Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating The Effect Of Contextual Variables On Discounting Of Health Related Behaviors, Jessica Hubrich

Theses

The present study used a discounting task with differing contextual variables to examine how variables effect discounting between studies and future health related behaviors. Thirty nine participants completed two discounting questionnaires, each included hypothetical food choices paired with a weight loss or stable weight. Participants were instructed to complete each survey based on either their current weight or a gain of 75 pounds, and each survey included two identical hypothetical menu options. One menu incorporated low calorie foods, while the other incorporated moderately healthy foods, and participants were instructed to select the menu they preferred based on weight loss/no weight …

Throughput Optimization And Resource Allocation On Gpus Under Multi-Application Execution, Srinivasa Reddy Punyala

Theses

Platform heterogeneity prevails as a solution to the throughput and computational chal- lenges imposed by parallel applications and technology scaling. Specifically, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are based on the Single Instruction Multiple Thread (SIMT) paradigm and they can offer tremendous speed-up for parallel applications. However, GPUs were designed to execute a single application at a time. In case of simultaneous multi-application execution, due to the GPUs’ massive multi-threading paradigm, ap- plications compete against each other using destructively the shared resources (caches and memory controllers) resulting in significant throughput degradation. In this thesis, a methodology for minimizing interference in shared resources …

Physical Properties Of Topological Insulator: Bismuth Selenide Thin Films, Yub Raj Sapkota

Theses

Topological Insulator (TI) is new classes of materials with gapless surface states and insulating bulk. The topological connection can be traced back to the discovery of Integer Quantum Hall Effect in 1980. In the last decade, new categories of topological insulators were predicted and later discovered, that have gained a lot of attraction for room-temperature applications. Since the experimental observation of single Dirac cone on the surface states of Bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) in 2009, it has emerged as the prototype. Bismuth Selenide has one of the highest bulk band gaps of 0.3 eV among all TI materials. While its single …

An Optimizing Method For Screening In A Mixture Design Experiment, Marcos Michael Soriano Almanzar

Theses

Mixture experiments, is when the responses are subject to the proportion of the components in the mixture and not on the total amount of the mixture. When we have a lot of component is a little tedious to analyze so we use screening methods in a mixture design using the Cox model. Using this we develop methods a new method for screening in a mixture setting.

An Alternative Approach To Counting Minimum (S; T)-Cuts In Planar Graphs, Rachel E. Silva

Theses

Finding and counting minimum cuts in graphs can be useful in image processing and segmentation and in networking systems such as computer or road networks. Researchers have previously developed polynomial-time algorithms to count minimum cuts in planar graphs which utilize the relationship between maximum network flows and minimum cuts.

This thesis presents a polynomial-time algorithm to count the number of minimum (s,t)-cuts in a planar graph without first finding a maximum flow. The presented algorithm is dependent on the finding that (s,t)-cuts in a planar graph correlate to certain cycles found in the dual of that graph, which can be …

Forecasting Strategies For Predicting Peak Electric Load Days, Harshit Saxena

Theses

Academic institutions spend thousands of dollars every month on their electric power consumption. Some of these institutions follow a demand charges pricing structure; here the amount a customer pays to the utility is decided based on the total energy consumed during the month, with an additional charge based on the highest average power load required by the customer over a moving window of time as decided by the utility. Therefore, it is crucial for these institutions to minimize the time periods where a high amount of electric load is demanded over a short duration of time. In order to reduce …

Automated Rf Over Fiber Signal Measurement System, Mageswaren Ravichandran

Theses

The demand for lossless data at a low cost has lead its way to use fiber optic in field of RADIO FREQUENCY. This research proposes the automation technique which can be used in RF-overfiber measurements. All other automation technique used visual basic or Labview as the source, this paper uses python an open-source language to create generic automation software. Python optimized the code to run faster and gave advantage of modularity and portability. The code was successfully developed and verified by the two-different test setup, which give an accuracy of 97%.

