Digital Commons Network^™

Integrating Depositional Facies And Sequence Stratigraphy In Characterizing Unconventional Reservoirs: Eagle Ford Shale, South Texas, Seth Jordan Workman

Masters Theses

The Mid-to-Late Cretaceous Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas is a mixed siliciclastic/carbonate, unconventional resource play with considerable oil and natural gas. Characterization of Eagle Ford reservoir quality and potential is made difficult by complex, small-scale heterogeneities.

The limited availability of subsurface data constrains previous subsurface Eagle Ford investigations. As a result, the internal variability of depositional facies and reservoir attributes remain poorly understood for these Eagle Ford rocks.

This investigation incorporates a representative group of four Eagle Ford cores, and core data, from within the current play area in order to: 1) determine facies successions, 2) establish a hierarchal …

Ethical Ambivalence In Local Television Weathercasting: A Rossian Analysis, Vernon Keith Thompson

Masters Theses

Today’s television weathercasters are being called upon increasingly to go beyond benign weather prognostications to become the “newsroom experts” for science topics. The expectation to act as both scientists and journalists can cause ethical ambivalence (EA), a sociological condition in which, faced with conflicting norms, the subject feels that he/she is being pulled psychologically in two different directions (Jansen & Von Glinow, 1985). This thesis presents a Rossian analysis of climate change in weathercasting, a topic that captures the most important ethical tensions arising from conflicting duties within the weathercaster role, specifically: a) how might the duties of the television …

Artificial Immune Systems And Particle Swarm Optimization For Solutions To The General Adversarial Agents Problem, Jeremy Mange

Dissertations

The general adversarial agents problem is an abstract problem description touching on the fields of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, decision theory, and game theory. The goal of the problem is, given one or more mobile agents, each identified as either “friendly" or “enemy", along with a specified environment state, to choose an action or series of actions from all possible valid choices for the next “timestep" or series thereof, in order to lead toward a specified outcome or set of outcomes. This dissertation explores approaches to this problem utilizing Artificial Immune Systems, Particle Swarm Optimization, and hybrid approaches, along with …

Compositional And Structural Analysis Of Nitrogen Incorporated And Ion Implanted Diamond Thin Films, Elias James Garratt

Dissertations

Significant progress in area of nano-structured thin film systems has taken place in recent decades. In particular, diamond thin film systems are being widely studied for their wear resistant, optical and electronic properties. Of the various methods researchers use to modify the structure of such films, three techniques in particular are of interest due to their versatility: modification of the growth atmosphere, growth on metalized substrates, providing an interfacial layer, and modification through post-growth ion implantation. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects each has to the structure and composition of elements. Different techniques are applied in …

Engineered Interfaces And Nano-Scale Thin Films For Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Electrolytes, Manjula I. Nandasiri

Dissertations

Solid state electrolytes with high oxygen ionic conductivity at low temperatures are required to develop cost effective and efficient solid oxide fuel cells. This study investigates the influence of engineered interfaces on the oxygen ionic conductivity of nano-scale multilayer thin film electrolytes. The epitaxial Sm₂O₃ doped C_eO₂ (SDC) and Sc₂O₃ stabilized ZrO₂ (ScSZ) are selected as the alternative layers for the proposed multilayer thin film electrolyte based on the optimum structural, chemical, and electrical properties reported in the previous studies. The epitaxial SDC(111)/ScSZ(111) multilayer thin films are grown on high …

A Comparative Study Of Exact Versus Propensity Matching Techniques Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Mukaria J. J. Itang'ata

Dissertations

Often researchers face situations where comparative studies between two or more programs are necessary to make causal inferences for informed policy decision-making. Experimental designs employing randomization provide the strongest evidence for causal inferences. However, many pragmatic and ethical challenges may preclude the use of randomized designs. In such situations, subject matching provides an alternative design approach for conducting causal inference studies. This study examined various design conditions hypothesized to affect matching procedures’ bias recovery ability.

See attachment for full abstract.

A Computational Method For Estimating And Finding The Hconfidence Interval Of The Ratio Scale Parameters In The Two-Sample Problem, Mona Abdullah Alduailij

Dissertations

Testing equality of variances between two samples is applied in various fields. However, in the absence of non-normal assumptions, equality of variance tests would not yield robust results. In real life situation, the absence of such assumptions is even evident, which calls for more reliable tests to accommodate for the lack of these assumptions. There are abundant parametric and nonparametric methods for estimating the scale parameter; yet a distribution-free method for estimating and finding the confident interval ratio of scale parameters in the two-sample problem would be a reliable alternative. A comparison between existing parametric and non-parametric rank tests for …

Metal-Organic And Supramolecular Architectures Based On Mechanically Interlocked Molecules, Isurika Rosini Fernando

Dissertations

The focus of this work is on mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs), which have unusual physicochemical and mechanical properties with potential applications in nano-scale/molecular devices and high strength materials.

Rotaxanes, for example, consist of an axle-like molecule threaded through a wheel-like molecule, with bulky groups at the two ends of the axle preventing the wheel from dissociating. The position of the wheel along the axle can be switched in a controllable and reversible manner by applying external stimuli, a feature that might lead to the next generation of computers. Molecularly woven materials (MWMs), another example of molecules with mechanically interlocked features, …

Weighted Shifts Of Finite Multiplicity, Daniel S. Sievewright

Dissertations

We will discuss the structure of weighted shift operators on a separable, infinite dimensional, complex Hilbert space. A weighted shift is said to have multiplicity n when all the weights are n x n matrices. To study these weighted shifts, we will investigate which operators can belong to the Deddens algebras and spectral radius algebras, which can be quite large. This will lead to the necessary and sufficient conditions for these algebras to have a nontrivial invariant subspace.

Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance Induced Structure-Property Relationships Of Metal Nanostructures, Subramanian Vilayurganapathy

Dissertations

The confluence of nanotechnology and plasmonics has led to new and interesting phenomena. The industrial need for fast, efficient and miniature devices which constantly push the boundaries on device performance tap into the happy marriage between these diverse fields. Designing devices for real life application that give superior performance when compared with existing ones are enabled by a better understanding of their structure-property relationships. Among all the design constraints, without doubt, the shape and size of the nanostructure along with the dielectric medium surrounding it has the maximum influence on the response and thereby the performance of the device. Hence …