Digital Commons Network^™

Public Policy And Technology: Advancing Civilization At The Expense Of Individual Privacy, Aaron D. Sanders

Theses

Technological advances have created a new existence, providing an unforeseen level of interaction and transaction between parties that have never physically met. Preliminary thinking was that these advances would create a previously unimaginable level of privacy and anonymity. While a surface examination suggests an abundance of privacy in modern society, a more thorough examination reveals different results. Advances in technology and changes in public policy have produced a world in which a startling amount of information is available regarding a given individual. Rather than experiencing an increase in individual privacy, modern societies suffer from rapidly decreasing individual privacy.

Parent Perceptions Of School Climate And Its Impact On Their Child's School Performance, Danielle Malinowski

Theses

This study compared the relationship of student and parent perceptions of school climate to the student's academic performance and school problem behaviors (disciplinary referrals, unexcused absences, and tardiness). A sample of students (n=531), grades 7-12, completed the School Climate Survey (Haynes et al., 1996). Additional information was obtained regarding each student's academic performance and school problem behaviors. A randomly selected sample of parents were sent the School Climate Survey,

Parent Edition and were asked to voluntarily return them (n=45). Correlation results found no significant relationship between parent and student perceptions of school climate. A significant relationship was found between Parent …

Perspective By Incongruity In Visual Advertising: Applying Kenneth Burke's Theory To The Adbusters Anti-Consumerism Campaign, Elizabeth B. Gorman

Theses

Kenneth Burke developed the theory of "perspective by incongruity" in which he claimed that oddly juxtaposed symbols influence audiences to have new perspectives by challenging their habits of thinking. This study applies Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theory of perspective by incongruity to the Adbusters anti-consumerism campaign. Twenty "spoof ad" postcards created by the Adbusters Media Foundation were analyzed to see how they utilize the technique of incongruous juxtaposition. The analysis concluded that the cards either juxtaposed two incongruous images, two incongruous phrases or words, or a combination of incongruous words and images in order to create new insights about consumer advertising …

Modeling Off-The-Shelf Pan/Tilt Cameras For Active Vision Systems, Yuriy Luzanov

Theses

There are many existing multicamera systems that perform object identification and track ing. Some applications include but are not limited to security surveillance and smart rooms. Yet there is still much work to be done in improving such systems to achieve a high level of automation while obtaining reasonable performance. Thus far design and implementation of these systems has been done using heuristic methods, primarily due to the complexity of the problem. Most importantiy, the performance of these systems is assessed by evaluating subjective quantities. The goal of this work is to take the first step in structured analysis and …

Dynamic Object Tracking By Partial Shape Matching For Video Surveillance Applications, Mustafa Husain

Theses

In this thesis, an algorithm for object tracking through frames of video using a fast partial shape matching technique is proposed. The tracking is divided into two modules: 1) moving object extraction followed by color/edge segmentation, and 2) tracking through frames using partial shape matching. The major challenges of object tracking, such as occlusions, splitting of one object and appearance and disappearance of objects, are effectively resolved. The proposed algorithm is tested on several synthetic and real life video sequences and is shown to be very effective in identifying and tracking moving objects independent of translations, rotations, scale variations and …

Chemistry At The Cu-Fluoropolymer Interface: Relevance To Adhesion, Daliana Gava Abreu

Theses

The adhesion of sputtered Cu to fluoropolymer surfaces modified by vacuum UV photo-oxidation increased with treatment time for Teflon® PTFE while for Teflon® FEP and PFA there was cohesive failure within FEP and PFA and not at the Cu-fluoropolymer interface. Ar ion etching of the surfaces after cohesive failure showed that the depth of FEP and PFA left on the Cu was ca. 3-10 nm. The chemistry at the interface included the presence of copper fluorides. Control experiments involving Ar ion etching of untreated fluoropolymers showed no evidence for fluoride ions. Thin films of Cu were thermally evaporated and sputter …

