Digital Commons Network^™

Osteogenic Differentiation Of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells On Thin Film Tyrosine Derived Polycarbonates, Tamunotoyne Briggs

Theses

Mesenchymal stem cells, harvested from adult bone marrow, are promising in the field of regenerative medicine because of the vast differentiation potential into various cell lines such as: osteoblasts, chondrocytes, adipocytes, and neurons. Osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) could be an important tool in the treatment of orthopedic deficiencies such as bone defects. The extent of in vitro human mesenchymal stem cell growth, adhesion, motility and differentiation into osteoblasts is a function of the material surface chemistry which is mediated by protein adsorption onto the surface. A library of tyrosine derived polycarbonates allows the tailoring of material …

Auto Detection In Autism, Gayathri Chandar

Theses

Autism is a neurobiological disorder in which, certain regions of the brain are affected. The main features of autism are impairment in communication, social interaction, language and deficit in imitation and theory of mind. Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), haemodynamic responses during a bilateral finger tapping task are analyzed for both autistic subjects and normal control subjects. fMRI is a noninvasive technique to image the activity of the brain related to a specific task. Generally, the active voxels in the IMRI images are detected using parametric or non-parametric statistical methods in which the fMRI response is assumed to have …

Network Activity Arising From Optimal Diameters Of Neuronal Processes, Juliane Gansert

Theses

Electrical coupling provides an important pathway for signal transmission between neurons. In several regions of the mammalian brain electrical synapses have been detected, and their role in the synchronization of neural networks and the generation of oscillations has been studied theoretically. Recently, it has been found that the amplitude of the postsynaptic potential is maximized for a specific diameter of the postsynaptic fiber.

In this thesis, the impact of the fiber's diameter on the success or failure of the action potential initiation and propagation is studied theoretically. Systems of two coupled neurons, as well as small networks, are investigated. The …

Automatic Detection Of Qt And Related Intervals, Divya Gowdar

Theses

The objective of this thesis is divided into two main sections: The first section comprises of the development of the algorithm for the detection of the Q wave, Tmax afld the Tend to measure the intervals such as QT, QT corrected (QTc), RT, QT_max and RT_max respectively. The second section deals with the analysis of different variabilities including heart rate variability (HRV), QT, QTc, RT, QT_max and RT_max.

Using the R wave points as reference points, the Q wave was detected by using the Differential Threshold Method (DTH). The Tmax was detected by using a …

Location Estimation In A 3d Environment Using Radio Frequency Identification Tags, Adwitiya Akash Jain

Theses

RFID tag location estimation in a 3D environment is investigated. The location of the tag with unknown coordinates can be estimated with certain accuracy. However, accuracy can be improved using the knowledge based on measurement of additional reference tags with known location. This thesis studies the mathematical formulation and practical realization of location sensing using RFID tags.

Deviating from the standard use of RFID technology which employs one tag reader to identify the presence of tag, here multiple tag readers with known location are used to estimate the physical location of an individual tag, with/without the help of few reference …

Classification, Testing And Optimization Of Intrusion Detection Systems, Javier Leon

Theses

Modem network security products vary greatly in their underlying technology and architecture. Since the introduction of intrusion detection decades ago, intrusion detection technologies have continued to evolve rapidly. This rapid change has led to the introduction of a wealth of security devices, technologies and algorithms that perform functions originally associated with intrusion detection systems.

This thesis offers an analysis of intrusion detection technologies, proposing a new classification system for intrusion detection systems. Working closely with the development of a new intrusion detection product, this thesis introduces a method of testing related technologies in a production environment by outlining and executing …

Finding Role Errors Of The Ncit Gene Hierarchy Using The Ncbi, Marc Oren

Theses

Due to the knowledge discovery process of gene information, details such as organism and chromosomal location should be known. Furthermore, the extensive biomedical research in genomics led to discovery of processes and diseases in which a gene plays a role. In the Gene hierarchy of the NCI Thesaurus (NCIT) such knowledge is represented by appropriate roles. However, upon review of the Gene hierarchy of the NCIT, many role errors are found. Realizing that such details are provided by another knowledge repository of NIH, the NCBI gene database, a methodology is presented to use NCBI to discover role errors for the …

Comparative Analysis Of Parametric, Nonparametric And Permutation Methods For Differential Expression, Rahul Patil

Theses

DNA microarrays permit us to study the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously. They are now used in many different contexts to compare mRNA levels between two or more samples of cells. Microarray experiments typically give us expression measurements on a large number of genes. Increasing popularity of microarray technology has resulted in a number of tests being proposed to detect differentials expression.

