Digital Commons Network^™

Breeding Bettas: An Interactive Study To The Breeding And Caring Of Siamese Fighting Fish, Ali Alquraini

Theses

Siamese fighting fish also known as “Betta fish” is one of the most well known fresh water fish around the world. Their beautiful colors and long finnage is one of the reasons in which most people are familiar with these fish. Also their unique labyrinth organ that helps this fish to get oxygen from the air made it easy for people to adopt. Over the past five years, I have been adopting Bettas from different countries around the world such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and United States. During this time I have met a lot of Betta lovers which made …

Optimum Non Hydrocarbon Gas Injection Development Process And Ultimate Recovery Maximization., Abdulla A.F. Abed

Theses

A multi layered heterogeneous reservoir was selected for this study. The integrated reservoir characterization model and the pertinent transformed reservoir simulation history matched model were quality assured and quality checked.

The development scheme was identified and selected where the pattern and completion of the wells were defined to fit the heterogeneity of the reservoir characterization model. Lateral and maximum block contact holes were investigated.

The development processes studied were mainly hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and rich hydrocarbon gas. The Water Alternating Gas/ Simultaneous Water Alternating Gas (WAG/SWAG) processes were also assured. In addition to the main gas and WAG/SWAG …

Material Selection And Optimization To Mitigate 316l Stainless Steel Corrosion In A Condensate Stabilizer, Afif Saif Nasser Harhara

Theses

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the key players of the oil and gas industry of the world; with oil reserves estimated at 9% of the total world reserves, the petroleum industry is considered to be the backbone of the economy.

In one of the gas processing facilities in Abu Dhabi, UAE; a case of material failure occurred in the fractionating column twice in a cycle of less than 2 years. The materials used for the internals of the column was stainless steel 316L. The different types of stainless steel corrosion were studied with emphasis on the suspected …

Indirect Camera Calibration In A Medical Environment, Bennet Tillapaugh

Theses

This thesis addresses the need to have calibrated cameras in surgery rooms. Data can then be collected during surgeries to assist the surgeons and it can later be used for postoperation analysis. Typical techniques for camera calibration are not adequate for a medical environment due to the cameras constantly moving and with no rigid area always in the cameras’ view. The proposed approach is to calibrate cameras attached to surgical lights by utilizing extra cameras placed on the ceiling. The ceiling cameras find the position of the light cameras and calibrate their extrinsic parameters. This indirect calibration method provides an …

Uniform Color Spaces Based On Ciecam02 And Ipt Color Difference Equations, Yang Xue

Theses

Color difference equations based on the CIECAM02 color appearance model and IPT color space have been developed to fit experimental data. There is no color space in which these color difference equations are Euclidean, e.g. describe distances along a straight line. In this thesis, Euclidean color spaces have been derived for the CIECAM02 and IPT color difference equations, respectively, so that the color difference can be calculated as a simple color distance. Firstly, the Euclidean line element was established, from which terms were derived for the new coordinates of lightness, chroma, and hue angle. Then the spaces were analyzed using …

Gamut Extension Algorithm Development And Evaluation For The Mapping Of Standard Image Content To Wide-Gamut Displays, Stacey E. Casella

Theses

Wide-gamut display technology has provided an excellent opportunity to produce visually pleasing images, more so than in the past. However, through several studies, including Laird and Heynderick, 2008, it was shown that linearly mapping the standard sRGB content to the gamut boundary of a given wide-gamut display may not result in optimal results. Therefore, several algorithms were developed and evaluated for observer preference, including both linear and sigmoidal expansion algorithms, in an effort to define a single, versatile gamut expansion algorithm (GEA) that can be applied to current display technology and produce the most preferable images for observers. The outcome …

Microgripper Force Feedback Integration Using Piezoresistive Cantilever Structure, Todd R. Simon

Theses

Force feedback is an important feature in most microgripper applications, but it is commonly overlooked. To successfully implement this feature, a cantilever structure has been designed and fabricated to integrate force feedback into a microhand gripper. The piezoresistive properties of doped polysilicon are used to transduce the mechanical stress of an object pressing against the cantilever sensor, resulting in a change in resistance or voltage capable of being monitored with external hardware. The force sensing structure was designed to have a fabrication process compatible with that of the microhand, allowing for their eventual integration. This fabrication process uses both bulk …

Multi-Object Decision Making For Supplier Selection In Outsourcing, Pushpen K. Mohile

