Digital Commons Network^™

(E,2e) Study Of Two-Center Interference Effects In The Ionization Of N₂, Leigh R. Hargreaves, Christopher J. Colyer, Mark A. Stevenson, B. Lohmann, Ola A. Al-Hagan, Don H. Madison, Chuangang Ning

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

A number of previous studies have suggested the possibility of two-center interference effects in the single ionization of diatomic molecules such as H₂ and N₂. While interference effects have been successfully observed in the ionization of H₂, to date evidence for interference in N₂ ionization has yet to be conclusively demonstrated. This study presents triply differential cross sections for electron impact ionization of N₂, measured using the (e,2e) technique. The data are probed for signatures of two-center interference effects. Evidence for interference manifesting in the cross sections is observed.

Dit Independent , 1st.-31st. Of December, 2009, Dit:Students Union

DIT Student Union

No abstract provided.

Increasing Knowledge Of The Entomological Fauna Of The United Arab Emirates And The Role Of Private Collections, Brigitte Howarth, Michael P.T. Gillett

All Works

Conservation of larger terrestrial organisms is easier in comparison with arthropods because those groups are more visible, are generally better known and their requirements more likely to have been described and documented. Arthropods are often very small, e.g. the average size of a beetle is 4 mm, and this means that much arthropod biodiversity has thus far not been described. Many arthropod species are of ecological importance and may be regarded as keystone species in their environment without which ecosystems would collapse. This has widely been recognized and much research is under way. Nowadays there is an urgency for arthropod …

Empirical Likelihood In Missing Data Problems, Jing Qin, Biao Zhang, Denis H. Y. Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Missing data is a ubiquitous problem in medical and social sciences. It is well known that inferences based only on the complete data may not only lose efficiency, but may also lead to biased results if the data is not missing completely at random (MCAR). The inverse-probability weighting method proposed by Horvitz and Thompson (1952) is a popular alternative when the data is not MCAR. The Horvitz–Thompson method, however, is sensitive to the inverse weights and may suffer from loss of efficiency. In this paper, we propose a unified empirical likelihood approach to missing data problems and explore the use …

Standards For Labelling And Storage Of Anaesthetic Medications--An Audit, Muhammad Imran, Fauzia Anis Khan, Shemila Abbasi

Department of Anaesthesia

OBJECTIVE: To check compliance of anaesthetist to current policies set for the use of medication within operation room and for induction room floor stock.

METHODS: The initial audit was conducted from 1st October to 31st November 2006 and reaudit after dissemination and sharing of results within the department repeated in July-August 2007. In each audit four operating rooms were visited twice a week. Syringes were checked for standard drug labelling for narcotic and non narcotic preparations. Drug trolley was checked for any expired drugs and whether the trolley was locked in case of operating room (OR) where list was ended …

Coherent Phrase Model For Efficient Image Near-Duplicate Retrieval, Yiqun Hu, Xiangang Cheng, Liang-Tien Chia, Xing Xie, Deepu Rajan, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents an efficient and effective solution for retrieving image near-duplicate (IND) from image database. We introduce the coherent phrase model which incorporates the coherency of local regions to reduce the quantization error of the bag-of-words (BoW) model. In this model, local regions are characterized by visual phrase of multiple descriptors instead of visual word of single descriptor. We propose two types of visual phrase to encode the coherency in feature and spatial domain, respectively. The proposed model reduces the number of false matches by using this coherency and generates sparse representations of images. Compared to other method, the …

To Trust Or Not To Trust? Predicting Online Trusts Using Trust Antecedent Framework, Viet-An Nguyen, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper analyzes the trustor and trustee factors that lead to inter-personal trust using a well studied Trust Antecedent framework in management science. To apply these factors to trust ranking problem in online rating systems, we derive features that correspond to each factor and develop different trust ranking models. The advantage of this approach is that features relevant to trust can be systematically derived so as to achieve good prediction accuracy. Through a series of experiments on real data from Epinions, we show that even a simple model using the derived features yields good accuracy and outperforms MoleTrust, a trust …

Insights Into Malware Detection And Prevention On Mobile Phones, Qiang Yan, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The malware threat for mobile phones is expected to increase with the functionality enhancement of mobile phones. This threat is exacerbated with the surge in population of smart phones instilled with stable Internet access which provides attractive targets for malware developers. Prior research on malware protection has focused on avoiding the negative impact of the functionality limitations of mobile phones to keep the performance cost within the limitations of mobile phones. Being different, this paper investigates the positive impact of these limitations on suppressing the development of mobile malware. We study the state-of-the-art mobile malware, as well as the progress …

