Digital Commons Network^™

Bedrock Mapping Using Shear Wave Velocity Characterization And H/V Analysis, James P. Gonsiewski

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An experiment was conducted to constrain the HVSR (Horizontal to Vertical Spectral Ratio) or H/V spectral ratio method at a glaciated site in northeast Ohio. Multiple methods were used to determine the shear wave velocity (Vs) and depth (h) to bedrock in relation to the fundamental resonant frequency (f_o) determined from 3-component seismic data, as defined by the relationship f₀=Vs/4h. The shear wave velocity structure was determined at three sites using MASW (Multi-channel Analysis of Surface Waves) and shear wave refraction methods, and the fundamental resonant frequency was passively observed using 3-component Guralp broadband seismometers. The …

Design Of A Novel Low - Cost, Portable, 3d Ultrasound System With Extended Imaging Capabilities For Point-Of-Care Applications, Michail Tsakalakis

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Ultrasound Imaging (USI) or Medical Sonography (MS), as it is formally called, has been widely used in biomedical applications over the last decades. USI can provide clinicians with a thorough view of the internal parts of the human body, making use of sound waves of higher frequencies than humans can perceive. USI systems are considered highly portable and of low-cost, compared to other imaging modalities. However, despite those advantages, Ultrasound Systems (US) and especially 3D ones, have not been yet extensively utilized for Point-of-Care (POC) applications, due to numerous restrictions and artifacts that they currently present.

Hardware complexity and real-time …

Knowledge Enabled Location Prediction Of Twitter Users, Revathy Krishnamurthy

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As the popularity of online social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook continues to rise, the volume of textual content generated on the web is increasing rapidly. The mining of user generated content in social media has proven effective in domains ranging from personalization and recommendation systems to crisis management. These applications stand to be further enhanced by incorporating information about the geo-position of social media users in their analysis. Due to privacy concerns, users are largely reluctant to share their location information. As a consequence of this, researchers have focused on automatic inferencing of location information from the …

A Computational Study Of A Photovoltaic Compound Parabolic Concentrator, William M. Vance

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Routines have been written and added to the Wright State developed solar system simulation program called Solar_PVHFC to model incident solar radiation for a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) that uses solar panels (photovoltaic panels) to produce electrical energy. Solar_PVHFC is a program that models a solar energy system composed of solar panels to produce electricity from the sun, hydrogen storage tanks to chemically store the energy produced by the solar panels, and fuel cells to convert between electrical and chemical energy when required. Solar_PVHFC features several adjustable parameters to model a solar panel, hydrogen storage, and fuel cell system. Now …

Polymerization Of Peek Ab Monomers With Oxyalkylene Linkages Via Nas And Friedel-Crafts Reactions, Shannon Theresa Hennelly

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The synthesis of the NAS monomer, 4-fluoro-4'-(2-(4-benzyloxyphenoxy)ethoxy) benzophenone, was envisioned as a two-step process. Thus, the synthesis of 4-fluoro- 4'-(2-(4-benzyloxyphenoxy)ethoxy)benzophenone was accomplished by the reaction of 4-fluoro-4'-hydroxybenzophenone and 1-(benzyloxy)-4-(2bromoethoxy) benzene. Hydrogenation of 4-fluoro-4'-(2-(4-benzyloxyphenoxy)ethoxy) benzophenone with 10% Pd/C was used to successfully remove the benzylic ether protective group, however, the reaction also reduced the benzophenone carbonyl. The synthesis of the EAS monomer, 4-(2-(4-phenoxyphenoxy)ethoxy)benzoic acid, was also a two-step process. The reaction of ethyl p-(2-hydroxyethoxy)benzoate and 4-phenoxyphenol gave ethyl 4-(2-(4-phenoxyphenoxy)ethoxy)benzoate in good yield. This ester could be easily hydrolyzed to 4-(2-(4-pheonxyphenoxy)ethoxybenzoic acid. The polymerization of the EAS monomer, 4-(2-(4-pheonxyphenoxy)ethoxybenzoic acid, was carried …

