Digital Commons Network^™

Positively Invariant Sets In Sliding Mode Control Theory With Application To Servo Actuator System With Friction, Shibly Ahmed

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

In this paper two invariant sets are derived for a second order nonlinear affine system using a sliding mode controller. If the state started in these sets, it will not leave it for all future time. The invariant set is found function to the initial condition only, from which the state bound is estimated and used when determining the gain of the sliding mode controller. This step overcomes an arithmetic difficulty that consists of calculating suitable controller gain value that ensures the attractiveness of the switching manifold. Also, by using a differentiable form for the approximate signum function in sliding …

Aggregation Is One Of The Challenges In Learning Probabilistic Relational Models, Saleh M., Jane Jaleel Stephan, Lamia Abed Noor

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Aggregation is a tool used in presenting the multiple instances of an individual attribute in a single value that characterizes the groups represented. However, probabilistic relational models are constructed from relational data base; these data are interrelated with different cardinalities so it is needed for aggregation in some situations in order to convert the relation cardinality from “many” to “one”. This paper will shed light on the role of aggregation in learning probabilistic relational models through presenting two aggregate functions one is conventional and the other is proposed and compare their effects on the produced models. The results produced from …

Tuning Of Pid Controller Based On Foraging Strategy For Pneumatic Position Control System, Amjad J.

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Pneumatic servo system has been applied in many industry fields. The system has many advantages, such as high speed, high flexibility and low price. However, the application of the system is restricted because the physical parameters have strong nonlinearity, inaccuracy and uncertainty, so that it is very difficult to find an optimal controller by means of traditional control theory. Proportional integral derivative (PID) control is one of the earlier control strategies; it has a simple control structure and can be easily tuned. Optimization of PID controller parameters is one of the recent control solutions; especially when the system is of …

Design And Development Of A Prototype Of Dual Modality Pet/Optical Breast Cancer Margin Specification Imager, Krishna Nandanavanam

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis is an attempt to develop a prototype of a breast cancer imager to assess the margins of excised breast tissue. This device is proposed to be used to assure that the entire cancerous lesion has been removed by imaging the intensity of a radio labeled tracer and inspecting for a noncancerous margin in the volume of the tissue sample. The dual modality PET/optical breast cancer specification imager uses a pair of small PET detectors to measure the bioactivity of an excised sample of tissue. A co-registered optical image is taken to allow the surgeon to visually correlate the …

Reframing Antitrust In Light Of Scientific Revolution: Accounting For Transaction Costs In Rule Of Reason Analysis, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

This Article contends that modern rule of reason analysis, informed by workable competition’s partial equilibrium trade-off paradigm, is suitable for evaluating only a subset of agreements that may reduce transaction costs. The Article distinguishes between “technological” and “non-technological” transaction costs. Technological transaction costs entail the bargaining and information costs first emphasized by Ronald Coase, while non-technological transaction costs result from more fundamental departures from perfect competition, departures creating a risk of opportunism that accompanies relationship-specific investments. Modern law does accurately assess restraints that may reduce technological transaction costs—costs that are analogous to the sort of production costs recognized by the …

The Influence Of Auditory Cues On Visual Spatial Perception, Joseph W. Geeseman

Theses

Traditional psychophysical studies have been primarily unimodal experiments due to the ease in which a single sense can be isolated in a laboratory setting. This study, however, presents participants with auditory and visual stimuli to better understand the interaction of the two senses in visuospatial perception. Visual stimuli, presented as Gaussian distributed blobs, moved laterally across a computer monitor to a central location and "bounced" back to their starting position. During this passage across the screen, a brief auditory "click" was presented via headphones. Participants were asked to respond to the bounce of the ball, and response latency was recorded. …

The Conservative Conversation, Heather Hall

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The conservative movement is defined by its ideology as well as its rhetoric. Richard Weaver’s conversion to the Right offers an opportunity to define conservatism and conservative rhetoric through his hierarchy of argumentation, and his examination of Plato’s Phaedrus allows an examination of the speaker’s nature and the nature of rhetoric. Glenn Beck, one of today’s most controversial conservative representatives, also deserves examination for his ideology and rhetoric. Both Richard Weaver and Glenn Beck bear scrutiny as influential members of the conservative movement and the role their rhetoric has in the conservative conversation today.

