Digital Commons Network^™

Isotope Sourcing Of Prehistoric Willow And Tule Textiles Recovered From Western Great Basin Rock Shelters And Caves: Proof Of Concept, Larry V. Benson, E. M. Hattori, H. E. Taylor, S. R. Poulson, E. A. Jolie

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Isotope and trace-metal analyses were used to determine the origin of plants used to manufacture prehistoric textiles (basketry and matting) from archaeological sites in the western Great Basin. Research focused on strontium (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) and oxygen (¹⁸O/¹⁶O) isotope ratios of willow (Salix sp.) and tule (Schoenoplectus sp.), the dominant raw materials in Great Basin textiles. The oxygen-isotope data indicated that the willow and tule used to produce the textiles were harvested from the banks of rivers or in marshes characterized by flowing water and not from lakes or sinks. The strontium-isotope …

Addressing The Arnstein Gap: Improving Public Confidence In Transportation Planning And Design Through Structured Public Involvement (Spi), Keiron Bailey, Ted H. Grossardt

Kentucky Transportation Center Faculty and Researcher Publications

The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, or TEA-21, enacted in 1998, following the Intermodal SurfaceTransportation Equity Act (ISTEA) of 1991, defines the “public” as “citizens, affected public agencies, representatives of transportation agency employees, freight shippers, private providers of transportation, representatives of users of public transit, providers of freight transportation services and other interested parties.” More recently the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has expanded this definition to include underrepresented groups “such as low income or minority households and the elderly”. In the last decade public involvement has been mandated for all metropolitan and statewide planning processes (TEA), and it …

Computational Sciences: At The Intersection Of Science And Engineering--Case Study For Academic And Research Programs, Menas Kafatos, Peter Becker, Zafer Boybeyi̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

No abstract provided.

Towards A Unified Radio Power Management Architecture For Wireless Sensor Networks, Kevin Klues, Guoliang Xing, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

In many wireless sensor networks, energy is an extremely limited resource. While many different power management strategies have been proposed to help reduce the amount of energy wasted, application developers still face two fundamental challenges when developing systems with stringent power constraints. First, existing power management strategies are usually tightly coupled with network protocols and other system functionality. This monolithic approach has led to standalone solutions that cannot easily be reused or extended to other applications or platforms. Second, different power management strategies make different and sometimes even conflicting assumptions about the rest of the system with which they need …

Link Layer Support For Unified Radio Power Management In Wireless Sensor Networks, Kevin Klues, Guoliang Xing, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Radio power management is of paramount concern in wireless sensor networks that must achieve long lifetimes on scarce amounts of energy. While a multitude of power management protocols have been proposed in the past, the lack of system support for flexibly integrating them with a diverse set of applications and network platforms has made them difficult to use. Instead of proposing yet another power management protocol, this paper focuses on providing link layer support towards realizing a Unified Power Management Architecture (UPMA) for flexible radio power management in wireless sensor networks. In contrast to the monolithic approaches adopted by existing …

Addressing Cheating And Workload Characterization In Online Games, Christopher Chambers

Dissertations and Theses

The Internet has enabled the popular pastime of playing video games to grow rapidly by connecting game players in disparate locations. However, with popularity have come the two challenges of hosting a large number of users and detecting cheating among users. For reasons of control, security, and ease of development, the most popular system for hosting on-line games is the client server architecture. This is also the most expensive and least scalable architecture for the game publisher, which drives hosting costs upwards with the success of the game. In addition to the expense of hosting, as a particular game grows …

Management Of System Of Systems Engineering: System Of Systems Engineering Requirements, Charles Keating, Andres Sousa-Poza, Samuel Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Traditional systems engineering focuses efforts on developing requirements that are assumed to be objective, definitive, and unwavering. However, the function, development, and utilization of requirements for System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) do not have the level of maturity or sophistication as traditional systems engineering. To avoid miscalculation of the nature and role of requirements in SoSE, a closer examination is necessary. It would be presumptuous to assume that SoSE requirements are a simple extrapolation of traditional systems engineering requirements. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of requirements from a SoSE perspective. This examination is concentrated in …

