Where I Belong

This project compiled research of my family history to present an honest and creative portrayal of my family’s journey, connecting the stories of my ancestors to the common struggle, movement, and growth of humanity. The Duckworth’s were farmers who came to West Virginia from Maryland in the 1830s. Five pieces follow the course of the Duckworths, who witnessed the growth of industrialism, the toils of migration, the extension of the B&O railroad, and the eruption of the American Civil War. The lives described in this thesis are the patriarchs of the Duckworth family, beginning with Henry Duckworth migrating to West Virginia due to the coal mining industry overtaking his home and continues with George Duckworth, the focus shifting to creating something tangible of his life for future generations. Place becomes central to the life of Ephraim Duckworth who not only worked the land but also fought in the Civil War. Progressing further in time, Hansford Duckworth moves off the farm and becomes more informed of the stories that are creating the United States and creating him as well. The final “creation” of Lowell Farrell Duckworth once again aims at truly experiencing his past life by examining tangible photos that he left behind. Through each of these essays, I was able to evoke the essence of my family and place them into the grand narrative of human existence. Ultimately, by combining lyricism and biography, I was able to see my own context in the history of my family and my family’s context in history

Hot Water Distribution System Model Enhancements

This project involves enhancement of the HWSIM distribution system model to more accurately model pipe heat transfer. Recent laboratory testing efforts have indicated that the modeling of radiant heat transfer effects is needed to accurately characterize piping heat loss. An analytical methodology for integrating radiant heat transfer was implemented with HWSIM. Laboratory test data collected in another project was then used to validate the model for a variety of uninsulated and insulated pipe cases (copper, PEX, and CPVC). Results appear favorable, with typical deviations from lab results less than 8%

Hydrogen slush density reference system

A hydrogen slush density reference system was designed for calibration of field-type instruments and/or transfer standards. The device is based on the buoyancy principle of Archimedes. The solids are weighed in a low-mass container so arranged that solids and container are buoyed by triple-point liquid hydrogen during the weighing process. Several types of hydrogen slush density transducers were developed and tested for possible use as transfer standards. The most successful transducers found were those which depend on change in dielectric constant, after which the Clausius-Mossotti function is used to relate dielectric constant and density

Instrumentation for hydrogen slush storage containers

Hydrogen liquid and slush tank continuous inventory during ground storag

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) In Information Systems Research: Status Quo, Guidelines, and Future Directions

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) allows researchers to study how configurations of conditions lead to outcomes and, thereby, richly explain the dynamics of complex digital phenomena. To advance discussion on QCA in the information systems (IS) discipline, we introduce its fundamental concepts and offer guidelines for authors on how to apply QCA to advance IS research. We also provide checklists for reviewers of QCA papers. We illustrate how to apply our guidelines through two exemplar studies. In the first exemplar study, we focus on IT-business strategic alignment to study the influence that different forms of alignment have on firm performance. In the second exemplar study, we use the perspective of the integrated technology acceptance model to explain an individual’s intention to use a digital assistant. The contrasting results from both studies highlight how to use QCA to derive robust and reproducible results. By doing so, we contribute to encouraging IS scholars to use QCA to develop sophisticated models that accurately depict real-world IS phenomena

Detecting joint attention events in mother-infant dyads : sharing looks cannot be reliably identified by naïve third-party observers

Funding: This study was funded by an European Research Council Consolidator grant (ERC_CoG 2016_724608) awarded to KS (https://erc.europa.eu/funding/consolidator-grants).Joint attention, or sharing attention with another individual about an object or event, is a critical behaviour that emerges in pre-linguistic infants and predicts later language abilities. Given its importance, it is perhaps surprising that there is no consensus on how to measure joint attention in prelinguistic infants. A rigorous definition proposed by Siposova & Carpenter (2019) requires the infant and partner to gaze alternate between an object and each other (coordination of attention) and exchange communicative signals (explicit acknowledgement of jointly sharing attention). However, Hobson and Hobson (2007) proposed that the quality of gaze between individuals is, in itself, a sufficient communicative signal that demonstrates sharing of attention. They proposed that observers can reliably distinguish “sharing”, “checking”, and “orienting” looks, but the empirical basis for this claim is limited as their study focussed on two raters examining looks from 11-year-old children. Here, we analysed categorisations made by 32 naïve raters of 60 infant looks to their mothers, to examine whether they could be reliably distinguished according to Hobson and Hobson’s definitions. Raters had overall low agreement and only in 3 out of 26 cases did a significant majority of the raters agree with the judgement of the mother who had received the look. For the looks that raters did agree on at above chance levels, look duration and the overall communication rate of the mother were identified as cues that raters may have relied upon. In our experiment, naïve third party observers could not reliably determine the type of look infants gave to their mothers, which indicates that subjective judgements of types of look should not be used to identify mutual awareness of sharing attention in infants. Instead, we advocate the use of objective behaviour measurement to infer that interactants know they are ‘jointly’ attending to an object or event, and believe this will be a crucial step in understanding the ontogenetic and evolutionary origins of joint attention.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Novel Nonreciprocal Acoustic Effects in Antiferromagnets

The possible occurrence of nonreciprocal acoustic effects in antiferromagnets in the absence of an external magnetic field is investigated using both (i) a microscopic formulation of the magnetoelastic interaction between spins and phonons and (ii) symmetry arguments. We predict for certain antiferromagnets the existence of two new nonreciprocal (non-time invariant) effects: A boundary-condition induced nonreciprocal effect and the occurrence of transversal phonon modes propagating in opposite directions having different velocities. Estimates are given and possible materials for these effects to be observed are suggested.Comment: Euro. Phys. Lett. (in press

Light Ions Response of Silicon Carbide Detectors

Silicon carbide (SiC) Schottky diodes 21 mum thick with small surfaces and high N-dopant concentration have been used to detect alpha particles and low energy light ions. In particular 12C and 16O beams at incident energies between 5 and 18 MeV were used. The diode active-region depletion-thickness, the linearity of the response, energy resolution and signal rise-time were measured for different values of the applied reverse bias. Moreover the radiation damage on SiC diodes irradiated with 53 MeV 16O beam has been explored. The data show that SiC material is radiation harder than silicon but at least one order of magnitude less hard than epitaxial silicon diodes. An inversion in the signal was found at a fluence of 10^15 ions/cm^2.Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures, submitted for publication to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research