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2008 Epa’S Report On The Environment: Indicators Presenting Data For Epa Region 7, United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment (ROE) compiles, in one place, the most reliable indicators currently available to answer 23 questions that EPA believes are of critical importance to its mission to protect human health and the environment.
The indicators are supported by data gathered from federal and state agencies and non-governmental organizations. All ROE indicators were peer-reviewed to meet exacting standards for accuracy, representativeness, and reliability, and the report has undergone extensive internal and interagency review, SAB review, and public comment. The indicators present trends wherever adequate data are available, and establish national baselines where they are not. The …

Formal Scenario Development For Environmental Impact Assessment Studies., Y. Liu, M. Mahmoud, H. Hartmann, S. Stewart, T. Wagener, D. Semmens, R. Stewart, H. Gupta, D. Dominguez, D. Hulse, R. Letcher, B. Rashleigh, C. Smith, R. Street, J. Ticehurst, M. Twer, H. Van Delden, D. White

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Scenario analysis is the process of evaluating possible future events through the consideration of alternative plausible, though not equally likely, states (scenarios). The definition by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) best represents scenarios considered in the natural sciences:

"A scenario is a coherent) internally consistent and plausible description of a possible future state of the world. It is not a forecast; rather, each scenario is one alternative image ~fhow the future can unfold."(http://ipcc-ddc.cru. uea.ac.uk/ ddc_definitions. htnll)

Good Modelling Practice, N. Crout, T. Kokkonen, A.J. Jakeman, J.P. Norton, L.T.H. Newham, R. Anderson, H. Assaf, B.F.W. Croke, N. Gaber, J. Gibbons, D. Holzworth, J. Mysiak, J. Reichl, R. Seppelt, T. Wagener, P. Whitfield

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Best-practice guidelines for Modelling have been developed by a numbers of organizations to promote better understanding of model development and application, facilitate tests of model quality and provide a framework for documenting and communicating modelling activities among modellers and decision makers. Good practice within a Data Mining paradigm is presented in Chapter 12.

Why Divide By (N-1) For Sample Standard Deviation?, Paul Savory

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Instructional Materials

In statistics, the sample standard deviation is a widely used measure of the variability or dispersion of a data set. The standard deviation of a data set is the square root of its variance. In calculating the sample standard deviation, the divisor is the number of samples in the data set minus one (n-1) rather than n. This often confuses students. This paper offers a quick overview of why the divisor is (n-1) for calculating the sample standard deviation.

The History Of The Unl Water Center From 1964, Water Center, School Of Natural Resources

Nebraska Water Center: Administrative Materials

Water is an integral part of Nebraska’s economy and well being in a state that depends on an adequate supply for all uses, including agricultural, municipal, industrial, recreational and wildlife habitat.

Nebraska is fortunate with regard to its water supply, having tremendous groundwater reserves which are estimated to be in excess of two billion acrefeet (an acre-foot being enough water to cover one acre of land with a foot of water, or approximately 325,000 gallons), combined with an estimated annual precipitation of 86 million acre-feet and annual average surface water inflows of 1.7 million acre-feet, give the state adequate supplies …

A Simulation-Based Approach For Dock Allocation In A Food Distribution Center, Balagopal Gopakumar, Suvarna Sundaram, Shengyong Wang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

This research endeavor focused on the warehouse receiving process at a large food distribution center, which comprises of trucks with goods reaching the destination warehouse, unloading and finally putting away the contents to the specific aisles. Discrete event simulation was used to model the current system’s functioning and to identify operational inefficiencies which were quantified through a detailed value stream mapping exercise. Inspired by ‘lean’ philosophy, a dock allocation algorithm was designed to take into account the relationship between the dock location and the destination aisle to ‘optimally’ assign the trucks to the docks. After validating the baseline, new scenarios …

Lightweight Objective Quality Of Voice Estimation Through Machine Learning, Daniel Riordan

Theses

Communication systems are undergoing constant and rapid innovation, both at the design stage and in the field. This in turn has led to an inereasing need for fast, efficient, portable and economic methods for the testing of these systems. For voice carrying communication systems the quality of the transmitted voice that the system produces is a large factor in the overall performance rating of the system. This measure is known as the ‘Quality of Voice’ (QoV) and can be evaluated either subjectively or objectively.

