Engineering Commons^™

How Can We Best Manage Freeway Congestion?, Robert Bertini, Christopher Monsere

TREC Project Briefs

Researchers from Portland State University evaluate Oregon’s Implementation of System-Wide Adaptive Ramp Metering (SWARM).

Using Archived Its Data To Measure The Operational Benefits Of A System-Wide Adaptive Ramp Metering System, Robert L. Bertini, Christopher Monsere, Oren Eshel, Soyoung Ahn

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A System-Wide Adaptive Ramp Metering (SWARM) system has been implemented in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, replacing the previous pre-timed ramp-metering system that had been in operation since 1981. SWARM has been deployed on six major corridors and operates during the morning and afternoon peak hours. This report presents results of a "before" and "after" evaluation of the performance of two freeway corridors as part of ongoing efforts to measure the benefits of the new SWARM system, as compared to the pre-timed system. The study benefited from using the existing regional data, surveillance and communications infrastructure in addition to a …

Hardware Architectures And Implementations For Associative Memories : The Building Blocks Of Hierarchically Distributed Memories, Changjian Gao

Dissertations and Theses

During the past several decades, the semiconductor industry has grown into a global industry with revenues around $300 billion. Intel no longer relies on only transistor scaling for higher CPU performance, but instead, focuses more on multiple cores on a single die. It has been projected that in 2016 most CMOS circuits will be manufactured with 22 nm process. The CMOS circuits will have a large number of defects. Especially when the transistor goes below sub-micron, the original deterministic circuits will start having probabilistic characteristics. Hence, it would be challenging to map traditional computational models onto probabilistic circuits, suggesting a …

More Than Screening Tools? : An Examination Of Preliminary Applicant Evaluation Methods, Matthew Eric Paronto

Dissertations and Theses

The increased prevalence of technology in organizations has had significant impacts on the recruiting, screening, and hiring processes. However, little is known regarding whether preliminary applicant evaluation methods provide meaningful candidate information beyond possession of minimum qualifications. To address this gap in the literature, two preliminary applicant evaluation procedures used at a major utility company were examined across two separate studies.

Study 1 examined online applicant prescreening protocols across three positions. Archival prescreening data from 5,619 applicants were analyzed in terms of item characteristics that distinguished candidates at different points in the score distribution (high vs. low; highest vs. high), …

Irrelevance, Polymorphism, And Erasure In Type Theory, Richard Nathan Mishra-Linger

Dissertations and Theses

Dependent type theory is a proven technology for verified functional programming in which programs and their correctness proofs may be developed using the same rules in a single formal system. In practice, large portions of programs developed in this way have no computational relevance to the ultimate result of the program and should therefore be removed prior to program execution. In previous work on identifying and removing irrelevant portions of programs, computational irrelevance is usually treated as an intrinsic property of program expressions. We find that such an approach forces programmers to maintain two copies of commonly used datatypes: a …

Progress Toward Meeting The Challenges Of Our Coastal Urban Future, Juile Pullen, Jason Ching, David J. Sailor, William Thompson, Bob Bornstein, Darko Koracin

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article provides information on the Seventh Conference on Coastal Atmospheric and Oceanic Prediction and Processes, and the Seventh Symposium on the Urban Environment in San Diego, California on September 9-13, 2008. Topics include the heterogeneity of urban areas, coastal vulnerabilities, urban planning, and emergency response modeling. The conference featured several speakers including Walter Dabberdt and James Voogt.

Cmol/Cmos Hardware Architectures And Performance/Price For Bayesian Memory - The Building Block Of Intelligent Systems, Mazad Shaheriar Zaveri

Dissertations and Theses

The semiconductor/computer industry has been following Moore's law for several decades and has reaped the benefits in speed and density of the resultant scaling. Transistor density has reached almost one billion per chip, and transistor delays are in picoseconds. However, scaling has slowed down, and the semiconductor industry is now facing several challenges. Hybrid CMOS/nano technologies, such as CMOL, are considered as an interim solution to some of the challenges. Another potential architectural solution includes specialized architectures for applications/models in the intelligent computing domain, one aspect of which includes abstract computational models inspired from the neuro/cognitive sciences.

