Digital Commons Network^™

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Students' Use Of The Fast Forword Reading Program And Their Performance On Standardized Assessments In Elementary Schools., G. Greg Marion

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the academic achievement of students through the use of standardized testing to examine the relationship of participation in a computer-based phonics instructional system called Fast ForWord^®. The sample included students enrolled in the fifth and sixth grades at four elementary schools in the Grainger County, Tennessee, school system. The comparison group consisted of same-grade peers at the four elementary schools in Grainger County who were not enrolled in the Fast ForWord^® program. Students' scores were compared using the 2003 Terra Nova standardized assessment test and using their 2001 and …

Development Of Ozone Forecast Models For Selected Kentucky Metropolitan Areas., Yiqiu Lin 1971-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ground-level ozone forecast models were developed for the following middle and small metropolitan areas in Kentucky: Ashland, Bowling Green, Owensboro, and Paducah. These models were nonlinear regression models, based on models previously developed for Louisville and Lexington. For each of the four cities, the mean absolute errors (MAE) for the model estimates, based on the 1998-2002 model-fitted data sets, were less than 7.7 ppb; the MAE/O3 were less than 12.7%. The models could explain at least 66% of the variance of the daily peak ozone. On average, the errors of the model were within +/- 15.0 ppb on 88% of …

Participatory Action Research With Adults With Mental Retardation : "Oh My God. Look Out World.", Rita Marie Valade

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a participatory action research project with adults with mental retardation who reside in Louisville, Kentucky. It explores some of the history and ideologies that frequently have hindered persons with mental retardation from being regarded by others as unique individuals with various abilities. It investigates dynamics of social ostracism and the resultant silence, inclusive of the social work profession's relative absence in the field of mental retardation. Furthermore, it explores various aspects of research with persons with disabilities, and with persons with mental retardation in particular. While there have been multiple studies about persons with mental retardation, very …

Strategies To Address The Effects Of Reduced Funding For Music Education., Jill Leigh Hobby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop a consensus from a panel of experts composed of public school music teachers both based in instrumental methods and/or choral methods, higher education music professors from various backgrounds, public school administrators, philanthropists, authors, researchers, state music supervisors, and leaders in professional music organizations on regional and national levels.

Through the use of the panel of experts from geographical regions across the United States and Canada, this study strove to build strategies that addressed the effects of reducing funding for music education. The vehicle used to build consensus was the Delphi Technique. Through …

Study Of The Excited-State Absorption Properties Of Polymethine Molecules, Richard Stanley Lepkowicz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates excited-state nonlinearities in a series of polymethine dyes for the application of nanosecond optical limiting. Optical limiters are devices that for low intensity light exhibit a high linear transmittance, but for high intensity light strongly attenuate the incident radiation. These devices would serve to protect optical sensors from intense laser radiation by clamping the maximum energy allowed through an optical system below the damage threshold of the sensor. The search is ongoing for optical materials that are both broadband and have high damage thresholds to be effective materials for limiting applications. Polymethine dyes are promising compounds due …

Image Quality Analysis Using Glcm, Dhanashree Gadkari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Gray level co-occurrence matrix has proven to be a powerful basis for use in texture classification. Various textural parameters calculated from the gray level co-occurrence matrix help understand the details about the overall image content. The aim of this research is to investigate the use of the gray level co-occurrence matrix technique as an absolute image quality metric. The underlying hypothesis is that image quality can be determined by a comparative process in which a sequence of images is compared to each other to determine the point of diminishing returns. An attempt is made to study whether the curve of …

The Use Of Filters In Topology, Abdellatif Dasser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sequences are sufficient to describe topological properties in metric spaces or, more generally, topological spaces having a countable base for the topology. However, filters or nets are needed in more abstract spaces. Nets are more natural extension of sequences but are generally less friendly to work with since quite often two nets have distinct directed sets for domains. Operations involving filters are set theoretic and generally certain to filters on the same set. The concept of a filter was introduced by H. Cartan in 1937 and an excellent treatment of the subject can be found in N. Bourbaki (1940).

Macmahon's Master Theorem And Infinite Dimensional Matrix Inversion, Vivian Lola Wong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

MacMahon's Master Theorem is an important result in the theory of algebraic combinatorics. It gives a precise connection between coefficients of certain power series defined by linear relations. We give a complete proof of MacMahon's Master Theorem based on MacMahon's original 1960 proof. We also study a specific infinite dimensional matrix inverse due to C. Krattenthaler.

