Digital Commons Network^™

Oxidative Stress And Redox Proteomics Studies In Models Of Neurodegenerative Disorders: I. The Canine Model Of Human Aging; Ii. Insights Into Successful Aging; And Iii. Traumatic Brain Injury, Wycliffe Omondi Opii

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The studies presented in this dissertation were conducted with the objective ofgaining greater understanding into the mechanisms of successful aging, the role ofmitochondria dysfunction in traumatic brain injury, and also on the mechanisms ofimproved learning and cognitive function in the aging.Aging is usually characterized by impairments in physiological functionsincreasing its susceptibility to dementia and neurodegenerative disorders. In thisdissertation, the mechanisms of dementia-free aging were investigated. The use of anantioxidant fortified diet and a program of behavioral enrichment in the canine model ofhuman aging was shown to result in a significant decrease in the levels of oxidativestress. A proteomic analysis of …

Dynamic Freeway Travel Time Prediction Using Single Loop Detector And Incident Data, Jingxin Xia

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The accurate estimation of travel time is valuable for a variety of transportation applications such as freeway performance evaluation and real-time traveler information. Given the extensive availability of traffic data collected by intelligent transportation systems, a variety of travel time estimation methods have been developed. Despite limited success under light traffic conditions, traditional corridor travel time prediction methods have suffered various drawbacks. First, most of these methods are developed based on data generated by dual-loop detectors that contain average spot speeds. However, single-loop detectors (and other devices that emulate its operation) are the most commonly used devices in traffic monitoring …

Analysis, Design, And Laboratory Evaluation Of A Distributed Unified Power Flow Controller Concept, Qiang Li

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

A single-phase, buck-boost based, dual-output AC-DC converter is studied in this thesis. The converter has two DC outputs with opposite polarities, which share the same ground with the input power line. The power stage performance, including the input filter, is studied and procedure to select power components is given. The circuit model is analyzed to develop appropriate control. Zerocrossing distortion of the source input current is addressed and a solution is proposed. Experimental results are satisfactory in that a high power factor line current results for steady-state operation.

Thermal Heat Transport At The Nano-Scale Level And Its Application To Nano-Machining, Basil T. Wong

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Nano-manufacturing is receiving significant attention in industry due to the ever-growing interest in nanotechnology in research institutions. It is hypothesized that single-step or direct-write nano-scale machining might be achieved by coupling nano-probe field emission with radiation transfer. A laser may be used to heat a workpiece within a microscopic region that encloses an even smaller nanoscopic region subjected to a focused electron beam. The electron-beam supplies marginal heat sufficient to remove a minute volume of material by evaporation or sublimation. Experimentally investigating this hypothesis requires an estimate of the power needed in the electron-beam. To this end, a detailed numerical …

A Numerical Study Of A New Spray Applicator, Vedanth Srinivasan

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This study focuses on the design and development of a new spray applicator design utilizing effects of imposed pressure oscillations in conjunction with cavitation collapse energy to create distribution of fine droplets. An oscillating horn placed inside the nozzle performing high frequency oscillations is envisioned to provide the necessary pressure perturbations on the exiting liquid jet, while the nozzle geometry design in configured to amplify cavitation process. Initially, a two-zone approach modeling the nozzle interior and exterior in a separate fashion and later, a coupled strategy is proposed. Parametric studies describing the effect of horn stroke length, frequency, its position …

Deeper Groundwater Flow And Chemistry In The Arsenic Affected Western Bengal Basin, West Bengal, India, Abhijit Mukherjee

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Natural attenuation of trichloroethene (TCE) and technetium (99Tc) was studied for five consecutive seasons (from January 2002 to January 2003) in Little Bayou Creek. The stream receives ground water discharge from an aquifer contaminated by past waste disposal activities at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP), a uranium enrichment facility near Paducah, Kentucky. Results from stream gaging, contaminant monitoring, tracer tests (with bromide, nitrate, rhodamine WT and propane) and simulation modeling indicate the TCE is naturally attenuated by volatilization and dilution, with volatilization rates related to the ambient temperature and surface discharge rate. The only apparent mechanism of 99Tc attenuation …

New Ultra-Lightweight Stiff Panels For Space Apertures, Jonathan T. Black

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Stiff, ultra-lightweight thermal-formed polyimide panels considered in this dissertation are examples of next generation gossamer structures that resolve some of the technology barriers of previous, membrane-dominated gossamer designs while maintaining their low mass and low stowage volume characteristics. The research involved statically and dynamically characterizing and modeling several of these panels to develop validated computer models which can be used to determine the effects of changing manufacturing parameters and scalability. Static characterization showed substantial local nonlinear behavior that was replicated by new physics-based finite element models, and global linear bending behavior that was modeled using classical shell finite elements incorporating …

