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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Synthesis And Characterization Of Peek Analogues Utilizing 3,5- And 2,4-Difluorobenzophenone., Zachary Ewing Jan 2016

Synthesis And Characterization Of Peek Analogues Utilizing 3,5- And 2,4-Difluorobenzophenone., Zachary Ewing

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Two routes to semi-crystalline, potentially functionalizable poly(ether ether ketone), PEEK, analogues were explored using varying percentages of 4,4’-difluorobenzophenone and either 3,5-difluorobenzophenone or 2,4-difluorobenzophenone as the electrophilic component in nucleophilic aromatic substitution polycondensation reactions with hydroquinone. PEEK analogues utilizing 3,5-difluorobenzophenone were carried out in a “one-pot” fashion and their properties were compared to the same materials prepared previously by a multi-step synthetic procedure. The use of 2,4-difluorobenzophenone led to completely new PEEK analogues. The polymers were characterized via NMR spectroscopy, Size Exclusion Chromatography, Thermogravimetic Analysis, and Differential Scanning Calorimetry. Molecular weight determinations showed the synthesized polymers to be of a variety …


Computer Modeling Of A Solar Thermal System For Space Heating, Dhananjay D. Deshpande Jan 2016

Computer Modeling Of A Solar Thermal System For Space Heating, Dhananjay D. Deshpande

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Most applications of flat plate, low-temperature solar thermal panels are for water heating, such as producing domestic hot water or raising the temperature of swimming pools. This is reasonable given that the large masses of water present in these systems inherently provide built-in thermal energy storage so that a separate energy storage tank does not have to be purchased. For a space heating system, extra thermal energy storage generally has to be purchased and is a detriment to the economics of these systems. Despite the economic drawbacks of solar thermal space heating, this thesis focuses on the size of thermal …


A Hybrid Approach To Aerial Video Image Registration, Karol T. Salva Jan 2016

A Hybrid Approach To Aerial Video Image Registration, Karol T. Salva

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Many video processing applications, such as motion detection and tracking, rely on accurate and robust alignment between consecutive video frames. Traditional approaches to video image registration, such as pyramidal Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) feature detection and tracking are fast and subpixel accurate, but are not robust to large inter-frame displacements due to rotation, scale, or translation. This thesis presents an alternative hybrid approach using normalized gradient correlation (NGC) in the frequency domain and normalized cross-correlation (NCC) in the spatial domain that is fast, accurate, and robust to large displacements. A scale space search is incorporated into NGC to enable more consistent recovery …


Intelligent Caching To Mitigate The Impact Of Web Robots On Web Servers, Howard Nathan Rude Jan 2016

Intelligent Caching To Mitigate The Impact Of Web Robots On Web Servers, Howard Nathan Rude

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With an ever increasing amount of data that is shared and posted on the Web, the desire and necessity to automatically glean this information has led to an increase in the sophistication and volume of software agents called web robots or crawlers. Recent measurements, including our own across the entire logs of Wright State University Web servers over the past two years, suggest that at least 60\% of all requests originate from robots rather than humans. Web robots display different statistical and behavioral patterns in their traffic compared to humans, yet present Web server optimizations presume that traffic exhibits predominantly …


Correlations Between Introductory Students’ Attitudes About Physics And Conceptual Understanding, Raym Alzahrani Jan 2016

Correlations Between Introductory Students’ Attitudes About Physics And Conceptual Understanding, Raym Alzahrani

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The purpose of this study is to measure correlations between the students’ incoming attitudes, beliefs and expectations about physics and their conceptual understanding. The study presents a profile of the attitudes and beliefs for Wright State University students who enrolled in calculus-based General Physics I courses during academic years 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. Students’ initial and final attitudes, measured using the CLASS, are correlated with initial and final conceptual gain, measured using the Force Concept Inventory. Students’ initial attitudes (Opre) was correlated with students’ gain (FCIgain) in many sections. Correlations between students’ final attitudes (Opost) and their conceptual understanding (FCIpost), reported …


Development Of Analytical Equations For Optimum Tilt Of Two-Axis And Single-Axis Rotating Solar Panels For Clear-Atmosphere Condition, Gaurav Subhash Gugale Jan 2016

