Digital Commons Network^™

Design And Modeling Of Centralized Distribution Network For The Dc House Project, Harpreet S. Bassi

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the design, modeling, simulation, and performance evaluation of Centralized Distribution Network for the DC House Project. Power System Computer Aided Design (PSCAD) is used to model a Centralized PV Source, Battery Bank, and Distribution Network for 25 DC Houses. Design and modeling of each component in the proposed system are described. For the performance evaluation, emphasis is on voltage stability and system reliability under different operating conditions. Results from the simulation demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed Centralized Distribution Network for the DC House Project to support the houses during non-generation periods and distribution network voltage …

Manufacturing Execution System (Mes) An Examination Of Implementation Strategy, Riley F. Elliott

Master's Theses

The priorities of executing the manufacturing orders generated by an MRP system are often in operational conflicts with the dynamics of the manufacturing floor. It is not uncommon for a given manufacturing order to reach the shop floor several weeks or longer after being "opened" by an MRP system where it may face a chaotic case of large queues, machine down-time, parts shortage, scrap problems and other resource management constraints. Many companies have resorted to the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software solution to resolve these problems. This method first gained popularity in mid-90’s within the semiconductor industry. An MES approach …

City Of Los Angeles Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan: Parking Management Strategies, Miriam L. Thompson

Master's Theses

This study examines the state of off-street parking in the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan (CASP) area of the City of Los Angeles. The focus is on discovering relevant strategies to strengthen the plans ability to reduce parking supply and demand.

Research has shown a causal relationship between planning policies and the oversupply of parking. An auto-centric approach to land use and urban form creates societal problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution, inflated development costs, and hostile pedestrian landscapes. Further issues that are directly associated with parking include: poor water quality, neighborhood livability, and ambient temperature. Additionally, an overabundance …

Testing Subspecies Limits In Monardella Villosa, Taylor Mclaughlin Crow

Master's Theses

Several subspecies of Monardella villosa (California Coyote Mint) have been distinguished on the basis of leaf thickness, shape, and trichome characteristics, yet many intermediates are known. We investigated morphological differences in natural populations of two subspecies (M. v. subsp. villosa and M. v. subsp. franciscana) in the Scott Creek watershed, north of Davenport, in Santa Cruz County, CA. Monardella villosa subsp. franciscana grows in coastal scrub in gulches and ocean terraces whereas subsp. villosa grows at more protected inland sites. Morphological difference between subspecies may be adaptations to these different habitats. I grew plants in a common garden at Cal …

Dairy Manure Flushwater Treatment By Packed-Bed Anaerobic Digesters, Neal Cary Adler

Master's Theses

Wastewater treatment performance of three pilot-scale packed-bed anaerobic digesters with walnut shell medium was researched for treating dairy freestall barn flushwater. Reciprocation mixing was evaluated as a means to lessen channelization in the media bed and to improve biogas production and organic matter removal at ambient temperatures. Reciprocation has been used in biological nitrogen removal systems to introduce air into the system to repeatedly oxygenate nitrifying biofilm along with mixing (Behrends et al. 2003), but the anaerobic systems benefit from mixing. Two tanks were used in each system, where one was full and one was empty at any given time. …

Nutrient Removal Using Microalgae In Wastewater-Fed High Rate Ponds, Matthew N. Rodrigues

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses the mechanisms associated with the removal of organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater-fed high rate algae ponds (HRAP) designed to operate as triplicates. Research was conducted at the San Luis Obispo Water Reclamation Facility (SLOWRF) as a pilot-scale study of nine 30-square meter ponds one foot in depth. During period of study, triplicates were operated at hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 4, 3 or 2-days. Main objectives for the study were to determine minimum HRTs required to achieve secondary and tertiary treatment. Experimental conditions such as CO₂ supplementation, nighttime aeration and operation of ponds in …

Applied Hw/Sw Co-Design: Using The Kendall Tau Algorithm For Adaptive Pacing, Kenneth W. Chee

Master's Theses

Microcontrollers, the brains of embedded systems, have found their way into every aspect of our lives including medical devices such as pacemakers. Pacemakers provide life supporting functions to people therefore it is critical for these devices to meet their timing constraints. This thesis examines the use of hardware co-processing to accelerate the calculation time associated with the critical tasks of a pacemaker. In particular, we use an FPGA to accelerate a microcontroller’s calculation time of the Kendall Tau Rank Correlation Coefficient algorithm. The Kendall Tau Rank Correlation Coefficient is a statistical measure that determines the pacemaker’s voltage level for heart …

Spork: A Summarization Pipeline For Online Repositories Of Knowledge, Steffen Slyngbae Lyngbaek

