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2010

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The Echo: December 10, 2010, Taylor University Dec 2010

The Echo: December 10, 2010, Taylor University

2010-2011 (Volume 98)

Taylor adds to Silent Night game tradition – WikiLeaks in world spotlight – Lighthouse service shows support – In Briefs – Snowstorm to hit Midwest – Winter Driving Tips – The Bubble – Israeli-Pakistani conflict continues after years of violence – World Voices – On This Day in History – Observations: Holidays around the world – Around the World in 30 Seconds – Breaching the Bubble – TU cribs: Christmas style – Sock-stuffing season – Look-a-like – On Brokenness – The wide world of winter – All I want for Christmas… -- Awards season forecast – Contender summaries – Christian …

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Fall Commencement Ceremonies, University Of North Florida Dec 2010

Fall Commencement Ceremonies, University Of North Florida

Commencement Printed Materials

Program for the Fall Commencement ceremonies.

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Mono-Dispersed Droplet Delivery In A Refrigerated Wind Tunnel, Kyle Hutchings Dec 2010

Mono-Dispersed Droplet Delivery In A Refrigerated Wind Tunnel, Kyle Hutchings

Theses and Dissertations

An aircraft may experience inlight ice accretion and corresponding reductions in performance and control when the vehicle encounters clouds of super-cooled water droplets. In order to study anti-icing coatings, the EADS-IW Surface Engineering Group is building a refrigerated wind tunnel. Several variations of droplet delivery systems were explored to determine the most effective way to introduce mono-dispersed droplets into the wind tunnel. To investigate this flow, timeurate, unsteady viscous flow simulations were performed using the Loci/CHEM flow solver with a multi-scale hybrid RANS/LES turbulence model. A Lagrangian droplet model was employed to simulate the movement of water droplets in the …

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Software Maintainability Measurement: A Task Complexity Perspective, Lulu He Dec 2010

Software Maintainability Measurement: A Task Complexity Perspective, Lulu He

Theses and Dissertations

Software maintainability is one of the most crucial quality attributes of a software product. Software engineering researchers and practitioners have devoted considerable effort to developing “good design” methods, rules and principles to improve software maintainability. But before we can validate the effectiveness of these methods, we first need an approach to measure software maintainability. The existing maintainability measures usually have limited scope and accuracy since they either isolate the software from its environment and focus only on the technical properties of the software, or measure a confounding effect of various factors involved in the maintenance process. Furthermore, these measures are …

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Static And Transient Voltage Stability Assessment Of Hybrid Ac/Dc Power Systems, Minglan Lin Dec 2010

Static And Transient Voltage Stability Assessment Of Hybrid Ac/Dc Power Systems, Minglan Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Voltage stability is a challenging problem in the design and operation of terrestrial and shipboard power systems. DC links can be integrated in the AC systems to increase the transmission capacity or to enhance the distribution performance. However, DC links introduce voltage stability issues related to the reactive power shortage due to power converters. Multi-infeed DC systems make this existing phenomenon more complicated. In addition, shipboard power systems have unique characteristics, and some concepts and methodologies developed for terrestrial power systems need to be investigated and modified before they are extended for shipboard power systems. One goal of this work …

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Waterhammer Modeling For The Ares I Upper Stage Reaction Control System Cold Flow Development Test Article, Jonathan Hunter Williams Dec 2010

Waterhammer Modeling For The Ares I Upper Stage Reaction Control System Cold Flow Development Test Article, Jonathan Hunter Williams

Theses and Dissertations

The Upper Stage Reaction Control System provides inlight three-axis attitude control for the Ares I Upper Stage. The system design must accommodate rapid thruster firing to maintain proper launch trajectory and thus allow for the possibility to pulse multiple thrusters simultaneously. Rapid thruster valve closure creates an increase in static pressure, known as waterhammer, which propagates throughout the propellant system at pressures exceeding nominal design values. A series of development tests conducted at Marshall Space Flight Center in 2009 were performed using a waterlow test article to better understand fluid characteristics of the Upper Stage Reaction Control System. A subset …

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Rapid Repair Of Levee Breaches: Plug Dimension Parameterization, Elizabeth Cathleen Burg Dec 2010

Rapid Repair Of Levee Breaches: Plug Dimension Parameterization, Elizabeth Cathleen Burg

