Digital Commons Network^™

Structure-Constrained Basis Pursuit For Compressively Sensing Speech, Miguel Dominguez

Theses

Compressed Sensing (CS) exploits the sparsity of many signals to enable sampling below the Nyquist rate. If the original signal is sufficiently sparse, the Basis Pursuit (BP) algorithm will perfectly reconstruct the original signal. Unfortunately many signals that intuitively appear sparse do not meet the threshold for "sufficient sparsity". These signals require so many CS samples for accurate reconstruction that the advantages of CS disappear. This is because Basis Pursuit/Basis Pursuit Denoising only models sparsity. We developed a "Structure-Constrained Basis Pursuit" that models the structure of somewhat sparse signals as upper and lower bound constraints on the Basis Pursuit Denoising …

A New Model-Free Sliding Mode Control Method With Estimation Of Control Input Error, Raul Mittmann Reis

Theses

A new type of sliding mode controller scheme, which requires no knowledge of system model, is derived in this work. The controller is solely based on previous control inputs and state measurements to generate the updated control input effort. The only knowledge required to derive the controller is the system order and the bounds of the control input gain, if one exists. The switching gain, which is required to drive the system states onto the sliding surface in the presence of disturbances and uncertainties, is derived using Lyapunov’s stability theorem, ensuring closed-loop asymptotic stability. The chattering effect, which is excited …

Features And Algorithms For Visual Parsing Of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions, Lei Hu

Theses

Math expressions are an essential part of scientific documents. Handwritten math expressions recognition can benefit human-computer interaction especially in the education domain and is a critical part of document recognition and analysis.

Parsing the spatial arrangement of symbols is an essential part of math expression recognition. A variety of parsing techniques have been developed during the past three decades, and fall into two groups. The first group is graph-based parsing. It selects a path or sub-graph which obeys some rule to form a possible interpretation for the given expression. The second group is grammar driven parsing. Grammars and related parameters …

Validating Color Doppler Ultrasound Performance Via A Quantitative Comparison With Particle Image Velocimetry, Allan Alexander Andranikian

Theses

Color Doppler Ultrasound (CDUS) is a method of non-invasive fluid velocity measurement that is used for regular cardiac screenings as well as during complex surgeries such as valve replacements. A Color Doppler image is a contour map of the velocity field and can thereby indicate the presence of abnormal flows or be used to quantitatively measure velocities. CDUS is inexpensive and completely non-invasive. It is for these same reasons that CDUS has the potential to be a powerful tool not only in the medical field, but in the industrial and engineering research fields as well. While there are many devices …

Random Subspace Learning On Outlier Detection And Classification With Minimum Covariance Determinant Estimator, Bohan Liu

Theses

The questions brought by high dimensional data is interesting and challenging. Our study is targeting on the particular type of data in this situation that namely “large p, small n”. Since the dimensionality is massively larger than the number of observations in the data, any measurement of covariance and its inverse will be miserably affected. The definition of high dimension in statistics has been changed throughout decades. Modern datasets with over thousands of dimensions are demanding the ability to gain deeper understanding but hindered by the curse of dimensionality. We decide to review and explore further to negotiate with the …

Structuring Statistical Tests For Validating Encryption: An Array-Based Approach, Kevin Hoyt

Theses

The technological advancements made in recent years regarding the transfer of personal data have brought along an imperative need for increased security and encryption capabilities. Information sent across these electronic platforms is most often intended to be delivered to and received by specific individuals. However, the notion that these selected individuals are the only people that are able to come into contact with the information is flawed. A more realistic assumption, and the assumption that is currently demonstrated, is that the information sent can and will be intercepted. This means that successful encryption of the data is an invaluable part …

Prevalence And Distribution Of Gastrointestinal Nematode Parasites And Dung Beetles Associated With Upland And Lowland Grazing Of Irish Native Dexter Cattle, Noel Dineen

Theses

Diseases such as parasitic gastroenteritis are very common in cattle and can have detrimental economic consequences on agricultural productivity. This study was conducted to establish the prevalence and distribution of gastrointestinal nematode parasites associated with Dexter cattle under an organic lowland grazing regime and an extensive upland system. A secondary aim to the study was to investigate dung beetle assemblages in upland and lowland sites and their interactions with gastrointestinal nematode parasites as they offer an alternative method of natural control to organic farming systems in particular.

