NDSU Theses & Dissertations

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Research performed to achieve a formal degree from NDSU. Includes theses, dissertations, master's papers, and videos. The Libraries are currently undertaking a scanning project to include all bound student theses, dissertations, and masters papers.

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Achieving a Sustainable Concrete Design and Construction
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Agrawal, Ankush Satishchandra
Concrete is one of the key materials in the construction industry. But today, the use of concrete and its production has become a matter of environmental concern throughout the world. This statement is true especially for the manufacturing process of cement. One of the major problems is emission of CO2 gas into the atmosphere during the manufacturing of cement. Every ton of concrete produced leads to emission of one ton of carbon dioxide gas. Hence replacement of cement by alternative materials has been investigated by many researchers. In the past, fly ash has been the most common replacement. This study, however, suggests replacing all the major components of concrete to the extent that would satisfy the standard strength requirements. This paper focuses on the development of a sustainable or green concrete and proposes a set of tools for a sustainable concrete design and construction. Many researchers have been trying to replace one component of concrete to make it more sustainable. Discussion in this paper will not only give a direction to produce more sustainable concrete but also eco-friendly concrete, thus addressing the two important issues of economy and environmental friendliness simultaneously. Defining the idea of sustainability with respect to the concrete and construction industry and doing a literature search on similar grounds was the first step taken towards completion of this research. The findings in the literature search made a survey necessary. This survey was done to have an idea of sustainability from the experts in the construction and cement industry. The survey was done by sending a questionnaire to concrete experts, engineers, designers and contractors to get their ideas for green concrete and its usage in the industry. The findings of the literature survey and inferences from the survey results made the generation of the proposed sets of tools possible. The concrete and the construction industry can achieve an overall sustainability by complete utilization of tools proposed in the paper. Strict usage of these tools will not only ensure environmental sustainability but will also satisfy the ends of economic and social aspects of sustainability.
Advanced Computational Ratings for College Football Teams
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Hensley, Joel Michael
This paper explores the subject of rating systems applied to the world of college football. Current rating system methodologies are examined, and four rating systems are developed and evaluated in a program. The Hensley Rating system is introduced as a new method. The details of each of these systems are discussed, and the results are analyzed and evaluated using data from the college football seasons of 2000 - 2009.
Alternative Clustering Algorithms in Sensor Networks
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Gupta, Divya
A wireless sensor network is composed of a large number of tiny sensor nodes that can be deployed in a variety of environments like battle fields, water, large fields, and the like, and can transmit data to a Base station (BS). In a clusterbased network organization, sensor nodes are organized into clusters and one sensor node is selected as a sensor head (SH) in each cluster. Each SH denotes a facility and sends useful information to the Base Station (BS) through other SHs via the shortest path. In this paper, we study two clustering techniques, namely kmedian clustering and k-center clustering for a wireless sensor network. All the sensor nodes are static and homogeneous (having the same specifications) and SHs are assumed to be heterogeneous with respect to other sensor nodes in their respective clusters (but homogeneous to other SHs once they are located). The focus of this paper is to compare the k-median and k-center clustering techniques based on shortest path and total intra-cluster distance. We have implemented the two clustering techniques using the Java language and necessary experimental and statistical results are provided.
Analysis of a Facebook Freakout: Rhetoric of Agency in the Places Privacy Debate
(North Dakota State University, 2011) Bakke, Abigail Rose
New technologies often generate fear regarding privacy threats, and social networking sites like Face book have lately experienced the brunt of the criticism. Face book users, even as they post greater amounts of information online, express concern over privacy violations. This paradox suggests that the issue is more complex than the private/public dichotomy and that the rhetoric used during these protests could yield insights regarding the competing worldviews expressed in a privacy debate. My paper examines discourse by the ACLU and Face book at the time the controversial Facebook Places application came out. I use cluster criticism to show how the two rhetors position themselves, each other, Face book users, and users' friends in terms of the degree of control each ;:igent is portrayed as having. My findings suggest that appealing to users' agency will be a key persuasive strategy as concerns over social networking privacy violations increase, and I comment on how sentence structure in corporate discourse can be used to enhance or detract from users' sense of agency when using social networking sites.
Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in Web Applications using Threat Modeling
(North Dakota State University, 2011) Kondamarri, Samuel Sudhakar
Software security issues have been a major concern to the cyberspace community; therefore, a great deal of research on security testing has been performed, and various security testing techniques have been developed. A security process that is integrated into the application development cycle is required for creating a secure system. A part of this process is to create a threat profile for an application. The present project explains this process as a case study for analyzing a web application using Threat Modeling. This analysis can be used in the security testing approach that derives test cases from design level artifacts.
Aortic Stenosis and the Path to Polymer Valves
(North Dakota State University, 2023) Van Auken, Kaitlyn
All available heart valve medical devices on the market are made from biological tissues. The major drawback of using biological tissue is that it is prone to calcification, which is generally why the intervention was needed in the first place. There is also the limitation of lifetime of the device; because it is a biological material it is more prone to degradation, wear, and tear. This leaves room for improvement of the valve device, to move from a tissue valve to a polymer valve. There has been great promise with preliminary materials studies showing resistant to calcification and an almost doubling lifespan for a valve. However, none of this proposed polymer valves have gone through clinical testing and are in general still being bench- top studied. There is ample room for companies or research groups to explore medical device innovation relating to a polymer leaflet material.
The Application of Active and Passive Optical Sensors in Natural Resource Decision Making
(North Dakota State University, 2020) Veverka, Donald Vincent
Remote sensing is becoming a significant tool utilized to study vegetation health and abundance. Vegetation indices (VIs) generated by active and passive remote optical sensors can be implemented in natural resource and agricultural decision-making processes. One such use of vegetation indices is to predict yield and protein contents for various crops. However, the application of VIs is limited due to land use differences and the time period when remote sensing information is most accurate. A literature search was conducted on VIs paying attention to how those are used with sensors mounted on small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAV). The search found that there was a limited amount of literature being catered towards management decisions compared to scientific studies and systematic reviews. This makes it difficult for decision makers to review and stay updated on remote sensing practices and to incorporate remote sensing into field based management and policy making.
Application of Biochar for Carbon Sequestration Mitigating Impacts of Climate Change: An Analysis of Detention Basins in Fargo, North Dakota
(North Dakota State University, 2021) Short, Karensa Jazz
Biochar can be used for many purposes beyond its use for carbon sequestration and is a multifunctional substance. Detention basins are primarily a one-use area utilizing large spaces to hold stormwater, allowing the production of biomass for biochar would allow many uses from the space. Analysis of biochar application in detention basins as a means of utilizing space for maximum benefits. Additionally, helping with mitigation of climate change as well as increased rates of infiltration. In a world where climate change is at the forefront of importance, it is time now, more than ever, to put focus on change to better the world for future generations. In this paper, you will see an introduction of the importance of researching biochar, a literature review of research found on biochar, a feasibility study using an example site, and concluding points.
An Architecture for the Implementation and Distribution of Multiuser Virtual Environments.
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Dischinger, Benjamin James
JavaMOO is an architecture for creating multiuser virtual environments focusing on domain-specific design and rapid development. JavaMOO components use best practices and extensible design for system configuration, client-server communication, event handling, object persistence, content delivery, and agent control. Application dependencies such as database and web servers are embedded, promoting wide dissemination by decreasing management overhead. The focus of this thesis is the design and implementation of the JavaMOO architecture and how it helps improve the state of multiuser virtual environments.
Automated Tool for Software Requirements Inspection
(North Dakota State University, 2011) Amaran, Pradeep
The software inspection process is a very cost effective method of identifying defects in documents produced during the software life cycle, leading to higher quality software with lower field failures. Manual inspections are labor intensive and dependent on human factors (e.g., preparation, moderation, and cooperation among development and quality assurance teams). An automated software inspection tool replaces a labor intensive manual approach of performing the inspection process. An automated inspection tool will offer greater efficiencies than any techniques involving manual inspections. Automation allows stakeholders (e.g., authors, inspectors) to closely work in coordination using the tool. Authors can host documents, view comments posted by inspectors, assign users and delete them. Inspectors can participate in the inspection process by validating against a set of guidelines and detect faults in a specific frame of time using different fault and error based inspection techniques. It is human to err, and as a result some of the faults may be overlooked. Hence, provisions are made for iterative inspection cycles to maximize the number of defects found and minimize the number of overlooked ones.
