Digital Commons Network^™

Development And Validation Of A New Blade Element Momentum Skewed-Wake Model Within Aerodyn, Andrew Ning, Greg Hayman, Rick Damiani, Jason Jonkman

Faculty Publications

Blade element momentum methods, though conceptually simple, are highly useful for analyzing wind turbines aerodynamics and are widely used in many design and analysis applications. A new version of AeroDyn is being developed to take advantage of new robust solution methodologies, conform to a new modularization framework for National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s FAST, utilize advanced skewed-wake analysis methods, fix limitations with previous implementations, and to enable modeling of highly flexible and nonstraight blades. This paper reviews blade element momentum theory and several of the options available for analyzing skewed inflow. AeroDyn implementation details are described for the benefit of users …

On Learning Time Delays Between The Spikes From Different Input Neurons In A Biophysical Model Of A Pyramidal Neuron, Achilleas Koutsou, Guido Bugmann, Chris Christodoulou

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Tsallis Entropy As A Biomarker For Detection Of Alzheimer's Disease, Ali H. Al-Nuaimi, Emmanuel Jammeh, Lingfen Sun, Emmanuel Ifeachor

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Individualized Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy: Next Generation Pacemaker Controls, Peter Jacob Hettwer

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Cardiac dyssynchrony (CD) causes some heart muscle regions to contract at different times, and current treatments do not help 30 – 50% of patients. In this thesis, multi-site pacing control schemes are created to quantitatively and automatically reduce the CD of ventricular wall accelerations by adjusting pacing times. Two and four left ventricular region models are investigated containing model variables that represent numerous muscle parameters. Optimization is performed using exhaustive search and genetic algorithm techniques, with particular attention paid to the latter with regard to development, parameter selection, and limitations. Relative to treatments firing all regions simultaneously, timing adjustment improves …

The Capillary-Centric Model Of Coupling-As-Thermodynamics, Andrew James David Taylor

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Models of ventricular-arterial coupling (VAC) have historically described the heart as a function of its energetic interaction with the arterial system. However, these models either represent the dynamic, adaptive cardiovascular system (CVS) in isolation or sacrifice cardiac mechanics to use simplified, time-averaged values across the cardiac cycle. In this thesis a facsimile CVS is constructed that characterizes ventricular-arterial interactions with intact cardiac mechanics as a function of whole-body thermo-fluid homeostatic regulation. Simulation results indicate proportional-integral (PI) control of heart rate and arterial resistance is conditionally sufficient to maintain body temperature during square-wave exercise, but further elements may be required to …

Power System Stability Enhancement Through Data Center Ancillary Services, Muhammad Ali

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The primary objective of a control system is stability and steady-state performance under varying dynamics, such as faults and disturbances. The stable power system should continue to function properly in case of faults and disturbances. Stability of the power systems find applications in various domains, such as power delivery through Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG), Doubly-Fed Induction Generator (DFIG), and data centers. The goal of this dissertation is to design a robust control for a power system. We propose a hybrid Fault-Ride-Through (FRT) strategy for DFIG and two new PMSG grid-interfaced models, named PMSG Boost and PMSG Rectifier-Inverter. We analyze …

Calcification Is Not The Achilles' Heel Of Cold-Water Corals In An Acidifying Ocean., Riccardo Rodolfo-Metalpa, Paolo Montagna, Stefano Aliani, Mireno Borghini, Simonepietro Canese, Jason M. Hall-Spencer, Andy Foggo, Marco Milazzo, Marco Taviani, Fanny Houlbrèque

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Ocean acidification is thought to be a major threat to coral reefs: laboratory evidence and CO2 seep research has shown adverse effects on many coral species, although a few are resilient. There are concerns that cold-water corals are even more vulnerable as they live in areas where aragonite saturation (Ωara ) is lower than in the tropics and is falling rapidly due to CO2 emissions. Here, we provide laboratory evidence that net (gross calcification minus dissolution) and gross calcification rates of three common cold-water corals, Caryophyllia smithii, Dendrophyllia cornigera, and Desmophyllum dianthus, are not affected by pCO2 levels expected for …

A Storm In A Tea-Cup? "Making A Difference' In Two Sure Start Children's Centres, Marie Lavelle

Plymouth Institute of Education

No abstract provided.

