Digital Commons Network^™

Synthesis And Characterization Of Vanadium Oxide Nanomaterials, Tyler M. Fears

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation focuses on the synthesis and characterization of vanadium oxide nanomaterials and neutron-transparent Li-ion battery electrolytes.

Vanadium oxide gels were synthesized via the epoxide-assisted gelation of VOCl₃ using epichlorohydrin in ethanol. This represents the first epoxide-assisted gelation developed for vanadium oxide gels and serves as a potential economical replacement for the fabrication of vanadium oxide gels via the hydrolysis of vanadium alkoxides. Though epoxide-assisted gelation has been demonstrated for a number of transition metal oxides, the gelation mechanism observed here for VOCl₃ appears to be unique.

While investigating the electrochemical and structural properties of lithium vanadates, it …

Efficient Cryptographic Primitives: Secure Comparison, Binary Decomposition And Proxy Re-Encryption, Feng Li

Doctoral Dissertations

”Data outsourcing becomes an essential paradigm for an organization to reduce operation costs on supporting and managing its IT infrastructure. When sensitive data are outsourced to a remote server, the data generally need to be encrypted before outsourcing. To preserve the confidentiality of the data, any computations performed by the server should only be on the encrypted data. In other words, the encrypted data should not be decrypted during any stage of the computation. This kind of task is commonly termed as query processing over encrypted data (QPED).

One natural solution to solve the QPED problem is to utilize fully …

Design And Implementation Of A Broker For Cloud Additive Manufacturing Services, Venkata Prashant Modekurthy

Masters Theses

"The growing number of cloud Additive Manufacturing (AM) services, offered by different providers over the Internet, makes it challenging for consumers to compare these cloud AM services to select a service of their choice. In addition, it is even more challenging for consumers to compare these cloud AM services against their personal preferences. This is because, consumers personal preferences on multiple service attributes such as price, material, accuracy, and schedule, should be considered for cloud AM service selection. The decentralized nature of these cloud AM services coupled by the need to consider consumers personal preferences during cloud AM service selection, …

Detection And Recognition Of R/F Devices Based On Their Unintended Electromagnetic Emissions Using Stochastic And Computational Intelligence Methods, Shikhar Prasad Acharya

Doctoral Dissertations

"Radio Frequency (RF) devices produce some amount of Unintended Electromagnetic Emissions (UEEs). UEEs are generally unique to a device and can be thought of as a signature of the device. This property of uniqueness of UEEs can be used to detect and identify the device producing the emission. The problem with UEEs is that they are very low in power and are often buried deep inside the noise band which makes them difficult to detect. There are two types of UEE detection methods. The first one is called stimulated detection method where the UEEs of a device are enhanced using …

Quantification Of Information Flow In Cyber Physical Systems, Li Feng

Doctoral Dissertations

"In Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs), traditional security mechanisms such as cryptography and access control are not enough to ensure the security of the system since complex interactions between the cyber portion and physical portion happen frequently. In particular, the physical infrastructure is inherently observable; aggregated physical observations can lead to unintended cyber information leakage. Information flow analysis, which aims to control the way information flows among different entities, is better suited for CPSs than the access control security mechanism. However, quantifying information leakage in CPSs can be challenging due to the flow of implicit information between the cyber portion, the …

Holocene Sedimentology And Stratigraphy Of Coastal Sediments In An Arid Climate, Al Qahmah, Southern Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Ibrahim Nabhan

Doctoral Dissertations

"Holocene sedimentary deposits in Al Qahmah coast, southern Red Sea, in Saudi Arabia have been accumulated on an arid siliciclastic coast in a rift tectonic setting. This study provides a detail interpretation and analysis of sedimentary facies, stratigraphy, depositional environment, and major geological processes. Two studies have been undertaken. First, petrological study of composition and texture of modern sediments and facies mapping delineate facies distribution and mechanisms of sediment transport and deposition. A unique suite of complex riverine, wave, tidal, wind, and chemical and biological processes affect the composition, texture, and distribution of the facies. Second, the depositional environments of …

