Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of A Universal Mosfet Gate Impedance Model, Sripriya Das

Theses

Scaling of CMOS technology to 100 nm & below and the endless pursuit of higher operating frequencies drive the need to accurately model effects that dominate at those feature sizes and frequencies. Current modeling techniques are frequency limited and require different models for different frequency ranges in order to achieve accuracy goals. In the foundry world, high frequency models are typically empirical in nature and significantly lag their low frequency counterparts in terms of availability. This tends to slow the adoption of new foundry technologies for high performance applications such as extremely high data rate serializer/deserializer transceiver cores. However, design …

Rochester Institute Of Technology's Laser Safety Manual, Joseph Whitney

Theses

Rochester Institute of Technology's Laser Safety Manual and Training Guide have been created as a recommended safety manual and training guide to help laser users work with lasers and laser systems in a safe manner. Standard operating procedures and protocols have been provided in order to assist the laser user in complying with Local, State, and Federal regulations.

The immense number and variation of lasers that are available makes laser safety a necessity. This manual contains guidelines that enable the laser user to identify areas of concern and apply corrective actions as needed. This manual addresses a wide array of …

Dynamics And Control Of Tethered Satellite System, Royce L. Abel

Theses

Tethered Satellite Systems (TSS) has been an ongoing project around the world for many decades. This study examined the dynamics an dcontrols of tethered satellites. The equations of motion were developed and simulated with no control and small eccentric orbits. A control law was derived by associating the Hamiltonian of the system to a Lyapunov Function. This control law was then simulated to demonstrate ability and robustness. The tethered system can be retrieved and deployed in a small number of orbits, and return from a perturbation quickly. Examination of a non thruster controlled system resulted in asymptotic convergence in retrieval …

Implications Of Implementing Hdtv Over Digital Subscriber Line Networks, Thomas J. Lantier

Theses

This thesis addresses the different challenges a telecommunications company would face when trying to implement an HDTV video service over a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connection. Each challenge is discussed in detail and a technology, protocol, or method is suggested to overcome that particular challenge.

One of the biggest challenges is creating a network architecture that can provide enough bandwidth to support video over a network that was originally designed for voice traffic. The majority of the network connections to a customer premises in a telephony network consists of a copper pair. This type of connection is not optimal for …

Advanced Thermodynamic Analyses Of Energy Intensive Building Mechanical Systems, Erin N. George

Theses

A review of past research reveals that while exergetic analysis has been performed on various building mechanical systems, there has not been extensive efforts in the areas of air distribution systems or cooling plants. Motivations for this new work include demonstrating the merits of exergetic analysis in association with retrocommissioning (RCX) an existing building air handling unit (AHU), as well as conducting an advanced analysis on an existing chiller. The following research demonstrates the benefits of including a second law analysis in order to improve equipment operation based on lowered energy consumption and improved operation, and as a means for …

Quantum Dot-Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Complexes For Tunable Optoelectronic Microsystems Sensors, Brian J. Landi

Theses

Quantum dot - single wall carbon nanotube (QD-SWNT) complexes have been investigated for use in optoelectronic applications. Quantum confinement effects imbue sizedependent properties in nanomaterials which can be controlled during synthesis and exploited in devices. The physical properties inherent to semiconducting quantum dots (QDs) and single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) render their chemical combination a unique nanomaterial complex for 11icrosystems. Synthesis proficiency has been demonstrated for two techniques: (1) a pulsed laser vaporization process for SWNTs, and (2) wet chemistry colloidal approaches for CdSe and CuInS2 QDs. A significant fraction of the work in this Dissertation has been devoted to establishing …

Influence Of Teacher Immediacy On Student Evaluations Of Teachers In American And Chinese Classrooms, Wenli Gao

Theses

This study investigated student perspectives on teacher immediacy in American and Chinese classrooms, and the correlation between immediacy and teacher evaluation. Specific immediacy behaviors that are most associated with teacher evaluation among American and Chinese students were also examined. Two hundred seventy-seven university students responded to instruments designed to measure teacher immediacy and teacher evaluation. Chinese students perceived a lower amount of instructor nonverbal immediacy than American students, but there is no significant difference between the two groups on verbal immediacy. Significant positive correlations were found between teacher immediacy and teacher evaluation in both groups. Praising students' work and soliciting …