The Removal Of Motion Artifacts From Non-Invasive Blood Pressure Measurements, Paresh Thakkar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern Automatic Blood Pressure Measurement Techniques are based on measuring the cuff pressure and on sensing the pulsatile amplitude variations. These measurements are very sensitive to motion of the patient or the surroundings where the patient is. The slightest unexpected movements could offset the readings of the automatic Blood Pressure meter by a large amount or render the readings totally meaningless. Every effort must be taken to avoid subjecting the body of the patient or the patient's surroundings to motion for obtaining a reliable reading. But there are situations in which we need Blood Pressure Measurements with the patient or …

Neural Networks Satisfying Stone-Weiestrass Theorem And Approximating, Pinal Thakkar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neural networks are an attempt to build computer networks called artificial neurons, which imitate the activities of the human brain. Its origin dates back to 1943 when neurophysiologist Warren Me Cello and logician Walter Pits produced the first artificial neuron. Since then there has been tremendous development of neural networks and their applications to pattern and optical character recognition, speech processing, time series prediction, image processing and scattered data approximation. Since it has been shown that neural nets can approximate all but pathological functions, Neil Cotter considered neural network architecture based on Stone-Weierstrass Theorem. Using exponential functions, polynomials, rational functions …

Raindrop Size Distribution Retrieval And Evaluation Using An S-Band Radar Profiler, Fang Fang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vertical pointing Doppler radar profilers are used to explore the vertical structure of precipitation cloud systems and to provide validation information for use in weather research. In this thesis, a theoretical radar rain-backscatter model was developed to simulate profiler Doppler spectra as a function of assumed rain parameters, of which the raindrop size distribution (DSD) is the fundamental quantity used to describe the characteristics of rain. Also, profiler observations during stratiform rain are analyzed to retrieve the corresponding rain DSD’s. In particular, a gamma distribution model is introduced, which uses Rayleigh scattering portion of the Doppler velocity spectrum to estimate …

New Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Sol-Gel Nanocomposite Materials For Raman Gain In Fiber Optics, Stephen James Andrasik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The recent increased availability of additional wavelengths in the telecommunications window of about 1300-1600 nm has generated an interest in new optical materials and devices that can operate outside the normally used regions of 840 nm, 1310 nm, and 1550 nm. Specifically, methods to amplify fiber optical data transmission in the regions where there is limited or no existing methods to achieve amplification is of interest in the chemistry and photonic communities. Raman gain is one method that has been proposed to passively amplify optical data transmission through a distributed process. Amplification is obtained through a nonlinear light scattering process …

The Combined Effects Of Frequency Of Satisfaction And Domain Equity On Relational Satisfaction, Amanda Dawn Coho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Romantic relationship research has yet to identify the relationship between conflict, an interpersonal variable, and equity, an intrapersonal variable. The current study represents the first attempt to understand these variables’ contribution, separately and interactionally, on individual partner’s feelings of relationship satisfaction. A total of 106 undergraduate and graduate participants completed questionnaires gauging their frequency of conflict and perceptions of equity across each of five relational domains: Love, Status/Power, Money, Services, and Sex, in addition to reporting general levels of relationship satisfaction. Data were interpreted in three separate relationships: conflict and satisfaction, equity and satisfaction, and the interaction of conflict and …

The Ecology Of Drift Algae In The Indian River Lagoon, Florida, Julie Lynnae Liss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To gain an understanding of the ecology of drift algae in the Indian River Lagoon system along the east coast of central Florida, four questions were addressed: 1) What is the composition and rate of accumulation of drift? 2) How much movement and turnover occurs within drift accumulations? 3) Do growth rates differ for drift versus attached algae? 4) Is there a difference in photosynthetic performance in drift versus attached algal species? Manipulative field and laboratory experiments were conducted to address these questions with the green macroalga Codium decorticatum and the red macroalga Gracilaria tikvahiae. Changes in pigment concentration and …

Filters In Topology : Products Of Fr╩╣Echet Spaces And The Stone Transform, Anh Tran Mynard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces With Emotion Recognition, Fatma Nasoz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is on creating Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces to facilitate enhanced natural communication during the Human-Computer Interaction by recognizing users' affective states (i.e., emotions experienced by the users) and responding to those emotions by adapting to the current situation via an affective user model created for each user. Controlled experiments were designed and conducted in a laboratory environment and in a Virtual Reality environment to collect physiological data signals from participants experiencing specific emotions. Algorithms (k-Nearest Neighbor [KNN], Discriminant Function Analysis [DFA], Marquardt-Backpropagation [MBP], and Resilient Backpropagation [RBP]) were implemented to analyze the collected data signals …

