Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Transcriptome Sequencing Of The Blind Subterranean Mole Rat, Spalax Galili: Utility And Potential For The Discovery Of Novel Evolutionary Patterns, Assaf Malik, Abraham Korol, Sariel Hubner, Aaron Avivi, Alvaro Hernandez, Jyothi Thimmapuram, Shahjahan Ali, Mark Bond, Fabian Glaser, Arnon Paz

Cyber Center Publications

The blind subterranean mole rat (Spalax ehrenbergi superspecies) is a model animal for survival under extreme environments due to its ability to live in underground habitats under severe hypoxic stress and darkness. Here we report the transcriptome sequencing of Spalax galili, a chromosomal type of S. ehrenbergi. cDNA pools from muscle and brain tissues isolated from animals exposed to hypoxic and normoxic conditions were sequenced using Sanger, GS FLX, and GS FLX Titanium technologies. Assembly of the sequences yielded over 51,000 isotigs with homology to ~12,000 mouse, rat or human genes. Based on these results, it was …

Miniature Mass Spectrometry: Rf Amplitude Control System Design, Matthew Allen Kirleis

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

This thesis covers the methods used to construct and characterize a custom digital RF amplitude control system. Many types of mass spectrometers exist, but few have been miniaturized as much as the Mini instruments developed at Purdue University. The goal of this research was to improve upon an earlier amplitude control system consisting of analog circuits first implemented in the Mini 11.5 mass spectrometer developed at Purdue University.

A custom set of control and data acquisition electronics were developed for testing the digital and analog control systems in a Mini 11.5 mass spectrometer chassis. A MATLAB Simulink simulation was done …

Do Wind Turbines Affect Weather Conditions?: A Case Study In Indiana, Meghan F. Henschen, Brittany Herrholtz, Lacey Rhudy, Kathryn Demchak, Brian Doogs, Joshua Holland, Erik Larson, Johnny Martin, Matthew Rudkin

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Wind turbines are becoming increasingly widespread in the United States as the world looks for cleaner sources of energy. Scientists, policymakers, and citizens have strong opinions regarding the positive and negative effects of wind energy projects, and there is a great deal of misinformation about wind energy circulating on the Web and other media sources. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how the rotation of hundreds of turbines can influence local weather conditions within a wind farm and in the surrounding areas. This experiment measures temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, relative humidity, …

Comparison Of Turbine Engine Test Cell Airborne Nanoparticle Count Versus Ambient Background Particle Count, Ryne Larowe

Purdue Polytechnic Directed Projects

With the establishment of the National Test Facility for Aerospace Fuels and Propulsion at Purdue University in October of 2009, new equipment has been acquired to measure and classify exhaust emissions. This facility utilizes the Honeywell F109 turbofan and Pratt & Whitney PT-6 turboprop engine test cells to analyze the emissions and engine operation of new alternative aviation fuels. This observational study investigates what, if any difference there is in the amount of ambient residual Particulate Matter (PM) in the turbofan engine test cell when compared to ambient particle count associated with the Purdue University Airport (KLAF) property. The project …

Probabilistic Assessment Of Drought Characteristics Using A Hidden Markov Model, Ganeshchandra Mallya, Shivam Tripathi, Sergey Kirshner, Rao S. Govindaraju

2011 Symposium on Data-Driven Approaches to Droughts

Droughts are evaluated using drought indices that measure the departure of meteorological and hydrological variables such as precipitation and stream flow from their long-term averages. While there are many drought indices proposed in the literature, most of them use pre-defined thresholds for identifying drought classes ignoring the inherent uncertainties in characterizing droughts. In this study, a hidden Markov model (HMM) [1] is developed for probabilistic classification of drought states. The HMM captures space and time dependence in the data. The proposed model is applied to assess drought characteristics in Indiana using monthly precipitation and stream flow data. The comparison of …

Quantifying Multiple Types Of Damping Acting On Bronze-Wound Guitar Strings, Jonathan Christian

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

The goal of this study was to quantify the contributions of multiple damping types acting on guitar strings for each mode over a wide frequency range so that design variables could be identified to one day create frequency based damping in guitar strings. Structural dynamic testing was used to obtain the time-response of a vibrating string in open air and in a vacuum. From this signal, each harmonic was filtered and the decay envelope was curve-fitted with a function that was a linear summation of decay functions. From the curve-fits, the damping coefficients for aerodynamic, friction, and material damping were …

How Much Do U.S. University Students Know, And Want To Know, About Sustainability And Green Building? The Findings Of A Survey, And Possible Implications For General Elective Curricula., Jeremy R. Farner