Gaussian Mixture Approach To Detect Drift, Mamidi Sree Kalyan Chakravorty

Theses

Historically it has been difficult to measure the deviation in the notion of a concept. Several schemes have been proposed to attack this challenging problem [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. The central notion of all these efforts is to detect the change point where the data mining model deviates significantly with respect to the data characteristics that it was trained or built on. The process of detecting such change points is often termed as concept drift. Current state of algorithms assume attribute independence, view the problem as a supervised learning problem and also need …

Modeling Off-The-Shelf Pan/Tilt Cameras For Active Vision Systems, Yuriy Luzanov

Theses

There are many existing multicamera systems that perform object identification and track ing. Some applications include but are not limited to security surveillance and smart rooms. Yet there is still much work to be done in improving such systems to achieve a high level of automation while obtaining reasonable performance. Thus far design and implementation of these systems has been done using heuristic methods, primarily due to the complexity of the problem. Most importantiy, the performance of these systems is assessed by evaluating subjective quantities. The goal of this work is to take the first step in structured analysis and …

Schottky Field Effect Transistors And Schottky Cmos Circuitry, Reinaldo Vega

Theses

It was the primary goal (and result) of the presented work to empirically demonstrate CMOS operation (i.e., inverter transfer characteristics) using metallic/Schottky source/drain MOSFETs (SFETs - Schottky Field Effect Transistors) fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates - a first-ever in the history of SFET research. Due to its candidacy for present and future CMOS technology, many different research groups have explored different SFET architectures in an effort to maximize performance. In the presented work, an architecture known as a "bulk switching" SFET was fabricated using an implant-to-silicide (ITS) technique, which facilitates a high degree of Schottky barrier lowering and therefore an …

Development And Characterization Of High Performance Transistors On Glass, Robert Saxer

Theses

Currently, the electrical drivers behind active-matrix flat-panel displays are polysilicon or amorphous silicon based thin-film transistors (TFTs). The ability to integrate transistors onto the glass substrate offers certain design and performance advantages over package-level integration with bulk silicon ICs; this is commonly referred to as system-on-glass (SOG) or system-on-panel (SOP). System on glass may also lower the manufacturing costs of the entire product. Cell phones, personal digital assistants, and entertainment systems are examples of applications that would benefit from system on glass integration. This project is a joint effort between the Microelectronic Engineering Department at RIT and Corning Incorporated. Thin- …

The Effectiveness Of Captive Release Conservation Methods For Spotted Turtles (Clemmys Guttata), Kate Cassim

Theses

The spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) is categorized as protected and a species of special concern in New York State (Milam 2001). Understanding the habitat use, movement patterns, and life history characteristics of this species will be essential for any future efforts to provide the necessary habitat requirements for their successful recovery and management. Rochester Institute of Technology partnered with the Seneca Park Zoo and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to investigate the release of captive-bred spotted turtles. The goal of this study was to determine the movements, habitat use, survivorship, and growth of the captive-bred spotted turtles in …

Three's A Crowd, Paul Engin

Theses

Not included.

Thermal Characterization And Parametric Optimization Of A Thermal Bimorph For Use In Mirco-Robotics Applications, Owen E. Brown

Theses

The thermal bimorph actuator is a multi-layer Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEMS) device used to achieve out-of-plane mechanical displacements in response to a thermal input. This device is one of the simplest MEMS devices to manufacture. Previous investigations of thermal bimorph actuators have studied the best materials to use based on ease of deposition, and the overall effect on the devices. The current work presents an optimization of the thermal bimorph (Aluminum and Polysilicon) actuator geometry, for a target application of a micro robotics actuator. The application of bimorph actuators to micro robotics demands high efficiency in the conversion from thermal energy to …

Parallelization Of A Maximum Parsimony Branch And Bound Algorithm For Phylogenetic Inference, Curtis J. Howard