Spectral Reflectance As An Indicator Of Foliar Concentrations Of Arsenic In Common Sunflower (Helianthus Annuus), Yuridia Patricia Peralta De Gandy

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Studies were conducted to investigate the use of spectral reflectance by foliage of common sunflower as a potential indicator of arsenic contamination of soil. Germination method was developed for sunflower seeds, and cohorts of sunflower seedlings in hydroponic tanks were established. The cohorts were exposed to 0 ppm, 5 ppm, 7.5 ppm, and 10 ppm treatments of As (V) and reflectance measurements of foliage were collected using a spectroradiometer during two experiments.Results demonstrated the feasibility of using spectral reflectance by foliage of common sunflower as a potential indicator of arsenic contamination. In both experiments, arsenic concentrations in leaf tissues were …

Redox-Magnetohydrodynamic (Mhd) Microfluidics: Fundamentals, Optimization, And Applications To Analytical Chemistry, Melissa Christine Weston

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Microfluidic systems are of great interest in analytical chemistry for the development of lab-on-a-chip devices. This dissertation describes fundamental investigations of magnetohydrodynamics with added redox species (redox-MHD) as a new microfluidic approach for use in analytical applications. Redox-MHD is attractive because it offers a unique combination of desirable features that are otherwise only available separately with individual micropumps. Redox-MHD is compatible with aqueous and nonaqueous solutions, does not require moving parts, easily reverses flow direction, and requires only low voltages. An ion flux is generated from the oxidation or reduction of an electroactive species at specific locations by activated electrodes …

An Evaluation Study: Does The Workforce Investment Act Impact Secondary Student Retention In Selected Mississippi Delta Communities?, Tyrone Price Dooley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study used a quasi-experimental cross-sectional quantitative model to evaluate the Youth Development Program, a component of the federal Workforce Investment Program. This evaluation study determines whether participation in the Youth Development Program reduced dropout rates among youth in secondary schools in seven school districts in the southeast Arkansas Delta. The impact of the Youth Development Program was examined in the following school districts: Dollarway, Pine Bluff, Watson Chapel, White Hall, Stuttgart, Dewitt, and Star City. The cross-sectional analysis covered the 2006 through 2008 program years. The evaluation model consisted of a comparison group that included 437 youth randomly drawn …

Climbing The Ladder: The Experiences Of Women Senior Leaders In Southern Baptist Colleges And Universities, Allison Barritt Langford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this interview study was to explore the career pathways, barriers, and keys to success experienced by women senior administrators in Southern Baptist colleges and universities. The researcher conducted an interview study with both open-ended and closed survey questions. The interviews primarily involved open-ended questions without response options and were conducted via the telephone. The researcher targeted the population of 42 women senior-level administrators. From this population, 20 women participated in the study. The researcher interviewed the 20 participants and collected a vita for 16 of the 20 women in the sample. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Member …

2010 December, Office Of Communications & Marketing, Morehead State University.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for December of 2010.

Rademacher-Type Formulas For Restricted Partition And Overpartition Functions, Andrew Sills

Mathematical Sciences: Faculty Publications

A collection of Hardy-Ramanujan-Rademacher type formulas for restricted partition and overpartition functions is presented, framed by several biographical anecdotes.

Time Cost Evaluation For Executing Rfid Authentication Protocols, Kevin Chiew, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng, Manfred Aigner

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There are various reader/tag authentication protocols proposed for the security of RFID systems. Such a protocol normally contains several rounds of conversations between a tag and a reader and involves cryptographic operations at both reader and tag sides. Currently there is a lack of benchmarks that provide a fair comparison platform for (a) the time cost of cryptographic operations at the tag side and (b) the time cost of data exchange between a reader and a tag, making it impossible to evaluate the total time cost for executing a protocol. Based on our experiments implemented on IAIK UHF tag emulators …

Dynamic Group Key Exchange Revisited, Guomin Yang, Chik How Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a dynamic group key exchange protocol, besides the basic group setup protocol, there are also a join protocol and a leave protocol, which allow the membership of an existing group to be changed more efficiently than rerunning the group setup protocol. The join and leave protocols should ensure that the session key is updated upon every membership change so that the subsequent sessions are protected from leaving members (backward security) and the previous sessions are protected from joining members (forward security). In this paper, we present a new security model for dynamic group key exchange. Comparing to existing models, …

Sequence Alignment Based Analysis Of Player Behavior In Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (Mmorpgs), Kyong Jin Shim, Jaideep Srivastava

