Digital Commons Network^™

Investigation Of Volatile Products From Wood Pyrolysis, Prabhavathi Gade

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this research we are following the thermo-chemical degradation of wood in the absence of oxygen. The objectives are to evaluate the influence of heating rates on pyrolysis products obtained from wood pyrolysis and to evaluate the influence of acid pre-treatment on pyrolysis products. Depending on the wood heating rates, pyrolysis can be categorized as Flash pyrolysis, Fast pyrolysis, and Slow pyrolysis. We have evaluated the volatile products obtained at different heating rates and the volatile products obtained from sulfuric acid pre-treatment by using gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC-MS). We have also performed thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) of raw wood samples …

An Application And Refinement Of The Karst Disturbance Index Through Evaluating Variability In Island Karst Disturbance In Puerto Rico, Brandon Lee Porter

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Karst environments are unique landscapes that contain important resources, including freshwater aquifers and specialized ecosystems, which are easily disturbed due to the interconnected nature of the surface and subsurface. The anthropogenic impacts on karst are deleterious to the ecosystems that are dependent on the karst environment and also to groundwater supplies. The Karst Disturbance Index (KDI) is a holistic tool used to measure anthropogenic impacts associated with karst environments, which has been applied and refined through studies performed in Florida and Italy, yet still remains untested and susceptible to modification for other areas. Application of the KDI in Arecibo, Puerto …

Interview With Dan Mcfarling, Aorta, 2010 (Audio), Dan Mcfarling

All Sustainability History Project Oral Histories

Interview of Dan McFarling by Andrew Scanlan at Union Station, Portland, Oregon on December 1st, 2010.

The interview index is available for download.

Design Decisions Under Risk And Uncertainty, Sravya Thoomu

All Theses

In the contemporary world of engineering, engineers strive towards designing reliable and robust artifacts while considering and attempting to control manufacturing costs. In due course they have to deal with some sort of uncertainty. Many aspects of the design are the result of properties that are defined within some tolerances, of measurements that are appropriate, and of circumstances and environmental conditions that are out of their control. This uncertainty was typically handled by using factors of safety, and resulted in designs that may have been overly conservative. Therefore, understanding and handling the uncertainties is critical in improving the design, controlling …

What Brown Saw And You Can Too, Philip Pearle, Brian Collett, Kenneth Bart, David Bilderback, Dara Newman, D. Scott Samuels

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

A discussion of Robert Brown’s original observations of particles ejected by pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella undergoing what is now called Brownian motion is given. We consider the nature of those particles and how he misinterpreted the Airy disk of the smallest particles to be universal organic building blocks. Relevant qualitative and quantitative investigations with a modern microscope and with a “homemade” single lens microscope similar to Brown’s are presented.

How Proactive Measures Reduce Patient Handling Injuries Among Healthcare Workers In A Hospital Setting: A Systematic Review To Determine Best Practice, Kimberly A. Jefferson

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The purpose of this study is to determine the best proactive measures in a hospital setting to reduce patient handling injuries among healthcare workers. Improper patient handling techniques have been found to be a major cause of workplace injuries among health care workers in the hospital setting. A systematic review was performed to assess programs that have implemented various methods of improving patient handling techniques. There are numerous programs or components that were found to be successful in reducing patient handling injuries. Among these program components are lift teams, lifting equipment, ceiling lifts, education, training and an active multidisciplinary team. …

47th Conference On Senior Engineering Design, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

Senior Engineering Design Conference

The 47th Conference on Senior Engineering Design Projects was held on December 7, 2010 at the College of Engineering and applied Sciences on the Parkview Campus of Western Michigan University. The college sponsors the conference to showcase the work of its graduating seniors, who are required to complete a capstone project that puts into practice what they have learned. Many of the projects are sponsored by business and industry.

Creating Tomorrow, Fall 2010, College Of Engineering

College of Engineering Magazines

Annual magazine of the College of Engineering at Utah State University.

Does Socio/Economic Status Affect Environmental Awareness In Elementary School Children Interacting With School Gardens?, Grady C. Erickson

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

This is a case study involving three elementary schools in the greater Lincoln, Nebraska area. These schools were chosen to provide insight to three different economic backgrounds. Saratoga and Randolph from Lincoln Public Schools, and Norris Elementary part of Norris Public Schools 160 was the third school involved in the study. This case study focused on seeing whether socio/economic background had any effect on environmental awareness. To do so, surveys were handed out to each school to help measure environmental awareness. These surveys also helped determine where the environmental literacy standards were in the elementary schools of Lincoln, Nebraska. The …

Adaptation Of Balanced Scorecard And Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Methodologies To Measure Nation-State Power, Gregg Eric Lassen

Dissertations

The objective of this research was to develop a model for nation-state power. People interested in international relations, including scholars, diplomats, and analysts, need to understand relative power among nation-states, but the unit of comparison, power, remains an elusive concept. This research utilized a Balanced Scorecard approach from business and organizational behavior literature to develop a more comprehensive model of nation-state power based on international relations literature. The model was then further developed into a ranking tool which utilized multiple criteria decision-making theory. The combination of these approaches provided a tool that was used to measure nation-state power based on …

