Digital Commons Network^™

Hydrogen Loading System Development And Evaluation Of Tritiated Substrates To Optimize Performance In Tritium Based Betavoltaics, Thomas E. Adams

Open Access Dissertations

State-of-the-art hydrogen loading system onto thin metallic films based on differential pressure in calibrated chambers has been developed for conditions pressures and temperatures up to 69 bar and 500°C, respectively. Experiments on hydrogen loading on to palladium films of thickness 50 and 250 nm were conducted at pressure ranging from 0.2 bar to 10 bar at temperature 310°C. For first time film hydrogen loading was carried out at 1 bar and at room temperature which temperature. Beta flux exiting surface of metal tritide films has been modeled with MC-SET (Monte Carlo Simulation of Electron Trajectories in solids). Surface beta flux …

A Nonlinear Interface Formulation For Frictional Contact, Layla K Amaireh

Open Access Dissertations

Finite element simulations of contact problems often involve modeling the interaction of multiple bodies across a non-confirming interface. Non-Confirming Meshes (NCM) are typically associated with large sliding or adaptive refinement on one side of the interface to capture localized nonlinear behavior due to large deformations, damage and inelasticity. The use of NCMs, however, presents a number of numerical issues; the main challenge with such discretizations is to ensure compatibility of the kinematic and traction fields along the non-conforming interface. ^ The Enriched Discontinuous Galerkin Approach (EDGA) (Haikal and Hjelmstad,2010)addresses this challenge by implementing a local enrichment along with an interface …

Integrating Pro-Environmental Behavior With Transportation Network Modeling: User And System Level Strategies, Implementation, And Evaluation, Husain M. Abdul Aziz

Open Access Dissertations

Personal transport is a leading contributor to fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse (GHG) emissions in the U.S. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that light-duty vehicles (LDV) are responsible for 61\% of all transportation related energy consumption in 2012, which is equivalent to 8.4 million barrels of oil (fossil fuel) per day. The carbon content in fossil fuels is the primary source of GHG emissions that links to the challenge associated with climate change. Evidently, it is high time to develop actionable and innovative strategies to reduce fuel consumption and GHG emissions from the road transportation networks. This dissertation …

A Qualitative Analysis Of The Impact Of The Reform Of The College Of Science Undergraduate Core Curriculum At State University, Dean Ballotti

Open Access Dissertations

The Dean of the College of Science at State University, a large public Midwestern research university, in a memo to the faculty and staff initiated what he called a "review" of the undergraduate science core curriculum. He formed a task force that was to investigate on three issues; a reassessment of the undergraduate core curriculum, the recruitment and retention of qualified undergraduate students with an emphasis on diversity, and strategies that would address these issues. The age of the curriculum, 40 years since the last significant change, was an important factor in the review of the curriculum. This qualitative study …

Transformation Of Biomass Carbohydrates By Transition Metal Catalysts, Christine M Bohn

Open Access Dissertations

By selectively removing functional groups from biomass derived carbohydrates, valuable platform chemicals can be generated from renewable sources. Through dehydration chemistry glucose can be upgraded into 5-(Hydroxymethyl)-2-furfuraldehyde (HMF) and levulinic acid. Iron (III) chloride hexahydrate has shown moderate activity to transform glucose into HMF and has also shown high yields and selectivity for the production of levulinic acid. Typically synthesized from acidic solutions made with mineral acids, levulinic acid has now been produced in high yields with a metal salt. The difference between maximizing production for HMF or levulinic acid from the same catalyst relies on the control of the …

Supersonic Jet Spectroscopy Of Synthetic Foldamers, Multichromophores, And Their Water Containing Clusters, Evan Gardner Buchanan

Open Access Dissertations

A central theme specific to this dissertation concerns the conformation-specific spectroscopy of flexible molecules in an effort to bridge the complexity gap. Generally, molecules in the complexity gap have several flexible coordinates yet conformational isomerization still occurs along a simple reaction coordinate on the potential energy surface. Molecules in this regime benefit greatly from experiments probing the potential energy surfaces and provide a means to develop and test new theories in an effort to explain more complex system. These measurements are possible through the utilization of a supersonic jet expansion to collisionally cool molecules into their vibrational zero-point levels, collapsing …