Two-Dimensional Simulation Of Solidification In Flow Field Using Phase-Field Model|Multiscale Method Implementation, Ying Xu

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Numerous efforts have contributed to the study of phase-change problems for over a century|both analytical and numerical. Among those numerical approximations applied to solve phase-transition problems, phase-field models attract more and more attention because they not only capture two important effects, surface tension and supercooling, but also enable explicitly labeling the solid and liquid phases and the position of the interface. In the research of this dissertation, a phase-field model has been employed to simulate 2-D dendrite growth of pure nickel without a flow, and 2-D ice crystal growth in a high-Reynolds-number lid-driven-cavity flow. In order to obtain the details …

Theory And Application Of Helium And Helium-Like Ions In Astrophysical Environments, Ryan Lucian Porter

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

A complete model of helium-like line and continuum emission in astrophysical plasmas has been incorporated into the plasma simulation code CLOUDY. All elements between He and Zn are treated, any number of levels can be considered, and a full treatment of radiative and collisional processes is included. This includes photoionization from all levels, line transfer including continuum pumping and destruction by background opacities, scattering, and collisional processes. The model is calculated self-consistently with the ionization and thermal structure of the surrounding nebula. The result is a complete line and continuum spectrum of the nebula. The model helium atom is described …

Can Trust Be Learned In Heterogeneous Environmetns? An Integrative Model Of Political And Social Learning Through Democracy, Satoshi Machida

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

While the virtues of social capital in democracies are widely recognized, previous studies have repeatedly shown that social capital is in short supply in heterogeneous communities with ethnic minorities. Against the view that levels of social capital are culturally predetermined, I argue that it is possible to generate social capital by carefully formulating political institutions. Drawing from theories of institutional management of ethnic conflict and theories of institutional learning, I construct an integrated theory of social capital which hypothesizes that citizens learn to trust one another based on their experiences with political institutions during an extended period of democratic rule. …

The Effectiveness Of Virtual Facilitation In Supporting Gdss Appropriation And Structured Group Decision Making, Harold Joseph Lagroue

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since their introduction a quarter of a century ago, group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups in face-to-face settings, to their growing use for “web conferencing,” online collaboration, and distributed group decision-making. Indeed, it is only recently that such groupware applications for conducting face-to-face, as well as “virtual meetings” among dispersed workgroups have achieved mainstream status, as evidenced by Microsoft’s ubiquitous advertising campaign promoting its “Live Meeting” electronic meeting systems (EMS) software. As these applications become more widely adopted, issues relating to their effective utilization are becoming increasingly relevant. This …

The Fundamental Rights Of The Shareholder, Julian Velasco

Journal Articles

Shareholders have many legal rights, but they are not all of equal significance. This article will argue that two rights — the right to elect directors and the right to sell shares — are more important than any others, that these rights should be considered the fundamental rights of the shareholder, and that, as such, they deserve a great deal of respect and protection by law.
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/="/">The history of corporate law has been one of increasing flexibility for directors and decreasing rights for shareholders. Although the law seems to have coalesced around the norm of shareholder primacy, this …

Free Wage Labor And The Suffrage In Nineteenth Century England, Robert J. Steinfeld

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Rise, Development And Future Directions Of Critical Race Theory And Related Scholarship, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

This essay tells the story of the rise, development and future directions of critical race theory and related scholarship. In telling the story, I suggest that critical race theory (CRT) rises, in part, as a challenge to the emergence of colorblind ideology in law, a major theme of the scholarship. I also contend that conflict, as a process of intellectual and institutional growth, marks the development of critical race theory and provides concrete and experiential examples of some of its key insights and themes. These conflicts are waged in various institutional settings over the structural and discursive meanings of race …

The Secret Life Of Legal Doctrine: The Divergent Evolution Of Secondary Liability In Trademark And Copyright Law, Mark Bartholomew, John Tehranian

Journal Articles

The recent explosion in intellectual property litigation has witnessed increasing recourse to secondary liability theories. The courts have responded favorably to plaintiffs by enunciating substantial reinterpretations of extant principles, thereby precipitating a veritable secondary liability revolution. Numerous commentators have bemoaned this trend, contending that judicial recasting of liability rules expands intellectual property rights beyond their intended scope, thereby resulting in an overprotective regime that stifles innovation. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the secondary liability revolution has been all but ignored in the literature: While the courts have broadened the scope of secondary liability principles with respect to …

Earthquake Hazard Input For Loss Estimation Study: St. Louis Highway System, Ronaldo Luna, David J. Hoffman, William T. Lawrence

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The long recurrence period and high consequence earthquakes events in the New Madrid Seismic Zone have caused some federal agencies (e.g., NEHRP, FHWA) to look at the more densely populated areas where higher seismic risk is present. This paper presents the data collection, interpretation, and analysis of the geotechnical information required for an earthquake loss estimation study in St. Louis metro area. The loss estimation study was limited to the highway transportation system, where only the major highways were considered. The project information was processed using a GIS, and the subsequent loss analysis was executed using the HAZUS-MH program.

