2923 research outputs found
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Effectiveness of Clay Nanotube Blended Coating Materials for Thermal Insulation
Get PDFStudies conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy reported that heating and cooling systems use nearly 60% of the total energy consumed in a building, while approximately 31% of that energy loss occurs through the improperly insulated floor, walls, and ceiling. Hot summers or severely cold weather can make these problems worse. The passing of conditioned air through these building materials is a substantial source of energy loss, which has driven significant investigation into new environmentally friendly, sustainable, and cost-effective solutions. The main objective of the research was to experimentally evaluate the thermal conductivity of paints blended with halloysite nanotubes and with NO halloysite nanotubes, and its effects on the aging of paint used on coupon samples. The paint samples were used to prepare lab-scale coupon specimens and test them to estimate the magnitude of the thermal conductivity through different experimental studies by using TPS500 Hot Disk, Searle’s apparatus, and an I.R. camera. The physical properties of the paint samples were studied to investigate for any alteration. Lastly, material-level studies were conducted to find any change at the molecular level. This research work presents the development and performance evaluation of an innovative heat-insulating paint for use as a construction material. The suggested novel solution includes advanced VOC-free water-based paints blended with natural clay nanotubes (halloysites). The addition of halloysites, a low-cost, safe, and environmentally friendly material, will chemically improve paint quality and add good insulation, flame retardation, antibacterial, and anti-corrosion properties. The application of this altered paint is expected to upgrade the existing R-values of drywall materials. It will also reduce the construction costs associated with the current practice of drilling holes and backfilling standard wall structures with insulation material. This project measured the change in thermal conductivity values through the inclusion of halloysite materials and reported paints’ thermal insulation properties. Results from the proposed research are expected to support the availability of new cost-effective and highly durable paint products for construction industry environments. Further, this will generate green credits and meet current and future federal requirements for reduced carbon footprints
Hypothesis Testing of Student\u27s Mathematical Performance in Relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThe COVID-19 Pandemic affected everyone, especially schools and education due to the rapid switch from traditional face-to-face classes to online and hybrid classes. The goal of this study is to see how the pandemic affected students’ grades during distance learning when compared to before. Using hypothesis testing, we will analyze data from 13 sections of MATH 243 classes to determine if the averages went down during the pandemic, specifically in hybrid class settings. Based on the raw data of the test grades in relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a significant difference can be found in test scores before and during the Pandemic. The preliminary hypothesis that we will be testing is that the average decreased during hybrid classes compared to face-to-face classes
Genotype and Herbicide Affect Hybrid Sweetgum Growth and Development on two Upland site in North Louisiana
Get PDFAmerican Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) was hybridized by ArborGen and the University of Georgia with Formosan Gum (Liquidambar formosana) to create a faster growing hardwood variety that can produce greater volumes of pulpwood on shorter rotations. In this study growth rate and physiological factors of five clonal hybrid varieties were tested against a native half-sib family to determine if the hybrid gum varieties were superior. All hybrid varieties grew significantly taller and larger at ground line than the native family. Indeed, the largest hybrid variety in both height and ground line diameter was 94.7 cm taller and 13.9 mm wider than the native family after two growing seasons. Another test was conducted within this study to determine how herbicide application timing affected the growth and survival of the hybrid gum varieties, as they break dormancy earlier than native sweetgum, and it has been documented that mortality can occur when herbicide is applied over actively growing sweetgum. Each of these tests were carried out at two locations, Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana, and LSU AgCenter’s Hill Farm Research Station in Homer, Louisiana. Over 99% of the sample trees at Louisiana Tech survived for the duration of the study across all herbicide treatments. At Hill Farm over 90% of the sample trees survived the two year duration of the study
Analysis Of Selection Bias In Online Adversarial Aware Machine Learning Systems
Get PDFAs is evident in areas of privacy, security, and ethics, the hindrances to research is the lack of validated real-world data. Therefore, people resort to creating their own dataset and/or artificially increasing the size of existing datasets. However, in areas like countermeasures of phishing, this is not only insufficient but could introduce bias in the dataset in the process. To raise the awareness of bias in Machine Learning (ML) / Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its consequences, this work tries to gauge one of its occurrences reliably, namely selection bias when generating more samples from existing samples in a dataset. However, there is currently no cross‐disciplinary or cross‐sector consensus in approaches to identifying or validating measurements, metrics, and key indicators of bias, or how data should be measured or understood in context.The problem presented in this thesis relies on investigating the effects of selection bias on Adversary-Aware Online Support Vector Machines (AAOSVM) with the help of support vectors to represent selection bias
A Case Study of How Pre-K-12 School Leaders’ Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions of the ISTE Standards Affect Learning Environments
Get PDFThe purpose of the current study was to better understand how pre-K-12 school leaders respond to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards. The instrumental case study involved school leaders with demonstrated success implementing learning technologies in elementary and middle level settings in a large southern, suburban school district. The study findings include: pre-K-12 school leaders benefit from the ISTE Standards’ framework to provide future-ready learning environments; the Standards serve as a technology guide to increase equity, inclusion, and digital citizenship; and school leaders benefit from participating as co-learners. Pre-K-12 school leaders can benefit from the current study’s findings and the ISTE Standards to support exemplary technology implementations for future-ready learning environments
