Digital Commons Network^™

Semi-Automated Object-Based Classification Of Coral Reef Habitat Using Discrete Choice Models, Steven Saul, Samuel J. Purkis

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

As for terrestrial remote sensing, pixel-based classifiers have traditionally been used to map coral reef habitats. For pixel-based classifiers, habitat assignment is based on the spectral or textural properties of each individual pixel in the scene. More recently, however, object-based classifications, those based on information from a set of contiguous pixels with similar properties, have found favor with the reef mapping community and are starting to be extensively deployed. Object-based classifiers have an advantage over pixel-based in that they are less compromised by the inevitable inhomogeneity in per-pixel spectral response caused, primarily, by variations in water depth. One aspect of …

The Current Volume 26 : Issue 14, Nova Southeastern University

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Commencement Program 2015 December: College Of Science, The University Of Texas At Arlington

Commencement Programs, Photos, and Video

No abstract provided.

Combating Anti-Statistical Thinking Using Simulation-Based Methods Throughout The Undergraduate Curriculum, Nathan L. Tintle, Beth Chance, George Cobb, Soma Roy, Todd Swanson, Jill Vanderstoep

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The use of simulation-based methods for introducing inference is growing in popularity for the Stat 101 course, due in part to increasing evidence of the methods ability to improve students’ statistical thinking. This impact comes from simulation-based methods (a) clearly presenting the overarching logic of inference, (b) strengthening ties between statistics and probability/mathematical concepts, (c) encouraging a focus on the entire research process, (d) facilitating student thinking about advanced statistical concepts, (e) allowing more time to explore, do, and talk about real research and messy data, and (f) acting as a firmer foundation on which to build statistical intuition. Thus, …

Studies Of Influence Of Energy Distribution On The Upper Atmosphere, Cheng Sheng

Physics Theses - Archive

The energy inputs into the upper atmosphere including both solar irradiation and geomagnetic energy can significantly change the upper atmosphere such as the neutral and plasma densities, velocities and temperatures. Therefore, the precise specification of the energy inputs is critical to estimate the ionosphere/thermosphere variation during both quiet and storm times. In order to improve the understanding of the energy distribution and its influence at high latitudes, specifically, we have conducted the following studies. (1) Estimation of the altitudinal distribution of Joule heating from COSMIC observations. Joule heating is the most significant way to dissipate geomagnetic energy at high latitudes. …

Controlled Hydrosilylations Of Carbonyl Compounds And Computational Investigations Of A Hydride Shuttle Mechanism For Alkene Hydrosilylation, Gabriela Trog

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses - Archive

Chapter 1 describes tandem dual hydrosilylations of α,β-unsaturated enals. Hydrosilylations of both carbonyl compounds and alkenes have been utilized to create chiral alcohols. Tandem dual hydrosilylations (TDH) of α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds create five-membered oxasilacycles that can be further converted to 1,3- diols, which are a common structural motif in the polyketide natural product family. We present preliminary data and a substrate scope for the formation of these oxasilacycles en route to the 1,3-diol compounds. Chapter 2 describes hydrosilylations of esters that result in silyl acetals. The silyl acetals are chemical synthons of the corresponding aldehyde. This reaction can be coupled …

Evaluation Of Activated Carbon As A Commercial Drug Disposal Product Using Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Veronica B. Waybright

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses - Archive

At present, pharmaceuticals, synthetic organic compounds, and endocrine disrupting compounds are ubiquitous in our environment. These have been introduced by consumers and manufacturers directly and indirectly for decades. There is plenty of published literature addressing the presence of these compounds, the development of newer and more sensitive techniques to detect them at low concentrations, as well as studies showing their effects in the environment and in human health. However, these studies are based on the measurement and detection of these compounds after the fact; and even though some have addressed the need to decrease these pollutants in the environment, procedures …

New Conductometric Detection Methods For Sensitive Ion Chromatographic Measurement Of Weak Electrolytes, Hongzhu Liao

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses - Archive

Since Suppressed conductometric anion chromatography (SCAC) was proposed in the mid-1970s, SCAC has become a widely used tool for the determination of anion species in aqueous samples. Its application ranges from trace analysis in semiconductor manufacture to pharmaceutical analysis. This dissertation primarily focuses on three different projects on the conductometric determination of weak acids. Other work carried out during the same period both involved SCAC for the determination of anion composition of açaí Extracts and on the unusual ion exchange behavior of myo‐inositol phosphates. SCAC responds poorly and nonlinearly to weak acids, because they only ionize partially and the degree …

