Digital Commons Network^™

Uav-Cloud: A Platform For Uav Resources And Services On The Cloud, Sara Yousif Mohamed Mahmoud

Theses

UAVs - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – have gained significant attention recently, due to the increasingly growing range of applications. However, developing collaborative UAV applications using traditional technologies in a tightly coupled design requires a great deal of development effort, time, and budget especially for heterogeneous UAVs. Moreover, monitoring and accessing UAV resources using traditional communication media suffer from several restrictions and limitations. This research aims to simplify the efforts, reduce the time, and lower the costs of developing collaborative applications for distributed heterogeneous UAVs. In addition, the research aims to provide ubiquitous UAV resources access. A platform is proposed for …

The Pricing Of Asian Options In High Volatile Markets: A Pde Approach, Nabil Kamal Riziq Al Farra

Theses

Financial derivatives are very important tools in risk management since they decrease uncertainty. Moreover, if used effectively, they can grow the income and save the cost. There are many types of financial derivatives, for instance: futures/forwards, options, and swaps. The present thesis deals with the pricing problem for Asian options. The main aim of the thesis is to generalize the Asian option pricing Partial Differential Equation (PDE) in order to handle post-crash markets where the volatility is high. In other words, we seek to extend the work on the Asian option pricing PDE under the well-known Black-Scholes model to a …

Applications Of Pure And Recycled Polymeric Micro-Nanofiber For The Removal Of Oil Spills., Afra Gharib Khamis Al Blooshi

Theses

Cleaning oil spills is a universal concern due to its environmental impact. The aim of this study is to study the effectiveness and applications of pure and recycled polymers in clean-up and the recovery of crude oil from oil spills. In this study, micro-nanofibres of analytical-grade and commercial polystyrene samples were prepared by electrospinning technique. Fiber size distribution was shown to vary with the electrospinning parameters and type of polymer. Fibrous sorbents prepared hereafter were investigated for their efficiency in removing oil spill. Results showed variation in the sorption capacities of the fibers to various types of crude oils with …

Testing Of Dubai Financial Market For Weak Form Of Efficiency, Jihad Yuzbashev

Theses

The following research paper is the first research to concentrate its focus primarily on the testing of the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) for weak form of efficiency. In order to obtain best results, the Random Walk model is be used to determine whether closing prices in the DFM are reflecting historical prices. The Autocorrelation Test, Runs Test and Variance Ratio Test will be used to determine whether the Random Walk theory is applicable to the DFM General Index. A number of research studies that have focused on detecting weak forms of efficiency have used the Random Walk model and the …

Determining The Daily Caloric Needs Of Collegiate Female Athletes, Alicia D. Watson

Theses

Dietary requirements in athletes are critical to overall health and performance, yet no formula to predict dietary needs is available for female athletes. This study's purpose was to develop a validated prediction equation to predict the resting metabolic needs of female athletes. 63 NCAA Division II female athletes (19.7 ± 1.1 years, 169.3 ± 8.6 cm, 67.5 ± 9.1 kg) were recruited as participants in this study. Upon providing their informed consent, study participants arrived for testing in the morning between the hours of 0600 - 1000 after observing a ~10 hour fast and within 30 - 60 minutes of …

Broken Art, Jihwan Park

Theses

My “Broken Art” series created between 2013 and 2014 is the subject of my Thesis.

My study is focused on three characteristics: Semiotics (signs, symbols, and indices explore artwork in a series that is broken). Great changes in art history between two art movements, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art are synthesized in one artwork.

Finally, commercialism is dealt with through symbols which I construct.

The following scholars and artists are discussed in relation to my series: Charles Sanders Pierce (1839~1914, American), Rene Magritte (1898~1967, Belgian), Rosy Keyser (1974~, Baltimore, MD), Roy Lichtenstein (1923~1997, American), and Barry Le Va (1941, Long …

Quantifying The Urban Forest Environment Using Dense Discrete Return Lidar And Aerial Color Imagery For Segmentation And Object-Level Biomass Assessment, Madhurima Bandyopadhyay

Theses

The urban forest is becoming increasingly important in the contexts of urban green space and recreation, carbon sequestration and emission offsets, and socio-economic impacts. In addition to aesthetic value, these green spaces remove airborne pollutants, preserve natural resources, and mitigate adverse climate changes, among other benefits. A great deal of attention recently has been paid to urban forest management. However, the comprehensive monitoring of urban vegetation for carbon sequestration and storage is an under-explored research area. Such an assessment of carbon stores often requires information at the individual tree level, necessitating the proper masking of vegetation from the built environment, …

Leaf-Cutter Ant (Atta Cephalotes) Behavioral Ecology Of Folivory In A Mixed-Use Guyanan Lowland Rainforest, Elizabeth Brianne Karslake

