34 research outputs found

    ATTEMPTING TO PREDICT THE UNPREDICTABLE: MARCH MADNESS

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    Each year, millions upon millions of individuals fill out at least one if not hundreds of March Madness brackets. People test their luck every year, whether for fun, with friends or family, or to even win some money. Some people rely on their basketball knowledge whereas others know it is called March Madness for a reason and take a shot in the dark. Others have even tried using statistics to give them an edge. I intend to follow a similar approach, using statistics to my advantage. The end goal is to predict this year’s, 2022, March Madness bracket. To achieve the best possible results, I will use team and individual statistics to help form logistic regression models and formulate new statistics that have not been used or thought of before. Rather than jumping right into the 2021-2022 season, I look into past years’ statistics and tournaments to see how well my logistic regression models perform and see what differences if any, there are in variables used year to year. The 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 seasons will not be present (no tournament and no fans, respectively). After evaluating past years’ models, I make rules to provide the best possibility of upsets to occur, based on what was seen in the 2011-2019 tournaments

    Identifying the Technical and Teacher Skills Needed by In-Service Teachers to Effectively Teach an Agricultural Mechanics Course in West Virginia

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    Agricultural mechanics remains one of the largest content sections in school-based agriculture education (SBAE). Therefore, in-service and pre-service teachers need to be effective in teaching agricultural mechanics to their students (Burris et al., 2005; Hainline & Wells, 2019). A number of studies (McKim & Saucier, 2011; Saucier et al., 2014) have identified the importance of safety in agricultural mechanics laboratories, but not the content skills specifically needed to teach the courses. The only areas of content that most new in-service teachers possess are those of basic woodworking and basic metal working. This study bases its theoretical framework off of the Roberts and Ball (2009) content-based model for teaching agriculture. More specifically, how it impacts the teaching of pre-service teachers in teacher preparation programs under the model’s knowledge domain. Using a modified Delphi approach, this study identified the technical and teacher skills needed to effectively teach an agricultural mechanics course. A panel of four agricultural mechanics experts identified 35 items that included 19 technical skills (e.g., welding, etc.) and eight teacher skills (e.g., conditioning tools, etc.). It was concluded that West Virginia SBAE educators should be well versed in all aspects of teaching agricultural mechanics. This is a replication study of Hainline & Wells (2019), Identifying the Agricultural Mechanics Knowledge and Skills Needed by Iowa School-based Agricultural Education Teachers

    An Examination of the Impact That Communities In Schools\u27 Interventions Make On High School Academic Performance

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    The following study seeks to answer the question: What impact does a local Communities In Schools (CIS), a nationwide dropout prevention program, affiliate\u27s interventions have on a high school student\u27s academic performance, absenteeism, and completion rates? To do this, the study examines the grade point average, absenteeism rate, and completion rate of 1298 students across four years of existing data from a local school district. For comparison purposes, the study uses a quasi-experimental approach and breaks the data into four groups: two experimental groups (At-Risk CIS students and Not-At-Risk CIS students) and two control groups (At-Risk students and Not-At-Risk students). To calculate the above variables for the four groups, two-sample t-tests were conducted for grade point average and absenteeism, with a cross tabulation analysis was conducted to compare the completion rate of the four groups. Findings report that At-Risk students who received CIS services at one or more points during their high school career experience an average increase of 6.6% in their grade point averages, there was virtually no difference in absenteeism between those At-Risk students who received CIS services and those who did not, and there was virtually no change in the completion rate of At-Risk students who received CIS services and those who did not

    Development and Simulation of a Novel Guidance System for Quadrotors Flying in a Contested Environment

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    Due to their accessibility, quadrotors are used as testbeds for guidance, navigation, and control systems and have been used for a wide variety of applications. These applications range from commercial aerial photography to military surveillance. In the latter case, the vehicle can be exposed to danger if opposing agents are present. The vehicle is incentivized to take cover among obstacles in order to protect it during surveillance operations. However, current research seeks only to avoid obstacles. This thesis develops a guidance system capable of generating tactical flight of a quadrotor. This guidance system consists of three complementary subsystems. The first is fast model predictive control (FMPC). This algorithm uses the dynamics of the system to plan several time steps into the future. Using this plan, the algorithm communicates the optimal action to take and repeats the process. FMPC is advantageous due to its fast computation subject to the system dynamics and customizable cost functions that can be used to enforce tactical behavior. However, it is not designed to work in non-convex environments and is vulnerable to locally optimal points that are not the goal position. The convexity issue is mitigated by using quadratic discrimination to find a locally convex region. Local optima are avoided by employing a global pathfinding algorithm built off of the motion primitive library. Flight test results demonstrating the capabilities of the resultant guidance system are presented

    Pedal 4 Purification

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    The lack of access to clean drinking water remains one of the largest issues still facing humanity. The Pedal 4 Purification is a product that addresses this need by utilizing pre-existing bicycle infrastructure and local freshwater sources to allow people to purify their own drinking water on a daily basis. Attachable to any standard bicycle, the Pedal 4 Purification product consists of pump, purification, cart and adjustable kickstand subsystems that allow the operator to pump, purify and transport 40L of potable water. Pedaling at the reasonable rate of 60 rpm will provide the optimal flow rate of 1.54L/min through the filter. At this rate, it would take the operator 26 minutes to provide enough drinking water to satiate 20 people for the day. As a result of the drastic reduction in the time and effort it takes for individuals to obtain drinking water, target communities will have more free time allowing them to focus on other pressing issues. Use of the Pedal 4 Purification product results in a 266% increase in user time savings as well as 54 times the amount of water collected per minute of user exertion compared to traditional methods. The Pedal 4 Purification team travelled to San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala to manufacture the entire device at Maya Pedal, an NGO that creates ‘bicimaquinas’ to help provide its local community members with basic human resource infrastructure. After the manufacturing process was complete, the team and Maya Pedal workers drove to the highland community of Patzun to implement the design and instruct the local people about how to use it. User feedback was noted after the successful implementation in the developing community of Patzun

    Marco Polo in Iran : cultural encounters in medieval history

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    MANUFACTURING COMPLEX SURFACES TO RECREATE THE DESIGN INTENT OF LEGACY ARTIFACTS

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    Manufacturing processes and techniques have changed throughout history. When designing a product for manufacturing knowledge and availability of these processes greatly influences design even though the intent remains the same. To evaluate and compare the effects of these manufacturing processes on design two legacy artifacts were recreated using manufacturing methods that differed from the original product. These artifacts were an early 1900’s sand casted infill mallet head from the Studley Tool Cabinet, and a 1950‘s Hydro-electric dam scroll cage at 1/80th scale created using vacuum forming. This analysis resulted in seven different pieces of finished hardware using five different manufacturing methods. Three of these processes belonged to the infill mallet, and two to the scroll cage. Using these different manufacturing methods we were able to produce similar geometries of the original design while maintaining the intent of the design.masters, M.S., Mechanical Engineering -- University of Idaho - College of Graduate Studies, 2018-0

    Design of an active control containment system for remote medical emergency assistance.

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    College of Engineering; Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department; Advisor: Dr. David Brian Landrum; Date: May 1, 2019; Pages: 20 p

    AN ARGUMENT FOR CANADA'S ADOPTION OF A NETFLIX TAX SIMILAR TO THE SINGAPORE MODEL

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    Bachelor'sBachelor of Laws (Honours) (LL.B.
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