Development Of Analytical Equations For Optimum Tilt Of Two-Axis And Single-Axis Rotating Solar Panels For Clear-Atmosphere Condition, Gaurav Subhash Gugale

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Solar Energy is a renewable energy source which is used widely in recent times. Photovoltaic panels collect the sun’s energy and convert it to electricity. Photovoltaic panels are being widely used in both domestic applications, commercial applications, and small-scale power generation applications. Photovoltaic panels are easy to install, they generate most of their power when electrical demands peak, prices of photovoltaic panels are dropping rapidly, photovoltaic panels require low maintenance, their operating costs are minimal, and they are highly suitable for remote applications. The amount of electricity produced by photovoltaic panels depends on the amount of sunlight the panel captures. …


High Powered Pulsed Terahertz Light Generation From Superconducting Antenna Arrays, Nicholas C. Padgett Jan 2016

High Powered Pulsed Terahertz Light Generation From Superconducting Antenna Arrays, Nicholas C. Padgett

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Terahertz radiation is invaluable for use in spectroscopy and imaging work due to its nondestructive nature. It has become a key focus for those wishing to develop sensors capable of detecting weapons and narcotics unobtrusively and at a distance as well as characterizing materials and identifying defects. An ultrafast pulsed (femtoseconds) laser incident on a superconducting ring has been predicted to cause the emission of terahertz (THz) radiation. It is theorized that the radiation is a result of the supercurrent being modulated by the breaking and recombining of Cooper pairs on the order of picoseconds, where the time scale determines …


Identifying Offensive Videos On Youtube, Rajeshwari Kandakatla Jan 2016

Identifying Offensive Videos On Youtube, Rajeshwari Kandakatla

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Harassment on social media has become a critical problem and social media content depicting harassment is becoming common place. Video-sharing websites such as YouTube contain content that may be offensive to certain community, insulting to certain religion, race etc., or make fun of disabilities. These videos can also provoke and promote altercations leading to online harassment of individuals and groups. In this thesis, we present a system that identifies offensive videos on YouTube. Our goal is to determine features that can be used to detect offensive videos efficiently and reliably. We conducted experiments using content and metadata available for each …


Bioavailability And Transformation Of Silver Nanoparticles In The Freshwater Environment, Seth W. Brittle Jan 2016

Bioavailability And Transformation Of Silver Nanoparticles In The Freshwater Environment, Seth W. Brittle

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The proliferation of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in consumer products and industrial applications has generated many environmental concerns since the chemistry of silver changes at the nanoscale and the very properties that make them desirable – their unique reactivity – may pose environmental risks. This dissertation addresses these concerns from three different angles. First, freshwater crayfish is demonstrated as a potential benthic indicator of Ag pollution since Ag accumulation depends on the form of Ag. The uptake and distribution of Ag (from AgNPs or Ag+) in tissue samples were measured by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The hepatopancreas (1.5-17.4 …


Design And Application Of Facile Routes To N-Heterocycle Functionalized Poly(Arylene Ether)S, Abraham K. Kemboi Jan 2016

Design And Application Of Facile Routes To N-Heterocycle Functionalized Poly(Arylene Ether)S, Abraham K. Kemboi

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A series of 3,5-difluorinated systems, which are activated towards nucleophilic aromatic substitution (NAS) by the strongly electron withdrawing benzoxazole or benzothiazole groups, located meta to the fluorines were prepared and fully characterized. The monomers also carry various N-heterocyclic species on the non-fluorinated ring. The corresponding poly(arylene ether)s, some of which were copolymers with triphenylphosphine oxide-based monomers, were prepared via standard NAS polycondensation reactions. Incorporation of the monomers containing N-heterocycle units was determined by NMR spectroscopy. Characterization of the thermal properties was done using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning (DSC). Most of the polymers displayed good film forming properties when …


Millimeter – Wave/Terahertz Chirped Michelson Interferometer Techniques For Sub Surface Sensing, Dinesh Amal Mirando Jan 2016

Millimeter – Wave/Terahertz Chirped Michelson Interferometer Techniques For Sub Surface Sensing, Dinesh Amal Mirando

