Digital Commons Network^™

Communicating In A Group, Jack C. Straton

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Student-centered learning requires teachers to provide students with opportunities to learn from and with each other, but most students come to group-work ill-equipped to handle the responsibility of cleanly communicating with each other. This paper provides one set of group-communication tools that helps students to become conscious molders of their own communication styles in relation to those of their peers.

Comment On "Realized Variance And Market Microstructure Noise" By Peter R. Hansen And Asger Lunde, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

With the availability of ultra high frequency financial data, the task of finding an appropriate econometric model to describe the movement of financial variables at the tick-by-tick level has become an important goal in financial econometric research. The task has both theoretical and empirical dimensions. From an empirical perspective, the near continuous recording of financial asset prices has opened up the intriguing possibility of fitting the quadratic variation process empirically, leading to what is possibly the most direct nonparametric measure of asset price volatility. The resulting quantity has become known in the financial econometrics literature as realized variance (RV) and …

On Organizing And Accessing Geospatial And Georeferenced Web Resources Using The G-Portal System, Zehua Liu, Ee Peng Lim, Yin-Leng Theng, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In order to organise and manage geospatial and georeferenced information on the Web making them convenient for searching and browsing, a digital portal known as G-Portal has been designed and implemented. Compared to other digital libraries, G-Portal is unique for several of its features. It maintains metadata resources in XML with flexible resource schemas. Logical groupings of metadata resources as projects and layers are possible to allow the entire metadata collection to be partitioned differently for users with different information needs. These metadata resources can be displayed in both the classification-based and map-based interfaces provided by G-Portal. G-Portal further incorporates …

Continuous Versus Discrete Market Games, Alexandre Marino, Bernard De Meyer

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

De Meyer and Moussa Saley [4] provide an endogenous justification for the appearance of Brownian Motion in Finance by modeling the strategic interaction between two asymmetrically informed market makers with a zero-sum repeated game with one-sided information. The crucial point of this justification is the appearance of the normal distribution in the asymptotic behavior of V n ( P )// n . In De Meyer and Moussa Saley’s model [4], agents can fix a price in a continuous space. In the real world however, the market compels the agents to post prices in a discrete set. The previous remark raises …

Simultaneous Elastic And Electromechanical Imaging By Scanning Probe Microscopy: Theory And Applications To Ferroelectric And Biological Materials, J. Shin, B. J. Rodriguez, Arthur P. Baddorf, T. Thundat, E. Karapetian, M. Kachanov, Alexei Gruverman, Sergei V. Kalinin

Alexei Gruverman Publications

An approach for combined imaging of elastic and electromechanical properties of materials, referred to as piezoacoustic scanning probe microscopy (PA-SPM), is presented. Applicability of this technique for elastic and electromechanical imaging with nanoscale resolution in such dissimilar materials as ferroelectrics and biological tissues is demonstrated. The PA-SPM signal formation is analyzed based on the theory of nanoelectromechanics of piezoelectric indentation and signal sensitivity to materials properties and imaging conditions. It is shown that simultaneous measurements of local indentation stiffness and indentation piezocoefficient provide the most complete description of the local electroelastic properties for transversally isotropic materials, thus making piezoacoustic SPM …

Monomethyl Histone H3 Lysine 4 As An Epigenetic Mark For Silenced Euchromatin In Chlamydomonas, Karin V. Van Dijk, Katherine E. Marley, Byeong-Ryool Jeong, Jianping Xu, Jennifer Hesson, Ronald Cerny, Jakob H. Waterborg, Heriberto D. Cerutti

Ronald Cerny Publications

Histone Lys methylation plays an important role in determining chromatin states and is mostly catalyzed by SET domain– containing proteins. The outcome, transcriptional repression or activation, depends on the methylated histone residue, the degree of methylation, and the chromatin context. Dimethylation or trimethylation of histone H3 Lys 4 (H3K4me2 or H3K4me3) has been correlated with transcriptionally competent/active genes. However, H3K4 methylation has also been implicated in gene silencing. This dualistic nature of the H3K4 methyl mark has thus far remained unresolved. In the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Mut11p, related to a subunit of trithorax-like methyltransferase complexes, is required for transcriptional …

Normal Hematologic And Biochemical Values For Prelaying Greater Sage Grouse (Centrocercus Urophasianus) And Their Influence On Chick Survival, Mike R. Dunbar, Michael A. Gregg, John A. Crawford, Mark R. Giordano, Susan J. Tornquist