Project Portfolio Evaluation And Selection Using Mathematical Programming And Optimization Methods, Hugo Caballero

Open Access Dissertations

Project portfolio selection is an essential process for portfolio management and plays an important role in accomplishing organizational goals. This research explores the feasibility of developing a project portfolio selection tool by using mathematical programming and optimization models, specifically 0-1 integer programming (one objective portfolio) and goal programming (multiple objectives portfolio). These methods select the set of projects which deliver the maximum benefit (e.g., net present value, profit, etc.) represented for objective functions subjected to a series of constraints (e.g., technical requirements and/or resources availability) considering the scheduling of selected projects in a planning horizon, interdependence relationship among projects (e.g., …

Beam-Induced Radiation Heating On The Superconducting Undulator At The Advanced Photon Source, Laura Elizabeth Boon

Open Access Dissertations

In January 2013 the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a 7 GeV synchrotron X-ray source, commissioned a Superconducting Undulator (SCU). The superconducting magnet is thermally isolated from the beam vacuum chamber, which absorbs the beam-induced heating. Previous beam induced heat load studies at other laboratories had not included a robust calculation of radiation heating from the upstream dipole magnet. The mitigation of the radiation heating mechanism, and production of photoelectrons to seed an electron cloud was studied for this thesis. ^ An analytical model was developed to predict the radiation heat load on the SCU chamber. This model was benchmarked with …

Aircraft-Based Measurements For The Identification And Quantification Of Sources And Sinks In The Carbon Cycle, Dana R Caulton

Open Access Dissertations

Improved quantification of carbon-cycle sources and sinks is an important requirement for determining mitigation strategies and modeling future climate interactions. Analytically robust measurements require high-precision instrumentation and thoughtful experimental design to produce rigorous and reproducible results despite complex and quickly changing meteorological and environmental conditions. Here, an aircraft platform equipped with a high-precision cavity ring-down spectrometer for CO₂, CH₄ and H₂O quantification was used to acquire data from previously un-sampled sources. The aircraft mass-balance technique was used to quantify CH4 emissions from natural gas well pads in the drilling stage, which were 2-3 orders of …

The Composition Of First-Year Engineering Curricula And Its Relationships To Matriculation Models And Institutional Characteristics, Xingyu Chen

Open Access Dissertations

The preparation of technically excellent and innovative engineering graduates urges for a reform of the engineering curriculum to meet critical challenges in society (National Academy of Engineering, 2005). An examination of the current engineering curricula is needed to offer a baseline to further discuss if the curriculum reform meets the critical challenges. Meanwhile, concern about engineering retention prioritizes a review of the first-year engineering curricula. The existing literature does not include a nationwide examination of the first-year engineering curricula and introductory engineering courses. This study aspired to fill the gap by providing a detail description of the composition of first-year …

Effects Of Energetic Irradiation On Materials And Devices Based On Graphene And Topological Insulators, Isaac Childres

Open Access Dissertations

This report focuses on the optical and electronic properties of graphene and topological insulators and how these Dirac fermion systems interact with energetic irradiation. We first present data exploring the effects of electron-beam and oxygen plasma induced disorder on the electronic properties and Raman spectra of graphene. These initial investigations were important for relating Raman peak intensities and weak localization features to each other and to an average disorder length in graphene, L_D. ^ We then integrate gate-effect measurements into the Raman spectroscopy study to fully explore the relationships between carrier density, disorder and Raman spectrum signatures. We …

Energy Conservation And Efficiency In Manufacturing: Employee Decisions And Actions, Marla Dee Corson

Open Access Dissertations

Energy conservation and intensity reduction efforts are becoming increasingly more prevalent and ultimately necessary, especially for energy-intensive manufacturing companies in particular to stay in business. Typical actions are to change technology, and thus, realize an energy cost savings in overall utilities. However, in today's competitive market, with climate change and other environmental impacts as well, it is necessary for the cost of energy to be valued as a cost of making a product, and thus, managed at the same level as the cost of labor or materials. This research assessed human behavior at the individual and organizational levels both at …

