archives@tulane.edu / In this dissertation, I analyze the development and dissemination of state-level policies to prohibit colleges from considering criminal history for purposes of admissions otherwise known as ban the box in higher education. This research engages with practical and instructive questions of how individuals or coalitions can learn from other policy campaigns to strategically reduce the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. I conducted a collective case study of the first five states to introduce ban the box in higher education legislation, namely New York, Illinois, Maryland, Louisiana, and Washington. I used critical discourse analysis to analyze all available media and social media content to identify where legislation was filed and major stakeholders. I then transcribed and analyzed all available legislative hearings and interviewed key stakeholders to determine the dominant discourses within and across five states. The study found that legislators and advocates evoked the following arguments in opposition to ban the box in higher education: positive self/ negative other, paternalistic decision making, uselessness, and fear of the undeserving. In support, advocates and legislators used arguments that emphasized individual benefits, community benefits, and diversity. Advocates in support also presented personal testimony from formerly incarcerated students and alumni to humanize people with convictions. The findings illuminate possible strategies and barriers to passing supportive policy that reduces collateral consequences and limits the reach of the criminal legal system. / 1 / Annie Phoenix

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The thesis focuses on an algebraic description of S-boxes by the special type of quadratic equations, defined as biaffine equations. Biaffine equations satisfying S-boxes of higher order may not even exist. However, the special type of S-boxes en- ables to find such equations also for S-boxes of higher order. The S-box in the block cipher Rijndael, composed of the inverse function and the affine transformation, is an example of such special type of S-boxes. The thesis proves that a number of biaffine equations satisfying an S-box of this type does not depend on the affine function. The thesis also proves that for every S-box of order n formed by the in- verse function there exist at least 3n − 1 biaffine equations satisfying this S-box. 1

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-08-08T12:41:40Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) dissertacao-mestrado-jcpf.pdf: 6512881 bytes, checksum: 0e42b481cf73ab357ca212b410fbd5ee (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-08T12:41:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) dissertacao-mestrado-jcpf.pdf: 6512881 bytes, checksum: 0e42b481cf73ab357ca212b410fbd5ee (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-29 / Prever o sucesso de um filme e, por consequência, seu sucesso nas bilheterias tem uma grande importância na indústria cinematográfica, desde a fase de pré-produção do filme, quando os investidores querem saber quais serão os filmes mais promissores, até nas semanas seguintes ao seu lançamento, quando se deseja prever as bilheterias das semanas restantes de exibição. Por conta disso, essa área tem sido alvo de muitos estudos que tem usado diferentes abordagens de predição, seja na seleção das características dos filmes como nas técnicas de aprendizagem, para atingir uma maior capacidade de prever o sucesso dos filmes. Neste trabalho de mestrado, foi feita uma investigação sobre o comportamento das principais características dos filmes (gênero, classificação etária, orçamento de produção, etc), com maior foco nos resultados das bilheterias e sua relação com as características dos filmes, de forma a obter uma visão mais clara de como as caracaterísticas dos filmes podem influenciar no seu sucesso, seja ele interpretado como lucro ou volume de bilheterias. Em seguida, em posse de uma base de filmes extraída do Box-Office Mojo e do IMDb, foi proposto um novo modelo de predição de box office utilizando os dados disponíveis dessa base, que é composta de: meta-dados dos filmes, palavras-chaves, e dados de bilheterias. Algumas dessas características são hibridizadas com o objetivo evidenciar as combinações de características mais importantes. É aplicado também um processo de seleção de características para excluir aquelas que não são relevantes ao modelo. O modelo utiliza Random Forest como máquina de aprendizagem. Os resultados obtidos com a técnica proposta sugerem, além de uma maior simplificação do modelo em relação a estudos anteriores, que o método consegue obter taxas de acerto superior 90% quando a classificação é medida com a métrica 1-away (quando a amostra é classificada com até 1 classe de distância), e consegue melhorar a qualidade da predição em relação a estudos anteriores quando testado com os dados da base disponível. / Predicting the success of a movie and, consequently, its box office success, has a huge importance in the motion pictures industry. Its importance comes since from the pre-production period, when the investors want to know the most promising movies to invest, until the first few weeks after release, when exhibitors want to predict the box office of the remaining weeks of exhibition. As result, this area has been subject of many studies which have used different prediction approaches, in both feature selection and learning methods, to achieve better capacity to predict movies’ success. In this mastership work, a deep research about the movie’s main features (genre, MPAA, production budget, etc) has been done, with more focus on the results of box offices and its relation with the movie’s features in order to get a clearer view of the organization of information and how variables can influence the success of a film, whether this success be interpreted as profit or revenue volumes at the box office. Then, in possession of a movie database extracted from Box-Office Mojo and IMDb, it was proposed a new box office prediction model based on available data from the database composed of: movie meta-data, key-words and box office data. Some of these features are hybridized aiming to emphasize the most important features’ combinations. A features’ selection process is also applied to exclude irrelevant features. The obtained results with the proposed method suggests, besides a further simplification of the model compared to previous studies, that the method can get hit rate of more than 90% when classification is measured with the metric 1-away (when the sample is classified within 1 class of distance from the right class), and achieve a improvement in the prediction quality when compared to previous studies using the available database.

