Current Search: nature (x)
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Title
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Legends of the Fabricated Wild: An Experimental Representation of Natural Landscapes through the Utilization of Analog Film Techniques.
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Creator
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Twardus, Nicholas, Danker, Elizabeth, Shults, Katherine, Mills, Lisa, Peterson, Lisa, Watson, Keri, Dierdorff, Brooks, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Legends of the Fabricated Wild is a feature-length body of work of landscape films. Voice-Destroy, Self-Portrait: Impermanence and the titular Legends of the Fabricated Wild are the experimental films that comprise my body of work. Keep your Distance, a single-channel installation, is a supplemental piece.Legends of the Fabricated Wild frames the complex interaction between a filmmaker and the collective unconsciousness of the natural environment, a theory outlined by Carl Jung, considering...
Show moreLegends of the Fabricated Wild is a feature-length body of work of landscape films. Voice-Destroy, Self-Portrait: Impermanence and the titular Legends of the Fabricated Wild are the experimental films that comprise my body of work. Keep your Distance, a single-channel installation, is a supplemental piece.Legends of the Fabricated Wild frames the complex interaction between a filmmaker and the collective unconsciousness of the natural environment, a theory outlined by Carl Jung, considering the implications and discoveries along the way. Subtle movement and precise compositions provide a transcendental perspective on the natural Florida landscape. Images of landscapes devoid of human figures are structured together in my work to meditate on the environment and the way humanity has shaped the landscape. Super 8mm and 16mm analog film frames expansive landscapes in a square image and challenges modern cinematic representations by applying the texture of celluloid. High definition digital video contrasts analog film. I foreground artificiality and the ways humanity has utilized the landscape through this medium.While searching for places to document (")pure(") or untouched landscapes, I discovered that modern landscapes are always influenced by the exchange between humanity and the natural environment. I wanted to foreground my own interaction with the natural Florida environment and challenge my interests and dominant ways of viewing landscapes. Through the assembly of a cinematic essay of landscape images with subtle motion, I foster an appreciation for the natural environment in an age of hyper-activity and exploitation of the landscape.
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Date Issued
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2019
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Identifier
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CFE0007546, ucf:52617
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007546
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Title
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Bridging Discourse: Connections Between Institutional and Lay Natural Philosophical Texts in Medieval England.
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Creator
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Lorden, Alayne, Larson, Peter, Zhang, Hong, Crepeau, Richard, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Translations of works containing Arabic and ancient Greek knowledge of the philosophical and mechanical underpinnings of the natural world(-)a field of study called natural philosophy(-)were disseminated throughout twelfth-century England. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, institutional (ecclesiastical/university) scholars received and further developed this natural philosophical knowledge by reconciling it with Christian authoritative sources (the Bible and works by the Church...
Show moreTranslations of works containing Arabic and ancient Greek knowledge of the philosophical and mechanical underpinnings of the natural world(-)a field of study called natural philosophy(-)were disseminated throughout twelfth-century England. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, institutional (ecclesiastical/university) scholars received and further developed this natural philosophical knowledge by reconciling it with Christian authoritative sources (the Bible and works by the Church Fathers). The subsequent discourse that developed demonstrated ambivalence towards natural philosophical knowledge; institutional scholars expressed both acceptance and anxiety regarding the theory and practice of alchemy, astrology/astronomy, and humoral/astrological medicine. While the institutional development and discourse surrounding natural philosophical thought is well-represented within medieval scholarship, an examination of the transmission and reception of this institutional discourse by broader sectors of English medieval society is needed. Examining fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English public writings, texts, and copies of Latin works provides an important avenue of analysis when exploring the transmission and reception of institutional natural philosophical discourse to the laity. By comparing the similarities of discourse evident between the institutional and lay texts and the textual approaches the Middle English writers employed to incorporate this discourse, these works demonstrate that the spheres of institutional and lay knowledge traditionally separated by medieval historians overlapped as the clerics and laity began sharing a similar understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of the natural world.
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Date Issued
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2015
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Identifier
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CFE0005830, ucf:50916
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005830
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Title
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Tails in the Wind: An Exploratory Examination of Media Reports on Nonhuman Animals Throughout Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
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Creator
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Jagoda, Nathan, Huff-Corzine, Lin, Rivera, Fernando, Grauerholz, Liz, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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On September 20th, 2017, category four Hurricane Maria rattled Puerto Rico, causing extensive damage throughout the island. While the experiences, injuries, and deaths of humans resulting from Hurricane Maria have received both scholarly consideration and large amounts of attention from media sources, one critical area that has been overlooked by many, particularly academics, are the ways in which various media sources have reported on, described and discussed nonhuman animals impacted by the...