Cattle weights were recorded and faecal samples were collected at the beginning and …

An Exploration Of The Effectiveness Of The Use Of Communication Apps Through Mobile Devices On Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders (Asd), Miriam O Sullivan

Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurological disorder which impacts on people in three primary areas: communication skills, social skills and behaviour skills. The diagnosis of ASD continues to rise with an estimated 1 in 100 receiving diagnoses of ASD in Ireland. There are many interventions promoted on a regular basis that claim positive effects on the basis of empirical research. However, the claims made by such studies are sometimes a little at odds with the level of methodological rigour and/or sample size employed. The research available is based on small scale international studies (America, Canada and Australia); however, …

Development Of An Efficient Ad Hoc Broadcasting Scheme For Critical Networking Environments, Ahmed Ghulam Mustafa Saber Karam

Theses

Mobile ad hoc network has been widely deployed in support of the communications in hostile environment without conventional networking infrastructure, especially in the environments with critical conditions such as emergency rescue activities in burning building or earth quick evacuation. However, most of the existing ad hoc based broadcasting schemes either rely on GPS location or topology information or angle-of-arrival (AoA) calculation or combination of some or all to achieve high reachability. Therefore, these broadcasting schemes cannot be directly used in critical environments such as battlefield, sensor networks and natural disasters due to lack of node location and topology information in …

Measurement Of Flow Velocities In A To-Scale Simplex Atomizer Using Particle Image Velocimetry, Andrew G. Thistle

Theses

To better understand atomization in a commercial aviation gas turbine combustion environment, we present experimental measurements of the internal fuel flow of a simplex atomizer. Particle Image Velocimetry was used to measure velocity in a plane axial to the flow internal to a standard aerospace fuel atomizer. The geometry studied used a 0.74mm orifice and is typical of a commercial aircraft engine. MIL PRF-7024 was employed as the working fluid and two mass flow rates were studied. Particle Image Velocimetry data on a small simplex atomizer was collected and methods are detailed including the machining of the optically clear spin …

Image Description Using Deep Neural Networks, Ram Manohar Oruganti

Theses

Current research in computer vision and machine learning has demonstrated some great abilities at detecting and recognizing objects in natural images. Current state-of-the-art results in object detection, classification and localization in ImageNet Challenges have the validation accuracy for top 5 predictions for classification to be at 3.08% while similar classification experiments run by trained humans report an accuracy of 5.1%. While some people might argue that human accuracy is a function of training time it can be said with great confidence that automated classification models are at least as good as trained humans in classification problems. The ability of these …

A Scalable Flash-Based Hardware Architecture For The Hierarchical Temporal Memory Spatial Pooler, Lennard G. Streat

Theses

Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is a biomimetic machine learning algorithm focused upon modeling the structural and algorithmic properties of the neocortex. It is comprised of two components, realizing pattern recognition of spatial and temporal data, respectively. HTM research has gained momentum in recent years, leading to both hardware and software exploration of its algorithmic formulation. Previous work on HTM has centered on addressing performance concerns; however, the memory-bound operation of HTM presents significant challenges to scalability.

In this work, a scalable flash-based storage processor unit, Flash-HTM (FHTM), is presented along with a detailed analysis of its potential scalability. FHTM leverages …

Low-Resource And Fast Elliptic Curve Implementations Over Binary Edwards Curves, Brian Koziel

Theses

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is an ideal choice for low-resource applications because it provides the same level of security with smaller key sizes than other existing public key encryption schemes. For low-resource applications, designing efficient functional units for elliptic curve computations over binary fields results in an effective platform for an embedded co-processor. This thesis investigates co-processor designs for area-constrained devices. Particularly, we discuss an implementation utilizing state of the art binary Edwards curve equations over mixed point addition and doubling. The binary Edwards curve offers the security advantage that it is complete and is, therefore, immune to the exceptional …

Preparation Of Novel Steroidal Conjugates As Potential Diagnostic And Therapeutic Agents With An Emphasis On Quinoid And Halogenated Moieties, Nuha Obaid Juma Alsoom

Theses

Steroids bonded to pharmaceutically active molecules are interesting candidates as therapeutic agents. In this work, a number of potentially bioactive residues, which include the quinoid moiety, have been synthesized as a simple steroid quinone hybrid, where the steroid component will be estradiol derived or the steroid cholesterol derived. For this purpose, two novel reactions have been explored namely, the modification of the APPEL reaction to connect residues by using PPh3/BrCCl3 for amidation and esterification of carboxylic acids. Another one is the hydrogenation reaction of alkenes by using NaBH4, AcOH, Pd/C and toluene or benzene in the presence of benzyl groups …

Sampling And Counting Crossing-Free Matchings, Wenbo Sun

Theses

Sampling of combinatorial structures is an important statistical tool used in applications in a number of areas ranging from statistical physics, data mining, to biological sciences. Of comparable importance is the computation of the cor- responding partition function, which, in the case of the uniform distribution, is equivalent to the problem of counting all such structures. For self-reducible combinatorial structures, once we can produce an almost uniform sample from them, then we can approximately count them.

Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method, this thesis presents polynomial-time algorithms to approximately count and almost uniformly sample crossing-free matchings for certain input …

Learning Chinese Writing: An App Design Concept For Multi-Touch Devices, Xi Zong

Theses

An app design concept to learn Chinese writing for multi-touch mobile & tablet devices

Mandarin can be divided into spoken Chinese and written Chinese. Many people who are taking Mandarin courses were first attracted to the Chinese language because of the writing system, which is considered one of the most complex in the world.

Chinese writing is considered difficult because of the enormous number of characters one has to learn. Mandarin is difficult in comparison to Spanish, Greek, Russian, Hindi, or any other language that requires at most a few dozen symbols to write in the language.

This Chinese writing …

Phenotypic Studies Of Pho13Δ In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Courtney Kellogg

Theses

PHO13 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) is a para-nitrophenyl phosphatase (pNppase) of the haloacid dehalogenase (HAD) superfamily. A biological substrate for PHO13 had remained undiscovered while a knockout phenotype has only been observed in strains engineered to grow on D-xylose. The purified enzyme has been identified in our lab to specifically hydrolyze 2-phosphoglycolate, classifying it as a phosphoglycolate phosphatase (PGPase). In photosynthetic organisms, 2-phosphoglycolate (2-PG) is generated by the oxygenation reaction of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (RuBisCO) in the Calvin Cycle. To be recycled back into general metabolism, photosynthetic PGPase converts 2-PG to glycolate. In non-photosynthetic yeast, 2-PG must be generated by …

Equipoise: An Animated Short Film About Positiveness And Negativity., Gung-Kai Koo

Theses

Equipoise is an animated short about positiveness, negativity and the opposite but complementary relationship between them. The two opposite attitudes of an individual’s personality not only affect but also establish emotions, decisions and behaviors. Positiveness reinforces positive thinking while pessimistic assumptions and hardship are driven by negativity. A person who has an imbalanced mind may live in pain or lead to high risks.

To have a great mental condition, both positiveness and negativity have to be involved to establish the balance. However, the importance of negativity, in one case, pessimism was frequently ignored as a result of education that focuses …

Microalgae Cell Quantification Using Electrical Parameters, Leena Osama Fahmi Saqer

Theses

Electrical properties of living cells have been proven to play a significant role in understanding and characterizing the different biological activities of the cell. The objective of this work is to develop an electrical based technique for determining and estimating the number of microalgae cells in a suspension without the need for any sample treatments or pre-processing.

The proposed technique is based on the direct use of electrical capacitive model. The basic premise behind this idea is the electrical polarization of microalgae particles that get charged due to the application of an electric field. This wouldn’t cause any distortion or …

Primary Math Teachers’ Perceptions Toward Mathematics Weekly Computerized Test, Sirin Darmoch Nasrini

Theses

This thesis is concerned with the computer base tests verses the traditional paper pencil in particular the perception of teachers toward the computer based test.

The main objective of this thesis is to examine the primary mathematics teachers’ perception toward the weekly computerized tests. And how does their gender of years of experience affect their perception toward this unique type of assessment. A mixed method of quantitative and qualitative is used to find out the results. A questionnaire and an interview are the instruments used in the research. The study found out that primary teachers are positive toward the weekly …

Enhancing Snort Ids Performance Using Data Mining, Mohammed Ali Almaleki

Theses

Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) such as Snort apply deep packet inspection to detect intrusions. Usually, these are rule-based systems, where each incoming packet is matched with a set of rules. Each rule consists of two parts: the rule header and the rule options. The rule header is compared with the packet header. The rule options usually contain a signature string that is matched with packet content using an efficient string matching algorithm. The traditional approach to IDS packet inspection checks a packet against the detection rules by scanning from the first rule in the set and continuing to scan all …

The Uae English Teachers’ Perspectives On The Multi-Dimensional Role Of Cooperative Learning, Khayal Al Allaq

Theses

This study explores teachers’ perspectives on the role of the structured application of cooperative learning in enhancing ESL students’ learning engagement, social awareness, and cultural responsiveness. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate English teachers’ perceptions on the way cooperative learning can foster learning engagement, social awareness, cultural understanding and the application of differentiation in the ESL classroom. To answer the research questions, the researcher employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain deeper insight into the topic. The initial stage of the study involved the collection of the quantitative data from the Cooperative Learning Questionnaire …

A Case Study Of An Intervention Program For Students With Dyslexia In A Primary School In The Uae, Elazab Mohamed Elazab Elshazly

