Digital Commons Network^™

Only In The Earth, Miran Lee

Theses

In only a few short years, multimedia has become powerful and accepted enough to begin taking its rightful place in the changing the way we communicate. Communication in the '90s must accomplish two fundamental tasks: satiating the demanding aesthetic tastes and expectations of today's sophisticated viewing audiences, and navigating the vast amount of knowledge, facts, and statistics that comprise the "Information Age." Multimedia allows us to use the best combination of media to present com pelling information suited to specific situations. It allows user-control over how and when that information is accessed. "Only In The Earth" is the ultimate multimedia …

Embracing The Celestial Body, Suzanne Grantham

Theses

None provided.

M-Ary Run Length Limited Coding, Jian Luo

Theses

This thesis consists of two parts: 1) a result of the rationality of channel capacity for the M -ary (d, k) constraint, and 2) a software package which has been designed to aid in the development of efficient, high density channel encoders for M -ary (d, k) constrained recording code. It has been written for the platforms of IBM PC or PC compatible and Sun Workstations. The designed software in this thesis involves three steps. The first step is to calculate the capacity of a RLL code after the user has chosen (M,d,k) . The channel capacity specifies the maximum …

Almost True Stories, Paul Porell

Theses

None provided.

The Symbolic Use Of Sea Shells In Design, Sunah Ahn

Theses

This thesis report details the various stages taken in the process of selecting a suitable topic for my graduate thesis, and moving through the various stages to complete an exhibition and an art book on the topic, The symbolic use of sea shells in design. Sea shells are an important design component in all of the visual arts. My thesis is an investigation into how four types of shells (scallop, nautilus, conch, and cowrie) have been used as signifiers in a variety of applications. My goal was to create a book that could be used by designers as a quick …

Missa Cantata, Kevin Mann

Theses

None provided.

Designing Navigation For Interactive Multimedia, Jeffrey Rascov

Theses

None provided.

Space Adventure, David Seah

Theses

None provided.

Boundary Scan System Design, Craig Loomis

Theses

Given the strong competition in digital design on the national and international levels, boundary scan devices are rapidly becoming a necessary as opposed to a convenient feature on integrated circuits. This thesis serves a dual purpose. First, it demonstrates how boundary scan devices can be used to increase the testability of a circuit and it presents several factors used to quantify the cost associated with the addition of boundary scan compatibility to digital designs. Cost tradeoffs are often the most intimidating hurdle for engineers to cross when deciding if boundary scan compatibility is worth the effort. Second, it demonstrates the …

Environmental Study Indoor And Outdoor Of The Abu Dhabi Compost Plant, Jaber Eidha S. Aljabri

Theses

The transformation of municipal solid waste into compost is of double interest: on the one hand, it helps to avoid the deficiencies of natural manure, and on the other it eliminates this major polluting agent which is increasing progressively as a consequence of rising populations.

Domestic waste produced per person per annum amounts to 730 kg in Abu Dhabi city. Based on a population in 1992 of 574,745, this gives a current daily refuse collection that amounts to 1120 tons. Refuse is reported to contain a high proportion of organic materials and therefore to be suitable for recycling to produce …

A Study Of Trellis Coded Quantization For Image Compression, Kannan Panchapakesan

Theses

Trellis coded quantization has recently evolved as a powerful quantization technique in the world of lossy image compression. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the potential of trellis coded quantization in conjunction with two of the most popular image transforms today; the discrete cosine transform and the discrete wavelet trans form. Trellis coded quantization is compared with traditional scalar quantization. The 4-state and the 8-state trellis coded quantizers are compared in an attempt to come up with a quantifiable difference in their performances. The use of pdf-optimized quantizers for trellis coded quantization is also studied. Results for the …

Teletype Network Communication Device, Mark Clyman

Theses

None provided.

Atomic Oxygen Resitant Zirconium Containing Polyimides, Liling He

Theses

The objective of this thesis is to improve the atomic oxygen resistance of polyimide Kapton by incorporating zirconium components. Toward this end, zirconium complexes/polyimide "composites",. zirconium-containing poly(maleimide)/ polyimide "blends" and polyimide polymers with zirconium complexes as "pendants" have been investigated. Tetra(acetylacetonato)zirconium(IV), Zr(acac)4_ has been identified as the best zirconium-containing atomic oxygen resistance component for polyimide composites with good film uniformity, flexibility and tensile strength. A 24-layer 10% Zr(acac)4/PI (mol/mol) composite film shows a 20 fold improvement of atomic oxygen resistance over pure polyimide. However, a 10% by mole upper limit of Zr(acac)4 in PI was encountered, above which films become …

A Digital Signal Processor Based Optical Position Sensor And Its Application To Flexible Beam Control, Thomas J. Spirock

Theses

A Digital Signal Processor (DSP) based optical position sensor was developed. The sensor system consists of the following components: 1) analog electronics, 2) the DSP based synchronous demodulation software, 3) PC based interface software which samples and saves the data, and 4) PC based control codes for a flexible beam. experiment.

