Digital Commons Network^™

Poly(Ethylenedioxythiophene) Based Electronic Devices For Sensor Applications, Jie Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Organic electronic devices, based on Poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-Poly (styrene sulfonic acid) (PEDOT-PSS) as the active layer for sensor applications, have been studied. Two sets of sensors have been developed. In one case, sensors consisting of PEDOT-PSS resistors have been realized and demonstrated for soil moisture monitoring. The resistor model for the soil moisture sensor enables the sensor device to be fabricated at low cost and easily tested with a simple structure. Unlike the large dimension device used in Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR), the sensors are small and are capable of capturing microscale behavior of moisture in soil which is useful for …

Writing Toward Readers' Better Health: A Case Study Examining The Development Of Online Health Information, Russell Willerton

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Each year, more people search the Internet for health information. Through a case study conducted at a prominent health information company, I will show that technical communicators are well suited to contribute to the development of online health information. Like other technical communicators, online health information developers must make rhetorical choices based on audience needs, function within specific social contexts, and work through challenges of writing, editing, and project management.

Sheep Updates 2008 - Part 3, L. J. E. Karlsson, J. C. Greeff, L. Slocombe, K. Jones, N. Underwood, Fred Wilkinson, W. D. Hoffman, W. A. Mckiernan, V. H. Oddy, M. J. Mcphee, B. L. Mcintyre, P. F. Parnell, R. A. Clark, J. Timms, G. Griffith, C. Mulholland, P. Hyland, Danielle England, Fiona Jones, John Lucey, Martin Staines, Richard Morris, Megan Abrahams, Caroline Peek, Dennis Van Gool, Daniel Gardiner, Kari-Lee Falconer, Sandra Prosser, Mario D'Antuono, John Young, Andrew Thompson, Chris Oldham, Brown Besier, Angus Campbell, Ralph Behrendt

Sheep Updates

This session covers fiveteen papers from different authors:

CONTROLLING FLY STRIKE

1. Breeding for Blowfly Resistance - Indicatoe Traits, LJE Karlsson, JC Greeff, L Slocombe, Department of Agriculture & Food, Western Australia

2.A practical method to select for breech strike resistance in non-pedigreed Merino flocks, LJE Karlsson, JC Greeff, L Slocombe, K. Jones, N. Underwood, Department of Agriculture & Food, Western Australia

3. Twice a year shearing - no mulesing, Fred Wilkinson, Producer, Brookton WA

BEEF

4. Commercial testing of a new tool for prediction of fatness in beef cattle, WD Hoffman^A, WA McKiernan^A, VH Oddy …

Earth Jurisprudence: The Moral Value Of Nature, Judith E. Koons

Faculty Scholarship

As planetary environmental crises advance toward us like an enormous oil spill, the call of Earth Jurisprudence has arisen, suggesting that a shift is necessary in the way that we think about law, governance, and nature. A predicate to rethinking law, however, is to reconsider the moral status of nature. This article posits that, to preserve a healthy planet for future generations of human beings - and for Earth itself - it is necessary to recognize Earth as the center of the moral community. As an ethical endeavor, the article turns the question of the moral status of nature through …

Non-Beneficial Pediatric Research And The Best Interest Standard: A Reconciliation, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

Federal efforts beginning in the 1990's have successfully increased pediatric research to improve medical care for all children. Since 1997, the FDA has requested 800 pediatric studies involving 45,000 children. Much of this research is "non-beneficial"; that is, it exposes pediatric subjects to risk even though these children will not benefit from participating in the research. Non-beneficial pediatric research (NBPR) seems, by definition, contrary to the best interests of pediatric subjects, which is why one state supreme court has essentially prohibited it. It also appears that the only plausible rationale for this research is utilitarian, as it risks some children …

Aminoacyl-Trna Synthetase Complexes: Molecular Multitasking Revealed, Corinne D. Hausmann, Michael Ibba

