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2003

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Monster Maker, Eddie Iii Davis Dec 2003

Monster Maker, Eddie Iii Davis

Theses

None provided.

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Decree N. 3683 Of 2003 - Renewable Energy Regulation, Ministerio De Minas Y Energía Dec 2003

Decree N. 3683 Of 2003 - Renewable Energy Regulation, Ministerio De Minas Y Energía

Latin American Energy Policies

This decree regulates the rational and efficient use of energy, so that the country has greater energy efficiency to ensure full and timely energy supplies, competitiveness of the Colombian energy market, consumer protection and promotion of non-conventional sources of energy. Additionally, this decree creates an Intersectoral Commission for the Rational and Efficient Use of Energy and Non-Conventional Energy Sources.

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A Neural Network Approach To Key Frame Extraction, Rajesh Narasimha, Andreas Savakis, Raghuveer M. Rao, Ricardo De Queiroz Dec 2003

A Neural Network Approach To Key Frame Extraction, Rajesh Narasimha, Andreas Savakis, Raghuveer M. Rao, Ricardo De Queiroz

Articles

We present a neural network based approach to key frame extraction in the compressed domain. The proposed method is an amalgamation of both the MPEG-7 descriptors namely motion intensity descriptor and spatial activity descriptor. Shot boundary detection and block motion estimation techniques are employed prior to the extraction of the descriptors. The motion intensity (“pace of action”) is obtained using a fuzzy system that classifies the motion intensity into five categories proportional to the intensity. The spatial activity matrix determines the spatial distribution of activity (“active regions”) in a frame. A neural network is used to pick those frames as …

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Improved Methods And System For Watermarking Halftone Images, Phil Sherry Dec 2003

Improved Methods And System For Watermarking Halftone Images, Phil Sherry

Theses

Watermarking is becoming increasingly important for content control and authentication. Watermarking seamlessly embeds data in media that provide additional information about that media. Unfortunately, watermarking schemes that have been developed for continuous tone images cannot be directly applied to halftone images. Many of the existing watermarking methods require characteristics that are implicit in continuous tone images, but are absent from halftone images. With this in mind, it seems reasonable to develop watermarking techniques specific to halftones that are equipped to work in the binary image domain. In this thesis, existing techniques for halftone watermarking are reviewed and improvements are developed …

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Resolution No. 30 - Geothermal Energy, Ministerio De Minería, Chile Dec 2003

Resolution No. 30 - Geothermal Energy, Ministerio De Minería, Chile

Latin American Energy Policies

This legislation establishes the administrative, legal, and technical procedures regarding the exploration and exploitation of geothermal energy.

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Analysis Of A Thin-Walled Curved Rectangular Beam With Five Degrees Of Freedom, Khurram Zeshan Moghal Dec 2003

Analysis Of A Thin-Walled Curved Rectangular Beam With Five Degrees Of Freedom, Khurram Zeshan Moghal

Theses and Dissertations

A study of a thin-walled curved rectangular box beam under torsion and out-of-plane bending is documented in this thesis. A new one-dimensional theory that takes into account warping and distortion in the beam cross-sections is the main focus. Existing available theories for thin-walled curved beams lack rigorous theoretical development, and most have ignored the effects of warping and distortion. A higher order theory including two additional degrees of freedom corresponding to warping and distortion was derived. The conventional three degrees of freedom model was compared with the new five degrees of freedom model. The variation of beam thickness to control …

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Performance Analysis Of Advanced Front Ends On The Aurora Large Vocabulary Evaluation, Naveen Parihar Dec 2003

Performance Analysis Of Advanced Front Ends On The Aurora Large Vocabulary Evaluation, Naveen Parihar

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few years, speech recognition technology performance on tasks ranging from isolated digit recognition to conversational speech has dramatically improved. Performance on limited recognition tasks in noiseree environments is comparable to that achieved by human transcribers. This advancement in automatic speech recognition technology along with an increase in the compute power of mobile devices, standardization of communication protocols, and the explosion in the popularity of the mobile devices, has created an interest in flexible voice interfaces for mobile devices. However, speech recognition performance degrades dramatically in mobile environments which are inherently noisy. In the recent past, a great …

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Investigating Cottonwood Leaf Beetle, Chrysomela Scripta F., Defoliation In Cottonwood Plantations Utilizing Remote Sensing And Geostatistical Techniques, Gensheng Shi Dec 2003