Consequently in this …

Methodology For Developing A Functional Multiscale Architecture Model System Towards Future Integrated Circuits, Yamini Yadov

Dissertations and Theses

Detection of the biochemical species in the environmental pollution, industrial emission monitoring, medical diagnosis, public security, agriculture and a variety of industries has resulted in the emerging need for a generation of high density nanostructured sensor arrays. The fundamental two terminal and three terminal device components because of their potential for specificity eventually have to be integrated into miniaturized and portable nanoarray sensors. One of the key components in these nanosensors is the development of building functional building blocks that improve device performance capabilities. This research is focused on methodology for developing fundamental, functional, multiscale architecture model system for generating …

Window Queries Over Data Streams, Jin Li

Dissertations and Theses

Evaluating queries over data streams has become an appealing way to support various stream-processing applications. Window queries are commonly used in many stream applications. In a window query, certain query operators, especially blocking operators and stateful operators, appear in their windowed versions. Previous research work in evaluating window queries typically requires ordered streams and this order requirement limits the implementations of window operators and also carries performance penalties. This thesis presents efficient and flexible algorithms for evaluating window queries. We first present a new data model for streams, progressing streams, that separates stream progress from physical-arrival order. Then, we …

Technology Forecasting For Wireless Communication, Timothy R. Anderson, Tugrul Unsal Daim, Jisun Kim

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wireless communications technologies have undergone rapid changes over the last 30 years from analog approaches to digital-based systems. These technologies have improved on many fronts including bandwidth, range, and power requirements. Development of new telecommunications technologies is critical. It requires many years of efforts. In order to be competitive, it is critical to establish a roadmap of future technologies. This paper presents a framework to characterize, assess and forecast the wireless communication technologies. A DEA-based methodology was used for predicting the state-of-the-art in future wireless communications technologies.

A Method For Processing Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler Velocity Data From Towed, Undulating Vehicles, David A. Jay, Jiayi Pan

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The utility of the acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) for sampling small time and space scales of coastal environments can be enhanced by mounting a high-frequency (1200 kHz) ADCP on an oscillating towed body. This approach requires both an external reference to convert the measured shears to velocities in the earth coordinates and a method to determine the towed body velocities. During the River Influence on the Shelf Ecosystems (RISE) project cruise, a high-frequency (1200 kHz) and narrowbeam ADCP with mode 12 sampling was mounted on a TRIAXUS oscillating towfish, which steers a 3D path behind the ship. This deployment …

The Inverse Ocean Modeling System. Part Ii: Applications, J. C. Muccino, H. G. Arango, Andrew F. Bennett, B. S. Chua, Julia Muccino Cornuelle, E. Di Lorenzo, Gary D. Egbert, D. Haidvogel, J. C. Levin, H. Luo, A. J. Miller, A. M. Moore, Edward D. Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Inverse Ocean Modeling (IOM) System is a modular system for constructing and running weak-constraint four-dimensional variational data assimilation (W4DVAR) for any linear or nonlinear functionally smooth dynamical model and observing array. The IOM has been applied to four ocean models with widely varying characteristics. The Primitive Equations Z-coordinate-Harmonic Analysis of Tides (PEZ-HAT) and the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) are three-dimensional, primitive equations models while the Advanced Circulation model in 2D (ADCIRC-2D) and Spectral Element Ocean Model in 2D (SEOM-2D) are shallow-water models belonging to the general finite-element family. These models, in conjunction with the IOM, have been used …

A Better Nondimensionalization Scheme For Slender Laminar Flows: The Laplacian Operator Scaling Method, Mark M. Weislogel, Yongkang Chen, D. Bolleddula