Propagating And Non-Propagating Intraseasonal Oscillations In The Tropical Atmosphere: Their Vertical And Horizontal Structures And Developing Mechanisms, Zhaoning Liang

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A fixed beamformer is proposed and designed to identify source regions of Intra-Seasonal Oscillations (ISO) in the tropical atmosphere. After tested by simulations of single and complex sources of waves, the fixed beamformer is applied to the ECMWF interpolated data grids to detect and identify source regions of the ISO in the tropical Indian and Pacific Ocean region. Results show that the fixed beamforming technique can uniquely identify the source region of the ISO, the source regions of all major ISO in the tropical Indian and western equatorial Pacific region from 1974 to 2002 have been identified.

Examinations of ISO …

Development Of An Arcuate Fold-Thrust Belt As A Result Of Basement Configuration: An Example From The Rocky Mountain Front Range, Montana, Caroline M. Burberry, D. L. Cannon, T. Engelder, J. W. Cosgrove

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

The Sawtooth Range forms part of the Montana Disturbed Belt in the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains, along strike from the Alberta Syncline in the Canadian Rockies. The belt developed in the footwall to the Lewis Thrust during the Sevier orogeny and is similar in deformation style to the Canadian Foothills, with a series of stacked thrust sheets carrying Palaeozoic carbonates. The Sawtooth Range can be divided into an inner and outer deformed belt, separated by exposed fold structures in the overlying clastic sequence. Structures in the deformed belts plunge into the culmination of the NE-trending Scapegoat-Bannatyne trend, part …

Sysml-Based Domain-Specific Executable Workflows, Vikas Patel

All Theses

The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is a general-purpose graphical modeling language for specifying, analyzing, designing, and verifying complex systems. This thesis presents a tool called SysFlow Workflow Engine (SWE) that is being developed to execute a domain workflow defined using SysML's Activity Diagram. The thesis also describes extensions added to the SysML semantics to make them SWE executable. SWE focuses on grid computing, cyberinfrastructure and related domains; however, support for other domains can be easily added. SWE aims to provide a common interface to grid, cyberinfrastructure and other domain-specific software by abstracting their complexity and idiosyncrasies. To create a workflow, …

Cole Train | V.9, No.1 (Fall 2010), Houston Cole Library

Library Annual Reports & Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The R Journal (December 2010) 2(2): Complete Issue, The R Foundation

The R Journal

Contributed Research Articles

Solving Differential Equations in R, Karline Soetaert, Thomas Petzoldt and R. Woodrow Setzer

Source References, Duncan Murdoch

hglm: A Package for Fitting Hierarchical Generalized Linear Models, Lars Rönnegård, Xia Shen and Moudud Alam

dclone: Data Cloning in R, Péter Sólymos

stringr: Modern, Consistent String Processing, Hadley Wickham

Bayesian Estimation of the GARCH(1,1) Model with Student-t Innovations, David Ardia and Lennart F. Hoogerheide

cudaBayesreg: Bayesian Computation in CUDA, Adelino Ferreira da Silva

binGroup: A Package for Group Testing, Christopher R. Bilder, Boan Zhang, Frank Schaarschmidt, and Joshua M. Tebbs

The RecordLinkage Package: Detecting Errors in Data, Murat Sariyar …

Investment Timing For New Business Ventures, George W. Blazenko, Andrey D. Pavlov

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

A key requirement for the start of many entrepreneurial business is private equity or venture capital financing. In the traditional approach to entrepreneurial investment analysis, an entrepreneur starts a new venture and a venture capitalist finances the new venture when business return exceeds the financial opportunity cost for comparable risk - the cost of capital for the new venture. The real options literature recommends that entrepreneurs delay business start due to investment irreversibility until business return reaches a threshold greater than the cost of capital. In this paper, we show that for new ventures with modest earnings volatility, an entrepreneur …

Winona Currents Magazine, University Advancement - Winona State University

Winona Currents

This magazine published by Winona State University’s University Advancement was intended to inform WSU Alumni, students, faculty, staff and the greater community about Alumni and the university.Major Buzz, Grand Tour, Satellite View.

Evaluation Of Periodontal Scaling Task And Development Of Force–Endurance Models For Simulated Scaling Task, Vettrivel Gnaneswaran

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Force exertion is critical in grasping and holding activities at sub-maximal levels. Exertion misjudgments lead to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) impairing performance and productivity. Published literatures on grasping have addressed the force balance and endurance issues for non-prehensile movements of hand. However, little information is available on the force exerted in precision gripping employed in health care. Professionals, especially dental hygienists, when treating patients adopt awkward postures for extended period leading to cumulative trauma. Literatures on cumulative trauma have identified force exertion to be an important risk factor. Lack of information on fatigue with precision gripping motivated this research to establish …

In Silico Modeling Of Ph-Optimum Of Protein-Protein Binding, Rooplekha C. Mitra, Zhe Zhang, Emil Alexov