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Declines in greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) productivity and population numbers throughout their range demand a better understanding of how nutrition influences sage grouse populations. During March and April 1999–2001, blood samples were collected from 158 female (73 adult, 85 yearling), free-ranging, prelaying, greater sage grouse from an area in northwestern Nevada, USA, and southeastern Oregon, USA. These blood samples were evaluated to establish normal blood values for sage grouse and ascertain if certain blood parameters, as indices of nutrition, are useful for predicting if sage grouse hens would raise at least one chick to 1 August. Results of logistic …

Security Analysis And Improvement Of Return Routability Protocol, Ying Qiu, Jianying Zhou, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile communication plays a more and more important role in computer networks. How to authenticate a new connecting address belonging to a said mobile node is one of the key issues in mobile networks. This paper analyzes the Return Routability (RR) protocol and proposes an improved security solution for the RR protocol without changing its architecture. With the improvement, three types of redirect attacks can be prevented.

Low Latency Multimedia Broadcast In Multi-Rate Wireless Meshes, Chun-Tong Chou, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a multi-rate wireless network, a node can dynamically adjust its link transmission rate by switching between different modulation schemes. For the current IEEE802.11a/b/g standards, this rate adjustment is limited to unicast traffic only while multicast and broadcast traffic is always transmitted at the lowest possible rate. In this paper, we consider a novel type of multi-rate mesh networks where a node can dynamically adjust its link layer multicast rates to its neighbours. In particular, we consider the problem of realising low latency network-wide broadcast in this type of multi-rate wireless meshes. We will first show that the multi-rate broadcast …

Forms Of Expression For Designing Visual Languages For Animation, Richard C. Davis, James A. Landay

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present further steps in our research into visual languages for animation. Animation is a rich mode of communication that is currently accessible to few, because animation systems are complex. Some systems try to make animation simple but put severe limits on users’ creative expression. Our field studies are demonstrating that would-be animators need to express animation in a wide variety of ways. We are developing a taxonomy of forms of expression for animation that will help the designers of visual languages for animation to determine which expressive forms to support. Our end goal is to build animation sketching systems …

New Efficient Mds Array Codes For Raid Part I: Reed-Solomon-Like Codes For Tolerating Three Disk Failures, Gui-Liang Feng, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao, Jia-Chen Shen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a class of binary maximum distance separable (MDS) array codes for tolerating disk failures in redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID) architecture based on circular permutation matrices. The size of the information part is m×n, the size of the parity-check part is m×3, and the minimum distance is 4, where n is the number of information disks, the number of parity-check disks is 3, and (m+1) is a prime integer. In practical applications, m can be very large and n is from 20 to 50. The code rate is R=n/(n+3). These codes can be used for tolerating …

Antecedents, Consequences, And The Mediating Role Of Organizational Innovation: Empirical Generalizations, Leslie H. Vincent, Sundar G. Bharadwaj, Goutam N. Challagalla

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study uses emerging meta-analytic methods, in combination with structural equations methodology, to synthesize empirical studies and extend the understanding of relationships amongthe correlates (antecedents and/or outcomes) of innovation in organizations. this study draws upon a meta-analytic database of 155 independent samples from 108 studies from the period of 1970 through 2004. Specifically, the study examines the impact of 26 determinants and 3 performance outcomes of innovation with an overall sample size of 229,395. Organizational resources account for the majority of unique variance explained in predicting innovation generation. Overall findings indicate that innovation is significantly and positively related to superior …

Solving Generalized Open Constraint Optimization Problem Using Two-Level Multi-Agent Framework, Hoong Chuin Lau, Lei Zhang, Chang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Open Constraint Optimization Problem (OCOP) refers to the COP where constraints and variable domains can change over time and agents' opinions have to be sought over a distributed network to form a solution. The openness of the problem has caused conventional approaches to COP such as branch-and-bound to fail to find optimal solutions. OCOP is a new problem and the approach to find an optimal solution (minimum total cost) introduced in [1] is based on an unrealistic assumption that agents are willing to report their options in nondecreasing order of cost. In this paper, we study a generalized OCOP …

Missouri S&T Magazine Fall 2005, Missouri S&T Marketing And Communications Department, Miner Alumni Association

Missouri S&T Magazine

No abstract provided.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: September 2005, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2005

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Update from September 30, 2005.

This update describes damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Flow Lookup And Biological Motion Perception, Nicholas Howe

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Optical flow in monocular video can serve as a key for recognizing and tracking the three-dimensional pose of human subjects. In comparison with prior work using silhouettes as a key for pose lookup, flow data contains richer information and in experiments can successfully track more difficult sequences. Furthermore, flow recognition is powerful enough to model human abilities in perceiving biological motion from sparse input. The experiments described herein show that a tracker using flow moment lookup can reconstruct a common biological motion (walking) from images containing only point light sources attached to the joints of the moving subject.

