Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling Motor Pattern Generation In The Development Of Infant Speech Production, Is Howard, P Messum

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

We previously proposed a non-imitative account of learning to pronounce, implemented computationally using discovery and mirrored interaction with a caregiver. Our model used an infant vocal tract synthesizer and its articulators were driven by a simple motor system. During an initial phase, motor patterns develop that represent potentially useful speech sounds. To increase the realism of this model we now include some of the constraints imposed by speech breathing. We also implement a more sophisticated motor system. Firstly, this can independently control articulator movement over different timescales, which is necessary to effectively control respiration as well as prosody. Secondly, we …

The Statistics Of Natural Hand Movements, James N. Ingram, Kp Kording, Ian S. Howard, Daniel M. Wolpert

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Composition And Decomposition In Bimanual Dynamic Learning, Ian S. Howard, James N. Ingram, Daniel M. Wolpert

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

The Reflective Science Educator, Caroline Anne Scheidel

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Reflection is synonymous with quality teaching. Though teachers reflect, the domains of reflections vary from teachers in different curriculum areas. Teachers of science have their own interesting characteristics to reflection. The art of reflection contains several unique aspects such as the logistics of reflections, the influence of the reflection, the content, and the perception one has on reflection. These aspects are described through the eyes of a science teacher to better understand their relationship to reflection. Though the research within reflections of teachers is plentiful, there is little on science teacher's reflections. The focus of this study is to determine …

Evaluating Earth Science Misconceptions In One School Districts: A Case Study, Katherine Marie Schafer

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This research was a case study in common Earth science misconceptions revealed among students in one rural Iowa school district known as "Ruraltown." Students in grades 5, 8 and 10 participated in this study. Evaluation of misconceptions was done through the administration of the Misconceptions-Oriented Standards-Based Assessment Resources For Teachers (MOSART). MOSART is designed to test for students' understanding of content contained within the K-12 Earth science National Science Education Standards and also to reveal misunderstandings held by students. Three questions guided this research study. One, how do students in this school district compare with students who participated in the …

A Case Study Of A Rural Iowa School Preparing To Meet New State Guidelines For School Libraries [Dissertation], Karla Steege Krueger

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The national school library guidelines place the greatest emphasis upon the teaching and learning component of school library programs led by professional school librarians. Despite findings linking school library programming, including instruction by professional school librarians, to increased student achievement on standardized tests and improved content learning through student inquiry using library resources, the importance of the instructional role of the school librarian remains largely unrecognized by administrators and teachers.

A qualitative case study of one rural Iowa elementary school provided insight into the issue of small schools without library programs as they are preparing to meet the Iowa reinstatement …

The Class Of 2008, Florence Soyinka

The Park Place Economist

No abstract provided.

Columbia University/Vireo-Cityu/Irit Trecvid2008 High-Level Feature Extraction And Interactive Video Search, Shih-Fu Chang, Junfeng He, Yu-Gang Jiang, Elie El Khoury, Chong-Wah Ngo, Akira Yanagawa, Eric Zavesky

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this report, we present overview and comparative analysis of our HLF detection system, which achieves the top performance among all type-A submissions in 2008. We also describe preliminary evaluation of our video search system, CuZero, in the interactive search task.

Specification And Automatic Code Generation Of The Data Layer For Data-Intensive Web-Based Applications, Sergei Golitsinski

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In this thesis I propose a new code generation approach to developing data-intensive web-based applications. I hypothesize that it is possible to build a code generator which will significantly improve development of data-intensive web-based applications by generating at least 50% of the data access code based on a specification of the application's data model. My main argument is that the application's data model is sufficient for deriving most of the data access functionality. To test this hypothesis I designed a data definition language, came up with a set of rules for deriving data access operations from the application's data model, …

Synthesis And Characterization Of New Luminescent Late Transition Metal Complexes Containing The Tridentate 1,3-Di(N-Pyrazolyl)-4,6-Dimethyl Benzene Ligand, Brian Christopher Gruver

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The tridentate 1,3-di(N-pyrazolyl) benzene L 1 was synthesized from dibromobenzene and pyrazole. When reacted with K2PtC14 and IrCl3 the asymmetric complexes (µ-Cl)2(PtL1 )2 and (µ-Cl)2[lr L12]2 were obtained. The tridentate l ,3- dimethyl-4,6-(di-N-pyrazolyl) benzene ligand L2 , was synthesized from di-bromo-mxylene and pyrazole. The ligand was reacted with K2PtC14 to give L2 PtCl. Further reaction with phenylacetylene led to the air sensitive acetylide complex L2 PtC=C(C6H5). L2 PtCl could also be reacted with AgOTf in acetonitrile to give [L2 PtN=CCH3] OTf. Reaction with other late transition metals led to the di-chloro bridged iridium dimer (µ-Cl)2[L 2IrCl]2 and the square planar …

