bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Data processing techniques of hydraulic bed sensor and doppler radar for elder care
Authors:   , Su Bo-Yu
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Population aging is a common phenomenon in a society. The developed country like the United States, eldercare is becoming an important issue nowadays. There are many aspects we need to address for eldercare, including - circulatory system, alimentary system, nervous system and so on. In this research study, we focus on the heart rate monitoring and estimation using a hydraulic bed sensor. In addition, we also develop the fall detection technique using a Doppler radar. The hydraulic bed sensor for heart rate monitoring is placed under the mattress. The sensor system contains four tubes filled with water and uses the pressure sensor to obtain the Ballistocardiogram (BCG) signal. The BCG signal contains the information of heart beat, respiratory rate and body motion. Two algorithms are developed to process the bed sensor data. One uses the Hilbert transform and the other is based on the energy. By using the algorithms we developed, we can extract the heart beat information to estimate the heart rate. The system has been validated in a well controlled lab environment and a nursing house. In addition to the heart rate, the relative blood pressure measurement by using two features extracted from the bed sensor signal has also been developed and validated with 48 people data. The results show high correlation coefficient with the groundtruth. The Doppler radar for human fall detection is mounted in the ceiling. The radar senses the motion of an object and produces outputs based on the Doppler shift effect. We propose an effective method based on Wavelet Transform (WT) for fall vs. nonfall classification. The proposed fall detection classi er can distinguish between the fall and daily activities. The good performance of the proposed detection method has been validated through the data from the lab and in-home environments, with the falls from stunt actors and senior residents. To further improve the performance, we introduce an additional radar mounted on the wall. Based on the same detection method as when using one radar, we extract and concatenate the features from two radars for classification. The result shows outstanding improvement.
(Re)Contextualizing gender representation in Hamlet
Authors:   , Darr Andrew
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] My dissertation "(Re)Contextualizing Gender Representation in Hamlet" argues that all Hamlets reflect their historically specific gender crisis, which helps explain why Hamlet remains the most adapted Shakespearian drama. Each Hamlet recontextualizes its representation of gender to reflect the gender norms of that historical period, beginning with Shakespeare's. My first chapter traces the ongoing conversation regarding male and female gender norms from Italian conduct books to their English translations, which in turn instigated an English counter-response. My second chapter interrogates gender representation in the English dramatic genre of revenge tragedy from its Senecan roots through Thomas Kyd's foundational play The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's first revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus. My third chapter explores twentieth century film adaptations of Hamlet as each film recontextualizes Hamlet and Ophelia within that period's dominant scholarly perception of the characters. My last chapter centers on the emergence of video game adaptations of Hamlet, which was made possible by the arrival of independently funded independent games. These innovative and interactive reimaginings of Hamlet participate within the larger, ongoing conversation concerning the representation of gender within the video game medium. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the transitional moment that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet during accounts for the play's incredible afterlife, especially in regards to the representation of gender.
The new imagined communities : the case of Hidroituango in Columbia
Authors:   , Suarez Gomez Juan Diego
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The main objective of the dissertation was to understand the relationship between three different phenomena: extractive economy, governance and biopolitics, and their role in the recreation of a specific type of community suitable to the needs of an extractive economy. In order to make visible the byproducts of this ongoing activities, it is necessary to reinterpret how the regimes of production and reproduction of social life are being reshaped. Specifically, I intended to analyze the strategies employed as part of the extractive device that ensure community compliance. Furthermore, these strategies would appear to generate enough changes in both the "social" and in "subjects" to warrant close investigation. I examined the social effects of a hydroelectric project that started on 2010 and currently under construction, in the Cauca River Canyon, Department of Antioquia, in the Northwest of Colombia, South America. The study attempted to explore how communities and their lands are being produced and reproduced through discourse, as a result of strategies that the hydroelectric company and the State--at different levels of governance--have begun to employ to disrupt and create malleable communities. The hegemonic block uses technologies of intervention, cooptation and elimination, which result in something known as the "extractivist device" (Dispositivo extractivista -In spanish). In Latin America, companies began using this method as a socialization process and have been able to impose and legitimize the new extractive model from above. This study also draw the attention to the relationship between the disruption occuring within local rural communities as a result of the large neoliberal extractive projects and the expansion of urban enclaves in Colombia, my homecountry. Over the past 2 decades hundreds of thousands have sought refuge in the cities as the dispossession of land and homes exploded. Earlier research within the city of Medellin, my hometown, drew my attention to the problem of how forcibly displaced people from the countryside is impacting urban life. Attention needs to be paid to the way the violence of the neoliberal economy not only dislocates some communities, but also reconstructs rural communities to suit its own purpose.