Show moreOn September 20th, 2017, category four Hurricane Maria rattled Puerto Rico, causing extensive damage throughout the island. While the experiences, injuries, and deaths of humans resulting from Hurricane Maria have received both scholarly consideration and large amounts of attention from media sources, one critical area that has been overlooked by many, particularly academics, are the ways in which various media sources have reported on, described and discussed nonhuman animals impacted by the storm. This study aimed to address this gap by analyzing media reports of nonhuman animals throughout the days before, during, and after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Mixed method content analysis was conducted on fifty-five media reports found to contain discussion of nonhuman animals and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, though a majority of the analyses were qualitative in nature. Analyses resulted in the identification of a variety of themes found to be emergent from the data.Themes explored include nonhuman animal abandonment, insufficient shelters, damaged shelters and lack of resources, collaboration between nonhuman animal welfare organizations, spay/neuter practices, positive descriptions of satos, bringing nonhuman animals to the U.S. mainland, a second chance at life for nonhuman animals, and the hierarchical arrangement of nonhuman animals presented within media reports. Results of the study point towards the need for greater planning and resource allocation in regard to nonhuman animals in Puerto Rico both during times of disaster and everyday life. The spay and neuter infrastructure and the animal shelters on the island are especially in need of resources. Additionally, the results indicate that the media sources examined placed their main focus on dogs and cats impacted by the storm, suggesting that these species of nonhuman animals hold a spot towards the top of the American nonhuman animal hierarchical arrangement.
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Date Issued
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2019
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Identifier
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CFE0007822, ucf:52808
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007822
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Title
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Larger-first partial parsing.
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Creator
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Van Delden, Sebastian Alexander, Gomez, Fernando, Engineering and Computer Science
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Abstract / Description
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University of Central Florida College of Engineering Thesis; Larger-first partial parsing is a primarily top-down approach to partial parsing that is opposite to current easy-first, or primarily bottom-up, strategies. A rich partial tree structure is captured by an algorithm that assigns a hierarchy of structural tags to each of the input tokens in a sentence. Part-of-speech tags are first assigned to the words in a sentence by a part-of-speech tagger. A cascade of Deterministic Finite State...
Show moreUniversity of Central Florida College of Engineering Thesis; Larger-first partial parsing is a primarily top-down approach to partial parsing that is opposite to current easy-first, or primarily bottom-up, strategies. A rich partial tree structure is captured by an algorithm that assigns a hierarchy of structural tags to each of the input tokens in a sentence. Part-of-speech tags are first assigned to the words in a sentence by a part-of-speech tagger. A cascade of Deterministic Finite State Automata then uses this part-of-speech information to identify syntactic relations primarily ina descending order of their size. The cascade is divided into four specialized sections: (1) a Comma Network, which identifies syntactic relations associated with commas; (2) a Conjunction Network, which partially disambiguates phrasal conjunctions and fully disambiguates clausal conjunctions; (3) a Clause Network, which identifies non-comma-delimited clauses; and (4) a Phrase Network, which identifies the remaining base phrases in the sentence. Each automaton is capable of adding one ore more levels of structural tags to the to the tokens in a sentence. The larger-first approach is compared against a well-known easy-first approach. The results indicate that this larger-first approach is capable of (1) producing a more detailed partial parse than an easy first approach; (2) providing better containment of attachment ambiguity; (3) handling overlapping syntactic relations; and (4) achieving a higher accuracy than the easy-first approach. The automata of each network were developed by an empirical analysis of several sources and are presented here in details.
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Date Issued
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2003
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Identifier
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CFR0000760, ucf:52932
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFR0000760
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Title
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Towards Real-time Mixed Reality Matting in Natural Scenes.
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Creator
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Beato, Nicholas, Hughes, Charles, Foroosh, Hassan, Tappen, Marshall, Moshell, Jack, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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In Mixed Reality scenarios, background replacement is a common way to immerse a user in a synthetic environment. Properly identifying the background pixels in an image or video is a difficult problem known as matting. In constant color matting, research identifies and replaces a background that is a single color, known as the chroma key color. Unfortunately, the algorithms force a controlled physical environment and favor constant, uniform lighting. More generic approaches, such as natural...
Show moreIn Mixed Reality scenarios, background replacement is a common way to immerse a user in a synthetic environment. Properly identifying the background pixels in an image or video is a difficult problem known as matting. In constant color matting, research identifies and replaces a background that is a single color, known as the chroma key color. Unfortunately, the algorithms force a controlled physical environment and favor constant, uniform lighting. More generic approaches, such as natural image matting, have made progress finding alpha matte solutions in environments with naturally occurring backgrounds. However, even for the quicker algorithms, the generation of trimaps, indicating regions of known foreground and background pixels, normally requires human interaction or offline computation. This research addresses ways to automatically solve an alpha matte for an image in real-time, and by extension video, using a consumer level GPU. It do so even in the context of noisy environments that result in less reliable constraints than found in controlled settings. To attack these challenges, we are particularly interested in automatically generating trimaps from depth buffers for dynamic scenes so that algorithms requiring more dense constraints may be used. We then explore a sub-image based approach to parallelize an existing hierarchical approach on high resolution imagery by taking advantage of local information. We show that locality can be exploited to significantly reduce the memory and compute requirements of previously necessary when computing alpha mattes of high resolution images. We achieve this using a parallelizable scheme that is both independent of the matting algorithm and image features. Combined, these research topics provide a basis for Mixed Reality scenarios using real-time natural image matting on high definition video sources.
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Date Issued
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2012
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Identifier
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CFE0004515, ucf:49284
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004515
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Title
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A Study of Central Florida College Students' Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution, Microevolution, Macroevolution, and Human Evolution.
