Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don\u27t: A Logical Analysis of Moral Dilemmas

This project explores the logical structure of moral dilemmas. I introduce the notion of genuine contingent moral dilemmas, as well as basic topics in deontic logic. I then examine two formal arguments claiming that dilemmas are logically impossible. Each argument relies on certain principles of normative reasoning sometimes accepted as axioms of deontic logic. I argue that the principle of agglomeration and a statement of entailment of obligations are both not basic to ethical reasoning, concluding that dilemmas will be admissible under some logically consistent ethical theories. In the final chapter, I examine some consequences of admitting dilemmas into a theory, in particular how doing so complicates assignment of blame

Financial Literacy: Past, Present and Future Impact on College Freshmen

This study researched the financial literacy of first-year students relating to their personal finances and financial aid at a rural, Midwestern, four-year public institution. The participants in the study were limited to first-year students with no previous college credit. There were 97 participants in this study, with 84 participant\u27s completing the entire survey. Results of the study indicated that overall students did have financial literacy relating to their financial aid. The results also indicated that students main and original source of financial knowledge came from their parent or guardian. Recommended for Student Affairs Professional is to create more comprehensive orientation programs that discuss students financial aid in depth and to create on campus resource centers for students to be able to utilize to help develop financial literacy. Further research recommendations are to look specifically at first generation students to determine if their financial literacy is comparable to non-first generation students. A study design that involved surveying students as freshman and again at seniors could also be conducted to see if students develop financial literacy over time

Financial Literacy: Past, Present and Future Impact on College Freshmen

This study researched the financial literacy of first-year students relating to their personal finances and financial aid at a rural, Midwestern, four-year public institution. The participants in the study were limited to first-year students with no previous college credit. There were 97 participants in this study, with 84 participant\u27s completing the entire survey. Results of the study indicated that overall students did have financial literacy relating to their financial aid. The results also indicated that students main and original source of financial knowledge came from their parent or guardian. Recommended for Student Affairs Professional is to create more comprehensive orientation programs that discuss students financial aid in depth and to create on campus resource centers for students to be able to utilize to help develop financial literacy. Further research recommendations are to look specifically at first generation students to determine if their financial literacy is comparable to non-first generation students. A study design that involved surveying students as freshman and again at seniors could also be conducted to see if students develop financial literacy over time

Robotic workcell analysis and object level programming

For many years robots have been programmed at manipulator or joint level without any real thought to the implementation of sensing until errors occur during program execution. For the control of complex, or multiple robot workcells, programming must be carried out at a higher level, taking into account the possibility of error occurrence. This requires the integration of decision information based on sensory data.Aspects of robotic workcell control are explored during this work with the object of integrating the results of sensor outputs to facilitate error recovery for the purposes of achieving completely autonomous operation.Network theory is used for the development of analysis techniques based on stochastic data. Object level programming is implemented using Markov chain theory to provide fully sensor integrated robot workcell control

Femtosecond hot-exciton emission in a ladder-type π-conjugated rigid-polymer nanowire

A hot exciton is usually the initial elementary excitation product of the solid phase, particularly in low-dimensional photonic materials, which is a bottleneck to all subsequent processes. Measurement of hot-exciton emission (HExEm) is a great challenge due to fast EK relaxation and thus very weak transient emission. Here, we report the unambiguous observation of femtosecond HExEm from thin films of a model quasi-one-dimensional π-conjugated organic rigid-rod quantum nanowire, methyl-substituted ladder-type poly(para-phenylenes), using femtosecond time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. The results show clear HExEm from the cooling hot excitons, having a lifetime of ∼500 to ∼800 fs, and concomitant very weak density-dependent singlet-singlet annihilation (SSA) due to this ultrashort dwell time. The ultrafast dispersive migration of the relaxing excitons toward the bottom of the density of states occurs immediately after HExEm, which is simultaneous to the strong density-dependent SSA effect enhanced by the lengthening dwell time

Sustainable concrete production with recycled concrete wash water beneficiated with CO2

A significant amount of wastewater is generated through the cleaning of equipment utilized within the ready mixed concrete production cycle. The reuse of concrete wash water as mix water is limited by the negative material performance impacts associated with the suspended solids; the effects are exacerbated with increasing solids contents and water aging. A novel carbon dioxide treatment to allow the use of high solids wash water (specific gravity 1.10) as mix water was examined. Seven batches of concrete were produced and compared: a reference mix, two batches with untreated wash water and four batches with CO2 treated wash water. The carbon dioxide treatment mineralized CO2 at 28% by mass of the treated solids. Acceptable concrete was produced through adjusting admixtures for workability. The compressive strength at 1, 7, 28 and 56 days was improved relative to both the reference and the concrete produced with untreated wash water. The suspended solids containing mineralized CO2 served as a viable cement replacement. The avoided cement and bound carbon dioxide served to lower the carbon impact of the concrete by about 14%. The approach allows three waste streams (CO2, wash water and wash water solids) to be reused to produce more sustainable concrete

Entanglement and particle fluctuations of one-dimensional chiral topological insulators

We consider the topological protection of entanglement and particle fluctuations for a general one-dimensional chiral topological insulator with winding number $\mathcal{I}$. We prove, in particular, that when the periodic system is divided spatially into two equal halves, the single-particle entanglement spectrum has $2|\mathcal{I}|$ protected eigenvalues at $1/2$. Therefore the number fluctuations are bounded from below by $\Delta N^2\geq |\mathcal{I}|/2$ and the entanglement entropy by $S\geq 2|\mathcal{I}|\ln 2$. We note that our results are obtained by applying directly an index theorem to the microscopic model and do not rely on an equivalence to a continuum model or a bulk-boundary correspondence for a slow varying boundary.Comment: 6 pages, published versio