Automatic Evaluation of Mobile Web Pages
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Sehgal, Ankita
The use of mobile devices to access the information on the World Wide Web is growing rapidly. The growth has created a surge in the number of webpages being designed for mobile devices. In order to support efficient mobile browsing, some markup languages (e.g., WML and XHTML Mobile Profile) and standards (Mobile Web Best Practices) have been developed to specifically support the rendering of information on mobile devices. Evaluating the mobile webpages manually against the guidelines requires a tremendous amount of work. This research paper focuses on automatic evaluation of mobile webpages, a process which offers many advantages in terms of saving time, reducing costs and many others. In this paper, an extensive inspection of the 46 most popular mobile websites, according to Mobile Web Best Practices using MobileOK checker [WMC09], has been conducted. The results have been provided and analyzed to make specific and general suggestions to improve the design and development of mobile websites. We believe that the analysis will help developers produce more user-friendly mobile websites while considering the Mobile Web Best Practices. Furthermore, the paper also presents a generic approach to represent the W3C Mobile Web Guidelines as an XML schema, which provides flexibility to design rule schemas in an open format; the schemas can be added to an automated tool that is used to evaluate the mobile webpages. The XML schema can also be used to redesign the rule if there is a change in the guidelines.
The B-Cell Role in Autoimmunity
(North Dakota State University, 2023) Mindt, Marissa Marie
This review is focused on B-cell’s role in autoimmunity and was conducted by reading current papers across a variety of journals and compiling the information learned in this process. Specifically, this review paper encompasses an analysis of what autoimmune diseases are, as well as some of the characteristics of autoimmune diseases the introduction section of this paper serves as a crash course on B-cell. The disease write-up is where autoimmune diseases that are affected and mediated by B-cells, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, and Chron’s disease, are explored. The next section will compare the mechanisms behind each of the diseases to explain how B-cells can cause a large variety of symptoms as well as highlight what symptoms overlap and why. Treatment options and current research are covered throughout this paper to display an understanding of how these diseases are combated.
Bayesian Approach for Detection Classification
(North Dakota State University, 2011) Annapureddy, Anupama Reddy
The objective of this paper is to develop and test a software system that uses incomplete information from a collection of sensors to classify different objects present in a particular area with a pre-specified probability. The objects in the study are referred to as vehicles called the Bus and the Truck. Intruding vehicles move across a designated geographical area. Sensors that have been placed in that area detect vehicles and calculate probabilities that a vehicle is of a specific type conditioned on the type of vehicle that is actually detected. The goal is to determine unconditional probabilities that a given detection is of a particular type. The main idea is to find which vehicle is located at a geographical point in a designated area using the Bayesian approach to calculate the probabilities for this detection classification problem. Each sensor tries to detect the vehicle based on its sensing radius, which is nothing but the distance between the sensor and the vehicle. To test the methodology, I assumed that the probabilities vary depending on the color of the vehicles. For example, if a vehicle is red in color, it is assumed to be easier for the sensors to classify than if it is blue. The framework uses Bayesian inference to calculate the probabilities and to distinguish two types of moving vehicles. Experiments are conducted to find the number of sensors that successfully distinguish two types of moving objects with a given probability threshold. In the future the Detection Classification Model can be used to distinguish any number of objects with the mobile sensors and also some obstacles included in a designated geographical area.
"Better Safe Than Sorry": Social Media Responses to Emerging Covid-19 Research in the News
(North Dakota State University, 2021) Wegner, McKenna Matty
In late 2019 and early 2020, the world faced the onset of a novel virus, SARS-CoV-2, also known as COVID-19 or Coronavirus, that would ultimately impact the lives of millions around the world. The COVID-19 Pandemic brought widespread attention to both the scientific process and communication of research from researchers through media outlets to the public. This study examines public responses to emerging and changing scientific research on surface transmission of COVID-19 as it was reported in New York Times articles during three different points in the pandemic. Three articles, published in March, May, and November of 2020, offer developing information about the surface transfer of COVID-19 as it became available. This study uses qualitative and quantitative analysis to analyze public Facebook comments on each New York Times article to document how public audiences understood and responded to changing COVID-19 research over time.