3D genome structure reconstruction from chromosomal contact data
Authors:   , Trieu Tuan Anh
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Different cell types of an organism have the same DNA sequence, but they can function differently because their difference in 3D organization allows them to express different genes and has different cellular functions. Understanding the 3D organization of the genome is the key to understand functions of the cell. Chromosome conformation capture techniques like Hi-C and TCC that can capture interactions between proximal chromosome fragments have allowed the study of 3D genome organization in high resolution and high through-put. My work focuses on developing computational methods to reconstruct 3D genome structures from Hi-C data. I presented three methods to reconstruct 3D genome and chromosome structures. The first method can build 3D genome models from soft constraints of contacts and non-contacts. This method utilizes the concept of contact and non-contact to reconstruct 3D models without translating interaction frequencies into physical distances. The translation is commonly used by other methods even though it makes a strong assumption about the relationship between interaction frequencies and physical distances. In synthetic dataset, when the relationship was known, my method performed comparably with other methods assuming the relationship. This shows the potential of my method for real Hi-C datasets where the relationship is unknown. The limitation of the method is that it has parameters requiring manual adjustment. I developed the second method to reconstruct 3D genome models. This method utilizes a commonly used function to translate interaction frequencies to physical distances to build 3D models. I proposed a novel way to derive soft constraints to handle inconsistency in the data and to make the method robust. Building 3D models at high resolution is a more challenging problem as the number of constraints is small and the feasible space is larger. I introduced a third method to build 3D chromosome models at high resolution. The method reconstructs models at low resolution and then uses them to guide the reconstruction of models at high resolution. The last part of my work is the development of a comprehensive tool with intuitive graphic user interface to analyze Hi-C data, reconstruct and analyze 3D models.
Bone regenerative engineering via controlled release of simple signaling molecules
Authors:   , Aliakbarighavimi Soheila
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] More than 1.7 billion people worldwide are suffering from bone defects that are due to trauma or medical conditions such as degenerative diseases. Bone can repair and remodel itself, however, in the case of critical size defects, healing is impossible without intervention. Bone regenerative engineering is a new field that focuses on the development of bone substitutes that can stimulate the body to remodel bone tissue in the defect site, most commonly utilizing calcium phosphates in their design to mimic the inorganic phase of bone. Most of previous research has overlooked that calcium phosphates consist of two non-proteinous signaling molecules calcium ions (Ca2+) and phosphate ions (Pi) which are referred as simple signaling molecules that are osteoinductive in a time-dependent and concentration-dependent manner. Higher concentrations of these ions are not only non-inductive, but are also cytotoxic. In my PhD research, I first identified the therapeutic range of Ca2+ and Pi after which I developed two novel platforms capable of controllably delivering these ions within their inductive therapeutic windows. The first platform was comprised of synthetic, hydrophobic, five-carbon polyesters incorporated with rapid dissoluting monobasic calcium phosphate as a scaffold for critical size defects in long bones. The second platform consisted of natural, hydrophilic, chitosan-based hydrogels incorporated with slow dissoluting dibasic calcium phosphate for the treatment of vertebral compression fractures. While I established a new aspect for controllably delivering Ca2+ and Pi as bioactive additives for different bone tissue engineering applications, we are interested in other simple signaling molecules as well. Moving forward, our research group is interested to investigate the effect of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and carbon monoxide (CO) as cytoprotective, angiogenic, and neuroinductive simple signaling molecules, respectively. The spatiotemporal delivery of multiple simple signaling molecules can be promising for complex bone tissue engineering applications.