Modified Sierpinski Fractal Antenna, Tripti Luintel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fractal antennas have the potential to provide multi-band solution through the property of self similarity that the fractal shape possess. This thesis deals with some modifications of the original Sierpinski fractal patch antenna, providing additional parameters to optimize in order to get the required radiation characteristics. A systematic study of the original Sierpinski monopole was done to gain an insight on the operation and multi-band behavior of the antenna and a similar study was done to find out why the patch version of Sierpinski lacks multi-band behavior. A Sierpinski antenna is designed by merging a grid and the fractal restoring …

Analysis And Integration Of A Debris Model In The Virtual Range Projec, Luis Robledo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After the accident of the STS 107 Columbia Space Shuttle, great concern has been focused on the risk associated to the population on the ground. Before this accident happened, re-entry routes as well as risk calculation of were not of public concern. Two issues that have been raised from this lamentable accident relate to spacecraft security and to public safety. The integration of a debris model has been part of the original conceptual architecture of the Virtual Range Project. Its integration has been considered as a specific research due to the complexity of the models and the difficulties to obtain …

Evaluation Of A Microwave Radiative Transfer Model For Calculating Sat, Simonetta Thompson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Remote sensing is the process of gathering and analyzing information about the earth's ocean, land and atmosphere using electromagnetic "wireless" techniques. Mathematical models, known as Radiative Transfer Models (RTM), are developed to calculate the observed radiance (brightness temperature) seen by the remote sensor. The RTM calculated brightness temperature is a function of fourteen environmental parameters, including atmospheric profiles of temperature, pressure and moisture, sea surface temperature, and cloud liquid water. Input parameters to the RTM model include data from NOAA Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), Reynolds weekly Sea Surface Temperature and National Ocean Data Center (NODC) WOA98 Ocean Salinity and …

Thermal Management, Beam Control,And Packaging Designs For High Power, Te-Yuan Chung

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Several novel techniques for controlling, managing and utilizing high power diode lasers are described. Low pressure water spray cooling for a high heat flux system is developed and proven to be an ideal cooling method for high power diode laser arrays. In order to enable better thermal and optical performance of diode laser arrays, a new and simple optical element, the beam control prism, is invented. It provides the ability to accomplish beam shaping and beam tilting at the same time. Several low thermal resistance diode packaging designs using beam control prisms are proposed, studied and produced. Two pump cavity …

Assessment Methods For Student Learning Outcomes In General Education At Urban And Metropolitan Universities, Angela R. Albert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The foci of this qualitative study were twofold. First, the researcher wanted to know what instruments and methods of data collection are being used to assess core general education intended student-learning outcomes at 62 urban and metropolitan universities (members of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities). Second, the researcher was interested in knowing the extent to which these approaches to measurement are producing data that can be used for improvement purposes. A review of the literature revealed that only 15% of institutions that indicated in a previous study that they were initiating change in the curriculum of general education …

Nitrification Investigation And Modeling In The Chloraminated Drinking Water Distribution System, Suibing Liu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of five papers concerning nitrification in chloraminated drinking water distribution systems in a one and a half year field study. Seven finished waters were produced from different treatment processes and distributed to eighteen pilot distribution systems (PDSs) that were made pipes taken from actual distribution systems. Unlined cast iron (UCI), galvanized steel (G), lined cast iron (LCI), and PVC pipes were used to build the PDSs. All finished waters were stabilized and chloraminated before entering the PDSs. This dissertation consists of five major parts. (1) System variations of nitrates, nitrites, DO, pH, alkalinity, temperature, chloramine residuals and …

Autonomous Environmental Mapping In Multi-Agent Uav Systems, Linus Jan Luotsinen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

UAV units are by many researchers and aviation specialists considered the future and cutting edge of modern flight technology. This thesis discusses methods for efficient autonomous environmental mapping in a multi-agent domain. An algorithm that emphasizes on team work by sharing the agents local map information and exploration intentions is presented as a solution to the mapping problem. General theories on how to model and implement rational autonomous behaviour for UAV agents are presented. Three different human and tactical behaviour modeling techniques are evaluated. The author found the CxBR paradigm to be the most interesting approach. Also, in order to …