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study proposes a sequence alignment-based behavior analysis framework (SABAF) developed for predicting inactive game players that either leave the game permanently or stop playing the game for a long period of time. Sequence similarity scores and derived statistics form profile databases of inactive players and active players from the past. SABAF uses global and local sequence alignment algorithms and a unique scoring scheme to measure similarity between activity sequences. SABAF is tested on the game player activity data of Ever Quest II, a popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Sony Online Entertainment. SABAF consists of the following …

The Impact Of Alternatively Prepared Teachers In Middle Georgia: The Perceptions Of High School Principals, Jaquel Lafay Johnson

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Alternative teacher preparation programs make both positive and negative contributions in producing classroom teachers. Principals are the key evaluators in determining the teachers' success. Principals are essential evaluators because they serve as the immediate supervisors of the program and help determine the certification process of the alternatively prepared teachers. Teachers are being hired to teach from traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs. This study was essential in determining the impact of the alternative teacher preparation programs in producing needed teachers for the classroom. The study focused on alternatively prepared teachers meeting the shortage areas in Georgia schools. "A teacher shortage …

Toward Effective Concept Representation In Decision Support To Improve Patient Safety, Tze-Yun Leong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Patient safety is an emerging, major health care discipline with significance accentuated in the influential Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports in the United States “To Err is Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm”. These reports highlighted the danger and prevalence of medical errors and preventable adverse events, explained the three main sources of system-related, human factors-related and cognitive-related errors, and recommended the use of information and decision support technologies to help alleviate the problem. A number of studies and reports from all over the world with similar findings have since followed, culminating in the 55th World Health Assembly Resolution on …

A Comprehensive Uncertainty Analysis And Method Of Geometric Calibration For A Circular Scanning Airborne Lidar, Michael Oliver Gonsalves

Dissertations

This dissertation describes an automated technique for ascertaining the values of the geometric calibration parameters of an airborne lidar. A least squares approach is employed that adjusts the point cloud to a single planar surface which could be either a narrow airport runway or a dynamic sea surface. Going beyond the customary three boresight angles, the proposed adjustment can determine up to eleven calibration parameters to a precision that renders a negligible contribution to the point cloud’s positional uncertainty.

Presently under development is the Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar (CZMIL), which, unlike most contemporary systems that use oscillating mirrors …

The Impact Of Self-Efficacy And Motivation Characteristics On The Academic Achievement Of Upward Bound Participants, Brenda Leigh Brown

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of self-efficacy and motivation characteristics on the achievement of at-risk students. Seventy-nine Upward Bound program participants completed self-efficacy, motivation, and demographic questionnaires. The relationship between GPA and self-efficacy was significant, negative, and low in strength. High GPA was associated with high self-efficacy (as shown by lower numbers on the survey). Gender, length of time in the Upward Bound (UB) program, length of participation in the UB summer program, college sponsor (community or four-year college), self-efficacy characteristics, and motivation characteristics significantly predicted academic achievement as measured by GPA. The relationship between …

Examining The Effect Of A Year Of Service In Americorps On Members' Attitudes Toward Attending College, Jessica Lucky Roberts

Dissertations

This study had two purposes. First, this study sought to determine how a year of service in the America Reads-Mississippi (ARM) AmeriCorps program impacted members’ perceptions and attitudes toward the non-monetary value of earning a college degree, the importance of earning a college degree in obtaining employment, and the influence of service in the ARM AmeriCorps program on members’ motivation to attend college. Second, this study sought to determine if a year of service in the ARM AmeriCorps program impacted members’ decisions to use the Segal Education Award they earn upon the successful completion of their year of service. Through …

The Effects Of Higher Education Endowment Management Practices On Endowment Performance, Robert Louie Stanton Mcelhaney

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify college and university endowments valued from $100 million to $1 billion and to determine the relationship between the five-year investment performance and selected endowment management practices. Data on the five-year investment performance and endowment management practices were obtained by the use of a survey instrument. The survey instrument was sent to 293 colleges and universities. Usable responses were received from 56 institutions. The 56 participants provided data on endowment performance, endowment governance, investment policies, investment managers, and investment manager selection practices.

To determine the endowment management practices that would best explain the …

Earmstrong, Armstrong Atlantic State University

Armstrong News & Publications: e-Armstrong Newsletter (Archived)

No abstract provided.

