Digital Commons Network^™

Hazard Vulnerability In Socio-Economic Context: An Example From Ecuador, Lucille Richards Lane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How people pereceive the risks associated with natural hazards contributes to their willingness to take protective action. Such action may be constrained by prevailing socio-economic and place-specific conditions that restrict or inform the choice of protective measures available to the individual. Vulnerability to the impacts of extreme geophysical events increases when the range of alternatives is limited or misinformed.

Many evacuees from a potentially violent volcanic eruption in Ecuador returned to their home town of Banos while it was still under an evacuation order in 2000 and considered to be a high risk area by officials. The research examined four …

Nutrient Uptake By Seagrass Communities And Associated Organisms: Impact Of Hydrodynamic Regime Quantified Through Field Measurements And Use Of An Isotope Label, Christopher David Cornelisen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Seagrass communities are composed of numerous organisms that depend on water-column nutrients for metabolic processes. The rate at which these organisms remove a nutrient from the water column can be controlled by physical factors such as hydrodynamic regime or by biological factors such as speed of enzyme reactions. The impact of hydrodynamic regime on rates of nutrient uptake for seagrass (Thalassia testudinum) communities and for organisms that comprise the community (seagrass, epiphytes, phytoplankton, and microphytobenthos) was quantified in a series of field flume experiments employing the use of ¹⁵N-labeled ammonium and nitrate.

Rates of ammonium uptake for …

Scavenger: A Junk Mail Classification Program, Rohan V. Malkhare

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem of junk mail, also called spam, has reached epic proportions and various efforts are underway to fight spam. Junk mail classification using machine learning techniques is a key method to fight spam. We have devised a machine learning algorithm where features are created from individual sentences in the subject and body of a message by forming all possible word-pairings from a sentence. Weights are assigned to the features based on the strength of their predictive capabilities for spam/legitimate determination. The predictive capabilities are estimated by the frequency of occurrence of the feature in spam/legitimate collections as well as …

A Natural Analogue For Long-Term Passivity, Raymond E. Monson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been engaged in a viability study for a potential underground geological repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The repository is being designed for disposal of high level nuclear waste. A reference design for the repository has focused on the use of natural and manmade barriers to assure that radionucleide release will not be significant though an extended time period on the order of 10,000 years. The reference design utilizes manmade metallic components that are expected to last for this time period. The specified metallic materials depend on a phenomenon known as metallic passivity to …

Performance Verification Of Personal Aerosol Sampling Devices, Steven T. Luecke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

International standards establish criteria for size-selective aerosol sampling for industrial hygiene. Commercially available aerosol samplers are designed to conform to these criteria. This study uses semi-monodispersed aerosols generated in a vertically aligned test chamber to compare the performance of three commercially available respirable dust samplers, one of which can simultaneously sample for thoracic and inhalable dust fractions. Comparison methods are used to calculate a theoretical fractional value based on the appropriate sampling conventions of the total dust concentration and size distribution of test materials. Performance of actual samplers can be conducted by comparing observed results to the theoretical value. Results …

System Integration And Testing Using Object Oriented Programming Based Control, Prashant P. Datar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Various techniques are used in the process of software development. The requirements of the system being designed and the constraints dictate the selection of a particular method to be used. This thesis attempts to explain the various types of development techniques available to software designers and programmers. It places specific emphasis on the Object Oriented style of design that is presently widely used in all areas of industry.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) involves a number of new concepts that make software design and development more modular. The actual problem is broken down into a number of smaller components and the …

Adapting The Scs Method For Estimating Runoff In Shallow Water Table Environments, Caroline Humphrey Masek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rainfall-runoff modeling in the United States has made extensive use of the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) curve number method for computing infiltration losses from rainfall. Even though the method is well established and may be applied to a wide range of environments, it often results in highly erroneous runoff estimates for shallow water table environments. Flat topography, wetlands, and fine sands are characteristics that make places like Florida very different from the environments where the SCS method was originally developed. The SCS method arose from experiments with soils that are dominated by infiltration excess (Hortonian mechanism), where runoff occurs after …

Selection Of Clinical Trials: Knowledge Representation And Acquisition, Savvas Nikiforou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When medical researchers test a new treatment procedure, they recruit patients with appropriate health problems and medical histories. An experiment with a new procedure is called a clinical trial. The selection of patients for clinical trials has traditionally been a labor-intensive task, which involves matching of medical records with a list of eligibility criteria.