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A scaling of the two-dimensional Laplacian operator is demonstrated for certain solutions (at least) to Poisson’s equation. It succeeds by treating the operator as a single geometric scale entity. The belated and rather subtle method provides an efficient assessment of the geometrical dependence of the problem and is preferred when practicable to the hydraulic diameter or term-by-term scaling for slender fully developed laminar flows. The improved accuracy further reduces the reliance of problems on widely varying numerical data or cumbersome theoretical forms and improves the prospects of exact or approximate theoretical analysis. Simple example problems are briefly described that demonstrate …

Role Of Food Neophobia, Food Attitudes And Written Information On The Acceptance Of Novel Fish Products : A Cross-Cultural Study, Koei Kudo

Dissertations and Theses

The present research used an integrative and multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the relations among food attitudes, food neophobia and acceptance of novel and familiar albacore tuna dishes for Japanese and U.S. consumers.

A pilot study selected seasonings and cooking methods that were familiar or novel to each culture, and identified the most relevant health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (FA).

The main study employed a self-reported, web-based questionnaire where back-translation maximized the cross-cultural equivalency of US and Japanese versions. Scales of food neophobia (Crystallized Neophobia Scale, or CNS) and attitudes towards foods (Health-, Pleasure- and Convenience-Oriented Food Attitudes Scale, or …

Lidar System Model For Use With Path Obscurants And Experimental Validation, J. W. Giles, I. N. Bankman, R. M. Sova, T. R. Morgan, Donald D. Duncan, J. A. Millard, W. J. Green, F. J. Marcotte

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

When lidar pulses travel through a short path that includes a relatively high concentration of aerosols, scattering phenomena can alter the power and temporal properties of the pulses significantly, causing undesirable effects in the received pulse. In many applications the design of the lidar transmitter and receiver must consider adverse environmental aerosol conditions to ensure the desired performance. We present an analytical model of lidar system operation when the optical path includes aerosols for use in support of instrument design, simulations, and system evaluation. The model considers an optical path terminated with a solid object, although it can also be …

Developing A Sense Of Academic Ownership : A Longitudinal Analysis, Gwen Catherine Marchand

Dissertations and Theses

Student responsibility has emerged as a key developmental task, particularly during the transition to middle school. A developmental and motivational perspective was taken for the present study that emphasized agency, ownership, and engagement as key parts of the development of student responsibility. Self-determination Theory (SDT) was selected as the overarching framework for the present investigation due to the theory's emphasis on autonomy, which refers to the experience of oneself as the authentic origin of one's own actions (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In SDT, the construct of autonomy is used to integrate views of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and to differentiate …

Modeling Broadband Ocean Acoustic Transmissions With Time-Varying Sea Surfaces, Martin Siderius, Michael B. Porter

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Solutions to ocean acoustic scattering problems are often formulated in the frequency domain, which implies that the surface is "frozen" in time. This may be reasonable for short duration signals but breaks down if the surface changes appreciably over the transmission time. Frequency domain solutions are also impractical for source-receiver ranges and frequency bands typical for applications such as acoustic communications (e.g. hundreds to thousands of meters, 1-50 kHz band). In addition, a driving factor in the performance of certain acoustic systems is the Doppler spread, which is often introduced from sea-surface movement. The time-varying nature of the sea surface …

Financial Engineering For Energy System Capital Budgeting, Chin-Chuen Teoh

Dissertations and Theses

The United State energy industry is experiencing a major paradigm shift. This conventional vertically integrated energy industry is gradually transformed to a competitive market environment—a deregulated energy market. The market and regulatory frameworks are expected to continue to evolve in the future. Market participants are emphasizing more on profit maximization as returns on investment are no longer guaranteed. Therefore, risk management and capital budgeting play critical roles in energy system planning. Planning always involves uncertainties. When there are uncertainties, there are risks involve. This dissertation concentrates on the application of Real Options Analysis, ROA, especially lattice method, to energy system …

