As the United States is on the cusp of returning astronauts to the Moon, it becomes increasingly apparent that the assembly of structures in space will have to rely upon robots to perform the construction process. With a focus on sustaining a presence on the Moon's surface in such a harsh and unforgiving environment, demonstrating the robustness of autonomous assembly and capabilities of robotic manipulators is necessary. Current robotic assembly on Earth consists mainly of inspection or highly controlled environments, and always with a human in the loop to step in and fix issues if a problem occurs. To remove the human element, the robot system then must account for safety as well. Thus, system risk can easily overwhelm project costs. This thesis proposes a combination of hardware and state estimation solutions to improve the feasibility of low-fidelity and low-resolution robots for precision assembly tasks. Doing so reduces the risk to mission success, as the hardware becomes easier to replace or repair. The hardware modifications implement an electro-permanent magnet interface with alignment features to reduce the fidelity needed for the robot end effector. On the state estimation side, an Ensemble Kalman Filter is implemented, along with a scaling system to prevent FASER Lab hardware from becoming stuck due to hardware limitations. Overall, the three modifications improved the test robot's autonomous convergence error by 98.5%, bettering the system sufficiently to make an autonomous assembly process feasible. / Master of Science / With the dawn of new space age nearly upon us, one of the most important aspects to working in space will be robotic assembly, whether on the surface of other planetary bodies like the Moon or in zero-gravity, in order to keep astronauts safe and to reduce spaceship launch costs. Both places have their own difficult problems to deal with, and doing any actions in those locations come with a significant amount of risk involved. To reduce extreme risk, you can spend more money to over-protect the robots, or reduce the consequences of the risk. This thesis describes a way to reduce the impact of risks to a mission by checking whether inexpensive robots can be adapted and modified to be able to perform similar construction actions to a much more expensive robot. It does this by using specialized hardware and software programs to better align the robot to where it needs to go without people needing to step in and help it. The experiments showed a 98.5% improvement to the system from without any of the modifications and validated that the low-cost robot could be improved sufficiently to be useful.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / An examination of the literature revealed that conflict is prevalent throughout American colleges and universities-especially within divisions of student affairs-and that senior student affairs officers are expected to assume an important role campus-wide in the management of conflict. Trends suggest a significant increase in their involvement with conflict over the next twenty years. This study sought to identify the nature of conflict and the conflict resolution process at small liberal arts colleges and to examine differences among senior student affairs officers in the methods they use to resolve conflicts, the theories they report as underlying these methods, and the sources of these espoused theories of conflict resolution. Interviews on these matters were held with 15 senior student affairs officers in such colleges in the American mid-west. The following are among the most important findings: 1) the deans have a firm understanding of how to handle conflict (contrary to many prior research findings); 2) the deans have a strong dislike for conflict; 3) one-third of the deans report that they avoid conflict whenever possible; 4) the deans see it as their responsibility to handle any conflict involving students and they have the potential to be directly and indirectly involved in almost any such situation, even outside their divisions; 5) handling conflict is reported to take up three-fourths of their time; 6) half of the deans attempt to mediate (minor) violations of policy while others deem it inappropriate; 7) factors which most frequently contribute to conflict include communication, and diversity-the interplay among people from different cultures and backgrounds; 8) the deans view issues of diversity as being the most difficult to handle because of their emotional intensity; and 9) the deans reported a predominantly trial-and-error preparation for dealing with conflict rather than through formal education. The findings suggest that further research is needed to address such questions as these: 1) What is the relationship between espoused theories of handling conflict and theories-in-use? 2) How does having a strong dislike for conflict affect one's ability to manage it? 3) How does institutional culture affect the handling of conflict? 4) What are the consequences of conflict avoidance? 5) How do institutions support deans in handling conflicts involving diversity issues? (6) What consequences typically ensue from trying to mediate policy violations? The findings also suggest the need for practical programs and policies such as the following: 1) improving relevant pre-professional programs; 2) improving in-service programs for those having responsibility for managing and resolving conflict; 3) changing the recruitment, hiring, and evaluation process for the dean of students position; 4) transforming college cultures in ways that better support conflict management and resolution; 5) institutionalizing the process of the effective management of conflict; 6) addressing the issue of avoidance to ensure that conflict is being addressed in a timely manner; 7) developing an ombudsman position to centralize and formalize the process of assisting faculty, staff, and students to resolve conflicts; and 8) creating a Center for Conflict Management to provide faculty, staff, and students with resource materials, training workshops, and assistance with mediating and managing conflict. / 2999-01-01