Forecasting Model For Air Taxi, Commercial Airline, And Automobile Demand In The United States, Hojong Baik, Antonio A. Trani, Nicolas Hinze, Howard Swingle, Senanu Ashiabor, Anand Seshadri

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A nationwide model predicts the annual county-to-county person roundtrips for air taxi, commercial airline, and automobile at 1-year intervals through 2030. the transportation systems analysis model (TSAM) uses the four-step transportation systems modeling process to calculate trip generation, trip distribution, and mode choice for each county origin-destination pair. Network assignment is formulated for commercial airline and air taxi demand. TSAM classifies trip rates by trip purpose, household income group, and type of metropolitan statistical area from which the round-trip started. a graphical user interface with geographic information systems capability is included in the model. Potential applications of the model are …

Projectile Angular-Differential Cross Sections For Transfer And Transfer Excitation In Proton Collisions With Helium, M. Zapukhlyak, T. Kirchner, Ahmad Hasan, B. Tooke, Michael Schulz

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Projectile angular-differential cross sections for single-transfer and transfer excitation have been calculated with the two-center extension of the nonperturbative basis generator method for 5-200 keV proton-helium collisions. The calculations are based on the independent electron model, and the eikonal approximation has been used to extract angular-differential cross sections from impact-parameter-dependent transition amplitudes. The present results are compared with experimental and previous theoretical data where available. In particular, we consider the ratio of transfer excitation to single capture versus double excitation to single excitation at intermediate energies. An experimentally observed structure in this ratio at a scattering angle about 0.5 mrad …

Web-Based Service Exchange System For Agents And Humans Alike, Evens Jean, Machigar Ongtang, A. R. Hurson

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Semantic Web research aims at bridging the gap between how humans and agents process information readily available on the Internet. One of the great challenges to this goal lies in the fact that humans, contrary to agents, can extract the meaning of words based on its context. This work introduces a service exchange system for the Web that allows agents to intelligently process information, as would humans. This is achieved by the use of thesauri to help agents resolve semantic heterogeneity in the information being processed. The framework for the exchange system has been realized under the aglet platform on …

Energy Efficient Correlated Data Aggregation For Wireless Sensor Networks, Seung Jong Park, Raghupathy Sivakumar

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Data aggregations from Sensors to a sink in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are typically characterized by correlation along the spatial, semantic, and temporal dimensions. Exploiting such correlation when performing data aggregation can result in considerable improvements in the bandwidth and energy performance of WSNs. For the sensors-to-sink data delivery, we first explore two theoretical solutions: the shortest path tree (SPT) and the minimum spanning tree (MST) approaches. To approximate the optimal solution (MST) in case of perfect correlation among data, we propose a new aggregation which combines the minimum dominating set (MDS) with the shortest path tree (SPT) in order …

A Stabilized Rbf Collocation Scheme For Neumann Type Boundary Value Problems, Nicolas Ali Libre, Arezoo Emdadi, Edward J. Kansa, Mohammad Rahimian, Mohammad Shekarchi

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDEs) with Neumann boundary conditions (BCs) resulted from strong form collocation scheme are typically much poorer in accuracy compared to those with pure Dirichlet BCs. In this paper, we show numerically that the reason of the reduced accuracy is that Neumann BC requires the approximation of the spatial derivatives at Neumann boundaries which are significantly less accurate than approximation of main function. Therefore, we utilize boundary treatment schemes that based upon increasing the accuracy of spatial derivatives at boundaries. Increased accuracy of the spatial derivative approximation can be achieved by h-refmement reducing the …

Private Query On Encrypted Data In Multi-User Setting, Feng Bao, Robert H. Deng, Xuhua Ding, Yanjiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Searchable encryption schemes allow users to perform keyword based searches on an encrypted database. Almost all existing such schemes only consider the scenario where a single user acts as both the data owner and the querier. However, most databases in practice do not just serve one user; instead, they support search and write operations by multiple users. In this paper, we systematically study searchable encryption in a practical multi-user setting. Our results include a set of security notions for multi-user searchable encryption as well as a construction which is provably secure under the newly introduced security notions.

