Digital Commons Network^™

Computational Methods On Study Of Differentially Expressed Proteins In Maize Proteomes Associated With Resistance To Aflatoxin Accumulation, Alka Tiwari

Theses and Dissertations

Plant breeders have focused on improving maize resistance to Aspergillus flavus infection and aflatoxin accumulation by breeding with genotypes having the desirable traits. Various maize inbred lines have been developed for the breeding of resistance. Identification of differentially expressed proteins among such maize inbred lines will facilitate the development of gene markers and expedite the breeding process. Computational biology and proteomics approaches on the investigation of differentially expressed proteins were explored in this research. The major research objectives included 1) application of computational methods in homology and comparative modeling to study 3D protein structures and identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) …

Determination Of The Weak Charge Of The Proton Through Parity Violating Asymmetry Measurements In The Elastic Ep Scattering, Adesh Subedi

Theses and Dissertations

The Qweak experiment has taken data to make a 2.5 percent measurement of parity violating elastic ep asymmetry in the four momentum transfer region of 0.0250 (GeV/c)2. This asymmetry is proportional to the weak charge of the proton, which is related to the weak mixing angle, sin2(thetaW). The final Qweak measurement will provide the most precise measurement of the weak mixing angle below the Z° pole to test the Standard Model prediction. A description of the experimental apparatus is provided in this dissertation. The experiment was carried out using a longitudinally polarized electron beam of up to 180 microampere on …

Electrical Breakdown Strength Of 5 Kv Ethylene Propylene Rubber (Epr) Cable Under Ac Voltage, Bishal Pradhan

Theses and Dissertations

Ethylene propylene rubber (EPR) cable has been extensively used for distribution of power. The insulation of cable should withstand electrical, thermal, mechanical, and chemical stresses during its operation. It is imperative to measure the data providing dielectric strength of EPR cable for these stresses. Significant improvements on the quality of insulation have been progressing for better performance of cable under these stresses. This study deals with ac voltage stress imposed on the cable. The electrical breakdown strength of 5kV EPR cable under ac voltage has been measured by constructing a suitable test set in Mississippi State University High Voltage Lab.

Development Of A Dynamic Performance Management Framework For Naval Ship Power System Using Model-Based Predictive Control, Jian Shi

Theses and Dissertations

Medium-Voltage Direct-Current (MVDC) power system has been considered as the trending technology for future All-Electric Ships (AES) to produce, convert and distribute electrical power. With the wide employment of highrequency power electronics converters and motor drives in DC system, accurate and fast assessment of system dynamic behaviors , as well as the optimization of system transient performance have become serious concerns for system-level studies, high-level control designs and power management algorithm development. The proposed technique presents a coordinated and automated approach to determine the system adjustment strategy for naval power systems to improve the transient performance and prevent potential instability …

Inspection Of Timber Bridge Longitudinal Decks With Ground Penetrating Radar, Brian K. Brashaw

Theses and Dissertations

Advanced nondestructive inspection techniques like stress wave timing and resistance microdrilling have been used to successfully inspection timber bridges, but it is most effective on girder style bridges. There is a noted need to develop additional inspection techniques for longitudinal deck/slab timber bridges, which comprise about 20% of the national bridge inventory. One technique that holds potential is ground penetrating radar, a recognized nondestructive testing technique that has been used effectively for many different environmental and transportation applications. It has been utilized successfully to identify buried objects, internal defects and material changes. The objective of this research was to assess …

Protein-Protein Interaction Profile Of Viral Protein Bicp0 During Bovine Herpesvirus-1 Lytic Infection, Stephanie Elaine Ander

Theses and Dissertations

Bovine Infected Cell Protein 0 (bICP0) is an immediate-early protein encoded by Bovine Herpesvirus-1 that modulates host immune response, activates transcription for all viral promoters, and causes ubiquitin-dependent degradation of proteins. Presented herein is a bICP0 protein-protein interaction (PPI) profile, consisting of 98 cellular and 15 viral proteins, generated through co-immunoprecipitation of bICP0 and its binding partners. The PPI profile was analyzed computationally to identify potential sites of interaction with bICP0 and any cellular pathways that may be influenced by bICP0. Some interactors fall in conjunction with bICP0’s known roles during infection, and others are consistent with known associations of …

Evaluation Of Herbicide Formulation And Spray Nozzle Selection On Physical Spray Drift, Jasper Lewis Cobb

Theses and Dissertations

New transgenic crops are currently being developed which will be tolerant to dicamba and 2,4-D herbicides. This technology could greatly benefit producers who are impacted by weed species that have developed resistance to other herbicides, like glyphosate-resistant Palmer Amaranth. Adoption of this new technology is likely to be rapid and widespread which will lead to an increase in the amount of dicamba and 2,4-D applied each season. It is well-documented that these herbicides are very injurious to soybeans, cotton, tomatoes, and most other broadleaf crops, and their increased use brings along increased chances of physical spray drift onto susceptible crops. …

Spectral Separability Of Longleaf And Loblolly Pines In High-Resolution Satellite Data, Mary Frances Nieminen