Theses and Dissertations

Thousands of miles of levees exist in the United States and around the world and failure of these levees as a result of breaching has the potential to cause severe flooding damage. A technology, the PLUG, has been developed to temporarily reduce the flow through a levee breach as an alternative to traditional methods. This study is focused on developing initial guidance on the parameters for sizing a PLUG using a 1:100 (model:prototype) Froude scaled model. It was found that for the PLUG to effectively reduce flow through the breach, the required ratio of the PLUG length to the breach …

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Investigating The Impact Of Process Complexity On Quality Of Care In Hospital Emergency Departments, Laura Carolyn Ruff Dec 2010

Investigating The Impact Of Process Complexity On Quality Of Care In Hospital Emergency Departments, Laura Carolyn Ruff

Theses and Dissertations

This research examined the impact of ED process complexity on hospital quality outcomes. Nine emergency department nurse managers from hospitals in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were interviewed regarding processes of registration, laboratory testing, medication administration, radiology, and discharge. Interview data was coded according to variables in proposed equations for patientocused, providerocused, and overall process complexity. Hospital quality was measured using existing process of care, outcome of care, and patient satisfaction standards. Results showed a strong negative correlation between process complexity and overall quality, suggesting that hospitals with lower process complexity experience higher quality outcomes. Regression analysis showed that the average …

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Modeling Heat Transfer During Cooling Of Ready-To-Eat Meat And Poultry Products Using Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis And Web-Based Simulation, Jihan F. Cepeda Jimenez Dec 2010

Modeling Heat Transfer During Cooling Of Ready-To-Eat Meat And Poultry Products Using Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis And Web-Based Simulation, Jihan F. Cepeda Jimenez

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The meat industry is required to comply with processing performance standards for preventing the growth of foodborne pathogens in products. These performance standards, established by the United States Department of Agriculture - Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) require a reduction of Salmonella spp (lethality standard) and limit the growth of sporeforming bacteria (stabilization standard) in certain processed meat products. In general, strategies used to comply with these standards are associated with thermal processing. Meat processors have difficulties complying with these performance standards. Moreover, thermal processing deviations are an issue in the meat industry that generate uncertainty regarding the safety …

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Spherical Nearest Neighbor Classification: Application To Hyperspectral Data, Dalton Lunga, Okan Ersoy Dec 2010

Spherical Nearest Neighbor Classification: Application To Hyperspectral Data, Dalton Lunga, Okan Ersoy

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

The problem of feature transformation arises in many fields of information processing, including machine learning, data compression, computer vision and geosciences applications. Here we discuss an approach that seeks a hyperspherical coordinate system preserving geodesic distances in the high dimensional hyperspectral data space. A lower dimensional hyperspherical manifold is computed using a lower rank matrix approximation algorithm combined with the recently proposed spherical embeddings method. Three spherical metrics for classification that exploits the nonlinear structure of hyperspectral imagery based on the properties of hyperspherical surfaces and their relationship with local tangent spaces are proposed. As part of experimental validation, results …

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Integrating Project Change Management Learning Into An Academic Course On It Project Management, Mikaela A. Nweke Ms. Dec 2010

Integrating Project Change Management Learning Into An Academic Course On It Project Management, Mikaela A. Nweke Ms.

Purdue Polytechnic Directed Projects

Within project management, little attention has been devoted to controlling and facilitating changes when constraints of a project have been changed such as scope, time, cost, or quality, also known as Project Change Management (Arami, 2008). Growing statistics prove it is imperative for students finishing IT programs to acquire an understanding of project change management (PCM) for industry preparation. The U.S. spent 3.28 billion dollars on global change management and accountability projects for technology (roughly one-third of the total budget for global change) in the year 2000; this percentage still continues to rise (Goncalves, 2007). As a result, students must …

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Harley-Davidson, Inc.: A Strategic Audit, Sheila Lenz Dec 2010

Harley-Davidson, Inc.: A Strategic Audit, Sheila Lenz

Honors Theses

Thesis presents a strategic audit to assess the strategy of Harley-Davidson, Inc. Includes financial information, risks and strategies, and marketing information.

