Digital Commons Network^™

Geologic Map Of The Bachelor Mountain 7.5' Quadrangle Beaverhead County, Montana, Susanne U. Janecke, R. J. Dorsey, J. C. Kickham, J. P. Matoush, W. Mcintosh

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Geologic Map of the Bachelor Mountain 7.5’ Quadrangle Beaverhead County, Montana Geologic Summary The Bachelor Mountain quadrangle is located in the Horse Prairie Creek drainage basin of southwest Montana and contains exposures of Middle Proterozoic metasedimentary rocks and eighteen map units of Eocene to Oligocene basin-fill deposits assigned to the Medicine Lodge beds. Locally, overlying upper Oligocene to lower Miocene(?) Everson Creek beds and late early to early late Miocene Bannack Pass beds are also preserved as basin-fill deposits. The Medicine Lodge beds were deposited in an early basin, the Grant protobasin (Fig. 1a), during slip on the Muddy-Grasshopper detachment …

Relation Of Healthcare Provider-Patient Interpersonal Impacts And Health Related Control Appraisals To Patients' Satisfaction And Compliance With Treatment, Thomas A. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined healthcare provider-patient interpersonal impacts and health related control appraisals to patients' satisfaction and compliance with treatment recommendations. Secondary outcomes such as patient satisfaction are becoming increasingly important, and compliance with treatment can have direct effects on primary outcomes. Eighty-one patients at a large, urban university student health center participated in the current study. Participants completed participatory style and interpersonal impact measures both before and after the visit with their provider, and completed satisfaction questionnaires immediately following the visit, and at the two-week follow-up along with a measure assessing compliance with treatment recommendations. Providers also completed interpersonal …

Integration Of Vmc++ Into A Commercial Treatment Planning System, Joseph Kingsley Gardner

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, there has been interest to integrate VMC++ into the commercial treatment planning system at VCU as another Monte Carlo code option, since it has been shown to increase efficiency dramatically without introducing a significant amount of systematic error. Also, independent validation of VMC++ for photon beams is of interest since this has not been performed previously in literature. This study included several tests required to integrate VMC++. Output factor normalization was performed and found to agree with experiment to within 1% for all field sizes except 1x1 cm2. Geometric validation was successful. Dosimetric validation was performed with respect to …

A Nomogram For Valproic Acid And The Effect Of Missed Doses, Alaa M. Ahmad

Theses and Dissertations

Background. Clinicians are divided on dosing recommendations when a dose is delayed or missed. For a neuropsychiatric agent like valproic acid (VPA), rational dosing recommendations are of particular importance. VPA is subject to therapeutic monitoring using total concentrations. Due to non-linear binding of VPA to plasma proteins, current dose titration schemes for VPA are empirical. The objectives of this research were to 1- study the effect of missed/delayed doses on steady state concentrations of VPA and 2-design a nomogram that can be used for dose titration based on total VPA concentrations. Methods. 1- A simulation study was conducted to test …

The Experience Of Decision Making In Adolescent Females And Young Women With Mobility Limiting Disorders, Bernice Balzer Allen

Theses and Dissertations

Young women with mobility limiting disorders face many challenges as they move through adolescence into young adulthood. In addition to the challenges of this developmental period, they must consider their disability as they manage their lives. Competent decision making is a foundational skill for self-management and for transition in adulthood. It is also a protective factor for resilience.There is little research on decision making in adolescents with disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the decision making experiences of female adolescents and young women with mobility limiting disorders. Theoretical underpinnings for the study included Resilience Theory …

Joint Center Movement Analysis And 3d Motion Modeling Of Upper Arm - Comparison Of Several Algorithms With The Visual 3-D Program, Leena Joseph

Theses and Dissertations

600 out of every 100,000 people in the United States today suffer from some form of cerebellar disease that causes major abnormalities in the equilibrium and aligned, coordinated movement of the body. Hence it becomes essential to diagnose the extent of the movement and gait disorder and provide required therapy to the patients. Various developments have been made in the designing and application of interactive software system for body positioning. Object oriented design techniques are used in the field of software engineering for interactive geometric representation of system behavior. Motion analysis of the upper and lower extremities of the body …

