Digital Commons Network^™

Cloud-To-Ground Lightning Production In Strongly Forced, Low-Instability Convective Lines Associated With Damaging Wind, Matthew S. Van Den Broeke, David M. Schultz, Robert H. Johns, Jeffry S. Evans, John E. Hales

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

During 9–11 November 1998 and 9–10 March 2002, two similar convective lines moved across the central and eastern United States. Both convective lines initiated over the southern plains along strong surface-based cold fronts in moderately unstable environments. Both lines were initially associated with cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning, as detected by the National Lightning Detection Network, and both events met the criteria to be classified as derechos, producing swaths of widespread damaging wind. After moving into areas of marginal, if any, instability over the upper Midwest, CG lightning production ceased or nearly ceased, although the damaging winds continued. The 9 March 2002 …

Photometry Of Type Ii Cepheids. Iii. The Intermediate-Period Stars, Edward G. Schmidt, Dale Johnston, Shawn Langan, Kevin M. Lee

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

We present 741 new photometric observations for 22 Cepheids with periods between 3 and 8 days. Many of the stars are probable type II Cepheids, but we have included some type I Cepheids for comparison. The shapes and stability of the shapes of the light curves, the stability of the periods, and the scatter of individual data points are discussed. Although none of these proves to be a reliable discriminator between type I and type II Cepheids, they do permit the identification of several unusual stars.

Towards A Scalable And Efficient Data Classification Technique., Fadi Samih Omar Mehanna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Data Classification is a task that could be found in many life activities. In general, the term could be used for any activity that derives some decision or forecast based on the currently available information. Using a more accurate definition, a classification procedure is the construction of some kind of a method for making judgments for a continuing sequence of cases, where each new case must be assigned to one of pre-defined classes. This type of construction has been termed supervised learning, in order to distinguish it from unsupervised learning or clustering in which the classes are not pre-defined but …

Development Of Simplified Models For Crashworthiness Analysis., Yucheng Liu 1976-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Simplified modeling generates a great deal of interest in the area of crashworthiness analysis. Modeling methods used to create simplified computer models for crashworthiness have been well developed. In advanced simplified models, researchers develop simplified elements that can correctly predict structure's crash behavior based on the existing collapse theories. These developed simplified elements then are applied to develop the simplified models. Nevertheless, most of the exiting collapse theories are regarding the thin-walled box section beams. However, in addition to the box section member, the channel section member is another popular member and is widely used in engineering for architectural structures, …

Defining The Mechanisms Of Neutrophil Exocytosis Using Proteomic Techniques., George Lominadze 1978-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exocytosis of intracellular granules is critical for conversion of inactive, circulating neutrophils to fully activated cells. The p38 MAPK pathway plays a central role in neutrophil exocytosis, although its mechanism of action is unknown. We used several proteomic approaches to identify granule proteins and find targets of the p38 MAPK and its downstream kinase, MK2, on granules. Our analysis identified 286 proteins on neutrophil granules, four of which were known MK2 substrates. Known p38 substrates were not detected. However, MRP-14 was identified as a novel p38 MAPK substrate. MRP-14 was phosphorylated by p38 MAPK in neutrophils upon cell stimulation and …

Analytical And Numerical Modeling, Fabrication And Rf Measurement Techniques For Rf Planar Micro-Inductors On Silicon, Daniel W. Brown

Theses

In mixed signal integrated circuits, the role of passives has become increasingly important. In particular, the characterization and implementation of an embedded planar coil inductor presents several challenges. The present work is a comprehensive study of micro inductors that includes analytical modeling, numerical simulation, in-house fabrication processes, circuit implementation in silicon, and RF measurement techniques. Although the inductor is widely integrated on silicon, there is still a need for closed form expressions for inductance and the quality factor. In addition, amongst the numerous commercially available simulation packages, there still is a need to identify the tool that best suits the …

Optimization Of Interhospital Transfer Of Patients To Reduce Emergency Department Overcrowding., Brandi Marie Hill 1980-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the feasibility of interhospital patient transfers (within a hospital corporation referred to as NESW Hospital Co.) as a means of reducing emergency department overcrowding. Customer satisfaction is a highly weighted factor in the event of interhospital transferring of patients, as providing quality health care is of the utmost importance to the NESW Hospital Co. Interhospital patient transfers are considered in times of high patient volumes when the referring hospital lacks an available bed to care for those patients whom, via the emergency department, must be admitted to a nursing unit. NESW …

Product Development Knowledge-Processing System, Jiefei Qiu

Theses

This thesis develops a methodology that integrates Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and Design Structure Matrix (DSM) to address the problem of analyzing, interpreting, and transforming the knowledge data flow during the product development process.

