Digital Commons Network^™

Bilinear Time-Frequency Representations Of Heart Rate Variability And Respiration During Stress, Rindala Saliba

Dissertations

Recently, joint time-frequency signal representation has received considerable attention as a powerful tool for analyzing a variety of signals and systems. In particular, if the frequency content is time varying as in signals of biological origin which often do not comply with the stationarity assumptions, then this approach is quite attractive. In this dissertation, we explore the possibility of better representation of two particular biological signals, namely heart rate variability (HRV) and respiration. We propose the use of time-frequency analysis as a new and innovative approach to examine the physical and mental exertion attributed to exercise. Two studies are used …

Two Dimensional Agonistic Control, Daqing Yang

Dissertations

The conventional method of precise multiple-axis motion control entails use of a multiple axis positioning system with each axis carrying not only the workpiece but also the positioning system of the remaining axes. The resultant structure is heavy, sluggish, and expensive. An alternative positioning technique is being investigated in which the motion of the workpiece is controlled by pulling it with tendons, each of which has its own actuator. Since the actuators can be mounted on the base of the structure instead of being carried by motion system of the other axes, they can be relatively large and powerful without …

Evaluation Of Environmental Characteristics Of Wtp Residuals For Disposal In Monofills, Ping Tian

Dissertations

Disposal of water treatment plant (WTP) have raised great concerns due to the stringent water quality standards and environmental regulations, and limited availability of land for ultimate disposal. The ultimate disposal of water treatment plant residuals by using monofill may be one of the most economical, and feasible options. Design and operation of such a monofill will be simple because of the uniformity of the characteristics of WTP residuals.

The objectives of this project were to determine the environmental characteristics of WTP residuals and to apply these characteristics for the design of monofills and development of the metal leaching model …

Safe Code Transfromations For Speculative Execution In Real-Time Systems, Mohamed Mohamed Younis

Dissertations

Although compiler optimization techniques are standard and successful in non-real-time systems, if naively applied, they can destroy safety guarantees and deadlines in hard real-time systems. For this reason, real-time systems developers have tended to avoid automatic compiler optimization of their code. However, real-time applications in several areas have been growing substantially in size and complexity in recent years. This size and complexity makes it impossible for real-time programmers to write optimal code, and consequently indicates a need for compiler optimization. Recently researchers have developed or modified analyses and transformations to improve performance without degrading worst-case execution times. Moreover, these optimization …

Counterpulsation Cardiac Assist Device Controller Defection Filter Simulation And Canine Experiments, Carl Edward Werner

Dissertations

Electronic control systems for counterpulsation Cardiac Assist Devices (CADs) are an essential part of cardiac assistance. Synchronization of the counterpulsation CAD controller with the cardiac cycle is critical to the efficacy of the CAD. The robustness of counterpulsation CAD controllers varies with the ability of the CAD controller to properly trigger on aortic pressure (Pa) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals for sinusoid rhythms, non-sinusoid rhythms and non-ideal signals resulting from surgical intervention. An analog-to-digital converter and digital-to-analog converter based CAD controller development platform was devised on a 33Mhz PC-AT.

Counterpulsation Pa systolic rise and dicrotic notch detectors were demonstrated with a …

Massively Parallel Reasoning In Transitive Relationship Hierarchies, Yugyung Lee

Dissertations

This research focuses on building a parallel knowledge representation and reasoning system for the purpose of making progress in realizing human-like intelligence. To achieve human-like intelligence, it is necessary to model human reasoning processes by programs. Knowledge in the real world is huge in size, complex in structure, and is also constantly changing even in limited domains. Unfortunately, reasoning algorithms are very often intractable, which means that they are too slow for any practical applications. One technique to deal with this problem is to design special-purpose reasoners. Many past Al systems have worked rather nicely for limited problem sizes, but …

Shaped Charges Having A Porous Tungsten Liner-An Experimental And Theoretical Study Of Metal Compression, Jet Formation And Penetration Mechanics, Brian Edward Fuchs

Dissertations

The use of porous tungsten as a liner for shaped charges to improve their penetration was proposed by Ki-Hwan Oh in his invention disclosure "Shock Extrusion of Ingots from Powders or Solids", at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro NM on June 7, 1988. The intention was to increase the ductility of the normally brittle metal by heating the liner to a high temperature by shock compaction during its acceleration just before jet formation.