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

The accurate synthesis of proteins, dictated by the corresponding nucleotide sequence encoded in mRNA, is essential for cell growth and survival. Central to this process are the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs), which provide amino acid substrates for the growing polypeptide chain in the form of aminoacyl-tRNAs. The aaRSs are essential for coupling the correct amino acid and tRNA molecules, but are also known to associate in higher order complexes with proteins involved in processes beyond translation. Multiprotein complexes containing aaRSs are found in all three domains of life playing roles in splicing, apoptosis, viral assembly, and regulation of transcription and translation. …

Otterbein Towers Summer 2008, Otterbein Towers

Towers Magazine

150 Years of Choral Traditions; Features: 150 Years of Choral Traditions; A Fraternal Centennial; Commencement; Alumni Weekend; Regulars: College News: Otterbein Breaks Ground on Equine Facility; Students Help Rescued Horses; Fredrik Marsh Named Guggenheim Fellow; Faculty and Staff Dumpster Dive for Charity; MBA Director Introduces John McCain; Spotlight on Faculty: Marsha Robinson; Professor Provides His Own DNA for Class; Business Class Gets Firsthand Experience with Charities; Peggy McMains Receives Support Staff Award; Retired Professor Still Very Active at the College; Bread and Roses Winners Named; ClassNotes; Milestones; Investing in Otterbein; Alumni Notes, etc.

11th International Coral Reef Symposium Proceedings, Bernhard Riegl (Editor), Richard E. Dodge (Editor)

ICRS Conference Proceedings

A defining theme of the 11^th International Coral Reef Symposium was that the news for coral reef ecosystems are far from encouraging. Climate change happens now much faster than in an ice-age transition, and coral reefs continue to suffer fever-high temperatures as well as sour ocean conditions. Corals may be falling behind, and there appears to be no special silver bullet remedy. Nevertheless, there are hopeful signs that we should not despair.

Reef ecosystems respond vigorously to protective measures and alleviation of stress. For concerned scientists, managers, conservationists, stakeholders, students, and citizens, there is a great role to play …

Comprehensive Data Analysis For Biomarker Pattern Discovery Using Dna/Protein Microarrays, Young Bun Kim

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

During the last decade, the advent of microarray technology has stimulated rapid research advances in bioinformatics. Microarray data pose great challenges for computational data analysis, because of their large dimensionality (up to several tens of thousands of genes) and their small sample sizes. In order to deal with these particular characteristics of microarray data, the need and importance for feature selection techniques were realized. While a lot of research deals with classification methods and their application to microarray data, only a few approaches are explicitly designed to consider interaction among the investigated features. It is well known that the interactions …

Effect Of Ph On Ptru Electrocatalysts Prepared Via A Polyol Process On Carbon Nanotubes, Li Ren, Yangchuan Xing

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper reports a study on the pH effects on the PtRu nanoparticles synthesized in a polyol process that were deposited on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by reducing metal salts using ethylene glycol at various pHs. It was found that the nanoparticle size, composition, and catalytic activity all were sensitive to pH. the nanoparticles decreased in size as the preparation pH increased from 1.6 to 10.0, with the largest size at 2.47 nm and the smallest at 1.13 nm. an exception was found for pH at 0.7, which resulted in an average size of only 1.01 nm. Preparation pH was found …

Volume 2008-09 - Issue 1 - Summer, 2008, Echoes Staff

Rose Echoes

No abstract provided.