The Effectiveness Of A Specifically Designed Green Roof Stormwater Treatment System Irrigated With Recycled Stormwater Runoff To Achieve Pollutant Removal And Stormwater Volume Reduction, Michael Hardin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of our greatest threats to surface-water quality is polluted stormwater runoff. In this research, investigated is the use of a green roof irrigated with recycled stormwater runoff to remove pollutants from stormwater runoff and reduce the volume of stormwater runoff leaving developed areas. The green roof properties of interest are the filtration and biological processes as well as the roof's ability to hold water and increase evapotranspiration, reducing the volume of stormwater runoff from the source. Because of the above mentioned reasons the experiment consists of a water quality analysis and a water budget done on several experimental chambers …

Computational Sciences: At The Intersection Of Science And Engineering - Case Study For Academic And Research Programs, Menas Kafatos, P. A. Becker, Z. Boybeyi

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

No abstract provided.

Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds In Wood Soot Extracts From Henan, China, Robyn Joy Cabrido Alcanzare

LSU Master's Theses

Polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC) are organic compounds composed of two or more fused benzene rings. These compounds are ubiquitous in the environment and some are found to be mutagenic and carcinogenic. High rates of esophageal cancer in the Henan Province of China had led to the suspicion that PAC from domestic coal and wood combustion are the main cause. Extraction of PAC from wood soot was done with a Soxhlet apparatus using dichloromethane as the solvent and concentration of the solution using a Kuderna Danish apparatus. Analysis of the different PAC was performed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with …

The Design Of An Undergraduate Degree Program In Computer & Digital Forensics, Gary C. Kessler, Michael E. Schirling

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Champlain College formally started an undergraduate degree program in Computer & Digital Forensics in 2003. The underlying goals were that the program be multidisciplinary, bringing together the law, computer technology, and the basics of digital investigations; would be available as on online and oncampus offering; and would have a process-oriented focus. Success of this program has largely been due to working closely with practitioners, maintaining activity in events related to both industry and academia, and flexibility to respond to ever-changing needs. This paper provides an overview of how this program was conceived, developed, and implemented; its evolution over time; and …

Gis And 3d Analysis Applied To Sea Turtle Mortalities And Navigation Channel Dredging, Bradley A. Shellito, Keith B. Lockwood

Virginia Journal of Science

Between 2000 and 2003 there were an increased number of documented sea turtle mortalities related to hopper dredging in the channels of the Chesapeake Bay. A pilot study was undertaken to create a bathymetric surface and three-dimensional model of the Cape Henry Channel using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a visualization tool to examine sea turtle mortalities in relation to the dredging. In Fall 2003, the US Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Thimble Shoals Federal Navigation Channel, and a more refined model was developed using this data. This project examines the growing concerns over sea turtle mortality rates and …

Freight Flows Of Indiana, William R. Black

JTRP Technical Reports

Using data primarily from the 1997 Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) this report develops a series of models for estimating the production and attraction of 41 different SCTG commodity groups for 145 geographic units in the United States; 92 of these are the counties of Indiana. This is followed by the calibration of fully-constrained gravity models for the flow of these commodities. Using modal share data from the CFS the generated traffic is divided between the various modes. This project looked primarily at the highway sector and used digital representations of these networks for traffic assignment purposes. A very detailed Indiana …

Neural Network Approach For Obstacle Avoidance In 3-D Environments For Uavs, Vivek Yadav, Xiaohua Wang, S. N. Balakrishnan

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper a controller design is proposed to get obstacle free trajectories in a three dimensional urban environment for unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). The controller has a two-layer architecture. In the upper layer, vision-inspired Grossberg neural network is proposed to get the shortest distance paths. In the bottom layer, a model predictive control (MPC) based controller is used to obtain dynamically feasible trajectories. Simulation results are presented for to demonstrate the potential of the approach.

A Cost Benefit Analysis Of The Ais Automatic Identification System System In Sweden, Andreas Westerberg

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Socio-Economic Analysis Of Fatal Crash Trends (Final Report), Adam Kirk, Jerry G. Pigman, Kenneth R. Agent

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This report describes the analysis of fatal crash patterns and explores the impact of socioeconomic factors and safety regulations on statewide crash rates. This analysis separated statewide crash rates between 2002 and 2004 into two samples, 1) those with crash rates 25 percent greater than the average national rate and 2) those with crash rates lower than this threshold. Safety regulations and socioeconomic factors were identified as having a significant effect on crash rates, with socioeconomic factors showing a higher potential to explain differences in crash rates between the two samples.

