SHAREOK Repository
Not a member yet
49261 research outputs found
Sort by
Component Importance Balancing of Multi-Commodity Networks
Get PDFDetermining which network components to focus on in case of a disruption can be determined by the component with the greatest importance to the network. This study extends a balancing component added to a list of optimization targets in multi-state system to a multi-commodity network. A bi-objective optimization problem is developed in which one objective seeks to minimize the difference in a flow-based component importance measure across one-at-a-time interdiction scenarios by adding capacity to components, while the other minimizes unmet demand to encourage flow through the network. The optimization approach is applied to a multi-commodity Swedish railway network, where a set of link capacity increases per commodity are suggested based on the desire to balance the network
Citizenship Education Curriculum for Adult ESL Students: Critical Discourse Analysis on What Is Untold
Get PDFThis research aimed (1) to examine a citizenship education curriculum for beginning-level adult ESL students designed to help them pass the U.S. citizenship test and (2) to explore students' lived experiences of taking a citizenship ESL class in the southwestern United States. The citizenship ESL curriculum was developed by the United States Citizenship and Immigrant Services (USCIS), a federal agency in charge of immigration and naturalization. Based on critical phenomenology, this study examined the curriculum using document analysis and conducted interviews with 11 participants enrolled in a citizenship ESL class. This research analyzed the curriculum as a discourse between the developers and students and used critical discourse analysis to inspect the relationship between the curriculum and students’ learning experiences. This study found that the curriculum transmits limited and partial civics knowledge as a disciplinary discourse to the students. At the same time, the participants had satisfactory learning experiences in citizenship ESL class, which they perceived as a source of social empowerment due to increased ESL skills and civics knowledge. This study suggests ways to improve citizenship ESL education and the curriculum to be more meaningful and continuous to help students become active citizens
External quality factor of antennas and their use in filtenna design
Get PDFFiltering antennas, or filtennas, have become a growing topic of interest in the pursuit of the minimization of the RF front end. Combining the filter and antenna, which are integral to RF front ends, allow for a decrease in the size, weight, and power consumption. In addition, a fully integrated filtenna can improve the overall performance of the RF system due to decreases in losses without sacrificing filtering capabilities. This improvement in performance is demonstrated through a noise analysis comparing a traditional RF front end utilizing a wideband antenna and an RF front end utilizing a tunable filtenna. The design of filtennas has been mostly outlined already in the existing literature and is achieved through similar methods to filter design. However, the existing filtenna literature has very little discussion on the external quality factor of the antenna, a parameter that is important to obtaining the correct desired bandwidth and correct desired response of the structure. The discussion of this topic is expanded upon in this work, and in doing so another method for finding this parameter is presented. Other methods for finding the external quality factor of antennas can also be applied from the antenna literature once the relationship between the external quality factor in filter design and the external quality factor of an antenna is understood as is presented in this work. An example second-order tunable filtenna covering all of S-band is simulated and fabricated to validate the ideas presented
Effects of Pressure and Oil Contamination on Drainage and Bubble Size Distribution of Aqueous Foams
Get PDFFoams exhibit valuable properties such as high viscosity, low density, and good cutting carrying capacity. However, they are thermodynamically unstable due to gravitational drainage, bubble coalescence, and coarsening. As a result, they lose these functional properties with time. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of pressure and contaminant oil on the stability of aqueous foams. In a flow loop with a vertical drainage measurement section, nitrogen foam was generated. Drainage experiments were conducted for different (40 - 60%) foam qualities while varying the pressure from 100 to 400 psi. Water with 2% anionic surfactant was used as the base liquid. Tests were also conducted at 10% v/v oil concentration to study the effect of contamination. The foam images were captured using a viewport at regular intervals to examine bubble structure and determine the bubble size distribution with time.
At constant pressure, lower-quality aqueous foams drained faster than higher-quality aqueous foams without oil contamination. On the contrary, when 10% oil was added to the base liquid, 50% quality foam exhibited lower drainage than 40% and 60% quality foams. The stability of aqueous foams also improved considerably when the pressure was increased for each foam quality, regardless of the presence of oil.