A product development process is the sequence of steps an enterprise takes to conceive, design, and commercialize a product. The general process includes: Planning, Concept Development, System-Level Design, Detail Design, Testing and Refinement, and Production Ramp-Up. One way to think about the development process is as a knowledge-processing system.

Prior to this study, there are few articles integrating TRIZ and …

Teacher Perceptions Of Full-Day Kindergarten, Roberta Shegrud

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Generalizability For Anomaly Detection, Gilbert L. Peterson, Robert F. Mills, Brent T. Mcbride, Wesley T. Allred

Faculty Publications

In security-related areas there is concern over the novel “zeroday” attack that penetrates system defenses and wreaks havoc. The best methods for countering these threats are recognizing “non-self” as in an Artificial Immune System or recognizing “self” through clustering. For either case, the concern remains that something that looks similar to self could be missed. Given this situation one could logically assume that a tighter fit to self rather than generalizability is important for false positive reduction in this type of learning problem. This article shows that a tight fit, although important, does not supersede having some model generality. This …

Crisis Manager Of The American Revolution: Henry Laurens, Jeffrey R. Gudzune

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens was a firm leader amid a time of national emergency. When a dispute within the Continental Army threatened both the continuation of General Washington's command and the American alliance with France, Laurens went beyond his limited sphere of political authority to settle the matter. When a peace commission from England arrived in the United States to begin discussing terms for an end to the hostilities, Laurens found himself in an increasingly difficult diplomatic situation. While wrestling with the question of whether or not to accept the British offer, Laurens was also forced …

Reservoir Characterization Using Intelligent Seismic Inversion, F. Emre Artun

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Integrating different types of data having different scales is the major challenge in reservoir characterization studies. Seismic data is among those different types of data, which is usually used by geoscientists for structural mapping of the subsurface and making interpretations of the reservoir's facies distribution. Yet, it has been a common aim of geoscientists to incorporate seismic data in high-resolution reservoir description through a process called seismic inversion.;In this study, an intelligent seismic inversion methodology is presented to achieve a desirable correlation between relatively low-frequency seismic signals, and the much higher frequency wireline-log data. Vertical seismic profile (VSP) is used …

Imaging Connection August 2005, Chester F. Carlson Center For Imaging Science

RIT Digital Archives

CIS Outreach Goes Nationwide||Imaging Helps Enhance Homeland Security||CEO of Pictometry International Corporation Named CIS Advisory Board Chair||Former RIT Dean Will Be Missed||RIT Team Promotes the Return of Otters to Western New York||CIS Alumni Joins Advisory Board Donna Rankin-Parobek ‘92||Famed Painting by Color Master Faber Birren Comes to Munsell Color Science Laboratory||Mellon Digital Camera Benchmarking Project Completed

Geogdl: A Web-Based Approach To Geography Examination, Ee Peng Lim, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The traditional educational approach with students as passive recipients has been the subject of criticism. A constructivist learner-centered approach towards education has been argued to produce greater internalization and application of knowledge compared to the traditional teacher-centered, transmission-oriented approach. Nevertheless, contemporary instructional design models argue for the use and integration of both approaches especially in complex learning tasks. This paper describes GeogDL, a Web-based application developed above a digital library of geographical resources for Singapore students preparing to take a national examination in geography. GeogDL is unique in that it not only provides an environment for active learning, it also …

Evaluation Of Time-Varying Availability In Multi-Echelon Inventory System With Combat Damage, Hoong Chuin Lau, Huawei Song

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The models for multi-echelon inventory systems in existing literatures predominantly address failures due to reliability in peacetime. In wartime or even peacetime operational scenarios, unexpected combat damage can cause a large number of systems to be heavily damaged, to the extent that they become irreparable. In this paper, we study a multi-echelon spare parts support system under combat damage, discuss the replenishment policy and propose an approximate method to evaluate the time-varying system performance operational availability considering the effect of passivation. Experiments show our model works well and efficiently against simulation.

