Browsing Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 12-31 of 10036
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A "Right for Every American:" Understanding the Concept of a "Human Right to Health" in the Context of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
(2012-12)This project examines the role that the concept of a “human right to health” played in the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). It analyzes this topic through the study of speeches made by ... -
A "Trinitarian" Theology of Religions? An Augustinian Assessment of Several Recent Proposals
(2007-05-04)Contemporary theology is driven by a quest to make the doctrine of the Trinity “relevant” to a wide variety of concerns. Books and articles abound on the Trinity and personhood, the Trinity and ecclesiology, the Trinity ... -
A 3D Active Microwave Imaging System for Breast Cancer Screening
(2008-12-11)A 3D microwave imaging system suitable for clinical trials has been developed. The anatomy, histology, and pathology of breast cancer were all carefully considered in the development of this system. The central component ... -
A Bargaining Theory of the “Edwards’ Effect” in the 2007-8 Democratic Presidential Primary
(2009)2008’s Democratic Presidential Primary will go down as one of the most competitive races in recent history. Two candidates, Senators Barack Obama (Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (New York), fought a see-saw battle to obtain ... -
A Bayesian Approach to Understanding Music Popularity
(2015-05-08)The Billboard Hot 100 has been the main record chart for popular music in the American music industry since its first official release in 1958. Today, this rank- ing is based upon the frequency of which a song is played ... -
A Bayesian Dirichlet-Multinomial Test for Cross-Group Differences
(2016)Testing for differences within data sets is an important issue across various applications. Our work is primarily motivated by the analysis of microbiomial composition, which has been increasingly relevant and important ... -
A Bayesian Forward Simulation Approach to Establishing a Realistic Prior Model for Complex Geometrical Objects
(2018)Geology is a descriptive science making itself hard to provide quantification. We develop a Bayesian forward simulation approach to formulate a realistic prior model for geological images using the Approximate Bayesian ... -
A Bayesian Hierarchical Model with SNP-level Functional Priors Applied to a Pathway-wide Association Study.
(2010)Tremendous effort has been put into study of the etiology of complexdiseases including the breast cancer, type 2 diabetes,cardiovascular diseases, and prostate cancers. Despite large numbers of reported disease-associated ... -
A Bayesian Model for Nucleosome Positioning Using DNase-seq Data
(2015)As fundamental structural units of the chromatin, nucleosomes are involved in virtually all aspects of genome function. Different methods have been developed to map genome-wide nucleosome positions, including MNase-seq and ... -
A Bayesian Model of Cognitive Control
(2014)"Cognitive control" describes endogenous guidance of behavior in situations where routine stimulus-response associations are suboptimal for achieving a desired goal. The computational and neural mechanisms underlying this ... -
A Bayesian Strategy to the 20 Question Game with Applications to Recommender Systems
(2017)In this paper, we develop an algorithm that utilizes a Bayesian strategy to determine a sequence of questions to play the 20 Question game. The algorithm is motivated with an application to active recommender systems. We ... -
A Beautiful Noise: A History of Contemporary Worship Music in Modern America
(2015)How did rock and roll, the best music for worshipping the devil, become the finest music for worshipping God? This study narrates the import of rock music into church sanctuaries across America via the rise of contemporary ... -
A Biomass Fuel Assessment for Duke University’s Chilled Water Plant #2
(2010-04-30)This Masters Project identifies the University’s biomass fuelshed and locates potential supply sources and probable fuel quantities. An Excel workbook couples user-defined transportation, processing, collection and handling, ... -
A Biopsychosocial Study of the Mammography Pain Experiences of Breast Cancer Survivors
(2009)Based on a biopsychosocial model of mammography pain, the current study assessed if specific biological and psychosocial factors were associated with higher reported mammography pain in early stage breast cancer survivors. ... -
A Black-Scholes-integrated Gaussian Process Model for American Option Pricing
(2020-04-15)Acknowledging the lack of option pricing models that simultaneously have high prediction power, high computational efficiency, and interpretations that abide by financial principles, we suggest a Black-Scholes-integrated ... -
A Bottom-up Approach to Setting a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target for Charlotte, North Carolina
(2011-04-28)In 2007, Charlotte’s City Council passed a resolution directing City staff to: (1) Inventory City Operations Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions; (2) Establish aggressive and realistic GHG emission reduction targets; (3) Create ... -
A bottom-up electricity demand model for the residential sector in Querétaro, Mexico
(2016-12-12)There is a growing interest in reducing energy consumption and its associated greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy. The residential sector is a substantial consumer of energy in every country ... -
A Bottom-Up Model of Residential Electricity Demand in North and South Carolina
(2017-04-28)Residential electricity is a significant component of total electricity use in the United States, and the residential market is also a key demographic for energy efficiency (EE) and distributed generation growth. Uncertainty ... -
A Brief Review and Analysis of Spectrum Auctions in Canada
(2017-05-08)We begin by explaining the importance of efficient spectrum allocation and reviewing Canada’s recent spectrum allocation history. We then use a dataset covering more than 1,200 licenses auctioned from 2001 to 2015 that ... -
A Business Plan for Blue Carbon Offsets at Duke University
(2012-04-26)Marine ecosystems such as salt marshes, sea grasses and mangroves absorb from the atmosphere and store large amounts of carbon, both in their vegetation and in the soil beneath them. In light of rapid climate change and ...
