Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/135
Browse
Browsing Graduate Theses and Dissertations by Type "Thesis"
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item 2020 Golden-Cheeked Warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia) Range Wide Breeding Habitat Availability and Change Detection(2022-12) Colgan, Kevin S.; Jensen, Jennifer L. R.; Duarte, Adam; Krause, SamanthaNo abstract prepared.Item 3D Sketch Recognition Using The Microsoft Kinect(2014-05) Bulgerin, Travis; Lu, Yijuan; Ngu, Anne; Zong, ZiliangThe concept of sketch-based recognition has recently been used to enhance object categorization and speed up image retrieval. However, in each of the previous studies, the user was required to sketch on a two-dimensional plane. Currently there haven’t been any studies on the performance of incorporating depth information into a sketch. The motivation behind this project is to develop software that will allow a user to draw in a three-dimensional space, incorporating this information, as well as determining whether this depth information will result in higher accuracies for object categorization. First, utilizing the Microsoft Kinect, software was developed to establish a virtual drawing board for three-dimensional sketching. Second, a new learning-based approach is proposed to allow for model feature extraction and recognition. The experimental results demonstrate the validity of the study as well as the effectiveness of the proposed solution.Item A (Re)Vision of Critical Pedagogy for Inclusion(2013-05) Pina, Manuel Agustin; Jackson, Rebecca; Pimentel, Octavio; Balzhiser, DeborahNo abstract prepared.Item A 4-Week Neuromuscular Stimulation Intervention on Skeletal Muscle Fatigue in Older Adults(2020-08) Mendoza, Monica A.; Mettler, Joni A.; Kipp, Lindsay E.; Doucet, Barbara M.No abstract prepared.Item A Biaxial Magneto-optical Kerr Magnetometer for Studying Magnetic Thin Films(2000-05) Watts, Charles B.; Geerts, Wilhelmus; Galloway, Heather; Michalk, VictorI have designed and built a biaxial magneto-optical Kerr magnetometer to study thin magnetic films. The design enables researchers to measure perpendicular and in-plane hysteresis curves of ultra thin films down to a thickness of 9 A. The optical components are fastened to a vibration isolation table and the sample is suspended between the pole pieces of an electromagnet resting on the floor. The magnetometer allows for the examination of two independent Kerr effect measurements for application in magneto-optical recording. I have tested the equipment on ferromagnetic films and Fe/ Al2O3 multilayers. Angle dependent measurements show that the polar magneto-optical Kerr effect diminishes as the poles are rotated towards an in-plane applied magnetic field. Polar and longitudinal measurements on the Fe/ Al2O3 multilayers show that a change in the reversal mechanism occurs for films thicker than 15 A.Item A Brief Historical-Legal-Political Perspective of the Arab-Israeli Conflict(2008-12) Sherman, Trent AndersonNo abstract prepared.Item A Brief History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1932-1937(1966-08) Smith, Richard Gary; Conrad, David E.; Pool, William C.; Hughes, MarshallNo abstract prepared.Item A Brief History of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review and its Attitude Toward the Issues of Temperance, Peace, and Abolition(1971-05) Kennedy, Larry J.No abstract prepared.Item A Brief Study of the Effects of a Regular Program of Physical Activity on Basal Metabolism(1945-08) Brown, Jonnie June; Crosslin, Hiawatha; Smith, C.S.; Wiley, E.O.No abstract prepared.Item A Brief Survey of the Historical Background and of the Present Status of Music Education in the Negro Schools of Texas(1950-08) Bartley, Ruby Ruth; Tampke, R.A.; Buchanan, Mary G.; Grusendorf, A.A.No abstract prepared.Item A Broader View of Conservation: Mapping Nature and Culture in Gillespie County, Texas(2023-05) Weathersby, Joanna; Julian, Jason; Sansom, Andrew; Currit, NathanWorking landscapes are cultural landscapes with natural value that provide tangible and intangible benefits to people. The development of working landscapes and other rural lands has been increasing, especially in regions experiencing rapid urban growth. Ensuring the future of working landscape benefits is especially challenging where private ownership is dominant. Available conservation options (e.g., conservation easements, cultural designations) rely on the preference of private landowners that also face a heightened incentive to subdivide or sell. To advance the conservation of working landscapes, this research developed a spatial inventory of broad landscape benefits (ecosystem