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Description
Situations present themselves in which someone needs to navigate inside of a building, for example, to the exit or to retrieve and object. Sometimes, vision is not a reliable sense of spatial awareness, maybe because of a smoky environment, a dark environment, distractions, etc. I propose a wearable haptic device, a belt or vest, that provides haptic feedback to help people navigate inside of a building that does not rely on the user's vision. The first proposed device has an obstacle avoidance component and a navigation component. This paper discussed the challenges of designing and implementing this kind of technology in the context of indoor navigation, where GPS signal is poor. Analyzing accelerometer data for the purpose of indoor navigation and then using haptic cues from a wearable haptic device for the navigation were explored in this project, and the device is promising.
ContributorsBerk, Emily Marie (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis director) / Chavez-Echeagaray, Maria Elena (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Radiometric dating estimates the age of rocks by comparing the concentration of a decaying radioactive isotope to the concentrations of the decay byproducts. Radiometric dating has been instrumental in the calculation of the Earth's age, the Moon's age, and the age of our solar system. Geochronologists in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU use radiometric dating extensively in their research, and have very specific procedures, hardware, and software to perform the dating calculations. Researchers use lasers to drill small holes, or ablations, in rock faces, collect the masses of various isotopes using a mass spectrometer, and scan the pit with an interferometer, which records the z heights of the pit on an x-y grid. This scan is then processed by custom-made software to determine the volume of the pit, which then is used along with the isotope masses and known decay rates to determine the age of the rock. My research has been focused on improving this volume calculation through computational geometry methods of surface reconstruction. During the process, I created an web application that reads interferometer scans, reconstructs a surface from those scans with Poisson reconstruction, renders the surface in the browser, and calculates the volume of the pit based on parameters provided by the researcher. The scans are stored in a central cloud datastore for future analysis, allowing the researchers in the geochronology community to collaborate together on scans from various rocks in their individual labs. The result of the project has been a complete and functioning application that is accessible to any researcher and reproducible from any computer. The 3D representation of the scan data allows researchers to easily understand the topology of the pit ablation and determine early on whether the measurements of the interferometer are trustworthy for the particular ablation. The volume calculation by the new software also reduces the variability in the volume calculation, which hopefully indicates the process is removing noise from the scan data and performing volume calculations on a more realistic representation of the actual ablation. In the future, this research will be used as the groundwork for more robust testing and closer approximations through implementation of different reconstruction algorithms. As the project grows and becomes more usable, hopefully there will be adoption in the community and it will become a reproducible standard for geochronologists performing radiometric dating.
ContributorsPruitt, Jacob Richard (Author) / Hodges, Kip (Thesis director) / Mercer, Cameron (Committee member) / van Soest, Matthijs (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
For the past few decades, the education system in the United States has failed many students because of its inability to increase student achievement. While there are many layers to this problem that cannot be solved with one simple solution, a curriculum change that provides students with more engaging and hands on learning opportunities along with teaching them to be advocates for their own education and community betterment offers a great start to the momentum for change. Service-learning is an ideal way to accomplish this because it incorporates civic engagement and community service into lesson plans that directly align with academic standards. Through service-learning, students are given the opportunity to apply their knowledge in direct and hands on ways meanwhile witnessing the difference that they can make in their community with their knowledge and abilities. Service-learning is a type of instruction typically employed in high school or junior high grades because it requires the course content to coincide with a service project of some kind. In this essay, we look into the research behind service-learning as well as several issues within the community that could be addressed with this kind of curriculum. The aim of this research is to adapt the models of service-learning intended for more advanced grades to align with the standards of a first grade curriculum and also consider the critical thinking skills, self-examination abilities, and social awareness of students at this age when making these adaptations. We believe that service-learning can benefit young students just as much, if not more than older students because it can help them to see the value in their education from early on and demonstrates real life uses for what they are learning. The curriculum created from this research is intended for use at schools within low-income communities in order to empower the students to actively fight against the challenges they face that prevent them from succeeding. However, this curriculum can easily be used in any school setting and adapted to various different age levels.
ContributorsBayer, Kendall Rose (Author) / Oliver, Jill (Thesis director) / White-Taylor, Janel (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Many researchers aspire to create robotics systems that assist humans in common office tasks, especially by taking over delivery and messaging tasks. For meaningful interactions to take place, a mobile robot must be able to identify the humans it interacts with and communicate successfully with them. It must also be able to successfully navigate the office environment. While mobile robots are well suited for navigating and interacting with elements inside a deterministic office environment, attempting to interact with human beings in an office environment remains a challenge due to the limits on the amount of cost-efficient compute power onboard the robot. In this work, I propose the use of remote cloud services to offload intensive interaction tasks. I detail the interactions required in an office environment and discuss the challenges faced when implementing a human-robot interaction platform in a stochastic office environment. I also experiment with cloud services for facial recognition, speech recognition, and environment navigation and discuss my results. As part of my thesis, I have implemented a human-robot interaction system utilizing cloud APIs into a mobile robot, enabling it to navigate the office environment, identify humans within the environment, and communicate with these humans.