A New Approach For Anonymous Password Authentication, Yanjiang Yang, Jianying Zhou, Jian Weng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Anonymous password authentication reinforces password authentication with the protection of user privacy. Considering the increasing concern of individual privacy nowadays, anonymous password authentication represents a promising privacy-preserving authentication primitive. However, anonymous password authentication in the standard setting has several inherent weaknesses, making its practicality questionable. In this paper, we propose a new and efficient approach for anonymous password authentication. Our approach assumes a different setting where users do not register their passwords to the server; rather, they use passwords to protect their authentication credentials. We present a concrete scheme, and get over a number of challenges in securing password-protected credentials …

Duol: A Double Updating Approach For Online Learning, Peilin Zhao, Steven C. H. Hoi, Rong Jin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In most online learning algorithms, the weights assigned to the misclassified examples (or support vectors) remain unchanged during the entire learning process. This is clearly insufficient since when a new misclassified example is added to the pool of support vectors, we generally expect it to affect the weights for the existing support vectors. In this paper, we propose a new online learning method, termed Double Updating Online Learning, or DUOL for short. Instead of only assigning a fixed weight to the misclassified example received in current trial, the proposed online learning algorithm also tries to update the weight for one …

Learning Bregman Distance Functions And Its Application For Semi-Supervised Clustering, Lei Wu, Rong Jin, Steven C. H. Hoi, Jianke Zhu, Nenghai Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Learning distance functions with side information plays a key role in many machine learning and data mining applications. Conventional approaches often assume a Mahalanobis distance function. These approaches are limited in two aspects: (i) they are computationally expensive (even infeasible) for high dimensional data because the size of the metric is in the square of dimensionality; (ii) they assume a fixed metric for the entire input space and therefore are unable to handle heterogeneous data. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme that learns nonlinear Bregman distance functions from side information using a nonparametric approach that is similar to …

Adsorptive Removal Of Nitrogen From Coal-Based Needle Coke Feedstocks Using Activated Carbon, Sreeja Madala

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A low percentage of nitrogen in needle coke feedstocks is desired for the reduction of puffing during the process of graphitization of needle coke. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the removal of nitrogen species from a coal-based needle coke feedstock, when treated with both commercial activated carbon, Nuchar SA 20 and "coal-derived" activated carbon, WVUAC 900-15. Koppers coal tar distillate (CTD), which has 1.1% wt starting nitrogen content, is selected as the needle coke feedstock. A series of experiments was performed to establish a standard procedure for the removal of nitrogen species. Using the established experimental …

Implementing Energy Release Rate Calculations Into The Lamodel Program, Morgan M. Sears

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Mining activity at increasingly greater depths and the tragedy at Crandall Canyon that claimed the lives of nine miners have forced coal bump research to the forefront of mining engineering research. Near the end of the last century, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the former U.S. Bureau of Mines investigated the mechanics, conditions, and mitigation of coal bumps. Unfortunately, the exact mechanics of coal bumps is still not fully understood. Following this period, research into coal bumps in the United States has been limited.;The Energy Release Rate (ERR) calculation quantifies the dissipation ("release") of the …

Design Of A Test Stand For Alternate Fuel And Ignition Systems Testing, Patrick Wildfire

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

There is a growing interest in improving engine versatility through the capacity to run on more than one fuel. To aid in this effort, ongoing research is being conducted to investigate a novel system using microwave plasma ignition designed with the goal of allowing spark ignited engines to run on multiple fuels. To accomplish the testing of this system, it was necessary to design and fabricate a test stand including an engine and instrumentation capable of measuring the performance of the ignition system within the environment of a running engine, and capable of testing this system on multiple fuels. It …

A Reconceptualized Analysis Of The West Virginia 4-H Global Education Program: Attitudes Of Agents, Specialists, And Volunteers, Ahmed M. Abdulai

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Global Education has been and continues to be an important aspect of American higher educational curriculum. Its importance is evidenced not only at the formal educational sector, but also within youth development programs like the West Virginia 4-H program.;The author contends that, the importance of global education is more relevant in the 21st century due to the increasing interdependence of the global world. The study looks at the perceived attitudes of 4-H Agents, Specialists, and Volunteers towards global education and how such an educational program affects the youth development of the 4-Her.;The present study, which is partly based on John …

Initiating A Practice Change: Prescribing Probiotics Concurrently With Antibiotic Therapy, Patty Hermosilla

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Background and significance. Over half of all hospitalized patients are treated with antibiotics and antibiotic use is rising. There has been a 500% increase in antibiotic associated diarrhea, a common side effect of antibiotic use, in the last decade. Probiotics are a safe and cost effective measure to prevent or reduce antibiotic associated diarrhea.;Problem statement. The majority of patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit receive antibiotic therapy; however, few are prescribed probiotic therapy concurrent with antibiotics.;Project design. Education was provided to health care providers regarding antibiotic associated diarrhea and the benefits of probiotic use. A guideline was developed …

