Digital Commons Network^™

Algorithm Animation And Its Application To Artificial Neural Network Learning, Walter Bubie C.

Theses

Algorithm animation is a means of exploring the dynamic behavior of algorithms using computer-generated graphics to represent algorithm data and operations. Research in this field has focused on the architecture of flexible environments for exploring small, complex algorithms for data structure manipulation. This thesis describes a project examining two relatively unexplored aspects of algorithm animation: issues of view design effectiveness and its application to a different type of algorithm, namely back-propagation artificial neural network learning. The work entailed developing a framework for profiling views according to attributes such as symmetry, regularity, complexity, etc. This framework was based on current research …

Transition Through Resonance In Linear And Nonlinear Systems, Mantrala Anand

Theses

In this work an asymptotic method known as the Krylov- Bogol iubov-Mit ropolsky (KBM) method is used to analyze linear and nonlinear systems. A system of first order equations for amplitude and phase is deduced. Using these first order equations the amplitude-response is approximated. The amplitude-response is then compared with the displacement response obtained by the Runge-Kutta method. Also, a comparative study is made between the stationary and nonstat ionary resonances in linear and nonlinear systems. The effect of linear variation of forcing frequency on the amplitude of the systems is closely examined. The consequence of different sweep rates on …

The Transportation Of Hazardous Materials, Songsamorn Kongboonma

Theses

Effective January 1, 1991, both international and domestic hazardous materials must be transported according to the shipment required by the United Nation Recommendations (UN Recommendations). This mandate to follow the UN Recommendations has caused a lot of confusions for packers, shippers and shipping agents. Due to the confusion surrounding the use of this document, this thesis provides a basic guideline and complete instructions on how to handle hazardous materials smartly and safely. Not understanding the regulations involved in hazardous material movement could result in much confusion in dealing with these type of materials. These analysis will clarify such areas as …

Thermal Evaluation Of An Integrated Circuit Chip Using Infrared Imaging And Finite Element Techniques, Terence Lerch

Theses

Thermal Analysis of a prototype IC chip was performed with the use of an Agema Infrared Thermal Imaging System and the Algor Thermal Supersap Heat Transfer finite elements software package. A preliminary calibration of the Agema Thermal Imaging system demonstrated its accuracy to be within ± 0.5 °C of the actual surface temperature being measured. Computed emissivities were within 6.0% of actual emissivity values of a surface. Qualitative comparison of the IC chip's temperature profiles measured by the Agema system and computed by the Algor finite elements package revealed agreement between the two techniques. Quantitative comparison between the two resulted …

An Expert System To Generate Musical Variations In The Style Of Telemann, Kathy Johnson Merck

Theses

Musical performance practice during the Baroque period (approximately 1600 - 1750) required that a solo performer be adept at adding extemporaneous variations on the composer's original melody during performance. Atypically, George Phillip Telemann, in his "Methodical Sonatas", provided, along with the original melody line, a written-out variation of that line. Using knowledge of the Baroque style in general and that gleaned from an analysis of Telemann's variations in particular, this expert system models a Baroque musician's (expert's) process of creating such variations. The variation process (programmed in Prolog) involves transformations to a list structure which represents the piece. The system …

Venture Stores: A Case Of Self-Inflicted Labor Shortages, Eugene J. Vargo

Theses

This thesis will focus on the corporate personnel problems that are expected to occur from the babyboom retirement and the babybust.

Research shows that in the last few years major corporations have felt the pinch of regional labor shortages. Facing an eminent labor shortage caused by the babybust, employers are looking into various ways of improving worker productivity and company performance.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census are forcasting that by the year 2000 the United States will see a significant change in the workforce. The median age will rise. There will be less 16-22 year olds entering …

The Level And Extent Of The Need For Workshops To Be Presented On Alcohol And Substance Abuse From The Black Cultural Prospective, Amelia I.G. Massie

Theses

The purpose of this research was to identify and assess the level of alcohol and substance abuse among the elderly. The primary focus was on the Black Elderly Community. The The secondary purpose was to determine the importance of an alcohol and substance abuse workshop for the Black Elderly Community.

The results suggested that a workshop was indeed needed for the Black Elderly Community. A workshop was designed using the data collected from the research.