Comprehensive Benefits Of Green Roofs, Madison R. Gibler

Masters Theses

"Green infrastructure uses vegetation, soils, and natural processes to manage water and create healthier urban environments, providing traditional roof services and alternative stormwater management technologies. Other benefits and impacts are not yet fully understood or valued. Research conducted assesses specific stormwater benefits of green roofs, providing information on nutrient leaching from media; and analyzes potential energy benefits through side-by-side comparisons of full-scale white, traditional black rubber, and green roofs in the mid-continent Missouri climate. Roofing media selection impacted leaching of nutrients, suspended solids, and organic carbon from the tested green roof media. Thermal properties were investigated at the building level, …

Fuzzy Adaptive Resonance Theory: Applications And Extensions, Clayton Parker Smith

Masters Theses

"Adaptive Resonance Theory, ART, is a powerful clustering tool for learning arbitrary patterns in a self-organizing manner. In this research, two papers are presented that examine the extensibility and applications of ART. The first paper examines a means to boost ART performance by assigning each cluster a vigilance value, instead of a single value for the whole ART module. A Particle Swarm Optimization technique is used to search for desirable vigilance values. In the second paper, it is shown how ART, and clustering in general, can be a useful tool in preprocessing time series data. Clustering quantization attempts to meaningfully …

Synthesis Of Different Sizes & Functions Nanoparticles, Jiaming Geng

Masters Theses

"Nanogels, whose size range from 1 to 100nm, have been interested in many research areas: cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, catalysts, photochemistry, and in optical switches or sensors. In Petroleum Engineering area, nanogels can be used as conformance control agent and emulsion stabilizer. And after grafting functional groups or hybrid, nanogels can be used as tracer for the visual modeling.

Though nanoparticles have been studied for more than 20 years, few of them are about nanogels. In the thesis, stirring rate, surfactant type and concentration were found have a large impact on the synthesis of nanogels. And cationic nanogels have salt and acid …

Paleogeographic And Paleoenvironmental Evolution Of Lacustrine And Fluvial Upper Triassic Zhangjiatan Shale Sequence, Ordos Basin, China, Qiuwan Yu

Masters Theses

"Detailed sequence stratigraphic and depositional systems analyses can effectively delineate factors and processes controlling deposition of fine-grained lacustrine sediments. Upper Triassic Zhangjiatan (ZJT) Shale Bed and adjacent strata in Ordos foreland basin was used as an example. A new depositional sequence model shows that the maximum regressive shoreline was more landward than that at the lowest lake-level. The study area is on the ramp margin, covering 100x90 km². Thin sections, cores and well-logs of 80 wells are used to calibrate log signatures, document lithofacies, and interpret depositional facies in a sequence stratigraphic context. The entire sequence thickens from …

Process Design, Dynamics, And Techno-Economic Analysis Of A Sustainable Coal, Wind, And Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Hybrid Energy System, Kyle Lee Buchheit

Doctoral Dissertations

"The availability of cheap electricity is one of the biggest factors for improving quality of life. With the debate on the effects of carbon dioxide emissions continuing, several countries have either implemented or are considering the reduction of emissions through various economic means. The inclusion of a monetary penalty on carbon emissions would increase the prices of electricity produced by carbon-based sources. The push for large-scale renewable sources of energy has met problems with regards to energy storage and availability. The proposed coal, wind, and nuclear hybrid energy system would combine a renewable energy source, wind, with traditional and stable …

Steam Flooding Screening And Eor Prediction By Using Clustering Algorithm And Data Visualization, Na Zhang

Masters Theses

"Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques are vitally important in the oil industry because these techniques could not only extend the life of wells, but also produce 10% to 30% additional oil from the reservoir. However, selecting the most suitable EOR techniques for unknown reservoirs is not easy for decision making. Based on literature, EOR screening criteria could help to find the best candidates for unknown projects, which is classified into two categories: conventional EOR screening and advanced EOR screening. In this research, an artificial intelligent (AI) method, hierarchical clustering algorithm, is adapted to analyze both steam flooding projects and worldwide …

