Digital Commons Network^™

Production And Characterization Of Cut Resistant Acrylic/Copolyaramid Fibers Via Bicomponent Wet Spinning, Stephen Hipp

All Dissertations

A composite fiber system consisting of a sheath core bicomponent polymer fiber loaded with hard ceramic particles was developed and characterized for use in cut protective clothing. The core component was comprised of a copolyaramid in order to provide high base cut resistance. An acrylic-copolyaramid polymer blend was used for the sheath component to improve processability and provide potential benefits such as dyeability. Lastly, aluminum oxide particles were incorporated into the fiber core to deflect and deform the cutting edge, further improving cut resistance. A series of designed experiments was used to explore the effects of the wet spinning and …

Estimating The Effect Of Extended And Emergency Unemployment Benefits On The Long-Term Unemployed, James Jones

All Dissertations

Unemployment insurance is designed to help workers smooth consumption in the event of a negative employment shock. These benefits are traditionally funded and administrated by the individual states and territories of the United States. The depth and severity of the “Great Recession” that started in December of 2007 and ended in June of 2009 was such that, Congress was compelled on multiple occasions to extend those benefits. Legislation during this period extended the duration of unemployment benefits to the longest period in history, as unemployed individuals in many states could receive up to 99 weeks of unemployment compensation. The policy …

Configuration Management In Manufacturing And Assembly: Case Study And Enabler Development, Keith Phelan

All Dissertations

The overall goal of this research is to improve the product configuration change management process. The increase in the demand for highly customizable products has led to many manufacturers using mass customization to meet the constantly changing demands of a wide consumer base. However, effectively managing the configurations can be difficult, especially in large manufacturers or for complex products with a large number of possible configurations. This is largely due to a combination of the scope of the configuration management system and the difficulty in understanding how changes to one element of a configuration can propagate through the configuration system. …

Microrna-Mediated Plant Development And Response To Environmental Stress In Perennial Grasses, Shuangrong Yuan

All Dissertations

World population will pass nine billion by 2050, while the agricultural land area will not increase dramatically in the coming decades. To meet the ever-increasing food demand, genetically engineered crops have been rapidly adopted for crop productivity. MicroRNAs have become increasingly attractive as targets in crop genetic modification due to their regulatory role in fine-tuning many essential biological processes. My research explores the potentials of microRNA528 (miR528) and miR396 for use in genetic modifications of the important agronomic traits of plant development, abiotic stress response, and/or flowering time control in an economically and environmentally important perennial monocot species, creeping bentgrass …

Risk Analysis And Disaster Recovery: A Florida Lihtc Case Study, Valerie Hammett

All Dissertations

In spite of numerous programs and policies that encourage private investment in affordable housing, particularly after hurricane disaster, insufficient numbers of affordable units exist to meet demand. Some low-income households are displaced in the course of disaster recovery, and others face severe housing cost burdens as demand for affordable housing outstrips supply. Some suggest competitive uses for limited funds impede production. Others suggest that disaster and recovery policies tend to favor homeowners and economic recovery. Little attention has been given to the development decisions of affordable housing developers during disaster recovery. This study examines LIHTC development risk after the 2004 …

Understanding Group Cohesion Of Festival And Events Attendees Satifaction And Intention To Revisit, Younsuk Kong

All Dissertations

Festivals and events provide a venue for individuals to relax, to spend time with their family, to escape from the daily demands of modern life, to enjoy themselves and to socialize as a way to enhance their quality of life. In addition, many leaders have used festival and events for the economic development of their communities (Getz & Frisby, 1988). However, according to Petrick and Li (2006), this research has been limited to topics associated with marketing, management and economic impact. For example, Finkel, McGillivaray, McPherson, & Robinson (2013) pointed out that scholars have investigated the relationships between festival and …

High Temperature Synthesis And Characterization Of Reduced Polyoxometalate Salt-Inclusion Solids, Dino Sulejmanovic