Master's Theses

The web 2.0 era has ushered an unprecedented amount of interactivity on the Internet resulting in a flood of user-generated content. This content is often unstructured and comes in the form of blog posts and comment discussions. Users can no longer keep up with the amount of content available, which causes developers to start relying on natural language techniques to help mitigate the problem. Although many natural language processing techniques have been employed for years, automatic text summarization, in particular, has recently gained traction. This research proposes a graph-based, extractive text summarization system called SPORK (Summarization Pipeline for Online Repositories …

Establishment And Validation Of A Novel Fucci (Fluorescent Ubiquitination-Based Cell Cycle Indicator) In An In Vitro Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Model, Jane Marie Isquith

Master's Theses

The deregulation of the cell cycle is important in the leukemic transformation and in the continued discovery of more efficient targeted therapies. After elucidation of the role of the RNA editor ADAR1 in the malignant reprogramming of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) progenitors to leukemia stem cells (LSCs) during the chronic phase to blast crisis stages of the disease, current research seeks to uncover the mechanism of action of ADAR1 in this process. To study the potential role ADAR1 plays in the changes to cell cycle during this disease progression, a novel Fucci (fluorescent ubiquitination-based cell cycle indicator) system was introduced …

Shark Sim: A Procedural Method Of Animating Leopard Sharks Based On Raw Location Data, Katherine S. Blizard

Master's Theses

Fish such as the Leopard Shark (Triakis semifasciata) can be tagged on their fin, released back into the wild, and their location tracked though technologies such as autonomous robots. Timestamped location data about their target is stored. We present a way to procedurally generate an animated simulation of T. semifasciata using only these timestamped location points.

This simulation utilizes several components. Input timestamps dictate a monotonic time-space curve mapping the simulation clock to the space curve. The space curve connects all the location points as a spline without any sharp folds that are too implausible for shark traversal. We create …

Baby Boomer Living: Designing A Modern Continuing Care Retirement Community, Ryan Michael Wassum

Master's Theses

With the largest U.S. generation in the midst of retirement, the Baby Boomer cohort is vastly changing the senior housing landscape. As the housing market gradually improves and the development of senior housing chases the increasing demand, Baby Boomers are a highly selective cohort with more buying and spending power than their predecessors, are healthier and more active, and are demanding an unconventional modification of alternative senior housing. The “traditional” senior community is outdated and no longer seen as a viable choice for retirement, and new and innovated models have surpassed the old-fashioned establishments.

Among the innovative senior community models, …

Post-Fire Response Of Little Creek Watershed: Evaluation Of Change In Sediment Production And Suspended Sediment Transport, Andrew Wood Loganbill

Master's Theses

The Little Creek watershed was assessed to identify changes in event-based suspended sediment export and determine the factors contributing to sediment production the first year following the Lockheed Fire in 2009. The amount and volume of near-stream sediment sources were found to decrease, while an increase in hillslope sediment production was documented. High intensity, short duration rainfall (up to 87 mm/hr for 10 minute duration) initiated extensive rilling and minor channel-derived debris torrents originating from the upper south facing slopes. Rainfall simulations, hillslope erosion plots, and soil infiltration tests indicated that fire produced soil water repellency, the lack of ground …

Calcium Carbonate Particle Size Effects On Titanium Dioxide Light Scattering In Coatings, Jason W. Boke

Master's Theses

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is an essential component in a white paint formulation due to its excellent light scattering ability. TiO2 also happens to make up most of the raw materials cost. Viable replacements to TiO2 do not currently exist in a feasible manner. Rising costs in the recent TiO2 supply shortage have forced coatings formulators to find a balance between cost and performance. One method includes partial substitution of TiO2 with cheaper material such as calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which serves to occupy volume.

The purpose of this study was to compare the coating spread rate of paints with varying TiO2 …

Traffic Signal Control With Swam Intelligence Ant Colony Optimization, Pang-Shi Shih

Master's Theses

Traffic signal control with swam intelligence ant colony optimization

Pang-shi Shih

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a meta-heuristic based on the indirect communication of a colony of artificial ants mediated by pheromone trails with collaboration and knowledge-sharing mechanism during their food-seeking process. ACO has been successfully applied to solve many NP-hard combinational optimization problems such as travel salesman problem, quadratic problem, just to name a few. In this research, we apply the ACO algorithm to the traffic signal control in order to minimize the user delay at a traffic intersection. Simulation results from our computational experiments indicate that ACO provides …

A Complete Streets Analysis And Recommendations Report For The City Of Bakersfield, California, Sherie L. George

Master's Theses

Driven by California State legislation, the City of Bakersfield is taking steps to introduce Complete Streets to the community. Working in collaboration with the Bakersfield City Planning Department, this project was prompted by the CIty's forthcoming update of its Metropolitan Bakersfield General Plan Circulation Element, with purpose to meet the California Complete Streets Act (AB1358) requirement to plan for a balanced, multimodal transportation network. This professional project intends to provide Bakersfield city officials, staff, and residents with tools and information needed to assess and implement Complete Streets within the Community.