The purpose of study is to compare the parametric, non parametric and permutation tests when applied to microarray data for differential expression analysis. t test (parametric), Mann Whitney test (nonparametric) and Significance of analysis (permutation ) test …

Development Of A System To Measure Cardiac Function In The Drosophila Melanogaster Animal Model, Heather Anne Reinhardt

Theses

Previous studies have shown that several genes are evolutionarily conserved from lower organisms to man, where a number of genes have been directly linked to cardiac function and disease. The Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit Fly) has a genome similar to humans and therefore has proven to be an important animal model to study the role of genetics in cardiac function and disease development. Fruit flies are an important basic science model because of the ease with which genes can be manipulated and quickly expressed due to the short lifespan of the fly. Although standard techniques exist to affect the genome of …

Synthesis Of Polymeric Nanocomposites In Supercritical Carbon Dioxide, Hongta Yang

Theses

Supereritical carbon dioxide has been of great interest in various areas of chemical science and engineering during the last decade. In this thesis, the properties of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/silica nanocomposites with different surfactant and filler concentrations synthesized through in-situ polymerization in supercritical carbon dioxide were investigated. In addition, ferromagnetic nano-particles were synthesized and functionalized for the preparation of nanocomposites. The thermal stability and surface morphology of PMMA/iron oxide nanocomposites synthesized in supercritical carbon dioxide were first studied in the work.

The scanning electron microscopy micrographs show that higher surfactant concentration results in higher number density of polymeric nanocomposite particles …

A Data Gathering Toolkit For Biological Information Integration, Munira Lokhandwala

Theses

SYSTERS is a biological information integration system containing protein sequences from many protein databases such as Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL and also protein sequences from complete genomes available at Ensembl, The Arabidopsis Information Resource, SGD and GeneDB. For some protein sequences their encoding nucleotide sequences can be found in their corresponding websites. However, for some protein sequences their encoding nucleotide sequences are missing.

The goal of this thesis is to. collect all nucleotide sequences for the protein sequences in SYSTERS and store them in a common database. There are two cases. The first case is that if the nucleotide sequences can …

The Complex Behavior Of Poly(Dte) Carbonate And Its Blend Properties, Christopher George Elvin

Theses

Over the years a number of different polymers have been studied for bone applications. Polyesters such as the poly lactic acids (PLA), poly glycolic acids (PGA), and their copolymers have been studied intensely for bone regeneration purposes. Poly(DTE)carbonate has been found useful for bone regenerative purposes and is under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the properties of poly(DTE)carbonate when PLLA, PLGA, and P(LcoDL)LA was blended with it. The desired outcome was to produce miscible polymer blends or significant phase shift in the blended materials which will make them at …

The Effects Of Limited Rebuild Buffer And Track Buffers On Rebuild Time In Raid5, Chintan Shah

Theses

Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) are very popular for creating large, reliable storage systems. A RAID array consists of multiple independent disks that achieve fault tolerance by parity coding. The contents on a failed disk can be reconstructed on demand by reading and exciusive-ORing the corresponding blocks on surviving disks. Upon disk failure, the array enters rebuild mode when it begins to systematically reconstruct the data of the failed disk on a spare disk, provided one is available. The fundamental element of rebuild is the Rebuild Unit (RU).

Surviving disks engaged in rebuild, process user requests at a higher …

New Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (Harq) Scheme For 4x4 Mimo System, Based On The Extended Alamouti Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Bloc Coding (Q-Stbc), In Invariant And Variant Fading Channel, Jordi Ferrer Torras

Theses

A new Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) combining scheme for a 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system in invariant and variant fading channel conditions is proposed and analized. Based on the Extended Alamouti Quasi-orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding (Q-STBC), the use of the so-called Alternative Matrices for transmission, depending on the Channel State Information (CSI) received as feedback, is compared to other existing solutions.