Investigating Cottonwood Leaf Beetle, Chrysomela Scripta F., Defoliation In Cottonwood Plantations Utilizing Remote Sensing And Geostatistical Techniques, Gensheng Shi

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to investigate the relationships between spectral properties of cottonwood plantations and defoliation by the cottonwood leaf beetle (CLB), Chrysomela scripta F., as well as to develop and analyze the spatial structure of CLB and associated defoliation using geospatial information technology. Multispectral imagery data from airborne platforms were acquired using three remote sensing systems: (1) GeoVantage remote sensing system with 450 nm, 550 nm, 650 nm and 850 nm wavelengths; (2) RDACS (real time digital airborne camera system) with 540 nm, 675 nm, 695 nm and 840 nm wavelengths; and (3) Kodak DCS420 digital camera with the …

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The Spatial And Temporal Distributions And Thermodynamic Characteristics Of Tornadoes In Mississippi, Jennifer M. Call Dec 2003

The Spatial And Temporal Distributions And Thermodynamic Characteristics Of Tornadoes In Mississippi, Jennifer M. Call

Theses and Dissertations

The vast majority of severe storm and tornado research is conducted in the natural laboratory of the Great Plains region of the United States. As a result, much of the knowledge and technology applied to storm forecasting is developed in the Great Plains environment. However, it has been shown that there is a maximum of strong and violent tornadoes in the region extending from Arkansas eastward into Alabama. In addition, various researchers have found strong severe storm thermodynamic signatures unique to regions such as the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. This study has analyzed five decades of tornado data for the state …

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An Investigation Of The Standardized Multiple-Choice Departmental Calculus I Final Examination, Maria Elizabeth Bearden Dec 2003

An Investigation Of The Standardized Multiple-Choice Departmental Calculus I Final Examination, Maria Elizabeth Bearden

Theses and Dissertations

At Mississippi State University, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, a standardized multiple-choice departmental final examination (SMCDF) was administered at the end of the Calculus I mathematics course. This practice was abolished at the end of the spring 1997 semester. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in students¡¯ success in subsequent calculus courses as measured by a student¡¯s grade. If there was a difference, was it consistent along varying levels of students¡¯ ACT mathematics scores. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run on the data. The variables were the five student ACT Mathematics …

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Network Training For Continuous Speech Recognition, Issac John Alphonso Dec 2003

Network Training For Continuous Speech Recognition, Issac John Alphonso

Theses and Dissertations

Spoken language processing is one of the oldest and most natural modes of information exchange between humans beings. For centuries, people have tried to develop machines that can understand and produce speech the way humans do so naturally. The biggest problem in our inability to model speech with computer programs and mathematics results from the fact that language is instinctive, whereas, the vocabulary and dialect used in communication are learned. Human beings are genetically equipped with the ability to learn languages, and culture imprints the vocabulary and dialect on each member of society. This thesis examines the role of pattern …

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New Visualization Techniques For Multi-Dimensional Variables In Complex Physical Domains, Rhonda J. Vickery Dec 2003

New Visualization Techniques For Multi-Dimensional Variables In Complex Physical Domains, Rhonda J. Vickery

Theses and Dissertations

This work presents the new Synthesized Cell Texture (SCT) algorithm for visualizing related multiple scalar value fields within the same 3D space. The SCT method is particularly well suited to scalar quantities that could be represented in the physical domain as size fractionated particles, such as in the study of sedimentation, atmospheric aerosols, or precipitation. There are two components to this contribution. First a Scaling and Distribution (SAD) algorithm provides a means of specifying a multi-scalar field in terms of a maximum cell resolution (or density of represented values). This information is used to scale the multi-scalar field values for …

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Quality Improvements In Extruded Meshes Using Topologically Adaptive Generalized Elements, Satish Chalasani Dec 2003

Quality Improvements In Extruded Meshes Using Topologically Adaptive Generalized Elements, Satish Chalasani

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a novel method to extrude near-body meshes from surface meshes of arbitrary topology that exploits topologically adaptive generalized elements to improve mesh quality is presented. Specifically, an advancing layer algorithm to generate near-body meshes which are appropriate for viscous fluid flows is discussed. First, an orthogonal two-layer algebraic reference mesh is generated. The reference mesh is then smoothed using a locally three-dimensional Poisson-type mesh generation equation that is generalized to smooth extruded meshes of arbitrary surface topology. Local quality improvement operations such as edge collapse, face refinement, and local reconnection are performed in each layer to drive …