The Evaluation Of A Nutrition Education And Fitness Program With A Contest Component Among College Students Using The Re-Aim Framework, Michelle L. Bartlett

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Only recently have practitioners and researchers targeted the population of college students in studying interventions aimed at increasing health behaviors. There is evidence that a proportion of college students are making attempts on their own to remedy weight gain and poor physical fitness with little or no guidance, which is reflected in consistently rising obesity rates in this population. Thus, the need for organized and effective interventions is illustrated. The impact of an intervention can be determined through evaluation research. Although the RE-AIM model has not yet been used to evaluate single-site, university-sponsored, college-student weight-loss/fitness programs, it provided a useful …

Mechanism By Which Dietary Polyunsaturated Fat Regulates Lipogenic Gene Expression, Alison Bloom Kohan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Primary hepatocytes treated with non-esterified polyunsaturated fatty acids have been used as a model for describing the inhibitory effects of dietary polyunsaturated fats on lipogenic gene expression. This model resembles starvation or uncontrolled diabetes but not dietary fat ingestion, which is delivered to liver via chylomicron remnants. Chylomicron remnants enriched with polyunsaturated fatty acids stimulate a unique pattern of intracellular signaling. These remnants enhance p38 mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) activity but do not inhibit insulin signaling or induce extracellular-signal related kinase (ERK) or AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation as do non-esterified polyunsaturated fatty acids. Polyunsaturated fatty acids-enriched remnants and …

Population Ecology, Residents' Attitudes, Hunter Success, Economic Impact, Modeling Management Options And Retention Time Of Telazol Of West Virginia Black Bears, Christopher W. Ryan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The West Virginia Black Bear Research Project (WVBBRP) was initiated in 1972 to investigate population parameters, growth rates, home ranges, and habitat uses of a declining American black bear (Ursus americanus ) population. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (WVDNR) continued to monitor the black bear population and increased monitoring efforts and sample sizes in the 1990's as the black bear population increased in size and expanded its range. As part of the WVBBRP, we investigated black bear population ecology. Our objectives were to estimate reproductive rates, estimate survival and cause-specific mortality rates, examine effects of special hunting seasons …

Cryptic Subtelomeric Rearrangements And Studies Of Telomere Length, Jasen Lee Wise

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Study One. An estimated five percent of individuals with unexplained mental retardation (MR) have chromosomally unbalanced subtelomere regions. Around half of these individuals inherited the imbalance from a parent with a balanced rearrangement. The frequency of carriers for cryptic balanced translocations is unknown. To determine this frequency, blood samples received from 565 out of 978 phenotypically normal, unrelated individuals were examined using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) probes to analyze all subtelomere regions. No balanced subtelomeric rearrangements were identified. The frequency of balanced cryptic translocations in the general population was estimated to be 1/8,000 from the literature. However, three females …

Optimization Of A Retrofit Urea-Scr System, Clinton R. Bedick

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions from legacy diesel engines are often many times over currently mandated standards, contributing significantly to degradation of air quality and negative environmental impact. A retrofit urea-SCR (selective catalytic reduction) aftertreatment system offers a viable solution for reducing NOx emissions from older diesel engines. A stand-alone retrofit urea-SCR aftertreatment system was previously developed by West Virignia University (WVU) engineers, implementing a pre-SCR NOx sensor, open-loop feed-forward control, and stoichiometric NOx reduction logic. During experimental testing at WVU, the urea-SCR system demonstrated NOx reductions of 2% to 53%, depending on the test cycle. In order to optimize …

The Fearful Face And Beyond: Fmri Studies Of The Human Amygdala, Jillian E. Hardee

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The amygdala has been labeled as a "detector of threat", evidenced by its heightened response to fearful faces in human neuroimaging studies. A critical element of the fearful face is an increase in eye white area, hypothesized to be crucial for the rapid detection of fear in another's face. Yet other facial expressions can also increase eye white area in a manner that is similar (a lateral shift in gaze) or identical (surprise) to fear. It is unknown if the amygdala can differentiate between these types of increases in eye white area and those that are specifically associated with fear …

Soldiers And Stereotypes: Mountaineers, Cultural Identity, And World War Ii, C. Belmont Keeney

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

To what extent are Appalachian stereotypes true and how much is pure fabrication? This study seeks to answer this question by examining the experiences of West Virginia soldiers during World War II. Appalachian hillbillies, believed to be culturally backward, uncivilized, isolated, and prone to violence, were often sent straight to the infantry because it was believed that their wild mountain heritage made them inherently better fighters. Using interviews, letters, and a collection of over 1,200 firsthand written accounts of Appalachian veterans collected by West Virginia University in 1946, this study traces the evolution of the cultural and individual identities of …