The feasibility of increasing the ductility of tungsten in this way is the subject of the present study. The theory and prior experimental …

A Cost Model For Multi-Lifecycle Engineering Design, Bin Zhang

Theses

Design for Environment aims to yield a product whose aggregate environmental impact is as small as possible. This thesis characterizes a product recovery system and defines the concepts of product lifetime and part lifetime. A multi-lifecycle product recovery model is developed based on the concepts of product tree and disassembly path representation, four product recovery choices, time varying costs, cost comparison. The four product recovery choices of a part in the product tree are: Reconditioning, Part Remanufacturing, Material Recycling, and Landfill. This thesis focuses on how to improve the product design while minimizing environmental impact of the product and introduces …

Oxidative Response Of Immobilized Bovine Blood To The Model Pollutant Phenol, Michael George Nickey

Theses

The primary purpose of this work is to determine if bovine blood can be studied in an immobilized cell bioreactor to determine if a phenol induced oxygen releasing optimum exists. This method of study has the potential to be used to determine what effects xenobiotics have on the oxidative activities of blood.

Three blood fractions containing approximately 21, 44, and 70% red blood cells (RBCs) were immobilized and placed in a recirculating bioreactor. These fractions were exposed injections of 0 ml, 3 ml, or 10 ml amounts of 2000 ppm phenol. The most active fraction was the 21% red cell …

Tcp/Ip Traffic Over Atm Network With Abr Flow And Congestion Control, Liping An

Theses

Most traffics over the existing ATM network are generated by applications running over TCP/IP protocol stack. In the near future, the success of ATM technology will depend largely on how well it supports the huge legacy of existing TCP/IP applications.

In this thesis, we study and compare the performance of TCP/IP traffic running on different rate based ABR flow control algorithms such as EFCI, ERICA and FMMRA by extensive simulations. Infinite source-end traffic behavior is chosen to represent, FTP application running on TCP/IP. Background VBR traffic with different ON-OFF frequency is introduced to produce transient network states as well as …

Potential Effects Of Pneumatic Fracturing On Existing Structures And Utilities, Michael C. Canino

Theses

This thesis develops a mathematical design model for predicting ground deformations resulting from pneumatic fracturing. Pneumatic fracturing is a patented process developed for the purpose of enhancing the in situ treatment and removal of hazardous contaminants from geologic formations. During pneumatic injections, measurable ground deformations are experienced both during and after the process. Safe application of pneumatic fracturing to contaminated plumes occurring beneath existing structures and utilities requires that the elastic deformation behavior of the geologic formation and overlying structures be quantified.

Data from five pneumatic fracturing sites were regressed to establish the characteristic polynomial describing the curvature of ground …

Three-Dimensional Stress Analysis Of The Femur With Prosthetic Hip Stem Utilizing Computed Tomography Scans Of The Femur For Geometry And Material Properties, Thomas J. Lavin

Theses

Three-dimensional finite element stress analyses of the femur with prosthesis hip stem were performed for two cases, one male and one female, using ideally bonded cemented titanium prostheses. Computed tomography data files were used to derive the three-dimensional femur geometry and material properties for each cortical bone element. The maximum shear stress (4.7 MPa) in the cement was greater then the maximum tensile stress and occurred at the cement-bone interface. The tensile stresses in the cement were less then the fatigue strength of the cement. The stress patterns were quite similar for the two cases.

A data analysis program was …

Application Of Geometric Hashing Techniques To Retrieval Of High Dimensional Objects In Scientific Databases, Joyce Ye Lu

Theses

An approach to designing very fast algorithms for tackling the problem of approximate object matching in very large databases of high-dimensional objects is proposed. Given are a target object C and a database D containing information about a set of high-dimensional objects each of which is represented as a set of points. Our algorithms have an off-line object preprocessing (shape representation) phase and a recognition phase. The described algorithms determine those objects from D which are the closest to object C, according to delete or insert some points, move and rotation. All of these can be achieved very efficiently with …

Optimization Of Ion-Exchange Chromotography With Multiple Gradient Inputs For Protein Separations, Tariq Mahmood

Theses

Gradient elution chromatography is an efficient technique for adjusting the retention of sample components during liquid chromatographic separations. However, the optimization of gradient elution is usually done by trial and error. Thus, for large scale processes this results in expensive and time consuming design and operations. Peak resolution that describes the degree of separation is a commonly used parameter for chromatographic processes. However, in processes where operating time and product dilution are of great importance, resolution alone is not adequate for describing the separation efficiency.

A new parameter "resolution optimization factor" is used for the optimization of gradient elution processes. …

Modeling Of Objects Using Planar Facets In Noisy Range Images, Girish Phansalkar

Theses

Products designed and manufactured before the advent of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) technology have not been documented electronically. To avoid the laborious procedure of redesigning the parts, a reverse engineering approach can be adopted. This approach involves, taking a picture of the object and constructing a solid model from the image data.

