Digital Commons Network^™

Surface Patterning Of Biodegradable Polymer In Tissue Engineering By Applying Photolithography, Lee-Chun Su

Material Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and inherent problems with current surgical therapies has prompted major efforts in the field of vascular tissue engineering. While there have been significant advances towards creating functional blood vessel substitutes, the fabrication of a vascular graft with mechanical, structural and functional properties similar to native vessels has not yet been achieved. We have presented an observation of a new biodegradable polymer utilized on the research of tissue engineering. Our idea was to create a structure to imitate blood vessel muscles in vitro and also to guide the cells when they start spreading and trying to …

Thermally Activated Sulfurization Scheme For Cuins2 Solar Cells, Karan Agrawal

Material Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Chalcopyrite Solar Cells are now being fabricated on flexible (polymer) substrates. However, CuInS2 solar cells have not been fabricated on the polymer substrates on the commercial scale due the sulfurization temperature which limits the use of polymer substrates during fabrication. To overcome this problem a thermally activated sulfurization process for the manufacture of CuInS2 solar cells from the Cu-In bilayers is described in this work. This sulfurization process can be employed for lower temperature for the formation of the absorber layer. For the sulfurization, the Cu-In bilayer with different compositions is prepared by thermal evaporation in which the In-rich film …

Use Of Filtering To Improve The Estimates Of Low-Cost Gps Systems Using Known Geometric Configurations Of Multiple Gps Receivers, Husein Anshur

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Ductile Lightweight Concrete For Lightweight Structural Application, Ake Piyamaikongdech

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

This study developed a ductile concrete for precast wall systems which are capable of resisting high wind in excess of 500 mph. The developed concrete mix design consists of sand, cement, glass fiber, and a foaming agent to produce lightweight concrete in the range of 87 pcf (1392 kg/m3) to 90 pcf (1440 kg/m3). A comprehensive testing program for evaluation of the developed concrete material was undertaken. The mix designs were prepared both in the laboratory and in the mix truck with drum capacity of 27 ft3 (0.77 m3), and 177.6 ft3 (5 m3), respectively. The large concrete batches using …

Learning Video Preferences Using Visual Features And Closed Captions, Darin Brezeale

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Viewers of video now have more choices than ever. As the number of choices increases, the task of searching through these choices to locate video of interest is becoming more difficult. Current methods for learning a viewer's preferences in order to automate the search process rely either on video having content descriptions or on having been rated by other viewers identified as being similar. However, much video exists that does not meet these requirements. To address this need, we use hidden Markov models to learn the preferences of a viewer by combining visual features and closed captions. We validate our …

Application Of The Transtheoretical Model Of Change To Saving Behaviors Of College Students, Benjamin Franklin Cummings

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Using the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of change (Prochaska & Di Clemente, 1982) as a guide to analyze financial behavior, college students were asked a variety of questions about their financial situations. Recruited from undergraduate classes at Utah State University, 112 students took the online survey. Surprisingly, 44.4% of participants reported being in the Maintenance stage of the TTM, and 71.2% reported contributing at least monthly to some sort of savings or investment account. In terms of Financial Planning Personality Type (Lown, 2007), 46.3% of respondents were Planners and 23.1% were Savers. Though the study displays limitations, it begs further investigation …

Eigenvector-Based Multidimensional Frequency Estimation : Identifiability, Performance, And Applications., Jun Liu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multidimensional frequency estimation is a classic signal processing problem that has versatile applications in sensor array processing and wireless communications. Eigenvalue-based two-dimensional (2-D) and N -dimensional ( N -D) frequency estimation algorithms have been well documented, however, these algorithms suffer from limited identifiability and demanding computations. This dissertation develops a framework on eigenvector-based N -D frequency estimation, which contains several novel algorithms that estimate a structural matrix from eigenvectors and then resolve the N -D frequencies by dividing the elements of the structural matrix. Compared to the existing eigenvalue-based algorithms, these eigenvector-based algorithms can achieve automatic pairing without an extra …

The Relationship Between Childhood Bereavement And Adult Mental Health, Alicia Kimball