Intimate Partner Violence, Supervisor Support And Work Outcomes For Low-Wage Workers, Nanette Lucia Yragui

Dissertations and Theses

The workplace is a setting where women in abusive relationships can potentially access information and support to resolve the violence in their lives. This study addresses a critical need for data-based knowledge about how supervisors can effectively support employees experiencing intimate partner violence. The dissertation study examines supervisor support congruency (i.e., the match between support wanted and received) and work outcomes for Latina and non-Latina, abused women. Specifically, I examine which supervisor support measures best predict work outcomes for abused, low-wage, employees. In addition, I evaluate the criterion validity and reliability of a behavioral measure of wanted and received supervisor …

A Grounded Agent Model Of The Consumer Technology Adoption Process, Brent Alan Zenobia

Dissertations and Theses

Adoption is one of the most important concepts in the diffusion of innovations (DOI) literature, yet certain aspects of it are poorly understood. In particular, causal adoption process theory (CAPT) has been stagnant for decades and seldom subjected to critical scrutiny. In consequence, DOI research is unstable – different studies identify different factors as important.

This dissertation introduces grounded agent modeling, a hybrid methodology drawing on existing software engineering and social science techniques to construct a step-by-step explanation of how consumers make technology adoption decisions. Inductive case studies, grounded theory, and sequence analysis are used to investigate transportation mode adoption …

Effects Of Ambient Velocity Shear On Nonlinear Internal Wave Associated Mixing At The Columbia River Plume Front, Jiayi Pan, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large-amplitude nonlinear internal waves (NLIWs) are frequently observed propagating away from Columbia River tidal plume fronts. They are generated because of the deceleration of the frontal bulge. During the River Influences on Shelf Ecosystems project cruises, the velocity, density structure and acoustic backscatter of the plume fronts and frontal NLIWs were observed using a towed vehicle, vessel-mounted instrumentation, and a vessel X band radar. These observations indicate that in the presence of strong ambient velocity shear, the NLIWs with maximum amplitudes occur well below the density interface and at a depth deeper than in the absence of shear. This deepening …

2007 Portland Metropolitan Region Transportation System Performance Report, Robert Bertini

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our transportation system is a key ingredient in the economy, quality of life and urban fabric of the Portland metropolitan area. It has been stated in the past that it is not possible to manage our transportation system tomorrow unless we understand how it is performing today. In this spirit, the Portland State University Center for Transportation Studies has been working with regional and statewide partners to develop new capabilities to measure, monitor and track the performance of the transportation system in real time and using archived data sources. We believe that it is possible to leverage these disparate data …

Advanced Algorithms For Vlsi: Statistical Circuit Optimization And Cyclic Circuit Analysis, Osama Neiroukh

Dissertations and Theses

This work focuses on two emerging fields in VLSI. The first is use of statistical formulations to tackle one of the classical problems in VLSI design and analysis domains, namely gate sizing. The second is on analysis of nontraditional digital systems in the form of cyclic combinational circuits.

In the first part, a new approach for enhancing the process-variation tolerance of digital circuits is described. We extend recent advances in statistical timing analysis into an optimization framework. Our objective is to reduce the performance variance of a technology-mapped circuit where delays across elements are represented by random variables which capture …

An Iterative Route Construction And Improvement Algorithm For The Vehicle Routing Problem With Soft And Hard Time Windows, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The joint solution of routing problems with soft and hard time windows has valuable practical applications. Simultaneous solution approaches to both types of problems are needed when: (a) the number of routes needed for hard time windows exceeds the number of available vehicles, (b) a study of cost-service tradeoffs is required or the dispatcher has qualitative information regarding the relative importance of hard time window constraints across customers. A new Iterative Route Construction and Improvement (IRCI) algorithm of average run time performance O(n2 ) is proposed to sequentially solve Vehicle Routing Problems with Soft Time Windows (VRPSTW) and Hard Time …

