Digital Commons Network^™

Njit Libraries Annual Report Fy2012-2013, Njit Libraries

Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Njit Highlanders Swimming & Diving 2013 Media Guide, New Jersey Institute Of Technology Athletic Department

Swimming and Diving

No abstract provided.

Njit Highlanders Tennis 2013 Media Guide, New Jersey Institute Of Technology Athletic Department

Tennis

No abstract provided.

Optimization Of Path Based Sensor Spacing On A Freeway Segment For Travel Time Prediction During Incidents, Patricia Kathleen Dijoseph

Dissertations

Congestion on freeways is increasing and a key source of it is non-recurring incidents. Accurate vehicle travel time predictions are needed during these incidents in order for roadway users to make informed trip decisions. Path based sensors are becoming a leading technology in gathering real-time travel time data. The data is used to make travel time predictions that are then provided through various means, such as dynamic message signs, to roadway users. These types of sensor are located at stationary points along a roadway and collect individual vehicle travel time data from vehicles as they drive pass the sensors.

The …

Exploitation Of Infrared Polarimetric Imagery For Passive Remote Sensing Applications, Joao Miguel Mendes Romano

Dissertations

Polarimetric infrared imagery has emerged over the past few decades as a candidate technology to detect manmade objects by taking advantage of the fact that smooth materials emit strong polarized electromagnetic waves, which can be remotely sensed by a specialized camera using a rotating polarizer in front of the focal plate array in order to generate the so-called Stokes parameters: S₀, S₁, S₂, and DoLP. Current research in this area has shown the ability of using such variations of these parameters to detect smooth manmade structures in low contrast contrast scenarios.

This dissertation proposes …

Batch And Continuous Production Of Stable Dense Suspensions Of Drug Nanoparticles In A Wet Stirred Media Mill, Afolawemi Afolabi

Dissertations

One way to improve the bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs is to reduce particle size of drug crystals down to nanoscale via wet stirred media milling. An increase in total surface area per mass loading of the drug and specific surface area as well as reduced external mass transfer resistance allow a faster dissolution of the poorly-water soluble drug from nanocrystals. To prevent aggregation of nanoparticles, polymers and surfactants are dissolved in water acting as stabilizers via adsorption onto the drug crystals.

In the last two decades, ample experimental data were generated in the area of wet stirred media milling …

Characterization Of Neural Ion Regulation Dysfunction During Insult And Evaluation Of Micro-Opioid Receptor Activation During Simulated Ischemia In The Pre-Botzinger Complex, Kyle F. Dobiszewski

Dissertations

The health and vitality of brain tissue is dependent upon the cells' abilities to maintain ionic homeostasis across their plasma membranes. Even slight alterations in intracellular or extracellular can have a devastating effect on excitability and neural vitality. This thesis investigates several concepts related to ion flux. First, it investigates how ion flux affects characterization of brain tissue by dielectric spectroscopy and what can be done to overcome that effect. Second, it investigates how ion flux can be used to describe the state of health of the tissue. Finally, it investigates if pharmacological intervention can attenuate some of the deleterious …

Pressure Swing Membrane Absorption Process For Separation Of Low Temperature Post-Shift Reactor Syngas, John Chau

Dissertations

This thesis is concerned with a cyclic pressure swing membrane absorption process (PSMAB) for separation of the feed gas mixture containing —40% CO₂-He balance using pure ionic liquid, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide ([bmim][DCA]), and its solution containing poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimer Gen 0 primarily with a dry feed gas. An advanced pressure swing membrane absorption process is developed to produce purified He as a surrogate for H₂ at a high pressure from simulated low- temperature shifted syngas for different membrane modules. The PSMAB process also simultaneously produces a highly purified CO₂ stream containing bulk of the CO₂ in …

Development Of Correction Algorithm For Pulsed Terahertz Computed Tomography (Thz-Ct), Suman Mukherjee

Dissertations

For last couple of decades, there has been a considerable improvement in Terahertz (THz) science, technology, and imaging. In particular, the technique of 3-D computed tomography has been adapted to the THz range. However, it has been widely recognized that a fundamental limitation to THz computed tomography imaging is the refractive effects of the sample under study. The finite refractive index of materials in the THz range can severally refract THz beams which probe the internal structure of a sample during the acquisition of tomography data. Refractive effects lead to anomalously high local absorption coefficients in the reconstructed image near …