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Creator
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Schleith, David, Murray, Kenneth, Baldwin, Lee, Doherty, Walter, Everett, Robert, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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In order to study the teaching and learning of the theory of evolution and determine levels of acceptance of the theory of evolution among college students studying biology in Central Florida, the Inventory of Student Evolution Acceptance, I-SEA, was administered to over 500 university students enrolled in a biology course during the Fall 2016 term. An analysis of 489 completed surveys demonstrated strong overall acceptance of the theory of evolution (average score = 103 out of 120 total...
Show moreIn order to study the teaching and learning of the theory of evolution and determine levels of acceptance of the theory of evolution among college students studying biology in Central Florida, the Inventory of Student Evolution Acceptance, I-SEA, was administered to over 500 university students enrolled in a biology course during the Fall 2016 term. An analysis of 489 completed surveys demonstrated strong overall acceptance of the theory of evolution (average score = 103 out of 120 total possible). Of all students, 78% fell into the category of very high acceptance of the theory of evolution. Students who reported attending worship services weekly or more scored statistically significantly lower on the I-SEA than students who reported attending worship services less than weekly. The level of previous high school coursework in biology(-)whether honors, or advanced biology courses were taken-- did not translate into statistically significant differences in acceptance of evolution as measured by the I-SEA. Three subscales contained within the Inventory of Student Evolution Acceptance are designed to measure student acceptance of microevolution, macroevolution, and human evolution. Students demonstrate higher levels of acceptance of microevolution than macroevolution or human evolution. These findings serve to inform educational leaders and science educators regarding students' worldview and how worldview may inform what students accept as true and valid. The I-SEA serves as a useful educational tool to inform instructional decisions in the biology classroom.
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Date Issued
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2017
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Identifier
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CFE0006792, ucf:51818
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006792
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Title
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Automatically Acquiring a Semantic Network of Related Concepts.
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Creator
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Szumlanski, Sean, Gomez, Fernando, Wu, Annie, Hughes, Charles, Sims, Valerie, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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We describe the automatic acquisition of a semantic network in which over 7,500 of the most frequently occurring nouns in the English language are linked to their semantically related concepts in the WordNet noun ontology. Relatedness between nouns is discovered automatically from lexical co-occurrence in Wikipedia texts using a novel adaptation of an information theoretic inspired measure. Our algorithm then capitalizes on salient sense clustering among these semantic associates to...
Show moreWe describe the automatic acquisition of a semantic network in which over 7,500 of the most frequently occurring nouns in the English language are linked to their semantically related concepts in the WordNet noun ontology. Relatedness between nouns is discovered automatically from lexical co-occurrence in Wikipedia texts using a novel adaptation of an information theoretic inspired measure. Our algorithm then capitalizes on salient sense clustering among these semantic associates to automatically disambiguate them to their corresponding WordNet noun senses (i.e., concepts). The resultant concept-to-concept associations, stemming from 7,593 target nouns, with 17,104 distinct senses among them, constitute a large-scale semantic network with 208,832 undirected edges between related concepts. Our work can thus be conceived of as augmenting the WordNet noun ontology with RelatedTo links.The network, which we refer to as the Szumlanski-Gomez Network (SGN), has been subjected to a variety of evaluative measures, including manual inspection by human judges and quantitative comparison to gold standard data for semantic relatedness measurements. We have also evaluated the network's performance in an applied setting on a word sense disambiguation (WSD) task in which the network served as a knowledge source for established graph-based spreading activation algorithms, and have shown: a) the network is competitive with WordNet when used as a stand-alone knowledge source for WSD, b) combining our network with WordNet achieves disambiguation results that exceed the performance of either resource individually, and c) our network outperforms a similar resource, WordNet++ (Ponzetto (&) Navigli, 2010), that has been automatically derived from annotations in the Wikipedia corpus.Finally, we present a study on human perceptions of relatedness. In our study, we elicited quantitative evaluations of semantic relatedness from human subjects using a variation of the classical methodology that Rubenstein and Goodenough (1965) employed to investigate human perceptions of semantic similarity. Judgments from individual subjects in our study exhibit high average correlation to the elicited relatedness means using leave-one-out sampling (r = 0.77, ? = 0.09, N = 73), although not as high as average human correlation in previous studies of similarity judgments, for which Resnik (1995) established an upper bound of r = 0.90 (? = 0.07, N = 10). These results suggest that human perceptions of relatedness are less strictly constrained than evaluations of similarity, and establish a clearer expectation for what constitutes human-like performance by a computational measure of semantic relatedness. We also contrast the performance of a variety of similarity and relatedness measures on our dataset to their performance on similarity norms and introduce our own dataset as a supplementary evaluative standard for relatedness measures.
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Date Issued
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2013
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Identifier
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CFE0004759, ucf:49767
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004759
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Title
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Virtual Interactions with Real-Agents for Sustainable Natural Resource Management.