Schooling And The “Hygienization” Of Less-Privileged Children In Brazil, 1870-1900, Karl M. Lorenz, Ariclê Vechia, António G. Ferreira

Education Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Remembrance Of Lives Past: The Challenge Of Addressing Epigenetic Risk In Society, Fazal Khan

Popular Media

Do our ancestors’ experiences from several generations ago play a role in our current health? Could a famine or a period of food abundance experienced by our grandfathers affect whether we are currently obese or likely to develop diabetes? Can being the grandchildren of those who suffered through genocide or intense racial discrimination affect levels of certain chemicals in our brains even if we are not exposed to the same social stresses? In other words, do we biologically inherit the “memories” of past generations independent of changes to our ancestors’ genetic code or DNA? Assistant Professor Fazal Khan explores how …

Simulation Study On Spatial And Temporal Changes Of Factories In An Industry District, Hiroyasu Nagata, K. Tainaka, J. Yoshimura

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Factories or plants are built or dismantled for various complex reasons. Understanding the construction and dismantlement processes of factories is one of complicated economic problems. The present article has two purposes: one is to explore the spatial and temporal changes of factories at Hamamatsu city in Japan, and the other is to represent the spatial and temporal changes by a simple simulation model. The time dependence of factory number can be classified into two periods. Before the collapse of Japanese stock market (1990), the number of factories increases smoothly. On the contrary, after the collapse, it rapidly decreases. The spatial …

Multivariate Spatio-Temporal Clustering (Mstc) As A Data Mining Tool For Environmental Applications, Forrest M. Hoffman, William W. Hargrove, Richard T. Mills, Salil Mahajan, David J. Erickson, Robert J. Oglesby

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The authors have applied multivariate cluster analysis to a variety of environmental science domains, including ecological regionalization; environmental monitoring network design; analysis of satellite-, airborne-, and ground-based remote sensing, and climate model-model and model-measurement intercomparison. The clustering methodology employs a k-means statistical clustering algorithm that has been implemented in a highly scalable, parallel high performance computing (HPC) application. Because of its efficiency and use of HPC platforms, the clustering code may be applied as a data mining tool to analyze and compare very large data sets of high dimensionality, such as very long or high frequency/resolution time series measurements or …

Overland Flow And Soil Erosion In An Undisturbed Brazilian Northeastern Semiarid Experimental Plot, Lúcio Flávio Ferreira Moreira, F. De O. Silva, A. M. Righetto, V. M. De A. Medeiros

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the Brazilian semi arid region, a combination between human activities and climatic factors produces an increase in the ecosystem susceptibility to soil erosion. In this study, runoff and soil erosion processes due to natural rainstorm events on a 0.025 ha undisturbed experimental plot is analyzed. The site was instrumented to monitor rainfall, overland flow, runoff and erosion. Automatic devices were installed to monitor rainfall and the level of a 5 m3 tank at a 1-minute time step. The sediment transported by the flow was collected after each event. Plot average slope is 2.5%, vegetated of both permanent and annual …

Improving Process Performance In Wastewater Treatment Plants Using An Intelligent Environmental Decision Support System, Lluís Corominas, Joel Denamur, Xavier Flores-Alsina, Joaquim Comas

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The objective of this paper is to present the simulation results of implementing and intelligent environmental decision support system (IEDSS) to overcome the limitations of the manual control at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) of Vall del Ges (North- East, Spain). The proposed IEDSS integrates online information with knowledge management techniques and aims to reduce the pollution load leaving the plant, at the same time that keeps the operational costs at minimum. To this end, a fuzzy logic engine (FLE) controls the effluent nitrate and ammonium concentration manipulating both aeration and internal recycle flow respectively. The results show significant savings …

Towards An Agent-Based Design For The Management Of Urban Wastewater Systems, M. Aulinas, Manel Poch, Ulises Cortés

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Urban Wastewater Systems (UWS) have an important role in nowadays growing and urbanized areas. The management of the water and wastewater cycle in these areas is complex since wastewater sources are both heterogeneous and rapidly changing. Moreover, it implies to deal with different spatial and temporal references and to adapt to the changing conditions that might appear in both natural and urban environments. New paradigms are required to be undertaken when designing and modelling this complex dynamic system, since the need to communicate the embedded elements is essential for an efficient and effective management and a better understanding of the …