School Climate: Comparing Student To Teacher Perceptions, Catherine S. Curione

Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare student and teacher perceptions of school climate. The participants included 51 junior and senior high school staff members, 256 senior high school students, and 109 junior high school students. It was found that teachers have strong positive views on the following school climate factors; school building, equity and fairness, and staff dedication to student learning. There is more disagreement among staff members on the following school climate factors; order and discipline, school/parent/community involvement, collaborative decision-making, and leadership. High School students do not take on a controlling role as far as school climate …

Tandi: Threat Assessment Of Network Data And Information, Jared D. Holsopple

Theses

Current practice for combating cyber attacks typically use Intrusion Detection Sensors (IDSs) to passively detect and block multi-stage attacks. This work leverages Level-2 fu sion that correlates IDS alerts belonging to the same attacker, and proposes a threat assess ment algorithm to predict potential future attacker actions. The algorithm, TANDI, reduces the problem complexity by separating the models of the attacker's capability and opportu nity, and fuse the two to determine the attacker's intent. Unlike traditional Bayesian-based approaches, which require assigning a large number of edge probabilities, the proposed Level-3 fusion procedure uses only 4 parameters. TANDI has been implemented …

Controlling Performance Of Crumb Rubber-Modified Binders Through Addition Of Polymer Modifiers, Magdy Abdelrahman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The use of tire rubber as a modifier to enhance the properties of asphalt mixes through the wet process has proved to be a successful procedure, but full control of the properties of crumb rubber-modified binders has been a challenge. The literature indicates a wide variation on adding rubber to asphalt and that the degree of success of rubber modification in AC mixes depends on several factors, the majority of which relate to the method of mixing, storing, and transporting and to construction technologies. Understanding the nature of the interaction process between asphalt cement and crumb rubber-modifier (CRM) helps explain …

A Fault-Tolerant P-Q Decoupled Control Scheme For Static Synchronous Series Compensator, Wei Qiao, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Ronald G. Harley

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Control of nonlinear devices in power systems relies on the availability and the quality of sensor measurements. Measurements can be corrupted or interrupted due to sensor failure, broken or bad connections, bad communication, or malfunction of some hardware or software (referred to as missing sensor measurements in this paper). This paper proposes a fault-tolerant control scheme (FTCS) for a static synchronous series compensator (SSSC). This FTCS consists of a sensor evaluation and (missing sensor) restoration scheme (SERS) cascaded with a P-Q decoupled control scheme (PQDC). It is able to provide effective control to the SSSC when single or multiple crucial …

Ac/Dc Power Systems With Applications In Future Human Habitat On Lunar And Mars Bases, Badrul H. Chowdhury, Sabbir A. Hossain, James T. Lawrence, Sushant Barave

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

As NASA readies itself for new space exploration initiatives starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020 eventually leading to human exploration of Mars, the requirements for a safe, efficient and comprehensive power system to support the exploration missions as well human habitat will become important issues to consider. Certain issues dealing with electric power generation and distribution on board Mars-bound vehicles and those on Lunar and Martian surfaces are described. The requirements for lightweight power generation dictates the use of a high frequency ac machine. Preliminary results of investigating the design of a permanent magnet …

Disinfection Of Swine Wastewater Using Chlorine, Ultraviolet Light And Ozone, John J. Macauley, Zhimin Qiang, Rao Y. Surampalli, Melanie R. Mormile, Craig D. Adams

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Veterinary antibiotics are widely used at concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to prevent disease and promote growth of livestock. However, the majority of antibiotics are excreted from animals in urine, feces, and manure. Consequently, the lagoons used to store these wastes can act as reservoirs of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There is currently no regulation or control of these systems to prevent the spread of these bacteria and their genes for antibiotic resistance into other environments. This study was conducted to determine the disinfection potential of chlorine, ultraviolet light and ozone against swine lagoon bacteria. Results indicate that a chlorine …