Relaciones familiares conflictivas y resignificaciï¿½n de la familia en la narrativa de escritoras Mexicanas contemporï¿½neas
Authors:   , Drake Reina Muro
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Esta disertaciÃ³n se basa en el estudio de tres novelas mexicanas, Amora de RosamarÃ­a Roffiel, Dos mujeres y Vida y peripecias de una buena hija de familia de Sara Levi-CalderÃ³n, enfocadas en la re-presentaciÃ³n de las relaciones familiares conflictivas y la resignificaciÃ³n de la familia en la narrativa de escritoras mexicanas contemporÃ¡neas. En este estudio se intenta demostrar que los trabajos narrativos actuales con temaÌtica lÃ©sbica son transgresores porque en ellos se subvierten las construcciones culturales del sistema patriarcal mexicano tales como los conceptos de: familia nuclear, instinto maternal y supremacÃ­a del padre. La narrativa lÃ©sbica de estas escritoras mexicanas se apoya en las perspectivas feministas para desestabilizar esos cÃ³digos culturales y sociales que obligan a la mujer a cumplir con sus funciones reproductivas biolÃ³gicas como si fuera su Ãºnica meta en la vida. Como lo demuestran las narradoras/protagonistas de estas novelas, las mujeres pueden escoger amar a otras mujeres, negarse a ser madres y distanciarse de los miembros de su famiia nuclear. La relacioÌn leÌsbica de las protagonistas nos invita a reflexionar sobre la vida y los problemas que enfrentan en la sociedad conservadora mexicana las mujeres que vi transgreden el orden social heteronormativo. Las personajas de estas novelas sufren violencia genÃ©rica aÃºn dentro de su familia nuclear, por lo que terminan por rebelarse y buscar nuevas relaciones afectivas que las ayuden a liberarse de las imposiciones del patriarcado. Estas subjetividades forman uniones familiares alternativas a las modelizaciones tradicionales donde predomina el amor, la buena comunicaciÃ³n y el respeto mutuo. La mejor manera que estas subversivas protagonistas encuentran de liberarse de las agresiones fÃ­sicas y psicolÃ³gicas que sufren de parte de sus familiares masculinos es la independizarse econÃ³micamente de ellos y encontrar un espacio propio donde puedan escribir sus propias historias del lucha social. Con sus aportaciones literarias, RosamarÃ­a Roffiel y Sara Levi CalderÃ³n han abierto el camino para que otras escritoras mexicanas usen sus obras artÃ­sticas como un medio para abogar por la liberaciÃ³n y aceptacioÌn de los sujetos pertenecientes a la comunidad de LGBTQ. Las ideas feministas pueden ser el instrumento para que estas autoras visibilicen las experiencias de dichos sujetos marginalizados por el sistema patriarcal que privilegia al sujeto masculino heterosexual. Entonces, esta investigaciÃ³n utiliza como marco teoÌrico las ideas de Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, LucÃ­a Guerra Cunningham, Adrianne Rich, Sharon Magnarelli, Mauren Baker, Darja Zorc-Maver y Norma Mongrovejo Aquise, entre otras. La finalidad de este anaÌlisis es comenzar un debate no solo sobre las diferencias de geÌnero sexual, sino sobre todo de que existen nuevas alternativas del concepto de familia.
Bifurcation analysis and damage detection in mechanical structures
Authors:   , Alshalal Iqbal
Published: April 2021

Bifurcation and damage are two phenomena prompting any structure to unpredicted failure. Their early detection is crucial to maintaining structural health and integrity. In this work, we investigate two topics in bifurcation and damage detection. Trusses with geometric and loading symmetries have been used in many structures to reduce complexity design. Here, bifurcation analysis has been conducted for a two-bar truss and a shallow arch structure with seven bars. Two program packages Gesa and Ansys based on the finite elements method (FEM) have been used to detect the symmetry breaking bifurcation points. The theoretical examination uncovers that the bifurcation prompts a much lower critical load in the presence of little asymmetry in comparison to the symmetric case. The outcomes of bifurcation detection by using Gesa program in Matlab for fully nonlinear analysis and Ansys commercial program show the two programs give results close to the results acquired from the theoretical analysis. Our study opens the door for the researcher to use the two programs for more complicated structures for bifurcation detection analysis since analytically will be hard to use. As for damage detection, the residual error method has been used. This is a technique that relies on observing the residual error in the equation of motion specified for free vibration analysis so as to reveal any changes in the structural dynamic characteristics. The method has been applied on bar, beam and plate to demonstrate its validity. Several numerical simulations with different damage scenarios are presented to assess the robustness and limitations of the method. The sensitivity of the method to noise has been tested with different noise levels as well. Results obtained with the residual error method are compared with those obtained from the absolute difference mode shape curvature (ADMSC) method. The comparison demonstrates that the residual error method can detect and locate damage in the simulated structures with low level of noise.
Because they care : rural community college instructors' beliefs and practices
Authors:   , Birt Julie
Published: April 2021

Community college instructors are influential in the lives of rural students, and they have key insights on the education of those students. Studies are needed to identify ways to support these rural students, who represent an important source of political and socioeconomic diversity for their communities and when transferring to universities. This multiple manuscript dissertation examines the instructional and assessment beliefs and practices of three experienced rural community college instructors. Using multiple case study methods and grounded in the curriculum development model, I found that the rural instructors tended to use more student-centered instructional methods. They considered students' future careers, acted as an explainer and promoted group work. The instructors held various beliefs about the focus and adaptability of assessment which manifested in their use of reflection to inform future assessments and instruction. The results of this empirical research informed the derivation of four CARE principles to help instructors support rural students in post-secondary biology classrooms. This dissertation concludes that instructors and researchers need to reconsider the common characterization of rural students as deficient and instead capitalize on their strengths.