Between Sea and Steppe: A Historical Foray in Three Parts
(North Dakota State University, 2020) Pogge, Asha Marie
Examinations into marine environmental history, Great Plains environmental history, and the city of Odessa, Ukraine, demonstrate these three areas have strong methodological and topical foundations and even stronger potential for future scholarship. Marine environmental history is a growing sub-field that necessitates a multidisciplinary approach to both situate the ocean as an active and dynamic participant in human history and allow it a history in its own right. Great Plains environmental history incorporates many kinds of scholarship including creative works—like those of novelist Will Cather—that shape historical memory as surely as they include marginalized perspectives. Finally, the city of Odessa, Ukraine, underwent such a transformation in the early twentieth century that it became a different city entirely, rendering its formative years (1794 to 1905) a mythologized memory.
"Building a Class Library": Emphasizing Summary in Teaching Source Use
(North Dakota State University, 2011) Haich, Niles Andrew
The study presented here is a qualitative study evaluating four objectives for teaching source use, ones I emphasized in my Spring 2011 classes with an assignment called the "Building a Class Library Assignment." I relied on two methods for evaluation: (1) process reflection, with audio recordings of one-on-one sessions serving as my data set; and (2) product analysis, with student-written profiles serving as my data set. In analyzing the profiles, as well as the interviews, it became obvious that my students fell short in the areas I wanted them to demonstrate an understanding in. However, it also became obvious that, because of the Class Library, the message that source integration means writing summary was one all of my students retained. Also successful was the structure of the Class Library, one that provided students with a recurring context in which to practice summary, and provided me with an additional setting in which to work with students on their writing. It is for these reasons that I argue that the Class Library, and the four objectives that are emphasized in the assignment, provide one answer to the larger, pedagogical question of how to improve instruction of source use. 111
CareCompanion: A Virtual Assistant for Enhancing Quality of Life in Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementia Patients
(North Dakota State University, 2023) Hasan, Wordh Ul
Patients with Alzheimer's Disease and Associated Dementias (ADRD), as well as older adults, grapple with issues such as memory loss, trouble navigating, and feelings of loneliness. These challenges influence their daily routines, scheduled appointments, and interpersonal relationships. This research delves into the conceptualization, creation, and initial appraisal of "CareCompanion" – a specialized virtual aide crafted for these individuals. Utilizing state-of-the-art AI techniques like natural language processing, machine learning, and knowledge graphs, CareCompanion offers personalized reminders, guidance for navigation, and features to enhance social ties. Early assessments highlight CareCompanion's promise in elevating life quality, autonomy, and social interactions among ADRD patients and the elderly. Continued exploration and advancement promise to refine its proficiency, user-friendliness, and adaptability, meeting this group's distinct requirements and alleviating the adversities of memory gaps, navigational hurdles, and feelings of isolation.
Carl Bildt's Assertive Sweden: Rhetorical Exigence, New Identity, and Prominence
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Carlson, Chris John
This study examined the text of a speech by Carl Bildt, Foreign Minister, Kingdom of Sweden, in Stockholm on December 19, 2006. Analyzed through the prism of Lloyd Bitzer's (1968) "rhetorical situation" theory, a discourse of re-identification appears as a means to re-establish Swedish relevance and influence in the continent. The elements of exigence, audience, and constraints were analyzed in relation to the text, and emergent discursive themes discussed. A discussion of the inherent limitations and implications was also offered.
Case Studies in Farm Management
(North Dakota State University, 2006) Jodock, Karl Nelson
Previous research on teaching methods in economics demonstrates the need for active learning. The use of case studies is one way to fill that need. Two case studies are developed; they can be used to give students experience in applying farm management concepts to real farm management decisions. Students are given the opportunity to analyze an expansion decision at a typical North Dakota cash crop farm. Students also evaluate a producer's marketing strategies, develop marketing plans, and make recommendations for the future. Teaching notes are included to provide guidance for the instructor. The case studies are expected to provide an effective addition to traditional teaching methods.
A Case Study on Assessing Quality of Life in a Resident of an Assisted Living Facility
(North Dakota State University, 2021) Peterson, A'shanti Mignona Kimera
Lorna (a pseudonym) is an 81-year-old African American female who resides in an assisted living facility in a small town in southern Kentucky, where she was born. She has some minor health issues, and her family alleges she has emotional issues going back to childhood. She is mentally competent, and until ten years ago resided independently in the home purchased by her deceased parents. Since leaving this home, Lorna has become increasingly withdrawn from family members and society; she has also lost weight and seems to have declined mentally. This case study used five different assessments to build a profile of Lorna’s current state and develop recommendations for her care. These tools could potentially form the basis of a standardized assessment protocol for other older adults who are not thriving in assisted-living facilities.

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