Processing, Microstructural And Mechanical Characterization Of Mechanically Alloyed Al-Al2o3 Nanocomposites, Pushkar Katiyar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aluminum-alumina nanocomposites were synthesized using mechanical alloying of blended component powders of pure constituents. This study was performed on various powder mixtures with aluminum as the matrix and alumina as the reinforcement with volume fractions of 20, 30, and 50 % and Al2O3 particle sizes of 50 nm, 150 nm, and 5 µm. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques were used for the crystal structure and microstructural characterization of the powders at different stages of milling. Al2O3 powders with 50 nm and 150 nm particle size were predominantly of γ-type, while Al2O3 of 5 µm size was …

Part I: Evaluation Of Russian Synthetic Compounds As A Potential Source Of New Drug Leads Agains Breast And Colon Cancer Part Ii: Isolation Of Beta-Amyrin Formate From Eucalyptus Viminalis Labill And Investigation Of Its Colon Cancer Activity, Mihaela Cohanoschi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although modern medicine made great steps toward curing most diseases considered deadliest, yet cancer remains one of the major public health problems. The first part of this thesis investigates a new source of selective compounds that are potential candidates against cancer. Fifteen Russian compounds were tested in order to establish their efficiency against two types of cancer: human breast SK-Br-3 and colorectal carcinoma HT-29. The bioassay results show that seven of the new synthetic Russian compounds can be considered new drug leads, based upon their low toxicity and efficacy in slowing the growth of human breast cancer and colon cancer …

A Piecewise Linear Generalized Poisson Regression Approach To Modeling Longitudinal Frequency Data, Jennifer Borgesi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this research we consider experiments that generate longitudinal frequency data. Often times this data comes from two or more experimental groups. Experiments that yield such data are common in the medical field and are often designed with the purpose of ascertaining differences among

experimental groups. Standard modeling techniques, such as repeated measures ANOVA, are inadequate for application to longitudinal frequency data because they ignore the correlation between the measurements as well as the discrete nature of the data. We present a piecewise-linear, generalized Poisson regression model for longitudinal frequency data. Based on the generalized Poisson distribution, this model is …

Modeling Of Membrane Solute Mass Transfer In Ro/Nf Membrane Systems, Yu Zhao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Five articles describing the impact of surface characteristics, and development of mass transfer models for diffusion controlled membrane applications are published in this dissertation. Article 1 (Chapter 3) describes the impact of membrane surface characteristics and NOM on membrane performance for varying pretreatment and membranes during a field study. Surface charge, hydrophobicity and roughness varied significantly among the four membranes used in the study. Membrane surface characteristics, NOM and SUVA measurements were used to describe mass transfer in a low pressure RO integrated membrane system. Inorganic and organic solute and water mass transfer coefficients were systematically investigated for dependence on …

Performance Analysis Of Low-Power, Short-Range Wireless Transceivers, Usha Neupane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To address the various emerging standards like BluetoothTM, Home RF, Wi-fiTM (IEEE 802.11), ZigBeeTM etc., in the field of wireless communications, different transceivers have been designed to operate at various frequencies such as 450 MHz, 902-920 MHz, 2.4 GHz, all part of designated ISM band. Though, the wireless systems have become more reliable, compact and easy to develop than before, a detailed performance analysis and characterization of the devices should be done. This report details the performance analysis and characterization of a popular binary FSK transceiver TRF6901 from Texas Instruments. The performance analysis of the device is done with respect …

Performance Of Interface Elements In The Finite Element Method, Kairas Rabadi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research is to assess the performance of interface elements in the finite element method. Interface elements are implemented in the finite element codes such as MSC.NASTRAN, which is used in this study. Interface elements in MSC.NASTRAN provide a tool to transition between a shell-meshed region to another shell-meshed region as well as from a shell-meshed region to a solid-meshed region. Often, in practice shell elements are layered on shell elements or on solid elements without the use of interface elements. This is potentially inaccurate arising in mismatched degrees of freedom. In the case of a shell-to-shell …

Autonomous Robotic Automation Systemwith Vision Feedback, Jeffery Rosino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, a full design, development and application of an autonomous robotic automation system using vision feedback is performed. To realize this system, a cylindrical manipulator configuration is implemented, using a personal computer (PC) based PID controller from National Instruments. Full autonomous control will be achieved via a programmable human machine interface (HMI) developed on a PC using Borland C++ Builder. The vision feedback position control is accomplished using an ordinary "off-the-shelf" web camera. The manuscript is organized as follows; After Chapter 1, an introduction to automation history and its role in the manufacturing industry, Chapter 2 discusses and …