School-aged children's awareness of their own working memory contents
Authors:   , Blume Christopher L.
Published: April 2021

Working memory researchers in psychology have long wondered about how the mind organizes the many different pieces of information that must be maintained at any one time in order that the individual may carry out daily tasks of cognition. This research has often focused on the capacity of information that an individual is capable of holding in mind at any one time. In order to obtain a better understanding of this capacity researchers have developed what are thought to be objective measures of estimating the number of items (k) an individual must have in mind based on their performance on some cognitive task. In the present research one such formula is used to obtain a typical estimate for a visual array task in which multiple colored squares must be held in mind for a short duration before the participant is asked about whether or not a single probe color was one of the colors that had just seen in the array. In addition, participants are asked to provide their own subjective estimates of the number of colors they believe themselves to have memorized. Several age groups were tested starting with children as young as 6. The results show that while all age groups appear to overestimate their own capacity when compared to the objective k estimate, younger children tend to do so to a greater degree. This effect is discussed as the result of the development of quicker processing with age, faster forgetting in young age, or simply a structural increase in the capacity irrespective of the prior two possibilities.
Heterogeneity in body condition, survival, and seasonal origins among lesser snow and Ross's geese
Authors:   , Fowler Drew N.
Published: April 2021

Individual heterogeneity in fitness within a population is well established and provides the required variability for natural selection to take place. Yet, in the case of overabundant midcontinent lesser snow (Anser caerulescens caerulescens) and Ross's geese (A. rossii), individual variation in regards to harvest effects on population growth has largely not been considered when evaluating management actions to reduce population size. In this dissertation, I first examined heterogeneity in body condition among hunter harvested individuals and the general population of midcontinent lesser snow and Ross's geese during the spring Light Goose Conservation Order in 2015 and 2016 across Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota. I found a body condition bias in decoy harvested geese, such that individuals removed by hunters were in lower body condition (less lipid content) relative to the general population. This finding suggests that disproportionate removal of lower conditioned individuals is a feature of the currently observed compensatory nature of harvest among midcontinent light geese. I also explored methods to estimate the magnitude of individual variation in survival rates of adult lesser snow geese using mark-recovery data via a Bayesian state-space model. I identified limitations to estimating heterogeneous survival rates using mark-recovery data alone and suggest future simulations to explore alternative methodological approaches. Finally, I evaluated differences in spring body condition among individuals using different wintering habitats through stable isotope analysis. I found that individuals overwintering in coastal marsh habitats had lower lipid reserves relative to those individuals overwintering in rice-based agricultural landscapes, suggesting a carry-over effect from winter habitat use that may influence harvest susceptibility or other fitness parameters. In conclusion, continued research to identify the amount of individual variation in survival parameters of cohort specific geese can further elucidate the role of heterogeneity on the Light Goose Conservation Order attempts to reduce population size.
It's styled by Helen Dryden : the fine art of good taste
Authors:   , Horne Sarah Marie
Published: April 2021

In the throes of the Great Depression the struggling automobile manufacturer Studebaker made the extraordinary decision to hire a woman to design their new model. The woman Studebaker hired was Helen Dryden, a New York based artist with an international reputation as a style authority and an arbiter of good taste. Through a combination of artistic talent, privileged upbringing, and sheer luck Helen Dryden forged a successful career as a commercial artist and became one of the founders of the industrial design profession. This dissertation explores the complex intersection of art and consumerism, and the ways in which this intersection helped and hindered efforts by women to establish careers as commercial artists in America during the interwar years. During this period the boundaries between fine art and commercial art temporarily relaxed, encouraging experimentation and facilitating the rise of the industrial design profession. This dissertation traces the inevitable consolidation of the industrial design profession through the lens of Helen Dryden's colorful career. Known primarily for her magazine illustrations and theatrical costume designs the extent of Dryden's role at Studebaker is contested. However, archival evidence corroborates Dryden's position as a vanguard of industrial design. This dissertation reconstructs Dryden's biography in an effort to understand why she was forgotten and to uncover new avenues for exploring the history of design. Her work sheds new light on the formation of industrial design as a profession by countering gendered stereotypes and revealing the limited conditions under which a woman could succeed.