Publications

Protein-protein association is a pH-dependent process and thus the binding affinity depends on the local pH. In vivo the association occurs in a particular cellular compartment, where the individual monomers are supposed to meet and form a complex. Since the monomers and the complex exist in the same micro environment, it is plausible that they coevolved toward its properties, in particular, toward the characteristic subcellular pH. Here we show that the pH at which the monomers are most stable (pH-optimum) or the pH at which stability is almost pH-independent (pH-flat) of monomers are correlated with the pH-optimum of maximal affinity …

Motivating Industrial Engineering Students: The Effects Of Authentic Learning Experience, Gender And Class Standing, Danielle Mcdonnell, Maria E. Mayorga, Lisa C. Benson, Laine Mears

Publications

This paper explores the attitudes and factors contributing to the motivation of Industrial Engineering (IE) students, and how these relate to various ASPECTS of their educational experience.

The River Discontinuum: Applying Beaver Modifications To Baseline Conditions For Restoration Of Forested Headwaters, Denise Burchsted, Melinda Daniels, Robert Thorson, Jason Vokoun

Center for Integrative Geosciences

Billions of dollars are being spent in the United States to restore rivers to a desired, yet often unknown, reference condition. In lieu of a known reference, practitioners typically assume the paradigm of a connected watercourse. Geological and ecological processes, however, create patchy and discontinuous fluvial systems. One of these processes, dam building by North American beavers (Castor canadensis), generated discontinuities throughout precolonial river systems of northern North America. Under modern conditions, beaver dams create dynamic sequences of ponds and wet meadows among free-flowing segments. One beaver impoundment alone can exceed 1000 meters along the river, flood the valley laterally, …

Towards Optimal Placement Of Bio-Weapon Detectors, Chris Kiekintveld, Octavio Lerma

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Biological weapons are difficult and expensive to detect. Within a limited budget, we can afford a limited number of bio-weapon detector stations. It is therefore important to find the optimal locations for such stations. A natural idea is to place more detectors in the areas with more population -- and fewer in desert areas, with fewer people. However, such a commonsense analysis does not tell us how many detectors to place where. To decide on the exact placement of bio-weapon detectors, we formulate the placement problem in precise terms, and come up with an (almost) explicit solution to the resulting …

How To Tell When A Product Of Two Partially Ordered Spaces Has A Certain Property: General Results With Application To Fuzzy Logic, Francisco Zapata, Olga Kosheleva, Karen Villaverde

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Computing The Range Of Variance-To-Mean Ratio Under Interval And Fuzzy Uncertainty, Sio-Long Lo, Gang Xiang

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical problems such as radar imaging, it is useful to compute the variance-to-mean ratio. The need is important because for the sum of k identical independent signal components, both the variance and the mean are multiplied by k, so this ratio is independent on k and thus, provides useful information about the components. In practice, we only know the samples values with uncertainty. It is therefore necessary to compute the variance-to-mean ratio under this uncertainty. In this paper, we present efficient algorithms for computing this ratio under interval and fuzzy uncertainty.

Towards Chemical Applications Of Dempster-Shafer-Type Approach: Case Of Variant Ligands, Jaime Nava

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

How To Bargain: An Interval Approach, Vladik Kreinovich, Hung T. Nguyen, Songsak Sriboonchitta

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Legal Research In An Electronic Age: Electronic Data Discovery, A Litigation Albatross Of Gigantic Proportions, Ahunanya Anga

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The increase in e-discovery, e-discovery‘s impact on litigation, and the courts‘ unavoidable role in defining the limits of discovery led to the author‘s decision to develop this article. The availability, accessibility, and the ease of requesting electronic data, resulting in increased e-discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, is an important issue that will affect the legal profession and its constituents in many ways for years to come. Part II of this article is an overview of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(f). This part stresses that in recognizing the herculean task involved in e-discovery, courts expect that …

University Magazine Winter 2010, University News Service, Office Of Alumni Relations

University Publications

This is the official magazine for RIT Alumni. Issued thrice a year in spring, fall and winter. Printing began in 1999.

Quantum Chemical Studies Of Nucleic Acids: Can We Construct A Bridge To The Rna Structural Biology And Bioinformatics Communities?, Jiri Sponer,, Judit Sponer, Anton I. Petrov, Neocles B. Leontis

Chemistry Faculty Publications

In this feature article we provide a side-by-side introduction for two research fields quantum chemical calculations of molecular interaction in nucleic acids and RNA structural bioinformatics Our main aim is to demonstrate that these research areas while largely separated in contemporary literature have substantial potential to complement each other that could significantly contribute to our understanding of the exciting world of nucleic acids We identify research questions amenable to the combined application of modern ab initio methods and bioinformatics analysis of experimental structures while also assessing the limitations of these approaches The ultimate aim is to attain valuable physicochemical insights …

Department Of Chemistry News For Alumni And Friends, December 2010, Illinois State University, Department Of Chemistry

Chem Letter

Newsletter of the Illinois State University Department of Chemistry