Liquefaction Effects On Lateral Pile Behavior For Bridges, Wei Zheng, Ronaldo Luna

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A coupled pile-soil-structure interaction (SPSI) analysis method is presented to study the liquefaction effects on lateral pile behavior of the highway bridges. Pile-soil interaction is simulated by the dynamic nonlinear p-y method including the effect of liquefaction. The liquefaction effects to the pile-soil interaction are taken into account by introducing a degradation multiplier to the p-y curve. The degradation multiplier is related to the excess pore water pressure buildup at the pile-soil interface. The SPSI analysis method is implemented into a Missouri highway bridge site near the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) rift complex for future earthquake scenarios of Mw …

Systems Approach For Estimating Field Moisture Content, Thomas M. Petry, Yuh-Puu Han, David Newton Richardson

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper describes a software tool developed for estimation of the field moisture content of subgrade materials. Subgrade behavior is directly related to its moisture content. Unfortunately, some approaches of estimating field moisture content are too complex to be used in routine design. In this paper, the authors attempt to provide an approach that is easy to use. The software presented here was developed using expert system approaches. It is capable of analyzing data entered by the users, and providing estimations to meet different scenarios. The information entered by the user is first examined for its reasonableness and accuracy. Then, …

Transverse-Earthquake Induced Deformations Of A Bridge Approach Embankment In The New Madrid Seismic Zone, Wanxing Liu, Richard Wesley Stephenson, Ronaldo Luna

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

It is predicted that strong earthquakes, larger than M 7.0, may occur within next 50 years in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), the location of three of the most powerful earthquakes in United States history. Large displacements may occur during strong earthquakes that can cause an embankment to fail or lose its function. The hyperbolic stress-strain model with Masing rules was modified to account for strength and stiffness reduction due to change in the effective confining pressure. The Byrne model was combined with a hyperbolic model to calculate the pore water pressure caused by seismic shaking. This modified hyperbolic …

Origin-Destination (O-D) Trip Table Estimation Using Traffic Movement Counts From Vehicle Tracking System At Intersection, S. Lee, Hojong Baik

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new video-based vehicle tracking system is proposed to provide accurate information on directional traffic counts at intersections. The extracted counts are fed to estimate an origin- destination trip table which is necessary information for traffic impact study and transportation planning. The system utilizes a fisheye lens to expand the area covered by a single camera and uses a particle filtering method to track an individual vehicle. The filter is designed to handle environmental changes and multiple motion dynamics. Experimental results show its strong ability on tracking in various conditions. The paper shows how to use the tracking outputs in …

Strength And Durability Characteristics Of A 70% Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (Ggbfs) Concrete Mix, David Newton Richardson

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

For a bridge pier and abutment mass concrete project, three mixes were studied: an ordinary portland cement (OPC) mix (Type I PC) and two 70% by weight ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) mixes (Type II Low Heat PC). One of the slag mixes contained a high range water reducer (HRWR). Tests for compressive strength, freezethaw durability, rapid chloride permeability, and salt scaling were conducted on field samples. Results showed that the strengths of the slag mixes were lower than the OPC mix at all ages up to one year, although the use of HRWR did improve the strength somewhat. …

Raster To Vector Conversion: Creating An Unique Handprint Each Time, William Dibacco

