Digital Commons Network^™

A Case Study In Quantitative Analysis Of Cyber-Physical Systems: Reliability Of The Smart Grid, Ayman Z. Faza

Doctoral Dissertations

"A cyber-physical system is the integration of a physical infrastructure with a cyber infrastructure, which provides control over its physical counterpart. The goal is to improve certain aspects of the physical infrastructure, such as its reliability. The Smart Grid, in which intelligent cyber control is added to improve the operation of the traditional power grid, is a prime example of a cyber-physical system. Quantitative models are needed in order to better understand the benefits and risks of adding intelligence to physical systems. To this end, we have developed an integrated cyber-physical reliability model, with a focus on the Smart Grid …

Advanced Dynamic Response Improvement Methods For Dc-Dc Power Electronic Converters, Lisheng Shi

Doctoral Dissertations

"Dc-dc power electronic converters supplying electric power to digital processors, data centers, and telecommunication systems are required to exhibit a fast dynamic response in response to their instantaneous electric load variations. This requirement is becoming more and more stringent as the operating voltage of such loads is continuously reducing. This voltage level reduction has reached a point where conventional control approaches can barely meet the dynamic response demanded by such loads. In order to overcome this issue, several approaches focusing on the dynamic response improvement for dc-dc converters have been proposed in the literature. Unfortunately, most of them have at …

Optimal Control Of Affine Nonlinear Continuous-Time Systems Using An Online Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs Formulation, T. Dierks, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Solving the Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs (HJI) equation, commonly used in ℋ∞ optimal control, is often referred to as a two-player differential game where one player tries to minimize the cost function while the other tries to maximize it. in this paper, the HJI equation is formulated online and forward-in-time using a novel single online approximator (SOLA)-Based scheme to achieve optimal regulation and tracking control of affine nonlinear continuous-time systems. the SOLA-Based adaptive approach is designed to learn the infinite horizon HJI equation, the corresponding optimal control input, and the worst-case disturbance. a novel parameter tuning algorithm is derived which not only achieves …

Output Feedback Control Of A Quadrotor Uav Using Neural Networks, Travis Dierks, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a new nonlinear controller for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is proposed using neural networks (NNs) and output feedback. the assumption on the availability of UAV dynamics is not always practical, especially in an outdoor environment. Therefore, in this work, an NN is introduced to learn the complete dynamics of the UAV online, including uncertain nonlinear terms like aerodynamic friction and blade flapping. Although a quadrotor UAV is underactuated, a novel NN virtual control input scheme is proposed which allows all six degrees of freedom (DOF) of the UAV to be controlled using only four control …

A Higher-Order Spectro-Temporal Integration Model For Predicting Signal Audibility, Qing Yang, John G. Harris

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A higher-order model to determine audibility of audio signals is presented. Previous models have been energy based (second order) and adequate only for stationary, narrow-band signals. Music, speech and other audio signals are nonstationary and wideband so traditional energy models poorly predict the audibility of these sounds. The predictions from the higher-order model are compared to actual subjective listening tests to show that the higher order, wide-band technique outperforms previous models. ©2010 IEEE.

Design And Characterization Of An Integrate-And-Fire Neural Recording System, Sheng Feng Yen, John G. Harris

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A neuronal recording system for brain-machine interfaces (BMI) based on asynchronous biphasic pulse coding is described. A recording experiment comparing, in parallel, a commercial recording system (Tucker-Davis Technology) and the UF's custom solution (FWIRE) is set up to compare performance. The novel aspect of the UF system is that the analog signal is represented by an asynchronous pulse train, which provides a low-power, low-bandwidth, noise-resistant means for coding and transmission. Based on different front-end hardware settings, recording bandwidth and corresponding reconstruction accuracy can be varied. Taking advantage of neural firing features, the pulse-based approach requires less than 3K pulses/second to …

Limit On Continuous Neutrino Emission From Neutron Stars, Itzhak Goldman, Shmuel Nussinov

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The timing data of the binary pulsar PSR1913+16, are used to establish an upper limit on the rate of continuous neutrino emission from neutron stars. Neutrino emission from each of the neutron stars of the binary system, increases the star binding energy and thus translates to a decrease in their masses. This in turn implies an increase with time of the binary period. Using the pulsar data we obtain an upper limit on the allowed rate of mass reduction: vertical bar M vertical bar < 1.1 x 10(-12) yr(-1) M, where M is the total mass of the binary. This constrains exotic nuclear equations of state that predict continuous neutrino emissions. The limit applies also to other channels of energy loss, e. g. axion emission. Continued timing measurements of additional binary pulsars, should yield a stronger limit in the future.