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Creator
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Pierce, Tyler, Madani Larijani, Kaveh, Wang, Dingbao, Jacques, Peter, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Common pool resource management systems are complex to manage due to the absence of a clear understanding of the effects of users' behavioral characteristics. Non-cooperative decision making based on individual rationality (as opposed to group rationality) and a tendency to free ride due to lack of trust and information about other users' behavior creates externalities and can lead to tragedy of the commons without intervention by a regulator. Nevertheless, even regulatory institutions often...
Show moreCommon pool resource management systems are complex to manage due to the absence of a clear understanding of the effects of users' behavioral characteristics. Non-cooperative decision making based on individual rationality (as opposed to group rationality) and a tendency to free ride due to lack of trust and information about other users' behavior creates externalities and can lead to tragedy of the commons without intervention by a regulator. Nevertheless, even regulatory institutions often fail to sustain natural common pool resources in the absence of clear understanding of the responses of multiple heterogeneous decision makers to different regulation schemes. While modeling can help with our understanding of complex coupled human-natural systems, past research has not been able to realistically simulate these systems for two major limitations: 1) lack of computational capacity and proper mathematical models for solving distributed systems with self-optimizing agents; and 2) lack of enough information about users' characteristics in common pool resource systems due to absence of reliable monitoring information. Recently, different studies have tried to address the first limitation by developing agent-based models, which can be appropriately handled with today's computational capacity. While these models are more realistic than the social planner's models which have been traditionally used in the field, they normally rely on different heuristics for characterizing users' behavior and incorporating heterogeneity. This work is a step-forward in addressing the second limitation, suggesting an efficient method for collecting information on diverse behavioral characteristics of real agents for incorporation in distributed agent-based models. Gaming in interactive virtual environments is suggested as a reliable method for understanding different variables that promote sustainable resource use through observation of decision making and behavior of the resource system beneficiaries under various institutional frameworks and policies. A review of educational or "serious" games for environmental management was undertaken to determine an appropriate game for collecting information on real-agents and also to investigate the state of environmental management games and their potential as an educational tool. A web-based groundwater sharing simulation game(-)Irrigania(-)was selected to analyze the behavior of real agents under different common pool resource management institutions. Participants included graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Central Florida and Lund University. Information was collected on participants' resource use, behavior and mindset under different institutional settings through observation and discussion with participants. Preliminary use of water resources gaming suggests communication, cooperation, information disclosure, trust, credibility and social learning between beneficiaries as factors promoting a shift towards sustainable resource use. Additionally, Irrigania was determined to be an effective tool for complementing traditional lecture-based teaching of complex concepts related to sustainable natural resource management. The different behavioral groups identified in the study can be used for improved simulation of multi-agent groundwater management systems.
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Date Issued
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2013
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Identifier
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CFE0005045, ucf:49953
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005045
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Title
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Florida sea shells.
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Creator
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Aldrich, Bertha, Snyder, Ethel, PALMM (Project)
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Abstract / Description
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Focusing on Florida, the book includes a history of sea shell collecting, information on the live inhabitants of the shells, and how to care for a shell collection.
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Date Issued
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1936
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Identifier
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AAC3708QF00001/23/200704/10/200712194BnamI? D0QF, FHP C CF 2007-1-23, FCLA url 20070328xOCLC, 100000190, FCLA url 20070410, CF00001741, 2703429, ucf:21841
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Format
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E-book
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/tc/fhp/CF00001741.jpg
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Title
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Where, when, and how to catch fish on the east coast of Florida.
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Creator
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Gregg, William H., Gardner, John, PALMM (Project)
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Abstract / Description
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Turn of the century illustrated guide to fresh and salt water fishing along the east coast of Florida.
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Date Issued
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1902
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Identifier
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AAA3225QF00011/15/200108/04/200516441BfamIa D0QF, FHP C CF 2001-11-15, FCLA url 20020205xOCLC, 49291454, CF00001554, 2555140, ucf:5873
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Format
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E-book
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dl/CF00001554.jpg
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Title
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GENETIC AND PHENOTYPIC EVOLUTION IN THE ORNATE CHORUS FROG (PSEUDACRIS ORNATA): TESTING THE RELATIVE ROLES OF NATURAL SELECTION, MIGRATION, AND GENETIC DRIFT.
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Creator
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Degner, Jacob, Hoffman, Eric, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Understanding how migration, genetic drift, and natural selection interact to maintain the genetic and phenotypic variation we observe in natural populations is a central goal of population genetics. Amphibians provide excellent model organisms for investigating the interplay between these evolutionary forces because amphibians are generally characterized by limited dispersal abilities, high philopatry, and are obligately associated with the areas around suitable habitats (e.g. breeding ponds...