All Dissertations

Herein, several new salt-inclusion solids (SISs) featuring electronically reduced Keggin polyoxometalate (POM) clusters were isolated for the first time using molten-salt high temperature (> 500 oC) synthetic method. These POM-based SISs are novel all-inorganic materials featuring an integrated lattice of ionic halide salt and covalent metal oxide clusters. Due to the weak interactions at the interface between these two chemically dissimilar lattices, these POM SISs are soluble in aqueous and polar solvents. While POM compounds are well-studied and are routinely synthesized in solution, the synthetic method presented in this dissertation yielded several POM solids with interesting structures and infrequently observed, …

Scalable Synthesis And Energy Applications Of Defect Engineered Nano Materials, Mehmet Karakaya

All Dissertations

Nanomaterials and nanotechnologies have attracted a great deal of attention in a few decades due to their novel physical properties such as, high aspect ratio, surface morphology, impurities, etc. which lead to unique chemical, optical and electronic properties. The awareness of importance of nanomaterials has motivated researchers to develop nanomaterial growth techniques to further control nanostructures properties such as, size, surface morphology, etc. that may alter their fundamental behavior. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are one of the most promising materials with their rigidity, strength, elasticity and electric conductivity for future applications. Despite their excellent properties explored by the abundant research works, …

Understanding How Synthetic Organic Chemistry Graduate Students Navigate Scifinder, Lindsey Whitfield Cain

All Dissertations

Students pursuing a Ph.D. degree are expected to contribute research to their field, for which the success depends, in part, on their ability to find, interpret, and use scholarly information from the primary literature. However, studies from the information sciences show that graduate students from a variety of fields, including the sciences, frequently struggle to comprehensively search their respective dissertation topics because of insufficient prior content knowledge and lack of guidance from their disciplinary community. This body of literature is consistent with the results of my previous research of chemistry graduate students’ laboratory decision-making processes. Specifically, that study showed their …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Constancy And Change In The Women’S Funding Network: International Horizons And Core Values, Eleanor Brilliant

The Foundation Review

This article is a case study of women’s advocacy funders and their network organization, the Women’s Funding Network (WFN). WFN developed in the context of alternative (targeted) private funding sources emerging in the 70s and 80s to support newly formed social action and identity groups, some of whom had been encouraged by federal programs before the Reagan era, but that in those years were also not receiving support from more traditional funders like the United Way and many foundations.

The author analyzes the evolution of the network and its member funds from 1985 to 2012 as they struggled for survival …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Reflections And Commentary On A Theory Of Philanthropy, Michelle Gagnon, Nathaniel Foote, Michael Quinn Patton, James Radner, Patricia Patrizi, John Bare, Kay Sherwood, Teresa Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Montana’S Campaign Contribution Limits Put To The Test In Lair V. Bullock, Connor Walker

Montana Law Review Online

Montana’s campaign contribution limits directly address the anti-corruption state interest. While the minimum standard for corruption applied in Eddleman was much broader, the facts of that case also meet the definition of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. Even if the contribution limits were originally conceived to prohibit a broader range of activity, they are still sufficiently tailored to pass muster under the narrower Citizens United standard. Montana’s long history of combatting corruption demonstrates that there is a compelling state interest.

Montana’s contribution limits are also closely drawn to that anticorruption interest. There is a freedom to affiliate that …

Paschen V. Paschen: When A Gift Is Not Just A Gift, Constance Van Kley

Montana Law Review Online

The guiding principle of child support is “to meet the needs of the child according to the financial ability of the parents.” In Paschen v. Paschen, the Montana Supreme Court reviewed a divorce proceeding that presented a novel child support question: Should gifts factor into determination of maintenance and child support payments? Undermining the guiding principle of child support, a five-justice panel unanimously held gifts should not be a factor.