Irrigation With Treated Wastewater: Potential And Limitations, Anne Dare

Open Access Dissertations

As the world population increases and resources become more coveted, water emerges as a key component to global food security. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is among the driest regions in the world: containing just one percent of the world's freshwater resources. An increasing population creates greater quantities of wastewater and demands greater quantities of food, so an obvious connection arises. However logical wastewater reuse may be for bridging the irrigation supply-demand gap in this arid region, significant limitations prevent widespread adoption. The overall goal of this research is to take a holistic view of the limitations facing …

Diagnosing Undergraduate Biology Students' Experimental Design Knowledge And Difficulties, Annwesa Dasgupta

Open Access Dissertations

Experimental design is an important component of undergraduate biology education as it generates knowledge of biology. This dissertation addresses the challenge undergraduate educators face for assessing knowledge of experimental design in biology by examining knowledge of, and difficulties with, experimental design in the context of first-year undergraduate biology students at Purdue. The first chapter reviews several recent reports that highlight the necessity to increase understanding of the experimental research process as a core scientific ability (for e.g., AAAS, 2011; AAMC-HHMI, 2009; NRC, 2007). Despite its importance, there is limited information about what students actually learn from designing experiments. In the …

Transport Studies Of Reentrant Integer Quantum Hall States Forming In The Two-Dimensional Electron Gas, Nianpei Deng

Open Access Dissertations

The two dimensional electron gas subjected to a magnetic field has been a model system in contemporary condensed matter physics which generated many beautiful experiments as well as novel fundamental concepts. These novel concepts are of broad interests and have benefited other fields of research. For example, the observations of conventional odd-denominator fractional quantum Hall states have enriched many-body physics with important concepts such as fractional statistics and composite fermions. The subsequent discovery of the enigmatic even-denominator ν=5/2 fractional quantum Hall state has led to more interesting concepts such as non-Abelian statistics and pairing of composite fermions which can be …

Applications Of Femtosecond Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering In Combustion, Claresta Nicole Dennis

Open Access Dissertations

The dissertation deals with the further development of chirped-probe-pulse femtosecond coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CPP fs-CARS) for applications of gas phase thermometry and extension to methane concentration measurements. The main effort has been to assess the usefulness and robustness of the technique in turbulent combustors of practical interest. A primary aim has been to evaluate the use of CPP fs-CARS for vibrational N₂ thermometry in a highly turbulent environment. It has been suggested that due to the laser beam temporal overlap required for fs-CARS signal generation, the technique would be unsuccessful due to beam propagation retardation effects from density …

The Emergence Of Constitutionalism As An Evolutionary Adaptation, Fábio Portela L. Almeida

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The emergence of modern societies is an evolutionary puzzle. Homo sapiens is the only animal species capable of cooperating in large-scale societies consisting of genetically unrelated individuals. From a biological point of view, this feature leads to enormous questions. Social scientists typically assume that human life is lived in large-scale societies as a result of cultural, social and institutional history. In this perspective, social institutions such as law, economy and religion enhance cooperation to higher levels. Gene-culture coevolutionary theories have studied this issue in an integrated framework that accounts for social and biological theories of cooperation. These theoretical approaches have …

Security Policies That Make Sense For Complex Systems: Comprehensible Formalism For The System Consumer, Rhonda R. Henning

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Information Systems today rarely are contained within a single user workstation, server, or networked environment. Data can be transparently accessed from any location, and maintained across various network infrastructures. Cloud computing paradigms commoditize the hardware and software environments and allow an enterprise to lease computing resources by the hour, minute, or number of instances required to complete a processing task. An access control policy mediates access requests between authorized users of an information system and the system's resources. Access control policies are defined at any given level of abstraction, such as the file, directory, system, or network, and can be …

Development Of Ultrasound Sensitive Eliposomes Containing Doxorubicin For Drug Delivery, Chung-Yin Lin, William G. Pitt, Kuo-Chen Wei

Faculty Publications

Aims: A novel nanocarrier was formulated by remote loading of doxorubicin (Dox) into a dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) liposome that also contains various perfluorocarbon (PFC) droplets within its aqueous interior. It was shown that Dox can be loaded to a level of up to 67% into these large unilamellar vesicles composed of DPPC and cholesterol by employing a transmembrane pH gradient technique.

