ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
The main objective of this research is to develop an integrated method to study emergent behavior and consequences of evolution and adaptation in engineered complex adaptive systems (ECASs). A multi-layer conceptual framework and modeling approach including behavioral and structural aspects is provided to describe the structure of a class of engineered complex systems and predict their future adaptive patterns. The approach allows the examination of complexity in the structure and the behavior of components as a result of their connections and in relation to their environment. This research describes and uses the major differences of natural complex adaptive systems (CASs) with artificial/engineered CASs to build a framework and platform for ECAS. While this framework focuses on the critical factors of an engineered system, it also enables one to synthetically employ engineering and mathematical models to analyze and measure complexity in such systems. In this way concepts of complex systems science are adapted to management science and system of systems engineering. In particular an integrated consumer-based optimization and agent-based modeling (ABM) platform is presented that enables managers to predict and partially control patterns of behaviors in ECASs. Demonstrated on the U.S. electricity markets, ABM is integrated with normative and subjective decision behavior recommended by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The approach integrates social networks, social science, complexity theory, and diffusion theory. Furthermore, it has unique and significant contribution in exploring and representing concrete managerial insights for ECASs and offering new optimized actions and modeling paradigms in agent-based simulation.
ContributorsHaghnevis, Moeed (Author) / Askin, Ronald G. (Thesis advisor) / Armbruster, Dieter (Thesis advisor) / Mirchandani, Pitu (Committee member) / Wu, Tong (Committee member) / Hedman, Kory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Ionizing radiation used in the patient diagnosis or therapy has negative effects on the patient body in short term and long term depending on the amount of exposure. More than 700,000 examinations are everyday performed on Interventional Radiology modalities [1], however; there is no patient-centric information available to the patient or the Quality Assurance for the amount of organ dose received. In this study, we are exploring the methodologies to systematically reduce the absorbed radiation dose in the Fluoroscopically Guided Interventional Radiology procedures. In the first part of this study, we developed a mathematical model which determines a set of geometry settings for the equipment and a level for the energy during a patient exam. The goal is to minimize the amount of absorbed dose in the critical organs while maintaining image quality required for the diagnosis. The model is a large-scale mixed integer program. We performed polyhedral analysis and derived several sets of strong inequalities to improve the computational speed and quality of the solution. Results present the amount of absorbed dose in the critical organ can be reduced up to 99% for a specific set of angles. In the second part, we apply an approximate gradient method to simultaneously optimize angle and table location while minimizing dose in the critical organs with respect to the image quality. In each iteration, we solve a sub-problem as a MIP to determine the radiation field size and corresponding X-ray tube energy. In the computational experiments, results show further reduction (up to 80%) of the absorbed dose in compare with previous method. Last, there are uncertainties in the medical procedures resulting imprecision of the absorbed dose. We propose a robust formulation to hedge from the worst case absorbed dose while ensuring feasibility. In this part, we investigate a robust approach for the organ motions within a radiology procedure. We minimize the absorbed dose for the critical organs across all input data scenarios which are corresponding to the positioning and size of the organs. The computational results indicate up to 26% increase in the absorbed dose calculated for the robust approach which ensures the feasibility across scenarios.
ContributorsKhodadadegan, Yasaman (Author) / Zhang, Muhong (Thesis advisor) / Pavlicek, William (Thesis advisor) / Fowler, John (Committee member) / Wu, Tong (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes and opinions of Navajo students toward the Navajo language and culture programs within the schools they were attending. Although in the final year of the No Child Left Behind, a majority of the 265 schools on and near the Navajo reservation have not been making Adequate Yearly Progress, a concern for the parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, and the Navajo Nation. The study entailed conducting a survey at five schools; three of which were not meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind. The purpose of the survey instrument (27 questions) administered to the students at the five schools was to examine their attitudes and opinions as to participating in Navajo language and culture programs, to determine if the programs assisted them in their academic achievements, and to examine whether these programs actually made a difference for schools in their Adequate Yearly Progress requirement Approximately 87% of 99 Navajo students, 55 boys and 58 girls, ages 9 through 14, Grades 3 through 8, who lived off the reservation in Flagstaff, Arizona and Gallup, New Mexico, and took the survey knew and spoke Navajo, but less fluently and not to a great extent. However, the students endorsed learning Navajo and strongly agreed that the Navajo language and culture should be part of the curriculum. Historically there have been schools such as the Rock Point Community School, Rough Rock Demonstration School, Borrego Pass Community School, and Ramah Community School that have been successful in their implementation of bilingual programs. The question presently facing Navajo educators is what type of programs would be successful within the context of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation. Can there be replications of successful Navajo language and culture programs into schools that are not making Adequate Yearly Progress?