Theses

The study aims to investigate the impact of an iPad programme on the performance of students with dyslexia on reading, writing and spelling skills in two classes of a public primary school in Al -Ain, UAE. The study follows a mixed method approach (questionnaire; face-to-face interviews; pre-posttests). Twenty (20) 3rd graders male students with dyslexia, attending English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes were the participants of the study. Students’ performance on spelling, reading and writing skills were tested after instructed through an iPad intervention programme with multisensory applications. The experimental group’s performance (10 students with dyslexia) was compared to …

The Effect Of Using Flipped Classroom Instruction On Students’ Achievement In The New 2016 Scholastic Assessment Test Mathematics Skills In The United Arab Emirates, Khaled Mohammed Abdel Baki Mohammed Diab

Theses

The flipped classroom instruction considered as the focus of many researchers and teachers in the recent years, many teachers around the word tried the flipped classroom instructions in different ways, different tools, to teach different subjects with different grades. Taking in the consideration, applying the flipped classroom teaching methods needs a lot of preparation and technological tools. This study utilized a quasiexperimental method research design to investigate the effect of flipped classroom instruction on students’ achievements in the new SAT 2016 mathematics skills (Heart of Algebra, Problem solving and data analysis, and Passport to Advanced Math) for the eleventh grade …

The Extent Of Practicing Different Components Of Professional Learning Communities At The Bani Kinanah Secondary Schools In Jordan, Rami Hussein Mohammad Abdallah

Theses

This study aimed to investigate the extent to which different components of the Professional Learning Community (PLC) were being practiced at the Bani Kinanah secondary schools in Jordan. The study employed a mixed approach to collect data, including a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. For the quantitative approach, 1110 participants responded to the questionnaire. For the qualitative approach, four schools participated: two female schools and two male schools. In every school, three educators have been interviewed. Findings revealed that the extent to which the different components of PLCs were practiced at the Bani Kinanah secondary schools was high, according to quantitative …

Applications Of Renewal Theory To Pattern Analysis, Hallie L. Kleiner

Theses

In this thesis, renewal theory is used to analyze patterns of outcomes for discrete random variables. We start by introducing the concept of a renewal process and by giving some examples. It is then shown that we may obtain the distribution of the number of renewals by time t and compute its expectation, the renewal function. We then proceed to state and illustrate the basic limit theorems for renewal processes and make use of Wald’s equation to give a proof of the Elementary Renewal Theorem. The concept of a delayed renewal process is introduced for the purpose of studying the …

A Mathematical Formalization Of Hierarchical Temporal Memory's Spatial Pooler For Use In Machine Learning, James W. Mnatzaganian

Theses

Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is an emerging machine learning algorithm, with the potential to provide a means to perform predictions on spatiotemporal data. The algorithm, inspired by the neocortex, consists of two primary components, namely the spatial pooler (SP) and the temporal memory (TM). The SP is utilized to map similar inputs into generalized sparse distributed representations (SDRs). Those SDRs are then utilized by the TM, which performs sequence learning and prediction. One challenge with HTM is ensuring that proper SDRs are generated from the SP. If the SDRs are not generalizable, the TM will not be able to make …

Optimal Phase Masks For High Contrast Imaging Applications, Garreth J. Ruane

Theses

Phase-only optical elements can provide a number of important functions for high-contrast imaging. This thesis presents analytical and numerical optical design methods for accomplishing specific tasks, the most significant of which is the precise suppression of light from a distant point source. Instruments designed for this purpose are known as coronagraphs. Here, advanced coronagraph designs are presented that offer improved theoretical performance in comparison to the current state-of-the-art. Applications of these systems include the direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets and circumstellar disks with high sensitivity. Several new coronagraph designs are introduced and, in some cases, experimental support is provided. …

Balancing Medical Resident Education And Workload While Ensuring Quality Patient Care, Akshit Agarwal

Theses

Medical residency is a requirement for medical professionals to practice medicine. Residency programs in internal medicine lasts 3 years and require residents to undergo a series of supervised rotations in elective, inpatient, and ambulatory units. Typically a team of chief residents develops a yearly rotational schedule that assigns residents to various departments for each week of the year, and for each day of the week. Scheduling resident rotations is complex as it needs to consider various academic, managerial, and legal restrictions while ensuring that the resulting schedules facilitate patient care and are balanced in terms of resident educational experience, workload, …

Development Of An Integrated Reformer And Fuel Cell System For Portable Power Applications, Michael G. Waller

Theses

In order for fuel cells to play a large part in a global sustainable energy infrastructure, fuel

cell-based systems need to be built to meet the demands of a wide range of applications in all aspects of society. To date, the majority of fuel cell research has been focused on developing systems to power applications such as passenger vehicles, commercial buildings, and small handheld devices. These applications typically require power outputs that are either greater than 100 kW or less than 20 W, and a gap remains in developing viable fuel cell systems for applications requiring electric power between 100 …