Determination Of Total And D-Amino Acid Content In Mice Brain Tissue By Achiral-Chiral Heart-Cutting Two-Dimensional Liquid Chromatography: Diagnostic And Clinical Relevance And A Comparison Between Non-Perfused And Perfused Tissue, Curran Parpia

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses - Archive

A heart-cutting two dimensional liquid chromatographic method for the quantification of free amino acid enantiomers from mouse brain tissue is demonstrated. Evidence to support the occurrence of D-amino acids in significant concentrations in physiological samples has spurred studies toward the elucidation of their importance and function. In this work, the level and regional distribution of select amino acids were determined by achiral-chiral LC/LC. Additionally, the effect of tissue perfusion on these levels was investigated. The free amino acid extracts were analyzed as their 9-fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl derivatives and separated in the reverse phase mode on superficially porous C18. In the second dimension, …

No Major Changes On Paleoclimate And Paleoenvironment Across The Eocene–Oligocene Transition In The Central Rocky Mountains, Sara Ayyash

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses - Archive

Earth’s climate has experienced dramatic cooling during the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) based on well-constrained marine geological records, however, a consensus on the terrestrial responses to this event has not been reached. The White River Formation in the central Rocky Mountains, western U.S.A., is a well-dated stratigraphic unit covering the EOT. The formation contains tuffaceous mudrock and sandstone that were deposited in fluvial and eolian depositional environments. Here I study oxygen isotope ratios and clumped isotope temperatures of carbonate cements and bulk organic carbon isotope ratios in order to reconstruct the paleoenvironment and paleoclimate across the EOT. These carbonate cements were …

Design For A Variable Pipe Cutting Jig, Truitt Ammons

2015 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Parker-Hannifin is an aerospace company located in Fort Worth, Texas. A large part of their business entails creating custom metal pipes that are used for aerospace applications. These pipes are all bent and cut at different specifications. Currently, the method being used to cut these pipes takes a lot of storage space, it is lengthy, it uses unsafe methodology and it adds up to be costly. My team and I were commissioned by Parker-Hannifin to design a system that will alleviate these problems. The solution that this team has proposed will save the company storage space, lower the time it …

Implementation Process For Automated Data Analysis In Mineral Extraction Companies, Richard A. Leach

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The need to determine knowledge from increasing amounts of information and raw data is a current and ongoing goal [1]. As technology continues to advance in the ability to collect and save more and more data, companies today must assimilate and understand this information as a valuable resource [2]. Companies in marketing and sales have found the use of a data warehouse and automated data analysis to be valuable resources [2]. This automated analysis of data has also been implemented in disciplines including scientific and medical research [2]. However, there continue to be other lower tech industrial areas of activity …

Two Phase Flow Cfd Analysis Of Refrigerants In A Condenser Pipe For Prediction Of Pressure Drop And Pumping Power, Aniket Ramchandra Kalambe

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

With the ever growing need of achieving optimum cooling at chip level at the expense of low input pumping power and keeping in check the Global Warming Potential (GWP) & Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) has given rise to “two-phase on chip cooling” with nature friendly refrigerants. Currently, “air-cooling” and “single-phase water on-chip cooling” using copper micro-channel coolers are being used but “two-phase on chip cooling” with refrigerants have a very large scale & long lasting advantages over the prior. However, due to the perceived complexity of modelling two-phase flow, this solution is not yet well understood. Modelling of two phase …

An Invastigation Of Band-Limited Fluid Damper Configuration Using Lumped Parameter Modeling, Ye Hong

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Vehicle suspension system is one of the key factors related to the vehicle dynamic characteristic. The fine tuning of suspension system between vehicle handling and ride comfort is not only a trade-off between these two aspects, but also, has its impact on vehicle safety and durability. For an optimal damper performance, the damper needs to generate sufficient damping force at maneuvering frequency (< 2 Hz); and it also needs to generate less damping force, which allow spring to filter the high frequency noise (> 2 Hz) generated by vehicle travels along rough road condition at speed. In order to achieve such performance, a lumped parameter model of Band-Limited Damper is proposed. Frequency response of both Conventional Damper and Band-Limited Damper are …

Computational Analysis Of Enhancing Heat Transfer In A 3-D Stacked Die Using Different Finned Heat Sink, Deekshith Pittala

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

3D die stacking is an exciting new technology that increases the transistor’s density by integrating two or more dies vertically with a dense high – speed interface. The result of 3D die stacking is a significant reduction of interconnect both within a die and across dies in a system. The objective of the thermal design requirement for a 3D stacked die package is to maintain the junction temperatures of the devices at or below specified limits. Installing the Heat sink aid the heat transfer activity from a package. The extent of cooling and the junction temperatures vary if the designs …