Algal Quality Controls The Distribution, Behavior And Growth Of Algivorous Cichlids In Lake Tanganyika, Renalda Nanziga Munubi

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The nutritional value of primary producer is dependent on the concentrations of C, N and P. These elements are the building blocks for protein, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids and other biochemical compounds. The balance between the supply of dietary elements and the herbivore's demand is crucial for the growth of algivorous organisms, including fish. However, anthropogenic changes in primary producer quality due to sediments may alter the value and quantity of food in the littoral zone of Lake Tanganyika, which may affect both herbivorous near shore and pelagic fisheries. This dissertation focuses on the influence of algae food on herbivore …

Growth Of Sparingly-Soluble Ab-Type Minerals As A Function Of Their A:B Ratio, Jacquelyn N. Bracco

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A fundamental understanding of mineral growth kinetics is necessary to predict mineral reactivity in geologic environments. We use hydrothermal atomic force microscopy (HAFM) to measure step advance speeds and morphological evolution of the sparingly-soluble minerals magnesite (MgCO3), barite (BaSO4) and celestite (SrSO4) while systematically varying the concentrations of their constituent cations and anions in solution. For all three minerals, a maximum step velocity is reached at an aqueous cation:anion concentration (r) near unity and decreases with extreme r despite order of magnitude differences in the water exchange rate for the cations comprising the minerals. Affinity based models fail to reproduce …

Accelerated Degradation Of Chlorinated Solvents By Nanoscale Zero-Valent Iron Coated With Iron Monosulfide And Stabilized With Carboxymethyl Cellulose, Shirin Ghahghaei Nezamabadi

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Nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) injections have proven to be a promising approach for the remediation of aquifers contaminated by chlorinated organic pollutants. This study compares the efficacy of nZVI in sulfidated and unamended forms in degrading selected chlorinated hyrocarbons (CHCs). Results show that nZVI amended with iron monosulfide (FeS) increases the rate of dechlorination of CT, CF and 1,1,1-TCA compared to that by unamended nZVI. The focus of this research was to characterize degradation kinetics and degradation byproduct distributions of CT, CF and 1,1,1-TCA by nZVI coated by iron monosulfide, which is represented as nZVI/FeS. To prevent nZVI particles from …

A Workload Balanced Mapreduce Framework On Gpu Platforms, Yue Zhang

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The MapReduce framework is a programming model proposed by Google to process large datasets. It is an efficient framework that can be used in many areas, such as social network, scientific research, electronic business, etc. Hence, more and more MapReduce frameworks are implemented on different platforms, including Phoenix (based on multicore CPU), MapCG (based on GPU), and StreamMR (based on GPU). However, these MapReduce frameworks have limitations, and they cannot handle the collision problem in the map phase, and the unbalanced workload problems in the reduce phase. To improve the performance of the MapReduce framework on GPGPUs, in this thesis, …

Features For Ranking Tweets Based On Credibility And Newsworthiness, Jacob W. Ross

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We create a robust and general feature set for learning to rank algorithms that rank tweets based on credibility and newsworthiness. In previous works, it has been demonstrated that when the training and testing data are from two distinct time periods, the ranker performs poorly. We improve upon previous work by creating a feature set that does not over fit a particular year or set of topics. This is critical given how people utilize social media changes as time progresses, and the topics discussed vary. In addition, we are constantly gaining new tweet data. Thus, it is important to be …

Proxy-Pet Building Blocks As A Design Element For Library Synthesis, Lainey Jo Mallin

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In exploring radioligands for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, it is not unusual to synthesize a library of compounds around some targeting scaffold, screen for optimal binding to a relevant diagnostic cellular target, remove some portion of optimized molecule so as to append the requisite reporter group, and then re-evaluate. To this end, the use of "click labeling" in radiochemistry is proving an increasingly attractive means of conjugating a 18F-reporter group, wherein the targeting scaffold bearing a terminal alkyne is allowed to react with a 2-[18F]-fluoroethylazide to forge a linkage as a 1,2,3-triazole substituent. Since the triazole linked prosthetic group …

