Browsing by Subject "Programming"
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Item A Case Study Comparing Participants vs Non-Participants of the Texas 4-H Livestock Ambassador Program in Relation to Animal Science Knowledge, Leadership, Career Development, and Higher Education Knowledge Gained(2013-11-25) Isbell, Elizabeth AnnSelected former Texas 4-H Livestock Ambassadors as well as former Texas 4-H members that are currently enrolled in Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University participated in an interview to determine the effectiveness of both programs in relation to several specific aspects. Five former ambassadors were selected from each institution, resulting in ten total participants. Just as well, five former 4-H members were selected from each institution resulting in ten total control group participants. The focuses of the study related to the following four criteria: 1) How did the T4HLA Program (or Texas 4-H Program) benefit the participants in terms of college preparation? 2) How did the T4HLA Program (or Texas 4-H Program) prepare the participants for determining a career path within agriculture? 3) How did the T4HLA Program (or Texas 4-H Program) allow you to develop leadership skills? 4) How did the T4HLA Program (or Texas 4-H Program) provide information specifically related to animal science knowledge? The results of the study verified the benefits of the T4HLA Program in relation to the targeted areas of higher education knowledge gained, leadership skills developed, agricultural careers explored, and practical animal science knowledge gained. The benefits of the program ensured that a very practical set of skills were being disseminated to the participants. Just as well, the 4-H member?s development in relation to life skills (public speaking, communication, team work, etc.) was magnified during their 4-H membership as well.Item Development and evaluation of a digital tool for virtual reconstruction of historic Islamic geometric patterns(Texas A&M University, 2005-11-01) Al Ajlouni, Rima AhmadFor the purpose of cultural heritage preservation, the task of recording and reconstructing visually complicated architectural geometrical patterns is facing many practical challenges. Existing traditional technologies rely heavily on the subjective nature of our perceptual power in understanding its complexity and depicting its color differences. This study explores one possible solution, through utilizing digital techniques for reconstructing detailed historical Islamic geometric patterns. Its main hypothesis is that digital techniques offer many advantages over the human eye in terms of recognizing subtle differences in light and color. The objective of the study is to design, test and evaluate an automatic visual tool for identifying deteriorated or incomplete archaeological Islamic geometrical patterns captured in digital images, and then restoring them digitally, for the purpose of producing accurate 2D reconstructed metric models. An experimental approach is used to develop, test and evaluate the specialized software. The goal of the experiment is to analyze the output reconstructed patterns for the purpose of evaluating the digital tool in respect to reliability and structural accuracy, from the point of view of the researcher in the context of historic preservation. The research encapsulates two approaches within its methodology; Qualitative approach is evident in the process of program design, algorithm selection, and evaluation. Quantitative approach is manifested through using mathematical knowledge of pattern generation to interpret available data and to simulate the rest based on it. The reconstruction process involves induction, deduction and analogy. The proposed method was proven to be successful in capturing the accurate structural geometry of the deteriorated straight-lines patterns generated based on the octagon-square basic grid. This research also concluded that it is possible to apply the same conceptual method to reconstruct all two-dimensional Islamic geometric patterns. Moreover, the same methodology can be applied to reconstruct many other pattern systems. The conceptual framework proposed by this study can serve as a platform for developing professional softwares related to historic documentation. Future research should be directed more towards developing artificial intelligence and pattern recognition techniques that have the ability to suplement human power in accomplishing difficult tasks.Item Investigating eighth graders' development of text-based scripting skills and their intrinsic motivation through game construction curriculum: a case study(2015-08) Navarrete, Cesar Chavez; Liu, Min, Ed. D.; Hughes, Joan E; Brown, Christopher P; Petrosino, Anthony J; Toprac, PaulGame construction learning approaches have seen increased interest for computational learning and digital literacy in K-12 education, but the paucity of research on game text-based scripting skill development identifies a gap in the literature. This case study investigated text-based scripting skill development and intrinsic motivation with a class of eighth grade students who were engaged in game construction. The study participants were 20 students and their teacher. The case involved the open-ended, project-based game construction class. Data sources included classroom observations, teacher and student interviews, survey responses, and student game scripts. The findings showed that engaging in game construction with peer collaboration and teacher support helped the students develop scripting skills. Game scripting skill development involved the use of language arts and mathematic skills. Challenges in game scripting included student debugging difficulties, as well as technology issues that distracted the students from their work with battery charging problems, Wi-Fi connectivity drops, and broken computers. The students showed moderate intrinsic motivation toward text-based scripting in game construction and appeared to prefer design artwork to scripting. Implications suggest that developing game scripting skills promoted the practice of language arts literacy and mathematics concepts. Game scripting was an engaging self-directed autonomous learning experience. Text-based scripting development is suggested to be a distinct digital literacy.Item Logos Ex Machina: A reasoned approach toward Cancer(2012-05) Avila, Andrew; Gollahon, Lauren; Strauss, Richard E.; Rice, Sean H.; Butler, Boyd; Watson, RichardLimitations in our current ability to integrate a diverse spectrum of genetic information in an effort to elucidate the underlying causes of cancer has spawned the need for a novel cancer modeling approach. Public repositories of biological pathways and gene expression experiments were combined in order to provide a systems biology approach toward cancer. Furthermore, by unifying these sources of knowledge, the ability to predict expression levels of unmeasured genes was developed. This technique was then applied to a variety of cancer types in order to resolve commonalities between heretofore divergent (or disparate) cancers. The results generated in this manner revealed characteristics that challenge the current prevailing paradigm of cancer. Specifically, the predicted results, according to the Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer, of a significant upregulation of oncogenes and a significant downregulation of tumor suppressor genes was not found. In contrast, it was found that oncogenes were significantly downregulated and tumor suppressor genes were upregulated among the cancers examined. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the differential expression, in cancer cells, of genes involved in the cellular differentiation and wound healing processes. These results were used as a springboard to develop a novel oncogenesis hypothesis, named Umbracesis. In short, the Umbracesis hypothesis proposes that disruption of the wound healing process via carcinogens, occurs in such a way as to prevent organismic homeostasis from being recovered or prevent full re-differentiation of dedifferentiated cells. The former concept is implicated in inflammatory cancers. Whereas the latter concept, is implicated in cancers that show characteristics associated with embryonic tissues. It was concluded, that the instrumental use of the modeling approach, developed within this study, has implications beyond cancer and may be of use within other areas of biomedical concern.Item Modest : Modeling, Debugging, and Testing distributed programs(2016-12) Rosales, David Andrew; Garg, Vijay K. (Vijay Kumar), 1963-Modest (Modeling, Debugging, and Testing) is a graphical modeling and testing environment for simulating the execution of distributed systems. Its objective is to assist as a learning tool but more importantly to aid in the design and implementation of distributed algorithms. It builds the simulation environment which means that only the algorithm is required from the user to perform testing. Logging and message animations help understand what events have occurred. Modest has the ability to replicate real life scenarios by inflicting network latency, network failures, and server failures. With the ability to quickly customize environment configuration and options, custom algorithm simulation can be initiated in minimal amounts of time. The concept of distributed computing can be complicated and Modest helps to simplify it with a modern user interface design.Item Musical expertise as a scaffold for novice programming(2015-05) Benton, Thomas Jonathan; Hughes, Joan E.; Azevedo, Flavio; Berland, Matthew; Resta, Paul; Rosenblum, JasonThis study addresses the role of musical expertise on novice computer programming. Engaging novices with computer programming is one of the great challenges of computer science education. Although there is extensive research focusing on constructionist approaches to programming education and creative entry points to programming, little research addresses the topic of how musical expertise informs an unstructured programming activity. To answer this question I focused on the role of participant talk during programming, patterns in participant programming, and evidence of computational thinking in participants’ final Scratch projects. For this interpretivist study, I worked with a dozen novice programmers from a variety of musical backgrounds: classical musicians, jazz musicians, composers, and non- musicians. Each participant worked on a free-form musical project in the Scratch programming environment. I collected data including participant talk, screen recordings of participant programming, and participants’ final Scratch projects. Overall, musical participants more readily took to the numeracy involved in programming music in Scratch. Also, musical participants were able to use musical concepts and techniques as jumping-off points for programming challenges. Considering my results by participant group, composers stood out in a number of ways: working the longest, testing their programs the most often, adding Scratch objects the slowest, v removing the most Scratch objects, creating projects of the greatest nested depth, and unanimous use of operators and random numbers. Non-musicians, on the other hand, worked for the shortest amount of time, added the fewest Scratch objects, and created projects of the lowest nested depth. In addition to adding to the body of research around chunking and tinkering, this study reinforces the importance of context and comfort in an introduction to computer programming. Composition may be an especially rich area to leverage, given the design- like programming activity of the composers here. Future research projects could resemble this one while focusing on younger learners, explicit musical concepts like those invoked by participants, or alternative performing arts framings such as theater or dance.Item Quadratic programming with linear inequality constraints(Texas Tech University, 1969-08) Pore, Michael DavidThe least-squares method of optimization of quadratic functions is the most common and widely practiced. The exact procedure in matrix form, is described by Boot, p.25 [2]. Some of the merits of the least-squares method are discussed in [1]. This thesis discusses this least-squares method of optimization in several restricted cases. The matrix format is used throughout, and the less than full rank case (the matrix in the quadratic part of the objective function is of less than full rank) is of particular interest. It is taken up in Chapter II along with the case of linear restrictions.Item Weak-memory local reasoning(2012-12) Wehrman, Ian Anthony; Hunt, Warren A., 1958-; Moore, J Strother, 1947-; Berdine, Josh; Hoare, C. A. R.; Emerson, E. Allen; Fussell, Donald SProgram logics are formal logics designed to facilitate specification and correctness reasoning for software programs. Separation logic, a recent program logic for C-like programs, has found great success in automated verification due in large part to its embodiment of the principle of local reasoning, in which specifications and proofs are restricted to just those resources—variables, shared memory addresses, locks, etc.—used by the program during execution. Existing program logics make the strong assumption that all threads agree on the values of shared memory at all times. But, on modern computer architectures, this assumption is unsound for certain shared-memory concurrent programs: namely, those with races. Typically races are considered to be errors, but some programs, like lock-free concurrent data structures, are necessarily racy. Verification of these difficult programs must take into account the weaker models of memory provided by the architectures on which they execute. This dissertation project seeks to explicate a local reasoning principle for x86-like architectures. The principle is demonstrated with a new program logic for concurrent C-like programs that incorporates ideas from separation logic. The goal of the logic is to allow verification of racy programs like concurrent data structures for which no general-purpose high-level verification techniques exist.