Show moreUnderstanding how migration, genetic drift, and natural selection interact to maintain the genetic and phenotypic variation we observe in natural populations is a central goal of population genetics. Amphibians provide excellent model organisms for investigating the interplay between these evolutionary forces because amphibians are generally characterized by limited dispersal abilities, high philopatry, and are obligately associated with the areas around suitable habitats (e.g. breeding ponds). Thus, on relatively small geographic scales, the relative effects of all of these evolutionary forces can be studied together. Here, we study the interaction of migration, genetic drift, natural selection, and historical process in the ornate chorus frog (Pseudacris ornata). We report the development and characterization of 10 polymorphic microsatellite genetic markers. Number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 21 averaging 9.2 and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.10 to 0.97 averaging 0.52. However, in an analysis of two populations, three locus-by-population comparisons exhibited significant heterozygote deficiencies and indicated that null alleles may be present some loci. Furthermore, we characterized genetic structure and historical biogeographic patterns in P. ornata using these microsatellite markers along with mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Our data indicate that in these frogs, migration may play a large role in determining population structure as pairwise estimates of FST were relatively small ranging from 0.04 to 0.12 (global FST = 0.083). Additionally, we observed an overall pattern of isolation-by-distance in neutral genetic markers across the species range. Moreover, our data suggest that the Apalachicola River basin does not impede gene flow in P. ornata as it does in many vertebrate taxa. Interestingly, we identified significant genetic structure between populations separated by only 6 km. However, this fine scale genetic structure was only present in the more urbanized of two widespread sampling localities. Finally, in this study, we demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between the frequency of green frogs and latitude. There was a higher frequency of green frogs in southern samples and a lower frequency of green frogs in northern samples. However, when we interpreted this phenotypic cline in light of the overall pattern of isolation-by-distance, it was apparent that the neutral evolutionary forces of genetic drift and migration could explain the cline, and the invocation of natural selection was not necessary.
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Date Issued
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2007
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Identifier
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CFE0001721, ucf:47319
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0001721
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Title
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CHARACTERIZATION OF NOVEL ANTIMALARIALS FROM COMPOUNDS INSPIRED BY NATURAL PRODUCTS USING PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS (PCA).
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Creator
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Balde, Zarina Marie G, Chakrabarti, Debopam, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Malaria is caused by a protozoan parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for over 500,000 deaths per year worldwide. Although malaria medicines are working well in many parts of the world, antimalarial drug resistance has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing malaria control today. Since the malaria parasites are once again developing widespread resistance to antimalarial drugs, this can cause the spread of malaria to new areas and the re-emergence of malaria in areas...
Show moreMalaria is caused by a protozoan parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for over 500,000 deaths per year worldwide. Although malaria medicines are working well in many parts of the world, antimalarial drug resistance has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing malaria control today. Since the malaria parasites are once again developing widespread resistance to antimalarial drugs, this can cause the spread of malaria to new areas and the re-emergence of malaria in areas where it had already been eradicated. Therefore, the discovery and characterization of novel antimalarials is extremely urgent. A previous drug screen in Dr. Chakrabarti's lab identified several natural products (NPs) with antiplasmodial activities. The focus of this study is to characterize the hit compounds using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to determine structural uniqueness compared to known antimalarial drugs. This study will compare multiple libraries of different compounds, such as known drugs, kinase inhibitors, macrocycles, and top antimalarial hits discovered in our lab. Prioritizing the hit compounds by their chemical uniqueness will lessen the probability of future drug resistance. This is an important step in drug discovery as this will allow us to increase the interpretability of the datasets by creating new uncorrelated variables that will successively maximize variance. Characterization of the Natural Product inspired compounds will enable us to discover potent, selective, and novel antiplasmodial scaffolds that are unique in the 3-dimensional chemical space and will provide critical information that will serve as advanced starting points for the antimalarial drug discovery pipeline.
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Date Issued
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2018
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Identifier
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CFH2000405, ucf:45893
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000405
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Title
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THE LOST VOICES OF ANCIENT ISRAEL: RECLAIMING EDEN, AN ECO-CRITICAL EXEGESIS.
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Creator
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Bacchus, Nazeer, Campbell, James, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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This work addresses the historically-read despotism Genesis 1.28 has often received in its subordination of nature for the interests of human enterprise and counters the notion of reading the entire Bible as an anti-environmental, anthropocentric text. In using a combined literary lens of eco-criticism and new historicism, this work examines the Hebrew Bible with particular attention to the books of Genesis and Exodus, offering within the Torah's oldest literary tradition (the J source) an...
Show moreThis work addresses the historically-read despotism Genesis 1.28 has often received in its subordination of nature for the interests of human enterprise and counters the notion of reading the entire Bible as an anti-environmental, anthropocentric text. In using a combined literary lens of eco-criticism and new historicism, this work examines the Hebrew Bible with particular attention to the books of Genesis and Exodus, offering within the Torah's oldest literary tradition (the J source) an environmental connection between humanity and the divine that promotes a reverence of natural world and, conversely, a rejection of rampant urbanization and its cultural departure from nature. It is the goal of this research to create a discourse by bridging the gap between religious and green studies and forging a connection with the works of the early biblical writers and environmental thought of the modern world.
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Date Issued
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2015
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Identifier
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CFH0004793, ucf:45337
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004793
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Title
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Driving Towards Sustainability: A Case Study of the Facilitators and Inhibitors of Electrifying Drive Tourism within the United States National Park System.
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Creator
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Templeton, Amanda, Fjelstul, Jill, Fyall, Alan, Tasci, Asli, Prideaux, Bruce, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Drive tourism has proven to be a popular sub-sector of the tourism industry, given its ability to offer tourists a substantial amount of flexibility and sense of freedom in determining what destinations to explore. Few studies have examined the future of the drive tourism with consideration to changing technologies and growing awareness to the impact of carbon emissions and Green House Gasses. Research has recently begun to examine the ecological consequences of park transportation systems....