Accelerating Stochastic Random Projection Neural Networks, Swathika Ramakrishnan

Theses

Artificial Neural Network (ANN), a computational model based on the biological neural networks, has a recent resurgence in machine intelligence with breakthrough results in pattern recognition, speech recognition, and mapping. This has led to a growing interest in designing dedicated hardware substrates for ANNs with a goal of achieving energy efficiency, high network connectivity and better computational capabilities that are typically not optimized in software ANN stack. Using stochastic computing is a natural choice to reduce the total system energy, where a signal is expressed through the statistical distribution of the logical values as a random bit stream. Generally, the …

Design Of A Single Precision Floating Point Divider And Multiplier With Pipelined Architecture, Mayuresh Vijay Keni

Theses

High speed computation is the need of today’s generation of Processors. To accomplish this major task, many functions are implemented inside the hardware of the processor rather than having software computing the same task. Majority of the operations which the processor executes are Arithmetic operations which are widely used in many applications that require heavy mathematical operations such as scientific calculations, image and signal processing. Especially in the field of signal processing, multiplication division operation is widely used in many applications. The major issue with these operations in hardware is that many iteration’s are required which results in slow operation …

Systemverilog Verification Of Wishbone-Compliant Serial Peripheral Interface, Avinash Srinivasan

Theses

Synchronous serial interfaces provide economical on-board communication between the processor, digital to analog and analog to digital converters, memory, and other building blocks on the chip. A number of Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturers develop and produce components that are compatible with serial interfaces. The common serial interfaces include Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C), Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART), and Universal Serial Bus (USB). SPI is widely used and advantageous over other serial interfaces due to its features of simplicity, low cost, clock synchronous, and non-interrupting high-speed data transfer rate. SPI is the core controller of the design. An …

Configurable Random Instruction Generator For Risc Processors, Krunal Mange

Theses

Processors have evolved and grown more complex to serve enormous computational needs. Even though modern-day processors share same dna with processors half century ago, verifying them today is the huge wall to scale. Verification dominates production cycle even with advances both in software (programming as well as CAD tools) and manufacturing (fabrication) as there are too many test scenarios to cover. Testing complex devices like processors with manual-testing alone in certainty missing the dead lines. Automatic verification is a great way to overcome hurdles of manual testing viz. speed, manpower, and ultimately cost. The work described in this paper targets …

Scalable Digital Architecture Of Hierarchical Temporal Memory Spatial Pooler, Sadhvi Praveen

Theses

Hierarchical Temporal memory is an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. Inspired by the structural and functional properties of the human brain, it is capable of processing spatio-temporal signals which are used for data storage and predictions. The algorithm is composed of two main components; the Spatial Pooler and the Temporal Memory. The spatial pooler produces a sparse distribution representation for the given pattern. These generalized representations are used by the temporal memory to make predictions. Therefore, it is important to ensure that more generalized sparse distribution representations are obtained for the spatio-temporal data

patterns.

This work presents the digital design of …

Automatic Protein Shake Freestyle Vending Machine, Balaji Salunkhe

Theses

This paper discusses the design and implementation of an automatic protein shake freestyle vending machine. This machine is capable of providing protein shakes as per the customer’s requirement. Customers are able to decide what kind of protein supplement they want according to their fitness needs, and they can give the appropriate instructions to the machine to prepare their protein drink by use of a touch system. Other customers, who are unable to decide or new to fitness supplements can choose a pre-designed drinks according to their personal fitness. As such, the machine gives the freedom of selection to the customer …

Optimization Of Residential Battery Energy Storage System Scheduling For Cost And Emissions Reductions, Zachary Olivieri

Theses

The introduction of dynamic electricity pricing structures such as Time of Use (TOU) rates and Day Ahead Pricing (DAP) in residential markets has created the possibility for customers to reduce their electric bills by using energy storage systems for load shifting and/or peak load shaving. While there are numerous system designs and model formulations for minimizing electric bills under these rate structures the use of these systems has the potential to cause an increase in emissions from the electricity system. The Increase in emissions is linked to the difference in fuel mix of marginal generators throughout the day as well …

Barriers To Implementation Of Lean Techniques In Printing Firms And The Impact Of Implementation, Sandeep Yellinedi

Theses

Lean practices including 5S Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma DMAIC and Value Stream Mapping are gaining more and more importance in a wide range of industries. Firms in various industries have implemented one or more of the techniques that comprise Lean techniques and have realized reduced wastes that in turn has contributed to increased profits. The researcher, being associated with the field of printing, has observed the Lean techniques practicing trends in the printing industry. This report builds upon the previously published research that has examined the implementation of Lean Methodologies, including studies that have investigated the impact of the adoption …

The Design Of A Custom 32-Bit Simd Enhanced Digital Signal Processor, Shashank Simha

Theses

For a number of years, the hardware industry has seen a drastic rise in embedded applications. Thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution, a majority of these embedded applications are shifting towards the usage of simple hardware capable of running on batteries, while being able to handle complex data and implement complex algorithms. Translating these requirements to digital design terms, the hardware is expected to have high power efficiency, be tiny and simple enough, while being capable of meeting realtime constraints and process mathematical algorithms. Looking at some of the modern DSPs, most of them have been targeting high …