Atmospheric Effects On Radar/Ladar Detection Of Seismic Activity, Michelle Frances Via

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This thesis investigates how well ground vibrations can be detected at ladar or radar wavelengths and how the atmosphere may impact the observation of such activity. First understanding atmospheric hindrances at each of these wavelengths is helpful to prioritize by those yielding best transmission results. A prerequisite to the outdoor field experiment performed for this study involves analyzing atmospheric effects characterization at six probable wavelengths using the Laser Environmental Effects Definition and Reference tool (LEEDR) developed by the Air Force Institute of Technology's (AFIT) Center for Directed Energy (CDE). These wavelengths, selected from the shortwave infrared and microwave portions of …

Owl Query Answering Using Machine Learning, Todd Huster

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The formal semantics of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) enables automated reasoning over OWL knowledge bases, which in turn can be used for a variety of purposes including knowledge base development, querying and management. Automated reasoning is usually done by means of deductive (proof-theoretic) algorithms which are either provably sound and complete or employ approximate methods to trade some correctness for improved efficiency. As has been argued elsewhere, however, reasoning methods for the Semantic Web do not necessarily have to be based on deductive methods, and approximate reasoning using statistical or machine-learning approaches may bring improved speed while maintaining high …

Whole-Lake Primary Production Calculator, Colin D. Leong

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This work describes an implementation of a model for estimation of both benthic and phytoplanktonic primary production in lakes. The web application makes use of interpolation techniques to allow estimates of primary production using values for photosynthesis/irradiance parameters at only 5 depths. These estimates compare favorably in accuracy with estimates using values listed at over one hundred depths. Validation of the implementation was done by comparison with primary production results from the Northern Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research database.

Feature Extraction Using Dimensionality Reduction Techniques: Capturing The Human Perspective, Ashley B. Coleman

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The purpose of this paper is to determine if any of the four commonly used dimensionality reduction techniques are reliable at extracting the same features that humans perceive as distinguishable features. The four dimensionality reduction techniques that were used in this experiment were Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS), Isomap and Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA). These four techniques were applied to a dataset of images that consist of five infrared military vehicles. Out of the four techniques three out of the five resulting dimensions of PCA matched a human feature. One out of five dimensions of MDS matched …

Dna-Nucleobase Guanine As Passivation/Gate Dielectric Layer For Flexible Gfet-Based Sensor Applications, Adrienne Dee Williams

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The main goal of this dissertation was two-fold: first, to study and design a graphene-based transistor environmentally friendly by replacing a standard substrate and gate dielectric with different flexible/rigid and biodegradable films and secondly, to study their effects on graphene's charge carrier mobility. A thin film of deoxyribonucleic acid nucleobase purine guanine deposited by physical vapor deposition onto up to ten layers of graphene that were transferred onto various rigid and flexible substrates was characterized more thoroughly. Several test platforms were fabricated with guanine 1) as a standalone gate dielectric, 2) as the control and 3) as a passivation layer …

Assessment Of The Applicability Of Terahertz Spectroscopic Breath Sensing Towards Monitoring Type 1 Diabetic Mellitus, Jessica Rose Thomas

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Type 1 diabetes is a condition that cumulatively costs around $14.9 billion in medical expenses every year in the United States. Besides being costly, the monitoring of this disease is invasive, painful, and often embarrassing to the afflicted individual; blood and urine testing is currently the daily method of monitoring blood glucose and ketone levels in the body of type 1 diabetics. Though the use of these samples is standard, another avenue for possibly determining blood glucose has not been completely explored. With over 3000 chemicals reportedly found in exhaled human breath, biomarkers associated with this disorder and many of …

Automatic Emotion Identification From Text, Wenbo Wang

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People's emotions can be gleaned from their text using machine learning techniques to build models that exploit large self-labeled emotion data from social media. Further, the self-labeled emotion data can be effectively adapted to train emotion classifiers in different target domains where training data are sparse.

