abstract

Previous research has shown infants viewing speaking faces shift their visual fixation
from speaker’s eyes to speaker’s mouth between 4-8 mo. Lewkowicz & Tift, 2011. It is theorized
this shift occurs to facilitate language learning, based on audiovisual redundancy in speech. We
previously found adults gazed significantly longer at speaker’s mouths while seeing and hearing
non-native language compared with their native language. This suggested there may be
mechanisms in which gaze fixations to speaking mouths are increased in response to uncertainty
in speech. If so, increasing familiarity with speech signals may reduce this tendency to fixate the
mouth. To test this, the current study investigated the effect of familiarization to non-native
language on the gaze patterns of adults. We presented English-speakers with videos of sentences
spoken in Icelandic. To ensure encoding of the speech, participants performed a task in which
they were presented with videos of two different sentences, followed by an audio-only recording
of one of the sentences, and had to identify whether the first or second video corresponded to the
presented audio. In order to familiarize participants with the utterances, the same set of sentences
were repeated. These ‘repetition’ blocks were followed by additional ‘novel’ blocks, using
sentences not previously presented. We found the proportion of fixations directed at the mouth
decreased across repetition blocks, but were restored to their initial rate in the novel blocks.
These results suggest that familiarity with utterances, even in a non-native language, serve to
reduce auditory uncertainty, leading to reduced mouth fixations.

The use of the telephone to speak to study participants about health-related issues is
useful when logistics make it difficult for participant and researcher to meet in person. However,
gaining the trust of the participant can be a challenge, partly due to fears of fraud and identity
theft. A spirit of openness and caring must come across the telephone lines between interviewer
and interviewee. Roach’s six C’s can be applied to convey a sense of caring, thereby relaxing the
participant and increasing their sense of safety to enhance the quantity and quality of health data
being collected. According to Roach, caring is manifested through six C’s – compassion,
competence, confidence, conscience, commitment, and comportment. Interviewers can be trained
through role playing and scripting using Roach’s caring model. Compassion is expressed by
being sensitive to the anxiety and apprehension they may feel toward receiving a call from a
stranger, who is asking about health-related issues. Competence is expressed by being able to
give the participant the information they need to have an understanding as to what they are
consenting. Confidence is achieved by ensuring the participant that the information they share
will be used appropriately and for the greater-good. Conscience is expressed by following ethical
research protocols, adhering to confidentiality, and respecting the relationship with the research
participant. Finally, interviewers manifest caring through comportment by identifying
themselves with their name, credentials, and institution; addressing the participant formally;
using language the participant can understand; and projecting caring through tone of voice.

In wireless systems such as cellular systems, frequency reuse is employed to extend the
coverage area but this process introduces undesirable co-channel interference. A tradeoff must be
made between increasing system capacity and transmission quality when planning, designing and
deploying such wireless systems. In order to meet the explosive demand for high data rate
wireless services for a growing population within a given geographical area, future wireless
cellular networks will adopt smaller cells, such as femtocells, that are serviced by low-power
base stations. As the deployment of femto-cellular base stations rapidly increases in the coming
years, interference coordination and management will be the primary challenge in such
heterogeneous networks. In this work, we derive a novel closed form expression for the
cumulative distribution function CDF and coverage probability for a small cell wireless network
operating in a Nakagami fading environment in the presence of Gaussian noise and impulsive
interference modeled as an alpha-stable process. With these results, we can determine the
probabilistic access thresholds that provide the best probable tradeoff between system capacity
and network quality.

As computing technology continues to advance, it has become increasingly difficult to
find businesses that do not rely, at least in part, upon the collection and analysis of data for
project management and process improvement. The cost of software, for example, tends to
increase over time due to its complexity and the expense of employing humans to develop,
maintain, and evolve it. To help control costs, organizations often seek to improve the process by
which software systems are developed and evolved. Improvements can be realized by
discovering previously unknown or hidden relationships between the artifacts generated as a
result of developing a complex software system. The objective of this the work was to engineer a
visualization software tool that helps managers and engineers better plan for future projects by
helping them discover new knowledge gained by synthesizing and visualizing data mined from
software repository records from their own previous projects.