Theses and Dissertations

The spectral separability of southern pines is a perplexing issue due to limited variance of spectral reflectance in species with similar morphological characteristics. Understory vegetation reflectance may exacerbate the ability to accurately identify various overstory tree species, specifically those of longleaf and loblolly pines in the southeastern US. In this study, identification of target level overstory crowns with varying degrees of understory vegetation cover based on fire return frequency was used to assess the role of understory reflectance on target crown species discernment. Seasonal variations of understory vegetation in late dormant and late growing seasons were compared for disparities in …

Study Of The Mechanisms Of Heat Tolerance In Ivy Geraniums, Mingshu Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Ivy geranium (Pelargonium peltatum) is a heat susceptible species with its heat tolerance varying among varieties. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and in-vivo defense systems are related to plant heat damage and heat tolerance. Application of chelated-iron has also been reported to enhance ivy geranium heat tolerance; however, the correlation of ROS, relative enzyme stability, and iron content to differences in heat tolerance in ivy geraniums is unknown. Here we show that the H2O2 content and ROS scavenging enzyme stability in ivy geranium varies with varieties and active iron is not related to heat tolerance in ivy geranium. H2O2 content in …

Summer Engineering Academies: Developing Participant Self-Efficacy In Engineering, Nathan Eric Heiselt

Theses and Dissertations

With the growing concern over the reduction of university students pursuing degrees in STEM fields, there are a number of entities sponsoring and implementing programs for young people in order to promote interest in and self-efficacy for these fields. Summer Engineering Academies (SEAs) are implemented in a variety of settings by stakeholders with a single purpose: to expose young people to the fields and work of engineers in the hope of recruiting them. This study is seeks to identify whether any positive changes to the self-efficacy of the participants occurs through the curricula of the program. This self-efficacy can be …

Investigating Nondestructive Evaluation Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Beams Using Embedded Terfenol-D Particle Sensors, Jonathan D. Rudd

Theses and Dissertations

Reinforced fiber polymer composites are a class of materials that are composed of multiple constituents that work together to create a material specific for applications. By combining different fibers and matricies, laminates can be created that meet demands for high specific stiffness, damping specifications, and electrical resistance. However, their internal complexity subjects them to a number of internal failure modes that have the potential to fail the laminate. Those failure mechanisms are fiber breaking, microcracking in the matrix, debonding of the fibers from matrix, and delamination of ply layers. To assess these failures, nondestructive evaluation methods have been developed to …

On A Ductile Void Growth Model With Evolving Microstructure Model For Inelasticity, Yustianto Tjiptowidjojo

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this work is to develop an evolution equation for the ductile growth of a spherical void in a highly strain rate and temperature dependent material. The material considered in this work is stainless steel 304L at 982 °C. The material is characterized by a physically-based internal state variable model derived within consistent kinematics and thermodynamics — Evolving Microstructure Model for Inelasticity. Through this formulation, the degradation of the elastic moduli due to damage has been naturally acquired. An elastoviscoplasticity user material subroutine has also been developed and implemented into a commercially available finite element software ABAQUS. The …

Petroleum Releases From Underground Storage Tanks In Northwest Indiana: Successful Remediation Techniques And Implications Of Cost Effectiveness, Richard Jason Lenz

Theses and Dissertations

Prior to the passage of the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) 1.6 million bare steel Underground Storage Tanks (UST) were in use in the United States. Many of them were leaking. In Indiana approximately 13,000 UST remain but have been upgraded to meet current industry and regulatory standards. Cleaning up the petroleum releases from leaking UST has continued since it became evident that bare steel underground tanks leaked. In Northwest Indiana glacial moraine and outwash deposits from the Wisconsin Ice Age that retreated 10,000 years ago left 200 feet of glacial till above the underlying bedrock. Soil Vapor …

Soundscape Evaluation On Mississippi State University Campus, Yalcin Yildirim

Theses and Dissertations

The term soundscape, used for the first time at the end of 1970s, refers to the sum of the sounds that can be heard and perceived by people in a specific environment. The concept of soundscape has recently received attention in planning and design disciplines. Recent studies on soundscape have shown that the acoustic environment plays an important role for the comfort of site users. Hence, this research investigates how objective measurement of soundscape might be different from subjective perceptions of users in the Mississippi State University Campus as a public open space due to demographic and climatic variations. The …

Finite Element Analysis Of Adhesive Bonding Performances Of Wooden Dowel Pin Joints In Furniture, Xin Sun

Theses and Dissertations

This study was performed to investigate how pressure, glue amount, dowel penetration depth and wood grain orientation affect direct withdrawal resistances of dowel pin joints both experimentally and numerically, and develop FE (finite element) models to simulate tensile strength, contact pressure, and shear stress occurred in dowel pin joints. Results indicated that the direct withdrawal resistance load of a dowel pin joints can be predicted based on knowing the glue bonding shear strength between dowel and joint member materials and the pressure between the contact surfaces of the dowel and hole of a connected joint member. The FE contact element …

Geologic Controls Of Sand Boil Formation At Buck Chute, Mississippi, Seth M. Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Sand boil formation due to underseepage is a potential failure mechanism for levees in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Sand boils were identified in the Buck Chute study area in the 1990s during high water events and during the 2009 Flood. The site is unique due to the presence of point bar and abandoned channel deposits. To understand the role of these alluvial deposits on sand boil formation at the site, a geologic investigation of the subsurface was conducted. Using shallow geophysics, cone penetrometer tests (CPT), borings, and a geographic information system (GIS), it was concluded that the thin blanket …

2014 Fall Commencement, Harding University

Commencement Programs

Program for the Harding University Commencement on December 13.