Online Diagnosis Of Diabetes With Twitter Data, Farheen Ali

Masters Theses

"Innovation in technology enables people to communicate, share information and look for their needs by just sitting in rooms and going through some clicks. While social media has played a very important role in connecting people worldwide, its potential has stretched beyond the innovative idea of connecting people through their social networks. While many thought there was no meeting point for the healthcare sector and social media, it was a surprise when research and innovations have shown that social media could lay a very significant role in the health care sector.

Research has been done in developing models that could …

Palynological Interpretations Of Deep Sea Drilling Projects Cores In The Gulf Of Mexico And Bahamian Platform, Adam Patrick Barron

Masters Theses

"One hundred drill core samples were from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Sites 94, 98, and 540 were investigated for their palynological contents (pollen, spores, acritarchs, dinoflagellate cysts, and dispersed organic matter) to infer the paleoenvironmental and paleoceanographic history of the Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamian Platform during the middle Eocene to middle Miocene interval. At Sites 94 and 540, abundant dinoflagellate cysts (chiefly Operculodinium centrocarpum, Lingulodinium machaerophorum, Impagidinium sp., Nematosphaeropsis sp., and Spiniferites spp.) were used as paleoenvironmental indicators. Two alternating palynofacies assemblages were identified from dispersed organic matter analysis: terrestrially influenced assemblage A and marine dominated assemblage …

Application Of Loglinear Models To Claims Triangle Runoff Data, Netanya Lee Martin

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, we presented in detail different aspects of Verrall's chain ladder method and their advantages and disadvantages. Insurance companies must ensure there are enough reserves to cover future claims. To that end, it is useful to estimate mean expected losses. The chain ladder technique under a general linear model is the most widely used method for such estimation in property and casualty insurance. Verrall's chain ladder technique develops estimators for loss development ratios, mean expected ultimate claims, Bayesian premiums, and Bühlmann credibility premiums. The chain ladder technique can be used to estimate loss development in cases where data …

Energy Disaggregation In Nialm Using Hidden Markov Models, Anusha Sankara

Masters Theses

"This work presents an appliance disaggregation technique to handle the fundamental goal of the Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring (NIALM) problem i.e., a simple breakdown of an appliance level energy consumption of a house. It also presents the modeling of individual appliances as load models using hidden Markov models and combined appliances as a single load model using factorial hidden Markov models. Granularity of the power readings of the disaggregated appliances matches with that of the readings collected at the service entrance. Accuracy of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using publicly released Tracebase data sets and UK-DALE data sets at various …

Rote-Lcs Learning Classifier System For Classification And Prediction, Benjamin Daniels

Masters Theses

"Machine Learning (ML) involves the use of computer algorithms to solve for approximate solutions to problems with large, complex search spaces. Such problems have no known solution method, and search spaces too large to allow brute force search to be feasible. Evolutionary algorithms (EA) are a subset of machine learning algorithms which simulate fundamental concepts of evolution. EAs do not guarantee a perfect solution, but rather facilitate convergence to a solution of which the accuracy depends on a given EA's learning architecture and the dynamics of the problem.

Learning classifier systems (LCS) are algorithms comprising a subset of EAs. The …

Day Of The Week Effect In Returns And Volatility Of The S&P 500 Sector Indices, Juan Liu

Masters Theses

"Previous studies have shown that returns associated with the stock market or foreign exchange's futures show variations across the day of the week. On such study, that employs a modified GARCH model for estimation, shows that returns associated with the S&P 500 stock index is highest on Wednesday and lowest returns on Monday. The same study shows that volatility is highest on Fridays and lowest on Wednesdays. In this study we investigate if this day-of-the-week effect on returns and volatility is present in the different sectors that constitute the S&P 500 index. The data set used provides daily returns from …