Theses

A supply chain is the system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information, and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. The main and basic challenges in the supply chain are to plan a strategy to manage the resources and meet the demands, to select the suppliers that will deliver the goods and services that are required to build the product, to manufacture the product, to deliver the product to the customers and to make an arrangement for return of the products through customers if there is any fault in the product for servicing. This thesis …

The Botanical Thread, Kaitlin Wilson-Bryant

Theses

My thesis is an exploration of my dual desires of creation/destruction and manipulation/transformation as realized through the remediation of botanical specimens gathered from my domestic environment and transformed into works of art. Each image questions and presents an understanding of the history of botanical representation, within Western art history, as symbols of nature and femininity and the domestic skill of needlework, a traditional skill learned by women as part of the feminine. I created a conceptual dialogue with those who preceded me, intrinsically linking the acts of sewing and botany as re-interpreted feminist acts. In this work, I attempt to …

A Shadow Of An Idea, Myung-Chul Jung

Theses

This story is about three cavemen’s escape from an active volcanic island. Whenever the island’s volcano begins to act up, they react to run as far away as possible from the volcano. But they cannot go beyond the shoreline to save their life. One day, the main character has had a dream of ship during taking a nap. He explains the ship to his fellow cavemen, however, he is ignored by them because they have never seen ships that float on the water. He is now faced with the additional problem of explaining his vision to them. In entering the …

Memoir Of A Marionette, Rui Jin

Theses

My film intends to draw public awareness to the quick disappearing of traditional performing arts due to the gap caused by fast advancement of technology. Film, TV, Internet and video games have diverted public interests from old performing arts. It discusses modernity vs. antiquity. How can we progress without sacrificing all we have inherited from our ancestors. In the film, this idea is demonstrated by two trembling hands trying to reach each other – one from the marionette and the other from the old performer. They all have the same dream: laughter and cheers from children. But before the hands …

Estimating Evolutionary Dynamics Of Cleavage Site Peptides Among H5ha Avian Influenza Employing Mathematical Information Theory Approaches, Sherry Dadgar

Theses

Estimating evolutionary conservation of cleavage site peptides among HA protein of all strains facilitates vaccine development against pandemic influenza. Conserved epitopes may be useful for diagnosis of animals infected with the influenza virus, and preventing their spread in other regions [ 1]. In the preliminary stage of this study, in silico analysis of hemagglutinin was applied to predict potential cleavage sites of each strain employing

SigCleave [2] and SignalP 3.0 server [3]. The second stage of the study focused on analyzing the structure of connecting peptides of hemagglutinin cleavage sites based on the availability of the existing experimental data. Our …

Studying A Virtual Testbed For Unverified Data, William Carl Bridges

Theses

It is difficult to fully know the effects a piece of software will have on your computer, particularly when the software is distributed by an unknown source. The research in this paper focuses on malware detection, virtualization, and sandbox/honeypot techniques with the goal of improving the security of installing useful, but unverifiable, software. With a combination of these techniques, it should be possible to install software in an environment where it cannot harm a machine, but can be tested to determine its safety. Testing for malware, performance, network connectivity, memory usage, and interoperability can be accomplished without allowing the program …

The Visual Analysis Of Heterogeneous Sex Role Interactions: A Content Analysis Of Popular Music Videos, Deanna Niccole Kimbrel

Theses

Hip Hop cultured music videos have raised concern among our nation’s leaders, parents and communities. Since the introduction of music videos in the early 1980s the medium has crossed cultural, regional and ethnic boundaries (Rose, 1994). This medium has been well researched since the 1980s. The focus of this study is Hip Hop cultured music videos from years 1989-2006. The uniqueness of this study is that it focuses on nonverbal sex role interactions in this genre of music videos. This study found many useful trends. For example, men were portrayed as more dominant and/or vertical than women in the sampled …

A Study Of Emerging Opportunities For Digital Print Production Of User-Generated Content, Javier Rodriguez-Borlado Martinez

Theses

Changes in information consumption habits have been especially rapid and deep in the last five years. As examples, Facebook, with more than 90 millions users at the time of this writing, was launched on 2004, and YouTube, a new model that has revolutionized the way the users are getting content, as well as the content itself, started in 2005. These rapid changes are threatening the printing industry. What will be the motivation and environment for consumers to print? What content will consumers prefer to print? What values will consumers appreciate in the print product versus the digital? What will be …