An Activity Based Cellular Automaton Model To Simulate Land Use Changes, Jasper Van Vliet, Hedwig Van Delden

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper proposes a spatial explicit model for land use dynamics, based on activities, which can represent for example population or jobs. In land use models based on constrained cellular automata (CA), the total area per land use is defined exogenously, while the model computes the allocation based on transition rules. The activity based model is a CA model, but it is constrained by activities instead of areas. Each time step, activities are distributed over cells based on transition rules. The CA transition rules comprise the effects of the activity in the neighbourhood, the land use of a cell, externalities …

Evolvable Biological Interfaces: An Outline Of The New Computing System, Igor Balaž, Dragutin T. Mihailović

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In this paper, we represent architecture of a new individual-based model of evolvable biological interfaces. The model is based on three parts: mutable coding sequence, individual agents produced by the coding sequence and external environment represented by various virtual substances. Agents are able to recognize external substances and to perform transformations on them. However, unlike general computational scheme currently used in evolutionary computation which is based on predefined list of actions, where each action have predefined fitness value defined strictly within current problem, the recognition and corresponding transformation in this model are organized in completely different way. Here we merged …

On The Role Of Pre And Post-Processing In Environmental Data Mining, Karina Gibert, Joaquín Izquierdo, Geoffrey Holmes, Ioannis N. Athanasiadis, Joaquim Comas, Miquel Sànchez-Marrè

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The quality of discovered knowledge is highly depending on data quality. Unfortunately real data use to contain noise, uncertainty, errors, redundancies or even irrelevant information. The more complex is the reality to be analyzed, the higher the risk of getting low quality data. Knowledge Discovery from Databases (KDD) offers a global framework to prepare data in the right form to perform correct analyses. On the other hand, the quality of decisions taken upon KDD results, depend not only on the quality of the results themselves, but on the capacity of the system to communicate those results in an understandable form. …

Managing Insular Tropical Environment Through Data And Knowledge Bases By Using Web Services: A Case Study On Corals And Herbarium Of La Réunion Island, Noel Conruyt, D. Sebastien, D. Payet, Y. Geynet, D. Caron, David Grosser

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Decision-makers who want to manage Insular Tropical Environment more efficiently need to narrow the gap between the production of scientific knowledge in universities or other labs and its pragmatic use by the general public. One key environmental problem is to preserve biodiversity of ecosystems that are under human pressure. As we only protect what we know, a solution is to share expert knowledge about habitats and species on the Web for educating the public about their richness and beauty. Data and knowledge bases are part of a biodiversity information system that we have built to deal with this research enhancement …

Sustainable Use Of Pesticides: An Innovative Experience In Lombardy Region, Italy, C. Riparbelli, A. Di Guardo, A. Serrano, E. Capri, S. Brenna

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Pesticide contamination may affect the quality of different environmental compartments as soil, water and air and, consequently, may pose a risk to human beings and ecosystems. The current environmental and agricultural policies of the European Union are aimed at the development of sustainable agriculture production. Therefore, decision makers need innovative instruments to plan pesticide use, while farmers need directions to fight pests in a sustainable way in order to maintain reasonable cost-benefit balances for the farm. A decision support system called SuSAP Network – Supplying Sustainable Agriculture Production – has been developed for an intensive agricultural area of North Italy …

Development Of An Information System For The Administration Of Environmental Monitoring Data, J. Ráček, T. Ludík, V. Kubík, J. Ministr, J. Sedláčková, J. Fiala

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents the current state of the information system for administrationof environmental monitoring data developed by Masaryk University in Brno (MU). Therising environmental database of MU can be considered as unique for the type and thequantity of stored data. The information system running over this database allows themanagement of monitoring projects, localities and samples and viewing of various data aswell as exporting and simple analysis of the data. The paper describes the basic architectureof the developed information system and shows the most important parts of its data model.The system prototype is implemented as a web application for internal use …