ContributorsDSouza, Daniel Anand (Author) / Kambhampati, Subbarao (Thesis director) / Zhang, Yu (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Millions of people every day log onto their computers to play competitive games with others around the world. Each of these players has their own unique personality and their own reasons for playing. To explore the relationship between player personalities and gameplay, this study asked participants to report their Myers-Briggs sixteen personality types and complete a survey that asked them questions about their behavior while games playing competitively online including their preferred in-game archetype and questions about how they interact with other players online. The survey also included the Grit Scale test, which which was intended to explore players' perseverance. Nearly 700 people participated in the study and all responses were analyzed based on their Myers-Briggs' personality type. While this study revealed that Myers-Briggs' personality type alone cannot determine a player's mindset while playing online, it was found to be an indicator of how they feel about socializing with others online. The implications of these results are discussed in this paper.
ContributorsKeyvani, Kurosh (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis director) / Chavez-Echeagaray, Maria Elena (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Lie detection is used prominently in contemporary society for many purposes such as for pre-employment screenings, granting security clearances, and determining if criminals or potential subjects may or may not be lying, but by no means is not limited to that scope. However, lie detection has been criticized for being subjective, unreliable, inaccurate, and susceptible to deliberate manipulation. Furthermore, critics also believe that the administrator of the test also influences the outcome as well. As a result, the polygraph machine, the contemporary device used for lie detection, has come under scrutiny when used as evidence in the courts. The purpose of this study is to use three entirely different tools and concepts to determine whether eye tracking systems, electroencephalogram (EEG), and Facial Expression Emotion Analysis (FACET) are reliable tools for lie detection. This study found that certain constructs such as where the left eye is looking at in regard to its usual position and engagement levels in eye tracking and EEG respectively could distinguish between truths and lies. However, the FACET proved the most reliable tool out of the three by providing not just one distinguishing variable but seven, all related to emotions derived from movements in the facial muscles during the present study. The emotions associated with the FACET that were documented to possess the ability to distinguish between truthful and lying responses were joy, anger, fear, confusion, and frustration. In addition, an overall measure of the subject's neutral and positive emotional expression were found to be distinctive factors. The implications of this study and future directions are discussed.
ContributorsSeto, Raymond Hua (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis director) / Runger, George (Committee member) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Global violent conflict has become an increasing problem in recent decades, especially in the African continent. Civil wars, terrorism, riots, and political violence has wrought havoc not only on civilian lives, but also on economic foundations. Trade networks are a way to measure these economic foundations. To summarize trade networks clustering coefficient as well as trade quantity/value summation measures are used. To understand effects of global trade on violent conflict, Pearson product-moment correlations are utilized. This work details a comparison of African national economies and violent conflict events using clustering coefficient, trade summation measures and Pearson correlation coefficient.
ContributorsKadambi, Sagarika Sanjay (Author) / Maciejewski, Ross (Thesis director) / Shutters, Shade (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Father Daniel Berrigan once said that "writing about prisoners is a little like writing about the dead." I think what he meant is that we treat prisoners as ghosts. They're unseen and unheard. It's easy to simply ignore them and it's even easier when the government goes to great lengths to keep them hidden.
Supermax prisons are used to hold those prisoners whom prison authorities regard as the most problematic in the prison system. These facilities merge the 19th-century practice of long-term solitary confinement with 21st-century technology in ways that subject prisoners to unparalleled levels of isolation, surveillance, and control, usually for long duration, with the potential to inflict significant amounts of psychological harm. Despite a range of academic studies documenting the serious and potentially long-lasting psychological harm it may inflict, and several judicial opinions criticizing the risks it entails and significantly limiting its use, supermax prisons are still in full effect today.
Although there have been no successful cases brought to the Supreme Court alleging the use of supermax prisons being in violation of the inmate’s Eighth Amendment right, one can look at isolated factors that distinguish supermax prisons in which judges at the Supreme Court level have shown to be unconstitutional in general population prisons. This thesis examines the Eighth Amendment implications of cruel and unusual punishment within supermax prisons, through isolated factors through judicial intervention.