Methods: The different encapsulation efficiencies for these eLipoDox constructs of differing PFC composition are 45.5% (PFC5), 31.5% (PFC6) and 66.7% (PFC5/PFC6 mixture, PFCm). At 30 seconds of insonation, the eLipoDox formulation with PFCm droplets appeared to release more Dox than …

New Best Equivocation Codes For Syndrome Coding, S Al-Hassan, Mz Ahmed, M Tomlinson

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

In this paper we present a code design technique which produces codes for syndrome coding which have better secrecy than the best error correcting codes. Code examples are given for the case where the number of parity bits of the code is equal to 15. The code design technique presented is based on extensions of the parity check matrix of a set of good equivocation codes of shorter length. It is also shown that syndrome coding can be implemented without the traditional syndrome look up table, enabling any length codes to be used. An efficient recursive method to calculate the …

A Constructive Study Of The Module Structure Of Rings Of Partial Differential Operators, A Quadrat, D Robertz

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

The purpose of this paper is to develop constructive versions of Stafford's theorems on the module structure of Weyl algebras A n (k) (i.e., the rings of partial differential operators with polynomial coefficients) over a base field k of characteristic zero. More generally, based on results of Stafford and Coutinho-Holland, we develop constructive versions of Stafford's theorems for very simple domains D. The algorithmization is based on the fact that certain inhomogeneous quadratic equations admit solutions in a very simple domain. We show how to explicitly compute a unimodular element of a finitely generated left D-module of rank at least …

Development Of Cell-Active Inhibitors And Activity-Based Probe Of Cysteine Cathepsins, Dibyendu Dana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cysteine cathepsins are an important class of enzymes that coordinate a variety of important cellular processes, and are implicated in various types of human diseases. Still however, many of their cellular function remain poorly understood. Chemical biology approaches employing small molecules can be utilized for this purpose. Unfortunately small molecule probes that are cell-permeable and non-peptidyl in nature are scarcely available.

In this work, first a library of sulfonyloxiranes is synthesized. From this library, 2-(2-ethylphenylsulfonyl)oxirane is identified as a selective inhibitor of cysteine cathepsins. Cell-based study reveals that 2-(2-ethylphenylsulfonyl)oxirane is a cell-permeable, covalent, and irreversible inhibitor of cathepsin B with …

A Study Of Twenty Two Caliber Long Rifle And Nine Millimeter Parabellum Bullet Ricochet From Common Substrates, Peter Diaczuk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Determining the angle at which a bullet will successfully ricochet is essential information when a shooting investigation involves indirect fire. In this research, determining the critical angle and its variance was measured for six substrates, two calibers and two bullet types. This information provides the forensic scientist with fundamental data required for the scientific reconstruction and assessment of a shooting scene. Depending upon the bullet's design, the substrate, and the angle of impact, a bullet may fail to ricochet upon impact, or the bullet will ricochet. Knowledge of bullet behavior with common substrates provides valuable information for scientific investigation of …

Development And Applications Of Mass Spectrometric Methods For Phosphorylation Analysis, Hsin-Pin Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Protein phosphorylation modification regulates numerous cellular functions by a reversible and selective control of kinases and phosphatases. To understand the entire dynamic network of phosphorylation requires sensitive and reliable quantification of phosphorylation, measurements that can be achieved by mass spectrometry. In this research, we established efficient MALDI-mass spectrometric methods as strategies for single- or multi-site phosphorylation quantification without the use of isotopes, chromatography and calibration curves. The methods were assessed by analyzing peptide standards with different single-multiple phosphorylation sites, showing a wide dynamic range, good accuracy and reproducibility. This is the first label-free MALDI method without using a calibration methodology …