ContributorsTsosie, David J (Author) / Spencer, Dee A. (Thesis advisor) / Appleton, Nicholas A. (Committee member) / Koerperich, Robbie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Nowadays product reliability becomes the top concern of the manufacturers and customers always prefer the products with good performances under long period. In order to estimate the lifetime of the product, accelerated life testing (ALT) is introduced because most of the products can last years even decades. Much research has been done in the ALT area and optimal design for ALT is a major topic. This dissertation consists of three main studies. First, a methodology of finding optimal design for ALT with right censoring and interval censoring have been developed and it employs the proportional hazard (PH) model and generalized linear model (GLM) to simplify the computational process. A sensitivity study is also given to show the effects brought by parameters to the designs. Second, an extended version of I-optimal design for ALT is discussed and then a dual-objective design criterion is defined and showed with several examples. Also in order to evaluate different candidate designs, several graphical tools are developed. Finally, when there are more than one models available, different model checking designs are discussed.
ContributorsYang, Tao (Author) / Pan, Rong (Thesis advisor) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Borror, Connie (Committee member) / Rigdon, Steve (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Nonregular screening designs can be an economical alternative to traditional resolution IV 2^(k-p) fractional factorials. Recently 16-run nonregular designs, referred to as no-confounding designs, were introduced in the literature. These designs have the property that no pair of main effect (ME) and two-factor interaction (2FI) estimates are completely confounded. In this dissertation, orthogonal arrays were evaluated with many popular design-ranking criteria in order to identify optimal 20-run and 24-run no-confounding designs. Monte Carlo simulation was used to empirically assess the model fitting effectiveness of the recommended no-confounding designs. The results of the simulation demonstrated that these new designs, particularly the 24-run designs, are successful at detecting active effects over 95% of the time given sufficient model effect sparsity. The final chapter presents a screening design selection methodology, based on decision trees, to aid in the selection of a screening design from a list of published options. The methodology determines which of a candidate set of screening designs has the lowest expected experimental cost.
ContributorsStone, Brian (Author) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Thesis advisor) / Silvestrini, Rachel T. (Committee member) / Fowler, John W (Committee member) / Borror, Connie M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In order to adapt to a new culture and new language, children of immigrant families are faced daily with the responsibility of being the intermediaries between the family and the host culture through their language proficiency (Weisskirch & Alva, 2002). This thesis looks into the experiences of English-Spanish bilingual children as they bridge the gap between the family and the non-Spanish speaking community through their interpreting/translating skills. With an emphasis on children of Mexican-origin, the goal is to further understand and illuminate how these children manage this communication in an adult society, their feelings and thoughts about their experiences, and the child's perceptions about the influence that this experience may or may not have on their future. A sample of seventeen children agreed to participate in a semi-structured face-to-face interview to share their experiences. The data from these interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). A priori themes of circumstantial bilingual and adaptive parentification were the initial focus of the research while being open to emerging themes. The children's accounts of their experiences indicated primarily that the Mexican-origin values of familism and respeto (respect) were a significant influence on them when they interpreted/translated for their family. With these traditional cultural values and norms as the groundwork, the sub-themes of normalcy and stress emerged as supportive elements of the circumstantial bilingual experience. Furthermore, the theme of adaptive parentification and the sub-themes of choice, expectation/responsibility to assist, and equality to parents offered further insight on how adaptive parentification can result as the roles of these children change. There was an emergent theme, identity negotiation, which increases our understanding of what the circumstantial bilingual child encounters as the attempt is made to negotiate his identity as an individual who has to mediate language between two opposing cultures. Due to the language brokering responsibility that are bestowed upon these children, it is concluded that communicative support by the parents is a necessary component of the parent-child relationship in order to nurture and develop these children as they negotiate and create their identity to become the successful leaders of tomorrow.
ContributorsCayetano, Catalina (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Waldron, Vincent (Committee member) / Gaffney, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this study is to investigate the literacy practices of three members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and to explore how they use these practices to support and maintain their recovery in their lives. This study also aims to examine how each participant used specialist language, enacted certain identities and acquired the secondary Discourse in A.A. through literacy use. This dissertation study is the result of in-depth interviewing in which each participant was interviewed three times for 90-minutes. These interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis. Study results are presented in three chapters, each one designated to one of the participants. Within these chapters is a life history (chronology) of the participant leading up to the point in which they got sober. The chapters also include a thematic discourse analysis of the interview transcripts across themes of literacy practice and topics in A.A. A conclusion is then presented to investigate how literacy was used from a sociocultural perspective in the study. Due to the emotionally charged nature of this dissertation, it has been formatted to present the stories of the participants first, leaving the theoretical framework, literature review and research methods to be included as appendices to the main text.