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<p>Manufacturing is becoming a crucial part of now-a-days fast growing economies and increase of earth’s population. Recently manufacturing is changing rapidly, different manufacturing strategies are being implemented, the conceptual understanding for manufacturing is changed, and new ways of producing products are showing up. Automation has been the essential term regarding the modern manufacturing processes. The humanmachine sharing is playing a major role in the production systems, and the most elegant thing is to create and design the appropriate level for interaction between them depending on the desired outcome in the production area. Technological innovation is the implementation of new more efficient production method by achieving qualitative improvements of the goods and services in a specific area in this paper’s case is a production system. This paper is regarding the importance of the correct production system being chosen for an organization regarding the right level of automation (LoA) being used, which is a way of controlling the overall effectiveness of the system.  Different approaches and methods are going to be used for demonstrating the choice of  the exact and right level of automation and the possibility of changing it by introducing and implementing the ongoing DYNAMO research on a different conceptual solutions for a foundry application in Factory-in-a-Box. The main objective of the research is to develop a method and system for supporting sustainable flexible and reconfigurable production system providing competitive industrial characteristics in the fast developing world.</p> / ProViking, Factory-in-a-box, Dynamo

This thesis explores the design development and experimental testing of a planar linkage for the Skiboard, a novel snowsports equipment device. The Skiboard, similar to a skateboard in appearance and style of use, combines two short skis with a bindingless board. Its aim is to fill a gap in the snowsports market for a product that offers a wide range of freestyle and trick riding possibilities, beyond those of a snowboard, while being as stable and easy to ride as a pair of skis. While the concept of the Skiboard in itself is simple, the task of designing a mechanism to link the skis to the board is complex. To translate a gradual lean of the rider into a gradual and equal tilting of the skis requires a multi-loop linkage mechanism. The synthesis and analysis of a mechanism for this application was the inspiration for the development of the synthesis-related design tools presented in this thesis. Design methodologies and design software concepts have been developed for use by designers faced with under-defined, “black-box” linkage synthesis problems similar to the Skiboard mechanism synthesis task. A software-based design of experiments setup, called SMAC, is introduced in this thesis and was used throughout the linkage synthesis process for the Skiboard. One promising candidate mechanism, developed and chosen using SMAC, is followed through to the pre-prototyping phase of the design process. PSEO, another, more advanced, software tool for complex and multi-loop linkage synthesis is also presented in the concept stage of development. This type of program has the potential to automate some of the most time-consuming portions of the synthesis and analysis process with the use of a genetic algorithm and curve-matching algorithm. Additionally, it keeps much of the user’s interaction with the design process and the design itself intact, which is something not offered by existing tools incorporating similar levels of automation. Overall, this thesis is an exploration into the field of linkage design, a topic with little crossover between theory and practical design helps. It includes a review of existing synthesis tools and the development of new tools to suit complex applications such as the Skiboard. The design process for the Skiboard linkage mechanism is also presented and illustrates the way in which the creative design process is iterative, progressively informing the designer’s understanding of the functional requirements of the linkage and how to best satisfy them.

This study examines the reproductive strategies of the Pill-box crab, Halicarcinus innominatus, at the Oaro Platform (24 km south of the Kaikoura Peninsula, New Zealand). As necessary components of reproductive strategies, the population dynamics, reproductive biology and mating behaviour of H. innominetus were examined from December 1997 through December 1998. There were obvious sexually dimorphic differences in secondary sexual traits in this species. Both males and females display a wide range of sizes over which individuals can moult to maturity. H. innominatus females displayed continuous breeding throughout the year, resulting in continuous recruitment. Females were found to outnumber males in each month. However, when comparisons were made between mature males and females with different brood stages (i.e. 0-5), males outnumbered each female type in each month. Investigations into the reproductive biology of H. innominatus females revealed that brood development and ovary development were in phase. This resulted in the ability of females to produce several broods in quick succession. Ovary development began before the moult to maturity, allowing for immediate production of a brood after the moult to maturity. Egg incubation periods were dependent on water temperature, being longest in the winter and shortest in the summer. Egg numbers were found to increase with female body size, but mortality of eggs through development was apparent. Sperm storage was found to occur in this species with possible layering of different ejaculates. Copulations were only observed between males and females in hard-shell conditions. Males mated more often with females carrying stage 5 broods, but also mated with all other female types, including pre-pubescent females. Postcopulatory mate guarding only occurred with stage 5 females. Males can detect females of different reproductive condition, which seems to be linked to the developmental stages of the females' ovaries. In conclusion, H. innominatus males seem to have two tactics to their reproductive strategies: mating with any receptive female, but only guarding stage 5 females.

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