Properties Of A Dehydroalanine Analog Of Glutathione: A Reactive Electrophilic Busulfan Metabolite, Cody J. Peer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Gamma-Glutamyldehydroalanylglycine (EdAG) is a dethiolated, electrophilic metabolite of glutathione (GSH) derived from the Phase II conjugation of GSH with busulfan catalyzed by glutathione S-transferase (GST). It was demonstrated in this dissertation that EdAG could be successfully synthesized and shown to be a metabolite of busulfan from in vitro metabolism by enzymes in human liver cytosol. The electrophilic EdAG was reactive toward the cellular thiols cysteine and glutathione (GSH), and toward cysteine residues in reduced bovine insulin B-chain and bovine serum albumin in vitro , as well. EdAG was demonstrated to be a reversible noncompetitive inhibitor of GSTs, specifically GSTA1-1 at …

Stock Returns, Risk Factor Loadings, And Model Predictions: A Test Of The Capm And The Fama -French 3 -Factor Model, Daniel Suh

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This paper presents the results of time-series tests of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the Fama-French 3-factor (FF3) model in the estimation of equity capital from a perspective of corporate investment decision-making. This paper addresses Fama-French (1992, "The Cross-section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance) who find that the CAPM beta has little explanatory power in cross-sectional tests of the Fama-French portfolios sorted on market capitalization and book-to-market ratios.;The main tests of this paper are (1) the equivalence of the predicted stock risk premia of the CAPM and the FF3 model, or how significantly the two model-predicted …

Bug Tracking For Improving Software Reliability, Sriram Gadupudi

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

Bug Tracking for Improving Software Reliability (BTS) is an automated system that can be useful to employees and the managers in any functional organization. Bug Tracking System gives the facility to define the tasks in the organization and also allows the managers to track the bugs spent by the employee for that particular task. A report generation facility is supported in BTS that allows the managers to analyze which are those skills by employee are utilized and those which are not utilized. This tool can help managers for Bug estimation per project or application. This tool helps employees to document …

Structured P2p Technologies For Distributed Command And Control, Daniel R. Karrels, Gilbert L. Peterson, Barry E. Mullins

Faculty Publications

The utility of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems extends far beyond traditional file sharing. This paper provides an overview of how P2P systems are capable of providing robust command and control for Distributed Multi-Agent Systems (DMASs). Specifically, this article presents the evolution of P2P architectures to date by discussing supporting technologies and applicability of each generation of P2P systems. It provides a detailed survey of fundamental design approaches found in modern large-scale P2P systems highlighting design considerations for building and deploying scalable P2P applications. The survey includes unstructured P2P systems, content retrieval systems, communications structured P2P systems, flat structured P2P systems and …

Richmond Public Schools: Post-Court Mandated School Desegregation (1986-2006), Joshua Cole

Theses and Dissertations

In 1970, cross-town busing was court mandated to enforce school desegregation in Richmond, Virginia. Unitary status was declared in Richmond when cross-town busing ended in 1986. Richmond Public Schools (RPS) no longer operated as a dual school system for blacks and whites after 1986. Class and racial segregation continued to exist in the City of Richmond. RPS remained predominately black and poor. Socio-economic conditions of the city continued to impact the school district. Controversies, mismanagement and low academic achievement stigmatized RPS until state and federal performance measures forced the district to improve. By 2006, RPS was still segregated; however, as …

A Study On Gas Penetration And Fingering Behavior In Injection Molding Of Polymer And Powder Metal Feedstock, Edna I. Orozco

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The effect of processing variables on the level of gas penetration in parts fabricated by gas-assisted injection molding from two different materials was compared. The materials used were polypropylene and stainless steel powder metal/thermoplastic feedstock. Software simulation and physical experiments were conducted. Taguchi analysis was used to reduce the number of experiment trials and to find the optimum processing conditions. Four different variables were changed using nine different combinations. The processing variables are the pressure, the delay time before gas is injected, the temperature of the material injected, and the amount of the material injected. The results showed that the …

S2st: A Relational Rdf Database Management System, Anthony T. Piazza

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The explosive growth of RDF data on the Semantic Web drives the need for novel database systems that can efficiently store and query large RDF datasets. To achieve good performance and scalability of query processing, most existing RDF storage systems use a relational database management system as a backend to manage RDF data. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a Relational RDF Database Management System. Our main research contributions are: (1) We propose a formal model of a Relational RDF Database Management System (RRDBMS), (2) We propose generic algorithms for schema, data and query mapping, (3) …