Theses

I studied the foraging ecology of a Neotropical leaf-cutter ant, Atta cephalotes, at CEIBA Biological Center, Guyana to elucidate diet choice and foraging strategy. These ants are serous agricultural pests because workers harvest leaves, flowers, fruits, and other plant organs of both cultivated and native plants. The plant materials are used to feed symbiotic fungi whose mycelia tips are the sole food of A. cephalotes larvae. Leaf-cutters were usually found in human disturbed habitats especially slash-and-burned forests cleared for farms, with their higher percentage of sun-exposure and lower plant stem diameters than second growth and primary forests. When given a …

The Scientific And Theological Superiority Of Divine Timelessness, David Christian Justice

Theses

For much of the history of the philosophy of religion it was generally accepted that God existed outside of time. Recently, however, many theologians have challenged the classical position that God exists outside of time and have instead argued for a temporal God. I argue that the concept of a temporal God is theologically and philosophically problematic, and in opposition to our best science. I first argue that a timeless existence is superior to that of a temporal existence, and that God as the most perfect being must therefore exist timelessly. I then argue a common objection raised against the …

Anonymity Analysis Of Cryptocurrencies, Liam Morris

Theses

Cash in the real world allows for parties to exchange currency without the need to go through some sort of central authority. One person, Alice, can simply hand cash over to another person, Bob. In this transaction the only two people that have knowledge of this exchange are Alice and Bob. Until recently there was no electronic equivalent to this exchange. In 1982 David Chaum proposed a system of anonymous electronic cash based on blind signatures, and in 1990 founded DigiCash as an electronic cash company. There were a few banks that implemented electronic cash systems, but these banks and …

Micro-Computed Tomography-Based Finite Element Analysis Of The Mechanical Integrity Of In Vivo Biodegradable Magnesium-Alloy Screw And Surrounding Bone, Adrienne F.O. Williams

Theses

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear, the most common knee injury, affects 100,000 to 200,000 persons in the US annually. Surgical repair is employed to restore the knee to its full range of motion. In the surgery, an interference screw is used to a secure a soft tissue graft that is used to replace the torn ACL. In 2012, orthopedic devices for knees accounted for the largest share of the $29.2 billion overall revenue for orthopedic devices. Biodegradable implants are expected to lead growth in the orthopedic sector by increasing the quality of life and decreasing recovery time after orthopedic …

Investigation Of Biomechanical Risk Factors Of Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome Through Finite Element Analysis, Robert Allen Wesley

Theses

Medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS) is an overuse injury in the lower extremity associated with endurance running. MTSS is a palpitation of pain of at least 5 centimeters along the medial tibia with possible microfractures in the tibia. The various risk factors which may lead to the development of MTSS are body mass index, over pronation, heel striking, level of shod in the running shoe, type and angle of running surface, high volume training, age, gender, stride length, range of motion, and calf girth. Few investigations have been made to limit these risk factors through the utilization of finite element …

Business Intelligence And Geographic Information System Lifecycle Architecture Using Cloud Computing For Smart Community, Rawan Sendi

Theses

Business Intelligence (BI) is a technique and IT tool that supports business decision making. BI is considered a unique source of competitive advantage in the market place and it can combine data, multimedia, and transactions all in one application to address people's needs. Using BI applications can increase both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. In addition, BI improves planning that provides the foundation for top successful performances in the future. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) deliver productivity tools that are highly beneficial for businesses. These benefits include: visualization, business capacity, analysis, and interpreting data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends. Another …

Predicting Hereditary Breast Cancer By Combining Family History And Medical Information, Sherin John

Theses

Breast cancer is a malignant tumor, commonly found in women but rarely in men. One in eight US women will have the chance of developing breast cancer in their lifetime. A family history analysis and genetic test can identify the potential carrier gene that cause hereditary breast cancer. Mutated genes such as BRCA1, BRCA2, Tp53 and PTEN confer high lifetime risk of breast cancers and are the most significant genes for clinical studies. The study goals of this thesis were to: 1) develop an open source software tool to predict the risk of hereditary breast cancer and mutation risk of …

Measurement Of Multidirectional Thermal Conductivity Of Im7-G/8552 Unidirectional Composite Laminate, Furkan Ismail Ulu

Theses

Thermal characterization of composite materials plays an important role in engineering design of thermal structures and aerospace systems and automotive, etc. There are limited data on these materials in the literature. In particular, multidirectional thermal characterization needs to be established for polymer matrix composites to determine their working temperatures and thermal conductivities. In unidirectional fiber reinforced composites, thermal conductivities are different in axial and transverse directions of the composite material. The purpose of this research was to determine multidirectional thermal conductivities of IM7-G/8552 unidirectional carbon/epoxy composite laminate and validate the data with micromechanics models and data in the literature for …