Cooperative Reinforcement Learning Using An Expert-Measuring Weighted Strategy With Wolf, Kevin Cousin, Gilbert L. Peterson

Faculty Publications

Gradient descent learning algorithms have proven effective in solving mixed strategy games. The policy hill climbing (PHC) variants of WoLF (Win or Learn Fast) and PDWoLF (Policy Dynamics based WoLF) have both shown rapid convergence to equilibrium solutions by increasing the accuracy of their gradient parameters over standard Q-learning. Likewise, cooperative learning techniques using weighted strategy sharing (WSS) and expertness measurements improve agent performance when multiple agents are solving a common goal. By combining these cooperative techniques with fast gradient descent learning, an agent’s performance converges to a solution at an even faster rate. This statement is verified in a …

Synthesis Of Lanthanum-Strontium Magnanites By A Hydroxide-Precursor Co-Precipitation Method In Solution And In Reverse Micellar Microemulsion, Vuk Uskoković, Darko Makovec, Miha Drofenik

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Nanostructured lanthanum-strontium manganites have been synthesized using two different co-precipitation approaches, one in bulk solution, and the other in reverse micelles of CTAB/1-hexanol/1-butanol/water microemulsion. In both cases, precursor cations were precipitated by alkali precipitating agents. The properties of the material synthesized by using these two methods were compared in order to reveal potential advantages of microemulsion-assisted approach. The influence of the annealing conditions on the properties of synthesized manganites was investigated by using X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, differential thermal analysis, thermogravimetric analysis and magnetic measurements.

Early Warning And Prediction Of Internet Attacks And Exploits, Brian P. Zeitz

Theses and Dissertations

A safe, secure, and functional information network is vital in today’s Air Force net centric environment. Information is more critical today than it has ever been. As more operational functions are placed in cyber space and greater computing power becomes available to everyone, keeping these networks safe and secure is an almost unattainable task. Network security entails Intrusion Detection Security, but another form of security or “insecurity” is quickly gaining attention. Honeypots allow the black hat community to attack and penetrate non-production systems. By monitoring and studying these attacks, network defenders can develop better Information Assurance tactics, techniques and procedures …

Amish Teacher Dialogues With Teacher Educators: Research, Culture, And Voices Of Critique, Henry Zehr, Glenda Moss, Joe Nichols

The Qualitative Report

This dialogical project is framed with in critical inquiry methods to bring an Amish teacher’s voice to the fore front. Henry, an Amish middle school teacher, and two university teacher educators in northeastern Indiana collaboratively critiqued educational literature written about the Amish culture from the past 15 years. Building on critical ethnography and narrative methods, the authors used dialogue as a medium for inquiry. The intersubjective, collaborative project democratized the university researchers’ research role and allowed an Amish voice to gain a place in the academic field of research.

Measurement Of Inelastic J/Ψ Production In Deep Inelastic Scattering At Hera, S. Chekanov, M. Derrick, S. Magill, S. Miglioranzi, B. Musgrave, J. Repond, R. Yoshida, Margarita C. K. Mattingly, N. Pavel, A. G. Yagües Molina, P. Antonioli, G. Bari, M. Basile, L. Bellagamba, D. Boscherini, A. Bruni, G. Bruni, G. Cara Romeo, L. Cifarelli, F. Cindolo, A. Contin, M. Corradi, S. De Pasquale, P. Giusti, G. Iacobucci, A. Margotti, A. Montanari, R. Nania, F. Palmonari, A. Pesci, A. Polini

Faculty Publications

The inelastic production of J/ψ mesons in ep collisions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 109 pb-1. The J/ψ mesons were identified using the decay channel J/ψ → μ+μ- The measurements were performed in the kinematic range 2 < Q2 < 80 GeV2, 50 < W < 250 GeV, 0.2 < z < 0.9 and -1.6 < Ylab < 1.3, where Q2 is the virtuality of the exchanged photon, W is the photon-proton centre-of-mass energy, z is the fraction of the photon energy carried by the J/ψ meson in the proton rest frame and Ylab is the rapidity of the J/ψ in the laboratory frame. The measured cross sections are compared to theoretical predictions within the non-relativistic QCD framework including colour-singlet and colour-octet contributions, as well as to predictions based on the κT-factorisation approach. Calculations of the colour-singlet process generally agree with the data, whereas inclusion of colour-octet terms spoils this agreement. © Springer-Verlag/Società Italiana di Fisica 2005.