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Solutions To The Navier-Stokes Equations In A Non-Inertial Reference Frame, Kishore Satya Majety Dec 2003

Solutions To The Navier-Stokes Equations In A Non-Inertial Reference Frame, Kishore Satya Majety

Theses and Dissertations

A general rotating frame formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations has been added to the incompressible and arbitrary Mach number versions of UNCLE. While eliminating the need for moving grids, this formulation also reduces the error caused by linear approximations of rotational motion. The formulation is validated for single axis rotations by comparing the simulations of a marine propeller and an isolated helicopter rotor with experimental data. A simulation of the helicopter rotor in pitching motion is also performed. Results are compared between the non-inertial reference frame formulation and absolute frame solver for a prolate spheroid with all the components of …

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An Analytical Method To Determine The Mechanical Properties Of Linear Viscoelastic Solids, Rani W. Sullivan Dec 2003

An Analytical Method To Determine The Mechanical Properties Of Linear Viscoelastic Solids, Rani W. Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations

A new methodology has been developed to model the viscoelastic behavior of solids using a general spectrum function. Not all materials can be modeled using simple Kelvin-Voigt (K-V) or Maxwell elements where the viscoelastic parameters are constants. There is a need for a general spectrum function that can be used to model the Lame' functions which constitute all properties of interest. Thus far, there is no method like the one presented in this study that can determine the moduli of viscoelastic materials. This study develops a methodology by which the time dependent properties of homogeneous and non-homogeneous materials may be …

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Limitations Of Principal Component Analysis For Dimensionality-Reduction For Classification Of Hyperspectral Data, Anil Meerasa Cheriyadat Dec 2003

Limitations Of Principal Component Analysis For Dimensionality-Reduction For Classification Of Hyperspectral Data, Anil Meerasa Cheriyadat

Theses and Dissertations

It is a popular practice in the remote-sensing community to apply principal component analysis (PCA) on a higher-dimensional feature space to achieve dimensionality-reduction. Several factors that have led to the popularity of PCA include its simplicity, ease of use, availability as part of popular remote-sensing packages, and optimal nature in terms of mean square error. These advantages have prompted the remote-sensing research community to overlook many limitations of PCA when used as a dimensionality-reduction tool for classification and target-detection applications. This thesis addresses the limitations of PCA when used as a dimensionality-reduction technique for extracting discriminating features from hyperspectral data. …

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Assessment Of Open-Source Software For High-Performance Computing, Gayatri Rapur Dec 2003

Assessment Of Open-Source Software For High-Performance Computing, Gayatri Rapur

Theses and Dissertations

High quality software is a key component of various technology systems that are crucial to software producers, users, and society in general. Software application development today uses software from external sources, to achieve software implementation goals. Numerous methods, activities, and standards have been developed in order to realize quality software. Nevertheless, the pursuit for new methods of realizing and assuring quality in software is incessant. Researchers in the software engineering field are in pursuit of methods that can be on par with changing technology. Assessment of open-source software can be supported by a methodology that uses data from prior releases …

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Integrating Algorithmic And Systemic Load Balancing Strategies In Parallel Scientific Applications, Sheikh Khaled Ghafoor Dec 2003

Integrating Algorithmic And Systemic Load Balancing Strategies In Parallel Scientific Applications, Sheikh Khaled Ghafoor

Theses and Dissertations

Load imbalance is a major source of performance degradation in parallel scientific applications. Load balancing increases the efficient use of existing resources and improves performance of parallel applications running in distributed environments. At a coarse level of granularity, advances in runtime systems for parallel programs have been proposed in order to control available resources as efficiently as possible by utilizing idle resources and using task migration. At a finer granularity level, advances in algorithmic strategies for dynamically balancing computational loads by data redistribution have been proposed in order to respond to variations in processor performance during the execution of a …

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Design, Assembly, And Assessment Of An Experimental Apparatus To Measure Fouling Of Condenser Tubes, Gregory J. Zdaniuk Dec 2003

Design, Assembly, And Assessment Of An Experimental Apparatus To Measure Fouling Of Condenser Tubes, Gregory J. Zdaniuk

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the design, construction, and debugging of an experimental apparatus to measure fouling in smooth and/or augmented copper alloy condenser tubes. In addition, guidelines and recommendations are made for construction of similar devices. Specification sheets of the system components, detailed design calculations, and photographs of the apparatus are included in the appendices.