Show moreDrive tourism has proven to be a popular sub-sector of the tourism industry, given its ability to offer tourists a substantial amount of flexibility and sense of freedom in determining what destinations to explore. Few studies have examined the future of the drive tourism with consideration to changing technologies and growing awareness to the impact of carbon emissions and Green House Gasses. Research has recently begun to examine the ecological consequences of park transportation systems. Some of these problems can be seen within the United States National Park System (NPS), as various park units are experiencing problems related to infrastructure and preservation of sites. As transportation plays an integral role within the NPS, the impacts of drive tourism must be considered. The study is founded on the premise that electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging stations will reduce GHG emissions, thereby increasing sustainability, supporting sustainable tourism and sustainable drive tourism within the NPS. In an effort to promote sustainable transportation efforts throughout the NPS this study investigates the facilitators that enable an EV infrastructure in some parks and inhibitors for other parks that have yet to develop an EV infrastructure. A qualitative methodology was adopted for this study. Data were analyzed using NVivo with findings being presented in case study format. The study, which offers a conceptual model and offers new definitions for electric vehicles and electric vehicle infrastructure within nature based tourism context, finds key facilitators to include: collaborative efforts through public/private partnerships, strong leadership within the NPS, and availability of funding; major inhibitors being: geography of park unit, lack cultural openness within NPS park unit, and regulatory policies. Current research has given little attention to the future sustainability of drive tourism, allowing this study to add to the academic body of knowledge. Additionally, the suggestions offered in the study are relevantly timed to what is happening within the industry.
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Date Issued
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2018
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Identifier
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CFE0007107, ucf:51967
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007107
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Title
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Experimental Investigation of Advanced Ignition Systems for High Efficiency Combustion.
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Creator
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Almansour, Bader, Vasu Sumathi, Subith, Kapat, Jayanta, Kassab, Alain, Sarathy, S.Mani, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Consumption of fossil and bio-derived fuels is growing due to energy demands associated with increase in population and standard of living across the globe. Power generation and transportation sectors are the primary two sources of fuel consumption, which have raised the demand for crude oil and led to serious environmental pollution issues. This demand for energy forced various government agencies to strengthen the allowable exhaust pollutant concentration limits. Recently, CO, CO2,...
Show moreConsumption of fossil and bio-derived fuels is growing due to energy demands associated with increase in population and standard of living across the globe. Power generation and transportation sectors are the primary two sources of fuel consumption, which have raised the demand for crude oil and led to serious environmental pollution issues. This demand for energy forced various government agencies to strengthen the allowable exhaust pollutant concentration limits. Recently, CO, CO2, particulate matter, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission restrictions have become more stringent to the extent that engines must operate at higher energy densities and efficiencies. Towards this goal, this doctoral study focused on evaluating advanced ignition systems and testing new biofuels for automotive combustion applications. First, a natural gas lean combustion mode was assessed by using advance ignition systems to provide higher brake power while maintaining the exhaust limits. A rigorous combustion data analysis was performed to identify the main reasons leading to improved performance in the case of prechamber equipped laser ignition. An overall efficiency improvement of 2.1% points was observed, compared to spark ignition, which in turn leads to save 633 PJ per year. In the second part of this dissertation, a spherical chamber was designed and validated to measure the laminar burning velocity (LBV) of a promising biofuel: 2,4-Dimethyl-3-pentanone, (DIPK), for homogenous charge compression ignition engines. LBV measurements were carried out with various diluent species (N2, Ar, and He) in order to provide several data points for development and validation of DIPK chemical kinetic mechanisms. It has been found that DIPK does not only have higher temperature and pressure sensitivities (compared to iso-octane), but additionally enabled a faster laminar burning velocity which leads to higher rate of heat release in reciprocating engines.
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Date Issued
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2018
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Identifier
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CFE0007387, ucf:52062
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007387
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Title
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Health Literacy Intervention to Influence Choices Made by Students in a Title I School Who Receive Free Lunch.
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Creator
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Kent, Melissa, Levin, Judith, Quelly, Susan, Szente, Judit, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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This study seeks to influence choices made by Kindergarten students in a Title I school who receive free breakfast and lunch through a health literacy intervention with the intent of decreasing daily added sugar consumption. Fruit and milk choices, either with naturally occurring sugar (NOS) or added sugar (AS), were recorded for 70 Kindergarten students among six classes in a Title I school for ten days before a four-week health literacy intervention. Three of the classes were randomly...