The ability of the system to determine the distance from the optical sensor to the power modulated light source was assessed by the following tests: 1) a stationary drift test to evaluate the system's noise, 2) a short-range test to determine the resolution of the optical sensor over a …

Remote Measurement Calibration In Power System, Xiaofeng Li

Theses

Power system reliability and economy of operation require accurate measurements of current, voltage, real and reactive powers. These measurements are transmitted to a control center of a power system for monitoring, display, and use in power system real-time analysis. The number of measurements is in thousands. Routinely field technicians must calibrate transducers and/or determine other sources of metering errors. Due to the large number of measurements and the time required to check each individual measurement, field calibration procedures are impractical, expensive, and not timely.

There has been a need for a more efficient approach to measurement calibration and identification of …

Bringing Ideas Back To The Evolution Of Design, Ayca Tuzmen

Theses

This thesis is an exploration into the evolution of design. It attempts to develop an awareness of the effectiveness of what we do as designers and users to improve design. To achieve this purpose, it elaborates on some of the implications of paradigms which have emerged in design evolution. It presents some of the evolutionary theories and their analogies. These theories and analogies develop a view of design evolution - a conception of design as a process which moves from a lower to a higher state. With this conception, concern is directed at the identification of past and current design …

Usability Of Hypertext : Factors Affecting The Construction Of Meaning, Kathryn L. King

Theses

One type of hypertext application, information retrieval, has become increasingly popular and accessible due to the explosion of activity occurring on the World Wide Web. These hypertext documents are referred to as web sites. Readers can now access a multitude of web sites and retrieve a wide variety of information.

The uniqueness of a hypertext document centers around the concept that text is broken into an array of non-sequential text chunks, or nodes, which are connected through links. The hypertext reading can be considered an interactive experience requiring the reader to effectively navigate the document. The potentially complex link and …

Comparison Of Different Signal Processing Algorithms To Extract The Respiration Waveform From The Ecg, David J. Caggiano

Theses

Power spectral analysis of heart rate variability is a powerful tool to measure the activity of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system noninvasively. To determine the parasympathetic activity, the frequency of respiration must be known. However, during ambulatory studies, the frequency of respiration is not acquired. To alleviate this problem, methods have been proposed in the past to derive the respiration from the ECG. Unfortunately, these previous methods are unreliable if the subject's breathing rate is uncontrolled. In this study, four methods to derive the respiration waveform from the electrocardiogram (ECG) were developed. Two leads of ECG and …

Relay Ladder Logic And Petri Nets For Discrete Event Control Design : A Comparative Study, Edward Twiss

Theses

In the 1960's and earlier discrete event systems (DES) were controlled by hardwired electromechanical relay systems. In 1969 an electronic programmable logic controller (PLC) was introduced. PLC's have been programmed utilizing relay ladder logic (RLL). RLL is a graphical programming language with software "devices" used to emulate electromechanical devices. RLL programs, however, often become large and difficult to understand because its graphical representation of physical switching devices obscures the discrete event dynamics inherent in the process to be controlled. Petri nets are a methodology for modeling discrete event systems (DES). Using a Petri net based controller, a control strategy could …

Environmental Communication : Theory And Practice, Mary Mccarney Mcmanus

Theses

The present study examines the relationship between environmental communication theory and practice. The focus of the case study is to examine the formal elements of an environmental document--the Industrial Pollution Prevention Planning guidelines published by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP)--and the process by which this document was created. This study of product and process allows a methodology to be developed by which the complexities of environmental communication may be better understood.

Pollution Prevention In The New Jersey Chemical Industry : Motivations And Barriers To Commitment, Judith A. Thornton

Theses

This study of the New Jersey Chemical Industry identifies the primary elements that lead to or inhibit company commitments to pollution prevention. A direct measure of facility pollution prevention commitment is developed that takes into account: organizational support attributes, past reductions achievements, current methods implementation, process reduction goals, and special environmental initiatives. The "P2 Commitment Index" allows for categorization of facilities so that the needs and interests of varying groups may be differentiated.