A Qualitative Study of the Collaborative Relationships Between District Leaders and School Principals in High-Performing and Low-Performing Schools Within a Single High-Performing School District
Get PDFResearch on effective collaborative relationships between district leaders and school principals have shown to exhibit characteristics that positively impact student achievement. Characteristics such as reciprocal communication, shared decision making, intensive support, and quality professional learning opportunities are repeated in literature. Therefore, this qualitative case study examined whether there are differences in collaborative relationships between district leaders and school principals in high-performing and low-performing schools within a single school district based on those common characteristics. The following research questions guided the current study: (a) What are the differences, if any, in communication between district leaders and principals of high- and low-performing schools?, (b) What are the differences, if any, in decision-making opportunities between district leaders and principals of high- and low-performing schools?, (c) What are the differences, if any, in needs-based support between district leaders and principals of high- and low-performing schools?, (d) What are the differences, if any, in professional learning opportunities between district leaders and principals of high- and low-performing schools? The current study took place in one high-performing school district using semi-structured interviews, observations, and analyses of documents. Participants in the study included two district leaders, two school leaders from high-performing schools, and two school leaders from low-performing schools. Findings show that there are no differences in the relationships between district leaders and school principals in high- and low-performing schools within a high-performing school district
Assessing Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching in Collegiate Aviation
Get PDFStudent evaluations of teaching (SET) are commonly used to assess teaching effectiveness and influence personnel decisions in higher education. This quantitative study sought to determine if gender and years of teaching experience were related to SET ratings for collegiate aviation faculty. Constructs evaluated related to gender stereotypes and consisted of expressiveness and immediacy as stereotypically female and professionalism and openness as stereotypically male. The overall rating was also analyzed as a fifth construct. Evaluation ratings from 54 participants associated with nine Aviation Accreditation Board International affiliated institutions were analyzed for the 2017 to 2020 academic years. Findings from the two-way MANOVA suggested no significant difference between ratings of the aviation faculty regardless of gender or years of teaching experience, Wilks’ Λ=.860, F(4, 47)=1.908, p=.125, multivariate η2=.140. A follow-up ANOVA of the between-subjects effect indicates no significant difference in ratings for expressiveness, immediacy, professionalism, openness, and overall based on gender and years of teaching experience. The lack of significant differences suggests that students in aviation do not associate these traits with the gender of aviation faculty. The similarities of aviation faculty in experience and personality type might be such that any gender differences are not evident in SET teaching ratings
Ryan Hitt Collection
Get PDFThe Ryan Hitt Collection (800 C.E. - 1600 C.E.; 2 linear feet) is a collection of pottery shards, points, and plumbs found by the donor hunting for artifacts in fields and woods
Parallel Computing Framework and GPU Performance Modeling
Get PDFDuring the past decades, High-Performance Computing (HPC) has been widely used in various industries. In particular, the exponential growth of GPU (graphics processing unit) is a key technology that has helped promoting the development of artificial intelligence in real-world use cases. When we use GPU to accelerate parallel applications, its programmability, resource management, and scheduling are non-trivial jobs to obtain optimized performance. Therefore, how to effectively exploit GPU resources and improve program performance has been a hot research topic recently. Benchmark does not always provide a good picture of the performance and details of the parallel applications. The various kinds of hardware devices and the constantly updated parallel programs make the performance analysis and modeling even more difficult. In this dissertation, there are four main contributions. First, we conduct a study on the GPU analytical performance model, which aims to estimate the suitable number of threads per block for performance improvement. Second, a novel method to elevate the limitation of GPU is proposed. This method offers a new way for optimization on GPU performance at the block schedule level.
Third, we propose two parallel computing abstract models, namely, the computational and programming models that represent various computing paradigms based on Flynn’s taxonomy and simplify the workload distribution characteristics. This framework provides a general way to create an analytical performance model. Finally, we validate our proposed abstract models and demonstrate their usefulness with real-world applications in AI (Artificial Intelligence) on a distributed GPU system. The analytical performance model for CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) application analyzes performance characteristics on multiple GPUs, enabling users to evaluate their techniques before running applications on targeted machines
The Relationship Between Experienced Workplace Incivility and Pre- Quitting Behaviors: A Model of Mediated Moderation
Get PDFWorkplace incivility is a non-overt and subtle form of workplace mistreatment. Though these low-intensity behaviors are often ambiguous, they display a lack of regard for people and are intended to harm. Yet the workplace incivility literature lacks in many areas, including its inclusion into more novel models. Therefore, this dissertation addressed several gaps in the workplace incivility literature, including distinguishing and measuring the impact of different sources of incivility, the social power of the instigators, and the distal outcome of pre-quitting behaviors. The researcher tested a unique theoretical model that included supervisor-and customer-instigated incivility, and illegitimate task assignment, as predictors with emotional exhaustion serving as a moderating variable between predictors and pre-quitting behaviors, deviant outcomes, and COVID-19 safety protocol adherence. In addition, both psychological capital and coercive power of the supervisor were tested for moderating effects. CFA was conducted to ensure validity of the ten measurement scales, and SEM verified the goodness-of-fit effects of the hypothesized model, including an analysis of the model’s purported paths. Data were collected (n=302) in a two-wave design. Results indicated support for most hypotheses in the hypothesized model, and the findings carry significant implications for the workplace incivility literature and practitioners alike