Theses

Phyiogenetic inference involves the reconstruction of evolutionary relationships among species in the form of branching diagrams called trees. Specifically, certain biological structures common to all living organisms, such as morphological characteristics, protein sequences or DNA sequences can be compared Differences and similarities in these characteristics among species are used to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships and draw trees. Many methods of tree reconstruction are currently used. The method of maximum parsimony for phyiogenetic inference is a widely used algorithm which employs the hypothesis that the most likely tree for a given group of data will be the one which uses the …

Media Distribution In The Printing Industry: A Study Of The Movement Of Printed Materials And Electronic Files, Bernice Adjoa Lemaire

Theses

Change, according to Phillip Ruggles (2005), can be advantageous to one's business. It can sometimes be exciting and economically rewarding. At other times, change can be challenging and risky, bringing about chaos and disruption. The printing industry is undergoing both structural and cyclical change. Meeting the challenge to remain competitive in today's printing industry relies heavily on providing value for customers. Thus, print service providers are offering a variety of value added services in an effort to meet customer demands and to remain competitive. One such additional service is distribution (both physical and electronic), which includes shipping/delivery, mailing, warehousing, and …

Huayru, Cristian Mogrovejo

Theses

For this project, I will design a board game based on Huayru, a traditional ritual game played by some indigenous people from the Andes mountain range for centuries. Mostly played currently at funerals, this tradition is considered to be in extinction [...]. It is not among my objectives to reintroduce the practice of the ritual; instead, I will aim to rescue its memory and trnsmit knowledge about it by designing a different game using the elements of the original as inspiration.

Corporate Culture Implications On Dam Implementation Success In The Greeting Card Industry, Philip G. Diamantis

Theses

Digital Asset Management (DAM) has become a necessary concern with the growing number of files used in the graphics industry. Organization, storage, filing, and dynamic distribution of electronic mediums is becoming increasingly more important. The ROI for DAM systems comes from time savings, expanding product offerings via the web, and organization. For testing purposes, the greeting card industry was chosen because of its need for various images across several platforms. The research started by selecting several companies in the greeting card industry to analyze their competence with DAM. From these companies, four were selected and categorized according to size and …

A Low-Power Interface Design For Intelligent Sensor Nodes Utilized In Wireless Sensor Networks, Shruti Lakdawala

Theses

This thesis describes a means for performing complex event detection at a single sensor node of a wireless sensor network (WSN) by interfacing a low-power mixed signal Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) to a MICA2 wireless sensor node. The proposed system helps to reduce the overall power consumption of the node, by lending it the advance computational capability to process a significant amount of data at the node rather than transmitting it. This allows the node to "intelligently" monitor a signal for impending events instead of transmitting the "raw" signal to the base constantly. Previous work by others has indicated …

The Relationship Between Emotional Recognition And Personality Traits, Lyndon A. Mitchell

Theses

This study investigated the relationship between personality traits and the ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions. A sample of undergraduate and graduate students (n = 52) were administered the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire 5th Edition (16PF-5) (Cattell, 1993) and an abbreviated version of Ekman's Pictures of Facial Affect (Ekman & Friesen, 1976). Pearson product-moment correlations revealed that the personality trait, Apprehension, was associated with the accurate recognition of most of the emotions. Further, regression analyses revealed that the recognition of fear was best predicted by the 16PF factors Dominance, Self Reliance and Apprehension. Personality differences were also identified between …

A Multicamera System For Gesture Tracking With Three Dimensional Hand Pose Estimation, Evan M. Clark

Theses

The goal of any visual tracking system is to successfully detect then follow an object of interest through a sequence of images. The difficulty of tracking an object depends on the dynamics, the motion and the characteristics of the object as well as on the environ ment. For example, tracking an articulated, self-occluding object such as a signing hand has proven to be a very difficult problem. The focus of this work is on tracking and pose estimation with applications to hand gesture interpretation. An approach that attempts to integrate the simplicity of a region tracker with single hand 3D …

Putting The Community Back Into Community Networks: A Content Analysis, Michael A. Horning