A Data Mining Approach For Identifying Pavement Distress Signatures, Megan Sue Bouret

Computer Science

This work introduces signature-based data mining of pavement distress data. The goal is to understand the factors that influence pavement distress. The presented approach maintains multiple types of flexible pavement distress scores throughout the analysis and considers them as signatures. The signatures are used to establish the relationship between distress score increases and overweight truck characteristics. Hierarchical clustering of pavement distress signatures provides insights into similarities among road segments. The use of signatures, rather than composite distress scores, is consistent with a data mining approach to the pavement distress problem. One set of experiments showed a relationship between the discovered …

Implementation And Evaluation Of Cma-Es Algorithm, Srikanth Reddy Gagganapalli

Computer Science

Over recent years, Evolutionary Algorithms have emerged as a practical approach to solve hard optimization problems in the fields of Science and Technology. The inherent advantage of EA over other types of numerical optimization methods lies in the fact that they require very little or no prior knowledge regarding differentiability or continuity of the objective function. The inspiration to learn evolutionary processes and emulate them on computer comes from varied directions, the most pertinent of which is the field of optimization. In most applications of EAs, computational complexity is a prohibiting factor. This computational complexity is due to number of …

Project Tracker And Organizer, Krishna Kanth Kambhampaty

Computer Science

A Project Tracking and Organizer is a software tool which is a simple, fast and an efficient way to assign modules of a project to employees and track the progress of a project. Using this software, project status can be tracked. Any number of module can be assigned to employees for each existing project using the Project Tracking and Organizer. In this software system, each schedule can be tracked from the start until the end of the project life cycle. The key functionalities of the software are, the developed software system is free and open source, module assignment of a …

A Map Reduce Approach Of K-Means++ Algorithm With Initial Equidistant Centers, Krittika Bhattacharyya

Computer Science

Data clustering has been received considerable attention in many applications, such as data mining, document retrieval, image segmentation and pattern classification. The enlarging volumes of information emerging by the progress of technology, makes clustering of very large scale of data a challenging task. In order to deal with the problem, many researchers try to design efficient parallel clustering algorithms. In this paper, we propose a parallel k-means++ clustering algorithm based on MapReduce, which is simple like traditional K-means, yet more powerful because the initial centroid selection process is not random. It follows a formula to plot initial centroids at equal …

Increasing Usability And Accessibility Of Gis Technology Through Extension Of Existing Software Tools, Elizabeth Joan Noel

Computer Science

As the popularity of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology increases and its use extends from specialized users to the general public, tools available to users must adapt to take these changes into account. Virtual globes, such as Google Earth, are simplified GIS tools which do not include any of the data analysis and visualization capabilities of traditional GIS. However, the use of these applications can be extended by shifting the GIS functionality out of the application and into KML, through the dynamic manipulation of KML objects, allowing for some of the functionality of GIS to be reintroduced. Because KML objects …

Domain Ontology Based Detection Approach To Identify Effect Types Of Security Requirements Upon Functional Requirements, Bilal Ibrahim Al-Ahmad

Computer Science

Requirements engineering is a subfield of software engineering that is concerned with analyzing software requirements specifications. An important process of requirement engineering is tracing requirements to investigate relationships between requirements and other software artifacts (i.e., source code, test cases, etc.). Requirements traceability is mostly manual because of difficulties automating the process. A specific mode of tracing is inter-requirements traceability, which focuses on tracing requirements with other requirements. Investigating inter-requirements traceability is very important because it has significant influence on many activities of software engineering such as requirements implementation, consistency checking, and requirements impact change management. Several studies used different approaches …

Review Mining: Hierarchy Generation For Online Reviews, Prateek Rajan

Computer Science

In the present world of ecommerce more and more products are purchased and sold online then via any other medium. With such massive drive in online shopping more and more information is being added every day on web regarding the products and how good or bad are they. From the perspective of seller (such as Amazon) this information is very vital as this insight could be very helpful in making various decisions regarding inventory management, product pricing and so on. But the problem that arises in this context is the sheer volume of the reviews being added. In this paper …

Multi-Variate Attribute Selection For Agricultural Data, Xing John Xu

Computer Science

Farmers always have been concerned about the quantity of crops (yield) as well as the quality of crops (sugar content of the sugar beets). The quality and quantity of crops are affected by various attributes, some are natural elements (rain, sunshine etc) and some are not (the amount of fertilizer, seed type etc). Some techniques have been developed to discover attributes that are important to different crops’ yield. But within those selected attributes, how can we tell one attribute is more important than the other? The proposed algorithm is aimed to utilize the advantages of multiple response attributes to select …