Sign changes and permutations in the retransmission sequences allow reducing the interference while exploiting the spatial diversity to introduce some gain in the signal power. The best transmission order is selected by the Determinant Criterion, which …

Dynamic Recomposition Of Documents From Distributed Data Sources, Abhishek Verma

Theses

Dynamic recomposition of documents refers to the process of on-the-fly creation of documents. A document can be generated from several documents that are stored at distributed data sites. The source can be queried and results obtained in the form of XML. These XML documents can be combined after a series of transformation operations to obtain the target document. The resultant document can be stored statically or in the form of a command, which can be invoked later to recompose this document dynamically. Also, in case a change is made to a document, then only the change can be stored, instead …

Performance Analysis Of Collaborative Hybrid-Arq Protocols Over Fading Channels, Igor Stanojev

Theses

Impairments due to multipath signal propagation on the performance of wireless communications systems can be efficiently mitigated with time, frequency or spatial diversity. To exploit spatial diversity, multiple-antenna technology has been thoroughly investigated and emerged as one of the most mature communications areas. However, the need for smaller user terminals, which results in insufficient spacing for antenna collocation, tends to limit the practical implementation of this technology. Without compromising terminal dimensions, future wireless networks will therefore have to exploit their broadcast nature and rely on collaboration between single-antenna terminals for exploiting spatial diversity.

Among cooperative schemes, Collaborative ARQ transmission protocols, …

Separation Of Ssl Protocol Phases Across Process Boundaries, Kirthikar Anantharam

Theses

Secure Sockets Layer is the de-facto standard used in the industry today for secure communications through web sites. An SSL connection is established by performing a Handshake, which is followed by the Record phase. While the SSL Handshake is computationally intensive and can cause of bottlenecks on an application server, the Record phase can cause similar bottlenecks while encrypting large volumes of data.

SSL Accelerators have been used to improve the performance of SSL-based application servers. These devices are expensive, complex to configure and inflexible to customizations. By separating the SSL Handshake and the Record phases into separate software processes, …

Dry Magnetic Assisted Impaction Mixing Of Sub-Micron Boron And Barium Chromate For A Time Delay Composition, Ryan Barrow

Theses

The objective of this investigation is to improve the mixture homogeneity of, Boron and Barium Chromate, a delay composition called T-10, using a novel dry mixing technique, , called the Magnetic Assisted Impaction Mixing (MAIM). Two additional mixing methods, ultra-sonic mixing and shaker mixing (dry and wet), were used for comparative analysis, to evaluate the mixing effectiveness of the MAIM which was also compared to two Navy mixed T-l0 samples. Characterization of the homogeneity is described by how well boron is effectively distributed throughout the mixture, which is a challenging task since the mixture's composition is 3% Boron versus 97% …

Smart Home Technology For Aging, Fareedh Meeran

Theses

The majority of the growing population, in the US and the rest of the world requires some degree of formal and or informal care either due to the loss of function or failing health as a result of aging and most of them suffer from chronic disorders. The cost and burden of caring for elders is steadily increasing. This thesis focuses on providing the analysis of the technologies with which a Smart Home is built to improve the quality of life of the elderly. A great deal of emphasis is given to the sensor technologies that are the back bone …

Fabrication Of Aligned Nanofiber Yarns, Mats And Isolation Of Single Nanofiber In Electrospinning, Venkatesh T. Nathilvar

Theses

Electrospinning has been extensively used as an effective technique for the fabrication of submicron and nanometer scale polymeric fibers. In spite of technological advances in electrospinning, creating a highly aligned fiber structure is a tough target to be achieved because of the chaotic motion of the electrospinning jet. In this study, two different techniques have been adopted to form a highly aligned nanofibrous scaffolds. Using these methods highly aligned fiber yams and mats are produced from Cellulose Acetate (CA) in a mixed solvent of acetone and water. In both the techniques the nanofibers suspend over the gap in a highly …

Pda Based Ambulatory Pulse Oximeter, Arpita Shah

Theses

The main aim of the research was to develop an ambulatory pulse oximeter which can be used to monitor the SpO₂ heart rate (HR) and plethsymograph (PPG) waveform of a person. To achieve this, an algorithm was developed in LabVIEW 8.0 to extract the HR, SpO₂ and PPG data from a Nonin Xpod device, Nonin Medical, Inc. LabVIEW PDA software was developed to make it compatible with the PDA. LabVIEW software was also developed for sending the data to the PDA via Bluetooth Pulse Oximeter commercialized by Nonin Medical Company.

Using this algorithm, data was collected from three …

Environmental Policy In Jordan : Analysis, Gap Identification, And Strategies For Improvement, Diana Saed

Theses

Jordan is a country with a tremendously fragile environment. It faces substantial environmental challenges due to its delicate environmental resources and its limited financial assets. These challenges are aggravated by the scarcity of available water, deterioration of the water resources, land contamination, desertification, mismanagement of land use, and air pollution. Attempting to describe the “State of the Environment” and to provide an informed analysis of the threats to the nation’s environment is a Herculean task. This analysis examines the efforts made by Jordan in regard to protection and management of the environment. This thesis provides a snapshot of the major …

Threadscape, Virginia M. Cassetta

Theses

Describes the author's creation of her thesis exhibition, an installation of textile sculpture titled "Threadwork." In this thesis, the artist explains how labor shapes the content of her work and how she translates experiences from her past into textile art. Includes color photographs of her exhibition as well as of artworks which inspired her.