Theses

When a person composes a document by hand, there is random variability in what is produced. That is, every letter is different from all others. If the person produces seven a s, none will be the same. This is not true when a computer prints something. When the computer produces seven a s they are all exactly the same. However, even with the variability inherent in a person s handwriting, when two people write something and they are compared side by side, they often appear as different as fonts from two computer families. In fact, if the two were intermixed …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Nanocrystalline (Zr₀.₈₄Y₀.₁₆)O₁.₉₂-(Ce₀.₈₅Sm₀.₁₅)O₁.₉₂₅ Heterophase Thin Films, Aniruddha Kulkarni, Alexander Bourandas, Junhang Dong, Paul A. Fuierer, Hai Xiao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new type of nanocrystalline samarium-doped-ceria/yttrium-stabilized-zirconia (SDC/YSZ) heterophase thin film electrolytes was synthesized on MgO and Si substrates by spin coating and thermal treatment of SDC-nanoparticle-incorporated polymeric precursors. In the heterophase films, SDC nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed in a nanocrystalline YSZ matrix. The heterophase structure was stable when fired in air at temperatures up to 850 °C. The nanocrystalline heterophase thin films exhibited electrical conductivities significantly higher than that of the phase-pure YSZ and SDC nanocrystalline thin films at reduced temperatures. The effects of SDC grain size and volume fraction on the electrical conductivity of the heterophase films were also …

An Investigation Into The Factors Affecting The Retention And Achievement Of Computing Students Attending Institutes Of Technology In Ireland, (Volumes 1), Carol O Shea

Theses

This research is a longitudinal case study of a cohort of five hundred and seventy-eight students attending computing courses at seven Institutes of Technology in Ireland. The investigation charts the progress of this cohort of students throughout the four-year duration of their programme from the time they commenced their course in 2001 to their graduation in 2005. The central aim of this research is to investigate the factors contributing to the achievement and retention of these students as they progress through their course. Relationships and patterns of association between attainment on the course and students’ prior educational, socio-economic and demographic …

Developing The Ict Infrastructure For Africa: The Influence On Global Scholarship, Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, Samantha K. Hastings

Faculty Publications

http://jelis.org/ © 2006

How The Presentation Of Electronic Gateway Pages Affects Research Behavior, Lisa Finder, Valdeda Dent, Brian Lym

Publications and Research

Purpose

The paper aims to provide details of a study conducted at Hunter College Libraries in fall 2005, the focus of which was how presentation of initial digital resource pages (or gateway pages) on the library's web site impacted students' subsequent steps in the research process.

Design/methodology/approach

A group of 16 students from English and History classes at Hunter College were recruited to participate after having had basic library instruction. They were given computer‐based key tasks to perform in a proctored classroom setting, using the library's homepage. A second group of students was recruited to participate in two small focus …

Moving A Part-Time Engineering Course To A Student-Centred Paradigm, Kevin Kelly

Level 3

This paper is a further reflection on two conference papers presented at the World Conference for Continuing Engineering Education (WCCEE) in Vienna in April 2006 and National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway Conference: The Challenge of Diversity: Teaching, Support and Student Learning , June 2006. Both conference papers dealt with different aspects of my experiences of the theoretical and pedagogical changes required in re-design and delivery of a part-time engineering programme for the continuing education development of electrical engineers in the workforce.

Drawing Through A Linear Temperament, Jorge Miguel Benitez

Theses and Dissertations

I am a draftsman, painter and printmaker. This first person statement is a written extension of the art that constitutes my thesis. It discusses the links between my work and the Enlightenment, Humanism, Catholicism, ethics and the Western canon as well as my use of perspective and other classical techniques in relation to history, language, high art, popular culture, propaganda, contemporary upheavals, Christian and Islamic Fundamentalism, globalization and the digital revolution. Furthermore, the main arguments draw upon my Cuban origin and European ancestry, the Cuban Revolution, my Belgian early education and eventual American hybrid identity. The overriding theme, however, concerns …

Professional Development Of Efl Teachers In Mexico: Examining Cross-Cultural And Global Linkages, Influences, And Outcomes, Robert A. Devillar, Binbin Jiang

Faculty Articles

During the past twenty years, the paradigm of professional development in U.S. education has shifted from an analyitco-incremental model to an integrative-systematic model. The integrative-systematic model focuses on the whole-scale improvement of general student performance through the articulation, implementation, and assessment of standards that apply to teachers and teacher preparation institutions as well as to students. This article addresses the basis for this paradigm shift in the U.S. and the global expansion of the professional development mandate. The authors describe the first phase of a three-year, cross-cultural professional development program involving English-as-a-Foreign Language (EFL) teachers at a private school in …

Copyright And Open Access: Reconsidering University Ownership Of Faculty Research, Robert C. Denicola, Robert C. Denicola

Nebraska Law Review

In 2001, a group of prominent scientists urged a boycott of scholarly journals that refused to provide free online access to research articles within six months after publication. In an open letter to colleagues they pledged to "publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to only those scholarly and scientific journals" that complied with their demand. They defended their stand with the proposition that "[a]s scientists, we are particularly dependent on ready and unimpeded access to our published literature, the only permanent record of our ideas, discoveries, and research results, upon which future scientific activity and progress are …