services) beginning with a case study at a private ranch. The inventory was then adapted and expanded at the county level where benefits from cultural, regulating, and provisioning categories were mapped from publicly accessible sociocultural and environmental data repositories. Based on categorical and spatial variation in the mapped benefits inventory, four conservation targets zones were identified and framed within the context of conservation planning and tradeoff analyses.Item A Burkeian Analysis of Three Organizations According to General Systems Theory(1975-08) Carpenter, Hellen I.; Salem, Phil; Gabbard-Alley, Anne; Stedman, AlexNo abstract prepared.Item A call recognition approach for endangered or threatened chorusing amphibian species using deep learning architectures(2020-12) Islam, Shafinaz; Valles, Damian; Forstner, Michael; Stern, HaroldAudio signal analysis has become prominent in biological domains for detecting endangered or threatened species like Houston toad and Crawfish frog. Researchers at Texas State University and Texas A&M University are working on a project to steward these species and understanding the causes of their decline. The researchers are currently using an Automated Recording Device (ARD), the Toadphone 1, which is an embedded solution. The hardware platform can perform detection tasks without human interruption and can provide near real-time notification. However, this device’s predictive model for the software solution has limited success to serve the primary purpose for which it was developed, which is to provide proper identification of Houston toad calls. Also, the current predictive model for Toadphone 1 was only designed for the Houston toad calls. There is another near-threatened chorusing amphibian, the Crawfish frog, which has become a concern of the researchers working to protect this species.
This thesis research experimented with a modified predictive model for the existing Toadphone 1 software solution, predicting a Houston toad call with decreased false-positive rates. The model can also perform the call recognition task for Crawfish frog calls. This work used the audio data for Houston toad and Crawfish frog collected by the Department of Biology to train the predictive model. Before training, the audio data spectrum was studied to find the frequency range of Houston toad and Crawfish frog call. Next, the audio data have been iteratively preprocessed using digital filters and then applying framing, the Hamming window function to each frame. Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) with their first and second derivatives or Spectral Sub-band Centroids (SSCs) or Mel-spectrograms audio features have been extracted for each frame. These features were used to train the predictive or classification model for Houston toad or Crawfish frog call prediction. Advanced Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) algorithms such as Long Short-Term Memory unit (LSTM) or Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) were utilized, which are sub-fields of deep learning network architectures. Several model architectures were experimented with using different combinations of classifiers and audio features with tuned hyperparameters to build the best predictive model. The voting mechanism of ensemble learning was developed to make the final prediction from the three-best models. Lastly, the predictive model was evaluated on a near real-time prediction system.
Item A Cambridge Mass by Ralph Vaughan Williams: A History, Context, and Analysis(2013-12) McClarney, Kevin Blake; Schmidt, John C.; Mooney, Kevin; Babcock, JonathanRalph Vaughan Williams is recognized as being one of England’s most prolific and nationalistic composers of the early 20th century, incorporating such nationalistic elements as English folksong, imagery of English pastoralism, and Tudor music. Nevertheless, Vaughan Williams’s mature style familiar to both scholars and fans did not begin to take shape until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1899, Vaughan Williams completed a mass as his doctoral music composition, later known as A Cambridge Mass.1 The 1890s was a time of musical development, inspiration, and education for Vaughan Williams. This mass, written for double chorus, four vocal soloists, and orchestra, is an example of his musical development at the end of the nineteenth century along with some foreshadowing elements of his mature style. Predating A Sea Symphony (1909), his other massive choral work and possibly his most well known, A Cambridge Mass remained hidden in the Cambridge University Library for 111 years until scholar and conductor Alan Tongue discovered it in 2007.