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Over the last couple of decades, the field of millimeter-wave (mmW) and terahertz (THz) radiation has seen an accelerated growth thanks to developments in high quality mmW/THz sensors. These developments have contributed to many useful applications in the fields of medicine, security, construction, etc. Non-destructive evaluations such as the detection of defects in materials is currently one of the major applications of mmW/THz radiation. These evaluations are performed using mmW/THz continuous-wave radar systems. In this study, we discuss how Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) techniques can enhance sensing applications through the use of a Michelson interferometer. This allows multiple objects …


An Autoencoder-Based Image Descriptor For Image Matching And Retrieval, Chenyang Zhao Jan 2016

An Autoencoder-Based Image Descriptor For Image Matching And Retrieval, Chenyang Zhao

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Local image features are used in many computer vision applications. Many point detectors and descriptors have been proposed in recent years; however, creation of effective descriptors is still a topic of research. The Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) developed by David Lowe is widely used in image matching and image retrieval. SIFT detects interest points in an image based on Scale-Space analysis, which is invariant to change in image scale. A SIFT descriptor contains gradient information about an image patch centered at a point of interest. SIFT is found to provide a high matching rate, is robust to image transformations; …


Symmetric Colorings Of The Hypercube And Hyperoctahedron, Bo Phillips Jan 2016

Symmetric Colorings Of The Hypercube And Hyperoctahedron, Bo Phillips

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A self-complementary graph G is a subgraph of the complete graph K_n that is isomorphic to its complement. A self-complementary graph can be thought of as an edge 2-coloring of K_n that admits a color-switching automorphism. An automorphism of K_n that is color-switching for some edge 2-coloring is called a complementing automorphism. Complementing automorphisms for K_n have been characterized in the past by such authors as Sachs and Ringel. We are interested in extending this notion of self-complementary to other highly symmetric families of graphs; namely, the hypercube Q_n and its dual graph, the hyperoctahedron O_n. To that end, …


Gpu-Accelerated Feature Tracking, Alex Graves Jan 2016

Gpu-Accelerated Feature Tracking, Alex Graves

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The motivation of this research is to prove that GPUs can provide significant speedup of long-executing image processing algorithms by way of parallelization and massive data throughput. This thesis accelerates the well-known KLT feature tracking algorithm using OpenCL and an NVidia GeForce GTX 780 GPU. KLT is a fast, efficient and accurate feature tracker but can easily suffer from low frame rates when tracking many features in an HD video sequence. This research explains how KLT could benefit from GPGPU programming and provides the corresponding OpenCL implementation. Additionally, various optimization techniques are emphasized to further boost GPU performance. The experiments …


Power Distribution And Probabilistic Forecasting Of Economic Loss And Fatalities Due To Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, And Floods In The United States, Scott Edward Baker Jan 2016

Power Distribution And Probabilistic Forecasting Of Economic Loss And Fatalities Due To Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, And Floods In The United States, Scott Edward Baker

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Traditionally, the size of natural disaster events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods is measured in terms of wind speed (m/sec), energy released (ergs), or discharge (m3/sec). Economic loss and fatalities from natural disasters result from the intersection of the human infrastructure and population with the natural event. This study investigates the size versus cumulative number distribution of individual natural disaster events in the United States. Economic losses are adjusted for inflation to 2014 United States Dollars (USD). The cumulative number divided by the time over which the data ranges is the basis for making probabilistic forecasts in terms …


Mechanisms Of Antixenosis And Antibiosis Of Ash Against Emerald Ash Borer, Chad Michael Rigsby Jan 2016

Mechanisms Of Antixenosis And Antibiosis Of Ash Against Emerald Ash Borer, Chad Michael Rigsby

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Emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), is an invasive forest pest causing widespread mortality of ash (Fraxinus spp.) in North America. Host resistance research and the development of resistant hosts offers a promising strategy for the long-term conservation of ash and management of EAB. Manchurian ash (F. mandshurica) shares an evolutionary history with EAB in Asia, resulting in its greater resistance relative to naive North American ashes. In the following studies I investigate antixenosis and antibiosis mechanisms of resistant and susceptible ashes. Antixenosis in Manchurian ash was demonstrated by quantifying substantially lower oviposition on this species relative to …


A Stochastic Petri Net Based Nlu Scheme For Technical Documents Understanding, Adamantia Psarologou Jan 2016

