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How To Relate Spectral Risk Measures And Utilities, Songsak Sriboonchitta, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Traditional decision theory describes human behavior and human preferences in terms of utility functions. In the last decades, it was shown that in many economic situations, a reasonable description of the actual decisions can be found if we use a different approach -- of spectral risk measures. In each of these approaches, we first need to empirically find the corresponding function: utility function in the traditional approach and the weighting function for spectral risk measures. Since both approaches provide a reasonable description of the same actual behavior (in particular, of the same actual economic behavior), it is desirable to be …

Flight Physician - April, 2010, Civil Aviation Medical Association

Browse all Civil Aviation Medical Association Newsletters

A twelve page newsletter of the Civil Aviation Medical Association. The newsletter provided news about civil aviation medicine and information related to the organization.

Why Polynomial Formulas In Soft Computing, Decision Making, Etc.?, Olga Kosheleva, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

We show that in many application areas including soft constraints reasonable requirements of scale-invariance lead to polynomial formulas for combining degrees (of certainty, of preference, etc.)

Towards Improved Trapezoidal Approximation To Intersection (Fusion) Of Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers: Specific Procedure And General Non-Associativity Theorem, Gang Xiang, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In some cases, our uncertainty about a quantity can be described by an interval of its possible values. If we have two or more pieces of interval information about the same quantity, then we can conclude that the actual value belongs to the intersection of these intervals.

In general, we may need a fuzzy number to represent our partial knowledge. A fuzzy number can be viewed as a collection of intervals (alpha-cuts) corresponding to different degrees alpha from [0,1]. In practice, we can only store finitely many alpha-cuts. Usually, we only store the lower and upper alpha-cuts (corresponding to alpha …

Effect Of Time Pressure And Task Uncertainty On Human Operator Performance And Workload For Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Missions, Trevor Petersen

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are being utilized at an increasing rate for a number of military applications. The potential for their use in the national airspace is also of interest to the Federal Aviation Administration, but there are some concerns about the safety of flying unmanned aircraft. The role of a UAS operator differs from that of a pilot in a manned aircraft, and this new role creates a need for a shift in interface and task design in order to take advantage of the full potential of these systems. This study examined the effect of time pressure and task …

Section Abstracts: Biomedical And General Engineering

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Biomedical and General Engineering Section for the 88th Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 20-21, 2010, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA.

Locked Plate Fixation Of Osteoporotic Humeral Shaft Fractures: Are Two Locking Screws Per Segment Enough?, David J. Hak, Peter Althausen, S J. Hazelwood

Biomedical Engineering

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the biomechanical behavior of using two versus three locking screws per bone segment in a cadaveric humerus fracture gap model.

Methods: Six matched pairs of elderly osteoporotic fresh–frozen human cadaveric humerii were used. An eight-hole locking compression plate was placed posteriorly on the humeral shaft and secured with either four or six bicortical locking screws. A 5-mm middiaphyseal gap osteotomy was created to simulate a comminuted fracture without bony contact. Specimens were tested in offset axial compression, four-point anteroposterior bending, four-point medial– lateral bending, and torsion. After the initial testing in …

Tracking Of Bone Mass And Density During Childhood And Adolescence, Heidi J. Kalkwarf, Vicente Gilsanz, Joan M. Lappe, Sharon Oberfield, John A. Shepherd, Thomas N. Hangartner, Xangke Huang, Margaret M. Frederick, Karen K. Winer, Babette S. Zemel

Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering Faculty Publications

Context: Whether a child with low bone mineral density (BMD) at one point in time will continue to have low BMD, despite continued growth and maturation, is important clinically. The stability of a characteristic during growth is referred to as “tracking.”

Objective: We examined the degree of tracking in bone mineral content (BMC) and BMD during childhood and adolescence and investigated whether tracking varied according to age, sexual maturation, and changes in growth status.

Design: We conducted a longitudinal study with measurements at baseline and annually for 3 yr.