ContributorsClausen, Jennifer Ann (Author) / Marsh, Josephine (Thesis advisor) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation explores different methodologies for combining two popular design paradigms in the field of computer experiments. Space-filling designs are commonly used in order to ensure that there is good coverage of the design space, but they may not result in good properties when it comes to model fitting. Optimal designs traditionally perform very well in terms of model fitting, particularly when a polynomial is intended, but can result in problematic replication in the case of insignificant factors. By bringing these two design types together, positive properties of each can be retained while mitigating potential weaknesses. Hybrid space-filling designs, generated as Latin hypercubes augmented with I-optimal points, are compared to designs of each contributing component. A second design type called a bridge design is also evaluated, which further integrates the disparate design types. Bridge designs are the result of a Latin hypercube undergoing coordinate exchange to reach constrained D-optimality, ensuring that there is zero replication of factors in any one-dimensional projection. Lastly, bridge designs were augmented with I-optimal points with two goals in mind. Augmentation with candidate points generated assuming the same underlying analysis model serves to reduce the prediction variance without greatly compromising the space-filling property of the design, while augmentation with candidate points generated assuming a different underlying analysis model can greatly reduce the impact of model misspecification during the design phase. Each of these composite designs are compared to pure space-filling and optimal designs. They typically out-perform pure space-filling designs in terms of prediction variance and alphabetic efficiency, while maintaining comparability with pure optimal designs at small sample size. This justifies them as excellent candidates for initial experimentation.
ContributorsKennedy, Kathryn (Author) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Thesis advisor) / Johnson, Rachel T. (Thesis advisor) / Fowler, John W (Committee member) / Borror, Connie M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study investigates the effectiveness of the use of Concept-Based Instruction (CBI) to facilitate the acquisition of Spanish mood distinctions by second semester second language learners of Spanish. The study focuses on the development of Spanish mood choice and the types of explanations (Rule-of-Thumb vs. Concept-based) used by five students before and after being exposed to Concept-Based Instruction regarding the choice of Spanish mood following various modalities .The students in this study were presented with a pedagogical treatment on Spanish mood choice that included general theoretical concepts based on Gal'perin's (1969, 1992) didactic models and acts of verbalization, which form part of a Concept-Based pedagogical approach. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the use of concept-based tools to promote the ability to use Spanish mood appropriately over time, a pre and post-test was administered to the group in which students were asked to respond to prompts containing modalities that elicit the indicative and subjunctive moods, indicate their level of confidence in their response, and verbalize in writing a reason for their choice. The development of these abilities in learners exposed to CBI was assessed by comparing pre and post-test scores examining both forms and explanations for the indicative and subjunctive modality prompts given. Results showed that students continued to rely on Rule-of-Thumb explanations of mood choice but they did expand their use of conceptually-based reasoning. Although the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the results indicate that most students did improve their ability to make appropriate mood choices (forms and explanations) after the CBI treatment, the increased use of conceptually-based explanations for their mood choices led to both correct and incorrect responses.
ContributorsBeus, Eric (Author) / Lafford, Barbara (Thesis advisor) / Beas, Omar (Committee member) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
During the initial stages of experimentation, there are usually a large number of factors to be investigated. Fractional factorial (2^(k-p)) designs are particularly useful during this initial phase of experimental work. These experiments often referred to as screening experiments help reduce the large number of factors to a smaller set. The 16 run regular fractional factorial designs for six, seven and eight factors are in common usage. These designs allow clear estimation of all main effects when the three-factor and higher order interactions are negligible, but all two-factor interactions are aliased with each other making estimation of these effects problematic without additional runs. Alternatively, certain nonregular designs called no-confounding (NC) designs by Jones and Montgomery (Jones & Montgomery, Alternatives to resolution IV screening designs in 16 runs, 2010) partially confound the main effects with the two-factor interactions but do not completely confound any two-factor interactions with each other. The NC designs are useful for independently estimating main effects and two-factor interactions without additional runs. While several methods have been suggested for the analysis of data from nonregular designs, stepwise regression is familiar to practitioners, available in commercial software, and is widely used in practice. Given that an NC design has been run, the performance of stepwise regression for model selection is unknown. In this dissertation I present a comprehensive simulation study evaluating stepwise regression for analyzing both regular fractional factorial and NC designs. Next, the projection properties of the six, seven and eight factor NC designs are studied. Studying the projection properties of these designs allows the development of analysis methods to analyze these designs. Lastly the designs and projection properties of 9 to 14 factor NC designs onto three and four factors are presented. Certain recommendations are made on analysis methods for these designs as well.
ContributorsShinde, Shilpa (Author) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Thesis advisor) / Borror, Connie (Committee member) / Fowler, John (Committee member) / Jones, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012