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The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a belt of convective systems around the equator with showers and thunderstorms, is an important feature not only to the tropical societies whose water budget depends on it, but also to the atmospheric science field to understand how will the Earth respond to a warming climate. Former studies found that annual and zonal mean ITCZ position is related to interhemispheric atmospheric heat transport (AHTtotal). The radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) transported across the equator to the cooler hemisphere explains the ITCZ position and its shift. Using idealized model simulations with a ``slab'' ocean, researchers found that an increase in the interhemispheric TOA radiation contrast causes an increase in cross-equatorial energy flux by the Hadley circulation and a shift of the ITCZ towards the warmer hemisphere. The theory that relates AHTtotal and ITCZ position is called energetic theory.
In this dissertation, we analyze Tropical rain belts with an Annual cycle and a Continent-Model Intercomparison Project (TRACMIP) model simulations to test the energetic theory. TRACMIP is a project of idealized models that fill the gap between Couple Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) idealized aquaplanet projects and fully-coupled projects. TRACMIP models are thermodynamically coupled to a slab ocean. TRACMIP has idealized tropical continent setups with both present-day and quadruple CO2 (4xCO2) concentration experiments, which can help us understand ITCZ shift and potential precipitation changes over land under a warming scenario. Our findings suggested that TRACMIP simulations do not support energetic theory's expectations under a warming climate.
All of our models simulated a northward shift of ITCZ and mass transport under a warming scenario. Our models disagreed on the changes of the energy transported by Hadley cells and the total energy transported by the atmosphere. In general, the link between mass transport changes and energy transported by the Hadley cells changes broke down the most during Northern Hemisphere tropical wet season. The link between changes of the energy transported by the Hadley cells and total energy transported by the atmosphere broke down the most during Northern Hemisphere tropical dry season. Breakdown of one or both of these links caused the overall link between ITCZ shifts and total energy transport changes to break down.
We encourage more studies to be done on energetic theory and climate change. We look forward to combining energetic theory with monsoon theories to develop a self-contained tropical climate model.
Improving the design of undergraduate gateway STEM courses is a high priority, particularly courses with large enrollment and high failure rates. Effective course design has been noted as a key strategy for improving higher education teaching. This has resulted in the need for faculty to enact the role of a faculty-designer to redesign courses. This embedded qualitative case study investigated how faculty design knowledge influences design practice. Three faculty participated in a 6-hour course modeling workshop and used the Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) toolkit to generate 13 visual lesson blueprints while engaging in design discussions and interviews. A two-phased, hybrid inductive-deductive analysis approach was used for data collection, data preparation, and data analysis. Results discuss: (1) “design patterns of practice” emergent among activity sequences and lesson sequences in visual blueprints; (2) contextual factors that drive faculty design decisions in STEM lesson design; and (3) key influencers to faculty design knowledge and design practice. Findings offer a deeper understanding of design knowledge that guides STEM faculty as they make design decisions. The study offers implications to qualitative visual research methods as well as to university centers for teaching and learning as key stakeholders in supporting faculty as designers.
Resource-hungry applications play a very important role in people's daily lives, such as real-time video streaming applications and mobile augmented reality applications.
However, there are several challenges to satisfy the user Quality-of-Experience (QoE) requirements of resource-hungry applications. First, these applications usually require a vast amount of network bandwidth resources to support the data communication of different functionalities. However, only limited network bandwidth resources can be assigned to these applications which leads to long network latency and poor user QoE. In addition, artificial intelligent (AI) and machine learning (ML) models are widely adopted in these applications which significantly increases the computation complexity of these applications. Because of the limited computing resource on mobile devices, computation-intensive tasks are offloaded to edge servers located at the edge of the core network. However, additional network latency and bandwidth usage are introduced which may degrade user QoE. In this dissertation, the characteristics of popular resource-hungry applications are first analyzed. Then, based on the analyzed characteristics, we propose several specific ally designed algorithms to enhance the performance of several popular resource-hungry applications.
Motivated by the government's clean energy targets, the penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) is increasing. These DERs interconnections bring the added generation and storage capacity at the distribution level. Also, with the increasing implementation of smart inverters and Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS), the flexibility of the DERs can be leveraged to solve the distribution grid issues like over abnormal voltages, intermittencies, and thermal overloads. The proposed work focuses on the development of a robust distributed control architecture to control and optimally manage the load and PV variations using energy storage by creating the virtual clusters of the distribution grid.