Image Down-Scaler Using The Box Filter Algorithm, Vaishnavi Parthipan

Theses

One of the indispensable aspects of digital image processing is the requirement of varied image resolutions. To achieve varied resolution, scaling comes into picture. Two important applications of scaling is good pictorial quality for human interpretation and processing of digital images for storage, transmission and for representation of autonomous machine perception. This paper focuses on the transmission application. The size of the image if reduced occupies less space in the communication medium thus reducing the bandwidth requirement. And also the server space and the processing power of the image is reduced greatly. The standard for digital television transmission over terrestrial, …

An Uncommon Use For An Uncommon Press: Approaching Object-Based Stem Education In Cultural Institutions By Way Of A Reconstructed English Common Press, Daniel B. Krull

Theses

The Uncommon Press Project was a cross-departmental, multi-disciplinary capstone project by students from the Kate Gleason College of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology which aimed to create a historically accurate reconstruction of a circa 1790 English common press for the Cary Graphic Arts Collection. As a member of the team undertaking this project, I was involved in the research, materials acquisition, construction, and social media engagement efforts. In addition to my role as part of this team, I desired, as an individual scholar, to learn how a reconstructed press can serve as an …

Studies On Stable Crack Growth, Mohammed Juma Humaid Al-Ghafri

Theses

The goal of this work is to experimentally investigate the stable crack growth (SCG) fracture behavior of AISI 4340 alloy steel. A series of mode I and mixed mode SCG fracture tests were carried out on 8 mm thick compact tension (CT) specimens subjected to quasistatic loading. The wire cutting technique was used to introduce a pre-notch/ pre-crack of 0.05 mm root radius to the specimen. Five different loading angles Ψ between the loading axis and the crack surface were employed; 90° (mode I), 75°, 65°, 60° and 50°. Five different ratios of original crack length to specimen width a …

Investigation Of Blend Time For Turbulent Newtonian Fluids In Stirred Tanks, Aaron Strand

Theses

A blend time investigation for stirred tanks was conducted to study the effect of impeller type (A310 Hydrofoil, Pitched-Blade Turbine, Rushton Turbine), impeller diameter (D/T = 1/5, 1/3, and 1/2), and impeller off-bottom distance (C/T = 1/5, 1/3, and 1/2) while considering tank diameter (T = 0.80 and 1.22 m) and mean specific energy dissipation (ε = 0.005 and 0.010 W/kg) for turbulent Newtonian fluids with square batch aspect ratios. The response of conductivity probes to the injection of a sodium chloride tracer was monitored to experimentally measure blend time for 108 unique setups. The results of the blend time …

How Should You Plan Your App’S Features? Selecting And Prioritizing A Mobile App’S Initial Features Based On User Reviews, Rebaz Saber Saleh

Theses

The app market is extremely competitive, with users typically having several alternative app possibilities. To attract and retain users, it is imperative for developers to consider the ratings and reviews their apps receive. App reviews frequently contain feature requests, sometimes hidden among complaints. Developers use these complaints and requests to improve their apps, thus increasing their rating which is incredibly important for attracting new users. Unfortunately, developers of new apps are at a severe disadvantage: They do not have the benefit of existing reviews, with only the reviews of similar apps to potentially rely upon. To address this problem, we …

Orbital Angular Momentum Multiplexing Over Visible Light Communication Systems, Hardik Rameshchandra Tripathi

Theses

This thesis proposes and explores the possibility of using Orbital Angular Momentum multiplexing in Visible Light Communication system. Orbital Angular Momentum is mainly applied for laser and optical fiber transmissions, while Visible Light Communication is a technology using the light as a carrier for wireless communication. In this research, the study of the state of art and experiments showing some results on multiplexing based on Orbital Angular Momentum over Visible Light Communication system were done. After completion of the initial stage; research work and simulations were performed on spatial multiplexing over Li-Fi channel modeling. Simulation scenarios which allowed to evaluate …

Accelerating Homomorphic Encryption In The Cloud Environment Through High-Level Synthesis And Reconfigurable Resources, Michael J. Foster

Theses

The recent surge in cloud services is revolutionizing the way that data is stored and processed. Everyone with an internet connection, from large corporations to small companies and private individuals, now have access to cutting-edge processing power and vast amounts of data storage. This rise in cloud computing and storage, however, has brought with it a need for a new type of security. In order to have access to cloud services, users must allow the service provider to have full access to their private, unencrypted data. Users are required to trust the integrity of the service provider and the security …