Setting: The Bone Mineral Density in Childhood Study was conducted at …

Bi-Planar Postural Stability Model: Fitting Parameters To Patient Data Automatically, Andrew Michael Sovol

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Studies of children with cerebral palsy (CP) have shown that maintaining control of posture in quiet standing is often difficult. Physical therapy and assistive devices, both with or without surgery, may be employed in an effort to improve postural stability. Assessing the effectiveness of such interventions is important for healthcare providers and their patients. A previously created bi-planar model of posture control has been further developed as a method of assessment. This MATLAB and Simulink model has successfully replicated experimental results for typical adults and children, as well as children with CP across three different test conditions: eyes open, eyes …

A Non-Rigid Registration Method For Analyzing Myocardial Wall Motion For Cardiac Ct Images, Elizabeth B. Philps

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has a high percentage of non-responders. Successfully locating the optimal location for CRT lead placement on a priori images can increase efficiency in procedural preparation and execution and could potentially increase the rate of CRT responders.

Registration has been used in the past to assess the motion of medical images. Specifically, one method of non-rigid registration has been utilized to assess the motion of left ventricular MR cardiac images. As CT imaging is often performed as part of resynchronization treatment planning and is a fast and accessible means of imaging, extending this registration method to assessing …

Coupling Into Waveguide Evanescent Modes With Applications In Electron Paramagnetic Resonance, Jason Walter Sidabras

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The use of analytical and numerical techniques in solving the coupling of evanescent modes in a microwave waveguide through slots can be optimized to create a uniform magnetic field excitation on axis within a waveguide. This work has direct applications in Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) where a 100~kHz time-varying magnetic field is incident on a sample contained in a microwave cavity. Typical cavity designs do not take into consideration the uniformity of the 100~kHz field modulation and assume it to be uniform enough over the sample region from quasi-static principles. This work shows otherwise and uses Ansoft (Pittsburgh, PA) High …

Real-Time Health Monitoring System For Mast-Arm Sign Support Structures, Andrew David Smith

Master's Theses (2009 -)

There has been an ongoing study conducted by Marquette University and supported by the Wisconsin Highway Research Program that is seeking to understand the risk of fatigue-induced fracture in the connections of mast-arm sign support structures. This study has been brought on by recent problems encountered with the connections contained in, and the in-service performance of, several cantilevered mast-arm sign support structures. A resulting recommendation of phase one in this effort was to monitoring an in-service cantilevered mast-arm sign support structure.

The health monitoring system developed in this thesis effort includes a grouping of strain gages (full-bridge arrangements) positioned around …

Light-Activation Influence On The Thermal Analysis Of A Resin-Modified Glass-Ionomer, Raksha Srinivas

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The acid-base and light polymerization reactions in resin modified glass ionomers (RMGI) have been shown to compete and possibly inhibit one another during early RMGI development. Earlier beginning times of light polymerization initiation may limit the acid-base reaction and if time allowed for the acid-base components to react is increased, the extent of light cure reaction may be lesser. The thermal behavior of a commercially available RMGI was investigated in relation to a light initiation regimen using a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The relationship between delay in light initiation or no light initiation and the resultant set matrix of the …

Determining The Utility Of Technology For Education, Brian Spencer Dillon

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

There is a substantial debate concerning the place of technology in education. This debate has been going on over every technology introduced through at least three millennia although the modern version takes place in journal articles. Technology, in the general sense, is already in the educational arena 1n ways which have become so commonplace that we hardly question them today. More modern technologies, however, meet perpetual resistance in achieving their potential. This paper calls into question the most recent trend in research and suggests a new research paradigm which focuses not only on student achievement, but on a variety of …

An Investigative Study Into The Relationship Of Bone Morphogenetic Protein Antagonist Expression And Osteocyte Density By Region And Quadrant, Scott C. Mosher

Master's Theses

The role of cytokines and cell behavior and viability with respect to bone remodeling and bone behavior is an exciting area of orthopedic research. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between BMP antagonist expression and osteocyte density, lacunar densities and osteocyte viability in cortical bone. Samples of unloaded tibial bone obtained from six C57Bl/6 mice were immunohistochemically stained for gremlin and noggin expression and also underwent methyl green staining to determine osteocyte presence. Bone sections were divided into four quadrants (cranial, caudal, medial and lateral) and three regions (proximal, mid shaft and distal), followed by analysis …

Online Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring And Control System, Paul Duffy, Gerard Woods, James Walsh, Michael Kane

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Marine Current Energy Devices: Current Status And Possible Future Applications In Ireland, Fergal O'Rourke, Fergal Boyle, Anthony Reynolds