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Bereavement, due to the loss of family and friends, affects approximately 3.7 million children per year in the United States. These losses can have lasting effects such as changed dynamics within a family, decreased academic performance, and poor physical and mental health that not only inhibit a child's ability to function normally but if not dealt with sufficiently can persist into adulthood.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if individuals who experienced a loss in childhood exhibit more mental health problems in adulthood than those who did not. A survey was administered to 209 college students requesting …

Optimization Modeling For The Operation Of Closed-Loop Supply Chains., Aman Gupta 1978-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmentally conscious manufacturing and remanufacturing/recycling of endof- life products are steadily growing in importance. The problem of managing the waste generated due to the disposal of many types of products has many aspects. The main driving forces for solving this growing problem are the rapid diminishment of raw material resources, decreasing space in landfills and increasing levels of pollution. The drivers associated with these forces are governmental regulations which require that the manufacturers take back the end-of-life products and customer perspectives on environmental issues. This research considers the problem of increasing levels of electronic and electrical equipments waste. The implementation …

Formulation Of Lean Six Sigma Critical Business Processes For Manufacturing Facilitites, Chaucey Chandler

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The author desired to create a method organizing the concepts from Lean, Six Sigma, critical business processes, and simplifying the usage of these concepts to identify Lean Six Sigma Critical Business Processes. Inspired by Laura Meade (1997) and the author's passion concerning process improvements, this research was created. Lean activities eliminate waste, Six Sigma activities eliminate variation, critical business processes focus on those areas that need improvement and are critical to the process, and Analytical Network Process (ANP) models problems considering the interactions between levels. There is value for all companies to implement at least one of these tools. Since …

Engineering Division, Bob Tolliver

Sci-Tech News

No abstract provided.

Histopathological Assessment And Comparison Sedimentation And Phosphate Stress On The Staghorn Coral, Acropora Cervicornis, Erin Christine Hodel

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Traditional coral reef monitoring efforts lack assessment of coral health at tissue and cellular levels. This thesis investigated tissue, cellular, and gross morphological responses of the Caribbean staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis, to elevated sedimentation and phosphate using state-of-the-art histological techniques. Branch fragments of A. cervicornis were collected offshore Broward County, FL, acclimated for 12 weeks, subjected to a 4-week experimental period, and given a 1-week recovery period in laboratory aquaria. Treatments consisted of high doses (200 mg cm^-2 day^-1) of sedimentation (S), phosphate (4 μM) (P), and a combination of these two (S + P), in …

Generalized Multiagent Learning With Performance Bound, Bikramjit Banerjee, Jing Peng

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present new Multiagent learning (MAL) algorithms with the general philosophy of policy convergence against some classes of opponents but otherwise ensuring high payoffs. We consider a 3-class breakdown of opponent types: (eventually) stationary, self-play and "other" (see Definition 4) agents. We start with ReDVaLeR that can satisfy policy convergence against the first two types and no-regret against the third, but it needs to know the type of the opponents. This serves as a baseline to delineate the difficulty of achieving these goals. We show that a simple modification on ReDVaLeR yields a new algorithm, RV σ(t), that achieves no-regret …

Weighted Additive Criterion For Linear Dimension Reduction, Jing Peng, Stefan Robila

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for dimension reduction has been applied to a wide variety of face recognition tasks. However, it has two major problems. First, it suffers from the small sample size problem when dimensionality is greater than the sample size. Second, it creates subspaces that favor well separated classes over those that are not. In this paper, we propose a simple weighted criterion for linear dimension reduction that addresses the above two problems associated with LDA. In addition, there are well established numerical procedures such as semi-definite programming for efficiently computing the proposed criterion. We demonstrate the efficacy of …

Grid Computing For Hyperspectral Data Processing, Stefan A. Robila, Nicholas A. Senedzuk

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We investigate the use of a flexible grid architecture for hyperspectral image processing. Recording data in tens or hundreds of narrow contiguous spectral intervals, hyperspectral data outperform multispectral imagery by allowing the detection of relatively small differences in material composition and of targets occupying a surface smaller than the one covered by a pixel (called subpixel targets). However, with increased spatial and spectral resolution, processing such data often leads to computational costs prohibitive to regular computer systems. While distributed or parallel computing are often found as solutions, many current configurations are still unable to reach the computational complexity level that …