Fault Interpretation And Reservoir Characterization Of The Farewell Formation Within Kerry Field, Taranaki Basin, New Zealand, Waleed Deefallah M Alotaby

Masters Theses

"The Kerry Field, located in the southern offshore Taranaki Basin, is a large liquid-rich gas accumulation with a thin (20 m) oil rim. The field was discovered by the New Zealand Oil & Gas in 1986 (well Kupe South-1). The gas and oil are trapped within a 9.2 km² fault-dependent three-way dip closure in the Paleocene Farewell Formation reservoir. Pressure, volume, and temperature (PVT) data indicate that the gas and oil columns in the field are in equilibrium with one another and are saturated at current reservoir conditions.

The Farewell Formation is the uppermost formation of the Kapuni Group …

Mineral And Geochemical Attributes Of The Midcontinent Rift Sequence; An Application For Deep Carbon Dioxide Sequestration, Alsedik Mohamed Ali Abousif

Doctoral Dissertations

"The potential for using the Oronto Group of the Midcontinent Rift (MCR) Sequence for CO₂ sequestration has been disparaged because of low porosity-permeability characteristics, which are largely a result of extensive calcite cementation. This study investigated the potential for using the MCR as a target for CO₂ sequestration by examining reactions involving detrital host-rock minerals at high pressure-temperature conditions that could provide dissolved Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, and Fe²⁺, and then precipitating these cations as carbonate minerals. The effect of carbonic acid on cement dissolution was also evaluated with respect to enhancing porosity and …

Dynamic Behavior Of Operational Wind Turbines Considering Aerodynamic And Seismic Load Interaction, Mohammad-Amin Asareh

Doctoral Dissertations

"With the advancements in the wind energy production industry, the demand for a cost effective and safe design of wind turbine structures is growing rapidly. The wide deployment of wind turbines in locations with high seismic hazard has lead engineers to take into account a more comprehensive seismic design of such structures. In response to the need for a computational tool that can perform coupled simulations of wind and seismic loads, a seismic module has been developed for the publicly available National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) code, FAST, at the first step of this research. This achievement allows engineers working …

Shear Wave Splitting Analysis Beneath Tien Shan: Geodynamic Implications Of Complex Anisotropy, Solomon Gerra Cherie

Doctoral Dissertations

"In spite of numerous studies, the mechanisms for the crustal shortening, mountain formation and associated tectonism leading to complex or simply seismic anisotropy formation beneath the Tien Shan Orogenic Belt is still debated. The most popular hypotheses suggested for the existence of seismic anisotropy are small-scale mantle convection, regional scale resistive basal shear and APM induced asthenospheric flow. Here, we used shear-wave splitting (SWS) measurements with good azimuthal coverage to provide additional constraints on the various models proposed by previous studies. One of the most effective approaches utilized to constrain convective mantle flow patterns is the splitting of P-to-S converted …

Vrcc-3d+: Qualitative Spatial And Temporal Reasoning In 3 Dimensions, Nathan Eloe

Doctoral Dissertations

"Qualitative Spatial Reasoning (QSR) has varying applications in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), visual programming language semantics, and digital image analysis. Systems for spatial reasoning over a set of objects have evolved in both expressive power and complexity, but implementations or usages of these systems are not common. This is partially due to the computational complexity of the operations required by the reasoner to make informed decisions about its surroundings. These theoretical systems are designed to focus on certain criteria, including efficiency of computation, ease of human comprehension, and expressive power. Sadly, the implementation of these systems is frequently left as …

Constitutive Activity In Orphan G Protein Coupled Receptors, Adam Lee Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

"The goal of this research was to use a distal signaling pathway analysis to evaluate the extent of agonist independent constitutive signaling among orphan class-A G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). These receptors translate extracellular signals via conformational change into intracellular activation of different G proteins and subsequent second messenger synthesis. These small molecules regulate cellular biochemistry, eventually leading to nuclear signaling that results in changes in gene expression. Some GPCRs are capable of signaling in the absence of an activating ligand, a phenomenon called constitutive activity that is inhibited via an "inverse-agonist". The use of cAMP dependent Luciferase expression is …

