The Diamond, April 11, 1985

Front Page : Budget Cuts into Education; Students Love Social Action; Theoretical Lectures Needed Editorial Letters to the Editor: An Open Letter to the Dordt Student Body; Senator Responds to Grants Articles: Science Fair to Be Held; Ag Prof Elated over $11,000 Grant; Skillen Questions MX; Einfeld\u27s Math Scores Place Him 37th Nationwide; Dordt Music Prof Receives McCowen Award; Choir Sings Easter Praises; Recognition Given to Art Student; Spring Break Social Work; State Considers Education Aid; International Newshttps://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/dordt_diamond/1364/thumbnail.jp

The Entrepreneurial Cognitive Adjustment Mechanism: Transitional Entrepreneurship as a Solution to Mitigate Illegal Migration

Purpose In this paper, the authors suggest that Central Americans can use entrepreneurship to solve economic uncertainty in their home country and that entrepreneurship can contribute to reducing the number of undocumented migrants to the USA. Design/methodology/approach The authors first illustrate the context of Central American illegal migration to the USA from a transitional entrepreneurship perspective, the authors address the economic drivers of illegal migration from Central America, which results in marginalization in the USA. Second, the authors build a theoretical model that suggests that Central Americans can improve their entrepreneurial abilities through the entrepreneurial cognitive adjustment mechanism. Findings Central Americans at risk of illegally migrating to the USA have high entrepreneurial aptitudes. Entrepreneurship can help them avoid the economic uncertainty that drives Central Americans to illegally migrate to the USA and become part of a marginalized community of undocumented immigrants. This conceptual paper introduces an entrepreneurial cognitive adjustment mechanism as a tool for Central Americans to reshape their personalities and increase their entrepreneurial abilities in their home countries. In particular, entrepreneurial intentions reshape the personality characteristics of individuals (in terms of high agreeableness and openness to experiences, as well as low neuroticism) through the entrepreneurial cognitive adjustment mechanism, which consists of reflective action in sensemaking, cognitive frameworks in pattern recognition and coping in positive affect. Originality/value This paper studies Central Americans at risk of illegal migration using the lens of transitional entrepreneurship, which advances the understanding of the antecedents to marginalized immigrant communities in the USA and suggests a possible solution for this phenomenon. Besides, the authors build a cognitive mechanism to facilitate the transitional process starting from entrepreneurial intention to reshaping individuals\u27 personality, which further opens individuals\u27 minds to entrepreneurial opportunities. Since entrepreneurial intention applies the same way to all entrepreneurs, the authors\u27 aim of constructing the entrepreneurial intention unfolding process will go beyond transitional entrepreneurship and contribute to intention-action knowledge generation (Donaldson et al., 2021). Moreover, the conceptual study contributes to public policy such that international and local agencies can better utilize resources and implement long-term solutions to the drivers of illegal migration from Central America to the USA

2021- The Twenty-fifth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars

The full program book from the Twenty-fifth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 29, 2021. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/sssprograms/1023/thumbnail.jp

Applying virtual reality techniques to engineering design optimization

Virtual reality (VR) provides a new paradigm that links a human operator with a computer-generated environment via visual, audio, or haptic interaction to support the illusion of immersion. The objective of this dissertation is to explore the use of VR techniques for sensitivity-based structural shape design optimization. The design tool developed in this research allows the designer to alter the shape of the computer representation of a model and see the resulting changes to the deformation and stress displayed immediately in the virtual environment. The combination of using natural motions to alter computer models and the ability to view stereo images of these models in a three dimensional virtual space allows the designer to interactively examine design changes and determine their effects on product performance;NURBS-based free form deformation (NFFD) and direct manipulation techniques are the methods implemented which allow the designer to change the shape of the design model, and also provide the information for the sensitivity computation in order to approximate the structural responses in real time. The designer-weighted optimization is also incorporated in the virtual environment which provides an additional capability to perform trade-off design for resolving conflicting design constraints;A general purpose structural shape design program is developed to perform the structural shape design optimization in the virtual environment. Several examples demonstrate the advantages of this program

Advanced Automation for Space Missions

The feasibility of using machine intelligence, including automation and robotics, in future space missions was studied

Developing educational games for children with ASC. VENECA- Virtual Environment for Navigational Education for Children with ASC

This thesis describes the full design process of VENECA, a research tool for experts in the area of cognitive science who specialize in children with ASC. The initial sections of this work concentrate on analyses of open questions and underexplored hypotheses in the area that can potentially be interesting to future expert users, and specifications of interconnected flexible features that could assist experts in their research studies. A review of different deficits of children with ASC, research directions and previous work, done in the area, and critical analysis of analogous computational tools in the area suggested potential problems and doubtful design decisions of the currently existing computer games that had to be avoided VENECA. After that, by means of pre-design analysis, all the constraints and goals of the project were met, and user requirements were specified. As a result, VENECA was developed as a research tool with a game as an internal cognitive element. The design process, which was organised in an iterative fashion, allowed precise specification of all design decisions and adjustment of the system to the needs of both children and research users. Prototype testings with experts in the area provided valuable feedback about not only the experts’ requirements, but also those of the child user’s. The fact that this feedback was gained during the whole design process allowed for the quick and low-cost fixing of all potential usability problems. At the end of this project, a full scope of initial goals was achieved, and the first version of VENECA was implemented as a complete software package with all necessary manuals and documentation. It provides necessary support for experts in order to answer a set of initial questions. Moreover, flexible combinations of features suggest that experts will potentially be able to specify their own research questions in the future. However, there still exist many directions for future extensions of VENECA, which were also analysed, described and justified in this work

Constructing 3D faces from natural language interface

This thesis presents a system by which 3D images of human faces can be constructed using a natural language interface. The driving force behind the project was the need to create a system whereby a machine could produce artistic images from verbal or composed descriptions. This research is the first to look at constructing and modifying facial image artwork using a natural language interface. Specialised modules have been developed to control geometry of 3D polygonal head models in a commercial modeller from natural language descriptions. These modules were produced from research on human physiognomy, 3D modelling techniques and tools, facial modelling and natural language processing. [Continues.