The project provides in depth background research on the Complete …

Surfactant Formulations For Water-Based Processing Of A Polythiophene Derivative, Cameron Dean Danesh

Master's Theses

Conjugated polymers are semiconducting materials that are currently being researched for numerous applications from chemical and biological sensors to electronic devices, including photovoltaics and transistors. Much of the novel research on conjugated polymers is performed in academic settings, where scientists are working to prepare conjugated polymers for commercially viable applications. By offering numerous advantages, inherent in macromolecular materials, conjugated polymers may hold the key to cheap and environmentally friendly manufacturing of future electronic devices. Mechanical flexibility, and solvent-based coating processes are two commonly cited advantages. Transitions in the backbone conformation of polythiophenes (PT) in organic solvents have been widely observed …

The Effect Of A Triphasic Pulse On Scs To Icd Crosstalk, Ryan James Wensley

Master's Theses

It is a known problem that a Spinal Cord Stimulator (SCS) can interact with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) when both devices are implanted in the same patient. Interactions between the SCS and ICD can cause inappropriate therapy which can be harmful to the patient. While ICD devices have a distinct narrowband sensing bandwidth, the pulse configurations that current SCS devices deliver were not designed with this frequency region in mind. In this thesis, I recommend a new pulse configuration for SCS devices that will minimize the interaction between the two devices. I produce a theoretical equation for each pulse …

A Stand-Alone Methodology For Data Exploration In Support Of Data Mining And Analytics, Michael Gage

Master's Theses

With the emergence of Big Data, data high in volume, variety, and velocity, new analysis techniques need to be developed to effectively use the data that is being collected. Knowledge discovery from databases is a larger methodology encompassing a process for gathering knowledge from that data. Analytics pair the knowledge with decision making to improve overall outcomes. Organizations have conclusive evidence that analytics provide competitive advantages and improve overall performance. This paper proposes a stand-alone methodology for data exploration. Data exploration is one part of the data mining process, used in knowledge discovery from databases and analytics. The goal of …

The Effect Of 2d And 3d Menus On Memory Retention In User Interface Design, Angela Michelle Muscat

Master's Theses

The increasing use of 3D user interface elements, particularly 3D menus, demonstrates the need to expand research in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as it pertains to 3D user interfaces. The results of this thesis contribute to the understanding of the cognitive impacts of using 3D menus. Multiple application areas for 3D menus have been identified where memory retention is a critical success factor, but little research has been done in the area of memory retention for 3D menus. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the use of 3D carousel menus increases retention of information …

Misheard Me Oronyminator: Using Oronyms To Validate The Correctness Of Frequency Dictionaries, Jennifer G. Hughes

Master's Theses

In the field of speech recognition, an algorithm must learn to tell the difference between "a nice rock" and "a gneiss rock". These identical-sounding phrases are called oronyms. Word frequency dictionaries are often used by speech recognition systems to help resolve phonetic sequences with more than one possible orthographic phrase interpretation, by looking up which oronym of the root phonetic sequence contains the most-common words.

Our paper demonstrates a technique used to validate word frequency dictionary values. We chose to use frequency values from the UNISYN dictionary, which tallies each word on a per-occurance basis, using a proprietary text corpus, …

Micrometeoroid Fluence Variation In Critical Orbits Due To Asteroid Disruption, Eliot Dan Aretskin-Hariton

Master's Theses

Micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD) is a growing issue with international importance. Micrometeoroids are naturally occurring fragments of rock and dusk that exist throughout the solar system. Orbital debris is human made material like rocket bodies, paint flakes, and the effluent of spacecraft collisions. Even small MMOD particles on the order of 1 cm in diameter have the potential to destroy critical spacecraft systems. Because of this, MMOD is a threat to all spacecraft in orbit. Even governments that most sternly oppose US international policy have a stake when it comes to minimizing MMOD flux. Space-based assets are essential to …

Mantis: A Predictive Driving Directions Recommendation System, Christopher Hoover

Master's Theses

This thesis presents Mantis, a system designed to evaluate possible driving routes and recommend the optimal route based on current and predicted travel conditions. The system uses the Bing Maps REST service to obtain a set of routes. Traffic data from the California Department of Transportation’s Performance Measurement System (PeMS) is then used to estimate travel times for these routes. In addition to simple travel time estimation based on instantaneous traffic conditions, Mantis can use historic data to predict traffic speeds at future times. This allows Mantis to more effectively account for regularly repeating traffic patterns such as rush hour, …

Design And Development Of A Stair Ascension Assistive Device For Transfemoral Amputees, Casey Michael Barbarino