Hydrologic Remote Sensing And Land Surface Data Assimilation, Hamid Moradkhani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Accurate, reliable and skillful forecasting of key environmental variables such as soil moisture and snow are of paramount importance due to their strong influence on many water resources applications including flood control, agricultural production and effective water resources management which collectively control the behavior of the climate system. Soil moisture is a key state variable in land surface?atmosphere interactions affecting surface energy fluxes, runoff and the radiation balance. Snow processes also have a large influence on land-atmosphere energy exchanges due to snow high albedo, low thermal conductivity and considerable spatial and temporal variability resulting in the dramatic change on surface …

Measurement Of Oxygen Saturation In The Retina With A Spectroscopic Sensitive Multi Aperture Camera, Jessica C. Ramella-Roman, Scott A. Mathews, Haripriya Kandimalla, Afshin Nabili, Donald D. Duncan, Salvatore A. D'Anna, Syed M. Shah, Quan D. Nguyen

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We introduce a new multi aperture system capable of capturing six identical images of the human fundus at six different spectral bands. The system is based on a lenslet array architecture and is well suited for spectroscopy application. The multi-aperture system was interfaced with a fundus camera to acquire spectroscopic sensitive images of the retina vessel and ultimately to calculate oxygen saturation in the retina in vivo. In vitro testing showed that the system is able to accurately reconstruct curves of partially oxygenated hemoglobin. In vivo testing on healthy volunteers was conducted and yielded results of oxygen saturation similar to …

Design Of Radio-Frequency Filters And Oscillators In Deep-Submicron Cmos Technology, Haiqiao Xiao

Dissertations and Theses

Radio-frequency filters and oscillators are widely used in wireless communication and high-speed digital systems, and they are mostly built on passive integrated inductors, which occupy a relative large silicon area. This research attempted to implement filters and oscillators operating at 1-5 GHz using transistors only, to reduce the circuits’ area. The filters and oscillators are designed using active inductors, based on the gyrator principle; they are fabricated in standard digital CMOS technology to be compatible with logic circuits and further lower the cost. To obtain the highest operating frequency, only parasitic capacitors were used.

Two new active-inductor circuits are derived …

A Strategy For Reducing The Impact Of Driving Under Influence Of Intoxicants In Portland, Oregon, Christopher Monsere, Delia Chi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII) applies to operating a vehicle under the influence of any substance that can impair driving performance. Nationally and locally there is a strong desire to reduce the societal impacts of this significant social problem. The trend in U.S. alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes was generally decreasing in the mid to late 1980’s but has remained fairly flat since the early 1990s. In 1982, approximately 60% of all US traffic fatalities were alcohol-related. By 1994, this had decreased to 43% but in the decade that followed it has changed little. In 2005, nearly 39% of …

Structural Identification Of Cubic Iron-Oxide Nanocrystal Mixtures: X-Ray Powder Diffraction Versus Quasi-Kinematic Transmission Electron Microscopy, Peter Moeck

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Two novel (and proprietary) strategies for the structural identification of a nanocrystal from either a single high-resolution (HR) transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image or a single precession electron diffraction pattern are proposed and their advantages discussed in comparison to structural fingerprinting from powder X-ray diffraction patterns. Simulations for cubic magnetite and maghemite nanocrystals are used as examples.

Bottom Profiling By Correlating Beam-Steered Noise Sequences, Chris H. Harrison, Martin Siderius

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

It has already been established that by cross-correlating ambient noisetime series received on the upward and downward steered beams of a drifting vertical array one can obtain a subbottom layer profile. Strictly, the time differential of the cross correlation is the impulse response of the seabed. Here it is shown theoretically and by simulation that completely uncorrelated surfacenoise results in a layer profile with predictable amplitudes proportional to those of an equivalent echo sounder at the same depth as the array. The phenomenon is simulated by representing the sound sources as multiple random time sequences emitted from random locations in …