Document Selection For Extracting Entity And Relationship Instances Of Terrorist Events, Zhen Sun, Ee Peng Lim, Kuiyu Chang, Maggy Anastasia Suryanto, Rohan Kumar Gunaratna

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this chapter, we study the problem of selecting documents so as to extract terrorist event information from a collection of documents. We represent an event by its entity and relation instances. Very often, these entity and relation instances have to be extracted from multiple documents. We therefore define an information extraction (IE) task as selecting documents and extracting from which entity and relation instances relevant to a user-specified event (aka domain specific event entity and relation extraction). We adopt domain specific IE patterns to extract potentially relevant entity and relation instances from documents, and develop a number of document …

Validation Of An Nsp-Based (Negative Selection Pattern) Gene Family Identification Strategy, Ronald L. Frank, Cyriac Kandoth, Fikret Erçal

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Background: Gene family identification from ESTs can be a valuable resource for analysis of genome evolution but presents unique challenges in organisms for which the entire genome is not yet sequenced. We have developed a novel gene family identification method based on negative selection patterns (NSP) between family members to screen EST-generated contigs. This strategy was tested on five known gene families in Arabidopsis to see if individual paralogs could be identified with accuracy from EST data alone when compared to the actual gene sequences in this fully sequenced genome. Results: The NSP method uniquely identified family members in all …

Social Network Analysis Of Video Bloggers' Community, John Warmbrodt, Hong Sheng, Richard H. Hall

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Video blogs (or vlogs) have become increasingly popular in recent years. As the main motivation for vlogging is to interact with other vloggers, it is important to investigate the structure of the videobloggers' community and the interactions among vloggers. This research conducted a quantitative analysis using social network analysis. A list of personal vloggers was identified from VlogDIR and linking patters of vlogs were analyzed. The results suggest that video bloggers' community is highly decentralized and exhibits a core/periphery structure.

Electrical Detection Of The Temperature Induced Melting Transition Of A Dna Hairpin Covalently Attached To Gold Interdigitated Microelectrodes, Greg P. Brewood, Yaswanth Rangineni, Daniel J. Fish, Ashwini Bhandiwad, David R. Evans, Raj Solanki, Albert S. Benight

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

The temperature induced melting transition of a self-complementary DNA strand covalently attached at the 5' end to the surface of a gold interdigitated microelectrode (GIME) was monitored in a novel, label-free, manner. The structural state of the hairpin was assessed by measuring four different electronic properties of the GIME (capacitance, impedance, dissipation factor and phase angle) as a function of temperature from 25 degrees C to 80 degrees C. Consistent changes in all four electronic properties of the GIME were observed over this temperature range, and attributed to the transition of the attached single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) from an intramolecular, folded …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Novel Chiral Ionic Liquids And Investigation Of Their Enantiomeric Recognition Properties, David K. Bwambok, Hadi M. Marwani, Vivian E. Fernand, Sayo O. Fakayode, Mark Lowry, Ioan Negulescu, Robert M. Strongin, Isiah M. Warner

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

We report the synthesis and characterization of amino acid ester based chiral ionic liquids, derived from L- and D-alanine tert butyl ester chloride. The synthesis was accomplished via an anion metathesis reaction between commercially available L- and D-alanine tert butyl ester chloride using a variety of counterions such as lithium bis (trifluoromethane) sulfonimide, silver nitrate, silver lactate, and silver tetrafluoroborate. Both enantiomeric forms were obtained as confirmed by bands of opposite sign in the circular dichroism spectra. The L- and D-alanine tert butyl ester bis (trifluoromethane) sulfonimide were obtained as liquids at room temperature and intriguingly exhibited the highest thermal …

Linear Prediction: The Problem, Its Solution And Application To Speech, Alan O'Cinneide, David Dorran, Mikel Gainza

Conference papers

Linear prediction is a signal processing technique that is used extensively in the analysis of speech signals and, as it is so heavily referred to in speech processing literature, a certain level of familiarity with the topic is typically required by all speech processing engineers. This paper aims to provide a well-rounded introduction to linear prediction, and so doing, facilitate the understanding of the technique. Linear prediction and its mathematical derivation will be described, with a specific focus on applying the technique to speech signals. It is noted, however, that although progress in linear prediction has been driven primarily by …

Shear Wave Splitting And Mantle Flow Associated With The Deflected Pacific Slab Beneath Northeast Asia, Kelly H. Liu, Stephen S. Gao, Yuan Gao, Jing Wu

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A total of 361 SKS and five local S wave splitting measurements obtained at global and regional seismic network stations in NE China and Mongolia are used to infer the characteristics of mantle fabrics beneath northeast Asia. Fast polarization directions at most of the stations in the western part of the study area are found to be consistent with the strike of local geological features. The dominant fast directions at the eastern part, beneath which seismic tomography and receiver function studies revealed a deflected slab in the mantle transition zone (MTZ), are about 100° from north, which are almost exactly …

Rational Best-Value Model Based On Expected Performance, Magdy Abdelrahman, Tarek Zayed, Jay Hietpas, Ahmed Elwakil

