportation engineering and planning. To help reduce traffic fatalities and injuries on roadways, crash prediction models are used to forecast the injury severity of potential crashes and apply precautionary countermeasures accordingly. Most of these models are reactive as they use historical crash data to categorize crash-related factors. Recently, advancements have been made in developing …

Systems For Free Parking Assignment, Abeer M. Hakeem

Dissertations

Finding a free, curbside parking spaces in metropolitan areas, especially during rush hours, is difficult for drivers. The difficulty arises from not knowing where the available spaces may be at that time; and, even if the spaces are known, many vehicles may pursue the same spaces, causing serious parking contention and traffic congestion. This dissertation presents three cost-effective and easily deployable free parking assignment systems that optimize the travel time of the drivers.

The first contribution is the Free Parking System (FPS), a centralized solution that solves the curbside parking problem. Unlike existing solutions, FPS is cost-effective, as it does …

Curb-Sided: How Technology Disrupts The American Transportation Planning Process, Mary Angelica Painter

Dissertations

The disruptive arrival of Uber, Lyft, and other transportation network companies (TNCs) into American cities ignited arguments on how policy-makers should regulate such entities. Policy debates started among policymakers, companies, and existing industries and interests. In attempts to persuade policy, actors adopted a variety of language and used different levels of government to achieve policy goals. In almost all cases, TNCs were able to gain favorable policy through image framing and venue shopping – the key components to Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET). This analysis looks at the policy process of three American cities: Chicago, IL, St. Louis, MO, and Austin, …

Against The Wind: A Study On Aviation As A Female Career Choice, Bonnie Gagliardo

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study is to identify and describe the educational and social experiences that sparked the interest of female pilots as young women to pursue a career in aviation.

Methodology: This qualitative phenomenological study utilized semi- structured interviews to explore the lived experiences of female pilots, to understand if there were common social and educational factors which influenced them to become interested in aviation. Using convenience sampling, eleven pilots who hold a Federal Aviation Administration Commercial or Airline Transport Pilot’s License were selected to participate in this study.

Findings: The findings from this …

Applied Deep Learning In Intelligent Transportation Systems And Embedding Exploration, Xiaoyuan Liang

Dissertations

Deep learning techniques have achieved tremendous success in many real applications in recent years and show their great potential in many areas including transportation. Even though transportation becomes increasingly indispensable in people’s daily life, its related problems, such as traffic congestion and energy waste, have not been completely solved, yet some problems have become even more critical. This dissertation focuses on solving the following fundamental problems: (1) passenger demand prediction, (2) transportation mode detection, (3) traffic light control, in the transportation field using deep learning. The dissertation also extends the application of deep learning to an embedding system for visualization …

Human Trafficking: Flying Under The Radar, Amber L. Hulsey

Dissertations

The global hegemon, the United States encompasses roughly 57,000 to 63,000 of the roughly 45.8 million slaves present across the world today (Walk Free Foundation 2016a). This dissertation research uses the theoretical lens of Human Security as a unique approach in that it is people-centered, focusing on the individual, rather than the more traditional theories in international relations that emphasize the state as the central actor. This dissertation focuses on the understudied area of human trafficking into and within the United States. More specifically, the objective of this research examines the movement of trafficked persons via air and details actions …

Estimating Vehicles Emissions At Signalized Intersections In The Highway Capacity Manual, Yuanyuan Fan

Dissertations

Over the past decades, motor vehicle volumes have continued to increase at a high rate. As a result, engineers in the transportation field not only need more robust knowledge of traffic operation control and transportation planning, but more attention is also needed to understand and estimate the influences that this increasing volume of vehicles has on the environment, especially the influence on air quality. The EPA has stated that reducing carbon monoxide (CO) from vehicle emissions is the most significant way to control air pollution from the transportation sector.

The Highway Capacity Manual is a national and international resource that …

The Relationship Between Private And Commercial Vehicle Driver Records And Accidents In Michigan, Robert E. Maki

Dissertations

The primary objective of this study was to determine whether previous accidents and citations are reliable predictors of future tractor-trailer heavy truck accidents in Michigan. In addition, the background material on accident trends shows how heavy truck safety policy was formed at the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Historically, accident prediction models have been able to explain only small portions of the accident experience. More recent studies have tended to show that previous citation and accident experience were good predictors of commercial vehicle accidents. Most studies have suffered from an admitted lack of exposure data and incomplete accident statistics.

Through the …