Fluorescent Photoinduced Electron Transfer (Pet) Cation Sensors Derived From Natural Products, Kenny Loo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Two new second generation fluorescent switches that are based on the chromophore-spacer-receptor architecture are reported in this thesis. The fluorescence modulation of these switches is a result of quenching or initiating photoinduced electron transfer (PET) between the chromophore and the receptors due to cation binding. These two molecules utilize an alkaloid, anabasine, as the proton receptor, and function as fluorescent off-on-off switches with decreasing pH. One of these molecules also utilizes a coumarin as the chromophore, making it the first rationally designed fluorescent PET system based on natural products. Further studies of two well-known first generation fluorescent switches to achieve …

Determining The Phylogenetic Relationship Of A Collection Of Hydra Strains And Species Using The Mitochondrial Genes : Lrrna, Trna-Trp And Coii, Jacob Zuckman

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The discovery of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the early 1960’s ushered in the field of organellar genetics. Evidence from both genetic and physical techniques has demonstrated that mtDNA are generally circular in structure, and that they represent the vestigial structure of the ancestral prokaryotic endosymbiont genome (Nosek et al., 1998). The more than 90 vertebrates and invertebrates sequenced to date have been found to have a remarkably constant gene content. With few exceptions, each contains the genes for 13 energy pathway proteins, the 2 RNA components of mitochondrial ribosomes (23S and 16S rRNA), and 22 transfer RNAs (Pont-Kingdon et …

Boosted Decision Trees For Word Recognition In Handwritten Document Retrieval, Nicholas Howe, Toni M. Rath, R. Manmatha

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Recognition and retrieval of historical handwritten material is an unsolved problem. We propose a novel approach to recognizing and retrieving handwritten manuscripts, based upon word image classification as a key step. Decision trees with normalized pixels as features form the basis of a highly accurate AdaBoost classifier, trained on a corpus of word images that have been resized and sampled at a pyramid of resolutions. To stem problems from the highly skewed distribution of class frequencies, word classes with very few training samples are augmented with stochastically altered versions of the originals. This increases recognition performance substantially. On a standard …

The Phantom Philosophy? An Empirical Investigation Of Legal Interpretation, William K. Ford, Jason J. Czarnezki

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

This Article tests a model of judicial decisionmaking that incorporates elements of both the attitudinal model and the legal model, along with measures of collegiality and other variables. We develop a measure of interpretive philosophy relying primarily on judicial opinions, which we code for certain indicators of traditional interpretive approaches (i.e., the use of interpretive tools). The critical question is whether judges with similar interpretive philosophies are more likely to agree with one another when deciding cases. Our general finding is that ideology and interpretive philosophy are not significant predictors of agreement. Instead, experience on the bench together is a …

Absolute Voting Rules, Adrian Vermeule

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

No abstract provided.

End-Users’ Acceptance Of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: An Investigation Using Grounded Theory Approach, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Xin Tan, Monica Beethe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The success of ERP implementation depends, to a large extent, on the intensity and nature of its use by end-users. Therefore, it is important to understand the phenomena underlying end-users’ acceptance of ERP systems. This study was conducted at a large institution that implemented an ERP system. It uses the grounded theory approach to inductively develop a model that highlights key factors influencing end-users’ acceptance of ERP systems.

Personalization Of Web Services: A Study On The Fit Between Web Tasks And Personalization Mechanisms, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Keng Siau, Min Ling

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Personalization is increasingly being considered an important ingredient of Web applications. In most cases, personalization techniques and mechanisms are used for tailoring information services to user needs. It is motivated by the recognition that a user has needs, and meeting them successfully is likely to lead to a satisfying relationship and re-use of the Web services offered. However, if the personalization mechanisms do not match the needs depicted by the tasks, it will decrease user satisfaction and performance. In this research, we use the cognitive fit theory to examine the fit between personalization mechanisms and Web tasks.