The main goal of this study is to facilitate the siting and full-scale implementation of
Florida Atlantic University Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center (FAU
SNMREC) ocean current energy (OCE) projects as well as other future ocean projects offshore
southeastern Florida through the analysis of benthic anchoring conditions. To realize this goal,
this thesis will address the following objectives: 1) Assemble a comprehensive database of
geologic and benthic parameters relevant to offshore southeast Florida OCE siting 2) Analyze
seafloor geology core and grab samples in order to locate suitable substrate for anchoring 3)
Analyze benthic biologic data to identify biologically sensitive areas which should be avoided in
offshore southeast Florida OCE siting 4) Determine pathways for cables that avoid biologically
sensitive areas 5) Create a finalized spatial layer identifying most likely offshore southeast
Florida suitable areas based on seafloor geology, benthic communities and proximity to cables
routes and 6) Discern what additional datasets are required to address offshore southeast Florida
OCE siting. Preliminary results suggest near shore areas are unsuitable for OCE due to their high
amounts of biologic activity, while areas further offshore likely contain sparse biologic presence
and therefore are better suited for siting OCE. However, higher resolution benthic and seafloor
core data will be necessary to gain a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the
substrate offshore southeastern Florida for the purposes of OCE development.

Sleep and feeding are processes essential to nearly all complex organisms, impacting the
behavioral output of an animal through homeostatic drive. In Drosophila melanogaster it has
been shown that starvation leads to sleep suppression through the signaling of core clock proteins
that regulate the animal circadian rhythm. Furthermore overexpression of short neuropeptide, a
sleep-promoting inhibitory modulator, increases sleep in animals and alters feeding behavior.
While these findings provide a framework of the interaction between the pressures to feed and
sleep, they are bi-modal shifts, limiting the understanding of this relationship between to its
extreme states. Using the Activity Recording CAFÉ ARC, a tool for measuring the sleep and
feeding of individual flies, we tuned either behavior and observed corresponding effects. By
shifting food concentrations we are able to control hunger state of an animal while recording its
sleep and activity patterns. By coupling this system with a gentle air puff we were also able to
control sleep while measuring feeding. We found that the hunger state of an animal had a direct
effect on sleep and sleep consolidation. Conversely, we show that increasing sleep pressure led
to increased feeding and reduced satiety as calculated through the animal’s prandial behavior. In
addition, we show that the direct relationship of the sleep/feeding is disrupted by core clock gene
mutations but not by secondary clock genes such as period. By use of the ARC and bi-directional
perturbation, we provide a higher resolution understanding of the sleep-feeding axis.

It has been widely hypothesized that while doing arithmetic individuals use two distinct
routes for phonological output. A direct route requires exact arithmetic which is thought to have
been linked to language dependent areas of the brain. In addition, an indirect route thought to be
language independent is active during arithmetic approximation that relies on visuo-spatial skills.
The arithmetic double route has been incorporated on the triple code model that consists of
Visual Arabic code for identifying string of digits, magnitude code for knowledge in numeral
quantities, and verbal code for rote arithmetic fact. Our goal is to investigate whether language
experience has an effect on the processing of exact/approximation math using bilingual
participants who have access to two languages. We will measure the 2 groups
monolinguals/bilingual processing speed to complete the 2 tasks Exact/Approximation in 2 codes
Arabic digit/Verbal. We hypothesized a faster reaction time in exact arithmetic task in
comparison to approximation due to it being language dependent. We expect a positive
correlation between self rated language proficiency and exact arithmetic in verbal code. We also
expect a main effect for the task Exact vs. Approximation independent of the input code when
the stimulus was presented in either Arabic digit and/or verbal codes. Results from this study
have implications in understanding the importance of the input code when processing numbers.
Further neuroimaging studies need to be compiled to investigate brain activation during simple
arithmetic when bilinguals use verbal or Arabic digit coding.