An Application Of Combinatorial Methods, Yingying Yang

Theses and Dissertations

Probability theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with determining the long run frequency or chance that a given event will occur. This chance is determined by dividing the number of selected events by the number of total events possible, assuming these events are equally likely. Probability theory is simply enumerative combinatorial analysis when applied to finite sets. For a given finite sample space, probability questions are usually "just" a lot of counting. The purpose of this thesis is to provide some in depth analysis of several combinatorial methods, including basic principles of counting, permutations and combinations, by specifically exploring …

The Civil War: A Collaboration In Direction And Choreography, Cara E. Rawlings

Theses and Dissertations

This text is a partial record of the development of the Virginia Commonwealth University production of The Civil War: A Musical that opened on April 7, 2005 for a three-week run ending April 28, 2005. The greater part of the text is devoted to the evaluation of the underlying principles of direction and choreography applied in the creation of an artistically aid financially successful production of this size. Included in the evaluation of The Civil War: A Musical are analyses of the directors' --Patti D'Beck and David Leong --individual creative processes, aesthetics, and working styles. The result of this evaluation …

Feedback Stabilization Of Inverted Pendulum Models, Bruce Cox

Theses and Dissertations

Many mechanical systems exhibit nonlinear movement and are subject to perturbations from a desired equilibrium state. These perturbations can greatly reduce the efficiency of the systems. It is therefore desirous to analyze the asymptotic stabilizability of an equilibrium solution of nonlinear systems; an excellent method of performing these analyses is through study of Jacobian linearization's and their properties. Two enlightening examples of nonlinear mechanical systems are the Simple Inverted Pendulum and the Inverted Pendulum on a Cart (PoC). These examples provide insight into both the feasibility and usability of Jacobian linearizations of nonlinear systems, as well as demonstrate the concepts …

Afm And C-Afm Studies Of Gan Films, Katherine Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the techniques of atomic force microscope (AFM) and conductive AFM (C-AFM) to study the conduction properties of n-type GaN films. A total of 16 samples were examined and grouped according to their surface morphologies and conduction behaviors. The most common type of surface morpliology was that of Ga-rich samples having undulating "hillocks" with interspersed holes. Although most of the samples had this common morphology, their local conduction behaviors were not all similar. Local I-V spectra of the tip-sample Schottky contact could be grouped according to three major types: low leakage, high leakage, and "p-type". The highest quality …

Erythrocyte-Associated Transients In Capillary Po2 In The Rat Spinotrapezius Muscle During Hemodilution With Hespan And A Hemoglobin-Based Oxygen Carrier, Matthew Barker

Theses and Dissertations

Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers for use as transfusion fluids have emerged as a leading technology directed at stemming shortages of a safe blood supply and providing a readily available resuscitation fluid in various trauma situations. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of isovolemic hemodilution with Hespan and a hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier (HBOC) on erythrocyte-associated transients (EATs) in capillary PO2. The particulate nature of blood flow in capillaries, when observed from a stationary observation point, results in fluctuations of PO2 as alternating red blood cells and plasma gaps move through the detection region. Therefore, through experimental methods which …

Intelligent Autonomous Data Categorization, Edward Graham Finegan

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research was to determine if the results of a simple comparison algorithm (SCA) could be improved by adding a hyperspace analogue to language model of memory (HAL) layer to form NCA. The HAL layer provides contextual data that otherwise would be unavailable for consideration. It was found that NCA did improve the results when compared to SCA alone. However, NCA added complexity problems that limit its practicality. The complexity of this algorithm is On3 where n is equal to the number of unique symbols in the data. While there is a relativity reasonable soft upper bound …

Material And Acoustic Properties Of Swimbladders Of Tilapia And Channel Catfish, Mohammed Ali Nawaz

Theses and Dissertations

Acoustically, teleost swimbladders have been considered resonant underwater bubbles. Contrary results indicating that bladders are tuned less sharply than such a bubble have been explained by damping of surrounding fish tissue. Recent findings in toadfish and weakfish, however, suggest that the bladder is a highly damped structure and that the frequency of the fish sounds is deternlined as a forced response to sonic muscle movement rather than by resonance of the bladder. In this study I examined acoustics and material properties of swimbladders in Tilapia (an auditory generalist) and the channel catfish (an auditory specialist). The swimbladder was struck with …