Distributed Power Control For Cellular Networks In The Presence Of Channel Uncertainties, Maciej Jan Zawodniok, Q. Shang, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a novel distributed power control (DPC) scheme for cellular network in the presence of radio channel uncertainties such as path loss, shadowing, and Rayleigh fading is presented. Since these uncertainties can attenuate the received signal strength and can cause variations in the received Signal-to-Interference ratio (SIR), a new DPC scheme, which can estimate the slowly varying channel uncertainty, is proposed so that a target SIR at the receiver can be maintained. Further, the standard assumption of a constant interference during a link's power update used in other works in the literature is relaxed. A CDMA-based cellular network …

The Relationship Between Dress And Socio-Economics, Tiffany A. Machado

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The objectives of this study were established to guide an answer to this problem: 1. Identify the socio-economic status of students that attend Old Dominion University; 2.Measure the opinion of Old Dominion University's students toward their selection of attire; 3. Project the relationship between socio-economic status and favored dress.

Senior Women Leaders In Higher Education Overcoming Barriers To Success, Nan-Chi Tiao

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to obtain a deeper understanding of what it takes for women to succeed as cabinet-level higher education administrators. The findings not only offer a wealth of strategies for career success and for overcoming professional and personal challenges, but also shed new light on critical factors that affect women’ experiences at work.

This qualitative, phenomenological study was based primarily on confidential interviews with nine senior women leaders. Two informants are presidents, six are vice presidents, and one serves as a senior executive officer of their universities. Before assuming their current posts, they worked in a …

Neuro Control Of Nonlinear Discrete Time Systems With Deadzone And Input Constraints, Pingan He, Wenzhi Gao, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A neural network (NN) controller in discrete time is designed to deliver a desired tracking performance for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with unknown deadzones and magnitude constraints on the input. The NN controller consists of two NNs: the first NN for compensating the unknown deadzones; and the second NN for compensating the uncertain nonlinear system dynamics. The magnitude constraints on the input are modeled as saturation nonlinearities and they are dealt with in the Lyapunov-based controller design. The uniformly ultimate boundedness (UUB) of the closed-loop tracking errors and the neural network weights estimation errors is demonstrated via Lyapunov …

Power System Control With An Embedded Neural Network In Hybrid System Modeling, Seung-Mook Baek, Jung-Wook Park, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The output limits of the power system stabilizer (PSS) can improve the system damping performance immediately following a large disturbance. Due to non-smooth nonlinearities from the saturation limits, these values cannot be determined by the conventional tuning methods based on linear analysis. Only ad hoc tuning procedures can been used. A feedforward neural network (FFNN) (with a structure of multilayer perceptron neural network) is applied to identify the dynamics of an objective function formed by the states, and thereafter to compute the gradients required in the nonlinear parameter optimization. Moreover, its derivative information is used to replace that obtained from …

Dietary Lysine:Calorie Ratios And Their Influence On Nitrogen Metabolism And Digestibility In Moderately Obese Mature Dogs, Trista Reeder

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This experiment was conducted to determine if changing the amount of ideal aminoacids (meaning the amount of amino acids necessary to supply all the animal's needswithout excesses or deficiencies of any single amino acid), in relation to caloric intakewill change nitrogen metabolism and weight loss in obese mature dogs. Informationprovided by this experiment can be used to formulate canine diets emphasizing weightloss in older animals.Six moderately obese mature female crossbred hounds were fed diets varying in theirratio of lysine:calories (Lysine % : Mcal ME/g) (2.2, 3.0, and 3.8) in a 3 x 3 replicatedLatin square design. Increasing the lysine:calorie of …

High-Dynamic-Range Photography: Image Display And Perception, Jiangtao Kuang

Theses

Current desktop and hard copy display media are capable of only a limited dynamic range in luminance. Hence, high dynamic range (HDR) images require tone-mapping operators for rendering on these media to adequately reproduce their perceptual qualities. Furthermore, the development of these operators requires a methodology for their evaluation in terms of perceptual attributes. To this end, a series of psychophysical experiments was conducted to evaluate a wide-variety of previously published, HDR tone-mapping operators. The evaluations were conducted in terms of rendering accuracy and image preference, and from them, a general methodology for evaluating tonemapping operators was proposed. A next …

Plane Elasticity Using Airy Stress Functions, Matthew David Roman

Theses

Given a three dimensional solid element in a state of plane stress or plane strain with conservative body forces, the stress components are equal to the appropriate second order partial derivatives of a bi-harmonic function, ϕ , called an Airy Stress Function. It follows that the stress components automatically satisfy the equilibrium conditions.