Structural Indicators For Effective Quality Assurance Of Snomed Ct, Ankur Agrawal

Dissertations

The Standardized Nomenclature of Medicine -- Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT -- further abbreviated as SCT) has been endorsed as a premier clinical terminology by many national and international organizations. The US Government has chosen SCT to play a significant role in its initiative to promote Electronic Health Record (EH R) country-wide. However, there is evidence suggesting that, at the moment, SCT is not optimally modeled for its intended use by healthcare practitioners. There is a need to perform quality assurance (QA) of SCT to help expedite its use as a reference terminology for clinical purposes as planned for EH R …

A Framework For Guiding Transportation Improvements To Support Desired Land Use, Jiruttichut Leoviriyakit

Dissertations

There is a growing recognition that transportation and land use policies cannot succeed independently of one another. The interactions between them must be understood, analyzed, and accounted for in order for land use and transportation plans and policies to be effective and successful. A methodological framework is presented that can help urban planners determine what outcomes can be expected in terms of change in land use patterns within the targeted communities and within the county should a transportation project be undertaken.

The framework is based on an interaction between travel demand model TRANSIMS and land use model TELUM that enables …

Solar Eclipse Observation On May 21, 2012 From Jvla, Shaheda Begum Shaik

Theses

The annular solar eclipse occurred on May 21, 2012 is studied using the radio data from the Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA), Sorrocco, Mexico. The eclipse is observed in the solar minimum activity period of solar cycle 24. The centimeter wavelength observation of the Sun's surface during the solar eclipse helps in determining the spatially well resolved features not obtained by the man made advanced technology. Even though, the activity on the Sun is observed to be low in the period of eclipse, the study provides a good opportunity to understand the quiet Sun features in the regions occulted by …

Njit Highlanders Women's Volleytball 2013 Media Guide, New Jersey Institute Of Technology Athletic Department

Volleyball - Women's

No abstract provided.

Investigations Into B-O Defect Formation-Dissociation In Cz-Silicon And Their Effect On Solar Cell Performance, Prakash M. Basnyat

Dissertations

About 30% of the total market share of industrial manufacture of silicon solar cells is taken by single crystalline Czochralski (CZ) grown wafers. The efficiency of solar cells fabricated on boron-doped Czochralski silicon degrades due to the formation of metastable defects when excess electrons are created by illumination or minority carrier injection during forward bias. The recombination path can be removed by annealing the cell at about 200° C but recombination returns on exposure to light.

Several mono-crystalline and multi-crystalline solar cells have been characterized by methods such as laser beam induced current (LBIC), Four-Probe electrical resistivity etc. to better …

Concept Graphs: Applications To Biomedical Text Categorization And Concept Extraction, Said Bleik

Dissertations

As science advances, the underlying literature grows rapidly providing valuable knowledge mines for researchers and practitioners. The text content that makes up these knowledge collections is often unstructured and, thus, extracting relevant or novel information could be nontrivial and costly. In addition, human knowledge and expertise are being transformed into structured digital information in the form of vocabulary databases and ontologies. These knowledge bases hold substantial hierarchical and semantic relationships of common domain concepts. Consequently, automating learning tasks could be reinforced with those knowledge bases through constructing human-like representations of knowledge. This allows developing algorithms that simulate the human reasoning …

Adaptive Data Acquisition For Communication Networks, Behzad Ahmadi

Dissertations

In an increasing number of communication systems, such as sensor networks or local area networks within medical, financial or military institutions, nodes communicate information sources (e.g., video, audio) over multiple hops. Moreover, nodes have, or can acquire, correlated information sources from the environment, e.g., from data bases or from measurements. Among the new design problems raised by the outlined scenarios, two key issues are addressed in this dissertation: 1) How to preserve the consistency of sensitive information across multiple hops; 2) How to incorporate the design of actuation in the form of data acquisition and network probing in the optimization …

An Innovative Protective Jacket For Structures Subject To Blast Loads: A Comprehensive Experimental And Simulation Study, Nicholas J. Carlson