The data from image processing showed that as the pressure increases, the bubble size decreases at a constant foam quality. Besides this, bubble size approximately linearly increased with time, demonstrating bubble coalescence and coarsening. Furthermore, the size of the bubbles grew with foam quality. It can be concluded that the increase in pressure stabilizes the aqueous foam. At a given foam quality, the lower the bubble size more stable is the foam. Contaminants like oil affect the aqueous foam's stability and bubble size. This study helps understand the effect of pressure and oil contaminants on the stability of aqueous foam at different quality
Generation of Synthetic Antenna Apertures In Swarm Unmanned Aerial Systems Using Tight-Coupling
Get PDFRelative to their various land and air-based counterparts, swarm unmanned aerial system (SUAS) platforms, being comprised of many separate airborne bodies, or elements, possess a number of unique and advantageous characteristics, whether in the context of radar, or communications. These advantages include reduced element complexity, minimal size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements, and a high degree of redundancy, among others. Because individual bodies in an SUAS are generally smaller than single UAS systems, however, it is generally imperative that the overall electromagnetic performance of the entire swarm match or even exceed that of its single-bodied counterpart, compensating for any reduction in the capabilities of individual radiators within the SUAS. Consequently, even with reduced complexity in the individual elements, the design and control of such large arrays of radiating bodies often presents a very significant challenge. Previous work has demonstrated the efficacy of design techniques involving widely-spaced, sparse arrays, and deliberate use of aperiodicity in order to maximize array radiation performance, while minimizing any deleterious effects. Such design techniques, however, are quite limited in their use, often requiring very large numbers of electromagnetically large elements, whilst only achieving fairly narrowband solutions. Consequently, attempts to make use of these techniques require both a high degree of control complexity, and vast amounts of space, being unable to bring elements close together, lest detrimental phenomena like mutual impedance arise. To enable the design of more tightly-spaced SUAS with fewer, and potentially smaller, elements, a fairly new antenna array design technique will be utilized, being now applied to the more challenging domain of SUAS for the first time. In particular, the following will be the application of tight-coupling, which exploits rather than mitigates the presence of mutual impedance, to closely-spaced antenna arrays. Thus, the ability of tight-coupling techniques, when applied to SUAS, to generate useful antenna array apertures will subsequently investigated. This exploration will pay particular attention to arrays comprised of elements with poor individual radiative capabilities. The performance of these SUAS arrays will be assessed primarily in terms of spectral impedance, efficiency, and realized gain behavior
Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals localized tumourablation and intratumoural immunostimulant deliverypotentiate T cell mediated tumour killing
No full textBackground: Metastatic breast cancer poses great challenge in cancer treatment. N-dihydrogalactochitosan (GC) is a novel immunoadjuvant that stimulates systemic immune responses when administered intratumourally following local tumour ablation. A combination of photothermal therapy (PTT) and GC, referred to as localized ablative immunotherapy (LAIT), extended animal survival and generates an activated B cell phenotype in MMTV-PyMT mouse mammary tumour microenvironment (TME). However, how T cell populations respond to LAIT remains to be elucidated.Methods: Using depletion antibodies, we studied the contributions of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells to the therapeutic effect of LAIT. Using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNAseq), we analysed tumour-infiltrating T cell heterogeneity and dissected their transcriptomes upon treatments of PTT, GC, and LAIT (PTT+GC).Results: Loss of CD8+ T cells after LAIT abrogated the therapeutic benefits of LAIT. Ten days after treatment, proportions of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells in untreated TME were 19.2% and 23.0%, respectively. Upon LAIT, both proportions were increased to 25.5% and 36.2%, respectively. In particular, LAIT increased the proportions of naïve and memory cells from a resting state to an activated state. LAIT consistently induced the expression of co-stimulatory molecules, type I IFN responsive genes, and a series of antitumor cytokines, Ifng, Tnf, Il1, and Il17 in CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. LAIT also induced immune checkpoints Pdcd1, Ctla4, and Lag3 expression, consistent with T cell activation. Relevant to clinical translation, LAIT also upregulated genes in CD8+and CD4+T cells that positively correlated with extended survival of breast cancer patients.Conclusions: Overall, our results reveal that LAIT prompts immunological remodelling of T cells by inducing broad proinflammatory responses and inhibiting suppressive signalling to drive antitumour immunity.Financial support was provided by the University of Oklahoma Libraries’ Open Access Fund. National Cancer Institute, Grant/AwardNumbers: R01CA205348, R01CA269897;Oklahoma Center for the Advancement ofScience and Technology, Grant/AwardNumbers: HR16-085, HF20-019.Ye
Examining Personal Branding Strategies and Perceptions of Preferred Brand Identity of Female Collegiate Athletes
Get PDFStudent-athlete branding opportunities are vastly expanding as more opportunities are given using athlete’s name, image, and likeness (NIL). However, a research gap exists between examining branding opportunities and perceptions of branding among different groups such as female student-athletes. This thesis examined the opinions and perceptions of female student-athlete branding, perceptions of NIL compensation and policies, and perceptions of potential barriers in the brand building process.
This quantitative study utilized survey methods to examine any differences between female student-athletes of different academic year, political affiliation, and sport played. A 49-item online survey was distributed to 100 NCAA Division I female student-athletes. Participants were asked to complete the survey which consisted of multiple-choice and 5-point Likert-scale items regarding branding, NIL, and branding barriers among female athletes
Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) were run on the data in SPSS to answer the 5 research questions posed in this study. Results indicated that there were significant differences between female student-athlete perceptions of branding via social media, NIL compensation and policies, and perceived branding barriers. The outcomes, limitations, and conclusions are discussed in the corresponding sections of the paper
Perceptions of Trust, Trust Building, and Maintenance between Japanese Expatriates and U.S. Host Nationals in a Multinational Corporation
Get PDFThis study examined characteristics of trust in the workplace for Japanese expatriates and U.S. American host nationals, how they build and maintain trust in one another, as well as similarities and differences in such processes with individuals of the same and different national cultural backgrounds, by relying on sensemaking theory. Semi-structured, individual interviews were conducted with 16 Japanese expatriates and 16 U.S. host nationals working at a Japanese manufacturing company across the U.S. Findings revealed that competence and skills, teamwork and collaboration, and open/honest communication were important characteristics of trust in the workplace for both Japanese expatriates and U.S. host nationals, with some cultural differences. In building and maintaining trust, both parties looked for these characteristics in others’ behaviors and used them as cues to make sense of whom to (continue) trust(ing); each party, however, identified some unique, specific behaviors that contributed to their trust building and maintenance processes. Further, both Japanese expatriates and U.S. host nationals shared some similarities in how they built and maintained trust with those of the same and different cultural backgrounds, such as competence and skills. However, they also encountered many cultural differences in their relationship development process (e.g., work ethic), which affected how long they took and how much effort they put into establishing and maintaining trust with their colleagues of different cultural backgrounds. These results are discussed in the context of trust in intercultural communication in multinational organizations. Theoretical implications for trust and organizational communication literature are discussed, as are practical implications for individuals working in multinational organizations and corporations who engage with host nationals in the U.S. and expatriates.
Keywords: expatriates, host nationals, trust, culture, organizational communicatio