Modeling And Control Of 5250 Lab-Volt 5 Dof Robot Manipulator, Wathik Isaa Mahdi, Wael Mohammed Hasan Hadi

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

This paper presents the modeling and control simulation for Lab-Volt 5250 five degree of freedom robot manipulator based on the standard Denavit- Hartenberg approach. The dynamic model of the robot derived using Euler- Lagrange equation which is the energy balance equation. This dynamic model has a very high nonlinearity that is represented by using MATLAB, m-file and simulation to run the dynamic model in open and close loop. In this research, the close loop simulation is done by using two types of control theory that applied to control each joint of the robot manipulator independently, the first one is PD …

Control System For Sluice Gates Flow In Irrigation Canals, Arif A., Shafaq Raad Abduljaleel

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Water has become the most important problem in relations between the countries of the Middle East in the recent years. It occupies an important place on the agenda of several international organizations. Water control and reduction loss of water discharge is a major challenge facing the design of new irrigation projects. A downstream control algorithm for demand operation of irrigation system is proposed in this paper through maintaining downstream end discharge of the canal at the target point by manipulating the upstream sluice gate in real time. The control of the water level and discharge for canal irrigation system has …

Design And Implementation Of Rehabilitation Robot For Human Arm Movements, Mohammed Y., Zeyad A. Karam

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Physical disabilities such as full or partial loss of function in the shoulder and elbow are a common impairment in the elderly and a secondary effect due to strokes, trauma, sports and injuries. Rehabilitation programs are the main method to promote functional recovery in these subjects. This work focuses on designing and implementing a 3 DoF's non-wearable, light weight rehabilitation robot for rehabilitee the human arm that can be used in hospitals or homes. This robot structure eliminates arm singularity problem of the end effecter with respect to the robot base by adding an offset link. The design includes an …

An Abc-Optimized Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles Algorithm For Navigation Of Multiple Mobile Robots, Ziyad T., Turki Y. Abdalla

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

In this paper, a new optimization method for the Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles (RVO) is proposed. It uses the Artificial Bee Colony Optimization (ABC) for navigation control of multiple mobile robots with kinematic constraints. RVO is used for collision avoidance between the robots, while ABC is used to choose the best path for the robot maneuver to avoid colliding with other robots and to get to its goal faster. This method is applied on 24 mobile robots facing each other. Simulation results have shown that this method outperformed the ordinary RVO when the path was arbitrarily chosen.

Polarization Division Multiplexing Coherent Optical Of Dm Transmission Systems, Ali Y., Falah Hasan Abdul-Baqi

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

High-capacity and long-haul transmission technologies are indispensable to develop cost-effective optical transport networks. Optical communication is rapidly advancing toward 1-Tera bit per second (Tb/s) and beyond transport. As the available bandwidth of Standard Single-Mode Fiber (SSMF) is limited, high Spectral Efficiency (SE) becomes an important Issue. Coherent Optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (CO-OFDM) has become one of the promising candidates due to its high SE and resilience to linear channel impairments such as Chromatic Dispersion (CD). In this paper, based on Optisystem 11.0 software simulation platform, the performance of a 1.6 Tb/s (16 x 100 Gb/s) PDM-CO-OFDM transmission system is investigated …

New Pseudo-Random Number Generator System Based On Jacobian Elliptic Maps And Standard Map, Luma Fayeq, Hilal Hadi Saleh, Ekhlas Abass Albhrany

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Chaotic systems have numerous properties, for example: mixing property, sensitivity to initial conditions parameters, structural complexity and deterministic dynamics. These properties were investment in the last decade for cryptographic applications and developments of pseudorandom number/bit generator. The paper propose new pseudorandom number (bits) generator (PRNG) based on the Jacobian elliptic chaotic maps and standard map. The principle of the method consists in generating binary sequence from elliptic chaotic maps of cn and sn types. These sequence positions is permuted using standard map. The performance of the generator is studied through conventional statistical methods and also using the NIST test suite. …

English To Arabic Example-Based Machine Translation System, Suhad M., Yasir R. Nasir