Computing And The Electrical Transport Properties Of Coupled Quantum Networks, Casey Andrew Cain

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation a number of investigations were conducted on ballistic quantum networks in the mesoscopic range. In this regime, the wave nature of electron transport under the influence of transverse magnetic fields leads to interesting applications for digital logic and computing circuits. The work specifically looks at characterizing a few main areas that would be of interest to experimentalists who are working in nanostructure devices, and is organized as a series of papers. The first paper analyzes scaling relations and normal mode charge distributions for such circuits in both isolated and open (terminals attached) form. The second paper compares …

Performance Analysis And Modelling Of Hybrid Photovoltaic-Thermal Solar Panels, Nicole C. Annis

Doctoral Dissertations

A photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) panel was constructed, tested, and modelled using both MATLAB and TRNSYS. During the experimental testing, which took place on the Missouri University of Science and Technology campus in Rolla, Missouri; two identical PVT panels were tested alongside two PV panels to gather an electrical baseline for comparison. Approximately 69 days’ worth of data were of data were collected during the summer of 2014. The PV electrical, PVT electrical, PVT thermal and PVT combined (electrical and thermal) efficiencies were 3.5-5.6%, 3.4-5.4%, 20.9-11.6%, and 24.3-17.0%, respectively.

A MATLAB program was developed using existing equations for one-dimensional, quasi-steady model of …

Methods And Algorithms For Service Selection And Recommendation (Preference And Aggregation Based), Kenneth Kofi Fletcher

Doctoral Dissertations

"In order for service users to get the best service that meets their requirements, they prefer to personalize their non-functional attributes, such as reliability and price. However, the personalization makes it challenging because service providers have to deal with conflicting non-functional attributes when selecting services for users. In addition, users may sometimes want to explicitly specify their trade-offs among non-functional attributes to make their preferences known to service providers. Typically, users' service search requests with conflicting non-functional attributes may result in a ranked list of services that partially meet their needs. When this happens, it is natural for users to …

The Synthesis And Characterization Of Water-Reducible Nanoscale Colloidal Unimolecular Polymer (Cup) Particles, Cynthia J. Riddles

Doctoral Dissertations

"The coatings industry has adapted to more stringent guidelines in paint formulations. Current VOC (volatile organic compound) limits placed by the federal government have pushed the industry toward the development of paint formulations which have very little to no VOC's. The development of Colloidal Unimolecular Polymer (CUP) particles is a step in the direction of providing a resin system which exists in zero VOC aqueous dispersion.

The CUP particles are a part of the polymer field of Single Chain Nano Particles (SCNP) and ranged in diameters of 3-9 nm. The research presented in this dissertation describes the synthesis and design …

Essays On Unit Root Testing In Time Series, Xiao Zhong

Doctoral Dissertations

"Unit root tests are frequently employed by applied time series analysts to determine if the underlying model that generates an empirical process has a component that can be well-described by a random walk. More specifically, when the time series can be modeled using an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) process, such tests aim to determine if the autoregressive (AR) polynomial has one or more unit roots. The effect of economic shocks do not diminish with time when there is one or more unit roots in the AR polynomial, whereas the contribution of shocks decay geometrically when all the roots are outside …

Aerial Vehicle Trajectory Design For Spatio-Temporal Task Satisfaction And Aggregation Based On Utility Metric, Amarender Reddy Mekala

Masters Theses

"Flight trajectories are mainly designed in order to make sure that the aerial vehicle reaches the destination point from the start point. In addition to that, the flight path is designed in such a way that the flight avoids dangerous zones and the maneuvers required for the path are practically feasible for the flight.

This thesis focuses on the aerial vehicle trajectory generation passing through a set of pre-defined way points while satisfying the task points sent by the ground base station in between the way points. Each specified waypoint is reached exactly at the specified location and time. Intermediate …