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Impact Of Wind Farms With Energy Storage On Transient Stability, Douglas A. Bowman Dec 2010

Impact Of Wind Farms With Energy Storage On Transient Stability, Douglas A. Bowman

Theses and Dissertations

Today’s energy infrastructure will need to rapidly expand in terms of reliability and flexibility due to aging infrastructure, changing energy market conditions, projected load increases, and system reliability requirements. Over the few decades, several states in the U.S. are now requiring an increase in wind penetration. These requirements will have impacts on grid reliability given the inherent intermittency of wind generation and much research has been completed on the impact of wind on grid reliability. Energy storage has been proposed as a tool to provide greater levels of reliability; however, little research has occurred in the area of wind with …

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Gene Network Inference And Expression Prediction Using Recurrent Neural Networks And Evolutionary Algorithms, Heather Y. Chan Dec 2010

Gene Network Inference And Expression Prediction Using Recurrent Neural Networks And Evolutionary Algorithms, Heather Y. Chan

Theses and Dissertations

We demonstrate the success of recurrent neural networks in gene network inference and expression prediction using a hybrid of particle swarm optimization and differential evolution to overcome the classic obstacle of local minima in training recurrent neural networks. We also provide an improved validation framework for the evaluation of genetic network modeling systems that will result in better generalization and long-term prediction capability. Success in the modeling of gene regulation and prediction of gene expression will lead to more rapid discovery and development of therapeutic medicine, earlier diagnosis and treatment of adverse conditions, and vast advancements in life science research.

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Newsroom: Argento On 'Internet Censorship' Bill, Roger Williams University School Of Law Dec 2010

Newsroom: Argento On 'Internet Censorship' Bill, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

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Asynchronous Database Drivers, Michael Adam Heath Dec 2010

Asynchronous Database Drivers, Michael Adam Heath

Theses and Dissertations

Existing database drivers use blocking socket I/O to exchange data with relational database management systems (RDBMS). To concurrently send multiple requests to a RDBMS with blocking database drivers, a separate thread must be used for each request. This approach has been used successfully for many years. However, we propose that using non-blocking socket I/O is faster and scales better under load. In this paper we introduce the Asynchronous Database Connectivity in Java (ADBCJ) framework. ADBCJ provides a common API for asynchronous RDBMS interaction. Various implementations of the ADBCJ API are used to show how utilizing non-blocking socket I/O is faster …

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Screening Of New Commercial And Experimental Gossypium Hirsutum Cultivars For Tolerance To The Reniform Nematode (Rotylenchulus Reniformis), Julie Anna Blessitt Dec 2010

Screening Of New Commercial And Experimental Gossypium Hirsutum Cultivars For Tolerance To The Reniform Nematode (Rotylenchulus Reniformis), Julie Anna Blessitt

Theses and Dissertations

The reniform nematode is a major pest affecting common upland cotton in the United States. Management of this pest in cotton fields only gives partial control and is sometimes neither economical nor profitable. Past research has shown no resistance to the reniform nematode in currently available commercial cotton cultivars. Screenings of several currently available cotton cultivars for tolerance to the reniform nematode were conducted in the growing seasons of 2006 and 2007 at the Delta Branch Experiment Station in Stoneville MS. Several cultivars were identified as tolerant and productive including ‘Croplan Genetics 3520 B2RF,’ ‘DynaGrow 2520 B2RF,’ and ‘Stoneville 5242 …

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Enhanced Lipid Production And Biodiesel Yields From Activated Sludge Via Fermentation Of Lignocellulose Hydrolyzate, Andro Hernandez Mondala Dec 2010

Enhanced Lipid Production And Biodiesel Yields From Activated Sludge Via Fermentation Of Lignocellulose Hydrolyzate, Andro Hernandez Mondala

Theses and Dissertations

The potential of enhancing lipid accumulation in municipal sewage activated sludge via fermentation of lignocellulose biomass hydrolyzate was investigated. The overall objective was to increase the levels of feedstock lipids in the activated sludge biomass and increase its biodiesel yield via in situ or ex situ transesterification; and improve its cost competitiveness as an abundant feedstock source for biofuels production. To reduce production costs and maintain environmental sustainability, influent wastewater and waste lignocellulose biomass hydrolyzate were used as cultivation media and substrate, respectively. However, lignocellulose hydrolyzates also contain degradation by-products such as furfural and acetic acid that are known to …

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Utilization Of Extracted Hardwood Flakes For Manufacturing Oriented Strand Lumber, Thomas Eric Mcconnell Dec 2010