Show moreThis study seeks to influence choices made by Kindergarten students in a Title I school who receive free breakfast and lunch through a health literacy intervention with the intent of decreasing daily added sugar consumption. Fruit and milk choices, either with naturally occurring sugar (NOS) or added sugar (AS), were recorded for 70 Kindergarten students among six classes in a Title I school for ten days before a four-week health literacy intervention. Three of the classes were randomly selected to learn about 'sometimes' and 'anytime' choices through the Healthy Habits for Life curriculum delivered by representatives from Nemours Children's Hospital. Following the intervention, milk and fruit choices were recorded for ten more school days to determine differences among the control and intervention groups. Pearson Chi Square test results concluded that the health literacy intervention lead to statistically significant improvements in milk choices for the intervention group, but fruit choices were inconclusive due to inconsistencies in significance. Hierarchical loglinear analyses were run to determine if there was a difference in response to intervention between male and female students, and the results indicated that the effectiveness of the intervention was not moderated by gender. The success of this intervention for milk choices will help students who receive free school breakfast and lunch to decrease their daily consumption of added sugars, and additional research needs to be done to help students make choices that will further decrease their daily added sugar consumption.
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Date Issued
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2019
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Identifier
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CFE0007662, ucf:52466
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007662
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Title
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The AfterMath: A Culturally Responsive Mathematical Intervention to Aid Students Affected by Natural Disasters.
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Creator
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Kurtz, Brianna, Haciomeroglu, Erhan, Bush, Sarah, Safi, Farshid, Biraimah, Karen, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico. The damage was extensive, and many people found themselves to be natural disaster refugees. As a result, schools in Central Florida saw an influx of new students who had their educations interrupted by the disaster and now were resuming school in a new language of instruction. These students not only faced linguistic challenges but also academic differences due to the high prevalence of poverty and the effects of...
Show moreOn September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico. The damage was extensive, and many people found themselves to be natural disaster refugees. As a result, schools in Central Florida saw an influx of new students who had their educations interrupted by the disaster and now were resuming school in a new language of instruction. These students not only faced linguistic challenges but also academic differences due to the high prevalence of poverty and the effects of neocolonialism in their previous schooling. This mixed methods study implemented an intensive intervention in probability to aid students in developing mathematical understanding and forming meaningful connections. Student participants, who had been affected by Hurricane Maria, were now attending a public high school and were paired one-on-one with a bilingual, mathematically high performing student mentor to complete culturally responsive, bilingual probability tasks. Data collection occurred over the course of six weeks in fall 2019. Both mentor and mentee students participated in focus group interviews, and the mentees completed a probability pre-test and post-test. Student participants were found to have statistically significant increases in the understanding of probability concepts when comparing pre-intervention and post-intervention results, with the understanding and usage of the multiplication rule showing the most significant improvement. Both mentors and mentees reported feeling a stronger sense of unity and belonging post-intervention as well as improvement in bilingual academic vocabulary. With the impact of natural disasters on the rise, implications of this study include its adaption to respond to future displaced students as they resume schooling post-interruption in Central Florida and beyond.
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Date Issued
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2019
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Identifier
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CFE0007828, ucf:52820
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007828
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Title
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The Impact of Degraded Speech and Stimulus Familiarity in a Dichotic Listening Task.
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Creator
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Sinatra, Anne, Sims, Valerie, Hancock, Peter, Szalma, James, Chin, Matthew, Renk, Kimberly, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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It has been previously established that when engaged in a difficult attention intensive task, which involves repeating information while blocking out other information (the dichotic listening task), participants are often able to report hearing their own names in an unattended audio channel (Moray, 1959). This phenomenon, called the cocktail party effect is a result of words that are important to oneself having a lower threshold, resulting in less attention being necessary to process them ...
Show moreIt has been previously established that when engaged in a difficult attention intensive task, which involves repeating information while blocking out other information (the dichotic listening task), participants are often able to report hearing their own names in an unattended audio channel (Moray, 1959). This phenomenon, called the cocktail party effect is a result of words that are important to oneself having a lower threshold, resulting in less attention being necessary to process them (Treisman, 1960). The current studies examined the ability of a person who was engaged in an attention demanding task to hear and recall low-threshold words from a fictional story. These low-threshold words included a traditional alert word, (")fire(") and fictional character names from a popular franchise(-)Harry Potter. Further, the role of stimulus degradation was examined by including synthetic and accented speech in the task to determine how it would impact attention and performance.In Study 1 participants repeated passages from a novel that was largely unfamiliar to them, The Secret Garden while blocking out a passage from a much more familiar source, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Each unattended Harry Potter passage was edited so that it would include 4 names from the series, and the word (")fire(") twice. The type of speech present in the attended and unattended ears (Natural or Synthetic) was varied to examine the impact that processing a degraded speech would have on performance. The speech that the participant shadowed did not impact unattended recall, however it did impact shadowing accuracy. The speech type that was present in the unattended ear did impact the ability to recall low-threshold, Harry Potter information. When the unattended speech type was synthetic, significantly less Harry Potter information was recalled. Interestingly, while Harry Potter information was recalled by participants with both high and low Harry Potter experience, the traditional low-threshold word, (")fire(") was not noticed by participants. In order to determine if synthetic speech impeded the ability to report low-threshold Harry Potter names due to being degraded or simply being different than natural speech, Study 2 was designed. In Study 2 the attended (shadowed) speech was held constant as American Natural speech, and the unattended ear was manipulated. An accent which was different than the native accent of the participants was included as a mild form of degradation. There were four experimental stimuli which contained one