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Generalizing List Scheduling For Stochastic Soft Real-Time Parallel Applications, Yoginder Singh Dandass Dec 2003

Generalizing List Scheduling For Stochastic Soft Real-Time Parallel Applications, Yoginder Singh Dandass

Theses and Dissertations

Advanced architecture processors provide features such as caches and branch prediction that result in improved, but variable, execution time of software. Hard real-time systems require tasks to complete within timing constraints. Consequently, hard real-time systems are typically designed conservatively through the use of tasks? worst-case execution times (WCET) in order to compute deterministic schedules that guarantee task?s execution within giving time constraints. This use of pessimistic execution time assumptions provides real-time guarantees at the cost of decreased performance and resource utilization. In soft real-time systems, however, meeting deadlines is not an absolute requirement (i.e., missing a few deadlines does not …

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Improvements On Heat Flux And Heat Conductance Estimation With Applications To Metal Castings, Xingjian Xue Dec 2003

Improvements On Heat Flux And Heat Conductance Estimation With Applications To Metal Castings, Xingjian Xue

Theses and Dissertations

Heat flux and heat conductance at the metal mold interface plays a key role in controlling the final metal casting strength. It is difficult to obtain these parameters through direct measurement because of the required placement of sensors, however they can be obtained through inverse heat conduction calculations. Existing inverse heat conduction methods are analyzed and classified into three categories, i.e., direct inverse methods, observer-based methods and optimization methods. The solution of the direct inverse methods is based on the linear relationship between heat flux and temperature (either in the time domain or in the frequency domain) and is calculated …

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Application Of Reinforcement Learning To Multi-Agent Production Scheduling, Yi-Chi Wang Dec 2003

Application Of Reinforcement Learning To Multi-Agent Production Scheduling, Yi-Chi Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement learning (RL) has received attention in recent years from agent-based researchers because it can be applied to problems where autonomous agents learn to select proper actions for achieving their goals based on interactions with their environment. Each time an agent performs an action, the environment¡Šs response, as indicated by its new state, is used by the agent to reward or penalize its action. The agent¡Šs goal is to maximize the total amount of reward it receives over the long run. Although there have been several successful examples demonstrating the usefulness of RL, its application to manufacturing systems has not …

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Automated Accident Detection In Intersections Via Digital Audio Signal Processing, Navaneethakrishnan Balraj Dec 2003

Automated Accident Detection In Intersections Via Digital Audio Signal Processing, Navaneethakrishnan Balraj

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to design a system for automated accident detection in intersections. The input to the system is a three-second audio signal. The system can be operated in two modes: two-class and multi-class. The output of the two-class system is a label of ?crash? or ?non-crash?. In the multi-class system, the output is the label of ?crash? or various non-crash incidents including ?pile drive?, ?brake?, and ?normal-traffic? sounds. The system designed has three main steps in processing the input audio signal. They are: feature extraction, feature optimization and classification. Five different methods of feature extraction are …

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Applicability Of Semi-Tension Fields To The Back Panel Of A Pick-Up Truck, Shubha S. Tangirala Dec 2003

Applicability Of Semi-Tension Fields To The Back Panel Of A Pick-Up Truck, Shubha S. Tangirala

Theses and Dissertations

The study and design of light-weight automobiles has emerged as an important area of interest in the government, academia, and the manufacturing industry. Significant advances in vehicle weight reduction technologies have taken place in almost all fields of transportation. Weight reduction is identified as a key factor to achieving fuel-economy, energy efficiency and environmental safety. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate cost effective design methodologies that enable fabrication of light weight structures, which subsequently result in a fuel saving. A few important techniques and trends of weight reduction in the automotive industry over the past few years …

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Coupling Heat Transfer And Fluid Flow Solvers For Multi-Disciplinary Simulations, Qingyun Liu Dec 2003

Coupling Heat Transfer And Fluid Flow Solvers For Multi-Disciplinary Simulations, Qingyun Liu