Today’S Dot And The Quest For More Accountable Organizational Structures, Lenahan O'Connell, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Merl Hackbart, Donald L. Hartman, Candice Wallace, Doug Kreis

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This study investigates the impact of DOT organizational structures on effective transportation planning and performance. A review of the 50 state DOT authorizing statutes and DOT organizational charts found minimal differences in organizational structures among the states. However, 37 states have quasi-independent commissions (sometimes called boards, or councils.) A statistical analysis showed that the commission states have higher Government Performance Project (GPP) scores than the non-commission states. The analysis suggested that effective commissions avoid having members represent geographical regions and political parties and avoid giving the commission the power to select the director of the DOT. In addition the states …

Loss Functions And Framework For Regional Flood Damage Estimation In Residential Area, Jui-Lin Kang, Ming-Daw Su, Ling-Fang Chang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The risks of flooding damages for a region increase as the population and economy development increased in that area. Damage assessment and risk analysis are important issues for risk management and hazard mitigation. There are huge amount of data involved in the process of regional damage assessment and most of these data are spatially and temporally distributed. This paper focuses on the use of spatial data for capture of spatial characteristics of damage in natural calamities. Because it affects a large number of persons and families, flood damages in the residential area usually attract major attentions in regional flood hazard …

A Grid-Based Gis Approach To Regional Flood Damage Assessment, Ming-Daw Su, Jui-Lin Kang, Ling-Fang Chang, Albert S Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Regional flood risk assessment is the base for a sound and comprehensive risk planning or management. The regional flood loss is the sum of the damages in all the flooded parcels. The data involved in this process are multifarious and difficult to establish and maintain especially in the developing countries that suffer most often from the flood hazard. A grid-based GIS approach to regional flood damage assessment is proposed in this paper. Aggregated census data that are relatively available were used instead of the data at parcel level. An algorithm was proposed to disaggregated these aggregated census data into spatially …

A Chain-Type Wireless Sensor Network For Monitoring Long Range Infrastructures, Chang Wen Chen, Yu Wang, Ivica Kostanic

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present in this paper an investigation on a special class of wireless sensor networks for monitoring critical infrastructures that may extend for hundreds of miles in distances. Such networks are fundamentally different from traditional sensor networks in that the sensor nodes in this class of networks are deployed along narrowly elongated geographical areas and form a chain-type topology. Based on careful analysis of existing sensor network architectures, we first demonstrate the needs to develop new architecture and networking protocols to match the unique topology of chain-type sensor networks. We then propose hierarchical network architecture that consists of clusters of …

The Global Positioning System, Timothy S. Stombaugh, Doug Mclaren, Benjamin K. Koostra

Agricultural Engineering Extension Publications

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is quickly becoming part of the fabric of everyday life. Beyond recreational activities such as boating and backpacking, GPS receivers are becoming a very important tool to such industries as agriculture, transportation, and surveying. Very soon, every cell phone will incorporate GPS technology to aid first responders in answering emergency calls.

An Energy-Efficient Media Access Control Protocol For Chain-Type Wireless Sensor Networks, Yu Wang, Chang Wen Chen

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present in this paper an energy efficient media access control (MAC) protocol for chain-type wireless sensor networks. The chain-type sensor networks are fundamentally different from traditional sensor networks in that the sensor nodes in this class of networks are deployed along narrow and elongated geographical areas and form a chain-type topology. Recently, we have successfully developed hierarchical network architecture, sensor deployment strategy, and corresponding network initialization and operation protocols for this class of sensor networks. In this paper, we present a novel TDMA scheduling protocol that takes full advantages of the available channel reuse inherent in the chain-type sensor …

Real-Time Power Aware Routing In Wireless Sensor Networks, Octav Chipara, Zhimin He, Guoliang Xing, Qin Chen, Xiaorui Wang, Chenyang Lu, John Stankovic, Tarek Abdelzaher