The proposed approach adopts a distributed control approach by partitioning the grid into manageable clusters through an improved spectral clustering-based approach. The cluster of the distribution grid represents a good balance of local load and DER generation. An approach for reactive power to voltage sensitivity is also proposed for voltage regulation purposes at the cluster level based on the grid measurements. The clusters configurations adapt to accommodate the varying grid topology or changing load and DER generation. For the distribution grids receiving the set-points at the substation level for management of transmission power flow, an Alternating Direction Methods of Multipliers (ADMM) based sharing optimization is proposed to share the area set-points among the clusters based on the state of charge of each cluster. The controllable assets of each cluster (BESS) are managed through model predictive control. The improvement in the grid resiliency is demonstrated through the implementation of the complete framework to support the loads on the healthy part of the grid without interruptions during the contingency/outage scenarios on the distribution grid.
Although research has been done to explore social media as a safe space for Black girls (Womack, 2013), there is limited research that assesses social media as a counter space for Black girls’ literacies. According to The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (2017), Black teens are the largest users of Instagram and SnapChat. While broader research has looked at Black girls' literacies and digital literacies among this population (Price-Dennis, 2016), there is limited research that has explored the literacy practices of Black girls specifically in the digital space they predominantly use, Instagram. Most importantly, the need to explore the elements of literacy that engage Black girls in non-formal academic spaces in which they utilize excessively may provide context for application in academic curriculum. This research study explores whether Instagram may provide a potential counterspace for Black girls' literacies and the ways in which they practice literacy through the examination of digital posts, online observations, and interviews with two adolescent Black girls.
Keywords: Instagram, Counterspace, Black Girls, Literacy, Social Media
Solar-plus-storage systems provide efficient energy yield and management, resilience, and more revenue to residential houses and buildings. In solar-plus-storage systems, power electronics converters are integral components to generate the maximum output power from a solar photovoltaic (PV) array, store the generated energy into a battery, and finally deliver and manage the power to an electric load or the electric grid. Many existing solar-plus-storage systems still use and combine legacy power electronics convert topologies initially designed for a solar PV generation system or a battery energy storage system (BESS) separately. These power converters are connected in parallel to an AC or DC point of common coupling: AC-parallel and DC-parallel integration methods. Another integration method of a solar-plus-storage system is connecting a high-voltage battery to the high-voltage DC bus in parallel in a solar PV generation system having two-stages power converter architecture: In-line integration method. These methods result in increased costs and size, lower energy yields due to the increased number of power electronics converters, and the requirement of high-voltage PV strings and batteries.
This research studies new PV-battery integration methods and develops PV-battery series optimizers—power electronics converters optimally designed for different residential solar-plus-storage systems. The two PV-battery integration methods are proposed: AC-series integration and DC-series integration. The proposed integration methods are based on the series connection of PV and battery modules. The AC-series integration method assists the residential panel-level series-connected solar PV inverters in reducing the intermittent PV output fluctuations with a low-voltage-profile battery energy storage inverter. The DC-series integration enables PV voltage support, reducing the number of power converter stages, reducing the rated power of power converters, improving the system round-trip efficiency, and seamless source integration. Three PV-battery series optimizers are developed for different solar-plus-storage applications. The proposed power converter topologies and controls are discussed in this dissertation. Off-line simulation, real-time controller hardware-in-the-loop simulation, and lab-scale experiment results are included and analyzed to demonstrate the operating and design principle and the control performance of the proposed system.