Theses

This study examines the role that community networks can take in fulfilling McQuail's call for a more democratic participant form of media. Community networks, which are grassroots organizations designed to promote local community initiatives, increased their presence on the Internet in the 1990s. However, in recent years their number has declined. Research suggests that community networks fail because they lack a unified identity, have not determined their specific purpose on the Web, and do not provide relevant information to network members. Findings suggest that community networks wishing to achieve sustainability should concentrate their efforts on developing social capital and fostering …

The Fit Between Task And Medium In Sending Equivocal And Unequivocal Messages: How Self-Reported Skill Creates Self-Reported Attitude In Using The Medium, Teresa Merritt

Theses

Communication channels selected by members of an organization can have an impact on the outcome of the messages sent. The media richness theory proposes that task performance can be optimized when task information is matched with the medium's ability to convey information richness. The current study surveyed 25 support staff within the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology to evaluate the best media fit between task and medium for sending equivocal (ambiguous) and unequivocal (clear and concise) messages. The findings supported the media richness theory, and employees report positive attitudes associated with media use.

Parameric Decomposition For Evaluating Metamerism, Zhaojian Li

Theses

In those industries in which materials are colored to close specifications, a means of evaluating the degree of metamerism of colored objects is of considerable importance. Based on Wyszecki's hypothesis and its application to quantifying metamerism as described by Fairman, parameric decomposition is a technique to adjust one spectrum of a parameric match in order to achieve a perfect (metameric) match under a specific illumination and observer condition. This method can be viewed as batch correction using three "colorants" where the color-mixing model is linear in reflectance.

The research in this thesis presented these methods using the basis functions from …

Simultaneous Visual Cryptography, Oliver Kikic

Theses

A visual cryptography scheme (VCS), as proposed by M. Naor and A. Shamir, encodes a secret image into n different shares. The scheme ensures that only certain designated combinations of shares can recover the original image, while other combinations yield, in probabilistic sense, no information about the secret image. In this thesis, we show that there exist simultaneous visual cryptography schemes (SVCS), i.e. cryptographic schemes that allow for multiple secret images to be encoded across a set of n shares. The essential part of this research is to derive a set of formal definitions used to construct a valid SVCS …

Nonverbal Vocal Interface, Michael J. Murdoch

Theses

Nonverbal vocal interface, meaning the use of non-speech vocal sounds such as "oooh" and "ahhh" as input to a computer, provides an interesting and useful input modality for a graphical user interface. Nonverbal vocal interface is a novel improvement over speech-based solutions because voiced sounds may be smoothly modulated, meaning they are well suited to control of continuous variables such as cursor position, while spoken commands are inherently discrete. A graphical user interface is an excellent environment for vocal input because instantaneous visual feedback is crucial to usability, enabling users to see the results of their vocalizations and learn the …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate (Kdp) Nanocomposites., Mufadal Ayubali-Mohamedali

Theses

Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate (KDP) nanocrystals were synthesized in micellar solutions of block copolymers of polystyrene (PS) and poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) in toluene/Dimethoxyethane solvent. The synthetic procedure entailed the doping of the block copolymer solutions with phosphoric acid and the stochiometric neutralization of the aciddoped system with potassium hydroxide (KOH). The neutralization reaction was localized within the core of the micelle which in effect served as a hanoreactor or nanovessel for the reaction.

Micellization of the block copolymer molecules was induced upon doping the solution with phosphoric acid which resulted in ion dipole binding of the protons to the ethylene oxide …

Modeling Of Diesel Particulate Emissions Aftertreatment System Using Non-Thermal Plasma, Cheng Chen

Theses

There is a growing demand for energy usage in the world, primarily due to increasing economic activity. This need can be met by pursuing increased power generation. However the impact of emissions from power generation sources on the health of human beings and environmental continues to be a major concern. In order to maintain and enhance environmental quality there is a need for the development of clean energy products. A diesel aftertreatment device was developed at RIT to reduce particulate matter (PM) in the emissions of generators and diesel engines by using the combination of non-thermal plasma oxidation and emission …

The Prince Frog, Chi-Shiuan Lu

Theses

Not Included

Soho Design In The Near Future, Soojung Lee

Theses

Not Included