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The best-value procurement strategy is gaining the interest of federal and state agencies. The strategy increases the value added to a project for each dollar added. A new concept of best value, that is, a rational and flexible model based on expected performance, is presented. The model's flexibility is obvious in the selection of parameters to be included in the contractor selection process and in the determination of their weights. The model's rationality will be achieved through relating all awarded scores to the agency's expected performance. The establishment of the best-value model relies on the past record of the contractor's …

Modeling The Fate Of Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products In Sewage Treatment Plants, Craig D. Adams

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Chemical fate models can be used to estimate the transformation reactions and the partitioning behavior of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in sewage treatment plants (STPs). Modeling the fate of PPCPs in a STP requires parameters such as rate constants or partition coefficients that are often unique to a specific STP, and that may exhibit significant temporal variability. Chemical fate models provide both a valuable test of our understanding of the fundamental underlying mechanisms regarding the fate of PPCPs in STPs, as well as a means of providing both qualitative and quantitative estimates for PPCP removal. This paper is …

Higher-Order Contributions Observed In Three-Dimensional (E,2e) Cross-Section Measurements At 1-Kev Impact Energy, M. Dürr, C. Dimopoulou, B. Najjari, A. Dorn, K. Bartschat, I. Bray, D. V. Fursa, Zhangjin Chen, Don H. Madison, J. Ullrich

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present experimental and theoretical fully differential cross sections for single ionization by fast, 1-keV (v=8.6 a.u.) electron impact. The cross sections were measured using a momentum imaging technique for electrons and ions (reaction microscope), which covers a large fraction of the emission angles for emitted low-energy electrons (EeV) and a wide range of scattering angles. Therefore comprehensive data sets are obtained for ionizing collisions at small relative momentum and energy transfer from the projectile to the target system. The experimental data are compared with predictions from several state-of-the-art theoretical calculations. At this high impact energy the calculated cross section …

Kinetics And Reaction Products Of Ozone And Surface-Bound Squalene, J. R. Wells, Glenn Morrison, Beverly K. Coleman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Because of the high occupant density in aircraft, the surface chemistry of ozone and squalene, an important component of skin oil, was evaluated. a reaction probability of 45±14) x 10 -5 was determined for the reaction of squalene (2,6,10,15,19,23-hexamethyl-2,6,10,14,18,22- tetracosahexaene) with ozone (50 parts per billion (ppb)) on a glass plate surface using the Field and Laboratory Emission Cell (FLEC) Automation and Control System (FACS). to more clearly define part of squalene's indoor environment degradation mechanism, gas-phase and surface-bound products of the squalene+O3 reaction were also investigated. Emitted products were captured in solution, derivatized with O-(2,3,4,5,6pentafluorobenzyl) hydroxylamine (PFBHA), and analyzed …

Energy Harvesting Using Piezoelectric Materials And High Voltage Scavenging Circuitry, Shahab Mehraeen, Jagannathan Sarangapani, Keith Corzine

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Piezoelectric transducers are increasingly being used to harvest energy from environmental vibrations in order to power remote sensors or to charge batteries that power the sensors. In this paper, two modifications have been analyzed and tested to increase the harvested electrical power from a vibrating piezoelectric material. First, the voltage inversion method, which has recently been used in piezoelectricbased energy harvesting, and that shapes the voltage to be in phase with current in order to increase the harvested power is reviewed. By injecting additional current, a new voltage inversion scheme, referred as voltage compensation scheme, is introduced. This new scheme …

Generalized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Formulation-Based Neural Network Control Of Affine Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, Zheng Chen, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we consider the use of nonlinear networks towards obtaining nearly optimal solutions to the control of nonlinear discrete-time (DT) systems. The method is based on least squares successive approximation solution of the generalized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (GHJB) equation which appears in optimization problems. Successive approximation using the GHJB has not been applied for nonlinear DT systems. The proposed recursive method solves the GHJB equation in DT on a well-defined region of attraction. The definition of GHJB, pre-Hamiltonian function, HJB equation, and method of updating the control function for the affine nonlinear DT systems under small perturbation assumption are proposed. …

Adhesion Enhancement Of Polymeric Films On Glass Surfaces By A Silane Derivative Of Azobisisobutyronitrile (Aibn)., Sudhir Mulik, Chariklia Sotiriou-Leventis, Nicholas Leventis

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Adhesion of polymeric films on surfaces can be due to a combination of van der Waals, electrostatic or covalent interactions between the two materials. The interfacial adhesion between a polymer film and glass or metal can be improved by using a broad class of silane coupling agents. Typically, silane coupling compounds used for adhesion improvement have structure similar to (R´O)3-Si-R, where R´O- is an alkoxy group and -R is an organofunctional group. Under appropriate reaction conditions alkoxy groups condense with hydroxyl groups available on the surface, resulting in surfaces decorated with organofunctional -R groups, which promote formation of covalent bonding …