Emotions are both prevalent in and essential to most aspects of our lives. They influence our decision-making, affect our social relationships and shape our daily behavior. With the rapid growth of emotion-rich textual content, such as microblog posts, blog posts, and forum discussions, there is a growing need to develop algorithms and techniques for …

Domain-Specific Document Retrieval Framework For Near Real-Time Social Health Data, Swapnil Soni

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With the advent of web search and microblogging, the percentage of Online Health Information Seekers (OHIS) using these services to share and seek health information in real-time has increased exponentially. Recently, Twitter has emerged as one of the primary mediums for sharing and seeking of the latest information related to a variety of topics, including health information. Although Twitter is an excellent information source, the identification of useful information from the deluge of tweets is one of the major challenges. Twitter search is limited to keyword-based techniques to retrieve information for a given query and sometimes the results do not …

Mining Behavior Of Citizen Sensor Communities To Improve Cooperation With Organizational Actors, Hemant Purohit

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Web 2.0 (social media) provides a natural platform for dynamic emergence of citizen (as) sensor communities, where the citizens generate content for sharing information and engaging in discussions. Such a citizen sensor community (CSC) has stated or implied goals that are helpful in the work of formal organizations, such as an emergency management unit, for prioritizing their response needs. This research addresses questions related to design of a cooperative system of organizations and citizens in CSC. Prior research by social scientists in a limited offline and online environment has provided a foundation for research on cooperative behavior challenges, including 'articulation' …

Verification And Validation Of A Transient Heat Exchanger Model, Jayme Lee Carper

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A statistical based verification and validation process is applied to the transient modeling of a shell and tube heat exchanger. A generic model of a heat exchanger was developed based on first principles as a sub-system of a larger thermal system model. This model was originally created without any experimental data, as it was not readily available. To provide the data necessary to apply the validation process, a thermal emulator was designed and built that allowed control of all system inputs to the heat exchanger, while also providing the instrumentation to record all required data. A wide test matrix was …

Relating Reactive Transport To Hierarchical And Multiscale Sedimentary Architecture, Mohamad Reza Soltanian

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This dissertation addresses the transport of reactive solutes in groundwater. The goal is to better link reactive transport processes to what is known about sedimentary architecture. New forms of Lagrangian-based models for the processes of retardation and dispersion are derived through linking the models to hierarchical and multiscale sedimentary architecture. This allows for a fundamental understanding of how these processes arise from the hierarchical architecture of sedimentary facies, and allows for a quantitative decomposition of these processes into facies-related contributions at different scales within the hierarchy.

The main focus is on reactive transport characterized by a high Damkohler number, DN, …

Efficient Training Of Small Kernel Convolutional Neural Networks Using Fast Fourier Transform, Tyler Highlander

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Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are currently state-of-the-art for various classification tasks, but are computationally expensive. Propagating through the convolutional layers is very slow, as each kernel in each layer must sequentially calculate many inner products for a single forward and backward propagation which equates to O(N^2 n^2) per kernel per layer where the inputs are N x N arrays and the kernels are n x n arrays. Convolution can be efficiently performed as a Hadamard product in the frequency domain. The bottleneck is the transformation which has a cost of O(N^2 log_2 N) using the fast Fourier transform (FFT). However, …

Water Quality Of The Upper Little Miami River Watershed In Ohio: Impacts Of Natural And Anthropogenic Processes, David Allan Huff

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Stream water quality is increasingly threatened by expanding anthropogenic activities, mainly through point source discharges and urban and agricultural runoffs of contaminants getting through a water body's watershed resulting in pollution. Concerns developed as to whether urban or agricultural type activities were causing most water quality impairment issues in the upper Little Miami River watershed in southwest Ohio.

Characterizing the upper Little Miami River (LMR) watershed with respect to water chemistry and Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) while evaluating the sources of any higher than expected natural parameter concentrations, with a strong emphasis on the nutrients phosphorus and nitrate, serves as …

Tuning The Physical Properties Of Poly(Arylene Ether)S Prepared From 3,5-Difluorobenzene Sulfonamides, Renata Mitton

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A series of functionalized poly(arylene ether)s, PAEs, based on 3,5-difluorobenzene sulfonamides with varying groups on the sulfonamide moiety were investigated. The main goal of the project was to tune the physical properties of the PAEs by altering the organic groups present on the sulfonamide nitrogen atom, including combinations of aryl iodide, alkyl, allyl, 4-ethoxycarboxylphenyl and benzyl moieties.