Prostate cancer after many years is still the second most common cancer in American
men with about 233,000 new cases and 29,480 deaths estimated to be occurring in 2014.
Despite the wide spectra of reports demonstrating the anti-cancer phytotherapeutic potentials of
beta-lapachone and soybean-derived genistein in various tumors, little emphasis had been placed
on their synergistic effects in androgen-independent PC3 and androgen-dependent LNCaP
prostate cancer cell lines. In this study, we aim to characterize the combined effects of genistein
and b-lapachone on the phyto/chemosensitivity of LNCaP and PC3 human prostate cancer cells
in-vitro, using MTT assay and LDH assay to study treatment-induced growth inhibition and
cytotoxicity. Annexin-V-FITC and PI-TUNEL assays were also used to determine the potential
treatment-induced apoptosis and/or necrosis.
Our results revealed that both PC3 and LNCaP are phytosensitive to both single and combined
treatments, though time-and dose-dependent. We observed that our treatments induced dual
death pathways-apoptosis and necrosis-in both cell types and also observed that growth
inhibition in both correlated positively with cell death in which, b-lapachone and genistein
induced cell cycle arrest at the G1 and/or S phase and G2–M checkpoints respectively.
Invariably, our results indicate that combination treatments with b-lapachone and genistein are
more potent in killing both PC3 and LNCaP cancer cells than treatment with either genistein or
b-lapachone alone. Our current results are therefore in agreement with the hypothesis that drugcombinations
that target cell cycles at different critical checkpoints are more effective in causing
cell death.

Sea turtles are most vulnerable to predators during early growth when they are small and
relatively defenseless. Predation risk might be reduced by evolving effective behavioral as well
as morphological defenses. Loggerhead Caretta caretta and green turtle Chelonia mydas neonates
hide in weed lines. They also become wider faster than they increase in length, a pattern of
positive allometry that may function to minimize the time during growth when they are
vulnerable to gape-limited predators. Virtually nothing is known about how young leatherbacks
grow which might reduce their vulnerability to predators. To find out, we reared 30 hatchlings
from 10 nests in the laboratory for up to 14 weeks, post-emergence. Once weekly, each turtle’s
body proportions straight line carapace length, SCL; straight line carapace width, SCW were
measured to yield an observed pattern of growth. That observed growth pattern was compared to
an expected pattern in which the turtles retained their hatchling proportions as they grew larger
isometric growth. We found that all of the leatherbacks showed allometric growth as their SCW
increased more rapidly than their SCL. Thus as they grew, leatherbacks became proportionally
wider, though this growth was not as pronounced as seen in loggerheads and green turtles. We
also modeled vulnerability to gape-limited predators. Leatherbacks, like loggerhead and green
turtles, were less vulnerable to predation when growing allometrically. These results provide
insight into a little know sea turtle life stage and aids in understanding how morphology in early
development may reduce predation risk.

Approximately 18.7 percent of the American population has some disability. Additionally
over 3.3 percent or 10.5 million people in United States are deaf/ have difficulty hearing. Based
on the U.S Census report more than half of this community reported the disability was severe.
However the disabled community if often overlooked or inadvertently excluded from the
mainstream planning process. Many community meetings, charrettes and even public hearings
lack strategic measures to engage or inform the deaf community of current plans and as such we
often create living spaces that fail to accommodate their unique needs. In the book Death and
Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs rightly notes that “Cities have the capability of
providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by
everybody.”
To that end, I would like to explore how the Planning Process can become inclusive of the
disabled and particularly the deaf community. Based on my experience in Planning thus far I
believe interpreters can play a vital role in fusing the communication lines between the general
population and the Planning team or public officials. I understand the needs of the community
and would like to use my unique perspective to reinvent the “Planning Wheel” and chart a new
course with guidelines or recommendations on how to engage the disabled community to
become active participants in the Planning process.