Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Exercise Power Grid Display And Web Interface, Alexander (Alex) Chernetz

Computer Engineering

The 2008-2009 expansion of the Recreation Center at Cal Poly includes three new rooms with cardiovascular fitness equipment. As part of its ongoing commitment to sustainable development, the new machines connect to the main power grid and generate power during a workout. This document explains the process of quantifying and expressing the power generated using two interfaces: an autonomous display designed for a television with a text size and amount of detail adaptable to multiple television sizes and viewing distances, and an interactive, more detailed Web interface accessible with any Java-capable computer system or browser.

Biological Conversion Of Hemicellulose Extract Into Value-Added Fuels And Chemicals, Sara Lynn Walton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The research presented in this thesis describes the fermentation of hemicellulose extracts to produce ethanol and lactic acid. Hardwood hemicellulose extracts made at a variety of conditions using the green liquor and hot water extraction processes were characterized and then fermented by Escherichia coli K011 and Bacillus coagulans MXL-9. Hemicellulose extracts were found to contain a dilute amount of xylo-oligosaccharides and acetic acid as the major components, and many minor components including other organic acids, lignin-derived phenolics, and sugar degradation products. In order to generate ethanol economically, the fermentation must produce at least a 4% ethanol solution, which requires a …

A Neural Network Approach To Border Gateway Protocol Peer Failure Detection And Prediction, Cory B. White

Master's Theses

The size and speed of computer networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, as do the corresponding errors, failures, and faults inherent within such extensive networks. This thesis introduces a novel approach to interface Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) computer networks with neural networks to learn the precursor connectivity patterns that emerge prior to a node failure. Details of the design and construction of a framework that utilizes neural networks to learn and monitor BGP connection states as a means of detecting and predicting BGP peer node failure are presented. Moreover, this framework is used to monitor a BGP network …

Solvent Dependent Morphologies In Thiol-Ene Photopolymerization: A Facile Route To Synthesis Of Resorcinarene Nanocapsules, Zaharoula Marie Kalaitzis

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Synthesis of morphologically distinct polymeric nanostructures is vital for their wide ranging applications from nanomedicine to material science. Among various polymeric nanostructures, nanocapsules in particular have attracted a lot of attention as nanoreactors and drug delivery vehicles in nanomedicine. Often, synthesis of nanocapsules is achieved by template-based approaches. A direct, template-free method for the fabrication of nanocapsules and a variety of other morphologically distinct polymeric architectures was developed. The photopolymerization of a resorcinarene thiol-ene surfactant in various solvents lead to the formation of nanocapsules, nanoparticles, fibers, distorted honeycomb-like lattices, and sheets. The progress of the polymerization reaction and the morphology …

Motion Analysis Of Fluid Flow In A Spinning Disk Reactor, Valentina N. Korzhova

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The flow of a liquid film over a rapidly rotating horizontal disk has numerous industrial applications including pharmaceuticals, chemical engineering, bioengineering, etc. The analysis and control of complex fluid flows over a rapidly rotating horizontal disk is an important issue in the experimental fluid mechanics. The spinning disk reactor exploits the benefits of centrifugal force, which produces thin highly sheared films due to radial acceleration. The hydrodynamics of the film results in excellent fluid mixing and high heat or mass transfer rates.

This work focuses on developing a novel approach for fluid flow tracking and analysis. Specifically, the developed algorithm …

Factors Affecting Redox Magnetohydrodynamics For Flow In Small Volumes, Matthew D. Gerner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lab-on-a-chip technologies offer the possibility of developing analytical devices that are low-cost, portable, disposable, fast, and operable by non-technical personnel. Such devices require automated methods to manipulate ultra-small volumes (picoliters) of samples and solution, including pumping, stirring, and positioning. Current methods for ultra-small volume microfluidics have limitations that restrict their use including high voltage requirements, disadvantageous flow profiles or rates, and relatively complicated fabrication due to mechanical parts. Redox magnetohydrodyanmics (RMHD) that utilizes permanent magnets for portability shows promise as a micropump with ease of switching flow direction, no moving parts, compatibility with both aqueous and non-aqueous solutions, low voltages …

Time Valuation Of Risk A Delayed-Bang Approach, Abhishek Pathak

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The subject of this thesis is the combined use of engineering economics and survival analysis in estimating time-value of risk-related resources. The discussion includes (1) the need for sustainable risk management, (2) the importance of time-valuation of risk related resources in the allocation or selection among competing risk mitigation alternatives, (3) the convergence of deterministic engineering economics, survivability analysis, and probabilistic analysis, and (4) results and examples of application in the context of prevention of risk event or mitigation of its consequences.