A Stochastic Petri Net Based Nlu Scheme For Technical Documents Understanding, Adamantia Psarologou

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Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is a very old research field, which deals with machine reading comprehension. Despite the many years of work and the numerous accomplishments by several researchers in the field, there is still place for significant improvements. Here, our goal is to develop a novel NLU methodology for detecting and extracting event/action associations in technical documents. In order to achieve this goal we present a synergy of methods (Kernel extraction, Formal Language Modeling, Stochastic Petri-nets (SPN) mapping and Event Representation via SPN graph synthesis). In particular, the basic meaning of a natural language sentence is given by its …


Seismic Reflection Profiling Near Middletown, Ohio And Interpretation Of Precambrian Deformational Settings, David Joseph Peterman Jan 2016

Seismic Reflection Profiling Near Middletown, Ohio And Interpretation Of Precambrian Deformational Settings, David Joseph Peterman

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The reprocessing of four vibroseis seismic reflection lines at the AK Steel facility in Middletown, Ohio, provides new insight on the age, deposition, and structural deformation of the pre-Mount Simon sedimentary sequence below Butler and Warren Counties. Processing was focused on the pre-Mt. Simon reflections to reveal gently west-southwest dipping reflectors that make a slight angular unconformity with the overlying Paleozoic sedimentary strata. This pre-Mount Simon sedimentary sequence has been encountered in several wells from western Ohio, Indiana, and northern Kentucky and has been identified as the Middle Run Formation. Examination of the weak and discontinuous seismic character of the …


Software Defined Secure Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, Maha Alqallaf Jan 2016

Software Defined Secure Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, Maha Alqallaf

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Software defined networking (SDN), a new networking paradigm that separates the network data plane from the control plane, has been considered as a flexible, layered, modular, and efficient approach to managing and controlling networks ranging from wired, infrastructure-based wireless (e.g., cellular wireless networks, WiFi, wireless mesh net- works), to infrastructure-less wireless networks (e.g. mobile ad-hoc networks, vehicular ad-hoc networks) as well as to offering new types of services and to evolving the Internet architecture. Most work has focused on the SDN application in traditional and wired and/or infrastructure based networks. Wireless networks have become increasingly more heterogeneous. Secure and collab- …


Alkylenedioxy Containing Peek Polymers Containing Meta Linkages, James Uchenna Ohaeri Jan 2016

Alkylenedioxy Containing Peek Polymers Containing Meta Linkages, James Uchenna Ohaeri

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The oxyalkylene containing, meta linked monomers 1,2-bis(3-(4-fluorobenzoyl)phenoxy)ethane, 1,3-bis(3-(4-fluorobenzoyl)phenoxy)propane, 1,4-bis(3-(4-fluorobenzoyl)phenoxy)butane, 1,5-bis(3-(4-fluorobenzoyl)phenoxy)pentane can be prepared by a three-step process starting with the dialdehydes (1,2-bis(3-formylphenoxy)ethane, 1,3-bis(3-formylphenoxy)propane, 1,4-bis(3-formylphenoxy)butane and 1,5-bis(3-formylphenoxy)pentane, respectively). Polymerization of the monomers with bisphenol-A gave soluble, thermally stable amorphous poly(ether ether ketone)s. The polymers exhibited molecular weights of (Mw/Mn) (21,841/ 8721) g/mol, (21,195/ 7569) g/mol, (9,107/ 2819) g/mol and (12,990/ 4723) g/mol, respectively. Thermal analyses of the polymers revealed Tgs of 112º, 106º, 92º and 91º, respectively and 5% weight losses under a nitrogen atmosphere of 389º, 410º, 411º and 414º, respectively.