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

The Example Based Machine Translation (EBMT) system retrieves similar examples (pairs of source phrases, sentences, or texts and their translations) from a database of examples, adapting the examples to translate new input. The Example Base (EB) is an important component in an EBMT system. It handles the storage to support the translation process. Thus, an efficient EB must be capable of handling a massive Vol of examples at an adequately high speed. In this research, a new approach to reduce the redundancy problem that some EBMT systems suffer from is suggested by designing EB using B+ tree. The EB is …

Sliding Mode Control For Electro-Hydraulic Servo System, Shibly Ahmed, Shaymaa Mahmood Mahdi, Taghreed M. Mohammad Ridha, Mustafa Hussein Mishary

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

This paper deals with the problem of designing a robust controller for the electro-hydraulic position servo system (EHPSS). The sliding mode control design methodology is utilized here to design a robust controller with respect to system parameters uncertainty. Because the relative degree of the mechanical sub-system with respect to hydraulic force FL is two, the switching function is constructed in two stages in order to reduce the relative degree to one. As a result of the proposed controller, the switching function reaches the zero level in a finite time, after that the state tracks the reference value asymptotically. The simulations …

A Comparative Study On Security Features In Manets Routing Protocols, Israa Tahseen

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of multi-hop wireless mobile nodes that communicate with each other without centralized control or established infrastructure. MANETs has a wide range of applications, ranging from mobile phone application to military applications. As the application of MANETs increases, the attacks on MANETs also increase. Due to mobility of nodes, frequent link breakage carry out, and it's widely use, MANET’s routing is considered as a challenging job. A vast range of research is being conducted to keep routing in MANETs robust and secure. One of the major research areas is routing privacy. This paper …

Moving On? Dispersal Policy, Onward Migration And Integration Of Refugees In The Uk, Emma Stewart, Marnie Shaffer

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Since 2000, the UK has operated compulsory dispersal, a policy designed to ‘spread the burden’ of housing asylum seekers who require accommodation across the UK and to discourage long-term settlement in London and the South East. To enhance understanding of refugee integration in the UK, this research focuses on the onward migration decisions of those who were dispersed and later granted refugee or humanitarian protection status. To date, much of the dispersal literature has critiqued the policy and focused on the negative outcomes for individuals removed from their networks. This project fills a knowledge gap surrounding the onward migration decisions …

Role Of Recent And Remote Context Exposures On Incubation Of Fear Memories, Peter Zambetti

Psychology

Studying learning and memory through the methods of Pavlovian fear conditioning has been a topic of behavioral neuroscience research for decades. Anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder can be modeled in rodents through fear conditioning. This study took on a different approach to study the learning and recall of a fear memory by using a within subjects group. This group was tested at both a recent and remote interval. The recent timepoint was three days after conditioning and the remote timepoint was thirty-one days after conditioning. The timepoints are used to observe the effect the passage of time has …

Prophetic Conflict And Yahwistic Tradition : A Synthetic Study Of True And False Prophecy (Jeremiah 26-29), M. Sashi Jamir

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Chicago School Trap In Trademark: The Co-Evolution Of Corporate, Antitrust, And Trademark Law, Deven R. Desai

Cardozo Law Review

The central claim of this Article is that, as a descriptive matter, trademark legislation and court interpretation is a close normative match with the Chicago School approach of scholars such as Robert Bork and Richard Posner. The organizing intellectual structure of modern trademark law, as developed in the law, has been freedom of action for the owner of the mark, not minimizing search costs as repeatedly stated in academic writing. This Article thus reveals that modern trademark law is a subset of the Chicago School's approach to the firm, deference to management, and competition. That view is not interested in …

Integrating Freight Into Livable Communities, Kristine M. Williams, Alexandria Carroll

TREC Final Reports

Where livability is a goal of the planning process, freight runs the risk of not being considered except as an afterthought or as something to be excluded. Yet, freight is an integral part of local economic development. Because economic prosperity is a key characteristic of livable communities, freight must be incorporated into the planning process. This study explores the relationship between freight and livability through a comprehensive literature review and case study research. The final report includes a menu of strategies and case study perspectives that highlight the importance of transportation and land use integration, interagency coordination, and context-sensitivity in …