Range image is a three dimensional image of an object or a scene. This image can be obtained from special cameras, called range image cameras, or can be constructed from the Coordinate Measuring Machine's (CMM) output data. Adaptive Fuzzy c-Elliptotype (AFC) clustering algorithm …

Catalytic Control Of Nitric Oxide With Gaseous Or Solid Reducing Materials, Xiaoyong Tang

Theses

Air pollution from mobile sources is an increasingly serious problem throughout most of the industrialized would. Diesel powered vehicles, because of their higher thermal efficiency, tend to emit less carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons than gasoline vehicles, but emit significant quantities of NO_x. Therefore, it is essential to develop improved emission control equipment in diesel engines. A fixed bed catalytic reactor was used to study the decomposition of NO and the reduction of NO to N₂ by different reductants that can be found in diesel exhaust, such as hydrocarbons, CO and elemental carbon over different catalysts. The …

Design Of A Mode Of Delivery For Macrobead Transplantation, Jagdip Desai

Theses

The macrobead is a form of a biohybrid artificial pancreas (BAP), which is being developed to treat type 1 diabetes. A hypothetical human transplant would require 125 rat equivalent macrobeads. For intraperitoneal transplantation a mode of delivery that allows the placement of several hundred macrobeads into a basket or pouch type device is required.

In this study, four commercially available materials were studied as possible candidates for creating a pouch. These materials are polyvinyl chloride acrylic copolymer (PVC), polyethersulfone (PES), polyvinylidenedifluoride (PVDF), and polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE). Tubular pouches of each material were designed. They then underwent in vivo biocompatibility and in-vitro …

Abstraction Of An Object-Oriented Vocabulary By Providing A Standardized Interface, Hemant Kothavade

Theses

Controlled vocabularies are ubiquitous in varied application fields. They are particularly helpful in the medical field since they can unify disparate terminologies and provide information in a compact, comprehensible manner. In this thesis, we present a mechanism to efficiently retrieve and update knowledge stored in a controlled vocabulary modeled as an Object-Oriented Database (OODB) system. We aim to provide a standardized interface to the vocabulary, such that the implementation details of the vocabulary are transparent to all users. The user of this standardized interface will typically be an application programmer who is trying to provide the vocabulary's knowledge-base to end …

Experimental Investigation Of Collisional Properties Of Spheres, Laurent Labous

Theses

We present experimental results on the collisional properties of spheres obtained through high-speed video analysis. An apparatus is built that produces collisions of spheres of various sizes with a wide range of impact, velocities and incidence angles.

Edge detection techniques are implemented to track the position of the spheres from frame to frame whereby the translational velocities may be computed. In order to determine the rotational velocities, small markers are imprinted on the surfaces of the spheres and also tracked and matched from one frame to the next.. From the pre and post collision kinematic data, three collisional properties are …

Size-Frequency Distribution Of Palaemonetes Pugio In Two New Jersey Estuaries And Predator-Prey Interactions With Fundulus Heterocolitus, Celine Santiago

Theses

Predation by Fundulus heteroclitus is known to be an important factor regulating the abundance and size distribution of Palaemonetes pugio in the salt marsh habitat.

A preliminary study showed that P. pugio from a polluted estuary, Piles Creek, were relatively larger than those found in a more pristine estuary, Little Sheepshead Creek. Possible causes could be differences in competition, inherent environmental components, reproductive effort, or predation. To investigate the differences in size frequency, data on relative abundances of both species and size frequency distribution of P. pugio were collected for comparison from the two estuaries.

It was determined that P. …

Oxidized Sterols In Patients With Diabetic Heart Disease And Microwave-Mediated Stereoselective Synthesis Of 3-Keto Cholesterol And Cholesterol Epoxide, Cholesteryl Ester Epoxides, Meenakashi N. Kothavale

Theses

Oxidized low density lipoproteins (ox-LDL) may play important role in mediating hypercholesterolemic endothelial dysfunction. The uptake of modified LDL by macrophages to form foam cells has been implicated in the enhancement of atherosclerosis. Recent reports have suggested that when LDL undergoes oxidation in vitro , it is accompanied by a substantial loss of free and esterified cholesterol leading to the formation of oxidation products of cholesterol ( oxysterols). These compounds are present in human atherosclerotic plaques and in human foam cells.

In this regard we have recently studied the plasma sterol composition in diabetic heart patients We have found cholesterol …

Experimental Study Of The Rise Of A Large Sphere In A Vibrated Bed Of Monodisperse Spheres, Loic Vanel

Theses

As a simplified way to study size segregation mechanisms, the rise of a single large sphere in a vibrated bed of smaller monodisperse spheres is investigated. The time it takes for the ball to rise from the bottom of the bed to the surface is measured in a very wide range of vibration amplitude, frequency and acceleration. Rise regimes are identified and are classified according to the macroscopic behaviors displayed by the granular bed: heaping, convection without heaping and crystallization. The influence of the large sphere's size on the rise velocity is described. The scaling features of the vibration amplitude …