In recent years, Americans have seen a plethora of litigation surrounding disputes parents have with school districts involving a wide range of special education issues. The ability to challenge the decisions made by school personnel regarding identification, evaluation, placement, and the provision of free appropriate public education is a cornerstone of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (Opuda, 1997). IDEA requires that states guarantee parents the right to bring complaints to the State Education Agency regarding any of these matters (34 C.F.R. 300.507). The federal government and state legislatures have toiled to develop strategies to work through these challenges by utilizing alternative dispute resolution procedures. Under IDEA, parents are afforded the opportunity to participate in meetings concerning their child or request mediation. If they feel the child has not been provided a free appropriate public education, they can challenge the local education agency, or state education agency. Consistent with federal regulations, all states must have a system to monitor and enforce special education compliance issues. If parents believe there is sufficient proof that their child has not been served in accordance with state and federal guidelines, they may file complaint resolution procedures with their state education agency (20 U.S.C. §1400, et. seq.). This study used a quantitative approach to examine the number of cases where parents filed complaint resolution procedures with the Virginia Department of Education regarding special education compliance issues as well as analyze the frequencies of the complaint resolution procedures over a four year period. The examination of these cases focused on whether or not the effects of the division size, locale (rural, suburban, or city), geographical region, socioeconomic status of the family, and the category of the issue influenced the outcome of the complaint. / Ph. D.

Yes

XML files are frequently used by developers when building Web applications or Java EE applications. However, maintaining XML files is challenging and time-consuming because the correct usage of XML entities is always domain-specific and rarely well documented. Also, the existing compilers and program analysis tools seldom examine XML files. In this thesis, we developed a novel approach to XML file debugging called Xeditor where we extract XML consistency rules from open-source projects and use these rules to detect XML bugs. There are two phases in Xeditor: rule inference and application. To infer rules, Xeditor mines XML-based deployment descriptors in open-source projects, extracting XML entity pairs that frequently co-exist in the same files and refer to the same string literals. Xeditor then applies association rule mining to the extracted pairs. For rule application, given a program commit, Xeditor checks whether any updated XML file violates the inferred rules; if so, Xeditor reports the violation and suggests an edit for correction?. Our evaluation shows that Xeditor inferred rules with high precision (83%). For injected XML bugs, Xeditor detected rule violations and suggested changes with 74.6% precision, 50% recall. More importantly, Xeditor identified 31 really erroneous XML updates in version history, 17 of which updates were fixed by developers in later program commits. This observation implies that by using Xeditor, developers would have avoided introducing errors when writing XML files. Finally, we compared Xeditor with a baseline approach that suggests changes based on frequently co-changed entities, and found Xeditor to outperform the baseline for both rule inference and rule application. / XML files are frequently used in Java programming and when building Web application implementation. However, it is a challenge to maintain XML files since these files should follow various domain-specific rules and the existing program analysis tools seldom check XML files. In this thesis, we introduce a new approach to XML file debugging called Xeditor that extracts XML consistency rules from open-source projects and uses these rules to detect XML bugs. To extract the rules, Xeditor first looks at working XML files and finds all the pairs of entities A and B, which entities coexist in one file and have the same value on at least one occasion. Then Xeditor will check when A occurs, what is the probability that B also occurs. If the probability is high enough, Xeditor infers a rule that A is associated with B. To apply the rule, Xeditor checks XML files with errors. If a file violates the rules that were previously inferred, Xeditor will report the violation and suggest a change. Our evaluation shows that Xeditor inferred the correct rules with high precision 83%. More importantly, Xeditor identified issues in previous versions of XML files, and many of those issues were fixed by developers in later versions. Therefore, Xeditor is able to help find and fix errors when developers write their XML files.

This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of curiosity resolution. I investigate the premise that the experience of curiosity resolution is influenced both by the fact that curiosity is resolved, as well as how it is resolved. While the outcome associated with curiosity resolution can be positive or negative in nature, the experience of curiosity resolution itself is predicted to be pleasant in nature. Therefore, I propose that the degree to which each of these two resolution facets is salient will influence curiosity-related evaluations. In this dissertation, I investigate pre-resolution expectations as well as post-resolution downstream consequences. Prior to curiosity resolution, I propose that individuals are likely to be focused on the outcome they will obtain. However, when faced with uncertain outcomes, individuals strategically heighten anticipated feelings of disappointment in order to protect against actual disappointment when the outcome is revealed; thus, I predict and demonstrate in four studies that curious consumers will display heightened levels of pre-resolution feelings of anticipated disappointment. After curiosity resolution, I propose that individuals experience not only positive or negative feelings associated with the outcome obtained, but also positive feelings of resolution itself. In four studies, I investigate the power of curiosity resolution to buffer negative responses to relatively undesirable outcomes. Importantly, I also demonstrate that consumers' focus on either the outcome obtained or on the experience of resolution itself can be experimentally shifted, thereby mitigating the previously described effects. / Ph. D. / When people become curious, they are more likely to engage with and explore the object of their curiosity. In a marketing context, this can result in positive outcomes such as increased interest and responsiveness to ads. Thus, marketers may seek to induce consumer curiosity in order to obtain these beneficial responses. However, little is known about what happens when consumers’ curiosity is resolved; individuals may react with a disappointed, ‘big deal’ response, or may experience more positive feelings of relief or reward. In this research, I seek to better understand curiosity resolution. I suggest that consumers may react positively or negatively to curiosity resolution depending on the outcome they receive. However, I also suggest that the experience of curiosity resolution itself, the feeling of finding out what you wanted to know, is positive. I suggest that these distinct sources of negative and positive feelings have different implications for consumers’ expectations of curiosity resolution and for consumers’ postresolution evaluations. Prior to curiosity resolution, individuals are expected to be focused on the nature of the unknown outcome they will obtain. Thus, they engage in an ‘expect the worst’ process in which they anticipate feelings of disappointment in case the unknown outcome they obtain is negative. However, if they shift their focus to the experience of resolution itself, these feelings of disappointment are reduced. After curiosity resolution, feelings associated with the outcome obtained are predicted to be tempered by positive feelings associated with curiosity resolution itself. Thus, consumers who experience curiosity resolution, compared to those who don’t, react less negatively to a relatively undesirable outcome. However, a shift in focus can change this reaction, such that a greater emphasis on the outcome obtained yields a more negative response to a relatively undesirable outcome.