Dissertations

As the importance of protective engineering and multi-hazard mitigation design has grown in recent years, the development of an effective structural protection system that aids in the preservation of life safety during blast events is an important topic of research in structural engineering. This protection is especially vital for blast and explosion mitigation, where a vehicle-borne bomb or an improvised explosive device can readily cause an under-designed structure with insufficient redundancy to undergo progressive collapse due to the removal of its first-floor columns. An especially pressing research need is the consideration of structures that require blast protection, but—due to time …

Novel Color And Local Image Descriptors For Content-Based Image Search, Sugata Banerji

Dissertations

Content-based image classification, search and retrieval is a rapidly-expanding research area. With the advent of inexpensive digital cameras, cheap data storage, fast computing speeds and ever-increasing data transfer rates, millions of images are stored and shared over the Internet every day. This necessitates the development of systems that can classify these images into various categories without human intervention and on being presented a query image, can identify its contents in order to retrieve similar images.

Towards that end, this dissertation focuses on investigating novel image descriptors based on texture, shape, color, and local information for advancing content-based image search. Specifically, …

Mechanical, Electronic And Optical Properties Of Multi-Ternary Semiconductor Alloys, Dongguo Chen

Dissertations

The ability to obtain tunable properties with composition makes multi-ternary alloys extremely useful for a variety of applications in semiconductor devices and is of significant interest in experimental and theoretical research. This dissertation investigates the mechanical, electronic and optical properties of multi-ternary, i.e., binary, ternary and quaternary, semiconductor alloys using analytical methods and first-principles calculations.

For the calculations of mechanical properties, existing models on the average shear modulus of III-V & II-VI binary semiconductors are revised. New expressions are developed for the average Young’s modulus as well as the shear modulus and Young’s modulus on (111) plane for these compounds. …

Stability And Precipitation Of Diverse Nanoparticles, Chintal Desai

Dissertations

Nanotechnology is a rapidly growing industry that is exploiting the novel characteristics of materials manufactured at the nanoscale. Carbon based nanomaterials such as Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) and Detonation Nanodiamond (DND) possess unique properties and find a wide range of industrial applications. With the advent of mass production of such materials, there is a possibility of contamination of water resources. Depending on the surface properties and structures, they might aggregate and settle down, or be dispersed and transported by the water. Therefore, there is a need to develop an understanding of the fate of such materials in aqueous media. The understanding …

The Application Of Bayesian Adaptive Design And Markov Model In Clinical Trials, Xiaoyu Lu

Dissertations

In this research, two new designs in clinical trials are proposed. The first problem is a new Bayesian adaptive dose-finding design and its application in an oncology clinical trial. This design is used for phase IB studies with the biomarker as the endpoint and with the fewer patients. The second problem is another new Bayesian adaptive dose-finding design with longitudinal analysis and its application in phase II depression clinical trial. This design is best fit for phase II dosing-finding clinical trials with clinical endpoints. MTD information has been obtained before the trials.

In adaptive dose-finding clinical trials, the strategy is …

Enabling Sustainable Power Distribution Networks By Using Smart Grid Communications, Chun-Hao Lo

Dissertations

Smart grid modernization enables integration of computing, information and communications capabilities into the legacy electric power grid system, especially the low voltage distribution networks where various consumers are located. The evolutionary paradigm has initiated worldwide deployment of an enormous number of smart meters as well as renewable energy sources at end-user levels. The future distribution networks as part of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) will involve decentralized power control operations under associated smart grid communications networks. This dissertation addresses three potential problems anticipated in the future distribution networks of smart grid: 1) local power congestion due to power surpluses produced by …

Developing Crash Modification Factors For Operational Parameters On Urban Freeways, Eugene Vida Maina

Dissertations

Studies have shown that, roadway safety has become an intensively investigated topic with the objective of improved understanding of the factors that cause crashes to occur. However, it has been shown that as traffic volumes continue to increase across the United States, 52% of drivers feel less safe on the roads today more than they did five years ago and that the American public feels that traffic safety is a serious problem that needs both the government and media to pay more attention to this issue.