Using 3,5-difluorobenzenesulfonyl chloride as a starting material, N-R1-N-R2-3,5-difluorobenzenesulfonamides were prepared, followed by conversion to the corresponding PAEs by reaction of 3,5-difluorobenzene sulfonamides with Bisphenol-A, via a typical NAS polycondensation. Copolymers with varying contents of the functional monomer ranging from 10 to 25 %, …

A Language For Inconsistency-Tolerant Ontology Mapping, Kunal Sengupta

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Ontology alignment plays a key role in enabling interoperability among various data sources present in the web. The nature of the world is such, that the same concepts differ in meaning, often so slightly, which makes it difficult to relate these concepts. It is the omni-present heterogeneity that is at the core of the web. The research work presented in this dissertation, is driven by the goal of providing a robust ontology alignment language for the semantic web, as we show that description logics based alignment languages are not suitable for aligning ontologies.

The adoption of the semantic web technologies …

Cometabolic Biodegradation Of Halogenated Aliphatic Hydrocarbons By Ammonia-Oxidizing Microorganisms Naturally Associated With Wetland Plant Roots, Ke Qin

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Bench-scale microcosms with wetland plant roots were investigated to characterize the microbial contributions to contaminant degradation of halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons (HAHs) with ammonium. The batch system microcosms consisted of a known mass of wetland plant roots in aerobic growth media where the roots provided both an inoculum of root-associated ammonium-oxidizing microorganisms and a microbial habitat. Aqueous growth media, ammonium, and HAHs including trichloroethene (TCE), cis-1,2-dichloroethene (cis-DCE), chloroform (CF), 1,1,2-trichloroethane (1,1,2-TCA), ethylene dibromide (EDB, or 1,2-dibromoethane, 1,2-DBA) and 1,2-dichloroethane (1,2-DCA) were replaced weekly in batch microcosms while retaining roots and root-associated biomass.

Molecular biology results indicated that ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) were …

Evaluating Threats To The Rare Butterfly, Pieris Virginiensis, Samantha Lynn Davis

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Humans have caused drastic changes in ecosystems and communities through their modification of the natural landscape. Rare species, often highly specialized, are more impacted by these changes. Pieris virginiensis is a rare butterfly native to eastern North America that is a species of concern due to negative influences from habitat loss and plant invasion. This thesis discusses several threats to P. virginiensis, including habitat loss, climate change, competition, and the cascading effects of a novel European invasive plant, Alliaria petiolata, that attracts oviposition but does not allow for larval survival.

First, I examined a local extinction event and …

World-Wide Body Size Patterns In Freshwater Fish By Geography, Size Class, Trophic Level, And Taxonomy, Shishir Adhikari

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The unifying themes of my thesis are patterns in world-wide freshwater fish body sizes and their underlying mechanisms. First, I explored Bergmann's rule in unprecedented detail, which states that body size is negatively correlated to temperature. Categorizing species by body size into quantiles and by trophic levels, I regressed the classes against latitude, temperature, seasonality, minimum temperature and habitable space. I found that Bergmann's rule applies to freshwater fish in general but the strength varies by size class and trophic levels. I concluded that Bergmann's rule in fish is driven by the exclusion of small fish from cold climate due …

Work Function Modification Of Metal Electrodes Via Printing Of Pedot:Pss And Carbon Nanotubes, Carly A. Jordan

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Work function tunability of metal electrodes provides a route to improving performance of organic electronic devices. Using an electrode with a different work function changes the potential barrier at the polymer/electrode interface, leading to altered device characteristics, such as turn-on voltage in light emitting diodes or series resistance photodiodes. In this work, we explore work function modification by employing solution-based conducting materials, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) : poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs), printed as overcoatings on oxidized Ni. The capability of direct write technologies, namely inkjet and aerosol jet printing, to control thin film thickness is investigated. The correlation between film …