A Model Analysis Of Sand Insertion In Hydraulic Fractures, Ya Hao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a well-stimulation technology to create large volume of fracture formation in rocks for gas and/or oil extraction. This technology has been applied to commercially exploit natural gas in unconventional shale reservoirs that contain immense quantity but low density of hydrocarbon sources. The productivity can be largely dependent on the connectivity of fractures that must stay open. However, upon initial hydraulic fracturing, the fractures would be closed due to high hydrostatic pressure deep inside the crust. Sand must be pumped into the fractures to keep them open. An in-depth understanding of the sand distribution and its dependence …

Merging Radar-Only Qpe And Rain Gauge Data Via Conditional Bias-Penalized Optimal Estimation, Beomgeun Kim

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

A new technique for merging radar precipitation estimates and rain gauge data is developed and evaluated to improve multisensor quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE). Various types of linear and nonlinear techniques have been used to combine rain gauge and radar data. Linear cokriging and its variants, for example, may be considered as the best linear unbiased estimators which minimize the error variance in the unconditional sense. They are, however, subject to conditional biases (CB) that may be unacceptably large for estimation of heavy-to-extreme precipitation. In this work, I develop, apply, and evaluate conditional bias-penalized cokriging (CBPCK) for spatial estimation of precipitation …

Migmatite Gneiss Of The Jættedal Complex, Liverpool Land, East Greenland: Protracted High-T Metamorphism In The Overriding Plate Of The Caledonian Orogen, S. M. Johnston, A. Kylander-Clark, H. K. Brueckner

Physics

The Greenland Caledonides (GC) formed in the overriding Laurentian plate during the closure of the Iapetus Ocean and the subduction of Baltica, and offer a unique opportunity to study metamorphic patterns, regional structures and the kinematic evolution of the overriding plate of a continental collision. We present new metamorphic petrology and coupled zircon geochronology and geochemistry data from the Jættedal complex in southern Liverpool Land to document the thermal evolution of the orogenic core of the southern GC. Pelitic migmatite gneisses from the Jættedal complex document metamorphic conditions of 850–730 °C at pressures of 11–9.5 kbar. Zircon from these samples …

The International Humanity Foundation Co-Director Training Program, Indonesia: Supporting International Volunteers, Christina Darling

Capstone Collection

The following capstone paper takes a critical look at international volunteer programs and the potential negative consequences these programs may inadvertently have on the host community. The current volunteer Co-Director program at the International Humanity Foundations (IHF) is an archetype of this phenomenon. This paper examines the ways in which IHF falls short in achieving its mission and warns of the possible neo-colonial impact its Western volunteers may be having on the local communities around IHF’s centers.

The International Humanity Foundation Co-Director Training Program, Indonesia has been created in an effort strengthen IHF’s existing program by minimizing any negative impacts …

Silk Road Traveler Identity Quest: Text, Kitty Lam

History of Cultural Contact

Who wrote this text?

“In the country of ‘the lord of elephants’ the people are quick and enthusiastic, and entirely given to learning. They cultivate especially magical arts. They wear a robe thrown across them, with their right shoulder bare; their hair is done up in a ball on the top, and left undressed on the four sides. Their various tribes occupy different towns; their houses are built stage over stage.”

Standing In The Intersection : Using Photovoice To Understand The Lived Experience Of Black Gay College Students Attending Predominantly White Postsecondary Institutions., Erica Caton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intersection of multiple oppressed identities is characterized by the compounded effects of victimization, intimidation and continued marginalization by dominant culture groups in society. Despite a growing body of knowledge about the individual experiences of racial and sexual minorities, there remains a lack of understanding of the unique life experiences of individuals with intersecting oppressed identities, specifically Black gay youth. Failure or inability to recognize, understand and take action in response to the needs of Black gay youth in college, perpetuates a culture of oppression that compromises the physical and mental well-being, and the academic success of these students. Engaging …

Spreading Speeds And Traveling Waves In Some Population Models., Quancheng Meng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Virtually every ecosystem has been invaded by exotic organisms with potentially drastic consequences for the native fauna or flora. Studying the forms and rates of invading species has been an important topic in spatial ecology. We investigate two two-species competition models with Allee effects in the forms of reaction-diffusion equations and integro-difference equations. We discuss the spatial transitions from a mono-culture equilibrium to a coexistence equilibrium or a different mono-culture equilibrium in these models. We provide formulas for the spreading speeds based on the linear determinacy and show the results on the existence of traveling waves. We also study a …