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Many mission-critical wireless sensor network applications must resolve the inherent conflict between the tight resource constraints on each sensor node, particularly in terms of energy, with the need to achieve desired quality of service such as end-to-end real-time performance. To address this challenge we propose the Real-time Power-Aware Routing (RPAR) protocol. RPAR achieves required communication delays at minimum energy cost by dynamically adapting the transmission power and routing decisions based on packet deadlines. RPAR integrates a geographic forwarding policy cognizant of deadlines, power, and link quality with new algorithms for on-demand power adaptation and efficient neighborhood discovery. Simulations based on …

A Conceptual Framework For Analysis Of System Safety Interoperability Of United States Navy's Combat Systems, Showkat Shanaz Alborzi

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Today's political and military reality requires the optimal use of our legacy systems. The objective is to maximize the effectiveness of our operations by efficient allocation, placement and the use of our forces and war-fighting systems. The synergism drawn from the capabilities of the legacy complex systems enables today's war-fighting needs to be met without substantial increase in cost or resources. This synergism can be realized by the effective integration and interoperation of legacy systems into a larger, more complex system of systems.

However, the independently developed legacy systems in this new tactical environment often have different data types, languages, …

A Shift In Teaching Methodology: From Instructor Led To Student Driven Multimedia Instruction, Patricia Backer

Faculty Publications

Multimedia can be a powerful tool in exploring the nature of the world around us, including its technological systems. This paper describes the design, development, and evaluation of self- paced multimedia and web-based modules that are used in an advanced General Education (GE) course in the College of Engineering at San José State University. The design and development cycle of these modules began in 1994 and spanned nine years. The General Education course, Technology and Civilization (TECH 198), is designed to introduce students to the realm of history and usage of technology in society and to increase their awareness of …

Outsourcing Of Kytc Project Delivery Functions, Donn E. Hancher, April Brenneman, Robin Meagher, Paul M. Goodrum

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The rise in daily travelers on highways due to population growth, and higher quality and service expectations of the public, are putting increased demands on DOTs today. These demands, combined with decreasing staff sizes and changing resources, are causing DOTs to investigate alternative methods for accomplishing their essential functions. A major option is to contract out more of their work to external parties, commonly called “outsourcing .” The purpose of this project was to evaluate the potential effectiveness, benefits, concerns and implementation requirements of outsourcing by the Kentucky Department of Highways.

This report looks at current outsourcing practices in other …

Survey Of Clustering Algorithms, Rui Xu, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Data analysis plays an indispensable role for understanding various phenomena. Cluster analysis, primitive exploration with little or no prior knowledge, consists of research developed across a wide variety of communities. The diversity, on one hand, equips us with many tools. On the other hand, the profusion of options causes confusion. We survey clustering algorithms for data sets appearing in statistics, computer science, and machine learning, and illustrate their applications in some benchmark data sets, the traveling salesman problem, and bioinformatics, a new field attracting intensive efforts. Several tightly related topics, proximity measure, and cluster validation, are also discussed.

2005 - The Tenth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Tenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 8, 2005. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Impulse, Dave Graves, Kyle Johnson, Denise Watt, Nicole Schaffer, Miranda Malo

Impulse (Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering Publication)

Features:
[Page] 2 Enterprise Institute moves from idea to $2.3-million building: Three agencies operating out of three-story Enterprise Center.
[Page] 6 ACE & YEA camps put high schoolers on career path: The Aerospace Career and Education camp and the Youth Engineering Adventure camp both bring high schoolers lo camp for a week in the summer. Many of them are coming back when it's time to enroll as a collegian. Corporate sponsorship may help camp numbers grow.
College:
[Page] 9 Four Programs reaccredited: The Electrical, Mechanical. Civil Engineering, and Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering programs all have been reaccredited for six years. …

Rapid Prototyping For The Design Of Virtual Worlds, Prabhu V. Krishnan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Development of Virtual Reality (VR) applications is challenging where application developers are required to have expertise in the target VR technologies along with the problem domain expertise. New VR technologies impose a significant learning curve to even the most experienced VR developer. The proposed solution relies on synthesis to automate the migration of a VR application to a new unfamiliar VR platform/technology. To solve the problem, the Common Scene Definition Framework (CSDF) was developed, that serves as a superset/model representation of the target virtual world. Input modules were developed to populate the framework with the capabilities of the virtual world …