Master's Theses

Transfemoral amputees around the world experience increased difficulty in climbing stairs due to lack of muscle, balance, and other factors. The loss of a lower limb greatly diminishes the amount of natural force generation provided that is necessary to propel oneself up stairs. This study investigated possible solutions to the problem of stair ascension for transfemoral amputees by the means of designing and developing an externally attachable device to a prosthesis. The number of amputations from military service has greatly increased since 2008, which shows there is a clear need for assistive devices (Wenke, Krueger, & Ficke, 2012). With the …

Auto-Motives: Unraveling The Riddle Of Alternative Transportation To School, Mikki Amano Mcdaniel

Master's Theses

Over the last 40 years, there has been a dramatic increase nationwide in the rate of children being driven to school in a private vehicle in the U.S., exacerbating problems from traffic congestion to childhood obesity. While many studies have focused on walking and cycling for the trip to school, few explore parental decision making and the interaction between all travel modes. This study conducts a survey of parents of children attending six elementary schools in San Luis Obispo regarding their children’s travel to school. It explores factors in mode choice, establishes local travel patterns for children, and describes parents’ …

Speed And Agility Training The Mustang Way: The Development Of An Instructional Dvd For Cal Poly Athletes' Summer Training, Gary D. Heron

Master's Theses

SPEED AND AGILITY TRAINING THE MUSTANG WAY:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INSTRUCTIONAL DVD FOR CAL POLY ATHLETES’ SUMMER TRAINING

Gary Douglas Heron

The purpose of this project was to create an instructional DVD of speed and agility training for Cal Poly student-athletes. The DVD is for athletes’ use when they are away from campus during summer break and contains information about the same drills and information the strength and conditioning coaches provided while athletes were on campus. The project was filmed and edited by the graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach for Cal Poly intercollegiate athletics. The DVD contains 74 …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of An Emr Based Orbital Debris Impact Testing Platform, Jeffrey J. Maniglia Jr.

Master's Theses

This paper describes the changes made from Cal Poly’s initial railgun system, the Mk. 1 railgun, to the Mk. 1.1 system, as well as the design, fabrication, and testing of a newer and larger Mk. 2 railgun system. The Mk. 1.1 system is developed as a more efficient alteration of the original Mk. 1 system, but is found to be defective due to hardware deficiencies and failure, as well as unforeseen efficiency losses. A Mk. 2 system is developed and built around donated hardware from the Naval Postgraduate School. The Mk. 2 system strove to implement an efficient, augmented, electromagnetic …

Algorithms For Library-Based Microbial Source Tracking, Aldrin Montana

Master's Theses

Pyroprinting is a novel, library-based microbial source tracking method developed by the Biology department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. This method consists of two parts: (1) a collection of bacterial fingerprints, called pyroprints, from known host species, and (2) a method for pyroprint comparison. Currently, Cal Poly Library of Pyroprints (CPLOP), a web-based database application, provides storage and analysis of over $10000$ pyroprints. This number is quickly growing as students and researchers continue to use pyroprinting for research. Biologists conducting research using pyroprinting rely on methods for partitioning collected bacterial isolates into bacterial strains. Clustering algorithms are commonly used …

Analysis Of Protein Pre-Coatings And Their Effect On Endothelial Cell Adhesion In A Tissue Engineered Blood Vessel Mimic, Rachel Ann Gohres

Master's Theses

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in developing countries. Because thousands of people are affected by this disease, medical device companies are constantly developing new intravascular devices in attempt to cure or alleviate the symptoms of the disease. However, before these devices can be brought to market or implanted in to patients, they must complete three stages of testing to receive FDA approval. These testing stages include: in vitro testing, in vivo testing, and clinical trials. Currently, there is a large gap between in vitro and in vivo testing because it is difficult to obtain physiologic information about …

Social Isolation And Cell Phone Use By College Students, Nichol Elise Myers

Master's Theses

In our technologically ever-advancing world, cell phones can either help us remain socially connected or can contribute to social isolation by substituting for face-to-face contact. This study examines the levels of social isolation in terms of the state of loneliness and trait of shyness and their correlations with academic achievement in 206 community college and university students to examine the connection between social isolation, GPA and cell phone use in college students. Two instruments used in the collection of data were the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS) and the DeJong Gierveld Loneliness Scale. Correlational analysis was used …

Impact Of Photovoltaic System Penetration On The Operation Of Voltage Regulator Equipment, Abesh Sorab Mubaraki

Master's Theses

The growing popularity of photovoltaic (PV) generation systems leads to an increase in the number of residential and commercial grid-tied PV systems that interconnect to the distribution circuit. This affects the characteristics of the distribution circuit; for example, the assumption that the voltage profile of a radial line decreases down-stream becomes invalid because of the addition of the PV system on the line. This poses new challenges when setting the parameters of voltage regulating devices. Add to that the fact that PV systems are intermittent, especially on cloudy days, which make the line even more difficult to regulate, and the …