A recent project at the University of South Florida has been aimed at the automation of this task. The project has involved the development of an expert system that selects matching clinical trials for each patient. If a patient's data are not sufficient for choosing …

The Diffusion Of New Media Scholarship: Power, Innovation, And Resistance In Academe, Judith R. Edminster

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are an evolving genre of graduate student research that is gaining widespread acceptance among universities in the international community. ETDs are also beginning to diffuse slowly among American universities; however, a number of issues continue to work against more rapid adoption among intitutions in the United States. This dissertation examines ETDs as an evolving electronic research genre by (1) historicizing the situated development of its predecessor, the traditional print dissertation, in nineteenth century German and American Universities; (2) reporting on the current state of the Networked Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations, an initiative …

Physical-Statistical Modeling And Optimization Of Cardiovascular Systems, Dongping Du

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Heart disease remains the No.1 leading cause of death in U.S. and in the world. To improve cardiac care services, there is an urgent need of developing early diagnosis of heart diseases and optimal intervention strategies. As such, it calls upon a better understanding of the pathology of heart diseases.

Computer simulation and modeling have been widely applied to overcome many practical and ethical limitations in in-vivo, ex-vivo, and whole-animal experiments. Computer experiments provide physiologists and cardiologists an indispensable tool to characterize, model and analyze cardiac function both in healthy and in diseased heart. Most importantly, simulation modeling empowers the …

Rainfall-Runoff Modeling In Humid Shallow Water Table Environments, Tatiana X. Hernandez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Simulating the processes of rainfall and runoff are at the core of hydrologic modeling. Geomorphologic features, rainfall variability, soil types, and water table depths strongly influence hydrological process in Florida ecosystems. Topographic characteristics of the terrain define the stream paths and landscape. Alteration of these characteristics as a result of urban and/or agricultural developments, for example, can highly influence wetlands and river basin response. There are two predominant landforms in Florida: wetlands, where Variable Saturated Areas form near streams causing saturation excess runoff, and uplands where runoff is mainly generated by infiltration excess. The objective of this work is to …

Growth And Characterization Of Zno For The Front Contact Of Cu(In,Ga)Se2, Rita Bhatt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ZnO window layers for CIGS solar cells are grown with a DC sputtering technique instead of a conventional RF sputtering technique. Transparent window layers and buffer layers are sputtered from the Zn target in the presence of Oxygen. The window layer is doped with Aluminum in order to achieve high electrical conductivity and thermal stability. The effect of different sputtering parameters on the electrical and optical properties of the films is elaborately studied. Sets of annealing experiments are also performed. Combinations of different deposition parameters are examined to design the optimum fabrication conditions. We are able to deposit 85% transparent, …

Thermodynamic Model And The Controlling Variables Of Phosphate Lattice Loss, Mohammad Abutayeh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A thermodynamic model was developed based upon five equilibrium reactions to predict the limits of distribution of phosphates between the liquid and the solid phases in a reactor used to extract phosphoric acid from phosphate rock. A computer code was generated to carry out different simulations of the model using several inputs of temperatures and liquid phase sulfuric acid contents. Ideal Solution, Debye-Hückel, and Robinson-Guggenheim-Bates electrolyte activity coefficient models were employed alternately in each simulation to complete the thermodynamic model and the outputs were compared to one another.