This thesis will discuss Vaughan Williams’s educational background and influences during the 1890s by examining biographies, his autobiography, personal letters, documentaries, and other secondary literature in relation to A Cambridge Mass in order to fully understand which composers and teachers and what compositional techniques influenced Vaughan Williams. In the first chapter, drawing from articles, reviews, and interviews of Tongue and details surrounding the background of this piece, I will describe Tongue’s discovery, editing process, and performance history. Finally, I will investigate the similarities and differences between this early work and his later style, highlighting musical examples of his early influences in the second chapter and the hints of Vaughan Williams’s mature style in the mass along with the conclusion in the final chapter. Also, the third chapter will address the significance of this early work of Vaughan Williams while discussing which scholars and musicians have been studying and performing this work and others who have not been researching and performing such early Vaughan Williams compositions as A Cambridge Mass.
Item A Case Study - Hydraulic Fracturing Geography: The case of the Eagle Ford Shale, TX, USA(2012-08) Wenzel, Cortney; Dixon, Richard; Zhan, Benjamin; Butler, DavidThe use of horizontal drilling in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing has increased the ability of producers to extract natural gas and oil from previously non-viable areas. By extracting natural gas and oil from low permeability geologic plays, or shale plays, the United States may have enough natural gas to burn for the next one hundred years. However, there are growing concerns about the effect hydraulic fracturing may have on the environment and surrounding ecosystems. These activities cause an increased potential for surface water contamination resulting from spills, leaks, soil erosion, large amounts of truck traffic, and habitat disturbance. With increasing amounts of hydraulic fracturing activity in the Eagle Ford structure, there is a greater chance that a spill may occur and cause adverse effects on the hydrologic processes in the area. In order to determine the risk spills pose to hydrologic processes, hydraulic fracturing wells were identified and mapped to show the distance from wells to streams as well as determining that spills in the Eagle Ford structure were not spatially auto-correlated.Item A Case Study of Qualitative Factors in Making Venture Capital Investment Decisions(2017-05) Brunner, Frances; Stokes, Alexis; Minifie, Jana; Hood, MatthewWhen a startup requires large capital backing, it can expect to seek out the venture capitalist. Understanding the process and priorities of the venture capitalist is necessary to gain funding approval on more than just a good business plan, a positive revenue model, or being a likeable person. This study gives a current view of the modern venture capitalist and the elements of their decision making for the edification of entrepreneurs in the funding stage, to understand and avoid pitfalls of their presentation and unspoken communication for nonfinancial components of their business persona. Five interviews have been conducted with venture capitalists residing in the Austin area and two interviews with subject matter experts (SMEs) who have been directly influenced and are consultants in venture capital decision making. These individuals have shared their experiences and methodologies in finding inimitable opportunities for high growth ventures. An explanation of venture capital review methods is presented, followed by a case study and summary of commonalities and contradictions between interview outcomes.Item A Catalogue of the Angelo and Camillo Parravicini Collection of Scene Designs(1988-12) Carter, Kathryn Ann SteinleNo abstract prepared.Item A Century of Historic Preservation in Texas(1998-12) Lopez-Trujillo, Miguel Angel; de la Teja, Jesus F.No abstract prepared.Item A Certain Trumpet: Margaret Chase Smith and the Demise of McCarthyism(1977-12) Burke, Bethany Denise; Craddock, Emmie; Pool, William; Bland, RandallNo abstract prepared.Item A Characterization of Oriented Hypergraphic Laplacian and Adjacency Coefficients and Minors(2017-05) Robinson, Ellen Beth; Rusnak, Lucas; Shen, Jian; Curtin, Eugene; Dochtermann, AntonNo abstract prepared.