String Theory And Our Relationship With Nature: The Convergence Of Science, Curriculum Theory, And The Environment, Virginia Therese Bennett

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Curriculum Theory affords us the opportunity to examine education from a multitude of directions. This work takes advantage of that opportunity to explore the relationships between science, nature, and curriculum using string theory and our ideas about the environment as a backdrop. Both the energy and multiple possibilities created by strings and the rich history leading up to the theory help to illustrate the many opportunities we have to advance discussions in alternative ways of looking at science. By considering the multiple dimensions inherent in string theory as multiple pathways and interweaving metaphors from Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Serres, and …

Encircled By Sisterhood: Mentoring Experiences Of African American Women In Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Francene Amaris Breakfield

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Research suggests that African American women are minorities by race and gender and the intersectionality of these constructs poses obstacles for African American women seeking to attain positions of power. Mentoring can aid African American women in overcoming these barriers. The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to explore the mentoring experiences of five African American women, the researcher and her sorority sister circle, who are members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and how their experiences have contributed to their identity and educational, career, and psychosocial success. This study focused on mentoring as a support system for African American women …

A Comparative Study Of Diversity In Evolutionary Algorithms, Jayakanth Jayachandran, Steven Corns

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

For many evolutionary algorithms a key obstacle to finding the global optima is insufficient solution diversity, causing the algorithm to become mired in a local optimum. Solution diversity can be influenced by algorithm parameters including population size, mutation operator and diversity preservation techniques. This study examines the combined effect of population size, mutation value and the geography imposed by the combinatorial graphs on a set of five standard evolutionary algorithm problems. a tradeoff can be seen between the initial diversity of the population size, introduction of new diversity from mutation, and the preservation of diversity from combinatorial graph. with an …

Design And Development Of Intelligent Navigation Control Systems For Autonomous Robots That Uses Neural Networks And Fuzzy Logic Techniques And Fpga For Its Implementation, Christopher James Jeanniton

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This research compares the behavior of three robot navigation controllers namely: PID, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), and Fuzzy Logic (FL), that are used to control the same autonomous mobile robot platform navigating a real unknown indoor environment that contains simple geometric-shaped static objects to reach a goal in an unspecified location. In particular, the study presents and compares the design, simulation, hardware implementation, and testing of these controllers. The first controller is a traditional linear PID controller, and the other two are intelligent non-linear controllers, one using Artificial Neural Networks and the other using Fuzzy Logic Techniques. Each controller is …

Frequency-Domain Turbo Detection For Ldpc-Coded Single-Carrier Mimo Underwater Acoustic Communications, Longbao Wang, Jun Tao, Chengshan Xiao, T. C. Yang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper proposes a frequency-domain detection scheme for single-carrier multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) underwater acoustic (UWA) communication using low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. the new scheme employs turbo equalization technology together with iterative decoding technique, leading to a double-layer turbo detection structure. in the outer-layer turbo equalization, a soft-decision frequency-domain equalizer (FDE) iteratively exchanges soft information with the soft-decision LDPC channel decoder. within each outer-layer iteration, the LDPC decoder performs inner-layer iterative decoding with sum-product algorithm. the new scheme achieves excellent detection performance attributing to the double layers of iterative operation, which has been tested by experimental data measured in two undersea …

Improved Target Impedance And Ic Transient Current Measurement For Power Distribution Network Design, Jingook Kim, Songping Wu, Hanfeng Wang, Yuzou Takita, Hayato Takeuchi, Kenji Araki, Gang Feng, Jun Fan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An improved definition of target impedance is proposed in this paper, which is derived from the time-domain waveforms of the IC transient current and the allowable voltage fluctuation. the proposed target impedance removes the unnecessary constraint in the original definition and allows for more cost-effective power distribution network (PDN) designs for consumer electronic products. a measurement procedure to obtain IC transient current waveforms is also developed for the PDN designs utilizing power traces. the proposed target impedance and the measurement procedure have been validated using practical functioning designs. ©2010 IEEE.

Incorporating Correlation Matrices Into Hardware Triply Selective Fading Channel Emulators Using Kronecker Product, Fei Ren, Yahong R. Zheng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article proposes a hardware triply selective Rayleigh fading channel emulator which is implemented by incorporating spatial and inter-tap correlation matrices into uncorrelated frequency-flat Rayleigh fading waveforms with a Kronecker product method. the Kronecker product of square roots of three correlation matrices are computed in real time via serial, parallel, or mixed serial-parallel computational methods and then combined with uncorrelated flat fading waveforms. a 4x4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) triply selective channel with 4 correlated delay-taps per subchannel is implemented on a Stratix III FPGA DSP development kit. We show that the three methods provide flexibility for designs in speed and …