Digital Commons Network^™

A Biologically Plausible System For Detecting Saliency In Video, David Burlone

Theses

Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists credit the dorsal and ventral pathways for the capability of detecting both still salient and motion salient objects. In this work, a framework is developed to explore potential models of still and motion saliency and is an extension of the original VENUS system. The early visual pathway is modeled by using Independent Component Analysis to learn a set of Gabor-like receptive fields similar to those found in the mammalian visual pathway. These spatial receptive fields form a set of 2D basis feature matrices, which are used to decompose complex visual stimuli into their spatial components. A …

Application Of Shifted Delta Cepstral Features For Gmm Language Identification, Jonathan Lareau

Theses

Spoken language identifcation (LID) in telephone speech signals is an important and difficult classification task. Language identifcation modules can be used as front end signal routers for multilanguage speech recognition or transcription devices. Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM's) can be utilized to effectively model the distribution of feature vectors present in speech signals for classification. Common feature vectors used for speech processing include Linear Prediction (LP-CC), Mel-Frequency (MF-CC), and Perceptual Linear Prediction derived Cepstral coefficients (PLP-CC). This thesis compares and examines the recently proposed type of feature vector called the Shifted Delta Cepstral (SDC) coefficients. Utilization of the Shifted Delta Cepstral …

Family Tree Manager, Catherine Sullivan

Theses

Many people are interested in learning about their family history. Discovering who has come before us can help us learn more about who we are, and possibly why we are the way we are. Over the years, more and more people have turned to software products to help them build and manage their family tree information. These products allow users to easily enter and retrieve the information, as well as provide graphical representations without the arduous task of drawing by hand. In addition, some manufacturers have made agreements with genealogy search services, and integrated the process of searching for relatives …

Implementation Of Image Processing Approach To Translation Of Asl Finger-Spelling To Digital Text, Divya Mandloi

Theses

This thesis describes the ongoing development of an image processing technique for the translation of American Sign Language (ASL) finger-spelling to text. The present analysis is the phase one of a broader project, the Sign2 Project, which is focused on a complete technological approach to the translation of ASL to digital audio and/or text. The methodology adopted in this analysis employs a gray-scale image processing technique to convert the American Sign Language finger-spelling to text. It attempts to process static images of the subject considered, and then matches them to a statistical database of pre-processed images to ultimately recognize the …

Europa: A Framework For Writing Reusable Automated Tests For C# Components, Christian Castillo

Theses

One of the main goals of software construction is reusability. Component-based (CB) development is a new paradigm that promises to facilitate the reuse of software elements. The component-based model attempts to create an analogy with computer hardware. The idea is that software applications should be developed by assembling existing components rather than reinventing solutions to problems that have already been solved. In this paradigm, a component consumer is faced with the problem of determining if a given component meets his expectations. Testing the component can help answer this question. The component consumer may have to apply the same test cases …

Mentoring In The Department Of Access Services At The National Technical Institute For The Deaf, Gayle Macias

Theses

Not provided.

Silver Lining, Mary Boyer

Theses

Not Included

Vanishing Trials: An English Perspective, Robert Dingwall, Emilie Cloatre

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This paper reviews the recent history of civil litigation in England and Wales. While previous work by Professor Kritzer has shown an absolute decline in trials over the last fifty years, with some fluctuation around this trend, this comment suggests that this may now have bottomed out. Given the evidence of a simultaneous, and continuing, decline in the number of claims filed, it may even be the case that trials are, at least temporarily, playing a larger part in the civil justice system than they have for many years. In contrast to the experience in the U.S., these changes seem …

Not Quite A World Without Trials: Why International Dispute Resolution Is Increasingly Judicialized, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The focus of this brief essay is to first outline some of the factors leading to increasing judicialization on the international level where public disputes (disputes between countries) are increasingly resolved by a neutral third party. In some cases, this increased judicialization includes arbitration (which we might put under the category of ADR in the U.S.). However, the use of arbitration at the international level is not ADR as we would define it in the U.S., since the important element at the international level is that the decision-making power is handed over to a third party-whether we call that a …

When We Hold No Truths To Be Self-Evident: Truth, Belief, Trust, And The Decline In Trials, Lisa Blomgren Bingham