Yes / Mandelic acids are prototypic chiral molecules where the sensitivity of crystallized forms (enantiopure/racemic compound/polymorphs) to both conditions and substituents provides a new insight into the factors that may allow chiral separation by crystallization. The determination of a significant number of single crystal structures allows the analysis of 13 enantiopure and 30 racemic crystal structures of 21 (F/Cl/Br/CH3/CH3O) substituted mandelic acid derivatives. There are some common phenyl packing motifs between some groups of racemic and enantiopure structures, although they show very different hydrogen-bonding motifs. The computed crystal energy landscape of 3-chloromandelic acid, which has at least two enantiopure and three racemic crystal polymorphs, reveals that there are many more possible structures, some of which are predicted to be thermodynamically more favorable as well as slightly denser than the known forms. Simulations of mandelic acid dimers in isolation, water, and toluene do not differentiate between racemic and enantiopure dimers and also suggest that the phenyl ring interactions play a major role in the crystallization mechanism. The observed crystallization behavior of mandelic acids does not correspond to any simple “crystal engineering rules” as there is a range of thermodynamically feasible structures with no distinction between the enantiopure and racemic forms. Nucleation and crystallization appear to be determined by the kinetics of crystal growth with a statistical bias, but the diversity of the mandelic acid crystallization behavior demonstrates that the factors that influence the kinetics of crystal nucleation and growth are not yet adequately understood. / EPSRC, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Sciences, UCL-MPS Impact Ph.D. Fellowship, EU COST Action

No / The purpose of the research was to examine the practical feasibility of developing a hyperspectral camera from a Zeiss fundus camera and to illustrate its use in imaging diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma patients. The original light source of the camera was replaced with an external lamp filtered by a fast tunable liquid-crystal filter. The filtered light was then brought into the camera through an optical fiber. The original film camera was replaced by a digital camera. Images were obtained in normals and patients (primary open angle glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy) recruited at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. A series of eight images were captured across 495- to 720-nm wavelengths, and recording time was less than 1.6s. The light level at the cornea was below the ANSI limits, and patients judged the measurement to be very comfortable. Images were of high quality and were used to generate a pixel-to-pixel oxygenation map of the optic nerve head. Frame alignment is necessary for frame-to-frame comparison but can be achieved through simple methods. We have developed a hyperspectral camera with high spatial and spectral resolution across the whole visible spectrum that can be adapted from a standard fundus camera. The hyperspectral technique allows wavelength-specific visualization of retinal lesions that may be subvisible using a white light source camera. This hyperspectral technique may facilitate localization of retinal and disc pathology and consequently facilitate the diagnosis and management of retinal disease.

Temperature programmed gas chromatography (TPGC) is commonly used for the analysis of complex samples with a wide range of boiling points. It is estimated that 80% of GC users implement TPGC on a regular basis. In 1962, John Calvin Giddings was the first to publish a simple model for TPGC. His theories concerning TPGC are still accepted as the benchmark for explaining the underlying theory. The purpose of this research was to investigate, as speculated by Giddings, if temperature programming rate (b) is the dominant contribution in determining fundamental chromatographic values, such as retention time, retention temperature and resolution. Comparison of these effects was made by studying column length and linear velocity in conjunction with temperature programming rates. Experimental determinations using a combination of three different column lengths, five linear velocities and three ramping rates on a three-component sample were investigated. A late eluting peak, C14, was evaluated by statistical analysis to determine the dominant contribution on retention time, retention temperature and resolution. Results from statistically analysis show that temperature programming rate (b), column length and linear velocity all have contributions on retention time, retention temperature and resolution, however b dominates at high programming rates. / Master of Science

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation contains conceptual and practical innovations in the field of super-resolution microscopy and applies super-resolution microscopy in the study of chromatin structure at the nanoscale</p>