Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Powering Rural Transformation: Solar Pv In Rural Uganda., Matt Piggins

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The intent of this study was to understand the role that solar PV plays in the process of rural electrification, what barriers exist in the PV market, and how the Rural Electrification Agency is bringing down those barriers. Moreover, I sought to understand solar PV’s development impact in rural areas and how people in rural regions of Uganda are using the technology, especially those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Additionally, I sought to understand if PV is a financially viable option for the rural poor or if it is only obtainable by the rural upper and middle class. …

Leveraging Social Media And Web Of Data For Crisis Response Coordination, Carlos Castillo, Fernando Diaz, Hemant Purohit

Kno.e.sis Publications

There is an ever increasing number of users in social media (1B+ Facebook users, 500M+ Twitter users) and ubiquitous mobile access (6B+ mobile phone subscribers) who share their observations and opinions. In addition, the Web of Data and existing knowledge bases keep on growing at a rapid pace. In this scenario, we have unprecedented opportunities to improve crisis response by extracting social signals, creating spatio-temporal mappings, performing analytics on social and Web of Data, and supporting a variety of applications. Such applications can help provide situational awareness during an emergency, improve preparedness, and assist during the rebuilding/recovery phase of a …

Hierarchical Interest Graph From Tweets, Pavan Kapanipathi, Prateek Jain, Chitra Venkataramani, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Industry and researchers have identified numerous ways to monetize microblogs for personalization and recommendation. A common challenge across these different works is the identification of user interests. Although techniques have been developed to address this challenge, a flexible approach that spans multiple levels of granularity in user interests has not been forthcoming. In this work, we focus on exploiting hierarchical semantics of concepts to infer richer user interests expressed as a Hierarchical Interest Graph. To create such graphs, we utilize users' tweets to first ground potential user interests to structured background knowledge such as Wikipedia Category Graph. We then adapt …

Transparent Spectrum Co-Access In Cognitive Radio Networks, Jonathan Daniel Backens

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The licensed wireless spectrum is currently under-utilized by as much as 85%. Cognitive radio networks have been proposed to employ dynamic spectrum access to share this under-utilized spectrum between licensed primary user transmissions and unlicensed secondary user transmissions. Current secondary user opportunistic spectrum access methods, however, remain limited in their ability to provide enough incentive to convince primary users to share the licensed spectrum, and they rely on primary user absence to guarantee secondary user performance. These challenges are addressed by developing a Dynamic Spectrum Co-Access Architecture (DSCA) that allows secondary user transmissions to co-access transparently and concurrently with primary …

Analyzing Responses To Open Ended Questions For Spirit Using Aspect Oriented Sentiment Analysis, Animesh Jain

Open Access Theses

Open ended questions provide an effective way of measuring the attitude and perception of respondents towards a topic. Surprising Possibilities Imagined and Realized through Information Technology (SPIRIT) was a program (2008-2012) that employed open-ended questions to gauge program participants' attitudes related to computing. SPIRIT sought to increase the interest of high school students, especially female students, towards computing courses and careers. Pre- and post-attitude surveys were used during the program to measure the changes in attitudes of the participants towards IT and also to analyze the impact different sessions had on different demographic groups of participants. The open-ended survey questions …

Plastic Deformation Of Steel Plates Under High Impact Loading, Brendan O'Toole

NSTec UNLV Symposium

• UNLV Two-stage Light Gas Gun
• Experimental Measurements
• Physical Results of Impact on Target Plates
• Research Objectives
• Computational Analysis Methods
• Material Models used in Computational Analysis
• Simulation Comparison: Crater and Deformation
• Simulation Comparison: Free Surface Velocity
• High Speed Video of Experiments
• Microscopy of Failure Surface: Is Phase Change an Issue?
• Electron Back Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) of Failure Surfaces
• On-going Plans and Future Work

Explore The Six Fundamentals Unlv Accelerated: High-Energy X-Ray Applications (Hexa), Oliver A. Hemmers

NSTec UNLV Symposium

• UNLV and HEXA for a Brighter Southern Nevada Future
• History of HEXA’s Public-­‐Private Partnership
• Discovery Through Research and Innova4ve Technologies
• The Innova4ve Process
• Southern Nevada Research and Economic Development Applica4ons
• HEXA Program Benefits

Fearless Friday: Kirsten Crear, Kirsten Crear

SURGE

Even in her last semester here at Gettysburg, Kirsten Crear ’14 is fearlessly working to make changes for the future of the campus community. This semester, Kirsten introduced a STEMinists club on campus that will give female students who are STEM (an acronym for Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) majors the opportunity to come together and create a community, share and discuss the difficulties they face as women in their fields of study, and support and mentor each other as they prepare to enter their fields.

Kirsten is passionate, driven, and determined, taking the initiative to bring this group of women together on campus …

State Of The U.S. Ocean And Coastal Economies 2014, Judith T. Kildow, Charles S. Colgan, Jason D. Scorse, Pat Johnston, Matt Nichols

Publications

The nation's coasts and oceans contribute much to the United States economy. For the past 14 years, the National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP), now a program of the Center for the Blue Economy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, has compiled time-series data that track economic activities, demographics, ports and cargo volume and value, natural resource production and value, non-market values, and federal expenditures in the U.S. coastal zone both on land and in the water. A report on the ocean and coastal economies of the United States was released by NOEP in 2009 covering data through 2005. The …

Coastal And Ocean Economic Summaries Of The Coastal States 2014, Pat Johnston

Publications

The following summaries of the ocean and coastal economies were prepared by the National Ocean Economics Program as a companion the State of the U.S. Ocean and Coastal Economies 2014. The U.S. report, its appendices, and these state summary reports are available on the NOEP website at www.OceanEconomics.org/download.

