Doctoral Dissertations
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Designing Smart Agents to Support Physician-Patient Interactions: Â The Effect of Varying Communication Styles
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-21)This dissertation reports five experiments exploring the use of AI-based smart agents to support physician-patient interactions. In each experiment, a sample of female participants evaluates video tapes of simulated ... -
High Performance RF Circuit Design: High Temperature, Ultra-Low Phase Noise, and Low Complexity
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-21)Advanced achievements in the area of RF circuit design led to a significant increase in availability of wireless communications in everyday life. However, the rapid growth in utilizing the RF equipment has brought several ... -
Computational Analysis of Internal Coral Hydrodynamics
(Virginia Tech, 2020-07-30)Knowledge of the detailed flow dynamics at the interior of branching corals is critical for a full understanding of nutrient uptake, mass transport, wave dissipation, and other essential processes. These physiological ... -
Autonomous Vehicle Waypoint Navigation Using Hyper-Clothoids
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-20)This research study presents two control solutions, PID and the novel hyper-clothoid control strategy, to autonomously navigate a car. These waypoint navigation solutions smoothly connect the given waypoints with C1 ... -
Engaging with the Invisible: STS Groundwork in an Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-20)This dissertation is a study of groundwork in Engaged Science, Technology, and Society (STS) research. Engaged STS scholars reframe STS knowledge and move it beyond the traditional scope and boundaries of the field. They ... -
Equity in Opportunity: Minority Student Enrollment in Advanced, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate English and Mathematics Courses in Virginia Public High Schools
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-20)Equal access in education has proven to be less than sufficient regarding academic success for all students (Atchison et al., 2017; Glynn and Wassell, 2018). Previous research indicates that despite efforts to impart ... -
The Cx43 Carboxyl-Terminal Mimetic Peptide αCT1 Protects Endothelial Barrier Function in a ZO1 Binding-Competent Manner
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-20)The Cx43 CT mimetic peptide, αCT1, originally designed to bind to ZO1 and thereby inhibit Cx43/ZO1 interaction, was used as a tool to probe the role of Cx43/ZO1 association in regulation of epithelial/endothelial barrier ... -
Assistant Principals' Perceptions of Preparedness for the Principalship as Defined by the Assistant Principal Development Framework
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-19)A review of literature on the preparation and training for assistant principals showed that there are gaps in the current support structures in place to encourage them to be effective in their position or prepared to assume ... -
Structure-Property Relationships in the Design of High Performance Membranes for Water Desalination, Specifically Reverse Osmosis, Using Sulfonated Poly(Arylene Ether Sulfone)s
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-19)Over 30% of the world's population does not have access to safe drinking water, and the need for clean water spans further than just for human consumption. Currently, we use freshwater for growing agriculture, raising ... -
Investigating Interactivity and Storytelling in Immersive Virtual Reality for Science Education
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-19)Immersive and interactive storytelling in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging creative practice that has been thriving in recent years. Educational applications using immersive VR storytelling to explain complex science ... -
Factors that Influence Teacher Perceptions of Safety in One School Division in Virginia
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-19)School divisions have spent billions of dollars on school safety upgrades since the events at Columbine (Cox and Rich, 2018). However, the research on the effectiveness of policies and safety upgrades has been inconsistent. ... -
Fixed-wing Classification through Visually Perceived Motion Extraction with Time Frequency Analysis
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-19)The influx of unmanned aerial systems over the last decade has increased need for airspace awareness. Monitoring solutions such as drone detection, tracking, and classification become increasingly important to maintain ... -
Neurobehavioral and Neurophysiological Correlates of Health Behaviors
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-19)Modifiable health behaviors are a leading cause of mortality and chronic disease in the United States. Engagement in maladaptive health behaviors is linked to poor physical, psychological, and cognitive outcomes including ... -
Data-driven Infrastructure Inspection
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-18)Bridge inspection and infrastructure inspection are critical steps in the lifecycle of the built environment. Emerging technologies and data are driving factors which are disrupting the traditional processes for conducting ... -
Investigation of Bragg Gratings in Few-Mode Fibers with a Femtosecond Laser Point-by-Point Technique
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-18)The higher-order modes (HOMs) of an optical fiber has been demonstrated as a new dimension to transmitting signals with the development of mode-division multiplexing (MDM) technique. This dissertation aims to explore the ... -
Gamma-ray emission from Galactic millisecond pulsars: Implications for dark matter indirect detection
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-18)The Fermi Large Area Telescope has observed a gamma-ray excess toward the center of the Galaxy at ~ GeV energies. The spectrum and intensity of the excess are consistent with the annihilation of dark matter with a mass of ... -
Evaluation of the Certus, Inc. and Lone Mountain Processing, Inc. Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Cases to Restore Mussels in the Clinch and Powell Rivers in Virginia and Tennessee
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-18)Freshwater mussels are particularly susceptible to injury from exposure to hazardous substances due to their sessile nature and filter feeding biology. There have been various Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration ... -
Behavioral and Neural Substrates of Decision-Making Under Perceptual and Reward Uncertainty: The Role of Task Structure
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-18)Real world decision-making requires simultaneously determining what we are observing in our environment (perceptual decision-making; PDM) and what the stimuli and actions are worth (reward-based decision-making; RDM). There ... -
The Impact of Constraining Auditor Behavior and Audit Committee Questioning on Non-GAAP Reporting Decisions
(Virginia Tech, 2020-07-23)Corporate managers often pursue voluntary non-GAAP reporting when mandatory reporting is limited, although regulators are concerned with how this reporting is utilized. While the level of flexibility external auditors ... -
Advanced Computing and Sensing to Improve Mine Fire Characterization and Response
(Virginia Tech, 2022-01-13)After fire is discovered in an underground coal mine, a decision must be made to mitigate fire consequences. The decision should be made based on existing conditions, with the goal of increasing the probability of fire ...
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