Combinatorial Properties Of Polyiamonds, Christopher Larson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Polyiamonds are plane geometric figures constructed by pasting together equilateral triangles edge-to-edge. It is shown that a diophantine equation involving vertices of degrees 2, 3, 5 and 6 holds for all polyiamonds; then an Eberhard-type theorem is proved, showing that any four-tuple of non-negative integers that satisfies the diophantine equation can be realized geometrically by a polyiamond. Further combinatorial and graph-theoretic aspects of polyiamonds are discussed, including a characterization of those polyiamonds that are three-connected and so three-polytopal, a result on Hamiltonicity, and constructions that use minimal numbers of triangles in realizing four-vectors.

Synthesis, Fabrication And Characterization Of Magnetic And Dielectric Nanoparticles And Nanocomposite Films, Xiaohua Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field investigating the structure-property relationship in solid-state materials scientifically and technologically. Nanoscience is concerned with the distinctive properties that matter exhibits when confined to physical dimensions on the order of 10^-9 meters. At these length scales, behaviors of particles or elaborate structures are often governed by the rules of quantum mechanics in addition to the physical properties associated with the bulk material.

The work reported here seeks to employ nanocystals, binary nanocomposites and thin films of materials, to build versatile, functional systems and devices. With a focus on dielectric, ferroelectric, and magnetoelectric performance, a …

Confucius, Yamaha, Or Mozart? Cultural Capital And Upward Mobility Among Children Of Chinese Immigrants, Wei-Ting Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the determinants of upward mobility among children of Chinese immigrants. While most studies emphasize ethnic cultural capital as a primary determinant of Chinese upward mobility, this study proposes three new concepts to illuminate understudied processes promoting mobility. Specifically, this study argues that Chinese immigrants' interactions with classical music schools in the Chinese community help generate globalized cultural capital (resources from immigrants' participation in transnational networks), navigational capital (the ability to connect social networks together to facilitate community navigation through higher-status educational institutions) and aspirational capital (the ability of parents to acknowledge the barriers to upward mobility). These …

An Innovative Ran Architecture For Emerging Heterogeneous Networks: "The Road To The 5g Era", Shahab Hussain

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The global demand for mobile-broadband data services has experienced phenomenal growth over the last few years, driven by the rapid proliferation of smart devices such as smartphones and tablets. This growth is expected to continue unabated as mobile data traffic is predicted to grow anywhere from 20 to 50 times over the next 5 years. Exacerbating the problem is that such unprecedented surge in smartphones usage, which is characterized by frequent short on/off connections and mobility, generates heavy signaling traffic load in the network "signaling storms". This consumes a disproportion amount of network resources, compromising network throughput and efficiency, and …

Study To Investigate Self-Reported Teacher Absenteeism And Desire To Leave Teaching As They Relate To Teacher-Reported Teaching Satisfaction, Job-Related Stress, Symptoms Of Depression, Irrational Beliefs, And Self- Efficacy, Georgina Ruth Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aimed to examine teacher-reported absenteeism and intention to leave the profession by investigating the relationships between teachers' demographic characteristics, self-rated teaching-related stress, job satisfaction, symptoms of depression, irrational beliefs, and self-efficacy. According to Steers and Rhodes' (1978; Rhodes & Steers, 1990) theory of employee absenteeism, employees are absent from or leave their jobs because of personal factors that influence or are associated with their ability to attend work, and motivational factors that relate to job satisfaction. Teacher characteristics such as age, gender, number of children, ethnicity, education level, and years of teaching experience frequently relate to absenteeism and …

The Computational Complexity Of Some Games And Puzzles With Theoretical Applications, Vasiliki Despoina Mitsou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The subject of this thesis is the algorithmic properties of one- and two-player

games people enjoy playing, such as Sudoku or Chess. Questions asked about puzzles

and games in this context are of the following type: can we design efficient computer

programs that play optimally given any opponent (for a two-player game), or solve

any instance of the puzzle in question?

We examine four games and puzzles and show algorithmic as well as intractability

results. First, we study the wolf-goat-cabbage puzzle, where a man wants to transport

a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across a river by using a …