Digital Commons Network^™

Intelligent Tool For Determining The True Harmonic Current Contribution Of A Customer In A Power Distribution Network, Joy Mazumdar, Ronald G. Harley, Frank C. Lambert, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Marty L. Page

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Customer loads connected to power distribution network may be broadly categorized as either linear or nonlinear. Nonlinear loads inject harmonics into the power network. Harmonics in a power system are classified as either load harmonics or as supply harmonics depending on their origin. The source impedance also impacts the harmonic current flowing in the network. Hence, any change in the source impedance is reflected in the harmonic spectrum of the current. This paper proposes a novel method based on artificial neural networks to isolate and evaluate the impact of the source impedance change without disrupting the operation of any load, …

Development Of Deterministic Collision-Avoidance Algorithms For Routing Automated Guided Vehicles, Arun S. Pai

Theses

A manufacturing job spends a small portion of its total flow time being processed on machines, and during the remaining time, either it is in a queue or being transported from one work center to another. In a fully automated material-handling environment, automated guided vehicles (AGV) perform the function of transporting the jobs between workstations, and high operational costs are involved in these material-handling activities. Consequently, the AGV route schedule dictates subsequent work-center scheduling. For an AGV job transportation schedule to be effective, the issue of collisions amongst AGV during travel needs to be addressed. Such collisions cause stalemate situations …

Statistical Model Prediction Of Fatigue Life For Diffusion Bonded Inconel 600, Timothy Nowicki

Theses

Diffusion bonding is a solid-state joining process, used in a wide range of fields, allowing the joining of both metallic and ceramic materials to create complicated parts and geometries [1]. Diffusion bonded material has been found to contain inherent defects caused by the bond process that have been loosely associated to the lower tensile and fatigue strengths of the parent material [2]. The process is relatively new, and little research has been done to characterize these defects or their relationship to bond quality, with the exception of a recent study that did relate tensile strength to the bond quality [3]. …

Undergraduate Research: A Bridge To Graduate Education In Agricultural Biotechnology For Hispanics, Eliezer S. Louzada, Hilda Sonia De Rio, Allison J. Abell, Gerson Peltz, Michael W. Persans

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Biology)

Hispanics lag behind all other U.S. ethnic groups in education, and are especially poorly represented in science careers. Undergraduate research is an efficient method to attract undergraduate students to science, and many universities are taking advantage of this; however, much still needs to be done to fully explore its potential. In 2000, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Brownsville and the University of Texas Pan-American, initiated a undergraduate research internship program in citrus biotechnology to channel Hispanic undergraduate students into graduate education. To date, 51 internships have been provided, and 20 students have been channeled …

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Generating Robust Schedules Subject To Resource And Duration Uncertainties, Na Fu, Hoong Chuin Lau, Fei Xiao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with minimal and maximal time lags under resource and duration uncertainties. To manage resource uncertainties, we build upon the work of Lambrechts et al 2007 and develop a method to analyze the effect of resource breakdowns on activity durations. We then extend the robust local search framework of Lau et al 2007 with additional considerations on the impact of unexpected resource breakdowns to the project makespan, so that partial order schedules (POS) can absorb both resource and duration uncertainties. Experiments show that our proposed model is capable of addressing the uncertainty of resources, …

A Heuristic Method For Job-Shop Scheduling With An Infinite Wait Buffer: From One-Machine To Multi-Machine Problems, Z. J. Zhao, J. Kim, M. Luo, Hoong Chuin Lau, S. S. Ge

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Through empirical comparison of classical job shop problems (JSP) with multi-machine consideration, we find that the objective to minimize the sum of weighted tardiness has a better wait property compared with the objective to minimize the makespan. Further, we test the proposed Iterative Minimization Micro-model (IMM) heuristic method with the mixed integer programming (MIP) solution by CPLEX. For multi-machine problems, the IMM heuristic method is faster and achieves a better solution. Finally, for a large problem instance with 409 jobs and 30 types of machines, IMM-heuristic method is compared with ProModel and we find that the heuristic method is slightly …

Do Online Reviews Affect Product Sales? The Role Of Reviewer Characteristics And Temporal Effects, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Jennifer Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online product reviews provided by consumers who previously purchased products have become a major information source for consumers and marketers regarding product quality. This study extends previous research by conducting a more compelling test of the effect of online reviews on sales. In particular, we consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of online reviews, such as reviewer quality, reviewer exposure, product coverage, and temporal effects. Using transaction cost economics and uncertainty reduction theories, this study adopts a portfolio approach to assess the effectiveness of the online review market. We show that consumers understand the value difference between favorable news and …

Distinguishing Between Fe And Ddos Using Randomness Check, Hyundo Park, Peng Li, Debin Gao, Heejo Lee, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Threads posed by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are becoming more serious day by day. Accurately detecting DDoS becomes an important and necessary step in securing a computer network. However, Flash Event (FE), which is created by legitimate requests, shares very similar characteristics with DDoS in many aspects and makes it hard to be distinguished from DDoS attacks. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective mechanism called FDD (FE and DDoS Distinguisher) to distinguish FE and DDoS. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effective and practical mechanism that distinguishes FE and DDoS attacks. …

Tennessee Archivist 31, No. 3, Society Of Tennessee Archivists

Tennessee Archivist newsletters

Fall 2008 issue of the Tennessee Archivist, a newsletter produced by the Society of Tennessee Archivists.