Circumventing Daubert In The Gene Pool, Erica Beecher-Monas

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

Meeting The Challenges Of The Daubert Trilogy: Refining And Redefining The Reliability Of Forensic Evidence, Mara L. Merlino, Victoria Springer, Jan Seaman Kelly, Derek Hammond

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interpreting The Fourteenth Amendment: Two Don'ts And Three Dos, Garrett Epps

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

A sophisticated reading of the legislative record of the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment can provide courts and scholars with some general interpretive principles to guide their application of the Amendment to current legal problems. The author argues that two common legal conceptions about the Amendment are, in fact, misconceptions. The first is that the Amendment was chiefly concerned with the immediate situation of freed slaves in the former slave states. Instead, he argues, the legislative record suggests that the framers were broadly concerned with the rights not only of freed slaves but also of foreign-born immigrants in the North …

Que Ondee Sola - December 2007, Xavier Luis Burgos

Que Ondee Sola

Student publication founded in 1972, articles include: State Senator William Delgado Visits NEIU, Faculty Profile: Teresita Diaz, Faculty Speak Out, Latina/o Students Speak Out, The Poor State of Latina/o Status at NEIU, Where is NEIU's Latina/o Cultural & Resource Center, The 15th Housing Congress of Puerto Rico, World AIDS Day on Paseo Boricua, Over 200 Proclaim 'Humboldt Park No Se Vende!'

A Computational Method For Flow Separation Detection And Control For Axial Compressor Airfoils, Chang Jun Meang

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

Conducting full annulus experiments on multistage compressors is costly and time consuming due to the complexity of the experimental processes. To reduce complexity, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods are applied to turbomachinery and other applications in recent analysis of such cases. CFD methods are widely used within the aerospace industry and are increasingly demonstrating their reliability. For axial compressors, it is known that highly staggered compressor stators will increase the aerodynamic loading on the stator, which directly relates to the compressor stall and efficiency. In this work, compressor stators stagger angle is increased 4 ° to induce separation on the …

Teaching Time Savers: The Exam Practically Wrote Itself!, Michael E. Orrison Jr.

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

When I first started teaching, creating an exam for my upper division courses was a genuinely exciting process. The material felt fresh and relatively unexplored (at least by me), and I remember often feeling pleasantly overwhelmed with what seemed like a vast supply of intriguing and engrossing exam-ready problems. Crafting the perfect exam, one that was noticeably inviting, exceedingly fair, and unavoidably illuminating, was a real joy.

Ferroelectric Glass-Ceramic Sintering Aid For Lead Titanate Ceramics, P Sooksaen, I M. Reaney, D C. Sinclair

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

Silicate-based glass that devitrifies on heating to form ferroelectric lead titanate has been developed. The potential for use as sintering aid in PbO-based electroceramics has been evaluated by studying the densification of PbTiO3 (PT) with increasing wt% addition of glass powder. As the wt% glass content increased, the density increased, the maximum and room temperature relative permittivity decreased and there was also a decrease in Tc and the c/a ratio. The decrease in Tc is believed to be due to increased clamping from neighbouring grains as the density of the PT increases. The decrease in maximum and room temperature relative …

Surface Modification Of Microfluidic Devices, P Kumlangdudsana, S T. Dubas, L Dubas

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

Microfluidic is a multidisciplinary which encompasses the fields of physics, chemistry, nanotechnology, engineering, and biotechnology. It has been developed extensively for many applications such as handling biological entities such as DNA separation, immunoassay, cell sorting, biosensors, and enzymatic assays due to the potential offered by miniaturizing, high throughput of analysis, low cost of fabrication, multiplex functionality and portability. The surface modification of microfluidic devices has also been a major focus in research to help to enhance their efficiency. There is a variety of surface modification methods and in this paper we reviews and presents an overview of the surface modification …

Measuring The Impacts Of Employer-Based Transportation Demand Management Programs On An Interstate Corridor, Nevine Labib Georggi, Phil Winters, Sachin Rai, Liren Zhou