Speech quality is a complex subjective phenomenon that can be best quantified by subjective testing. A …

Helical Axes Of Skeletal Knee Joint Motion During Running, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert, C. Reinschmidt, A. Lundberg

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to determine the changes in the axis of rotation of the knee that occur during the stance phase of running. Using intracortical pins, the three-dimensional skeletal kinematics of three subjects were measured during the stance phase of five running trials. The stance phase was divided into equal motion increments for which the position and orientation of the finite helical axes (FHA) were calculated relative to a tibial reference frame. Results were consistent within and between subjects. At the beginning of stance, the FHA was located at the midepicondylar point and during the flexion phase …

Comparison Of The Effectiveness Of Alternative Ferrate (Vi) Synthesis Formulas As Disinfectants For Wastewater And River Water, Rachelle Ginart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ferrate (VI) has been studied as an alternative chemical to disinfect water and wastewater in recent years. The disinfection effectiveness of two different wet oxidation ferrate (VI) synthesis formulas in wastewater and Econlockhatchee River water was evaluated. Ferrate (VI) is synthesized by addition of ferric chloride to a mixture of sodium hydroxide and calcium hypochlorite (refer to U.S. Patent 6,790,429). One ferrate (VI) synthesis formula uses below the stoichiometric requirement of hypochlorite (Low Chlorine Formula) while the other ferrate (VI) synthesis formula uses more than the stoichiometric requirement of hypochlorite (Standard Chlorine Formula). For applications requiring low chlorine residual effluent …

Delay Sensitive Routing For Real Time Traffic Over Ad-Hoc Networks, Dipika Darshana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wireless ad hoc network consists of inexpensive nodes that form a mobile communication network. Due to limitations of the transmission range, the nodes rely on each other to forward packets such that messages can be delivered across the network. The selection of the path along which a packet is forwarded from the source node to the destination node is done by the routing algorithm. Most commonly used routing algorithms, though effective for non-real time applications, cannot handle real-time applications that require strict delay bounds on packet delivery. In this thesis, we propose a routing protocol that ensures timely delivery of …

A Reinforcement Learning Technique For Enhancing Human Behavior Models In A Context-Based Architecture, David Aihe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A reinforcement-learning technique for enhancing human behavior models in a context-based learning architecture is presented. Prior to the introduction of this technique, human models built and developed in a Context-Based reasoning framework lacked learning capabilities. As such, their performance and quality of behavior was always limited by what the subject matter expert whose knowledge is modeled was able to articulate or demonstrate. Results from experiments performed show that subject matter experts are prone to making errors and at times they lack information on situations that are inherently necessary for the human models to behave appropriately and optimally in those situations. …

The Effectiveness Of Specifically Designed Filter Media To Reduce Nitrate And Orthophosphate In Stormwater Runoff, Mikhal Moberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout Central Florida surface water and ground water are decreasing in quantity and quality in part because of excess Nitrate and Phosphorus nutrients. Stormwater runoff serves as a medium for transport of Nitrate and Phosphorus to surface water and ground water. The goal of this experiment is assess the Nitrate and Phosphorus removal in stormwater using select media. The results of a literature search, batch test experimentation and column test experimentation are used to determine an optimal media blend that may be implemented in detention ponds to reduce Nitrate and Phosphorus. The extensive literature search revealed 32 different media that …

Performance Based Decision System In Determining Post Closure Care (Pcc) Duration In Florida Landfills, Asawari Kulkarni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is an evaluation of Post Closure Care (PCC) duration of landfills using performance based methodology. The post closure care phase begins once the landfill is closed. As required by the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle D, PCC duration for municipal solid waste landfills is 30 years. During the PCC period, the landfill operator/owner is required to conduct monitoring for leachate, landfill gas, and ground-water and maintain the integrity of the cap so that the landfill does not impose a threat to surrounding human health and environment (HH&E). The duration of PCC can be reduced by the director …

A Kinetics Study Of Selected Filtration Media For Nutrient Removal At Various Temperatures, Elizabeth Henderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the nutrient levels of the Upper Floridan aquifer have been increasing (USGS, 2008). An example of this is found in Ocala, Florida where Silver Springs nitrate concentrations have risen from 0.5 mg/L in the 1960 s to approximately 1.0 mg/L in 2003 (Phelps, 2004). Because stormwater is a contributor to surficial and groundwater aquifer recharge, there is an increasing need for methods that decrease nitrogen and phosphorus levels. A laboratory column study was conducted to simulate a retention pond with saturated soil conditions. The objectives of the column studies reported in this thesis were to investigate the …

The Highly Similar Arabidopsis Homologs Of Trithorax Atx1 And Atx2 Encode Proteins With Divergent Biochemical Functions, Abdelaty Saleh, Raul Alvarez-Venegas, Mehtap Yilmaz, Oahn-Le, Guichuan Hou, Monther Sadder, Ayed Al-Abdallat, Yuannan Xia, Guoqinq Lu, Istvan Ladunga, Zoya Avramova