Lived Body Architecture : An Argument For Lived Bodies In Architecture And An Exploration Of Women's Lived Bodies In Society, Sherri A. Scribner

Theses

This thesis is about architecture's current disregard for the lived body and about the lived bodily experiences of women in Western society. Although these seem to be two different themes, they are connected. Architecture disregards the lived body, but it can never escape it. Architects design buildings from their own lived experiences of the world and architectural theorists most often write about architecture from their experience of being in the buildings they discuss. But because architecture has been built and discussed predominantly by men, Western theories of architecture reflect mainly a male interpretation. I begin by analyzing the paradigms of …

Graduate Catalog, 1996-1999, New Jersey Institute Of Technology, New Jersey Institute Of Technology

Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

A Controlled Release Technique Using Microporous Membranes, Stephanie Farrell

Dissertations

A novel controlled release device based on aqueous-organic partitioning is described. The device comprises a reservoir, bounded by a microporous or porous membrane in the form of a hollow fiber or flat film. The reservoir liquid phase and the pore liquid phase are immiscible. The agent partitions between the phases at the aqueous-organic interface of the reservoir and the pore mouth, and then diffuses through the membrane pore liquid into a surrounding aqueous solution. The partition coefficient significantly influences the rate of release of the agent by reducing the driving force for diffusion across the fluid-filled membrane pore. The performance …

Local Stresses On Lateral Pipe-Nozzle With 45 Degree Angle Intersection, James Jin Xu

Dissertations

This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of local stresses, due to internal pressure around a pipe-nozzle with 45 degree angle intersection_ The resulting circumferential and longitudinal stresses on the pipe around the pipe-nozzle region are normalized as local stress factors and plotted as function of beta, β, (the radius of the nozzle/the radius of the pipe) and gamma, y, (the radius of the pipe/the thickness of the pipe) through the finite element method. The range of beta, [3, is from 0.1, to 1.0, and gamma, y, from 10 to 300. Comprehensive studies were made for the boundary parameters, such as …

Reductive Dehalogenation Of Chlorinated Aromatic And Aliphatic Hydrocarbons Under Anaerobic Conditions, Monica Turner Togna

Dissertations

The process of reductive dehalogenation involves the removal of a halogen substituent from a molecule with the concurrent addition of electrons to the molecule, resulting in a more reduced and often less toxic product. Anaerobic bacteria have the potential to utilize hazardous chlorinated aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons as electron acceptors in metabolic reductive dehalogenation processes.

In experiments performed with chlorinated aromatic compounds a highly enriched anaerobic culture stoichiometrically converted 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (2,4,6-TCP) to 4-monochlorophenol. Dehalogenation occurred only in alkaline media (pH 8-9) at concentrations of 2,4,6-TCP up to 1 mM. Data indicated that the dehalogenating organism did not fit into any …

Scaling Up Of Water-Based Organic Reactions, Chen Gu

Dissertations

Three water-based organic reactions, Diels-Alder, epoxidation of olefins, and free-radical bromination have been investigated as an approach to pollution prevention. The first two systems were scaled-up by at least a factor of 20. These reactions are of special interest to the pharmaceutical and speciality chemical industries. The photo-induced free-radical bromination of alkanes with bromine in water was studied in a two-phase system. Experimental results show that all reactions have advantages resulting from being conducted in water, such as reaction rate acceleration, reaction selectivity increase, and the absorption of water-soluble gas byproduct by solvent water.

The effects of stirring rates, temperature, …

Effect Of Vitamin Supplementation On Biodegradation Of Aliphatic Hydrocarbons And Diesel Fuel, Susmita Guptapal

Dissertations

Bioremediation of hazardous wastes is proven to be environmentally benign and most cost effective technology when proper conditions are provided. However, commercialization of this method still requires comprehensive research to enhance the degradation rate to make the technology more acceptable for implementation. In this research a unique approach to increase the rate of biodegradation by vitamins supplementation was studied.

Five vitamins, niacin, biotin, folic acid, thiamin and pantothenic acid were selected for the present study. Different short chain (C₈ and C₉), and long chain (C₁₆ and C₁₇) aliphatic hydrocarbons and diesel fuel (a mixture …

Scheduling And Discrete Event Control Of Flexible Manufacturing Systems Based On Petri Nets, Huanxin Henry Xiong

Dissertations

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a computerized production system that can simultaneously manufacture multiple types of products using various resources such as robots and multi-purpose machines. The central problems associated with design of flexible manufacturing systems are related to process planning, scheduling, coordination control, and monitoring. Many methods exist for scheduling and control of flexible manufacturing systems, although very few methods have addressed the complexity of whole FMS operations. This thesis presents a Petri net based method for deadlock-free scheduling and discrete event control of flexible manufacturing systems. A significant advantage of Petri net based methods is their powerful …