Journal of Public Transportation

This article is based on a study that analyzed the impacts of employer-based transportation demand management (TDM) strategies and the performance of a transportation system. The study simulated the effects of the Washington State Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) programs implemented by 189 employers on an 8.6-mile segment of I-5 in the Seattle downtown area. This comprehensive dataset included before/after employer trip reduction plans and the origins/destinations of nearly 63,000 commuters working for those 189 employers. The current performance of the selected network was compared to that of a scenario with reduced vehicle trips due to CTR programs added back onto …

User Perceptions Of Private Paratransit Operation In Indonesia, Tri Basuki Joewono, Hisashi Kubota

Journal of Public Transportation

In this article, public perception is expressed by user participation in rating the mode’s condition and loyalty to it. The aim of this research is to explore user perceptions of paratransit (i.e., jitney) operation, a privately owned and operated mode of transport, regarding quality of service, frequency of negative experience, and loyalty. This article examines the condition of paratransit from the user’s point of view to balance the judgment from other stakeholders. The findings from path analysis reveal the important determinants that influence overall satisfaction. Moreover, path analysis supports the hypothesis that this mode will still be relevant in the …

Examining Incentives And Preferential Treatment Of Carpools On Managed Lane Facilities, David Ungemah, Ginger Goodin, Casey Dusza, Mark Burris

Journal of Public Transportation

As managed lanes (ML) are considered throughout more than 25 North America cities, there is a need for guidance in defining the role of carpools in tolled ML and the trade-offs between carpool exemptions and other project objectives. Increasingly, project objectives are reflecting not only mobility concerns but the need to generate revenue as well. As a result, allowing exempt or discounted users, such as carpools on priced-ML requires an evaluation of revenue impacts as well as mobility interests such as person movements, operations, and emissions. This article highlights the existing body of knowledge regarding carpooling, facilities, and incentives designed …

Localization In Noisy Environment Using Extended Kalman Filter, Aneeket Suresh Patkar

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Localization is an important aspect of Wireless Sensor Networks. Information regarding the position of the sensor nodes is not always known. Without the position information of the sensors, the data reported by the sensors is of little use. Various approaches have been used to perform localization using some information about the sensor node. Potential field approach for localization, using distance information has been successfully tested with satisfactory results. However in case of noisy environment, the range measurements have greater inaccuracy. In such cases, localization using the above algorithm can provide some inaccuracy. To rectify such erroneous localization situations, Extended Kalman …

Decoupling Of Hamiltonian System With Applications To Linear Quadratic Problem, Vishal Gupta

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis provides a method of decoupling the Hamiltonian system with application to linear quadratic problem in control system. Resulting decoupled Hamiltonian system helps in formulating easy closed form solution to various optimal control problems. These closed form solution are improvement over the problem of solving first order nonlinear differential equations in conventional methods. Decoupling also eliminates the constraint, "Q = 0 " for certain type of optimal control.

Multi-Objective Evaluation Of Dynamic Facility Layout Using Ant Colony Optimization, Gary Yu-Hsin Chen

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The Dynamic Facility Layout Problem (DFLP) deals with changes of facility layout throughout time. As an extension to Static Facility Layout Problem (SFLP), it has gathered increasing interests lately. Facility layouts are constantly modified over time either to meet customers' changing demands in product designs and functionalities or to keep pace with technological innovations. Manufacturers must stay flexible and agile and frequent facility layout changes are needed. Since there is often insufficient time and insufficient funding to build a new manufacturing plant, it is often necessary to rearrange the current plant layout. Even though the rearrangement of plant layout can …

On The Study Of Multi-Channel Eeg: Lossless Compression, Signal Modeling And Classification, Yodchanan Wongsawat

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Recently, electroencephalogram (EEG) has become necessary for diagnosis, telemedicine, and brain computer interface (BCI). This thesis investigates three signal processing tools which can explore multi-channel structures of the EEG for different applications such as lossless compression, artifact removal, and classification. First, this thesis presents a method for approximating the Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT) of multi-channel EEG signals. The proposed transform is further parameterized by lifting factorization by which the coefficients' dynamic range is controlled through a proposed pivoting scheme, rendering a reversible structure under quantization of coefficients called IntSKLT. A lossless coder for multi-channel EEG signals which exploits inter-channel correlation among …