The Effects Of Spousal Career Status On The Decision To Offer Promotion, Gregory B. Holder

Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible relationship between the career status of a female employee's spouse and her promotability. Previous research has suggested managerial bias against dual-career marriages based on assumptions regarding geographic mobility and commitment to career (Rosen, Jerdee, and Prestwich, 1975; LeLouam and Decotiis, 1983). Expanding on this premise, 60 managers from a large, regional corporation were enlisted. Each manager was given a brief series of personnel decisions to rate on a four-point scale ranging from 1 (certain denial) to 4 (certain approval). One of these decisions concerned whether or not to offer a …

The Valuation Of Minority Interests In A Closely Held Corporation, Richard Houlihan

Theses

According to the 1990 Statistical Abstract of the United States, approximately 17 million businesses exist in the U.S. They are comprised of over 3.4 million corporations, 1.7 million partnerships, and more than 12 million sole proprietorships. Furthermore, the United Shareholders Association reports that there are approximately 47 million minority shareholders in approximately 10,000 U.S. public companies. It is logical to infer from this data that millions of minority shareholders also exist in closely held companies - that is, non-publicly traded companies.

A minority interest is an interest which has no meaningful control over the day-to-day operations of a business, as …

The Effect Of Psychosocial Factors On The Immune Response Of Hiv Infected Individuals As Measured By The Extent Of Relationship With Cd-4 T Cell Count And Physical Symptoms, Richard R. Taylor

Theses

The effect of psychosocial factors on the immune response of HIV infected human subjects was assessed by measuring the degree of relationship to CD-4 T cell count and physical symptoms.

Twenty six participants (22 white and 2 black males) all who had been diagnosed as HIV positive completed a battery of 11 psychological tests and a social and medical history questionnaire. Fifty four psychosocial factors were selected as having the potential to have a significant effect on immune response.

Correlational analyses yielded no strong relationships between the psychosocial factors and CD-4 T cell count or physical symptoms. Moderate associations were …

Shareholder Value For Esco, Kelley A. Hullihen

Theses

This thesis will focus on the study and use of Shareholder Value Analysis as a technique to be implemented as a measure for business performance. Using the Al car software to perform the financial modeling for ESCO this thesis will prove that ESCO is undervalued and why. The financial models were built and based upon management's forecast and expectation trends.

Shareholder Value Analysis enables managers to evaluate alternative strategies in terms of changes in corporate value. The approach provides a uniform yardstick, a measuring tool for comparing one business plan to another in order to see which creates the most …

Computational Methods For Contact Stress Problems With Normal And Tangential Loading, Christopher R. Mcgoldrick

Theses

This investigation contains an historical overview of contact stresses including various classifications of the problem and their associated solutions. The solution for the normal loading elliptical contact problem is reviewed, as formulated using classic methods of linear elasticity theory. An efficient computational method is developed to evaluate the elliptic integrals that arise. The limitations of this solution are investigated in detail and it is shown how the method could be extended to the sliding elliptical contact problem. Practical applications of contact stresses are included with an emphasis on mechanical design. Differences between the continuum model and the behavior of real …

A Group Art Therapy Program For Use With Adolescents Who Have Been Victims Of Incest, H. Alec Arnold

Theses

This project represents the development of a manual for the application of art therapy activities in group therapy with adolescents who have been victims of incest. The treatment model presented in the manual is based on the need of incest victims to be able to articulate and abreact the feelings associated with their abuse within the context of a supportive and empathic relationship.

This need serves as the basis for this model for two principal reasons. In the act of incest victims are treated with complete disregard for their feelings and needs. Victims are treated as objects to be used …

Computer Classification Of Stop Consonants In A Speaker Independent Continuous Speech Environment, Michael R. Campanelli

Theses

In the English language there are six stop consonants, /b,d,g,p,t,k/. They account for over 17% of all phonemic occurrences. In continuous speech, phonetic recognition of stop consonants requires the ability to explicitly characterize the acoustic signal. Prior work has shown that high classification accuracy of discrete syllables and words can be achieved by characterizing the shape of the spectrally transformed acoustic signal. This thesis extends this concept to include a multispeaker continuous speech database and statistical moments of a distribution to characterize shape. A multivariate maximum likelihood classifier was used to discriminate classes. To reduce the number of features used …

Electrostatic Discharge - Understanding And Controlling The Phenomenon: A Handbook For Packaging Professionals, Deanna Jacobs