Application Of Geographical Information Systems To Determine Human Population Impact On Water Resources Of Yellow Springs, Ohio, And The Use Of Lidar Intensities In Land Use Classification, Gregory Geise Jan 2016

Application Of Geographical Information Systems To Determine Human Population Impact On Water Resources Of Yellow Springs, Ohio, And The Use Of Lidar Intensities In Land Use Classification, Gregory Geise

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The purposes of the following studies were to investigate natural and human influences on several spatial and temporal aspects of a local and regional environment. The decreasing discharge rate of the ground water supplied Yellow Spring may be caused by the increase in population of the nearby Village of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Periodic measurements of Yellow Spring's discharge rate compared to changes in the town's population showed an inverse relationship, where spring discharge declined as population grew. A sharp decrease in discharge occurred during a period when the spring's facade was modified and an airport was built partially overlying the …


Knowledge-Empowered Probabilistic Graphical Models For Physical-Cyber-Social Systems, Pramod Anantharam Jan 2016

Knowledge-Empowered Probabilistic Graphical Models For Physical-Cyber-Social Systems, Pramod Anantharam

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There is a rapid intertwining of sensors and mobile devices into the fabric of our lives. This has resulted in unprecedented growth in the number of observations from the physical and social worlds reported in the cyber world. Sensing and computational components embedded in the physical world constitute a Cyber-Physical System (CPS). Current science of CPS is yet to effectively integrate citizen observations in CPS analysis. We demonstrate the role of citizen observations in CPS and propose a novel approach to perform a holistic analysis of machine and citizen sensor observations. Specifically, we demonstrate the complementary, corroborative, and timely aspects …


Heating Power Of Coated Fecov Magnetic Nanoparticles, Hanaa Ali Alshammari Jan 2016

Heating Power Of Coated Fecov Magnetic Nanoparticles, Hanaa Ali Alshammari

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The effect of coatings on the heating curves of magnetic nanoparticles was studied in this Thesis. Iron cobalt vanadium (FeCoV) nanoparticles with oxide (CoOFe2O3) and graphite (C) coating to prevent oxidation, were synthesized through thermal plasma processing method. The magnetic nanoparticles had an average diameter of 30 nm. In the case of FeCoV with oxide coating, the initial diameter of the pure FeCoV nanoparticles on average was 30 nm but after oxidation 5 nm thick oxide layer was created. As a result of this oxidation, the magnetic core of FeCoV nanoparticles was shrunk from 30 nm to 20 nm in …


Knowledge Driven Search Intent Mining, Ashutosh Jadhav Jan 2016

Knowledge Driven Search Intent Mining, Ashutosh Jadhav

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Understanding users' latent intents behind search queries is essential for satisfying a user's search needs. Search intent mining can help search engines to enhance its ranking of search results, enabling new search features like instant answers, personalization, search result diversification, and the recommendation of more relevant ads. Hence, there has been increasing attention on studying how to effectively mine search intents by analyzing search engine query logs. While state-of-the-art techniques can identify the domain of the queries (e.g. sports, movies, health), identifying domain-specific intent is still an open problem. Among all the topics available on the Internet, health is one …


Determination Of Atmospheric Particulate Matter Composition In The Dayton Metro Area, Saagar Mahendra Patel Jan 2016

Determination Of Atmospheric Particulate Matter Composition In The Dayton Metro Area, Saagar Mahendra Patel

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Quartz filters from high-volume air samplers of particulate matter of a size less than 10 micrometers in diameter (PM10) located in Moraine and Yellow Springs, Ohio, were obtained from the Regional Air Pollution Control Agency and analyzed for levoglucosan, metals, and the EPA 16 priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Average concentration of levoglucosan increased as ambient temperature decreased. Winter concentrations of levoglucosan for Moraine and Yellow Springs were 39.41 ± 31.58 µg/g and 51.52 ± 27.44 µg/g, respectively, which is due to a greater amount of residential wood burning in the colder months. The concentration of biomass burning …


Use Of Clearview Gel Dosimeter For Quality Assurance And Testing Of Stereotactic Radiosurgery, Erik Joseph-Leonard Courter Jan 2016

Use Of Clearview Gel Dosimeter For Quality Assurance And Testing Of Stereotactic Radiosurgery, Erik Joseph-Leonard Courter

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There exists a lack of accurate, reproducible three-dimensional dosimetry techniques for stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) commissioning and quality assurance. This experiment evaluates the use of ClearView gel dosimeters as an alternative to current methods for small field dosimetry in SRS testing. ClearView differs from other gel dosimeters in that it uses tetrazolium salt in its chemical make-up in place of traditional Fricke-type compounds. Using a Varian TrueBeam radiotherapy system to deliver the radiation, three vials of ClearView gel dosimeter were tested in three different dose delivery scenarios. The first test examined the dosimeter's response to a static beam with the dose …