Articles

There is a growing demand for the use of renewable energy technologies to generate electricity due to concerns over climate change. The oceans provide a huge potential resource of energy. Energy extraction using marine current energy devices (MCEDs) offers a sustainable alternative to conventional sources and a predictable alternative to other renewable energy technologies. A MCED utilises the kinetic energy of the tides as opposed to the potential energy which is utilised by a tidal barrage. Over the past decade MCEDs have become an increasingly popular method of energy extraction. However, marine current energy technology is still not economically viable …

Turbulent Flow Studies Of A Scaled Model Of A Large Mining Truck - Computations And Experiment, Wayne Randolph Sexton

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Modern mining operations are highly reliant on the amount of material that can be removed from the earth, transported to processing, and then processed. The companies that design and build mining dump trucks concentrate on improving the material payload capacity. Currently, the largest trucks are 400ton-class trucks. The design of these large mining dump trucks certainly does not stem from aerodynamics, but rather, from functionality and payload As a result, the shear size and asymmetric functional design creates interesting turbulent wakes on, around, and behind these trucks. This research focuses on the turbulent flow behind the truck. Computational Fluid Dynamic …

Analysis Of Helicopter Downwash/Frigate Airwake Interaction Using Statistically Designed Experiments, Yavuz Nacakli

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A research program to investigate helicopter downwash/frigate airwake interaction has been initiated using a statistically robust experimental program featuring Design of Experiments. Engineering analysis of the helicopter/frigate interface is complicated by the fact that two flowfields become inherently coupled as separation distance decreases. The final objective of this work is to develop experimental methods to determine when computer simulations need to include the effects of a coupled flowfield versus using a simplified representation by superposing the velocity fields of the individual flowfields. The work presented was performed in the Old Dominion University Low Speed Wind Tunnel using a simplified 1/50 …

Petroleum Degradation In Soil By Thermophilic Bacteria With Biopile Reactor, Astri Nugroho, Edison Effendi, Yulius Karonta

Makara Journal of Technology

Crude oil degradation has been carried out using biopile reactor in total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) concentration of 5%, 10% and 15%. The thermophilic microorganisms used from isolation result and identification are Aeromonas salmonicida, Bacillus pantothenticus, and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. The biodegradation of biopile reactor is done by various concentrations of TPH, total plate count (TPC), and volatile suspended solid (VSS) per day for 30 days. The biodegradation of kinetic parameter calculated consists of μ, μm, Y, Yt, Yobs, Kd, Ks from TPH concentration decision, and TPC and VSS in every microorganism with t (observation time) of 0 hour to 168 hours. …

The Influence Of Mechanical Circulation On Water Column Stability And Dissolved Oxygen In Stratified Lakes, Paal Engebrigtsen

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Surface circulators have been used in wastewater and industrial lagoons for many years, but only recently have they been designed for lakes and reservoirs as a water quality management tool. Their relatively low capital investment and operational costs make them an attractive chemical free option for ameliorating the symptoms of eutrophication. Little research has been conducted on their effectiveness in impacting water quality. Today many lake managers are waiting for independent research on surface circulators' performance before installing such systems.

The Occoquan Reservoir was the primary site for a study conducted to examine the influence of surface circulation on water …

Poster Session, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium

• River Basins of Kentucky, Dan Carey, Kentucky Geological Survey
• An Initial Prioritization Approach for Potential Agricultural Best Management Practice Implementation Based on Subwatershed Indicators and Expert Knowledge, Brian Lee and Corey Wilson, Dept Landscape Architecture, UK
• Locating Karst Conduits in Cane Run Watershed of Central Kentucky Using Electrical Resistivity Methods, Junfeng Zhu and others, Kentucky Geological Survey
• Identification of DNA Biomarkers for Determining Sources of Fecal Pollution in Water, Rick Fowler and others, WATERS Laboratory, WKU
• Integrating Participatory Communication and Structured Public Involvement Processes to Better Address Superfund Issues: The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Future State …

Plenary Session, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium

• Evaluating the Impact of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Invasion on Headwater Streams, Joshua Adkins and Lynne Reiske-Kinney, Dept of Entomology, UK
• Effects of Roundup^® Exposure on Behavior and Reproductive Function in a Pond-Breeding Salamander, Catherine Aubee and Howard Whiteman, Dept of Biological Sciences, Murray State University

Proceedings Of 2010 Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium

This conference was planned and conducted as part of the state water resources research annual program with the support and collaboration of the Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Kentucky Research Foundation, under Grant Agreement Number 06HQGR0087.