Utilization Of Extracted Hardwood Flakes For Manufacturing Oriented Strand Lumber, Thomas Eric Mcconnell

Theses and Dissertations

Lignocellulosic ethanol production currently uses expensive and harsh methods to extract wood sugars from small-diameter hardwood trees that otherwise would have little or no marketability. A byproduct that adds no value to the conversion process results, thus alternative methods are needed to make this fuel source cost-effective. This dissertation proposes only partially hydrolyzing southern hardwoods, extracting some polysaccharides for ethanol fermentation while leaving behind a modified wood material which could be used as furnish for manufacturing strand-based wood composites. Three treating solutions, 1% sulfuric acid, water, and 1% sodium hydroxide, along with untreated controls, were utilized in a partial hydrolysis …

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Vortices In The Near Field Of Optical Dipole Radiation, Xin Li Dec 2010

Vortices In The Near Field Of Optical Dipole Radiation, Xin Li

Theses and Dissertations

An oscillating electric dipole emits radiation, and the flow of energy is represented by the field lines of the Poynting vector. In the most general state of oscillation the dipole moment vector traces out an ellipse. We have evaluated analytically and numerically the field lines of the Poynting vector for the emitted light, and it appears that each field line lies on a cone, which has its axis perpendicular to the plane of the ellipse. The field lines exhibit a vortex structure near the location of the dipole, and they approach a straight line in the far field. The spatial …

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Spatio-Temporal Characteristics Of Mississippi Wildfires, Saranee Dutta Dec 2010

Spatio-Temporal Characteristics Of Mississippi Wildfires, Saranee Dutta

Theses and Dissertations

Based on wildfire data acquired from Mississippi forestry commission from 1991- 2005 approximately 4,000 wildfires occur in Mississippi each year, burning over 60,000 acres of forest and grassland. This study focuses on Mississippi’s wildfires from 1991- 2005 for the summer/fall period defined for this study as the May-November fire season. Statistical analysis indicates that there is significant correlation between vegetation indices derived from remotely sensed data and wildfire size at various time lag periods. Forest areas are correlated with vegetation indices at longer lag periods, nonorested areas are correlated at shorter lag periods. The inverse correlation between wildfire size and …

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Alabama Community College Presidents' Perceptions Regarding Distance Education, Janina Lakeshea Nobles Dec 2010

Alabama Community College Presidents' Perceptions Regarding Distance Education, Janina Lakeshea Nobles

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine Alabama community college presidents’ perceptions regarding distance education. Further, this study was intended to determine the adequacy of the training opportunities and support for faculty that teach distance education courses and what services are available for distance education students. This study was designed to investigate distance education in the Alabama Community College System and to provide information in an effort to create a comprehensive plan to maximize access to online learning for students within the system. A survey was given to a total of 26 Alabama 2-year college presidents (22 comprehensive community …

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Assessment Of Body Armor Design On Physical Performance During Simulated Law Enforcement Activities, David Rashad Close Dec 2010

Assessment Of Body Armor Design On Physical Performance During Simulated Law Enforcement Activities, David Rashad Close

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research was to evaluate the impact of current body armor design on physical performance during simulated law enforcement activities. Twenty participants completed three trials of 13 individual activities representative of routine law enforcement activities. Three body armor configurations were evaluated: baseline (i.e., no armor), concealable body armor, and external body armor. Dependent variables included task completion time, heart rate, and center of pressure (COP). Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to test the dependant variables, with Tukey’s HSD post hoc tests used where appropriate. Results showed that the vertical and horizontal components of COP were affected by …

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Biomass-To-Biofuels' Supply Chain Design And Management, Ambarish Madhukar Acharya Dec 2010

Biomass-To-Biofuels' Supply Chain Design And Management, Ambarish Madhukar Acharya

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to study optimization models that integrate location, production, inventory and transportation decisions for industrial products and apply the knowledge gained to develop supply chains for agricultural products (biomass). We estimate unit cost for the whole biomass-to-biofuels’ supply chain which is the per gallon cost for biofuels up till it reaches the markets. The unit cost estimated is the summation of location, production, inventory holding, and transportation costs. In this dissertation, we focus on building mathematical models for designing and managing the biomass-to-biofuels’ supply chains. The computational complexity of the developed models makes it advisable …

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Coupling Sediment Transport And Water Quality Models, Yi Xiong Dec 2010