August 31, 2005 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Robust Techniques And Applications In Fuzzy Clustering, Amit Banerjee

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses issues central to frizzy classification. The issue of sensitivity to noise and outliers of least squares minimization based clustering techniques, such as Fuzzy c-Means (FCM) and its variants is addressed. In this work, two novel and robust clustering schemes are presented and analyzed in detail. They approach the problem of robustness from different perspectives. The first scheme scales down the FCM memberships of data points based on the distance of the points from the cluster centers. Scaling done on outliers reduces their membership in true clusters. This scheme, known as the Mega-clustering, defines a conceptual mega-cluster which …

Variable Permittivity Dielectric Material Loaded Stepped-Horn Antenna, Ozgur Ozdemir

Dissertations

Stepped-horn antenna loaded with dielectric material of variable permittivity is proposed to improve radiation characteristics and/or to increase the electrical dimensions of the radiating structure compared to unloaded empty one. A hybrid numerical technique is used to analyze such an antenna. The tapered section of the horn antenna is modeled by multi-stepped waveguide structures filled with variable dielectric constant material. Generalized scattering matrix representation of the tapered section of the horn antenna is obtained using mode matching technique. The radiating aperture problem is solved by the method of moments, under the assumption that the horn is terminated by an infinite …

An Automata-Based Automatic Verification Environment, Yi Meng

Dissertations

With the continuing growth of computer systems including safety-critical computer control systems, the need for reliable tools to help construct, analyze, and verify such systems also continues to grow. The basic motivation of this work is to build such a formal verification environment for computer-based systems.

An example of such a tool is the Design Oriented Verification and Evaluation (DOVE) created by Australian Defense Science and Technology Organization. One of the advantages of DOVE is that it combines ease of use provided by a graphical user interface for describing specifications in the form of extended state machines with the rigor …

On The Design For Flexibility Of Manufacturing Systems : A Stochiastic Approach, Nathapol Areeratchakul

Dissertations

Flexibility has emerged as one of the most strategic imperatives for company viability in today's fast paced economy. This realization has stimulated extensive research efforts in this area most of which have focused mainly on defining flexibility and its attributes, the need for flexibility and how to measure it. Nevertheless, despite the considerable amount of publications regarding flexibility and its related subjects, insufficient attention has been given to the optimality of the design for flexibility and the inherent needs to meet uncertainty. Bridging this gap is the intent of this work.

In this dissertation, developed analytical models are for the …

Development Of Micro-Scale And Automated Membrane Extraction Systems For Water Analysis, Xiaoyan Wang

Dissertations

Monitoring of trace level contaminants in water involves the extraction and enrichment of analytes. Over the years several techniques have been developed for this purpose. Currently there is an urgent need for the development of micro-scale extraction techniques that can lead to simple, fast trace analysis. Automated instruments that can be used for continuous, on-line analysis are also important. Membrane extraction can address both these needs, because it can be carried out in a continuous fashion and can also be miniaturized. This research addresses these two aspects of membrane extraction for the next generation of sample preparation.

Micro-Scale Membrane Extraction: …

Effect Of Heavy Metals On Salt March Biota, Kallaya Suntornvongsagul

Dissertations

Environmental restoration of disturbed, degraded and potentially contaminated wetland sites aims for the persistent and sustainable re-establishment of biological communities and important wetland functions. An ecologically informed restoration strategy presupposes some understanding of these system processes, but also of potential impacts on contaminants in the environment for risk assessment, long-term management, and potential cost-effective mitigative measures. In this study, potential effects of moderate heavy metal contamination in sediments of the urban salt marsh Harrier Meadow, NJ, were evaluated on growth performance of the common salt marsh plant S. patens and associated arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) colonizing its roots. Growth performance …

Functionalization, Growth And Applications Of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes, Yubing Wang

Dissertations

Because of their remarkable structural, mechanical and electrical properties, carbon nanotubes, and especially single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), represent one of the most widely investigated materials today in the emerging field of nanotechnology. The development of oriented growth of SWNTs critical for applications, novel approaches for the creation of functional SWNTs, and applications of both as-prepared and chemically functionalized SWNTs for electrochemically-induced hydrogen storage, in-situ formation of new polymer and ceramic nanocomposites with SWNTs, and the fabrication and study for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, of a SWNT-based biofuel cell and self-powered biosensor, are the thrusts …

A Bayesian Approach To Wireless Location Problems, Ivan Zorych

Dissertations

Several approaches for indoor location estimation in wireless networks are proposed. We explore non-hierarchical and hierarchical Bayesian graphical models that use prior knowledge about physics of signal propagation, as well as different modifications of Bayesian bivariate spline models. The hierarchical Bayesian model that incorporates information about locations of access points achieves accuracy that is similar to other published models and algorithms, but by using prior knowledge, this model drastically reduces the requirement for training data when compared to existing approaches. Proposed Bayesian bivariate spline models for location surpass predictive accuracy of existing methods. It has been shown that different versions …