Theses

This thesis is designed to be a handbook on the phenomenon of electrostatic discharge (ESD) and its deleterious effects on electrically-sensitive electronic devices. Packaging and handling of sensitive devices occurs at every step in the assembly of such devices. Once the hardware is designed (and this may include some ESD-protective mechanisms) , it is the packaging of ESD-sensitive devices that determines their ultimate fate: being 100% reliable, being among the "walking wounded," or being completely useless. Electrostatic discharge is a phenomenon experienced in many industries from foods to pharmaceuticals, aerospace to communications, medical packaging to explosives, military to optics, and …

Vowel Recognition Using Kohonen's Self-Organizing Feature Maps, Anand R. K. Sundaram

Theses

An important organizing principle observed in the sensory pathways in the brain is the orderly placement of neurons. Although the neurons are structurally identical, the specialized role played by each unit is determined by its internal parameters that are made to change during early learning processes. In the human auditory system, the nerve cells and fibres are arranged in a manner that would elicit maximum response from the neurons when they are activated. Although most of this organization is genetically determined, some of the high level organization is created due to algorithms that promote self-organization. Kohonen's self-organizing feature map is …

Ms. Pacrat: A Feeling, Thinking Machine, Lorraine D'Ortona

Theses

Since before the time of the first digital computers, the workings of the mind have been compared to that of a machine. With the onset of the discipline of Artificial Intelligence a truly organized attempt has been made to build intelligent machines that model the mind. Many interesting programs have been built, but the legitimacy of their success is a matter of great controversy. None of the AI programs developed so far have come close to the true power and intelligence of the brain. Expert systems, for example, are the most success ful commercial AI programs, and even they have …

Findings Of A Comparison Of Five Filing Protocols, R. Elayne Mcfaul

Theses

Filing protocols are essential for the management and dissemination of shared information within computer systems. This is a survey of the current state of the art in filing protocols. Five popular filing protocols were selected and subjected to a rigorous comparison. FTAM, FTP, UNIX rep, XNS Filing, and NFS are compared in the following areas: exported interface, concurrency control, access control, error recovery, and performance. The coverage of background material includes a taxonomy and a brief history of filing protocols.

Investigation Of Cell Mapping And Off-Line Programming Within A Flexible Assembly System, Marta Anna Galuga

Theses

This investigation achieves two objectives. The first objective renders every robot on the production floor "alike" via a single robot configuration file. The second objective eliminates the tedious routine of teaching and reteaching robotic locations on-line by an operator or engineer. The functionality of these software solutions is demonstrated using the AdeptOne Scara robot, but the impact of this system is far beyond Adept. The code listings included within this thesis are specific to the AdeptOne controller, but the concepts developed and demonstrated herein may be extended to any sophisticated robot controller and programming language.

The Legal Status Of Strikers And Replacement Workers, Chun-Shu Su

Theses

On labor-management dispute, each party to the negotiation seeks to protect its economic interests by extracting concession from the other. Both union and management back up their demands with the threat of pressure tactics which would inflict economic harm upon the other party. If the negotiations reach an impasse, a labor union's most powerful weapon at the bargaining table is the credible threat of a strike, a protected right under the National Labor Relations Act. On the other hand, the management may use lockouts or hire new employees to replace those striking workers to force concessions.

Hiring permanent replacements has …

Microwave Treatment Of Hazardous Wastes : Benchscale And Pilot Plant Studies, Yaoli He

Theses

Microwave treatment of hazardous wastes was studied on both bench-scale and pilot plant scales. Bench-scale studies were carried out on two processes: steam distillation to effect the removal of volatile and semi-volatile organics from substrata like soil; immobilization of heavy metals like chromium in soil.

The pilot plant work involved the start-up of a newly-installed facility and the determination of the efficiency of energy transfer from the power system to a load.

It was found that microwave generated steam within the substratum effects the distillation of naphthalene in both sandy soil and clay soil, respectively; 95% removal is effected within …

A Petri Net Simulation Tool, Ashish H. Shukla

Theses

A user friendly and highly interactive graphical tool for drawing, editing and simulating translated Petri Net models is developed. This SunView based tool allows simulation to be carried out in the 'step' and 'run' modes. In the 'run' mode it produces a log file of the simulation run which consists of: a) total number of tokens in the net; b) names of the transitions that fired; and c) the system state reached after each step's execution. The tool offers a new solution to the problem of modeling concurrent and interlocked systems, such as computer systems, modular software, flexible manufacturing systems …

Effective Disciplinary Process In Management, Ying-Lung Teng

Theses

The application of discipline is the punitive behavior by the employer to suppress the employee's undesired behavior in the work place. However, there are many considerations have to be concerned when applied discipline.

