Showcase of Faculty Scholarly & Creative Activity

Statistical methodology and data analytics have avenues of exploring relationships among observed variables that are qualitative and quantitative in nature. The main objective of this study is to show that there is not a single “best” model to predict the length of stay of elderly patients; but rather that there is a preferred model for different age groups with various health conditions. We investigate a large amount of public data that are collected for the Agency for Health Care Administration and suggest possible predictive models to interpret its outcomes. Our data consist of every Medicare inpatient hospital discharge record related in the state of Florida 2011 related to the following primary diagnoses: Acute Myocardial Infarction, Heart Failure, and Pneumonia. The response variable is duration of stay in days. The nature of the predictor variables is either categorical or ordinal. We use an Accelerated Failure Time model and a Cox Proportional Hazard model for the right-censored response time in order to analyze related distribution functions. We interpret the effect of sex, primary diagnosis, age, inclusion of respiratory charges, and severity of illness as explanatory variables and use these to rank the patients in terms of expected length of stay. We use an extensive amount of visual display to substantiate the outcomes. The result includes expected instantaneous rate of change on the hazard functions of Accelerated Failure Time and Cox Proportional Hazard models, as well as the Kaplan Meier estimates. The study results indicate the importance of using multiple model types when analyzing any data which incorporates failure time data.

In this work, a denial of service (DoS) attack known as the clogging attack has been performed on three different modern protocols for smart grid (SG) communications. The first protocol provides authentication between smart meters (SM) and a security and authentication server (SAS). The second protocol facilitates secure and private communications between electric vehicles (EV) and the smart grid. The third protocol is a secure and efficient key distribution protocol for the smart grid.

Recent research on labor market conditions in the United States points to a rise in 'precarious work,' which is characterized by low wages, unstable and/or temporary work arrangements, underemployment, economic insecurity, and an absence of employer-provided benefits. This article examines the prevalence of precarious work in the growing logistics sector of the U.S. economy and the mechanisms facilitating these working conditions. These domestic developments are placed in the context of the geographic reorganization of production and the restructuring of the employment relationship under a neo-liberal political economic regime. This article highlights two logistics industries, drayage trucking and warehouse/distribution centers (W/DCs)-and the challenges facing workers in these industries. For port truckers, this involves their misclassification as 'independent contractors.' For W/DC workers, the core issue is labor outsourcing and temporary work. The article concludes with an overview of recent labor actions taken to improve conditions for workers.

This unique multimedia exhibit examines the intersection of personal identity and brand identity through the tattooed fans of Irish rock band U2. It showcases bodily markings in the context of related U2 artifacts; presents the compelling personal stories behind the tattooed logos, symbols and lyrics; and explores the dynamic relationship between fan and band as U2’s visual identity passes into the hands and onto the bodies of fans. Curated by Beth Nabi, the exhibit displays the research of the U2 Tattoo Project, an ongoing international curation and study of U2-related tattoos currently based on online submissions (U2tattooproject.com) as well as personal interviews with nearly 150 fans from 17 different cities in 3 countries and photographs of more than 300 fan tattoos. In 40 years as a band, U2 has accumulated a rich history of transient visual identities from each era or album, but no consistently used logo, like the Rolling Stones’ legendary lips-and-tongue symbol. The U2 Tattoo Project was created to study what, in the absence of that official logo, U2 fans get tattooed, and why. As both tattoos and fandom gain significance in popular culture, this unique study of these areas contributes to new understandings of meaning-making and the transition of symbols from creator to audience, and back again. The U2 Tattoo Project considers graphic design in an unconsidered medium of tattooed skin, and this unprecedented study offers valuable insight into the intersection of brand identity and personal identity.

The intermodal logistics supply chain is designed to move goods from the point of production to the point of consumption as quickly and as cheaply as possible. The ability to accomplish this objective has allowed for the wholesale geographic relocation and offshoring of basic manufacturing and assembly. As a chain of linked and integrated organizations characterized by sequential interdependence, interorganizational relations play a key role in determining the level of integration and seamlessness. Yet there is one critical interorganizational link in the chain that deviates from this vision. This is the relationship between the shipping container terminal and drayage trucking operations which is better described as a form of intermodaldisintegration. The weakness in this link of the supply chain is explained by the divergent industrial structures and labor market conditions, the unique nature of the transaction, and the externalization of costs to subordinate workers.