The Perceived Impact Of The Empowerment (Tamkeen) Training Programme On Improving Cycle Two Teachers' Competencies In Al-Ain City United Arab Emirates, Salma Musabbeh Al Dhaheri

Theses

At a time of significant educational reform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), teacher professional development (PD) plays an instrumental role in equipping teachers with the knowledge, teaching practice, skills and competencies to improve students’ learning outcomes. This study explores the impact of Tamkeen: Empowering Educators Programme, which was a large-scale teacher PD training initiative by the Abu Dhabi Education and Knowledge (ADEK) PD Division. Carried out from 2012 to 2016, the programme was designed to improve participating teachers’ competencies. This qualitative study was based on the perspectives of teachers who had participated in the programme, from eleven female schools …

Exact Localized Solutions Of The Nonlinear Dirac Equation, Yaser Hasan Sabbah

Theses

The nonlinear Dirac equation is a relativistic classical field theory that describes the behavior of a system of self-interacting spinor fields. According to this theory, the interactions among spinor fields are represented by additional Kerr-nonlinearity added to the Dirac equation, which justifies and models the noticed solitonic behavior of the systems. There are various models of the nonlinear Dirac equation which differ from each other in the factors taken into account in the modelling, especially the mode of the coupling among the spinor fields as well as the nature of the system represented by the model. In this present thesis, …

Evaluation Of Functionalized Magnetite Nanoparticles For The Removal Of Heavy Metal Ions From Aqueous Media, Khaula A. Ai Jahoushi

Theses

Sorption is one of the most efficient techniques for the removal of heavy metal ions from waste water. It involves the use of solid materials, known as sorbents, which can be natural of synthetic in origin. Recently, synthetic nanomaterials of various compositions have been used as sorbents. Among these materials, calcium phosphate; also known as hydroxyapatite (HAp), and magnetite were previously investigated as potential sorbents. In the current study, commercial HAp, and magnetite nanoparticles as well as their physical and chemical mixtures were investigated as potential sorbents for the removal of Cd²⁺ ions from simulated wastewater. A comparison is made …

Business-It Alignment In Higher Education Institutions: United Arab Emirates University Case Study, Nayla Salem Al Khateri

Theses

This thesis addresses the importance of Business-IT alignment in higher education institutions. Business-IT alignment is defined as applying IT in a suitable and timely manner, in harmony with business strategies, goals and needs. Business- IT alignment is an ultimate goal of governmental and non-governmental organizations that requires close attention and continuous monitoring. UAE university has a well-defined business strategy augmented with a well-defined IT strategy. So, to get the most benefits of acquiring and using IT in the university, the IT need to be aligned with the core business and the supporting services. The main objective of this thesis is …

Comparative Degradation Of Emerging Pollutants Using Chemical And Enzymatic Approaches, Khadega Abobaker Al-Maqdi

Theses

Organic pollutants, especially those found in water bodies; pose a direct threat to various aquatic organisms as well as humans. A variety of different remediation approaches, including chemical and biological methods have been developed for the degradation of these organic pollutants. However, comparative mechanistic studies of pollutant degradation by these different systems are almost non-existent. In this study, the degradation of two emerging pollutants an antibiotic pollutant, Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and a model thiazole pollutant, Thioflavin T (ThT), was carried out using advanced oxidation process (AOP), using UV+H2O2 or a peroxidase enzyme system. Optimization conditions for Sulfamethoxazole degradation by peroxidase enzyme …

A Field Study On Treating Wastewater Using Bioretention And Permeable Pavement Systems, Rubab Ammad

Theses

The wastewater treatment study was conducted as a part of the efforts initiated by the UAE government for combating water shortage in the country by adopting the strategy of water conservation and reuse. This study investigated the performance of two water sensitive urban design systems, the Permeable Pavement and the Bioretention System, in improving the wastewater quality from fish tanks. Conventionally, these systems are used for storm water treatment but as UAE is situated in an arid climatic zone and experiences minimal rainfall, the two systems in undertaken study have been used in treatment of wastewater to gage their performance …

Determining The Optimal Stockpile Level For Combination Vaccines, Sheetal Aher

Theses

By 2015, vaccine shortages still remained one of the major problems around the globe, as described in the annual secretariat report of the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP). Despite multiple initiatives to reduce vaccine shortages, supply interruptions are unexpected and unavoidable. To mitigate the risk of such interruptions, vaccine stockpiles have traditionally been the tool of choice. However, the models used to determine vaccine stockpile levels have only considered the use of monovalent vaccines, which provide protection against a single disease. This study aims to determine optimal stockpile levels for combination vaccines, which provide protection against multiple diseases. First, through …