Considering the progressive growth of healthcare expenses in the national economy, many of those impacts are directly seen in the cost to our publicly and privately funded healthcare insurance programs. This research will utilize a version of the Behavioral Healthcare Utilization Model (BHUM) to conduct a comparative analysis of medical insurance payers and discharge dispositions. It will look at all payer types of healthcare funding in comparison to discharge disposition outcomes concerning acute care hospital admissions for patients that are age 45 to 75 and when diagnosed with Medical Severity Diagnosis Related Code 207, Respiratory Failure with Mechanical Ventilation Greater Than Ninety-Six Hours. This study will evaluate the lengths of stay, payer type, total charges of an acute care hospitalization as well as the discharge dispositions of those cases with the moderating effects of age, gender, and race on those relationships. The analysis will utilize the MS-DRG 207 as a control variable so that discharge disposition is moderated by the predisposing patient characteristics utilized by health systems and insurance payers to monitor per patient profit or loss variances. This research hopes to provide perspective on both the financial and quality of care aspects of a healthcare payer's influence on the healthcare system and how this impact may outweigh sociocultural and sociodemographic variables. Research objectives will benefit health system executives, healthcare insurance payer systems, and legislative planning committees. It will show how those differences in care management could affect long-term healthcare costs associated with care through hospital lengths of stay and payer influences on this utilization services.
Educators and researchers have been exploring alternative approaches to school discipline such as School-wide Positive Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS) and Restorative Justice. There has been little research analyzing the effectiveness of both approaches implemented in tandem. Using an autoethnographic design, this study critically analyzes the beliefs and perceptions of one white, female school principal as she combines SW-PBIS and Restorative Practices at her racially diverse, Title I elementary school. The following research questions were addressed in this study 1) How has implementing restorative practices and PBIS simultaneously within a diverse, Title, urban-like school helped to shape my beliefs as a white female administrator? 2) As a white female principal, what are my perceptions of the staff response to a blended model of SW-PBIS and Restorative Practices? 3) How do I, as a white, female principal, contribute to the environment that produces discipline disparities? How do I combat it? Four themes emerged during the data analysis: A Pollyanna Principal, Deficit Mindsets, Zero Tolerance for Zero-Tolerance, and White Savior. The findings revealed connections between the themes and Critical Race Theory, exposing the impact of race in student discipline through my eyes as a white, female principal.
MARK EDWARD VERBURG. NCAA Transfer Student-athletes, Athletic Identity, and the Impact of COVID-19
(Under the direction of Dr. MARK D’AMICO)
Transfer students are an increasingly important piece of the college athletics puzzle; however, little is known about the athletic identity of this important population and the effects of COVID on their commitment to sport. The purpose of this study was to measure and compare the athletic identity levels of NCAA student-athletes who transferred to their current institutions versus the athletic identity levels of fellow student-athletes who did not transfer. Additionally, the study sought to explore relationships between athletic identity and a student-athlete’s view of the personal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample included 413 student-athletes from all three NCAA divisions and a variety of transfer situations. Noteworthy findings include: student-athletes who transfer are likely to have a higher athletic identity than those who have not transferred, student-athlete’s strength of commitment to their sport during the pandemic influenced their athletic identity scores, and student-athletes who had negative academic experiences exhibited higher athletic identity scores. Considering the increasing prevalence of transfer student athletes, these findings will inform athletic personnel from administrators to coaches to academic advisors about the transfer population and the influence of the pandemic on student-athletes. Recommendations include: intentionally discussing the concept of athletic identity with student-athletes throughout their collegiate careers, encouraging student-athletes to develop multiple roles or identities outside of sport, and understand that the pandemic impacted student-athletes in a multitude of ways including influencing how they viewed the role of sport in their lives.
SABRINA M. BROWN. HERITAGE SEEKING AND ITS IMPACT ON BLACK HBCU STUDENTS. (Under the direction of DR. LISA MERRIWEATHER)
Abstract
Study abroad is a high-impact practice in the college and university setting that can lead to increased student engagement and student success. While study abroad participation has increased, it is not a common practice across ethnic demographics or minority-serving institutions. Heritage-seeking is a form of study abroad that allows students of the ethnic minority to learn more about themselves in the context of another country. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand what, if any, impact heritage-seeking study abroad had on Black, HBCU students. This study also identified the aspects of heritage-seeking that are important to include in the experience to encourage student success.
This study utilized interviewed six HBCU students who participated in a heritage-seeking experience in Haiti. At the conclusion of the interviews, it was found that heritage-seeking study abroad impacted the students in two ways; it nurtured their university relationships, and it instilled a greater sense of responsibility to the Black community. This study also found that there were three aspects of heritage-seeking instrumental to this type of study abroad program: creating opportunities for students to develop relationships, developing it as an immersive experience; and allowing students the space to self-reflect.