Nebraska Center for Biotechnology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Gene duplication followed by functional specialization is a potent force in the evolution of biological diversity. A comparative study of two highly conserved duplicated genes, ARABIDOPSIS TRITHORAX-LIKE PROTEIN1 (ATX1) and ATX2, revealed features of both partial redundancy and of functional divergence. Although structurally similar, their regulatory sequences have diverged, resulting in distinct temporal and spatial patterns of expression of the ATX1 and ATX2 genes. We found that ATX2 methylates only a limited fraction of nucleosomes and that ATX1 and ATX2 influence the expression of largely nonoverlapping gene sets. Even when coregulating shared targets, ATX1 and ATX2 may employ different …

Packing Factors Of Feed Products In Storage Structures, Samuel G. Mcneill, Michael D. Montross, Sidney A. Thompson, I. Joseph Ross, Thomas C. Bridges

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Experiments were conducted to measure the changes in bulk density of cracked corn, corn meal, soybean meal, cotton seed meal, and distillers dried grain (without solubles) when subjected to simulated overburden pressures. All materials were tested at two moisture content levels (approximately 8% and 12% w.b.) and seven pressures between 0 and 69 kPa (0 and 10 psi). A mathematical model was fitted to the data to predict the bulk density of each feed ingredient as a function of pressure and moisture content. These relationships were inserted into a previously developed computer model to predict ingredient packing within conventional storage …

Real-Time Realistic Rendering Of Nature Scenes With Dynamic Lighting, Kevin Boulanger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rendering of natural scenes has interested the scientific community for a long time due to its numerous applications. The targeted goal is to create images that are similar to what a viewer can see in real life with his/her eyes. The main obstacle is complexity: nature scenes from real life contain a huge number of small details that are hard to model, take a lot of time to render and require a huge amount of memory unavailable in current computers. This complexity mainly comes from geometry and lighting. The goal of our research is to overcome this complexity and to …

Evaluating The Performance Of Animal Shelters: An Application Of Data Envelopment Analysis, Brandy Heyde

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this thesis is the application of data envelopment analysis to understand and evaluate the performance of diverse animal welfare organizations across the United States. The results include identification of the most efficient animal welfare organizations, at least among those that post statistics on their operations, and a discussion of various partnerships that may improve the performance of the more inefficient organizations. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that there are 4000 - 6000 independently-run animal shelters across the United States, with an estimated 6-8 million companion animals entering them each year. Unfortunately, more than half …

Kentucky Traffic Collision Facts 2008 Report, Kentucky Transportation Center, Kentucky State Police

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

KENTUCKY’S TRAFFIC COLLISION FACTS report for 2008 is based on collision reports submitted to the Kentucky State Police Records Branch. As required by Kentucky Revised Statutes 189.635, “every law enforcement agency whose officers investigate a vehicle accident of which a report must be made...shall file a report of the accident...within ten days after investigation of the accident upon forms supplied by the bureau.” The stated purpose of this requirement is to utilize data on traffic collisions for such purposes as will improve the traffic safety program in the Commonwealth. Data contained in this report are based solely on the observations …

Application Of Artificial Neural Networks And Colored Petri Nets On Earthquake Resilient Water Distribution Systems, Nandini Kavanal Balakrishnan

Masters Theses

"Water distribution systems are important lifelines and a critical and complex infrastructure of a country. The performance of this system during unexpected rare events is important as it is one of the lifelines that people directly depend on and other factors indirectly impact the economy of a nation. In this thesis a couple of methods that can be used to predict damage and simulate the restoration process of a water distribution system are presented. Contributing to the effort of applying computational tools to infrastructure systems, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used to predict the rate of damage in the pipe …

The Journal Of Undergraduate Research: Volume 06

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

This is the complete issue of the South Dakota State University Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 6.

Color Multiplexed Single Pattern Sli, Neelima Mandava

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Structured light pattern projection techniques are well known methods of accurately capturing 3-Dimensional information of the target surface. Traditional structured light methods require several different patterns to recover the depth, without ambiguity or albedo sensitivity, and are corrupted by object movement during the projection/capture process. This thesis work presents and discusses a color multiplexed structured light technique for recovering object shape from a single image thus being insensitive to object motion.

This method uses single pattern whose RGB channels are each encoded with a unique subpattern. The pattern is projected on to the target and the reflected image is captured …

Emotional Speech Corpora For Analysis And Media Production, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

Research into the acoustic correlates of emotional speech as part of the SALERO project has led to the construction of high quality emotional speech corpora, which contain both IMDI metadata and acoustic analysis data for each asset. Research into semi-automated, re-usable character animation has considered the development of online workflows based on speech corpus assets that would provide a single point of origin for character animation in media production. In this paper, a brief description of the corpus design and construction is given. Further, a prototype workflow for semi-automated emotional character animation is also provided, alongside a description of current …

Machine Annotation Of Sets Of Traditional Irish Dance Tunes, Bryan Duggan, Mikel Gainza, Padraig Cunningham