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to build, test, validate, and implement two heat transfer models, and couple them to an existing fluid flow solver, which can then be used for simulating multi-disciplinary problems. The first model is for heat conduction computations, the other one is a quasi-one-dimensional cooling channel model for water-cooled jacket structural analysis. The first model employs the integral, conservative form of the thermal energy equation, which is discretized by means of a finite-volume numerical scheme. A special algorithm is developed at the interface between the solid and fluid regions, in order to keep the heat flux …

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Dehydration Of An Ethanol/Water Mixture Using Lignocellulosic Based Adsorbents, Tracy John Benson Dec 2003

Dehydration Of An Ethanol/Water Mixture Using Lignocellulosic Based Adsorbents, Tracy John Benson

Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the effectiveness of using cellulosic adsorbents to dehydrate 95 wt% ethanol/5 wt% water mixture. Hardwood sawdust, kenaf core, and bleached wood pulp were used as adsorbents in both liquid phase and gas phase experiments. All three adsorbents preferentially adsorbed water compared to ethanol. Bleached wood pulp exhibited the best performance of adsorbents examined. Data from the liquid ? phase experiments were fitted to the Chakravarti ? Dhar isotherm equation. From the vapor ? phase experiments, the average water loading of hardwood sawdust, kenaf core, and bleached wood pulp was 0.0037, 0.0076, and 0.0121 g H2O/g adsorbent, respectively. …

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Fully Scalable Video Coding Using Redundant-Wavelet Multihypothesis And Motion-Compensated Temporal Filtering, Yonghui Wang Dec 2003

Fully Scalable Video Coding Using Redundant-Wavelet Multihypothesis And Motion-Compensated Temporal Filtering, Yonghui Wang

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a fully scalable video coding system is proposed. This system achieves full temporal, resolution, and fidelity scalability by combining mesh-based motion-compensated temporal filtering, multihypothesis motion compensation, and an embedded 3D wavelet-coefficient coder. The first major contribution of this work is the introduction of the redundant-wavelet multihypothesis paradigm into motion-compensated temporal filtering, which is achieved by deploying temporal filtering in the domain of a spatially redundant wavelet transform. A regular triangle mesh is used to track motion between frames, and an affine transform between mesh triangles implements motion compensation within a lifting-based temporal transform. Experimental results reveal that …

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Effects Of Transcription Errors On Supervised Learning In Speech Recognition, Ramasubramanian H. Sundaram Dec 2003

Effects Of Transcription Errors On Supervised Learning In Speech Recognition, Ramasubramanian H. Sundaram

Theses and Dissertations

Supervised learning using Hidden Markov Models has been used to train acoustic models for automatic speech recognition for several years. Typically clean transcriptions form the basis for this training regimen. However, results have shown that using sources of readily available transcriptions, which can be erroneous at times (e.g., closed captions) do not degrade the performance significantly. This work analyzes the effects of mislabeled data on recognition accuracy. For this purpose, the training is performed using manually corrupted training data and the results are observed on three different databases: TIDigits, Alphadigits and SwitchBoard. For Alphadigits, with 16% of data mislabeled, the …

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Remote Control Of Heating, Ventilating, And Air Conditioning System With Labview, Yu-Loong Liew Dec 2003

Remote Control Of Heating, Ventilating, And Air Conditioning System With Labview, Yu-Loong Liew

Theses and Dissertations

Recent technological advances have extended the use of some old technology such as the X-10 home automation. With the use of X-10 and the Internet, a remote control home is possible. One of the major energy consumption appliances in a house is the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system. The main objective of this study is to explore the possibility of using X-10 and the Internet to serve as an energy saving system. A simulation is used to estimate the energy consumption.

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Service Based Marketplace For Applications, Anand Kumar Kalyanasundaram Dec 2003

Service Based Marketplace For Applications, Anand Kumar Kalyanasundaram

Theses and Dissertations

The Grid has revolutionized the way computations are done on the Internet. Access to remote computational resources and ad hoc creation of virtual organizations across administrative domains opens new opportunities on the Grid. The newly developed web services based Open Grid Services Architecture makes the Grid more accessible by allowing the Grid to be constructed from distinct platform independent components. Together they provide an environment for application sharing (or trading), collaborations and access to remote data repositories. The application marketplace is a natural extension to this application sharing environment. The marketplace addresses the fact that the existing infrastructure is still …

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