Religion And Science At The Turn Of The Century, Calvin Jongsma

Pro Rege

This article was published in the 2007 issue of the online Journal of the ACMS (Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences).

One Mathematician's Journey Through Mathematics And The Faith Equation: One Mathematician's Journey In Christianity (Book Reviews), Calvin Jongsma

Pro Rege

Reviewed Titles: Bittinger, Marvin. One Mathematician’s Journey through Mathematics. Addison-Wesley, 2004. ix + 212 pages. ISBN: 0321241509. Bittinger, Marvin. The Faith Equation: One Mathematician’s Journey in Christianity. Literary Architects, 2007. xxv + 290 pages. ISBN: 1933669071.

The article incorrectly cites "One Man's Journey through Mathematics" as "One Mathematician's Journey through Mathematics."

Canon: A Whirligig Tour Of The Beautiful Basics Of Science (Book Review), David J. Mulder

Pro Rege

Reviewed Title: Angier, Natalie. The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 304 pp. ISBN: 978-0-618-24295-5.

Network-Centric Localization In Manets Based On Particle Swarm Optimization, Raghavendra V. Kulkarni, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Ann K. Miller, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

There exist several application scenarios of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) in which the nodes need to locate a target or surround it. Severe resource constraints in MANETs call for energy efficient target localization and collaborative navigation. Centralized control of MANET nodes is not an attractive solution due to its high network utilization that can result in congestions and delays. In nature, many colonies of biological species (such as a flock of birds) can achieve effective collaborative navigation without any centralized control. Particle swarm optimization (PSO), a popular swarm intelligence approach that models social dynamics of a biological swarm is …

Sr-2: A Hybrid Algorithm For The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem, Angel A. Juan, Javier Faulin, Josep Jorba, Barry Barrios, Scott Erwin Grasman

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

During the last decades a lot of work has been devoted to develop algorithms that can provide near-optimal solutions for the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). Most of these algorithms are designed to minimize an objective function, subject to a set of constraints, which typically represents aprioristic costs. This approach provides adequate theoretical solutions, but they do not always fit real-life needs since there are some important costs and some routing constraints or desirable properties that cannot be easily modeled. In this paper, we present a new approach which combines the use of Monte Carlo simulation and parallel and grid …

Windsat Passive Microwave Polarimetric Signatures Of The Greenland Ice Sheet, David G. Long, Li Li, Peter Gaiser, Mary R. Albert, Elizabeth M. Twarog

Faculty Publications

WindSat has systematically collected the first global fully polarimetric passive microwave data over both land and ocean. As the first spaceborne polarimetric microwave radiometer, it was designed to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction by including the third and fourth Stokes parameters, which are mostly related to the asymmetric structures of the ocean surface roughness. Although designed for wind vector retrieval, WindSat data are also collected over land and ice, and this new data has revealed, for the first time, significant land signals in the third and fourth Stokes parameter channels, particularly over Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets. …

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: September 2008, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2008

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from September 2008. These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: September 2008, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2008

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Update from September 26, 2008.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Optimal Remedies For Patent Infringement: A Transactional Model, Paul J. Heald

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

In a world of zero transaction costs, one should observe optimal invention and innovation. As long as a system of enforceable contracts were in place, firms with inventive capacity and firms requiring inventions would negotiate for the optimal production of new creations. With adequate information, an observer could accurately predict which transactions would occur between firms and which transactions would not, thereby permitting description of the conditions for optimal inventiveness. Patent remedies in a world with transactions costs can be calibrated so that real firms behave as ideal firms, providing incentives for real world transactions to mimic those in a …

2007 Annual Report, Thomas F. Turner

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Special Issue Introduction: Hci Studies In Mis, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Xiaowen Fang, Traci Hess, Weiyin Hong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We are grateful to the editors-in-chief for this opportunity and their strong support of the second AIS SIGHCI-sponsored special issue on HCI studies in MIS. We also thank the following reviewers who have played an important role in the development of the manuscripts included in this special issue: Steven Bellman, Damon Campbell, Jinwei Cao, Jane Carey, Andrea Everard, Mark Fuller, Matt Germonprez, Maggie Guo, Susanna Ho, De Liu, Hong Sheng, Chuan Hoo Tan, Horst Treiblmaier, June Wei, and Yunjie Calvin Xu.

