Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Land-Cover Detection And Landscape Structure Analysis In The Pachitea Basin, Peruvian Amazon, Daniel Gann

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Classification procedures, including atmospheric correction satellite images as well as classification performance utilizing calibration and validation at different levels, have been investigated in the context of a coarse land-cover classification scheme for the Pachitea Basin. Two different correction methods were tested against no correction in terms of reflectance correction towards a common response for pseudo-invariant features (PIF). The accuracy of classifications derived from each of the three methods was then assessed in a discriminant analysis using crossvalidation at pixel, polygon, region, and image levels. Results indicate that only regression adjusted images using PIFs show no significant difference between images in …

Association Between Mean Residual Life (Mrl) And Failure Rate Functions For Continuous And Discrete Lifetime Distributions, Leonid Bekker

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to correct some mistakes in the literature and derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the MRL to follow the roller-coaster pattern of the corresponding failure rate function. It was also desired to find the conditions under which the discrete failure rate function has an upside-down bathtub shape if corresponding MRL function has a bathtub shape. The study showed that if discrete MRL has a bathtub shape, then under some conditions the corresponding failure rate function has an upside-down bathtub shape. Also the study corrected some mistakes in proofs of Tang, Lu and Chew …

Effects Of Invasive Africanized Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera Scutellata) On Native Stingless Bee Populations (Meliponinae) And Traditional Mayan Beekeeping In Central Quintana Roo, Mexico, Christine Elizabeth Cairns

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Maya of the Yucatan region have a long history of keeping the native stingless bees (subfamily Meliponinae). However, market forces in the last two decades have driven the Maya to favor the use of invasive Africanized honey bees (Apis mellifera scutellata) for producing large quantities of high quality honey which has an international market. Furthermore, the native bees traditionally used by the Maya are now disappearing, along with the practice of keeping them.

An interdisciplinary approach was taken in order to determine the social factors behind the decrease in stingless beekeeping and the ecological driving forces behind their disappearance …

A Real-Time Distributed Analysis Automation For Hurricane Surface Wind Observations, Sonia Otero

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From 1993 until 1999, the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produced real-time analyses of surface wind observations to help determine a storm's wind intensity and extent. Limitations of the real-time analysis system included platform and filesystem dependency, lacking data integrity and feasibility for Internet deployment.

In 2000, a new system was developed, built upon a Java prototype of a quality control graphical client interface for wind observations and an object-relational database. The objective was to integrate them in a distributed object approach with the legacy code responsible for the actual real-time wind analysis and …

Characterization And Interactions Of Mercury, Dissolved Organic Matter And Organic Sulfur In Surface Waters Of The Florida Everglades, Maria Asuncion Calero Sheils

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two sampling stations in the Florida Everglades were selected based on the results from US Environmental Protection Agency and Florida International University Mercury Project. In both sites, most of the methylmercury is associated with the truly dissolved organic matter fraction (

Targeting Of Ribonucleotide Reductase With 2'-Disulfide Analogs Of Adenosine. Electronic Versus Steric Effects In Radical Deoxygenation Of Fluorine-Containing Nucleosides, Dania Companioni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Inhibition of the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase is an appealing concept for the rational drug design against rapid proliferation of systems such as viruses and cancer cells. Synthesis of 2'-thionucleoside analogs as possible inhibitors of the enzyme was targeted in this research. For protecting the reactive thiol group, mixed disulfides were prepared as precursors of the sulfur-containing nucleosides. The thionucleoside obtained are currently under biological studies.

Fluorinated compounds are widely used in biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology. Synthesis of 2'-deoxy-2'-fluoroadenosine and its arabino epimer as well as 3’-deoxy-3'-fluoroadenosine and its xylo epimer were also targeted in order to study the electronic …

Multimedia Presentation Authoring And Browsing In Multimedia Database Systems, Xiaoming Chen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to design and implement multimedia presentation authoring and browsing in multimedia database systems, based on a two-tier client/server architecture.

The major approaches included: (i) Build a client/server multimedia presentation authoring and browsing environment; (ii) Allow query-by-image image retrieval and domain-based browsing through the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) between the Java socket at the client and the Unix socket at the server; (iii) Allow the multimedia presentation authoring by unifying the temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal relations among various media items into Multimedia Augmented Transition Network (MATN) model; (iv) Support the user interaction during the authoring …

Environmental Quality Monitoring At Five Golf Courses In Miami-Dade County, Lorna Bucknor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Five golf courses in Miami-Dade County, Florida participated in a one year monitoring study to investigate the environmental impact of agrichemical turf management activities.

Groundwater, soil, surface water, and sediments were sampled quarterly at the golf courses in 1997. Ground and surface water were sampled for 51 pesticide residues (including arsenic), nitrates, and phosphates. Soil and sediments were sampled for arsenic.

Arsenic was the main contaminant of interest. Seventy-five percent of soil samples exceeded the Florida residential soil cleanup target level (CTL) while thirty-two percent of shallow groundwater samples exceeded the maximum contaminant level (MCL). Five other pesticide residues were …