Experimental data of equilibrium constants were regressed to adjust the values of …

Genetic Variation In Chrysopsis Floridana Small, The Endangered Florida Golden Aster, As Revealed By Random Amplification For Polymorphism Detection (Rapd), Laurie Lysle Walker Markham

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Chrysopsis fioridana Small (Asteraceae) is a federally endangered plant endemic to the Tampa Bay area of west central Florida. It is confined to the sand pine scrub community, growing in open, sunny, and sandy areas or in disturbed areas at the edges of scrub. As a means ofassessing the genetic variability ofthis species, eight populations in Hillsborough County were compared with a seed stock collection housed at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales using random amplification for polymorphism detection (RAPD). The objectives of this study were to (I) describe the overall genetic variation among and within populations and subpopulations of …

Stochastic Methods For Evaluating The Potential For Wetland Rehydration In Covered-Karst Terranes, Christian David Langevin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Augmentation with reclaimed water is one method for rehydrating wetlands damaged by water-level declines. Augmentation with reclaimed water has been proposed for rehydrating a wetland in the covered-karst terrane of west-central Florida. There is concern because reclaimed water may contain harmful agents that could flow from the wetland 1.4 km to a municipal wellfield that withdraws 30,000 m³/day. Estimates of groundwater flow velocities were calculated from the results of detailed field studies at the wetland. Results indicate that groundwater flows downward in the surficial aquifer at rates of 0.1 to 0.2 m/day and horizontally in the Floridan aquifer …

Knowledge-Guided Processing Of Magnetic Resonance Images Of The Brain, Matthew C. Clark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a knowledge-guided expert system that is capable of applying routinesfor multispectral analysis, (un)supervised clustering, and basic image processing to automatically detect and segment brain tissue abnormalities, and then label glioblastoma-multiforme brain tumors in magnetic resonance volumes of the human brain. The magnetic resonance images used here consist of three feature images (T1-weighted, proton density, T2-weighted) and the system is designed to be independent of a particular scanning protocol. Separate, but contiguous 2D slices in the transaxial plane form a brain volume. This allows complete tumor volumes to be measured and if repeat scans are taken over time, …

An Application Of Artificial Neural Networks In Freeway Incident Detection, Sujeeva A. Weerasuriya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Non-recurring congestion caused by incidents is a major source of traffic delay in freeway systems. With the objective of reducing these traffic delays, traffic operation managers are focusing on detecting incident conditions and dispatching emergency management teams to the scene quickly. During the past few decades, a few number of conventional algorithms and artificial neural network models were proposed to automate the process of detecting incident conditions on freeways. These algorithms and models, known as automatic incident detection methods (AIDM), have experienced a varying degree of detection capability.

Of these AIDMs, artificial neural network-based approaches have illustrated better detection performance …

Simultaneous Extraction And Sorption Under Supercritical Conditions, Ş. Uğur Akman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Supercritical Exsorption (SCEXS), simultaneous supercritical extraction and sorption (adsorption and/or desorption), is a novel process which may have potential for applications in chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering. The system of interest consists of a fixed-bed packed with an adsorbent (e.g., activated carbon or catalyst) through which a so~vent stream (e.g., supercritical carbon dioxide) and a feed stream (e.g., an aqueous stream with low concentration of solute such as phenol) flow countercurrently.

In this work, the theoretical foundations of SCEXS have been established through distributed-parameter modeling which enables phenomenal description of several probable three-phase mass transfer dynamics taking place in the …

Automatic Translation Of Extended Concurrent Pascal To C: A Tool In Support Of Efficient Development Of Lan Software Through Rapid Prototyping, Heng-Fu Tseng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Concurrent Pascal is a higher-level and more abstract language than most other high-level concurrent programming languages. Programs written in Concurrent Pascal (C-Pascal) are relatively easy to analyze. However, the interpretive approach used in execution of Concurrent Pascal programs leads to relatively poor execution efficiency. To rewrite the C-Pascal compiler for generating native code will lose the portability of programs written in this language. Another approach to improve execution efficiency is by translating C-Pascal programs to other high-level languages which can be compiled into native code. The programming language C is one of these attractive target languages, especially because of the …