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article will explore the relationship between the "vanishing trial" and the changing ways in which we think about truth. First, it briefly overviews how we think about knowing what is true: epistemology and this history of philosophy. Second, it looks to the philosophy of science and history of social science for new theories and methods about how we ascertain and construct meaning and what we believe to be real and true. Third, it examines our changing relation to information in the face of the "information explosion": information is the evidence upon which we reach a conclusion about what is …

How Much Justice Can We Afford: Defining The Courts' Roles And Deciding The Appropriate Number Of Trials, Settlement Signals, And Other Elements Needed To Administer Justice, John Lande

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article discusses how the court system can function optimally given declining trial rates and the limited resources available. It does not provide a detailed analysis of court financing but rather discusses broad issues relating to the role of trials in the legal system.

Designer Trials, Elizabeth Thornburg

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article is a thought experiment, or maybe a nightmare, about the intersection of freedom of contract and the trials that have not vanished. Could contracting parties effectively agree in advance of a dispute that any litigation of the case will comply with certain rules? Would such an agreement be enforced even in a contract of adhesion? If so, parties with sufficient bargaining leverage could design away many of the characteristics of litigation that they find unappealing without the need to resort to private processes. The result: a designer trial with the procedural deck stacked in favor of the party …

When Confidentiality Is Not Essential To Mediation And Competing Interests Necessitate Disclosure, Patrick Gill

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Mediation is a process where a neutral intervener helps disputing parties develop a mutually beneficial resolution. Confidentiality is an established element of mediation. In general, confidentiality furthers the ability of the parties to seek mutually beneficial outcomes to disputes that would otherwise customarily produce a win/lose result. Confidentiality encourages parties to explore their underlying interests, without fear of the repercussions of revealing such information. Arguments are asserted that mediation will not succeed without the assurance that communications will be protected by a confidentiality privilege. The Uniform Mediation Act (UMA) has attempted to clarify the various confidentiality protections afforded by individual …

Reconciling Professional Legal Education With The Evolving (Trial-Less) Reality Of Legal Practice, Julie Macfarlane, John Manwaring

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Our focus in this paper is the impact of these trends on legal education, especially professional legal education. What is undeniable is that lawyers (and judges) are more and more involved in legal tasks which are not related to trials. This does not necessarily mean that the practice of law is focused exclusively on settlement activities, although such activities are increasingly important. Pre-trial processes and procedures including motions, discovery and mandatory settlement conferences take up more time than ever before. Lawyers are playing a different role, offering different kinds of service to their clients, and performing different tasks

Optimal Design Of Ink Spectra For Multiple-Ink Color Reproduction, Yongda Chen

Theses

Conventional four-color printing systems are limited by a relative small color gamut, poor color constancy, and a high degree metamerism. In this dissertation, these problems were addressed by increasing the ink number, optimizing the spectral ink curves, and the lookup tables for multiple-ink printing. First, a computer simulation was performed to investigate the optimum combinations of different ink number to maximize the color gamut for halftoning printing. By analyzing the color gamuts achieved by real ink sets and virtual ink sets, the conclusions were drawn that the color gamut can be improved by increasing ink number and optimizing spectral ink …

Photographic Strategies For Graphic Design Problem Solving, Suthida Sakulsurarat

Theses

Graphic design and photography are both forms of visual communication although they are separate disciplines. This thesis will explore the potential benefits of applying useful approaches in photography and demonstrating their potential for solving graphic design problems. ... The main goal of this project is to outline the possibilities of bringing principles of photographic approaches into graphic design. This thesis attempts to help designers understand that two different disciplines can support each other to provide a wider range of opportunities. In addition, the thesis is designed to enlighten, challenge and inspire designers. To accomplish the thesis, the designer will research …

Successful Digital Asset Management And Variable Data Printing - An Approach Based On Mindsets And Skill Sets, Henrik Holm Christensen

Theses

The implementation and operation of services based on digital asset management (DAM) and variable data printing (VDP) technologies in the graphic communication industry call for new skill sets among the employees. This study examines how successful providers of DAM and VDP are obtaining their employee skills and clarifies the importance of these skill sets in relation to business success.