Commencement Speaker: Rex Nelson

The Primary Source, Vol. 33, Issue 2, Elizabeth La Beaud

The Primary Source

No abstract provided.

Victims Of Success: Managing The Consequences Of Digital Outreach , Sean Benjamin

The Primary Source

No abstract provided.

A Pure Soul, Carlos Fuentes

Ontario Review

CARLOS FUENTES, the distinguished Mexican writer, has published a number of books of fiction, the most recent being Distant Relations, a novel, and Burnt Water, short stories. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Princeton.

Imsa B-Wing Lab Renovations Budget, Illinois Math And Science Academy

Lab Renovations

No abstract provided.

Imsa B-Wing Lab Renovations Specifications, Illinois Math And Science Academy

Lab Renovations

No abstract provided.

Essays On Price Competition And Strategies: Market Entry With Capacity Allocation, Channel Design And Information Provision., Huaqing Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Pricing strategy has attracted great interest among researchers due to its wide application in real world application and in academics. And very often, pricing strategy used along with other strategies such as branding, sales effort, and product information revelation. In this dissertation, we investigate different pricing strategies combined with other important non-price strategies. More specifically, we study how an incumbent firm can adopt different pricing and branding strategies to compete with a capacitated entrant. We also study the interaction between a single retailer and a single manufacturer in different service channels where they both can provide pre-sales effort to increase …

Spatial Dynamics Of Vegetated Seascapes And The Influence On Fish And Crustaceans, Rolando O. Santos Corujo

Open Access Dissertations

My dissertation adopted concepts and spatial tools of seascape ecology, the marine counterpart of landscape ecology, to understand the broad-scale structural attributes that make submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) seascapes resilient to anthropogenic disturbances, drivers of fauna community structure, and productive fisheries habitats. My research was designed to address the relative and interrelated ecological effects of broad-scale changes in SAV habitat amount (habitat loss) and configuration (fragmentation). SAV seascapes in nearshore areas of Biscayne Bay have been subject to constant anthropogenic disturbances associated to freshwater pulses from canals over the last 50 years; thus, these seascapes served as a model system …

Higher Wireless Connection Capacity Route Selection Algorithms For Automobiles Traveling Between Two Points, Brandon Sato

Open Access Theses

A GPS system selects routes between two points with minimum physical distance or minimum driving time. Here we address a different type of route selection problem. Given a road map with driving distance and wireless connectivity for each road segment, find a driving route that maximizes total wireless connectivity while its length is bounded by a predetermined value. In this thesis, we present three heuristic algorithms. Initially they compute the shortest path for determining a distance bound. The first modifies the road map by replacing each road segment with the ratio of the distance and wireless communication capacity, and selects …

Volume 50 - Issue 10 - Friday, December 12, 2014, Rose Thorn Staff

The Rose Thorn Archive

The Rose Thorn, Rose-Hulman's independent student newspaper.

The Development Of Photography Training For Recreation And Wellness Marketing, Erica Pax

Master of Education in Instructional Design and Technology Plan II Graduate Projects

The Department of Recreation and Wellness marketing office previously did not have a standardized photographic workflow to ensure all marketing student employee photographers consistently capture, edit, name, and store digital image files. As a result, the digital photo library contained digital image files of varying quality that were organized inconsistently. These inconsistencies made it difficult for designers to quickly and efficiently locate adequate image files for use in the creation of promotional items. In addition, a reduction in administrative staff and an increase in workload necessitated that new student employees learn new processes through self-instruction.

The researcher created a photography …

Forging A New Identity: Report Of The Metropolitan University Steering Group, Metropolitan University Steering Group

Strategic Planning

This report represents the consensus of a working group of faculty, staff, students, and community members appointed by the President of USM. Its membership was not necessarily intended to be representative of particular departments or academic units, but rather of its faculty members’ demonstrated commitment to public, civically engaged education and community action. The report is but the first step in the overall strategic transformation of USM. As a consensus document, it does not necessarily reflect the individual opinions of every member on every issue; a larger, more involved unfolding and participation of the entire USM community is now required …

Cal Poly Wins Contract To Help Bring Water To Disadvantaged Communities, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, Baccalaureates, December 12, 2014, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

President's Fellow Medallion - Vince Roig and Paul Luna; King O'Neal Scholars - Mary Bigelow, Dana Braden, Sufyan Dawoodjee, Ryan Feigel, Beatrice Froute De Domec, Sarah Griffis, Danielle Haberer, Dennis Kirichenko, Kristen Roles, and Daniel Vieira; Outstanding Graduate - John Wendy Tuy