Giving a knot, there are three rules to help us finding the Kauffman bracket polynomial. Choosing knot’s orientation, then applying the Seifert algorithm to find the Euler characteristic and genus of its surface. Finally finding the relationship of the Kauffman bracket polynomial and the genus of the alternating links is the main goal of this paper.

This project is an extension of i2MapReduce: Incremental MapReduce for Mining Evolving Big Data . i2MapReduce is used for incremental big data processing, which uses a fine-grained incremental engine, a general purpose iterative model that includes iteration algorithms such as PageRank, Fuzzy-C-Means(FCM), Generalized Iterated Matrix-Vector Multiplication(GIM-V), Single Source Shortest Path(SSSP). The main purpose of this project is to reduce input/output overhead, to avoid incurring the cost of re-computation and avoid stale data mining results. Finally, the performance of i2MapReduce is analyzed by comparing the resultant graphs.

This thesis argues for the inclusion of religious exploration among the commonly accepted list of high impact practices at institutions of higher education. In the last decade, colleges and universities have turned to high impact practices to bolster positive student outcomes in retention, graduation, campus involvement, and deep learning. In its basic forms, religion and spirituality have always been one way that humans have made sense of our most elemental questions: Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? At a time when faith and religion have become wedded to increasingly narrow ideological and political positions, student affairs professionals and educators are in a unique position to reclaim the meaning-making power of religious stories and help students examine their fundamental assumptions about their identities and purpose. To this end, I examine high impact practices as transformational experiences, and discuss how both general religious literacy and individual religious practice transform a student’s college experience and their life beyond. Using scholarly personal narrative, I recount my own quarterlife religious exploration and contrast that experience with what we know about how college students approach faith and religion today. Finally, I make specific recommendations about how to incorporate religious and spiritual learning in our curriculum and open a campus dialogue about faith and its role in the meaning-making endeavors of our quarterlife students.

Graphical information has become a critical method for portraying information for education, work and personal tasks and decisions. Unfortunately there are currently limited means of providing this information to individuals who are blind or visually impaired: alternate text is frequently missing, and accessible tactile diagrams tend to be time consuming to make and require expertise in order for them to be interpretable (which may be costly to the user and/or impossible to get). The aim of this project is to provide an accessible system to automatically generate tactile graphics for those who need to interpret information contained in visual images. Previous automatic conversion methods have not been especially successful and are not used in normal practice, possibly because they have not taken advantage of current advances in the field of image processing. In the preliminary work, we systematically look at the myriad of image segmentation methods that exist as part of the conversion process. For those techniques, previous researchers have often compared the results to the “gold standard” of human segmentation to evaluate their success. However, there are important difference between this “gold standard” and what is needed for tactile graphics. Key steps by professionals who create tactile diagrams are simplification so that the information is manageable to extract through the tactile sense, elimination of perspective as it is difficult to interpret tactually, and possible spreading of information across multiple diagrams. Planned work is to examine more closely the underlying themes to the myriad of algorithm are relevant for tactile diagrams. Future work, will also involve taking the initially segmented image, simplifying it further by removing “unimportant” detail so that it is manageable by the tactile system and removing perspective based on geometric information found in the image.

Spectral imaging is a powerful technique which uses the wavelength to identify/quantify the exact location and amount of the molecules. It facilitates the identification of materials and studying their properties through analyzing the way they interact with light. The study of light interaction with elements is called spectroscopy; spectroscopy examines how light behaves in the target and recognizes materials based on their spectral signatures. Spectral signatures can be compared to fingerprints which can be used to identify a person; spectral signatures can be used to identify materials. Therefore, we hypothesize that identifying the exact location and quantity of molecules present in the given cells samples can be done by using a spectral imaging system. In this study, we identify the exact UV-Vis and fluorescence spectra of organic substances including Rhodamine 6G, Doxorubicin and UV-Vis spectra inorganic compounds including silver (Ag), gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs). After that, we used the Q-TOF LC/MS system to quantify the maximum and minimum detectable concentrations of Rhodamine 6G and Doxorubicin by checking the chemicals spectrum based on the molecular weight. In addition, we used HPLC system to quantify the chemicals basing on their UV spectrum. Forwards, we used spectral imaging system to determine the exact amount and location of the molecules within cells samples. For Rhodamine 6G and doxorubicin, we started with the minimum detectable concentration by Q- TOF and consider it as a maximum limit with spectral imaging. And for NPs we used the maximum concentration for the analysis. Using the spectral imaging we were able to vii detect the exact location of Rhodamine 6G which was in the cytoplasm, Doxorubicin in the nucleoplasm, and NPs in both. Furthermore, spectral imaging was able to detect much lower concentrations of Rhodamine 6G and Doxorubicin by the spectrum in comparison to Q-TOF LC/MS.