Machine Learning And A Workflow Engine For An Agent-Based Structural Health Monitoring System, Jr. William Nick

Theses

This thesis reports on work in machine learning and high-performance computing for structural heath monitoring. The data used are acoustic emission signals, and we classify these signals according to source mechanisms, those associated with crack growth being particularly significant. The work reported here is part of a larger project to develop an agent-based structural health monitoring system. The agents are proxies for communication- and computation-intensive techniques and respond to the situation at hand by determining an appropriate constellation of techniques. The techniques thus structured are executed by a workflow engine, which is part of the contribution reported here. It is …

An Analytical Study Of Consumer Trust In Cloud Computing, Iii Albert Horvath

Theses

The Internet has developed to such a point that many scholarly articles are calling it the 5th utility, behind water, power, sewage, and telephone. The usefulness of the fifth utility is undeniable and will certainly only grow. Soon, common internet users will be able to do more than just use it for entertainment and shopping. Emerging technologies have the ability to intelligently connect people to the data they need to improve their lives. For instance, heart rate monitors can be connected remotely to the internet and patients can live at home knowing that if there are any problems, help will …

A Manifold Learning Approach To Target Detection In High-Resolution Hyperspectral Imagery, Amanda K. Ziemann

Theses

Imagery collected from airborne platforms and satellites provide an important medium for remotely analyzing the content in a scene. In particular, the ability to detect a specific material within a scene is of high importance to both civilian and defense applications. This may include identifying "targets" such as vehicles, buildings, or boats. Sensors that process hyperspectral images provide the high-dimensional spectral information necessary to perform such analyses. However, for a d-dimensional hyperspectral image, it is typical for the data to inherently occupy an m-dimensional space, with m << d. In the remote sensing community, this has led to a recent increase in the use of manifold learning, which aims to characterize the embedded lower-dimensional, non-linear manifold upon which the hyperspectral data inherently lie. Classic hyperspectral data models include statistical, linear subspace, and linear mixture models, but these can place restrictive assumptions on the distribution of the data; this is particularly true when implementing traditional target detection approaches, and the limitations of these models are well-documented. With manifold learning based approaches, the only assumption is that the data reside on an underlying manifold that can be discretely modeled by a graph. The research presented here focuses on the use of graph theory and manifold learning in hyperspectral imagery. Early work explored various graph-building techniques with application to the background model of the Topological Anomaly Detection (TAD) algorithm, which is a graph theory based approach to anomaly detection. This led towards a focus on target detection, and in the development of a specific graph-based model of the data and subsequent dimensionality reduction using manifold learning. An adaptive graph is built on the data, and then used to implement an adaptive version of locally linear embedding (LLE). We artificially induce a target manifold and incorporate it into the adaptive LLE transformation; the artificial target manifold helps to guide the separation of the target data from the background data in the new, lower-dimensional manifold coordinates. Then, target detection is performed in the manifold space.

An Intelligent Nonlinear System Identification Method With An Application To Condition Monitoring, Clara Echavarria

Theses

Neural networks are black-box model structures that map inputs to outputs and do not require underlying mathematical models between the two. They are frequently used in the field of system identification, the area that deals with the development of system models based on input-output data. In this work, a hybrid system identification method is implemented with neural networks (NN) and the Minimum Model Error estimator (MME) on different benchmark experimental setups, as well as simulations. The MME algorithm uses a cost function with a covariance constraint to determine smooth state estimates of a system given noisy measurement data and an …

Uncertainty Quantification And Reduction In Cardiac Electrophysiological Imaging, Azar Rahimi Dehaghani

Theses

Cardiac electrophysiological (EP) imaging involves solving an inverse problem that infers cardiac electrical activity from body-surface electrocardiography data on a physical domain defined by the body torso. To avoid unreasonable solutions that may fit the data, this inference is often guided by data-independent prior assumptions about different properties of cardiac electrical sources as well as the physical domain. However, these prior assumptions may involve errors and uncertainties that could affect the inference accuracy. For example, common prior assumptions on the source properties, such as fixed spatial and/or temporal smoothness or sparseness assumptions, may not necessarily match the true source property …

Aspects Of Supermassive Black Hole Growth In Nearby Active Galactic Nuclei, Davide Lena

Theses

Super-massive black holes (SBHs) have long been identified as the engines of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and are now considered to play a key role in galaxy evolution. In this dissertation I present results from two observational studies conducted on nearby AGNs with the aim of furthering our understanding of SBH growth and their interplay with the host galaxies.