Analysis And Shape Modeling Of Thin Piezoelectric Actuators, Makram Mouhli

Theses and Dissertations

The field of smart materials is an increasingly growing area of research. In aerodynamics applications especially, transducers have to fulfill a series of requirements such as light weight, size, energy consumption, robustness and durability. Piezoelectric transducers, devices which transform an electrical signal into motion, fulfill many of these requirements. Specifically, piezoelectric composites are of interest due to their added toughness and ease of integration into a structure. Resulting composites have a characteristic initial curvature with accompanying residual stresses that are responsible for enhanced performance, relative to flat actuators, when the active material is energized. A number of transducer designs based …

Free, Full-Text, Scholarly Journals On The Web, John Jaeger

The Christian Librarian

In the November, 2000 issue of College & Research Libraries, Michael Fesmire and Elizabeth Young had a fascinating article entitled, "Free Scholarly Electronic Journals: What Access Do College and University Libraries Provide?" In the article, they discussed the rapid growth of these free, academic, peer-reviewed journals on the Internet that covered all different subject areas. Through careful effort, the authors had located over 200 scholarly, full-text, peer reviewed journals, many of which were indexed in major services such as ERIC, Medline, MathSciNet, INSPEC, and C henucal Abstracts. They also noted, though, that most college and university libraries were not making …

Estimation Of Image Quality Factors For Face Recognition, Akintunde A. Akinbola

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Over the past few years, verification and identification of humans using biometric has gained attention of researchers and of the public in general. Face recognition systems are used by the public and the government and are applied in different facets of life including security, identification of criminals and identification of terrorists. Because of the importance of these applications, it is of great necessity that face recognition systems be as accurate as possible. Some research has shown that image quality degrades the performance of face recognition systems. Most previous research has focused on designing algorithms for face recognition that deal or …

Evaluation Of Quality Control Parameters For Superpave Hot Mix Asphalt, Thomas W. Adams

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Quality control of Superpave hot mix asphalt has profound consequences for both the West Virginia Department of Highways (WVDOH) and the constructor who has placed the asphalt. The quality control procedure includes taking samples from the job site, and performing various tests so that certain volumetric parameters can be evaluated against a standard set of tolerances. WVDOH currently uses a statistically based quality control - quality assurance method, QC/QA.;The current QC/QA requirements used by the WVDOH for Superpave projects have not been statistically evaluated to establish the risk to the agency and constructor for either accepting an unsatisfactory material or …

Graph Algorithms For The Haplotyping Problem, Yunkai Liu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Evidence from investigations of genetic differences among human beings shows that genetic diseases are often the results of genetic mutations. The most common form of these mutations is single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). A complete map of all SNPs in the human genome will be extremely valuable for studying the relationships between specific haplotypes and specific genetic diseases. Some recent discoveries show that the DNA sequence of human beings can be partitioned into long blocks where genetic recombination has been rare. Then, inferring both haplotypes from chromosome sequences is a biologically meaningful research topic, which has compounded mathematical and computational problems.;We …

Gallium Nitride-Based Blue Laser Diodes, Sridhar Kuchibhatla

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Group III nitride wide band gap semiconductors have recently attracted considerable attention due to their applications for optical devices operating in the blue and UV wavelength regions. Nitride materials are stable at high temperatures and also chemically stable. Analysis of InGaN based blue laser diodes is required for the research and development of future deep UV laser diodes for bio-sensing applications. The conventional multiple quantum wells suffer from inhomogeneous carrier distribution across quantum wells. This inhomogeneous distribution increases the threshold current density of the laser diode. This project addresses the issue through the design of a novel structure for the …

Dynamic Learning With Neural Networks And Support Vector Machines, Liang Tian

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Neural network approach has proven to be a universal approximator for nonlinear continuous functions with an arbitrary accuracy. It has been found to be very successful for various learning and prediction tasks. However, supervised learning using neural networks has some limitations because of the black box nature of their solutions, experimental network parameter selection, danger of overfitting, and convergence to local minima instead of global minima. In certain applications, the fixed neural network structures do not address the effect on the performance of prediction as the number of available data increases. Three new approaches are proposed with respect to these …

The Relationship Between Third And Fourth Grade Everyday Mathematics Assessments And Performance On The New Jersey Assessment Of Skills And Knowledge In Fourth Grade (Njask/4), Mariann T. Helfant

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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High Performance Liquid Chromatography Diastereomeric Separation For Chiral Analysis And Kinetic Analysis, Li Li

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Simulation-Based Performance Modeling For War Fighter In Loop Minefield Detection System, Abhilash Rajagopal, Sanjeev Agarwal, Sreeram Ramakrishnan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Adviser's Guide To Health Savings Accounts, Gary S. Lesser, Christine L. Keller, Susan D. Diehl

Guides, Handbooks and Manuals

No abstract provided.