The significance of this thesis is in how three topics: engineering economics, survivability analysis, and probability theory can …

A Study Of Decision Analysis Methods In Aerospace Technology Assessments, Sharon Monica Jones

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Managers of aerospace technology programs and projects are faced with the challenge of making technology portfolio decisions under conditions of limited data, rapidly changing macro level factors and organizational uncertainties. To help make these technology investment decisions, some aerospace managers and analysts have used techniques from the field of decision analysis. In addition, there have been a limited number of research studies of real decision problems.

This dissertation presents the results of a non-experimental examination of the use of decision analysis methods for the assessment of aerospace technology portfolios. A web-based survey instrument was developed based on the results of …

Compensation Of Loss And Stimulated Emission Of Surface Plasmon Polaritons, Guohua Zhu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have become in recent years an important research topic because of their interesting, physics and exciting potential applications, ranging from sensing and biomedicine to nanoscopic imaging and information technology. However, many applications of surface plasmon polaritons are hindered by one common cause—absorption loss in metal.

Over the years, numerous proposals have been made on how to conquer the plasmon loss. In this dissertation, (1) the known solutions to the loss problem by adding optical gain have been reviewed; (2) the properties of surface plasmon polaritons are studied theoretically, and the solution of the controversy regarding the …

An Efficient And Effective Implementation Of The Trust System For Power Grid Compartmentalization, Juan M. Carlos Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

As utility companies develop and incorporate new technologies, such as moving to utility Internet technology based architecture and standard; it is crucial that we do so with history in mind. We know that traditional utility protection and control systems were not designed with security in their top priorities. This presents a danger in an environment where near real-time responses are required to ensure safe operations. As a consequence, system security becomes a burden to the system rather than necessary protection. Unfortunately, technology implementation is not the only concern. The number of utility privately-owned companies has multiplied as the market has …

Software Quality Attribute Measurement And Analysis Based On Class Diagram Metrics, Dalia Rizk

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Software quality measurement lies at the heart of the quality engineering process. Quality measurement for object-oriented artifacts has become the key for ensuring high quality software. Both researchers and practitioners are interested in measuring software product quality for improvement. It has recently become more important to consider the quality of products at the early phases, especially at the design level to ensure that the coding and testing would be conducted more quickly and accurately. The research work on measuring quality at the design level progressed in a number of steps. The first step was to discover the correct set of …

Routing In The Dark: Pitch Black, Nathan S. Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In many networks, such as mobile ad-hoc networks and friend-to-friend overlay networks, direct communication between nodes is limited to specific neighbors. Friendto-friend “darknet” networks have been shown to commonly have a small-world topology; while short paths exist between any pair of nodes in small-world networks, it is non-trivial to determine such paths with a distributed algorithm. Recently, Clarke and Sandberg proposed the first decentralized routing algorithm that achieves efficient routing in such small-world networks.

Herein this thesis we discuss the first independent security analysis of Clarke and Sandberg’s routing algorithm. We show that a relatively weak participating adversary can render …

Store And Forward Routing For Sparse Pico-Satellite Sensor Networks With Data-Mules, Trevor Joseph Koritza

Master's Theses

Satellites are playing an increasingly important role in collecting scientific information, providing communication services, and revolutionizing navigation. Until recently satellites were large and very expensive, creating a high barrier to entry that only large corporations and government agencies could overcome. In the past few years the CubeSat project at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) has worked to refine the design and launching of small, lightweight, and less expensive satellites called pico-satellites, opening space up to a wider audience. Now that Cal Poly has the launch logistics and hardware under control, a new problem has arisen. These …

Mechanical Optimization Of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Blades, Alexander Laurence Combe

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

A Methodology To Design Pipelined Simulated Annealing Kernel Accelerators On Space-Borne Field-Programmable Gate Arrays, Jeffrey Michael Carver

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Increased levels of science objectives expected from spacecraft systems necessitate the ability to carry out fast on-board autonomous mission planning and scheduling. Heterogeneous radiation-hardened Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) with embedded multiplier and memory modules are well suited to support the acceleration of scheduling algorithms. A methodology to design circuits specifically to accelerate Simulated Annealing Kernels (SAKs) in event scheduling algorithms is shown. The main contribution of this thesis is the low complexity scoring calculation used for the heuristic mapping algorithm used to balance resource allocation across a coarse-grained pipelined data-path. The methodology was exercised over various kernels with different …