Driver Knowledge, Beliefs, And Attitudes About Deer–Vehicle Collisions In Southern Michigan, Alix Marcoux, Shawn J. Riley

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Deer–vehicle collisions (DVCs) are one of the most frequent and costly human– wildlife conflict throughout the range of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We conducted a self-administered, mail-back survey of Michigan drivers to determine: (1) driver attitudes and knowledge about DVCs; (2) reporting rates of DVCs; and (3) effects of being in a DVC on attitudes toward desired deer population levels. From a sample of 3,600 randomly selected licensed drivers >18 years of age in southeast Michigan, we obtained 1,653 completed questionnaires (48% response rate). Although 18% of respondents reported experiencing >1 DVC within 5 years of the survey …

Estimating Annual Vertebrate Mortality On Roads At Saguaro National Park, Arizona, Kenneth Gerow, Natasha C. Kline, Don E. Swann, Marin Pokorny

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Road-killed vertebrates are a conspicuous effect of roads on animals, particularly in natural preserves where wildlife is protected. Knowledge of the number of vertebrates killed by vehicles in a national park or other natural area is important for managers, but these numbers are difficult to estimate because such mortality patterns vary greatly in space and time and by taxonomic group. Additionally, animals killed by vehicles may be difficult to observe, particularly during driving surveys, and carcasses may not persist between surveys due to scavenging and other factors. We modified an estimator previously developed for determining bird mortality at wind turbines …

Examining Resistance, Accommodation And The Pursuit Of Aspiration In The Indian It‐Bpo Space: Reflections On Two Case Studies, M. N. Ravishankar, Laurie Cohen, Amal El-Sawad

All Works

This article is based on case studies of two organisations: an India-based information technology (IT) services company and a financial services company located in the UK and India. Although they operate in different sectors and have some notable contrasts, both can be seen as typifying aspects of India's new economy. Our article explores the lived experience of working in this economy—a perspective that has been relatively neglected in the extant literature. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's notions of ambivalence and mimicry, and V. S. Naipaul's powerful illustrations of these concepts in his fiction and non-fiction works, we report on how respondents …

Taxes And Death: The Rise And Demise Of An American Law Firm, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Misconduct by lawyers in law firms is often attributed to pressures from increasing competition for legal services. Modern firms do face fierce competitive pressures. We can gain more subtle insights, however, by focusing on the specific markets in which particular firms operate and the ways in which forms of influence in law firms interact with common patterns of behavior in organizations.

This paper, a chapter in the collection Law Firms, Legal Culture, and Legal Practice, draws on this type ofanalytical framework to provide a case study of the experience of Jenkens & Gilchrist, a national law firm that had …

The Parent As (Mere) Educational Trustee: Whose Education Is It, Anyway?, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this Article is two-fold. First, the Article argues that the parent’s right to educate his or her children is strictly circumscribed by the parent’s duty to ensure that children learn habits of critical reasoning and reflection. The law has long recognized that the state’s duty to educate children is superior to any parental right. Indeed, the “parentalist” position to the contrary rests on an inflation of rights that is, in fact, a radical departure from longstanding legal norms. Indeed, at common law the parent had “a sacred right” to the custody of his child, and the parent’s …

Exporting U.S. Criminal Justice, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article explores how and why, in the Cold War’s wake, the U.S. government began to export U.S.-style criminal law and procedure models to developing and politically transitioning states. U.S. criminal law and development consultants now work in countries across the globe. This article reveals how U.S. initiatives have shaped state and non-state actors’ responses to a range of global challenges, even as this approach suffers from a deep democratic deficit. Further, this article argues that U.S. programs perpetuate U.S.-style legal institutional idolatry (which is often tied to systemic dysfunction both in the United States and abroad), and in so …

On Being Accountable In A Kaleidoscopic World, Edith Brown Weiss

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this lecture, the author explores the concept of accountability in the changing world in which international law operates, and to draw upon my own recent experience chairing the Inspection Panel at the World Bank. In doing so, I want especially to recognize the concerns of poor people and bring their plight into the discussion of accountability.