Youtube as an early childhood music education resource parental attitudes, beliefs, usages, and experiences
Authors:   , Ko Michelle Y.
Published: April 2021

This descriptive study was designed with two main purposes: (a) to provide researchers and educators with baseline information about current YouTube music usages and practices and (b) to examine parental attitudes and beliefs towards YouTube as a music education resource. One hundred ninety-two (N = 192) parents of toddler-age children (16-to-36 months old) participated in a researcher-constructed survey designed to examine the digital home music environment, digital musical parenting, and parent-child YouTube music experiences. Results indicated that parents accessed YouTube regularly, maintained positive attitudes towards YouTube, and considered YouTube to be an effective resource for children's overall learning and music skills. Data suggested that children engage with and respond to digital music in various ways, and parental beliefs about YouTube were multi-faceted. Findings suggested a need for accessible musical parenting guidelines and resources in this YouTube generation.
Starting a career in the U.S. : international student perceptions of the optional practical training experience
Authors:   , Monahan James L.
Published: April 2021

The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program offers a pathway for international students to begin their professional career in the United States. Originally a one year training program, students with a degree in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) are now eligible for an additional two year OPT extension while on their student visa. The rapidly growing number of STEM students participating in an OPT experience indicates the increasing importance of this program to both students and employers. This qualitative study examined how students eligible for the STEM OPT extension perceive their transition from an academic setting to a work environment. Eight students on OPT were interviewed to identify the factors that had the greatest influences on their career decisions, and how OPT regulations and U.S. immigration policies influenced these decisions. These students acknowledged the professional opportunities that OPT provides, but also recognized that their OPT position was temporary and the program limits their career choices. They believe the ability for international students to secure employment in the U.S. is becoming more difficult due to the complicated nature of OPT regulations and uncertainties surrounding immigration policies. The students hoped universities could do more to inform employers about the OPT program in an effort to increase employer participation. They also acknowledged that their career success depends upon both outside influences and self-determination.
Towards real-time object detection on edge with deep neural networks
Authors:   , Zhang Zhi
Published: April 2021

Despite being a core topic for more than several decades, object detection is still receiving increasing attentions due to its irreplaceable importance in a wide variety of applications. Abundant object detectors based on deep neural networks have shown significantly revamped accuracies in recent years. However, it's still the day one for these models to be effectively deployed to real world. In this dissertation, we focus on object detection models which tackle real world problems that are unavailable few years ago. We also aim at making object detectors on the go, which means detectors are not longer required to be run on workstations and cloud services which is latency unfriendly. To achieve these goals, we addressed the problem in two phases: application and deployment. We have done thoughtful research on both areas. Our contribution involves inter-frame information fusing, model knowledge distillation, advanced model flow control for progressive inference, and hardware oriented model design and optimization. More specifically, we proposed a novel cross-frame verification scheme for spatial temporal fused object detection model for sequential images and videos in a proposal and reject favor. To compress model from a learning basis and resolve domain specific training data shortage, we improved the learning algorithm to handle insufficient labeled data by searching for optimal guidance paths from pre-trained models. To further reduce model inference cost, we designed a progressive neural network which run in flexible cost enabled by RNN style decision controller during runtime. We recognize the awkward model deployment problem, especially for object detection models that require excessive customized layers. In response, we propose to use end-to-end neural network which use pure neural network components to substitute traditional post-processing operations. We also applied operator decomposition and graph level and on-device optimization towards real-time object detection on low power edge devices. All these works have achieved state-of-the-art performances and converted to successful applications.
Protein transport : bioinformatics methods for understanding protein subcellular localization
Authors:   , Zhang Ning
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Eukaryotic cells contain diverse subcellular organelles. These organelles form distinct functional cellular compartments where different biological processes and functions are carried out. The accurate translocation of a protein is crucial to establish and maintain cellular organization and function. Newly synthesized proteins are transported to different cellular components with the assistance of protein transport machineries and complex targeting signals. Mis-localization of proteins is often associated with metabolic disorders and diseases. Compared with experimental methods, computational prediction of protein localization, utilizing different machine learning methods, provides an efficient and effective way for studying the protein subcellular localization on the whole-proteome level. Here, we present in this dissertation the bioinformatics methods for studying protein subcellular localization. We reviewed the studies of protein subcellular transport and machine learning methods in bioinformatics, presented our work on mitochondrial protein targeting prediction in plants, summarized the ongoing development of a web-resource for protein subcellular localization, and discussed the future work and development.