Parents' Perceptions On The Quality Of Information Given By Professionals Regarding Their Deaf Children, Charles Phillips

Theses

Many deaf children have delayed language development that would greatly affect their future academic success (Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002). Information given by professionals to parents could be a significant factor in overcoming this delay. To assess the quality of this information six parents of deaf children in the Rochester NY area, three deaf parents and three hearing parents were selected to participate in an interview and survey. After the data was examined, it was found that the majority of the parents in this study felt that the information they received from professionals concerning their child's language development was adequate …

Successful Deaf Readers: Deaf Professionals' Perspectives On Their Childhood Learning-To-Read Experiences, Sharon Cooke

Theses

The purpose of this project was to discover if there were any common themes or factors that exist, or are perceived to exist, in the childhood reading experiences of successful deaf readers serving as participants in this study. Despite the availability of research concerning poor reading abilities among many deaf children, there has been little exploration into the experiences of successful deaf readers. Through in-depth interviews, detailed information was collected from five deaf adults holding Ph. D. degrees and working in the field of education regarding their learning-to-read experiences. Information was then analyzed and placed in thematic categories related to …

Anxiety In Deaf High School Students About The Future Education And Career: Pilot Study Of A School For The Deaf, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, Theeratorn Lersilp

Theses

This study examines the anxiety level of deaf high school students about their future education and careers upon graduating from high school at Anusamsunthorn School for the Deaf, Chiang Mai province, Thailand. The purpose of this pilot study is to explore levels of anxiety in deaf high school students about their future upon graduating from high school in both the deaf students who plan to work and those who plan to continue study. Anxiety is defined as deaf high school students' feelings of uncertainty as they approach graduation from high school. Twenty-nine deaf students participated in this study by responding …

Acoustics In The Classroom, Carolyn Tully

Theses

"Acoustics in the Classroom: a Guide for Classroom Teachers" is a brochure developed specifically for teachers of the deaf who work with mainstreamed deaf and hard of hearing students and their teachers. A review of the current literature, input from my experience as a Teacher of the Deaf, and veteran Teacher of the Deaf were used to generate the brochure. The goal is to evaluate and enhance acoustics in the classroom therefore enabling the use of residual hearing for spoken language learning. Noise as a health issue in general has been so well documented scientists have referred to the problem …

Effectiveness Of Dbq Strategies For Deaf Students In Social Studies Classroom, Sophie-Shifra Gold

Theses

Document-based question (DBQ) strategy is considered one of innovative teaching strategies which allow students to learn through real life historical events, demonstrations, and sources. Research has shown that DBQ strategies are effective in any content subject, especially in the social studies content area. DBQ strategies are heavily incorporated in advanced placement courses. There is a growing number of state mandated exams with DBQ items where students are asked to provide in-depth responses. The problem statement of this research study is whether or not DBQ strategies could be used effectively for deaf students at middle and high school academic levels. In …

The Impact Of Genetic Variations In Bipolar Disorder, Lee Edsall

Theses

Bipolar disorder is a devastating illness that affects the quality of life for millions of Americans. The current diagnostic system depends on an extremely subjective interview and can frequently result in an incorrect diagnosis and ineffective treatment. An improved, biologically based, classification system requires a thorough understanding of the genetic basis of bipolar disorder. This understanding has been hampered by the difficulty in diagnosing patients and by the heterogeneity of the illness. The number of linkage analysis studies and lack of organization have also added to the challenges involved in understanding the biological basis of the disorder. The Bipolar Disorder …

Identifying The Largest Complete Data Set From Alfred, Mohamed Uduman

Theses

ALFRED is a central and curated repository for allele frequency data for anthropologically defined human populations. To study and estimate the relationships and similarities between populations, researchers require a large and complete data set. However, the data set within ALFRED is not complete. Specifically, not all the populations in the database have been typed for all the polymorphisms. Mining ALFRED for the largest complete data set is equivalent to the 'Maximal Biclique' problem in graph theory. This is proven to be NP-Complete and no single algorithm can find the perfect solution in polynomial time. This project describes a heuristic (Largest …