In response to these public and driver grievances, State and National transportation agencies have …

The Effect Of Nanoclays On The Properties Of Aspirin Modified Enteric Polymer Prepared By Hot-Melt Mixing, Nonjaros Chomcharn

Dissertations

Melt mixing in batch equipment or continuous extruders is a technique that recently gained the attention of the pharmaceutical industry. This dissertation investigates two controlled-release drug delivery systems. The first system, namely the enteric matrix, contains an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and plasticizer in an enteric polymer while in the second system a nanoclay is added to the enteric matrix, to produce a polymer nanocomposite. The first system employs hot-melt mixing to prepare a modified enteric matrix, as a delayed-release dosage form. Different concentrations of aspirin (ASP) ranging from 10 – 30% w/w are melt-mixed with a plasticized Eudragit® …

Application Of Hydrogen Peroxide As Brown Tide Bloom Control Agent, Varunpreet Randhawa

Dissertations

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are growing problem across the globe. One such HAB that’s recurring in the coastal waters of New York and New Jersey since mid-1980s, and has been reported in other countries recently, is brown tide bloom. The causal organism is a minute pel agophyte (cell diameter ~- 2µ m) Aureococcus anophagefferens. The brown tide bloom has been responsible for the severe ecological damage and economic loss (e.g. shellfishery) in the affected areas. This research focuses on finding a method to control brown tide blooms and explores the potential of natural chemical biocide hydrogen peroxide (H_{2 …}

Study Of Deep Level Defects Of N+-Cds/P-Cdte Solar Cells, Poonam Rani Kharangarh

Dissertations

Among various photovoltaic materials, polycrystalline cadmium telluride thin film is now the most promising material, due to its low production cost excellent stability and reliability. Current-voltage and capacitance-voltage measurements of CdTe photovoltaic devices at different temperatures can provide valuable information about non-idealities in the n-p semiconductor junction. There are certain limitations which limit the efficiency of CdTe solar cells. There is no real distinction between defects and impurities in CdTe solar cells as both act as beneficial dopants or detrimental traps unlike Si where intentional shallow dopants and traps are distinctly different. Therefore, the role of defect states on CdTe …

Community Composition, Demographic Change, And The Impact Of Spatial Proximity To Disadvantage On Violence And Gang Presence In New Jersey Municipalities, Brian Engelmann

Dissertations

Neighborhood composition, change, and disadvantage have been shown to influence crime and gang presence in communities. There is a dearth of research, however, that explores whether spatial proximity to disadvantaged areas affects crime and gang presence in nearby locations. Through maps and spatial analysis, this study investigates how neighborhood demographics may vary and may have changed by community type in New Jersey municipalities. Through quantitative analysis and interviews with school and law enforcement officials, the study then analyzes how such community-based phenomena, coupled with proximity to disadvantaged areas, may affect crime, violence, and gang presence in towns and schools.

Findings …

High Performance Digital Signal Processing: Theory, Design, And Applications In Finance, Mustafa Ugur Torun

Dissertations

The way scientific research and business is conducted has drastically changed over the last decade. Big data and data-intensive scientific discovery are two terms that have been coined recently. They describe the tremendous amounts of noisy data, created extremely rapidly by various sensing devices and methods that need to be explored for information inference. Researchers and practitioners who can obtain meaningful information out of big data in the shortest time gain a competitive advantage. Hence, there is more need than ever for a variety of high performance computational tools for scientific and business analytics. Interest in developing efficient data processing …

Influence Of Sinx/Si Interface States On Si Solar Cells, Santosh Sahoo

Dissertations

Impact of the SiN_x/n⁺-Si interface on silicon solar cell performance was investigated, where SiN_x is used as a passivation layer. Significant shifts in capacitance, conductance and leakage current characteristics were observed for metal/SiN:H/n⁺-Si MOS capacitor when it was subjected to a constant voltage stress (CVS) of +10V at room temperature. The interface trap density (D_it) across the SiN:H/n⁺-Si interface increased from 6.3 x 10⁹ to 7.5 x 10⁹ cm^-2 eV^-1 after a 500-second stress whereas the n⁺/p junction diode remained unaffected by the …

Study Of Elementary Reactions Of Combustion Importance At Elevated Temperatures And Pressures, Manuvesh Sangwan

Dissertations

The aim of the present study is to study the kinetics of elementary reactions of combustion importance at elevated temperatures and pressures. High pressure is encountered in many systems of practical importance such as internal combustion engines and rocket combustion chambers. Several reactions of OH, CH₃ and HO₂ radicals are studied. The pressure range covered in this study is 1 - 100 bar and the temperature range is 292 - 834 K. The experimental approach used is laser photolysis coupled to UV transient absorption spectroscopy. A unique high pressure heatable flow reactor is employed and a novel approach …