The world today differs sharply from that when the United Nations was formed, some 65 years ago. In that world, there were only 51 states, few international organizations, a nascent global civil society, only 2 billion people, many of whom lived under colonialism …

Mapping The Issues: Public Health, Law And Ethics, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The field of public health is typically regarded as a positivistic pursuit and, undoubtedly, our understanding of the etiology and response to disease is heavily influenced by scientific inquiry. Public health policies, however, are shaped not only by science but also by ethical values, legal norms, and political oversight. Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (expanded and updated 2nd ed., 2010) probes and seeks to illuminate this complex interplay, through a careful selection of government reports, scholarly articles, and court cases together with discussion and analysis of critical problems at the interface of law, ethics, and public health. The …

Attention Must Be Paid: Commercial Speech, User-Generated Ads, And The Challenge Of Regulation, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article examines the dynamics that drive advertisers to push into new formats, and the law’s ability to regulate them. I argue that it will remain possible, and constitutional, to identify advertising and subject it to prohibitions on false and misleading claims, even for ads in unconventional formats. The article also addresses the ways in which regulators were caught off-guard by these new formats. In particular, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which frees online service providers and users from liability for content generated by other users, poses some unanticipated barriers to regulating advertising. Yet despite section 230’s provisions, …

Structural Performance Of Concrete/Cold-Formed Steel Composite Beams Supporting Composite Floor Decks, Pouria Bahmani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Light-gage steel (LGS) construction is widely used for commercial and industrial buildings. In such construction, the wall framing is usually an assembly of cold-formed steel (CFS) studs held between CFS tracks, and the floors are normally composite concrete/LOS decks spanning between load-bearing CFS walls. Heavy hot rolled steel angles or hollow structural sections (HSS) are attached to the top of CFS load-bearing walls to function as load distribution members (LDM) or to span wall openings. The use of hot rolled steel elements results in significant increase in construction cost and time. Such heavy steel elements would be unnecessary if the …

Computational Methods For The Discovery And Analysis Of Genes And Other Functional Dna Sequences, Cyriac Kandoth

Doctoral Dissertations

"The need for automating genome analysis is a result of the tremendous amount of genomic data. As of today, a high-throughput DNA sequencing machine can run millions of sequencing reactions in parallel, and it is becoming faster and cheaper to sequence the entire genome of an organism. Public databases containing genomic data are growing exponentially, and hence the rise in demand for intuitive automated methods of DNA analysis and subsequent gene identification. However, the complexity of gene organization makes automation a challenging task, and smart algorithm design and parallelization are necessary to perform accurate analyses in reasonable amounts of time. …

Characterization Of Diamond Thin Films And Related Materials, Travis K. Mckindra

Doctoral Dissertations

"Thin carbon films including sputtered deposited graphite and CO₂ laser-assisted combustion-flame deposited graphite and diamond thin films were characterized using optical and electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy. Amorphous carbon thin films were deposited by DC magnetron sputtering using Ar/O₂ gases. The film morphology changed with the oxygen content. The deposition rate decreased as the amount of oxygen increased due to oxygen reacting with the growing film. The use of oxygen in the working gas enhanced the crystalline nature of the films. Graphite was deposited on WC substrates by a CO₂ laser-assisted O₂/C₂H₂ combustion-flame method. Two distinct microstructural areas …

学術機関リポジトリでのオリジナルコンテンツの公開, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

学術機関リポジトリ（Institutional Repository、IR）は主に、学術雑誌、記念論文集、論文集など、他の場所で公開済みの学術的コンテンツを再公開する手段として開発され促進されてきた。本書では、他ではまだ公開していない資料の最初の公開場所にIRを使用する方法について考察し、学術的公開のための発展性のある「第一手段」として、また従来の商業出版社または大学出版局の代わりとなる既存の手段としてIRを利用できる可能性を評価する。Serials Review 2008; 34:27-30. Translation courtesy of Library Liaison Team, National Institute of Informatics, Japan, Cyber Science Infrastructure Development Department, Scholarly and Academic Information Division.