Historic Thermal Calibration Of Landsat 5 Tm Through An Improved Physics Based Approach, Francis P. Padula

Theses

This investigation is motivated by the current need for a detailed post launch calibration of the Thematic Mapper (TM) thermal band (Band 6), aboard NASA’s Landsat 5 spacecraft. The historical calibration spans the period from 1984 to 2007. It is through fusion of environmental data sources (i.e. buoy observations, surface observations, and radiosonde observations) that a vicarious calibration approach will be implemented to construct the complete calibration record of the Landsat 5 TM thermal band. The vicarious calibration process takes advantage of the long standing National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) moored buoy fleet to acquire historic ground truth measurements needed …

Distributed Pre-Computation For A Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off, Michael S. Taber

Theses

Cryptanalytic tables often play a critical role in decryption efforts for ciphers where the key is not known. Using a cryptanalytic table allows a time-memory tradeoff attack in which disk space or physical memory is traded for a shorter decryption time. For any N key cryptosystem, potential keys are generated and stored in a lookup table, thus reducing the time it takes to perform cryptanalysis of future keys and the space required to store them. The success rate of these lookup tables varies with the size of the key space, but can be calculated based on the number of keys …

A Novel Partial Reconfiguration Methodology For Fpgas Of Multichip Systems, Juan Manuel Galindo

Theses

A number of SRAM-based field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) allow for partial reconfiguration (PR). Partial reconfiguration can be used to maximize the resource utilization in these FPGAs. Any large design usually consists of many modular features that are never used all concurrently. An FPGA does not need to implement all these features at the same time provided that it can be reconfigured in a reasonable amount of time to implement the features that can be used simultaneously. The use of partial reconfiguration is ideal in this case, since it allows for just the features that are no longer needed to …

Brilliance, Contrast, Colorfulness, And The Perceived Volume Of Device Color Gamut, Rodney L. Heckaman

Theses

With the advent of digital video and cinema media technologies, much more is possible in achieving brighter and more vibrant colors, colors that transcend our experience. The challenge is in the realization of these possibilities in an industry rooted in 1950s technology where color gamut is represented with little or no insight into the way an observer perceives color as a complex mixture of the observer’s intentions, desires, and interests. By today’s standards, five perceptual attributes – brightness, lightness, colorfulness, chroma, and hue - are believed to be required for a complete specification. As a compelling case for such a …

Variations, Michael Gochoco

Theses

Variations is a film that was developed in the context of experimentation and discovery. It can be described in many ways to be a film that was born out of process. In the same way that many artists may refer to a piece of art as process, the aesthetic development of Variations was linked to the methods in which the work was created and was progressively revealed.

Pottery, The Multi-Sensual Medium, Ryan Bothamley

Theses

The search for beauty, nourishment, and celebration of life can be found within thoughtful hand made pottery. These objects help create, recreate and bring together a community. The most intimate, personal, and enriching objects are useful and found in the home. I strive to create pottery for occasions, to celebrate a memorable event or to make the everyday routine include more significant moments. I want my pottery to be so captivating that a viewer will be compelled to interact with it. My hope is that the use of these pots will create more significant moments within the user's life. While …

On The Determination Of The Elastic Properties Of Geopolymeric Materials Using Non-Destructive Ultrasonic Techniques, Joseph L. Lawson

Theses

Current methods of determining the elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio for geopolymeric materials are limited by the destructive nature of compressive strength and bending testing analysis techniques. Since these tests are not repeatable, there is no means of evaluating whether measured properties are a result of the actual materials or the effect of possible mechanical defects. This study applies a relationship between the speed of sound through a material and its elastic properties to determine the elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio of geopolymeric samples. In addition to these elastic properties, the density, percent pore volume, average pore diameter and standard …

Statistical Modeling Of Radiometric Error Propagation In Support Of Hyperspectral Imaging Inversion And Optimized Ground Sensor Network Design, Scott Klempner

Theses

A method is presented that attempts to isolate the relative magnitudes of various error sources present in common algorithms for inverting the effects of atmospheric scattering and absorption on solar irradiance and determine in what ways, if any, operational ground truth measurement systems can be employed to reduce the overall error in retrieved reflectance factor. Error modeling and propagation methodology is developed for each link in the imaging chain, and representative values are determined for the purpose of exercising the model and observing the system behavior in response to a wide variety of inputs. Three distinct approaches to modelbased atmospheric …

Human Behavior Centered Museum Guided Tour System, Yenmin Chen

Theses

As new technologies appear, many devices or tools become more and more powerful. New technology also gives us more options to choose from in our daily lives, not only in ways used for school, but also with the devices used to surf the Internet. Certainly, we have more variety available in the various aspects of our lives, such as entertainment, education, work etc.--but new technology brings with it more problems, too. If new technology doesn't come with new thinking, life may not be better than before.