Object Trajectory Estimation Using Optical Flow, Shuo Liu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Object trajectory tracking is an important topic in many different areas. It is widely used in robot technology, traffic, movie industry, and others. Optical flow is a useful method in the object tracking branch and it can calculate the motion of each pixel between two frames, and thus it provides a possible way to get the trajectory of objects. There are numerous papers describing the implementation of optical flow. Some results are acceptable, but in many projects, there are limitations. In most previous applications, because the camera is usually static, it is easy to apply optical flow to identify the …

Evaluation Of Low-Temperature Fluoride Routes To Synthesize Actinide Nitrides And Oxide Solid Solutions, Gunanda Waduge Chinthaka Silva

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Actinide mononitrides have been considered as a possible nuclear fuel for the Generation-IV nuclear reactor systems. In the process of evaluating these actinide mononitrides as nuclear fuel, it is important to study different chemical and physical characteristics of these compounds. Synthesis of the materials is thus important. Carbothermic reduction is one of the techniques that have been used to synthesize actinide mononitrides. In this method, a mixture of actinide oxide such as UO ₂ and excess carbon is heat treated at temperatures greater than 1700 °C under a nitrogen atmosphere. The technique is however not promising in synthesizing the actinide …

Magnetic Sensors For Biodetection, Pranjali Vineet Sneha Deshpande

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The objective of thesis is to design magnetic sensor for detection of nanoparticles. Recently integrating the standard laboratory techniques into integrated system on chip is growing attention. Recent development is to combine magnetic markers and magnetoresistive sensors together in magnetic chip. In this thesis two magnetoresistive sensors were studied and designed.

By applying magnetic fields, magnetic nanoparticles can be manipulated on-chip, which can be utilized to pull the molecules to specific binding sites or to test the binding strength and distinguish between specifically and non-specifically bound molecules

Magnetoresistive sensors are compatible with the semiconductor industry which provides electronic signal directly …

Turn Constrained Path Planning Problems, Victor M. Roman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We consider the problem of constructing multiple disjoint paths connecting a source point s to a target point t in a geometric graph. We require that the paths do not have any sharp turn angles. We present a review of turn constrained path planning algorithms and also algorithms for constructing disjoint paths. We then combine these techniques and present an O(nlogn) time algorithm for constructing a pair of edge disjoint turn constrained paths connecting two nodes in a planar geometric graph. We also consider the development of a turn constrained shortest path map in the presence of …

The Influence Of Carbon Source Types And Nitrate On The Performance Of The Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal Systems, Shamim Ara Begum

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research focuses on two issues in enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR). The first issue encompasses the effect of the type of carbon sources (i.e. volatile fatty acids and non volatile fatty acids) on the microbiology of EBPR. The second issue deals with the influence of denitrification on EBPR. Few studies have been performed to investigate these two issues. The recent findings on these areas are summarized below to establish the knowledge gaps this dissertation attempted to address. Details on the specific findings can be found in the literature review portion of this proposal.

Computational Study Of Pristine And Titanium-Doped Sodium Alanates For Hydrogen Storage Applications, Gopi Krishna Phani Dathar

Doctoral Dissertations

The emphasis of this research is to study and elucidate the underlying mechanisms of reversible hydrogen storage in pristine and Ti-doped sodium aluminum hydrides using molecular modeling techniques. An early breakthrough in using complex metal hydrides as hydrogen storage materials is from the research on sodium alanates by Bogdanovic et al., in 1997 reporting reversible hydrogen storage is possible at moderate temperatures and pressures in transition metal doped sodium alanates. Anton reported titanium salts as the best catalysts compared to all other transition metal salts from his further research on transition metal doped sodium alanates. However, a few questions remained …

Chasing Μ, Joseph P. Cannon

Doctoral Dissertations

Conducting and semiconducting, π-conjugated polymers are promising materials for micro- and nano-optoelectronic applications because of their widely tunable physical, electrical, and optical properties. These polymers have been used to fabricate a number of electronic devices including field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, and photovoltaic cells. However, widespread commercial application of these devices has yet to be realized, due in part to poor electronic transport characteristics and device degradation.