Training Set Selection To Improve Crop Classification, Eric John Christeson

Computer Science

In some classification problems, acquiring class label information is much more expensive than collecting attribute data. One such problem is crop classification from satellite imagery. While random sampling is one option, we demonstrate that a targeted training set selection can be beneficial, when the acquisition of class label information occurs in sets: In crop classification, the number of data points is given by the number of pixels in the imagery, while all data points within one field can be assumed to have the same class label. Each data point is constructed from multiple images throughout the growing season, and each …

Study Of Aerosols’ Characteristics And Dynamics Over The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia Using A Multisensor Approach Combined With Ground Observations, Ashraf Farahat, Hesham El-Askary, Abdulaziz Al-Shaibani

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

This study covers various aspects of the aerosol distribution and characteristics, namely, optical depth climatology, absorption characteristics, and their microphysical properties over four regions in Saudi Arabia using satellite and ground observations including MODIS/Terra and Aqua, OMI, MISR/Terra, AERONET, and CALIPSO for the period April 2003–January 2013. The study includes cities in the North Western, Western, Eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia and in the Rub al Khali desert or Empty Quarter. Satellite and ground observations showed that the dust season extends from April to August with prominent peaks yet with high anthropogenic contribution late summer and early fall. Analysis shows …

Studying Air Pollutants Origin And Associated Meteorological Parameters Over Seoul From 2000 To 2009, Sunmin Park, Hesham El-Askary, Ismail Sabbah, Hanbin Kwak, Anup K. Prasad, Woo-Kyun Lee, Menas Kafatos

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate the temporal characteristics of major air pollutants collected from 44 air quality stations over the city of Seoul, Korea, namely, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particular matter at 10 microns, and sulfur dioxide (SO2) between 2000 and 2009. The corresponding satellite datasets, namely, aerosol optical depth (AOD_sat), Ångström exponent, and fine mode fraction, collected from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) as well as the Aeronet ground aerosol optical depth (AOD_aeronet), have been analyzed. Pollutants’ seasonal effect has been inferred from the precipitation and temperature. The four pollutants under study show varying temporal characteristics with different …

Comparative Analysis Of Prostate Cancer Gene Regulatory Networks Via Hub Type Variation, Pegah Khosravi, Vahid H. Gazestani, Mohammad Akbarzadeh, Samira Mirkhalaf, Mehdi Sadeghi, Bahram Goliaei

Publications and Research

Background

Prostate cancer is one of the most widespread cancers in men and is fundamentally a genetic disease. Identifying regulators in cancer using novel systems biology approaches will potentially lead to new insight into this disease. It was sought to address this by inferring gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Moreover, dynamical analysis of GRNs can explain how regulators change among different conditions, such as cancer subtypes.

Methods

In our approach, independent gene regulatory networks from each prostate state were reconstructed using one of the current state-of-art reverse engineering approaches. Next, crucial genes involved in this cancer were highlighted by analyzing each …

"I Don't Understand What You're Saying!": Lessons From Three Esl Writing Tutorials, Eun-Young Julia Kim

Faculty Publications

This article presents three case studies that closely examine various types of inter-actions taking place in writing center tutorials involving newly arrived pre-ma-triculated ESL writers. By learning what strategies tutors commonly use and how successfully the ESL writers negotiate their goals for the visit and the form and meaning of their text through this sample, this study aims to help identify what characterizes successful tutorials and what unique challenges English language learners might face when interacting with tutors. Results from these case studies show that it is not how many corrections tutors make or suggest for the students’ papers, but …

Phase Transitions And In Situ Dynamics Of Crystal Grain Formation Of Alumina Nanotubes Templated By Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotubes, L. F. Lampert, A. Barnum, S. W. Smith, J. F. Conley, Jun Jiao

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Phase transitions of amorphous alumina (a-alumina) nanotubes grown by atomic layer deposition and templated by carbon nanotubes were investigated with thermal annealing, transmitted Kikuchi electron diffraction, electron-irradiation-induced crystallization, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The resulting, engineered alumina nanotube arrays demonstrate a large range of tunable phases that are vital for understanding how alumina nanotube arrays can be applied for uses within biotechnology, catalysis, and other academic and industrial uses.