Higher level commitments are associated with: establishment of company pollution prevention policy, setting of prioritized facility goals, and measurement and reporting on pollution prevention progress. Facilities at …

Simple Fast Vector Quantization Of The Line Spectral Frequencies, Jin Zhou

Theses

Speech coding has been of interest to communication specialists for years. A number of technologies for describing and transmitting the speech spectral envelope have been studied. Among them, the Vector Quantization (VQ) of Line Spectral Frequencies (LSF) is receiving more attention because of its good rate-distortion performance. Typically, about 30 bits are assigned to code 10-dimensional LSF vectors with a resulting spectral distortion of less than ldB. However, 30-bit full-search VQ is totally impractical in terms of both computational complexity and memory space. Various standard suboptimal, low-complexity VQ techniques have been used for coding the LSF's in the literature. The …

Design Process And Digital Technology: A Perspective For Education, Susan Wieters

Theses

None provided.

Beef You Feel Good About, Courtney Grim

Theses

None provided.

Tashlich - "And You Shall Cast", Rachel Kanter

Theses

Art is my means of communication. It is a visual statement of my conscience and soul. Clay is the medium I use, to help me create my statement. I use it as my visual typewriter. It is how I speak without writing, and communicate to people through their eyes. Clay is an extension of my mind and hands. The development of the initial idea, to the actual work of art, happens naturally when I use clay. It enables my ideas to become dimensional realities. The following thesis is a documentation of the process I used, from the preliminary thoughts, to …

Graphical Visualization Of Control System Performance, Jeffrey Marx

Theses

University courses on control system design have traditionally relied on the root locus approach to predict transient system output. However, the increasing speed of personal computers has made it practical to design control systems by simulating their time and frequency responses. This thesis presents an interactive Matlab program for control system analysis and design. The system is defined in Simulink with a user-specified gain parameter of variable magnitude. The gain parameter is automatically varied by the program within user-specified bounds. Several surface and performance plots are produced which describe system time-domain and frequency-domain performance. The system root locus is also …

An Investigation Into The Cost Justification Of Computer-To-Plate Systems, Jessica Murphey

Theses

In the history of technological development, it is usually the case that the technology is available before mankind understands the full potential of its use. Thus it should come as no surprise that CTP (Computer-to Plate) technology is currently waiting for its advantages to be exploited by the graphic arts' market. This was evidenced by the heavy saturation of platesetters presented at DRUPA 1995 (the largest printing trade show in the world), which demonstrated that CTP is no longer a research and development experiment but a marketplace reality and the topic of considerable discussion. Surprisingly, the response of the printing …

A Conservation Plan For The Juan Mendez Photographic Collection, Fernando Osorio

Theses

This thesis is put forth to document not only the outcome of two years worth of intensive investigation and preparation on the Juan Mendez Photographic Collection, but more importantly it offer viable conservation measures. The first two chapters describe the context of the life and work of Juan Mendez, a Mexican photographer who was active in the City of Puebla, Mexico during the years of 1926 to 1962. The third and fourth chapters are a report of the conservation survey that took place through various visits to the collection of his works during the course of one year. With the …

The Life Of Mariano Payeras: A Study In Church/State Relations, Douglas Anthony Cutter

Theses

To understand the role of Mariano Payeras as Father President of the California Franciscan Missions, it is necessary to place the historiography of the mission in its perspective. Literature abounds regarding California's Franciscan missionaries and their charges--the missions and Indian neophytes. Few historical arenas can claim such easily traceable roots as California and its mission period. In many ways the early Franciscans emerge as the creators of a new civilization, largely because the aborigines kept no written records and because centuries of cultural change, disease, persecution and censure have limited what anthropologists and historians can create of the native past.

An Interview With Mac Mcgrew: American Typeface Historian And Typographer, Karin Yvonne Hurlburt

Theses

Mac McGrew gained a reputation within typographic circles as a leading type expert through his work as Type Director with Ketchum, MacLeod and Grove in Pittsburgh, his many articles published in various typographic magazines and newsletters, as well as his membership in several printing guilds. With the publishing of his book, American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century in 1993, his position as the foremost American type historian was established. Mac is one of a select group of people who have detailed knowledge of the transition from metal type to current digital methods. This knowledge must be preserved to educate …