Supermax prisons are used to hold those prisoners whom prison authorities regard as the most problematic in the prison system. These facilities merge the 19th-century practice of long-term solitary confinement with 21st-century technology in ways that subject prisoners to unparalleled levels of isolation, surveillance, and control, usually for long duration, with the potential to inflict significant amounts of psychological harm. Despite a range of academic studies documenting the serious and potentially long-lasting psychological harm it may inflict, and several judicial opinions criticizing the risks it entails and significantly limiting its use, supermax prisons are still in full effect today.
Although there have been no successful cases brought to the Supreme Court alleging the use of supermax prisons being in violation of the inmate’s Eighth Amendment right, one can look at isolated factors that distinguish supermax prisons in which judges at the Supreme Court level have shown to be unconstitutional in general population prisons. This thesis examines the Eighth Amendment implications of cruel and unusual punishment within supermax prisons, through isolated factors through judicial intervention.
ContributorsLucca, Veronica Cristina (Author) / Stanford, Michael (Thesis director) / Cavender, Gray (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder that disrupts the hydration of mucous of the lungs, which promotes opportunistic bacterial infections that begin in the affected person’s childhood, and persist into adulthood. One of the bacteria that infect the CF lung is Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This gram-negative bacterium is acquired from the environment of the CF lung, changing the expression of phenotypes over the course of the infection. As P. aeruginosa infections become chronic, some phenotype changes are known to be linked with negative patient outcomes. An important exoproduct phenotype is rhamnolipid production, which is a glycolipid that P. aeruginosa produces as a surfactant for surface-mediated travel. Over time, the expression of this phenotype decreases in expression in the CF lung.
The objective of this investigation is to evaluate how environmental changes that are related to the growth environment in the CF lung alters rhamnolipid production. Thirty-five P. aeruginosa isolates from Dartmouth College and Seattle Children’s Hospital were selected to observe the impact of temperature, presence of Staphylococcus aureus metabolites, and oxygen availability on rhamnolipid production. It was found that the rhamnolipid production significantly decreased for 30C versus 37C, but not at 40C. The addition of S. aureus spent media, in any of the tested conditions, did not influence rhamnolipid production. Finally, the change in oxygen concentration from normoxia to hypoxia significantly reduced rhamnolipid production. These results were compared to swarming assay data to understand how changes in rhamnolipid production impact surface-mediated motility.
The objective of this investigation is to evaluate how environmental changes that are related to the growth environment in the CF lung alters rhamnolipid production. Thirty-five P. aeruginosa isolates from Dartmouth College and Seattle Children’s Hospital were selected to observe the impact of temperature, presence of Staphylococcus aureus metabolites, and oxygen availability on rhamnolipid production. It was found that the rhamnolipid production significantly decreased for 30C versus 37C, but not at 40C. The addition of S. aureus spent media, in any of the tested conditions, did not influence rhamnolipid production. Finally, the change in oxygen concentration from normoxia to hypoxia significantly reduced rhamnolipid production. These results were compared to swarming assay data to understand how changes in rhamnolipid production impact surface-mediated motility.
ContributorsKiermayr, Jonathan Patrick (Author) / Bean, Heather (Thesis director) / Misra, Rajeev (Committee member) / Haydel, Shelley (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
"The Reality of Imagination" is short animated film about a young girl name Isabel who, with her sketchbook and box of crayons, demonstrates the power of imagination through her drawings. From her own bedroom, her simple sketches transform into more complicated, realistic drawings, bringing her artistic creation to life. From a bouncing red ball, to flying on a plane, to a thunderstorm, her world extends beyond her sketchbook. The overall message is to demonstrate the importance of art and the power of imagination, especially seen from the perspective of a young child where much of that development is evident. In addition, further exploration of the film industry and learning about the production process was conducted to continue exercising my interest for film editing and graphic designing. This involved devising the script, selecting the appropriate actors, planning the production set, purchasing the tools and equipment, putting together a production crew, and applying the concepts learned about editing to create a short film that was approximately 3 minutes long. The editing software application used for this production was Final Cut Pro X distributed by Apple while the camera used was a Canon EOS Rebel T6. At least three different editing techniques were applied in the film and included stop-motion, keying, and split-screening. Furthermore, other concepts such as transforming and resizing video clips were applied along with learning to use the audio and visual effect resources available from Final Cut Pro X to enhance the quality of the film. An in-depth analysis of the entire process is also given in detailed.
ContributorsReyes, Diana (Author) / Ganssle, Gene (Thesis director) / Giner, Oscar (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05