The views and conclusions contained in this document and presented at the symposium are those of the abstract authors and presenters and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Government or other symposium organizers and sponsors.

Artificial Intelligence: Soon To Be The World’S Greatest Intelligence, Or Just A Wild Dream?, Edward R. Kollett

Academic Symposium of Undergraduate Scholarship

The purpose of the paper was to examine the field of artificial intelligence. In particular, the paper focused on what has been accomplished towards the goal of making a machine that can think like a human, and the hardships that researchers in the field has faced. It also touched upon the potential outcomes of success. Why is this paper important? As computers become more powerful, the common conception is that they are becoming more intelligent. As computers become more integrated with society and more connected with each other, people again believe they are becoming smarter. Therefore, it is important that …

Compression Testing Of Composite Laminated Foam Under Thermal Loading And With Central Holes, Dominic Surano, Jonathan Russo, Daniel Leighton

Aerospace Engineering

A study was conducted to investigate the effect of heat on composite sandwich plates, fabricated with the vacuum resin infusion process, with center holes of varying diameters. The study involved conventional notched specimens and notched specimens with shear keys, both of which were subjected to monotonic inplane compression loading. Hole diameter was be varied from one to four inches in one inch increments. Loading rate was applied using the Instron machine at one millimeter per minute. The diameter of the shear key around the holes varied from one inch to four inches in one inch increments. The specimens were placed …

Processing A Nickel Nanostrand And Nickel Coated Carbon Fiber Filled Conductive Polyethylene By Injection Molding, David Anthony Whitworth

Theses and Dissertations

A new method for pre-impregnating nickel coated carbon fiber with a thermoplastic polymer to make towpreg, similar to a recently developed coating-line by João P. Nunes et al and a new electrically conductive thermoplastic are developed. A melted bath was used to help mitigate health concerns and waste for dispersion of nickel coated carbon fibers (NCF) in low density polyethylene (LDPE). This towpreg was then mixed with more LDPE or a mixture of LDPE and nickel nanostrands (NiNS) to a desired filler volume fraction to test the electrical conductivity of the composite. Some of these mixtures were then injection molded …

Codifying Information Assurance Controls For Department Of Defense (Dod) Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (Scada) Systems (U), Eddie A. Mendezllovet

Theses and Dissertations

Protecting DoD critical infrastructure resources and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems from cyber attacks is becoming an increasingly challenging task. DoD Information Assurance controls provide a sound framework to achieve an appropriate level of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. However, these controls have not been updated since 2003 and currently do not adequately address the security of DoD SCADA systems. This research sampled U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering subject matter experts representing eight Major Commands that manage and operate SCADA systems. They ranked 30 IA controls in three categories, and evaluated eight SCADA specific IA controls for inclusion into …

Scalable And Fault Tolerant Group Key Management, Nicholas A. Lupien

Theses and Dissertations

To address the group key management problem for modern networks this research proposes a lightweight group key management protocol with a gossip-based dissemination routine. Experiments show that by slightly increasing workload for the key update mechanism, this protocol is superior to currently available tree-based protocols with respect to reliability and fault tolerance, while remaining scalable to large groups. Java simulations show that the protocol efficiently distributes keys to large groups in the midst of up to 35 percent node failure rates. In addition, it eliminates the need for logical key hierarchy while preserving an overall reduction in rekey messages to …

Aiding Gps With Additional Satellite Navigation Services, Yasin A. Mutlu

Theses and Dissertations

In modern warfare navigation services are very important. GPS is currently providing service for accurate navigation, except in some areas, especially urban areas, where GPS signals cannot always be tracked by users. In these cases some additional navigation support could be provided by other global navigation satellite systems. If GPS is combined with other navigation systems than the navigation gap will be minor. In this thesis, the effect of combining GPS with other satellite navigation systems, specifically GLONASS, Galileo and Compass, is evaluated in terms of availability and position dilution of precision (PDOP) values. First, satellite constellations are simulated in …