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Using the survey approach, this investigation examined the attitudes and interest of college students at two universities in different geographic locations within the United States. Approximately 24,000 students from all disciplines and majors at Weber State University (WSU) in Utah, and 4,000 at Purdue University in Indiana, were invited to participate in a study to determine current knowledge, familiarity, and interest in topics within the sustainability and Green Building educational arena. The goal of this study was to determine what students already know, would like to know, and how much interest there would be in developing …

How Much Do U.S. University Students Know, And Want To Know, About Sustainability And Green Building? The Findings Of A Survey, And Possible Implications For General Elective Curriculum., Jeremy R. Farner

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Using the survey approach, this investigation examined the attitudes and interest of college students at two universities in different geographic locations within the United States. Approximately 24,000 students from all disciplines and majors at Weber State University (WSU) in Utah, and 4,000 at Purdue University in Indiana, were invited to participate in a study to determine current knowledge, familiarity, and interest in topics within the sustainability and Green Building educational arena. The goal of this study was to determine what students already know, would like to know, and how much interest there would be in developing …

A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of A Campus Computing Grid, Preston M. Smith

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Any major research institution has a substantial number of computer systems on its campus, often in the scale of tens of thousands. Given that a large amount of scientific computing is appropriate for execution in an opportunistic environment, a campus grid is an inexpensive way to build a powerful computational resource. What is missing, though, is a model for making an informed decision on the cost-effectives of a campus grid. In this thesis, the author describes a model for measuring the costs and benefits of building a campus computing resource based on the institution’s existing investment in computing hardware.

For …

Orchardgrass (Dactylis Glomerata L.) Est And Ssr Marker Development, Annotation, And Transferability., B.S. Bushman, S.R. Larson, M Tuna, M.S. West, A.G. Hernandez, D Vullaganti, G Gong, J.G. Robbins, K. B. Jensen, Jyothi Thimmapuram

Cyber Center Publications

Orchardgrass, or cocksfoot [Dactylis glomerata (L.)], has been naturalized on nearly every continent and is a commonly used species for forage and hay production. All major cultivated varieties of orchardgrass are autotetraploid, and few tools or information are available for functional and comparative genetic analyses and improvement of the species. To improve the genetic resources for orchardgrass, we have developed an EST library and SSR markers from salt, drought, and cold stressed tissues. The ESTs were bi-directionally sequenced from clones and combined into 17,373 unigenes. Unigenes were annotated based on putative orthology to genes from rice, Triticeae grasses, other Poaceae, …

Identification And Analysis Of Common Bean (Phaseolus Vulgaris L.) Transcriptomes By Massively Parallel Pyrosequencing, Venu Kalavacharla, Zhanji Liu, Blake C. Meyers, Jyothi Thimmapuram, Kalpalatha Melmaiee

Cyber Center Publications

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is the most important food legume in the world. Although this crop is very important to both the developed and developing world as a means of dietary protein supply, resources available in common bean are limited. Global transcriptome analysis is important to better understand gene expression, genetic variation, and gene structure annotation in addition to other important features. However, the number and description of common bean sequences are very limited, which greatly inhibits genome and transcriptome research. Here we used 454 pyrosequencing to obtain a substantial transcriptome dataset for common bean.

Privacy-Preserving Assessment Of Location Data Trustworthiness, Chenyun Dai, Fang-Yu Rao, Gabriel Ghinita, Elisa Bertino

Cyber Center Publications

Assessing the trustworthiness of location data corresponding to individuals is essential in several applications, such as forensic science and epidemic control. To obtain accurate and trustworthy location data, analysts must often gather and correlate information from several independent sources, e.g., physical observation, witness testimony, surveillance footage, etc. However, such information may be fraudulent, its accuracy may be low, and its vol-
ume may be insufficient to ensure highly trustworthy data. On the other hand, recent advancements in mobile computing and positioning systems, e.g., GPS-enabled cell phones, highway sensors, etc., bring new and effective technological means to track the location of …

Prox-Rbac: A Proximity-Based Spatially Aware Rbac, Michael Kirkpatrick, Maria Luisa Damiani, Elisa Bertino

Cyber Center Publications

As mobile computing devices are becoming increasingly dominant in enterprise and government organizations, the need for fine-grained access control in these environments continues to grow. Specifically, advanced forms of access control can be deployed to ensure authorized users can access sensitive resources only when in trusted locations. One technique that has been proposed is to augment role-based access control (RBAC) with spatial constraints. In such a system, an authorized user must be in a designated location in order to exercise the privileges associated with a role. In this work, we extend spatially aware RBAC systems by defining the notion of …