Understanding The Meaning Of The Equal Sign : An Investigation Of Elementary Students And Teachers., Victoria Miller Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of two different policies for implementing new mathematics standards in two schools, for grades two through five, on student understanding of the equal sign. The study also examined teachers’ knowledge of the equal sign. The research used a mixed methods design to explore differences in student understanding of the equal sign as a result of how standards were implemented in two adjoining states with two different decisions as to when the standards would be implemented. This dissertation shares research that may be of interest to teachers, administrators, teacher educators and …

The Time Frames Of New Venture Teams., Jason D’Mello

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The central research question in this dissertation is: how do an individual’s perceptions of time impact a new venture team? Specifically, the study examined whether or not temporal depth relates to how reactive entrepreneurs may be to the environmental changes and threats that they face in their new venture team. I interviewed two cofounders from 40 new venture teams. The results suggest that cofounders in the same new venture team have very different perceptions of time. Their agreement, or congruence of temporal depth (future, past, and total) impacts their new venture team’s perception regarding environmental hostility. This relationship is negatively …

Multiple Instance Fuzzy Inference., Amine Ben Khalifa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A novel fuzzy learning framework that employs fuzzy inference to solve the problem of multiple instance learning (MIL) is presented. The framework introduces a new class of fuzzy inference systems called Multiple Instance Fuzzy Inference Systems (MI-FIS). Fuzzy inference is a powerful modeling framework that can handle computing with knowledge uncertainty and measurement imprecision effectively. Fuzzy Inference performs a non-linear mapping from an input space to an output space by deriving conclusions from a set of fuzzy if-then rules and known facts. Rules can be identified from expert knowledge, or learned from data. In multiple instance problems, the training data …

The Unique Electrochemical Reactivity Of Small Metal Nanoparticles., Rafael A. Masitas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes the factors controlling metal nanoparticle (NP) oxidation, using Au oxidation in Br- and Ag oxidation in acid as model systems. We found that the oxidation potential depends on size, surface charge, and electrode material. Size has a dramatic effect, shifting about 200 mV from > 200 nm diameter down to 4 nm diameter. The shift is more dramatic below 4 nm. 2.3 nm average diameter Au NPs oxidized in the 300-500 mV range and 1.5 nm average diameter Au NPs displayed several sharp peaks from 200 mV to as low as -200 mV. These smallest Au NPs show …

Evaluation Of Two-Phase Evaporation Pressure Drop Correlations For Low Refrigerant Mass Flux., Anna Fenko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to evaluate three currently popular two-phase pressure drop models for extremely low velocity refrigerant flow through smooth circular evaporators in household refrigeration systems. Experimental data was taken at mass fluxes under 70 kg/m²s for two refrigerants, R134A and R600A, internal diameters of aluminum evaporators ranging from 0.186 to 0.317 inches, U-bend internal radii ranging from 0.342 to 0.750 inches in horizontal and vertical orientations of evaporators. The geometry of the samples closely resembled a commonly used serpentine shape with multiple U-bends experiencing both, up- and down-flow of the refrigerant. Two empirical models, Müller-Steinhagen & …

Construction Of An Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (Icvd) Reactor And Deposition Of Polytetrafluoroethylene (Ptfe) Thin Films Using Perfluoro-1-Octanesulfonyl Fluoride As The Initiator, Edgar Kiprop Kosgey

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (iCVD) is a surface polymerization technique that is different from other traditional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques. iCVD is carried under a vacuum without the use of solvents, therefore eliminating contaminations. An initiator and a monomer are metered into a vacuum reactor chamber. Inside the reaction chamber is an array of resistively heated filaments and a cooled substrate stage. Monomer species adsorb on to the cooled substrate surface underneath the filament array. The thermal energy from the resistively heated filaments breaks the bonds in the initiator molecule, generating free radicals. These generated free radicals chemisorb to …

Mohat Tool To Illustrate Diode And Transistor Modes Of Operation Using Ltspice, Getu D. Engdaw

Electrical Engineering

This project develops a tool to identify the modes of operation of diodes and transistors in a circuit. The MoHAT tool receives schematics or circuit files generated from LTspice, and it determines the state of each diode and transistor. This tool illustrates diodes, BJT and MOS regions of operations using text or graphics accordingly. The tool also suggests necessary adjustments to switch from one mode of operation to another upon users request. Furthermore, the tool specifies if a transistor functions in amplification region. The MoHAT tool compares the nodal voltages of an element and determines the mode of operation.

Commencement Program 2015 December: College Of Architecture, Planning And Public Affairs; School Of Social Work; University College, The University Of Texas At Arlington

Commencement Programs, Photos, and Video

No abstract provided.