Just How Right Are The Customers? An Analysis Of The Relative Performance Of Patron-Initiated Interlibrary Loan Monograph Purchases, David C. Tyler, Yang Xu, Joyce C. Melvin, Marylou Epp, Anita M. Kreps

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

There has been a flurry of interest in programs for collection development through patron-initiated requests. However, some librarians have been concerned that such methods run the risk of producing idiosyncratic collections with poor usage and poor use value. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries have operated such a program through the Interlibrary Loan Department over a fiveyear period. The following study assesses the relative performance of the program’s interlibrary loan–acquired monographs in terms of prices paid per rates of annual circulation, relative use at the topical level, and annual rates of circulation.

Connecting Researchers With Funding Opportunities: A Joint Effort Of The Libraries And The University Research Office, Leslie M. Delserone, Julia A. Kelly, Jody L. Kempf

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

In early 2007, staff from the University of Minnesota Libraries and the Office of the Vice President for Re-search began a collaboration to present a workshop covering grant resources. The session introduced fa-culty, staff, and graduate students to four key databases of external granting opportunities as well as intramural funding sources. We explain the context, development, and implementation of this ongoing, popular workshop; mention extensions of the workshop effort; and hope to inspire fellow librarians to identify and explore routes to broad institutional engagement.

Complex Systems Architecting Using Design Primitives, Comparative Analysis And Fuzzy Analytical Feedback, Jason Paul Dauby, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern systems are increasing in complexity. It is advantageous to understand and control this complexity as early in the design lifecycle as possible. The system architecting community must reconcile the inherent ambiguity in a system description with the need for analytical assessments of system attributes so as to increase the likelihood of developmental success. Presently, it is commonplace to decompose systems and subsystems using assumptions of idealized severability and reliance on superposition to estimate composite performance. It is suggested that these assumptions can result in errant oversimplification and represent an opportunity for new systems engineering research. This paper introduces a …

Manual Handling Workload And Musculoskeletal Discomfort Among Warehouse Personnel, Terrance N. Knox

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSD), specifically physical and muscular discomfort in the upper arm, lower arm, thigh, lower leg, wrist, shoulders, back, or neck, are among the most frequently reported workplace injuries in the United States. The dearth of knowledge about the types of workloads that may contribute to the development of WRMSD was the impetus of this research. The study aimed to identify antecedents of WRMSD among warehouse workers in order to reduce WRMSDs and increase productivity as expressed in a systems perspective on industrial health. The research questions examined the prevalence of specific WRMSDs, the relationship of high-risk tasks …

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: January 2010, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2010

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from January 15 and 29, 2010.

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.

Faculty Publications 2009, Lsu Health Sciences Center New Orleans

Historical Faculty Publications

This Faculty bibliography contains 806 publications.

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: January 2010, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2010

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates from January 2010.

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.

Hypercapnic Acidosis Reduces Oxidative Reactions In Endotoxin-Induced Lung Injury, Alistair D. Nichol, Donall F. O'Cronin, Finola Naughton, Natalie Hopkins, John Boylan, Paul Mcloughlin

Articles

Hypercapnic acidosis frequently occurs when patients with acute lung injury are initially ventilated with low tidal volume "protective" strategies. Hypercapnic acidosis per se, in the absence of any change in tidal volume or airway pressure, is protective when instituted before the onset of injury. However, the mechanisms by which hypercapnic acidosis confers this protection are incompletely understood, in particular, the effects on pulmonary oxidative reactions, which are potent mediators of tissue damage, have not been previously examined in vivo.

The Pencil, The Pin, The Table, The Bowl And The Wheel, Valerie Allen

Publications and Research

The commodity created under global capitalism originates from everywhere and seems to have been made by everyone. Endlessly fungible, it is also endlessly divisible. Analysis of the commodity reveals the indissoluble link between commodification and technologization. Although the medieval commodity is a very different kind of object, not issuing from an economy dedicated to commodity production, and being produced more regionally, the link between production and technology applies to the Middle Ages as much as it does to now. Medieval technology, in particular road-building, is commonly regarded as a regression in comparison to Roman engineering skills. I argue, however, for …

For The Healing Of The Nations: Repairers Of Broken Walls And Restorers Of God's Justice, Zdravko Plantak

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

No abstract provided.