Some designers focus on human factors too much; they forget to consider how people …

Elucidating The Degree Of Selectivity For Nlo Surrogate Attachment To Model Compounds And A Co-Polyimide Using The Mitsunobu Reaction, Timothy E. Woods

Theses

The goals of this research are: to elucidate the degree of selectivity shown using the Mitsunobu reaction for pendent attachment to phenol and carboxylic acid functional groups, and to make progress towards the synthesis of a novel, UV-Crosslinkable, Mellitic Acid Dianhydride (MADA)-containing, low color, nonlinear optical (NLO) pendent co-polyimide (co-PI). Two of the three co-PI components lower the hydrophilicity and color of the product polymer by incorporating C-F bonds between their aromatic rings: the diamine, 2,2-bis(3-amino-4-hydroxyphenyl)hexafluoropropane (Bis-AP-AF), and the dianhydride, 4,4’-(hexafluoroisopropylidene)diphthalic anhydride (6FDA). MADA was synthesized using a previously established procedure, and its purity was verified by a 5.9% weight …

An Evaluation Of Energy Consumption And Emissions From Intermodal Freight Operations On The Eastern Seaboard: A Gis Network Analysis Approach, Aaron Falzarano

Theses

As global trade continues to increase, the energy and environmental impacts of freight movement in the US have become more of a concern. As such, the freight transport system needs to consider opportunities to meet customer objectives, while also meeting social goals. In the US there has been legislation enacted to address the growing impact that freight movement has on the environment, but there are limited tools to assist in the implementation of those polices. This research sets forth a process for creating a geospatial intermodal freight transportation (GIFT) model within ArcGIS that can be used to analyze freight movement …

A Selection Framework For Derivative Products: Development Of An Impact Metric And Platform Value Assessment Methodology, Alvaro José Rojas Arciniegas

Theses

In today’s product development environment, most companies develop product platforms due to the time and cost advantages that are reaped on subsequent development efforts. Many Research and Development (R&D) efforts conclude with the establishment of a platform that anticipates certain technologies and/or markets. However, when a new unanticipated market or technology arises, firms often struggle to assess these opportunities. Most tools to date focus on the upfront decisions while the product platform is under development. There is little work that examines these decisions with the added constraint of a preexisting platform. This work proposes a new methodology derived from existing …

Development Of Deterministic Collision-Avoidance Algorithms For Routing Automated Guided Vehicles, Arun S. Pai

Theses

A manufacturing job spends a small portion of its total flow time being processed on machines, and during the remaining time, either it is in a queue or being transported from one work center to another. In a fully automated material-handling environment, automated guided vehicles (AGV) perform the function of transporting the jobs between workstations, and high operational costs are involved in these material-handling activities. Consequently, the AGV route schedule dictates subsequent work-center scheduling. For an AGV job transportation schedule to be effective, the issue of collisions amongst AGV during travel needs to be addressed. Such collisions cause stalemate situations …

Statistical Model Prediction Of Fatigue Life For Diffusion Bonded Inconel 600, Timothy Nowicki

Theses

Diffusion bonding is a solid-state joining process, used in a wide range of fields, allowing the joining of both metallic and ceramic materials to create complicated parts and geometries [1]. Diffusion bonded material has been found to contain inherent defects caused by the bond process that have been loosely associated to the lower tensile and fatigue strengths of the parent material [2]. The process is relatively new, and little research has been done to characterize these defects or their relationship to bond quality, with the exception of a recent study that did relate tensile strength to the bond quality [3]. …

Chiasm, Christine Heusner

Theses

This thesis explores the convergence and divergence between the mind and multimedia environment as perceptions are formed. The digitally constructed representation of the space investigated in the thesis work illustrates an abstract impression of the modern environment, somewhere between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the representational. The installation of the thesis images, off the gallery walls and at varying levels throughout the space, encourages the viewers to question realities and perception. I discuss the creation of the thesis work through a variety of different processes and media, both digital and traditional, and how this mimics environmental reality. …