of the following in the unattended ear: American Natural, British Natural, American Synthetic and British Synthetic. Overall, more unattended information was reported when the unattended channel was Natural than Synthetic. This implies that synthetic speech does take more working memory processing power than even an accented natural speech. Further, it was found that experience with the Harry Potter franchise played a role in the ability to report unattended Harry Potter information. Those who had high levels of Harry Potter experience, particularly with audiobooks, were able to process and report Harry Potter information from the unattended stimulus when it was British Natural. While, those with low Harry Potter experience were not able to report unattended Harry Potter information from this slightly degraded stimulus. Therefore, it is believed that the previous audiobook experience of those in the high Harry Potter experience group acted as training and resulted in less working memory being necessary to encode the unattended Harry Potter information. A pilot study was designed in order to examine the impact of story familiarity in the attended and unattended channels of a dichotic listening task. In the pilot study, participants shadowed a Harry Potter passage (familiar) in one condition with a passage from The Secret Garden (unfamiliar) playing in the unattended ear. A second condition had participants shadowing The Secret Garden (unfamiliar) with a passage from Harry Potter (familiar) present in the unattended ear. There was no significant difference in the number of unattended names recalled. Those with low Harry Potter experience reported significantly less attended information when they shadowed Harry Potter than when they shadowed The Secret Garden. Further, there appeared to be a trend such that those with high Harry Potter experience were reporting more attended information when they shadowed Harry Potter than The Secret Garden. This implies that experience with a franchise and characters may make it easier to recall information about a passage, while lack of experience provides no assistance. Overall, the results of the studies indicate that we do treat fictional characters in a way similarly to ourselves. Names and information about fictional characters were able to break through into attention during a task that required a great deal of attention. The experience one had with the characters also served to assist the working memory in processing the information in degraded circumstances. These results have important implications for training, design of alerts, and the use of popular media in the classroom.
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Date Issued
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2012
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Identifier
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CFE0004256, ucf:49535
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004256
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Title
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A Crack in Everything.
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Creator
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Hoffman, Jeffrey, Isenhour, David, Poindexter, Carla, Kim, Joo, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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Contained herein is a close examination of self-awareness and self-portraiture as it applies to the works of artist Jeffrey Hoffman. Water, frozen into various forms and combined with natural elements of wood, slowly melt over an indeterminable amount of time, each droplet documented as the process transforms the elements. Through this process, we see change. We see time. We see truth. This documentation of change and time through natural elements is where the artwork comes full circle....
Show moreContained herein is a close examination of self-awareness and self-portraiture as it applies to the works of artist Jeffrey Hoffman. Water, frozen into various forms and combined with natural elements of wood, slowly melt over an indeterminable amount of time, each droplet documented as the process transforms the elements. Through this process, we see change. We see time. We see truth. This documentation of change and time through natural elements is where the artwork comes full circle. Working with new media to explore man's interconnectivity to life, energy, and the cosmos, he produces time based installations, photographs, videos, and sculptures that serve as both existential metaphors and Tantric symbols. With the use of digital cameras and video, a record is created by which the disintegration which occurs from the unseen forces of gravity, heat and time upon sculptures made from natural elements and ice is examined. In its sculptural form, his work can be categorized as Installation art and Performance art due to its evolving nature. Each piece is intended to either change over time or to have that change halted by another temporal force like that of flowing electricity. The possibility of allowing varying levels of self-awareness to emerge through self portraiture is also examined. The existential, as well as the metaphysical, can be present in a physical form when the form is imbued with evidence of an evolutionary process. In many ways, the work serves as a self portrait. It is a means for Hoffman to examine his own existentialism as a student of the modern western world and life.
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Date Issued
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2012
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Identifier
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CFE0004242, ucf:49518
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004242
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Title
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SketChart: A Pen-Based Tool for Chart Generation and Interaction.
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Creator
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Vargas Gonzalez, Andres, Laviola II, Joseph, Foroosh, Hassan, Hua, Kien, University of Central Florida
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Abstract / Description
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It has been shown that representing data with the right visualization increases the understanding of qualitative and quantitative information encoded in documents. However, current tools for generating such visualizations involve the use of traditional WIMP techniques, which perhaps makes free interaction and direct manipulation of the content harder. In this thesis, we present a pen-based prototype for data visualization using 10 different types of bar based charts. The prototype lets users...
Show moreIt has been shown that representing data with the right visualization increases the understanding of qualitative and quantitative information encoded in documents. However, current tools for generating such visualizations involve the use of traditional WIMP techniques, which perhaps makes free interaction and direct manipulation of the content harder. In this thesis, we present a pen-based prototype for data visualization using 10 different types of bar based charts. The prototype lets users sketch a chart and interact with the information once the drawing is identified. The prototype's user interface consists of an area to sketch and touch based elements that will be displayed depending on the context and nature of the outline. Brainstorming and live presentations can benefit from the prototype due to the ability to visualize and manipulate data in real time. We also perform a short, informal user study to measure effectiveness of the tool while recognizing sketches and users acceptance while interacting with the system. Results show SketChart strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement.
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Date Issued
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2014
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Identifier
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CFE0005434, ucf:50405
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Format
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Document (PDF)
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PURL
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http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005434
Pages