The education of a gambler's daughter
Authors:   , Benjamin Deanna
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The Education of a Gambler's Daughter is a creative dissertation that tells the story of a daughter trying to make sense out of the chaos that resulted from her family's relationship to gambling. In the process of this sense-making, I explore how my adolescent world was a negotiation between her self-actualization and her understanding of risk. In the critical introduction, 'Writing Someone Else's Story or Imagining Narrative in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior," I examine the way in which Kingston retells the family secret of her aunt's demise by applying ethnographer Amy Shuman's theory about the relationship between entitlement and privacy to understanding the balance between truth and compassion in retelling someone else's story. Together, the critical introduction and the memoir call into question the responsibilities the memoirist bears in retelling her own story when that story is dependent upon other people's stories and the family secrets embedded in them.
KOLAM : human computer interfaces fro visual analytics in big data imagery
Authors:   , Haridas Anoop
Published: April 2021

In the present day, we are faced with a deluge of disparate and dynamic information from multiple heterogeneous sources. Among these are the big data imagery datasets that are rapidly being generated via mature acquisition methods in the geospatial, surveillance (specifically, Wide Area Motion Imagery or WAMI) and biomedical domains. The need to interactively visualize these imagery datasets by using multiple types of views (as needed) into the data is common to these domains. Furthermore, researchers in each domain have additional needs: users of WAMI datasets also need to interactively track objects of interest using algorithms of their choice, visualize the resulting object trajectories and interactively edit these results as needed. While software tools that fulfill each of these requirements individually are available and well-used at present, there is still a need for tools that can combine the desired aspects of visualization, human computer interaction (HCI), data analysis, data management, and (geo-)spatial and temporal data processing into a single flexible and extensible system. KOLAM is an open, cross-platform, interoperable, scalable and extensible framework for visualization and analysis that we have developed to fulfil the above needs. The novel contributions in this thesis are the following: 1) Spatio-temporal caching for animating both giga-pixel and Full Motion Video (FMV) imagery, 2) Human computer interfaces purposefully designed to accommodate big data visualization, 3) Human-in-the-loop interactive video object tracking - ground-truthing of moving objects in wide area imagery using algorithm assisted human-in-the-loop coupled tracking, 4) Coordinated visualization using stacked layers, side-by-side layers/video sub-windows and embedded imagery, 5) Efficient one-click manual tracking, editing and data management of trajectories, 6) Efficient labeling of image segmentation regions and passing these results to desired modules, 7) Visualization of image processing results generated by non-interactive operators using layers, 8) Extension of interactive imagery and trajectory visualization to multi-monitor wall display environments, 9) Geospatial applications: Providing rapid roam, zoom and hyper-jump spatial operations, interactive blending, colormap and histogram enhancement, spherical projection and terrain maps, 10) Biomedical applications: Visualization and target tracking of cell motility in time-lapse cell imagery, collecting ground-truth from experts on whole-slide imagery (WSI) for developing histopathology analytic algorithms and computer-aided diagnosis for cancer grading, and easy-to-use tissue annotation features.
Identity-motivated elaboration : the role of partisan social identities and elaboration in political persuasion and learning
Authors:   , Jennnings Fred J.
Published: April 2021

Persuasive political messages play a central role in the attitude formation process. The unification of the social identity theory, the theory of motivated reasoning, and the elaboration likelihood model better explains the way individuals learn from and are persuaded by messages in the evolving political media landscape. Partisanship is a social identity that biases the processing of new political information. The current dissertation employs an experimental design (with replication) to test the process of identity-motivated elaboration and structural equation modeling to test hypothesized relationships. The results reveal that the insertion of partisan cues to a political message, indicating partisan social group norms, conditions persuasion by partisan social identity, limits learning, and valences elaboration. Citizens engage in partisan motivated reasoning, not just to defend prior beliefs, but to defend their partisan social identity. Identifying with the Democratic or Republican Party creates a partisan lens through which all new political information is processed. The integration of the three psychological theories avails a new perspective on the political persuasion process, one that is more nuanced and extensive than that provided by any isolated theoretical perspective. The current study extends our understanding of this complex political communicative process by synthesizing the social identity approach, partisan motivated reasoning, and valenced cognitive elaboration into a unified theory of political persuasion.