Coupling Sediment Transport And Water Quality Models, Yi Xiong

Theses and Dissertations

Sediment has profound effects on water quality. Correspondingly, water quality modeling often needs sediment transport modeling. However, simplified descriptive sediment transport was originally employed for water quality modeling, and the linkage between sediment transport models and water quality models is less developed. Therefore, the main purposes of this study were to develop general methods of coupling sediment transport and water quality models and to improve sediment transport modeling for water quality modeling. Linkage of sediment transport and water quality was discussed and a comprehensive sediment transport literature review was conducted. SEDDEER (Sediment Deposition and Erosion), a stand-alone sediment and contaminant …

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Deconvoluting The Link Between Weld Tool Geometry And Process Parameters, Joseph Andrew Querin Dec 2010

Deconvoluting The Link Between Weld Tool Geometry And Process Parameters, Joseph Andrew Querin

Theses and Dissertations

Advancing the process of friction stir welding (FSW) currently relies on a trial and error approach toward selecting tool geometries and determining process parameters. Before a more formalized design process can be established, a methodology for process parameter selection must be developed. In FSW, various flow paths, as influenced by the tool design, have been proposed to explain the formation of a high quality weld. Central to the discussion is whether the metal is extruded around the tool or whether the metal crosses a shear zone which differentiates the stir zone from the parent material. Probing the interaction between the …

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Department Of Defense Radiation Hazards Testing Analysis, Jarrod Douglas Fortinberry Dec 2010

Department Of Defense Radiation Hazards Testing Analysis, Jarrod Douglas Fortinberry

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Department of Defense tests its weapons systems to many different real as well as man-made environments prior to deploying the systems to the troops. The intent of testing is to insure the systems function as they are intended without adverse reactions. One of the required tests is a Radiation Hazards test to insure that non-ionizing radio frequency waves generated by transmitters, such as radios and jammers, do not cause harm to personnel, ordnance or fuel. This test is typically performed at a DoD test lab and data taken at the lab is used to determine safe operating …

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Design, Construction, And Testing Of A High Altitude Research Glider, Trevor Llewellyn Parker Dec 2010

Design, Construction, And Testing Of A High Altitude Research Glider, Trevor Llewellyn Parker

Theses and Dissertations

Micro aerial vehicle development and atmospheric flight on Mars are areas that require research in very low Reynolds number flight. Facilities for studying these problems are not widely available. The upper atmosphere of the Earth, approximately 100,000 feet AGL, is readily available and closely resembles the atmosphere on Mars, in both temperature and density. This low density also allows normal size test geometry with a very low Reynolds number. This solves a problem in micro aerial vehicle development; it can be very difficult to manufacture instrumented test apparatus in the small sizes required for conventional testing. This thesis documents the …

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The Economic Feasibility Of Producing Sweet Sorghum As An Ethanol Feedstock In Mississippi, Joseph Andrew Linton Dec 2010

The Economic Feasibility Of Producing Sweet Sorghum As An Ethanol Feedstock In Mississippi, Joseph Andrew Linton

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the feasibility of producing sweet sorghum as an ethanol feedstock in Mississippi. An enterprise budgeting system is used along with estimates of transportation costs to estimate farmers’ breakeven costs for producing and delivering sweet sorghum biomass. This breakeven cost for the farmer, along with breakeven costs for the producer based on wholesale ethanol price, production costs, and transportation and marketing costs for the refined ethanol, is used to estimate the amounts that farmers and ethanol producers would be willing to accept (WTA) and willing to pay (WTP), respectively, for sweet sorghum biomass. These WTA and WTP estimates …

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Economic Impact Of On-Board Module-Building Cotton Harvesters On Replacement Schedule And Harvest Costs, Matthew Alan Farrell Dec 2010

Economic Impact Of On-Board Module-Building Cotton Harvesters On Replacement Schedule And Harvest Costs, Matthew Alan Farrell

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to further understand the economic impact of the new on-board module-building cotton harvesters that both John Deere and Case IH have introduced to the market. This study will examine two different areas, the optimal asset replacement schedule and a machine’s performance rate’s effect on harvest costs due to rainfall loss. Using data collected from Willcut (2008), USDA crop progress reports, and a USDA weather station, models will be used to study the areas in question. The findings are that, the age of the associated assets begin replaced with the conventional harvester and the number …

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