The research data was hypothesized and analyzed out from two major groups of respondents. One group consists of 33 companies that have hired employees within their IT administration, DAM, and/or VDP functional areas within the past two years, the "hired" group. …

Recovery From Crisis: Jordan Tourism Facing Political Instability, Rasha Hani Saoudi

Theses

This study outlines tourism crises facing international tourism to Jordan. The study also examines major efforts taken by the public and private sectors to recover from the loss of international tourism arrivals to the country caused mainly by the ongoing political crisis in the Middle East. A number of internal and external tourism challenges are identified based on the opinions of key stakeholders in the Jordanian tourism industry. Different approaches to crisis management, drawn from an overview of recovery marketing literature and studies, are also presented. The study concludes that the continuous cooperation and coordination of tourism stakeholders before, during, …

Preparation For Radiological Disasters: A Radiation Effects Epidemiological Database, Martha S. Raj

Theses

Not Included

Computational Fluid Dynamics And Experimental Studies Of An Energy-Efficient Uv Disinfection System For Water Treatment, Nancy Goenawan

Theses

In typical commercial UV treatment system, water is flushed through a reactor vessel, where a UV lamp irradiates the flowing water. The distribution of the UV dose is extremely non-uniform. At distances away from the light, the dosage will be too low to kill the microorganism. As a result more power is needed in such a system for an effective treatment. A new energy-efficient UV disinfection system, named "Off Center", was designed, developed, and tested. This "Off Center" system consists of a UV bulb that has been relocated from its traditional central location to a location closer to the 4-in …

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 …

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 …

Tilling The Cram Down Landscape: Using Securitization Data To Expose The Fundamental Fallacies Of "Till", Matthew H. O'Brien

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is almost universally recognized that the Bankruptcy Code's protection for consumers is justifiable under the theory that an ''entrepreneurial economy prospers when honest but unfortunate debtors are given a fresh opportunity to swim back into the productive mainstream rather than being forced down to drown." The amount of protection the Bankruptcy Code (hereinafter, the "Code") should afford consumers, on the other hand, is a source of much disagreement. Long-standing debate over this issue was, in fact, the basis for the controversy surrounding the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act ("the Act") that the President signed into law in …

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 …

Cultivation Of Methanogens From Shallow Marine Sediments At Hydrate Ridge, Orego, Melissa Kendall, David R. Boone

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Little is known about the methanogenic degradation of acetate, the fate of molecular hydrogen and formate or the ability of methanogens to grow and produce methane in cold, anoxic marine sediments. The microbes that produce methane were examined in permanently cold, anoxic marine sediments at Hydrate Ridge (44°35' N, 125°10' W, depth 800 m). Sediment samples (15 to 35 cm deep) were collected from areas of active methane ebullition or areas where methane hydrates occurred. The samples were diluted into enrichment medium with formate, acetate or trimethylamine as catabolic substrate. After 2 years of incubation at 4 °C to 15 …

Hunger Strikes At Guantanamo: Medical Ethics And Human Rights In A “Legal Black Hole”, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Being Human, a collection of readings assembled by President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, contains a powerful description of the force-feeding of Soviet political prisoner Vladimir Bukovsky, who was on a hunger strike to protest the refusal of prison authorities to provide a lawyer for a fellow inmate who was awaiting trial:

They started feeding me forcibly through the nostril. By a rather thick rubber tube with a metal end on it. . . . The procedure will be that four or five KGB guys will come to my cell, take me to a medical unit, put a straitjacket …

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Patent Buy-Outs For Global Disease Innovations For Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

Drug prices are uniquely susceptible to radical price reductions through generic competition. Patented pharmaceuticals may be priced at more than 30 times the marginal cost of production; the excess is the patent rent collected by the drug company while the patent and exclusive marketing periods remain. Patent rents are significant. AIDS drugs which sell for US$10,000 per person per year in the US are sold generically for less than US$200. If patented drugs could be sold at the marginal cost of production, cost effective treatments would become even more attractive, and other interventions would become affordable.

This Article proposes marginal …

Family Constitutions And The (New) Constitution Of The Family, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at a topic that has received little attention in the legal literature: constitution making by families. Of what interest is it to constitutional law and family law, and to those interested in the state of the family, that families undertake to draft - and are urged by assorted experts on the family to draft - family constitutions (by analogy to the U.S. constitution) and family mission statements (by analogy to corporate mission statements)? This article contends that this reported trend is a fruitful topic of inquiry, since it bears on important questions about the dynamics of family …