Privacy Issues In The Era Of Ubiquitous Commerce, Holtjona Galanxhi, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The vision of ubiquitous commerce (u‐commerce) is realized through the convergence of electronic, mobile, television, voice and silent commerce applications. The ubiquity, universality, uniqueness and unison of u‐commerce will provide two principal benefits for individual users and businesses: increased convenience as well as more personalized and customized services. However, u‐commerce will also bring emerging issues such as a greater degree of privacy concerns that will impact individual users, companies and society at large. This paper proposes and elaborates on a conceptual framework for privacy in the u‐commerce era. This framework is developed based on Lessig's macro‐level perspective and Adams' micro‐level …

Evaluation Criteria For Information Systems Development Methodologies, Keng Siau, Xin Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The evaluation of information systems development methodologies is becoming increasingly important. The lack of a commonly acceptable set of criteria for evaluation, however, hinders aggregating knowledge from field studies. Our study attempts to fill the gap. To reduce the effects of subjectivity, we surveyed the opinions of a group (28) of experienced IS researchers. Fifty-one criteria were generated from the research participants. A systematic content analysis technique will be applied for grouping the unique criteria into general categories. Upon completion, our study can make both academic and practical contributions in evaluating ISD methodologies.

Toward Practical Measures Of Complexity In Real-Time Modeling Methods, J. Erickson, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Systems development methods have become more complex, concurrently with many of today’s systems. UML has been criticized for its complexity. Using Rossi and Brinkkemper’s (1996) complexity metrics, Siau and Cao, (2001) completed a complexity analysis of UML and other modeling techniques, finding that UML is more complex than other techniques. Siau, Erickson and Lee (2002) proposed that Rossi and Brinkkemper’s metrics present the theoretical maximum complexity, as opposed to a practitioner-based complexity, that must be less than the theoretical maximum. Erickson and Siau (2004) proposed that a subset of UML (a kernel) composed of the most commonly used constructs, could …

An Investigation Into The Continued Use Of Unified Modeling Language (Uml) In Information Systems Development, Keng Siau, X. Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As the de facto standard for object-oriented modeling language, UML is expected to play an increasingly important role in information systems development. The long-term viability and eventual success of UML depend, to a great extent, on the continued use by UML users such as developers and analysts. Systematic investigations on UML’s continued use have been missing from contemporary discussions. Our study attempts to fill this gap in the literature. We developed a research model, which is primarily based on the Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT). According to this model, UML users’ perceived discrepancy between pre-adoption expectation and post-adoption perceived performance, which …

A Semiotics View Of Modeling Method Complexity – The Case Of Uml, Keng Siau, Y. Tian

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the standard modeling language for object oriented system development. Despite its status as a standard, UML’s formal specification is fuzzy and its theoretical foundation is weak. Semiotics, the study of signs, provides us good theoretical foundation for UML research as UML graphical notations are some kinds of signs. In this research, we use semiotics to study the graphical notations in UML. We hypothesized that using iconic signs as UML graphical notations leads to more accurate representation and arouses fewer connotations than using symbolic signs. Since symbolic signs involve more learning efforts, we assume that expert …

Medoid Queries In Large Spatial Databases, Kyriakos Mouratidis, Dimitris Papadias, Spiros Papadimitriou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Assume that a franchise plans to open k branches in a city, so that the average distance from each residential block to the closest branch is minimized. This is an instance of the k-medoids problem, where residential blocks constitute the input dataset and the k branch locations correspond to the medoids. Since the problem is NP-hard, research has focused on approximate solutions. Despite an avalanche of methods for small and moderate size datasets, currently there exists no technique applicable to very large databases. In this paper, we provide efficient algorithms that utilize an existing data-partition index to achieve low CPU …

Constrained Shortest Path Computation, Manolis Terrovitis, Spiridon Bakiras, Dimitris Papadias, Kyriakos Mouratidis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes and solves a-autonomy and k-stops shortest path problems in large spatial databases. Given a source s and a destination d, an aautonomy query retrieves a sequence of data points connecting s and d, such that the distance between any two consecutive points in the path is not greater than a. A k-stops query retrieves a sequence that contains exactly k intermediate data points. In both cases our aim is to compute the shortest path subject to these constraints. Assuming that the dataset is indexed by a data-partitioning method, the proposed techniques initially compute a sub-optimal path by …

Web Mining - The Ontology Approach, Ee Peng Lim, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The World Wide Web today provides users access to extremely large number of Web sites many of which contain information of education and commercial values. Due to the unstructured and semi-structured nature of Web pages and the design idiosyncrasy of Web sites, it is a challenging task to develop digital libraries for organizing and managing digital content from the Web. Web mining research, in its last 10 years, has on the other hand made significant progress in categorizing and extracting content from the Web. In this paper, we represent ontology as a set of concepts and their inter-relationships relevant to …