An organization has to support the supervisor when applying discipline because it gives the supervisor the great power in dealing with problem workers. Organizational policy has to specify the degree of discipline and timing of discipline in order to make the supervisor and the employee have an idea about discipline.

The employee becomes satisfied with supervision when the supervisor uses good leadership skills to manage. In order …

Cascading Of Ever Adaptive Variation Of Lzw Algorithm With Arithmetic Coding Method, Ramesh Vishwanatham, Ketan Tejani

Theses

Two known compression algorithms appropriate for communication are LZW and the Arithmetic Coding method. Both algorithms are adaptive and require no extra communication from the encoder to the decoder. We have considered a variation of LZW algorithm known as Online version which result in better compression. Here we present a scheme to cascade Online LZW with Arithmetic algorithms into an Ever Adaptive data compression algorithm which achieves higher compression ratio and is appropriate for communication.

Experimental Study On Filterability Of Leukocytes, Qi Wang

Theses

The filterability of leukocytes treated with A23187, Cytochalasin B, PAF and FMLP and pumped through 5 µm polycarbonate filters at a constant flow rate was examined. The concentration of the four agents was systematically varied. The filtration pressure was continuously recorded for data analysis. The pressure-time curves generally showed multiphasic components, following a small jump step at the beginning of the filtration process. The pressure rise was initially fast (initial faster increased phase, IP) and then rose more slowly (later slower increased phase, LP). The leukocytes treated with A23187 showed increased IP and higher LP values; those which were treated …

Finite Element Analysis Of Torsional Concentric Composite Shaft Using Isoparametric Circular Element, Yee-Haur Wong

Theses

Finite Element Method is used to analyze the concentric composite material shaft subjected to torsion. Isoparametric circular ring element has been formulated to solve the one-dimensional problem. An intermaterial element at the interface has been developed to accomodate the changing modulus of rigidity.

Solutions of Prandtl's stress functions are used to compute shear stresses and torque in the composite shaft. Results of torque of the composite shaft are established using convergence tests of homogeneous solid and hollow shafts. Good agreement with classical solutions are obtained for homogeneous solid and hollow shafts.

A Torsional Concentric Composite Chart has been developed showing …

Characterization Of Material Removal In The Course Of Abrasive Waterjet (Awj) Machining, Yu Yang

Theses

The objective of this study is to develop a practical procedure for prediction of the results of abrasive waterjet (AWJ) machining. The first stage of the study involves the development of the technique for prediction of the rate of material removal in the course of abrasive waterjet (AWJ) machining. A new parameter, Exergy Distribution Density (EDD), is introduced and used in order to characterize the cutting conditions. EDD, determined as the kinetic energy of particles delivered to a unit length of the generated surface, is the function of diameters of the sapphire nozzle (Dn) and the focusing tube (Dc), the …

Adaptive Stack Filtering By Lms And Perceptron Learning, Yu-Chou Huang

Theses

Stack filters are a class of sliding?window nonlinear digital filters that possess the weak superposition property(threshold decomposition) and the ordering property known as the stacking property. They have been demonstrated to be robust in suppressing noise. Two methods are introduced in this thesis to adaptively configure a stack filter. One is by employing the Least Mean Square(LMS) algorithm and the other is based on Perceptron learning.

Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods to noise suppression.

An Integrated Circuit X-Ray Sensing Array Based On A Cmos Flip-Flop Cell, Huan-Chung Lee

Theses

A novel X-ray sensor IC has beeli designed which counts individual photons at rates up to 5,000,000 counts per second. A two-dimensional X-ray flip-flop sensor array, consisting of an 30 x 30 matrix of CMOS flip-flop sensors integrated in one chip together with an internal clock generator and access selection circuitry is described. A flip-flop sensing cell contains cross-coupled CMOS devices, one of which is connected to a large-area reverse-biased diode. A large area diode exposed to X-ray flux triggers the flip-flop. By reading out the final stable state of the flip-flop, the absence or presence of an X-ray photon …

How Effective Is The Union Title Vii Grievance Procedures, Yu-Wen Liu

Theses

Title VII forbids certain kinds of discrimination in employment and establishes a federal forum to enforce employee's rights. It means an employer discriminates against any individual in hiring or discharging, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

It has been a long time to use Title VII in unlawful practice employment. Therefore, in my thesis, I investigate the development of labor law, special for the development of Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964. Secondly, I emphasize on the individual and union that they can effectively make use of their rights under Title VII. …