Understanding The Global Energy Crisis, Eugene D. Coyle, Richard A. Simmons

Purdue University Press Books

We are facing a global energy crisis caused by world population growth, an escalating increase in demand, and continued dependence on fossil-based fuels for generation. It is widely accepted that increases in greenhouse gas concentration levels, if not reversed, will result in major changes to world climate with consequential effects on our society and economy. This is just the kind of intractable problem that Purdue University’s Global Policy Research Institute seeks to address in the Purdue Studies in Public Policy series by promoting the engagement between policy makers and experts in fields such as engineering and technology.

Major steps forward …

Does Access To Information Technology Make People Happier? Insights From Well-Being Surveys From Around The World, Carol Graham, Milena Nikolova

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

This lecture summarizes new research on the relationship between access to cell phones, TV, and the internet and subjective well-being worldwide. Technology access is positive for well-being in general, but with diminishing marginal returns for those who already have much access. It is also associated with increased stress and anger among cohorts for whom access to the technologies is new. The increased financial inclusion in very poor countries that comes with cell phones and mobile banking also has effects on well-being. Well-being levels are higher in the countries with higher levels of access to mobile banking, but so are stress …

Comparative Trust Management With Applications: Bayesian Approaches Emphasis, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Pramod Anantharam, Cory Andrew Henson, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Trust relationships occur naturally in many diverse contexts such as collaborative systems, e-commerce, interpersonal interactions, social networks, and semantic sensor web. As agents providing content and services become increasingly removed from the agents that consume them, the issue of robust trust inference and update becomes critical. There is a need to find online substitutes for traditional (direct or face-to-face) cues to derive measures of trust, and create efficient and robust systems for managing trust in order to support decision-making. Unfortunately, there is neither a universal notion of trust that is applicable to all domains nor a clear explication of its …

Cursing In English On Twitter, Wenbo Wang, Lu Chen, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Cursing is not uncommon during conversations in the physical world: 0.5% to 0.7% of all the words we speak are curse words, given that 1% of all the words are first-person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us, our). On social media, people can instantly chat with friends without face-to-face interaction, usually in a more public fashion and broadly disseminated through highly connected social network. Will these distinctive features of social media lead to a change in people's cursing behavior? In this paper, we examine the characteristics of cursing activity on a popular social media platform - Twitter, involving the analysis of …

From The Past (1854): A Chapter On Necklaces, Old And New, Mrs. White

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Originally published in Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book in 1854 (pp. 213-216), this article presents a brief history of necklaces among the classic Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as the British, from the perspective of an educated English lady. It is an instructive early study of strung adornments based on antiquarian, historical, and literary sources.

Archaeometrical Analysis Of Glass Beads: Potential, Limitations, And Results, Adelphine Bonneau, Jean-François Moreau, Ron G.V. Hancock

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Over the past few decades, several new analytical techniques have been used to determine the composition and the likely production centers of glass beads found at archaeological sites around the world. Made since antiquity, glass beads are important artifacts which can provide much more information than their small size suggests. This article reviews the most common analytical techniques used to study glass beads - optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray fluorescence (XRF), instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), and Raman spectroscopy - and discusses their potential, limitations, and what results may be …

Historical Descriptions Of Malay "Beadwork", Hwei-Fe'n Cheah

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Little has been published in English about Malay ceremonial textiles. This article relates early-20th-century beaded examples to historical descriptions and court literature to illustrate the link between beaded and bejeweled hangings.

Java City: Developing A Successful Cultural Center, Jack G. Montgomery Jr.

DLTS Faculty Publications

Introduction:

Western Kentucky University Library had a large two-level, but largely unused lobby that had once been the library’s entrance but had been closed as a new entrance was created. By 2002, it sat empty and all but devoid of human traffic just outside our Reference area. Also, in 2002, Reference statistics were down, as was Circulation and library usage in general. Dean Binder believed that with the renovation and development of this former lobby, the library would realize an increase in campus visibility and library usage would increase.

Glass Beads From Jar Burials Of The 15th-17th Centuries In The Cardamom Mountains Of Cambodia, Alison Carter, Nancy Beavan

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

A variety of glass beads were encountered in jar burials dating to the 15th-17th centuries found on rock ledges in remote portions of the Cardamom Mountains in southern Cambodia. These burials represent a mortuary ritual in which defleshed bones, often from multiple individuals, were deposited in large ceramic jars predominantly from Thai kilns. Despite the isolated location, the jars and glass beads suggest that the people buried in the jars were active participants in exchange networks. The identification of different compositional types of glass beads can be related to possible trade networks with the lowlands and maritime Southeast Asia. Using …

Shell And Glass Beads From The Tombs Of Kindoki, Mbanza Nsundi, Lower Congo, Charlotte Verhaeghe, Bernard-Olivier Clist, Chantal Fontaine

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

The ancient Kingdom of Kongo originated in Central Africa in the 14th century. In the 15th century, the Portuguese organized tight contacts with the Bakongo. From then on European goods gained new significance in the local culture and even found their way into funerary rites. Among the most important grave goods in the Kingdom of Kongo were shell and glass beads. They occur in many tombs and symbolize wealth, status, or femininity. At the burial site of Kindoki, linked with the former capital of Kongo's Nsundi province, a great number of shell and glass beads were found together with symbols …