Conference papers

A set in traditional Irish music is a sequence of two or more dance tunes in the same time signature, where each tune is repeated an arbitrary number of times. A turn in a set represents the point at which either a tune repeats or a new tune is introduced. Tunes in sets are played in a segue (without a pause) and so detecting the turn is a significant challenge. This paper presents the MATS alogrithm, a novel algorithm for identifying turns in sets of traditional Irish music. MATS works on digitised audio files of monophonic flute and tin-whistle music. …

Emergent Behavior In Massively-Deployed Sensor Networks, Ekaterina Shurkova, Ruzana Ishak, Stephan Olariu, Shaharuddin Salleh

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The phenomenal advances in MEMS and nanotechnology make it feasible to build small devices, referred to as sensors that are able to sense, compute and communicate over small distances. The massive deployment of these small devices raises the fascinating question of whether or not the sensors, as a collectivity, will display emergent behavior, just as living organisms do. In this work we report on a recent effort intended to observe emerging behavior of large groups of sensor nodes, like living cells demonstrate. Imagine a massive deployment of sensors that can be in two states "red" and "blue". At deployment time …

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: Chapter 9: Causes, Prevention, And Mitigation Workgroup Report, Paul Berger, Justin Brooks, Terence Evens, Christopher Gobler, Jennifer Graham, James Hyde, Dawn Karner, Dennis (Kevin) O'Shea, Valerie Paul, Hans Paerl, Michael Piehler, Barry Rosen, Mary Santelmann, Pat Tester, Judy Westrick

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are estimated to have evolved 3.5 billion years ago, at which time they began to add oxygen to the existing anaerobic atmosphere, actually changing the chemistry of the planet and allowing new life forms to evolve. These ubiquitous microbes are capable of tolerating desiccation, hypersalinity, hyperthermal conditions, and high ultraviolet radiation, often for extensive periods of time. Recently, cyanobacteria have responded to human alterations of aquatic environments, most notably nutrient-enhanced primary production, or eutrophication. In fact, cyanobacterial blooms are now viewed as widespread indicators of freshwater, brackish and marine eutrophication.

Due to the complex interactions between physical …

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: Chapter 20: Analytical Methods Workgroup Report, Armah De La Cruz, Parke Rublee, James Hungerford, Paul Zimba, Steven Wilhelm, Jussi Meriluoto, Kathy Echols, Michael Meyer, Gerard Stelma, Rosemonde Mandeville, Linda Lawton, Kaarina Sivonen, Ambrose Furey

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The topic of exposure assessment overlaps with other topic areas of this workshop. It includes considerations of establishment of long term monitoring and event response, sampling protocols, development and standardization of organism and toxin assays, funding mechanisms, and public outreach. The development of a coordinated infrastructure (funding, human resources, and facilities, materials and equipment) is key to successfully addressing the threat posed by CHABs.
The establishment of validated standardized protocols to detect cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins is of considerable importance given the increased occurrence of CHABs worldwide. Standardized methods are needed for studies assessing occurrence, monitoring and toxicity studies which are …

Release And Removal Of Microcystins From Microcystis During Disinfection Treatments, Jie Ding

Masters Theses

"The presence of algal toxins, or cyanotoxins, in surface water has been increasingly reported. These highly hazardous toxins are potential threat to both human health and animals by contaminating drinking water sources over the world. In this research project, inactivation of Microcystis aeruginosa cells and release and removal of intracellular microcystins during several oxidative and physical treatments was studied. The results of this study show that chlorine dioxide, sonication, low salinity and quick blending with tissuemiser caused immediate release of microcystin-LR to water after treatment. No significant increase of toxin level was observed after treatment with free chlorine, ozone, permanganate, …

A Laboratory Study Of Struvite Precipitation For Phosphorus Removal From Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Wastewater, Sushmita Dhakal

Masters Theses

"Struvite precipitation occurs spontaneously in many wastewater treatment facilities as a nuisance. However, struvite precipitation is now being studied as a method to concurrently treat high phosphorus wastewaters and generate a valuable product. Many factors influence the precipitation of struvite such as component -ion molar ratios, pH, aeration, solubility, solids and mixing energy. In the present work, struvite precipitation in the actual swine wastewater was studied by strategically controlling aeration, pH, and mixing"--Abstract, page iv.

Individual-Based Artificial Ecosystems For Design And Optimization, Srinivasa Shivakar Vulli, Sanjeev Agarwal

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Individual-Based modeling has gained popularity over the last decade, mainly due to its proven ability to address a variety of problems, including modeling complex systems from bottom-up, providing relationships between component level and system level parameters, and relating emergent system level behaviors from simple component level interactions. Availability of computational power to run simulation models with thousands to millions of agents is another driving force in the wide-spread adoption of individual-Based modeling. in this paper, we propose an individual-Based modeling approach to solve engineering design and optimization problems using artificial ecosystems (AES). the problem to be solved is "mapped" to …