During disaster operations in Ghana in 2015, as a result of flood and fire, there was evidence of poor coordination between the workers and victims of the NGO, as well as inappropriate use of funds, which consequently caused compounding problems for disaster victims especially the outbreak of diseases. Little, however, is known about what conditions precipitated these events that may have delayed humanitarian, non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) ability to engage in disaster relief to victims. Using Freeman's stakeholder theory as the foundation, the purpose of this case study of the 2015 fire/flood disaster in Ghana was to understand from the perspective NGOs what events and conditions may have contributed to lack of coordination and inefficient practices. Data were collected from 13 executive directors, employees, and volunteers of the NGO through personal interviews. Interview data were deductively coded and subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Findings revealed that participants perceived that the NGO provided financial accountability to donors, but not to disaster victims, nor were victims involved in the NGO's operations. The study's findings have implications for how future researchers in related disasters may approach studies in disaster management by including the perspectives of both NGO and victims in humanitarian aid operations. Implications for social change include recommendations to NGO management to develop and engage in accountability practices to ensure financial accountability to all stakeholders as well as active involvement of the disaster victims.

The Region 4 Study, a four-county research project completed in July 1971 for the New York State Education Department under the direction and organization of the author, was approved by Walden University as the outline for this dissertation. The statistical data and committees' recommendations were adapted for this thesis without altering, hopefully, the substance or intent of the documented findings. The dissertation has been footnoted to indicate the use of Region 4 data in Chapters V, VI, and VII. The study was undertaken to seek methods of improving programs in occupational education and of coordinating those programs among the school districts to open up many more opportunities for students to learn about the world of work such an investigation involved many specialists, as well as the executives of business and the administrators of governmental agencies. In the process, communication between educators and the men responsible for running the businesses of the four counties was greatly enhanced. A start in this direction, made five years before the Study by the author in his capacity as county coordinator of occupational education for Westchester-Putnam counties, served as an opening wedge for this cooperation over one 'hundred individuals participated in the gathering of statistical data during the eight months of the Study, all of which had to be summarized for the report to the State Education Department. The charts and graphs were made by gleaning data from other statistical sources as well as doing original research. The organization and editing of the Study were directly controlled by the author. Chapter I of the dissertation covers the problems in occupational education from a four-county perspective. Chapter II gives the authors view of 'what ought to be' in occupational education generally, and what he knows is feasible for the four counties particularly. Chapter III sets the geographical and historical background of the counties. Population growth and economic development are given in Chapter IV, and Chapter V deals with the numbers of students in the schools and the need for manpower. Occupational education courses offered presently on all educational levels are listed in Chapter IV, with a summation indicating how far short we fall in meeting our goals. Chapter VII reflects specific and general views of the participating committees in the summing up of conclusions and recommendations. Projections are made for enlarging programs and improving curricula; the considerations of area-wide needs encompass the hopes and aims of men and women concerned with pragmatic goals and the ideals of a good society. A very significant recommendation is the one expressing the need for continual planning and for improving regional coordination through the resources of active advisory committees.

Capillary electrophoresis is currently a very powerful technique for the analysis of seized drugs. A rapid analytical CE method for the screening and quantification of GHB and GBL was achieved using 300mM CTAC/25mM phosphate buffer pH 6.3. Reversed phase HPLC was achieved using 25mM phosphate buffer pH 6.5 and a Cl8 Aqua column. Chiral separation of 9 amphetamine type stimulants was obtained using a highly sulfated gamma-cyclodextrin as a chiral selector. MECC and CZE were compared for the analysis of psilocybin, while a rapid and robust method is presented for the analysis of major opium alkaloids, using dynamically coated capillary columns. The column is coated with a polycation followed by a polyanion coating, using a commercial reagent kit. Using a background electrolyte pH of 2.5 with the addition of hydroxypropyl-beta- cyclodextrin and dimethyl-beta-cyclodextrin, the analysis of morphine, papaverine, codeine, noscapine, and thebaine in opium samples was obtained with great resolution. Finally, separation of common benzodiazedpines was also investigated using CZE and a pH 2.5 phosphate buffer.

Early lap-reading experiences have been shown to benefit normally hearing children. Within this lap-reading context, children are exposed to more diverse vocabulary, complex syntactic structures, story grammar constructs, and higher level thinking skills such as inferencing, predicting, and evaluating. There is also evidence that children with hearing impairment benefit from lap-reading experiences, but with more modest effects. It has been hypothesized that greater effects have not been documented due to the fact that many hearing parents may be uncomfortable or may lack adequate skills to teach their deaf children literacy skills in sign and print as do deaf parents by reading and sharing stories from books with their deaf children (Marschark & Harris, 1996). In addition, the reading skills of deaf children have historically been, and continue to be lower than those of normally hearing children. It is hypothesized by this researcher that a factor which contributes to the reading difficulties seen in the majority of deaf children is a lack of linguistic and literacy exposure and practice that comes from early lap-reading experiences with an adult, who is competent in the language of the child. The Gallaudet Shared Reading Project represents an attempted intervention that has had some success; though there are inherent limitations to the program. An experimental approach that uses the Iowa E-Book seeks to make up for the limitations of the Shared Reading Project. This study involves the use of four mother-child dyads in a single subject design study that seeks to answer two research questions. The first involves testing the effects of including a signing narrator in the Iowa E-Book on the development of deaf children's knowledge of sign vocabulary and book related concepts. The second involves assessing changes in the parent-child interactions that occur while using the Iowa E-Book with and without sign support.

No description available.