Nanostructuring of conjugated polymers by various methods has demonstrated marked improvements in molecular ordering and electronic transport. In this research, nanoscale, tubular structures of semiconducting polymers fabricated by template wetting nanofabrication procedures are explored. …

Computational Simulation Of Strain Localization: From Theory To Implementation, Shouxin Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Strain localization in the form of shear bands or slip surfaces has widely been observed in most engineering materials, such as metals, concrete, rocks, and soils. Concurrent with the appearance of localized deformation is the loss of overall load-carrying capacity of the material body. Because the deformation localization is an important precursor of material failure, computational modeling of the onset and growth of the localization is indispensable for the understanding of the complete mechanical response and post-peak behavior of materials and structures. Simulation results can also be used to judge the failure mechanisms of materials and structures so that the …

On The Role Of Assertions For Conceptual Modeling As Enablers Of Composable Simulation Solutions, Robert Dennis King

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This research provides a much needed systematic review of the roles that assertions play in model composability and simulation interoperability. In doing so, this research contributes a partial solution to one of the problems of model composability and simulation interoperability—namely, why do simulation systems fail to achieve the maximum level of interoperability possible? It demonstrates the importance of the assertions that are made during model development and simulation implementation, particularly as they reflect the unique viewpoint of each developer or user. It hypothesizes that it is possible to detect composability conflicts by means of a four-step process developed by the …

Characterization Of Microwave Cavity Discharges In A Supersonic Flow, Dareth Janette Drake

Physics Theses & Dissertations

A partially ionized gas is referred to as either a plasma or a discharge depending on the degree of ionization. The term discharge is usually applied to a weakly ionized gas, i.e. mostly neutrals, where as a plasma usually has a larger degree of ionization. To characterize a discharge the plasma parameters, such as the rotational temperature, vibrational temperature, and electron density, must be determined. Detailed characterization of supersonic flowing discharges is important to many applications in aerospace and aerodynamics. One application is the use of plasma-assisted hydrogen combustion devices to aid in supersonic combustion. In conditions close to the …

Tree-D-Seek: A Framework For Retrieving Three-Dimensional Scenes, Saurav Mazumdar

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, a strategy and framework for retrieving 3D scenes is proposed. The strategy is to retrieve 3D scenes based on a unified approach for indexing content from disparate information sources and information levels. The TREE-D-SEEK framework implements the proposed strategy for retrieving 3D scenes and is capable of indexing content from a variety of corpora at distinct information levels. A semantic annotation model for indexing 3D scenes in the TREE-D-SEEK framework is also proposed. The semantic annotation model is based on an ontology for rapid prototyping of 3D virtual worlds.

With ongoing improvements in computer hardware and 3D …

Frequency Diversity For Improving Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging, Jawad L. Farooq

Theses and Dissertations

In this work, a novel theoretical framework is presented for using recent advances in frequency diversity arrays (FDAs). Unlike a conventional array, the FDA simultaneously transmits a unique frequency from each element in the array. As a result, special time and space properties of the radiation pattern are exploited to improve cross-range resolution. The idealized FDA radiation pattern is compared with and validated against a full-wave electromagnetic solver, and it is shown that the conventional array is a special case of the FDA. A new signal model, based on the FDA, is used to simulate SAR imagery of ideal point …

Determining The Orbit Locations Of Turkish Airborne Early Warning And Control Aircraft Over The Turkish Air Space, Nebi Sarikaya

Theses and Dissertations

The technology improvement affects the military needs of individual countries. The new doctrine of defense for many countries emphasizes detecting threats as far away as you can from your homeland. Today, the military uses both ground RADAR and Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) Aircraft. AEW&C aircraft has become vital to detect low altitude threats that a ground RADAR cannot detect because of obstacles on the earth. Turkey has ordered four AEW&C aircraft for her air defense system because of the lack of complete coverage by ground RADAR. This research provides optimal orbit locations that can be updated according to …

Bit-Error-Rate-Minimizing Channel Shortening Using Post-Feq Diversity Combining And A Genetic Algorithm, Gokhan Altin

Theses and Dissertations

In advanced wireline or wireless communication systems, i.e., DSL, IEEE 802.11a/g, HIPERLAN/2, etc., a cyclic prefix which is proportional to the channel impulse response is needed to append a multicarrier modulation (MCM) frame for operating the MCM accurately. This prefix is used to combat inter symbol interference (ISI). In some cases, the channel impulse response can be longer than the cyclic prefix (CP). One of the most useful techniques to mitigate this problem is reuse of a Channel Shortening Equalizer (CSE) as a linear preprocessor before the MCM receiver in order to shorten the effective channel length. Channel shortening filter …

Dynamic Network Formation Using Ant Colony Optimization, Steven C. Oimoen

Theses and Dissertations

Military and industry are moving toward every device being network enabled and connected for reliable availability of communication and information. To make this type of system a reality, the devices must be capable of forming a network topology on their own in a dynamic environment to ensure that the correct information reaches a desired location and on-time. This research presents three contributions for solving highly dynamic (i.e. drastic change within the network) Multi-commodity Capacitated Network Design Problems (MCNDPs) resulting in a distributed multi-agent network design algorithm. The first contribution incorporates an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm Ant Colony System (ACS) …