Anisotropy Of The Reynolds Stress Tensor In The Wakes Of Wind Turbine Arrays In Cartesian Arrangements With Counter-Rotating Rotors, Nicholas Hamilton, Raúl Bayoán Cal

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A 4 × 3 wind turbine array in a Cartesian arrangement was constructed in a wind tunnel setting with four configurations based on the rotational sense of the rotor blades. The fourth row of devices is considered to be in the fully developed turbine canopy for a Cartesian arrangement. Measurements of the flow field were made with stereo particle-image velocimetry immediately upstream and downstream of the selected model turbines. Rotational sense of the turbine blades is evident in the mean spanwise velocity W and the Reynolds shear stress −vw. The flux of kinetic energy is shown to be of greater …

Thermodynamic Grain Size Stabilization Models: An Overview, Mostafa Saber, Carl C. Koch, Ronald O. Scattergood

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Grain boundaries in a nanocrystalline microstructure produce an increase in the excess free energy of the system. Grain growth is a consequence of the thermodynamic driving force reducing this excess. Thermodynamic stabilization is an approach based on eliminating the driving force by suitable alloy additions that can produce a metastable equilibrium state at the nanoscale grain size, as opposed to kinetic stabilization where the grain growth mobility is restricted by pinning and/or drag mechanisms. The present paper reviews and compares various models proposed for thermodynamic stabilization.

Estimation Of Transient Temperature Distribution During Quenching, Via A Parabolic Model, Diego E. Lozano, Gabriela Martinez-Solis, Rafael David Mercado-Solis, Rafael Colás, George E. Totten

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A material-independent model to estimate the transient temperature distribution in a test probe quenched by immersion is presented in this study. This model is based on the assumption that, under one-dimensional unsteady heat conduction, the radial temperature distribution at the end of an interval belongs to the equation of a parabola. The model was validated using AISI 304 stainless steel test probes (Φ8×40 mm and Φ12×60 mm) quenched from 850 to 900 °C in water and in water-based NaNO2 solutions at 25 °C and in canola oil at 50 °C. Additionally, square test probes (20×20×100 mm) were quenched from 550 …

Taming The Hurricane Of Acquisition Cost Growth – Or At Least Predicting It, Allen J. Deneve, Erin T. Ryan, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Christine M. Schubert Kabban

Faculty Publications

Cost growth is a persistent adversary to efficient budgeting in the Department of Defense. Despite myriad studies to uncover causes of this cost growth, few of the proposed remedies have made a meaningful impact. A key reason may be that DoD cost estimates are formulated using the highly unrealistic assumption that a program’s current baseline characteristics will not change in the future. Using a weather forecasting analogy, the authors demonstrate how a statistical approach may be used to account for these inevitable baseline changes and identify related cost growth trends. These trends are then used to reduce the error in …

Neural Function, Injury, And Stroke Subtype Predict Treatment Gains After Stroke, Erin Burke Quinlan, Lucy Dodakian, Jill See, Alison Mackenzie, Vu Le, Mike Wojnowicz, Babak Shahbaba, Steven C. Cramer

Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research

Objective

This study was undertaken to better understand the high variability in response seen when treating human subjects with restorative therapies poststroke. Preclinical studies suggest that neural function, neural injury, and clinical status each influence treatment gains; therefore, the current study hypothesized that a multivariate approach incorporating these 3 measures would have the greatest predictive value.

Methods

Patients 3 to 6 months poststroke underwent a battery of assessments before receiving 3 weeks of standardized upper extremity robotic therapy. Candidate predictors included measures of brain injury (including to gray and white matter), neural function (cortical function and cortical connectivity), and clinical …

Fair Use, Girl Talk, And Digital Sampling: An Empirical Study Of Music Sampling's Effect On The Market For Copyrighted Works, William M. Schuster Ii

Oklahoma Law Review

This Article presents an empirical study of digital sampling’s effect on the sales of copyrighted songs and how this effect should influence the fair use analysis. To conduct this research, a group of previously sampled songs was identified and sales information for these songs was collected. The over 350 songs sampled in musician Gregg Gillis’s (also known as Girl Talk’s) most recent album presents an ideal dataset because the album’s instantaneous popularity allows for its influence to be analyzed through a comparison of the sampled songs’ sales immediately before and after release. Collecting and comparing sales information for these songs …

Does Anyone Have “Actual Knowledge” Of What Effects The Cape Town Treaty Has Had On The Application Of Philko Aviation, Inc. V. Shacket?, Kaitlyn E. Schrick

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remote Sensing And Modeling Of Atmospheric Dust And Studying Its Impact On Environment, Weather, And Climate, Hesham El-Askary, Seon K. Park, Slobodan Nickovic, Mian Chin

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

An overview of the 2015 volume of Advances in Meteorology, which was co-edited by Chapman faculty member Dr. Hesham El-Askary.