Tagnsearch: Searching And Navigating Geo-Referenced Collections Of Photographs, Quang Minh Nguyen, Thi Nhu Quynh Kim, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Ee Peng Lim, Aixin Sun, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

TagNSearch is a map-based tool for searching and browsing geo-tagged photographs based on their associated tags. Using Flickr as the dataset, TagNSearch returns, for a given query, photographs clustered by locations, and summarizes each cluster of photographs by cluster-specific tags. A map-based interface is also provided to help users better search, navigate and browse photographs and their clusters. A qualitative evaluation comparing TagNSearch and an existing tag search support in Flickr was also conducted. The task involved finding locations associated with a set of photographs. Participants were found to perform this task better using TagNSearch than Flickr.

An Efficient Pir Construction Using Trusted Hardware, Yanjiang Yang, Xuhua Ding, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

For a private information retrieval (PIR) scheme to be deployed in practice, low communication complexity and low computation complexity are two fundamental requirements it must meet. Most existing PIR schemes only focus on the communication complexity. The reduction on the computational complexity did not receive the due treatment mainly because of its O(n) lower bound. By using the trusted hardware based model, we design a novel scheme which breaks this barrier. With constant storage, the computation complexity of our scheme, including offline computation, is linear to the number of queries and is bounded by after optimization.

Software Nightmares, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To err is human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer. So states the remarkably insightful Murphy’s Law. And nowhere else does this ring truer than in our financial workplace. After all, it is the financial sector that drove the rapid progress in the computing industry – which is why the first computing giant had the word “business” in its name. The financial industry keeps up with the developments in the computer industry for one simple reason. Stronger computers and smarter programs mean more money — a concept we readily grasp. As we use the latest and …

Relative Importance, Specific Investment And Ownership In Interorganizational Systems., Kunsoo Han, Robert J. Kauffman, Barrie R. Nault

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Implementation and maintenance of interorganizational systems (IOS) require investments by all the participating firms. Compared with intraorganizational systems, however, there are additional uncertainties and risks. This is because the benefits of IOS investment depend not only on a firm's own decisions, but also on those of its business partners. Without appropriate levels of investment by all the firms participating in an IOS, they cannot reap the full benefits. Drawing upon the literature in institutional economics, we examine IOS ownership as a means to induce value-maximizing noncontractible investments. We model the impact of two factors derived from the theory of incomplete …

Cascade Rsvm In Peer-To-Peer Network, Hock Hee Ang, Vivekanand Gopalkrishnan, Steven C. H. Hoi, Wee Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The goal of distributed learning in P2P networks is to achieve results as close as possible to those from centralized approaches. Learning models of classification in a P2P network faces several challenges like scalability, peer dynamism, asynchronism and data privacy preservation. In this paper, we study the feasibility of building SVM classifiers in a P2P network. We show how cascading SVM can be mapped to a P2P network of data propagation. Our proposed P2P SVM provides a method for constructing classifiers in P2P networks with classification accuracy comparable to centralized classifiers and better than other distributed classifiers. The proposed algorithm …

Ultracapacitor Assisted Powertrains: Modeling, Control, Sizing, And The Impact On Fuel Economy, Dean Rotenberg

All Theses

This thesis investigates possible fuel economy gains attainable by a combination of high-power density ultracapacitors (also called supercapacitors) and an induction motor integrated into a conventional vehicle powertrain for power assistance.
Periods of quick acceleration require a much higher power output from an automobile than what is encountered under more typical driving conditions. A simple kinetic energy calculation can show that accelerating a 2000 kg vehicle (roughly the size of a Ford Explorer SUV) from 0 to 60 mph in 10 seconds requires almost 70 kW of power, in addition to the power needed to overcome road and air drag …

A Teaching Intervention To Increase Achievement Of Hispanic Nonscience Majors Taking Physical Science Courses, G. Herold Poelzer, Liang Zeng

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

This quasi-experimental pilot study of nonscience majors taking a physical science course at a university in South Texas was conducted on Hispanic undergraduate students, and is theory based--an application of attribution theory. That the treatment group outperformed the comparison group provides evidence of the positive effect of having students reflect on controllable reasons for their grades and on their subsequent planning of strategies to maintain or improve those grades. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Lime For High Rainfall Pastures: Above 800mm Average Annual Rainfall, Mike Bolland, Bill Russell

Bulletins 4000 -

Conventional agriculture acidifies soil. As your soil becomes more acid, productive pasture species disappear and are replaced by species of low agricultural value. It is a waste of money to apply expensive fertiliser to pastures which are inherently poorly productive because they are growing in an acid soil.

The paper examines the types of lime available, how to select lime for quality and when and how much lime to apply. Maganese toxity and aluminum toxicity are examine, how to test your soil, and affect of soil acidity on bacteria and other microorgansims.

On The Rolling Motion Of Viscous Fluid On A Rigid Surface, Xinli Wang

Dissertations

This thesis considers two closely related problems. First, the influence of insoluble surfactant at a moving contact line is considered. This work is mostly motivated by the air entrainment during the coating process where there is a three-phase contact point (e.g., air, liquid and solid). For moving contact line problems, when the fluid is assumed to be an incompressible Newtonian fluid and a no-slip boundary condition is enforced at the solid boundary, the non-integrable stress singularity arises at the contact line, which is physically unrealistic. The contact angle of 180° is considered as a special case in which the singularity …