Sensitivity analysis and optimal design of conventional and magnnetorheological fluid brakes
Authors:   , Khafaji Salwan Obaid Waheed
Published: April 2021

Mechanical and electrical brakes have dominated the braking industry for many years and will most likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future due to their low cost and adequate operating performance, wide range of applications, vehicle engineering, civil engineering, and biomedical engineering. Simple mechanical drum brake and magnetorheological (MR) fluid brake have presented in the current work. The main objective of this work is to increase braking torque, and to develop a new optimal design of MR fluid brake with better design and design control of the MR fluid design. To do so, four important steps have been accomplished. In the first step, a mathematical modeling of the conventional frictional brake and MR fluid brake has been developed to study and specify all design parameters. In the second step, a nondimensional, closedform analysis and a Taylor series expansion have used to examine the effects of perturbing dimensionless design parameters on the overall brakes performance. In the third step, two optimal designs for MR fluid brakes have been developed by taking advantage of sensitivity analysis and the design of experiments method also known as the Taguchi method. In the fourth step, controlling a MR fluid brake is performed by using two parallel PI controls for controlling the magnetic current and MR fluid thickness simultaneously. It was concluded that sensitivity analysis is a good method for identifying the parameters that have the greatest impact on brake performance and can be used as one method for the designer to obtain an optimal design. Four nondimensional design parameters were successfully used to describe the conventional frictional brake and seven nondimensional design parameters for MR fluid brake. Only two parameters for the conventional brake and five parameters for the MR fluid brake affect the performance and the others can be neglected. Two new designs for the MR fluid brake are presented and shown to be very simple in design, low in cost by removing a lot of additional auxiliaries for the frictional brake, and easy for control. By simultaneously controlling the MR fluid thickness and the electric current, a large range of brake torque is achieved without increasing the radial envelop for the brake, and saturation conditions in one controller are compensated for by the other controller. High angular velocities of the brake are primarily controlled by increasing the MR fluid thickness, while low angular velocities are primarily controlled by increasing the electric current. Good transient responses for regulating a constant speed (high, moderate, and low), and good stability while seeking to track a sinusoidal input have been achieved. In summary, the proposed control system for the MR fluid brake has demonstrated good controllability for the MR fluid brake.
Direct simulation Monte Carlo for modeling spatially homogeneous multi-component aerosols
Authors:   , Saldivar Issac
Published: April 2021

Nuclear aerosols generated under normal operational and post-accident reactor environments are of particular importance in estimation of the nuclear source term. Several light water reactor aerosol containment experiments provided an experimental database for verification and validation of thermal-hydraulic and aerosol transport codes. The Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) technique has been shown to model multicomponent aerosol dynamics accurately while maintaining greater fidelity to actual aerosol physics than its sectional, moments, and finite element predecessors. This research focuses on the development of a comprehensive n-component source term code for modeling the behavior of aerosolized fission products based on the DSMC technique. Effective DSMC benchmarks provided further confidence in the technique's capabilities for modeling exceedingly complex systems. With the inclusion of the Knudsen, Kelvin, and solute effects in the Mason model, the role of condensation on aerosol evolution showed the differentiation of particles by physical size and chemical properties. High fidelity large-scale simulations posed evident but considerable challenges to computational runtime. Developments in the simulation scaling theory for coagulation, condensation, deposition, and generation processes showed to give comparable results while simultaneously reducing simulation time significantly. The evolution of aerosols coupled to environments was explored, and benchmark simulations provided further evidence that DSMC accurately models aerosol dynamics when coupled with containment thermal-hydraulics.
Structural and chemical characterization of modified graphenes for hydrogen storage
Authors:   , Schaeperkoetter Joseph
Published: April 2021

The automotive industry is already showing signs of moving beyond a century long dependence on petroleum. The tens of billions of dollars in the electric vehicle (EV) consumer market are a powerful demonstration of this transition. Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles also offer a clean alternative to petroleum and have advantages to EVs in some transportation sectors. To grow the hydrogen economy, significant progress must be made in hydrogen storage systems. Adsorbent based storage systems have the potential to lower the pressure requirements while simultaneously improving the storage capacity of these systems. The research presented in this dissertation focuses on the development and characterization of new adsorption storage systems based upon modified graphene. Early work involved substitutional doping of activated carbon with boron to alter the surface chemistry of the adsorbing surface with the goal of improving adsorption strength. Boron-doped samples were characterized with X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy to correlate specific boron chemistries to adsorption performance metrics. A maximum of 2% substitutional doping was observed. Later work focused on framework materials built up from graphene oxide and benzene diboronic acid (GOFs). GOFs are an ideal material to study the structural response of an adsorbent during adsorption due to their layered structure and relatively well-defined pore geometry. To study GOF's adsorption-induced structural response, we built a computer-controlled gas handing system for in situ neutron diffraction measurements at the University of Missouri Research Reactor. For the first time, supercritical adsorption-induced structural change was observed. Through correlation of adsorption and structural data, we are able to predict the rate of expansion in GOF based on the critical temperature and vdW diameter of the adsorbate molecule.