Integration Of In-Situ And Remote Sensing Data For Water Risk Management, Bernhard H. C. Sputh, Oliver Faust, Lasse H. Pettersson, Torill Hamre, Damiano Vitulli, Alastair R. Allen, Tim Spracklen

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The combination of environmental measurements from different sensor equipment improveswater quality monitoring and associated risk management. The merging of in-situ andremote sensing data is a prerequisite to efficient monitoring of coastal and marine environments,because of their complementary nature and application areas. Both sensor types can monitorthe same phenomena, but remote sensing delivers the overall picture and in-situ measuring provideslocalised, high resolution measurements, over a wide range of parameters. The WARMER(WAter RiskManagement in EuRope) system combines remote sensing satellite data with in-situmeasurements for water quality risk management applications and delivers products to end-usersthrough a web GIS (Geographic Information System) portal. This …

Conceptual Model Of Single Information Space For Environment In Europe, Jiří Hřebíček, K. Kisza

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The paper presents the further development of the conceptual model of the Single Information Space for the Environment in Environment (SISE) and compares this with an upper ontology concept of the SISE. The developed conceptual model of the SISE enables an implementation the vision of development an integrated, modern, common, shared and sustained Single European Information Space infrastructure for environmental information exchange and environmental management in Europe.

A Qualitative Reasoning–Based Curriculum For Learning About Sustainable Development, Tim Nuttle, Anders Bouwer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Qualitative Reasoning (QR) has many qualities making it a useful ontology for educationabout system dynamics (Bredeweg and Forbus 2003). We implemented an onlinecurriculum for learning about sustainable development using QR in Moodle, an onlinecourse management system (http://www.moodle.org). This curriculum is centred onqualitative reasoning models that explore sustainable development situations in a five casestudies (Bredeweg et al. 2007), in addition to other models that explore specificsustainability issues. Each model is implemented using the QR model-building andinspecting workbench, Garp3 (Bredeweg et al. 2006). The “lesson” activity in Moodle isused to create a series of questions that guide learners stepwise through different scenariosfor …

Creating Robust Sensor Networks - Architecture And Infrastructure, Gerald Schimak, Thomas Usländer, D. Havlik, R. M. Argent

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Significant unregulated development is occurring in sensor devices, protocols and sensor networks especially in the areas of air and water quality monitoring and management where the focus has been on human health and exposure impacts. Satellite technology is well established as a means of deploying sensors. However, for monitoring of air and water we lack the interconnectivity of both in-situ and remote sensing devices that link to interoperable information systems. One reason for this deficiency is the lack of a sensor network infrastructure generic enough to support this interoperability and interconnectivity. This workshop will explore the architectural aspects of creating …

Statistical Analysis Of Spatial Plant Patterns Under The Effect Of Forest Use, I. López, T. Standovár, J. Garay, Z. Varga, M. Gámez

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The analysis of the consequences of land use (in particular forest use) may beconsidered as a partial step towards an integrated modelling of a land system. Let usconsider a forest territory, where a gap-cut is made, and after a given time period theeventual change in the spatial distribution of undergrowth plants and tree seedlings is to bedetected (see Mihók et al., 2005 and Gálhidy et al., 2006). If floristic data are collectedalong a line transect, we can try to detect the change in the plant distributions along thetransect, the so-called change-point, and see whether this occurs at the geometric frontierof …

Influence Of The Uncertainties Of Monitoring Data On Model Calibration And Evaluation, A. Ullrich, Martin Volk, G. Schmidt

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The model-based prediction of the impact of different land management on nutrient loading requires measured nutrient flux data. Thereby the accurate calibration and evaluation of the models need an adequate data base in form of monitoring data. Uncertainties in the monitoring data influence the calibration and thus the parameter settings which affect the modelling results. Hence, we compared three different time-based sampling strategies and four different load estimation methods for model calibration and compared the results. For our study we used the river basin model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool). Study area is the intensively used loess-dominated Parthe watershed …