The submitted videos are a representation of recent performances and world premieres of commissions by Dr. Andrea Venet’s percussion duo, Escape Ten. Escape Ten is an ensemble in residence at the UNF School of Music with Dr. Annie Stevens (Virginia Tech). The first video is of a new composition, 2300 Degrees, by Ivan Trevino. Trevino held a musical residence at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY and was greatly affected by observing glass blower Lino Tagliapietra work. Ivan states “In order to recreate the feelings I felt while watching Lino work, I decided to create a piece with a stream of unrelenting notes, while at times having each player play in time signatures different than the other. As you can imagine, this is a very challenging piece to play, and the most difficult duo I've written.” The second video contains two pieces, the first entitled Clear Midnight by Michael Burritt, followed by Fastlane by Hungarian composer Aurél Holló. Clear Midnight is a continuous two-movement work connected by a drum interlude, and is inspired by the poem 'A Clear Midnight' by Walt Whitman. The piece showcases interjectory and organic uses of the drums in a homogenous manner within the marimba texture. What is most unique about the work is that the performers are required to sing while playing their instruments in the middle section, eliciting an immediate, visceral response from the listener. Fastlane is by Aurél Holló, who is most notable for his wide breadth of performances with the internationally acclaimed Hungarian percussion ensemble Amadinda. Holló’s musical influences include music by György Ligeti and Balinese Gamelan, a very rhythmic and percussive music with a heavy emphasis on repeated, interlocking patterns called kotekan by idiophones and gong chimes. You can hear these influences in timbre and rhythm in Fastlane. A supplemental video of Clear Midnight is also provided: https://youtu.be/qfRen2JS2zA

Why do legislative parties emerge in democracies where elections are contested by individual candidates, rather than national party organizations? And can parties survive in the absence electoral pressure for their members to work on shared political goals? In this article, we examine the emergence and maintenance of party discipline in an atypical legislative context: California’s 1878–79 constitutional convention. The unusual partisan alignments among the delegates at the California convention provide us with a unique empirical opportunity to test election- and policy-based explanations for legislative discipline. Our study combines a careful reading of the historical record with a statistical analysis of roll call votes cast at the convention to show how leaders of the “Nonpartisan” majority held together their disparate coalition of Democratic and Republican members in the face of conflicting preferences, ideological divisions, and well-organized political opponents. Our findings provide evidence that cohesive parties can exist even in the absence of broadly shared electoral pressures or policy goals.

A proof of a Hormander theorem applicable to sum of squares operators with degeneracies of exponential order.

Jax symphony presents music composed by Glass and Bach accompanied by visual projections—product of artistic collaboration between Vanessa B. Cruz and Sheila Goloborotko. The artists created an elaborate video projection for each composition in an effort to create a unique visual environment to these evocative compositions. With the combination of live music and projections the audience experiences music as abstract imagery that travels and transmutes the physical space and the realm of all senses. The tying thread that will move throughout all three sections will be the energy of Nature. Visuals will move from a water environment to land, creating this push and pull, like the tide: a coming together of water and land, ebb and flow. This analogy of a tidal pull was made to reflect on the relationships between the Artist (both musical and visual) and the Audience; the Composer and the Musicians. This idea of the giving and taking of energy from one to another, in order to create a shared experience: one cannot exist without the other.

Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America’s largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola’s unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.

This book seeks to convey the transformational excitement of discovery experienced by the students as they traveled through Italian culture and experienced all the elements of the Mediterranean diet through daily life in Italy. As one student stated, “From my perspective and from what I’ve witnessed, the Italian people seem to innately enjoy what they are doing, when they are doing it, and who they are doing it with. These observations have inspired me to incorporate this mindset more into my own life so that wherever I am, I am all there.” Mediterranean Diet and Culture in Tuscany and Umbria, Italy

In this work we propose to design and implement a secure one-time password (OTP) system to provide a better method of enforcing a stricter set of policies, that bypass natural human habits of choosing passwords that do not abide by the policies of an organization, leaving systems vulnerable to security threats. We would then perform static and dynamic analysis of our OTP system to ensure it is not vulnerable to different kinds of security threats and other risks.