In front of the lens : the expectations, experiences, and reactions of visual journalism's subjects
Authors:   , Thomson T. J.
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Visual journalism is a curious form of social interaction usually involving strangers and the process of transforming one's private life into public spectacle. Sometimes the interaction between journalist and subject is extended and in-depth, sometimes it is brief and shallow, and sometimes, it is nonexistent. People are often reactive to cameras and tension can exist between the idealized ways people want to be depicted and the ways journalists visually render them. Considering that visual media are "complex reflections of a relationship between maker and subject in which both play roles in shaping their character and content," scholars have called for more research on journalists' subjects and how they behave in front of the visual news media. This study answers that call and provides one of the first empirical glimpses into how people regard the experience of being imaged by visual journalists photographers. Since a primary arc of the study is concerned with the nature of experience, it adopts a phenomenological approach and seeks to identify 1) the expectations that news media subjects have of visual journalists, 2) how journalists' subjects perceive the experience of being imaged in a news media context, and 3) how the subject's identity and representational aspirations affect their perception of the imaging event. These questions are explored through a four-pronged approach: 1) non-participant observations, 2) word association exercises, 3) in-depth interviews, and 4) photo elicitations. The findings suggest that subjects are more outcome-- rather than process-focused; that technological changes and resulting behavior shifts are altering the nature of reality and experience, which has implications for privacy and consent; and that perception is quite fluid and can be impacted by identity, habituation, and emotionally valenced experiences.
Practice-based evidence research design for lymphedema management
Authors:   , Tidhar Dorit
Published: April 2021

Lymphedema (LE) is treated in Maccabi Healthcare Services (Maccabi) by LE physical therapists (LPTs). Until today, the knowledge of the extent of the problem in Israel, the interventions for patients with LE, and the effectiveness of these treatments were not well studied. The aims of this dissertation were to: (1) describe the treatment code documentation as part of the PBE process and to evaluate the accuracy of treatment code documentation by LPTs in Maccabi; (2) examine the known-group construct validity of functional status (FS) scores on patients with LE at Maccabi; and (3) describe characteristics of the patients with lymphedema treated at Maccabi between the years of 2010-2017. We used a Practice-based Evidence (PBE) research design to develop a new module for LE in the Maccabi electronic medical record (EMR) to support the gathering of data to address these gaps. The intra-rater reliability of arm and leg measurements by trained LPTs was found to be very high. The treatment code documentation system in the EMR was found to be clear and accurately used by most LPTs. Specific needs for improvement were identified. The computerized adaptive testing of FS score discriminated between patient groups in clinically logical ways both at intake into and discharge from LE treatments. Finally, descriptive analyses of the patients treated by LPT's in Maccabi revealed trends in physician diagnosis and referral, LPT classifications of LE, treatment interventions, co-morbidities, and more. This is the first time such a PBE research process was conducted in a large data set in a national health system for therapists treating patients with LE, laying the foundation for on-going research and application.
Periconceptional, gestational, and lactational exposure to unconventional oil and gas chemical mixture alters energy expenditure in adult female mice
Authors:   , Balise Victoria Danielle
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Unconventional oil and gas (UOG) processes involves injection of pressurized water, chemicals, and suspended solids thousands of feet under the surface to release natural gas and oil. Previously our lab has shown antagonist activity in 23 of 24 UOG chemicals tested for estrogen, androgen, progesterone, glucocorticoid, and/or thyroid receptors. We hypothesized that developmental exposure to a mixture of 23 chemicals used in UOG processes would program the fetus and alter metabolism in adulthood and would be exacerbated by age and a high fat high sugar diet. A lab made mixture of 23 UOG chemicals at equimass concentrations was administered via drinking water at a range of dosages to pregnant and lactating mice from gestation day 1 to postnatal day 21 and offspring were analyzed at 7 months of age and again at 12 months of age on a high fat and high sugar diet. Developmental exposure was associated with altered pre-pubertal body weight and adult energy expenditure in 7-month-old female mice, particularly in the dark cycle when mice are more active. At 12 months of age on a high fat diet there was increased spontaneous activity (beam breaks) and total meters travelled during the light cycle, when mice are less active. Mice also had increased exploratory activity in the elevated plus maze. More active treatment groups also had an increase in energy expenditure, and a decrease in fat mass. These results suggest the potential for developmental health outcomes related to activity in humans and animals exposed to UOG chemicals.