2005 Survey Report On The Wellbeing Of The Professions: Policing, Nursing And Teaching, Institute For The Service Professions, Edith Cowan University

Research outputs pre 2011

This report assesses the wellbeing of the professions of policing, nursing and teaching in Western Australia. The findings are derived from surveys of how individuals think about their occupations, their colleagues and employers. The level of wellbeing affects the ease of attracting and retaining staff and the quality of delivered services.

We present and discuss summary results of responses to questionnaires sent in 2005 to 5,180 police, 6,000 nurses and 9,000 teachers. Each of the professions is here regarded as a single group. The number of respondents is sufficient to allow many more detailed analyses to be performed and reported …

Issec: A Socio-Technical Dss For Information Security Planning, Brian D. Fritz, Omar F. El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The traditional notion of information security, rooted in a solidly technical foundation, has within the past decade seen wide criticism within academia - much of which has originated from the social sciences community - as being narrow and technology-centric instead of holistic and organizational in its focus. As information security awareness encompasses an ever-greater scope of organizational dynamics, it becomes necessary for us to develop design methodologies and ultimately, systems, capable of dealing practically with the complex and multifaceted nature of the decision-making of information systems security which is entailed by the emerging notions of a new paradigm for security. …

The Analysis Of Dielectric Loss In Co-Planar Waveguide Structures Using Generalized Transverse Resonance, James William Culver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are several methods for the full-wave characterization of waveguide discontinuities; Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference Technique (FDT), and Method of Moments (MoM) are popular. However, these methods are not easily applied when studying the ‘modal anatomy’ of a discontinuity. Other full-wave techniques are better suited. This dissertation discusses the formulation of a technique known as Generalized Transverse Resonance (GTR), which is a subset of Method of Moments. Generalized Transverse Resonance is a hybrid method combining the Transverse Resonance Method (TRM) with the Mode Matching Technique (MMT).

The understanding of the generalized transverse resonance method starts with a discussion …

Development Of Enhanced Multiport Network Analyzer Calibrations Using Non-Ideal Standards, John Edward Daniel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An Improved Short-Open-Load-Reciprocal (SOLR) Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) calibration is developed and validated. Through the use of a more complex load model the usable frequency range of the SOLR calibration algorithm is expanded. Comparisons are made between this new calibration and existing calibration techniques that are known to be accurate at high frequencies. The Anritsu 37xxx Lightning series 65GHz VNA is used as the principle measurement tool for calibration comparison and verification. This work is built off of previous work done at USF in which it is shown that the Short-Open-Load-Thru (SOLT) calibration’s accuracy improves through the implementation of more …

Evaluation Of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools (Abets) And Their Application In Improving Tcp Performance, Yegyalakshmi Easwaran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Available bandwidth is a time-dependant variable that defines the spare bandwidth in an end-toend network path. Currently, there is significant focus in the research community on the design and development of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools (ABETs), and a few tools have resulted from this research. However, there is no comprehensive evaluation of these tools and the research work in this thesis attempts to fill that gap. A performance evaluation of important ABETs like Pathload, IGI and pathChirp in terms of their accuracy, convergence time and intrusiveness is conducted in several scenarios. A 2 k factorial design is carried out to …

Automatically Determining Route And Mode Of Transport Using A Gps Enabled Phone, Himanshu Gilani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A system consisting of a GPS-enabled phone and a database has been designed and implemented. This system is capable of recording the route traveled by a user and determining the mode of transport (walk, bicycle, car or bus) used. The Java code running in the GPS-enabled phone automatically records location data, determines critical locations for the trip, and transmits the locations to a central database using the wireless capabilities of the phone. As the route information arrives at the database, it is processed by the mode detection algorithm that determines the mode of transportation being used by the individual for …