The function ϕ depends on both the geometry of the body and the loading, which leaves infinite possible stress functions to be developed. As thesis work, I have researched and collected currently existing Airy Stress Functions, made plots of thier stress fields in order to gain a …

Health Monitoring Of Lav Planet Gear Bushings Using Signature Analysis Techniques, Victoria L. Parnell

Theses

The Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies (CIMS) is studying the improvement of military Light Armored Vehicles (LAVs) for the United States Department of Defense. A focus of this study is the Marine Corps LAVs that are experiencing failures in the planetary assembly which serves as the vehicle's final drive system. The primary failure source is the bushings that provide the interface between the planet gears and their respective pins.

Currently, to detect a bushing failure, vehicle occupants must exit the LAV and place their hand on the wheel hub cover to check for excessive heat. If the hub "feels too …

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 …

Development Of An Automated Template Selection And Alignment Tool For Protein Structure Homology Modeling, David R. Riley

Theses

DNA and protein sequence data sets have exploded in size over the past several years and have stimulated the development of new methods for closing the sequence/structure gap. Bench laboratory methods, while being the most accurate, are still far too time consuming and limited to breech this gap. Thus computational methods have become the standard. The work described here details the development of a system to automatically select a structural template, align the template and query sequence and model the query. The system was implemented fully for antibodies but maintains a modular design that can accommodate a wider variety of …

Dynamics And Control Of Tethered Satellite System, Royce L. Abel

Theses

Tethered Satellite Systems (TSS) has been an ongoing project around the world for many decades. This study examined the dynamics an dcontrols of tethered satellites. The equations of motion were developed and simulated with no control and small eccentric orbits. A control law was derived by associating the Hamiltonian of the system to a Lyapunov Function. This control law was then simulated to demonstrate ability and robustness. The tethered system can be retrieved and deployed in a small number of orbits, and return from a perturbation quickly. Examination of a non thruster controlled system resulted in asymptotic convergence in retrieval …

Print Process Identification For Forensic Document Examiners, Roxanne Stevens

Theses

The advent of current digital print technology has resulted in a drastic increase in the accessibility of counterfeiting currency and secure documents. In response, organizations such as the CIA, Secret Service and FBI must continually train and educate their employees and staff. To meet the increasing demands of these groups, the Rochester Institute of Technology has developed the Marking Engine Characterization (MEC) target to train and assist forensic document examiners in identifying print processes.

The MEC target's effectiveness in identifying print processes was tested by printing the target on a variety of marking engines and processes. These marking engines included: …

Polyvinylidene Fluoride Composites As An Option For Proton Exchange Membranes In Fuel Cells, Rohini P. Sajanpawar

Theses

This thesis details approaches for the preparation of composite membranes derived from poly (vinylidene fluoride), PVDF, or copolymers thereof. It was expected that these membranes would withstand the harsh thermal oxidative conditions of a practical fuel cell and might exhibit high proton mobility. Sulfonated carbon black was used as the proton conducting component in the membrane. The advantages and the disadvantages of the materials used for fabrication of proton exchange membranes were reviewed. This thesis provides procedures for the preparation of composites of PVDF with sulfonated carbon black (CB) which might be employed as proton exchange membranes. Thin films from …

Advanced Thermodynamic Analyses Of Energy Intensive Building Mechanical Systems, Erin N. George

Theses

A review of past research reveals that while exergetic analysis has been performed on various building mechanical systems, there has not been extensive efforts in the areas of air distribution systems or cooling plants. Motivations for this new work include demonstrating the merits of exergetic analysis in association with retrocommissioning (RCX) an existing building air handling unit (AHU), as well as conducting an advanced analysis on an existing chiller. The following research demonstrates the benefits of including a second law analysis in order to improve equipment operation based on lowered energy consumption and improved operation, and as a means for …

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 …