The first study is an observational search for SBHs spatially offset from the center of their host galaxies. Such offsets can be considered signatures of gravitational recoil following the coalescence of an SBH binary system (formed in the aftermath of a …

Mathematical Modeling Of The Imported Malaria In The United Arab Emirates, Fatima Hassan Ali Alawadhi

Theses

Although the UAE was certified to be free of local malaria transmission cases in 2007, the increased number of imported malaria cases in recent years required the attention of the public health professionals. The aim of this work is to study, via mathematical modeling, the impact of imported malaria cases on the population of the UAE. The nature of the health policies in the UAE imposes on us a model that classifies the living population of the UAE in two categories. The local population, who represent the permanent residents that do not have any health requirement for their residency, and …

Optimization Of A Combined Approach For The Treatment Of Desalination Reject Brine And Capture Of Co₂, Ameera Fares Mohammad

Theses

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most widespread greenhouse gas that traps heat and raises the global temperature, contributing to climate change. Existing techniques to sequester carbon dioxide have numerous environmental concerns and usually require an extensive amount of energy. New technologies and methods, such as reactions with desalination reject brine according to the Solvay process, offer new hope for the reduction of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. Brine management is another environmental concern, as many desalination plants need to find suitable approaches for the treatment or disposal of the large amounts of concentrated brine, resulting from the desalination processes. …

Existence And Uniqueness Of Solutions For A Class Of Non-Linear Boundary Value Problems Of Fractional Order, Arwa Abdulla Omar Salem Ba Abdulla

Theses

In this thesis, we extend the maximum principle and the method of upper and lower solutions to study a class of nonlinear fractional boundary value problems with the Caputo fractional derivative 1

Solving Nonlinear Boundary Value Problems Using The Homotopy Analysis Method, Ghada Ayed Janem Ayed Janem

Theses

Analytical solutions of differential equations are very important for all researchers from different discipline. Obtaining such solutions is difficult in most cases, especially if the differential equation is nonlinear. One of the mostly used methods are the series methods, where the solution is represented as an infinite series. Different methods are available to evaluate the terms of this series. These methods include the well-known Taylor series method, the Adomian decomposition method, the Homotopy iteration method, and the Homotopy analysis method. In this thesis we give a survey of the different series methods available to solve initial and boundary value problems. …

An Efficient Method For Solving A Discrete Orthogonal Approximation To Fractional Boundary Value Problems, Mwaffag Husein Nahar Sharadga

Theses

In this thesis we developed a numerical method for solving a class of nonlinear fractional boundary value problems using the fractional order Legendre Tau-path following method. Theoretical and numerical analyses are presented. The numerical results showed that this method works properly and efficiently.

Multispectral Image Road Extraction Based Upon Automated Map Conflation, Bin Chen

Theses

Road network extraction from remotely sensed imagery enables many important and diverse applications such as vehicle tracking, drone navigation, and intelligent transportation studies. There are, however, a number of challenges to road detection from an image. Road pavement material, width, direction, and topology vary across a scene. Complete or partial occlusions caused by nearby buildings, trees, and the shadows cast by them, make maintaining road connectivity difficult. The problems posed by occlusions are exacerbated with the increasing use of oblique imagery from aerial and satellite platforms. Further, common objects such as rooftops and parking lots are made of materials similar …

Dual Signal Optical Bistability In A Semiconductor Optical Amplifier, Aiswarya Kannan

Theses

Future all-optical signal processing applications may require the use of multiple optical signals passing through a single, optically bistable device. My thesis investigates an improved model for modeling two optical signals passing through an optically bistable Fabry-Perot semiconductor optical amplifier (FP-SOA). The optical power and phase of these signals are both modeled, as well as the optical gain of the FP-SOA. My improved model is based on an improved model used to study optical bistability of just a single optical signal, in which the internal power is related to the output power with an expression accounting for the Fabry-Perot structure. …

Numerical Investigation Of Interfacial Mass Transport Resistance And Two-Phase Flow In Pem Fuel Cell Air Channels, Mustafa Koz

Theses

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are efficient and environmentally friendly electrochemical engines. The performance of a PEMFC is adversely affected by oxygen (O2) concentration loss from the air flow channel to the cathode catalyst layer (CL). Oxygen transport resistance at the gas diffusion layer (GDL) and air channel interface is a non-negligible component of the O2 concentration loss. Simplified PEMFC performance models in the available literature incorporate the O2 resistance at the GDL-channel interface as an input parameter. However, this parameter has been taken as a constant so far in the available literature and does not reflect variable PEMFC …

Four Domains Of Knowledge In Education, Justin Tyler Ormsby

Theses

American educational curricular policy defines knowledge in an unfortunately narrow way. Specifically, it favors theoretical knowledge that is both appropriate for college bound students and is easy to assess by mass distributed standardized tests. But there are many domains of knowledge which, when implemented into the curriculum, serve equally well to prepare students for life after schooling. In this paper I construct a logical space for discussing knowledge in an educational institution that is not so narrow. I divide knowledge into two main categories, virtues and techne. The domain of virtues contain contains two additional categories, virtues of character and …