Digital Commons Network^™

Econometric Estimation Of Groundwater Depth Change For The High Plains Aquifer, Jonathan R. Sims

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This article presents a new method for estimating changes in depth to groundwater at a yearly, county level and incorporates these estimates as the dependent variable of econometric models for the High Plains aquifer. The High Plains (Ogallala) aquifer underlies eight states in the central United States and is the primary source of irrigation water for this large food producing region. The stock of groundwater is a finite, non-renewable resource with minimal recharge in most areas. Many fields of study, including hydrology and agricultural economics, are interested in depth to groundwater changes because they serve as a proxy for estimating …

Techno-Economic Implications Of Fed-Batch Enzymatic Hydrolysis, Ellen Emanuel

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As ethanol production continues to increase in the United States, cellulosic ethanol continues to gain traction as a viable option for meeting ethanol demands. In this work, a literature review of techno-economic analyses for cellulosic ethanol was conducted. It was found that pretreatment methods greatly affect the ethanol production costs. There is a lack of techno-economic data comparing a batch enzymatic hydrolysis to a fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis for a separate hydrolysis and fermentation production process. Consequently, a techno-economic analysis comparing cellulosic ethanol production using batch versus fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis was conducted. SuperPro Designer software (Intelligen, Scotch Plains, New Jersey), a …

The Impact Of Building Form On Energy Consumption In New School Models Of Abu Dhabi, Meriem Rahmani

Architectural Engineering Theses

The high rates of energy consumption by schools are mainly caused by inappropriate designs of architectural forms and limited access to free energy resources that can be provided by natural lighting and ventilation. Optimizing the architectural form with regards to its geometry, aspect ratio, spatial height to depth proportion, form direction, spacing between building masses can help to improve connection to the outdoor environment including daylight, air and outdoor greenery. The optimized form can help not only to save energy but also to create educational environments that are more lively and cheerful; and hence improve students’ performance, health and attitude. …

Contemporary Issues Of Open Data In Information Systems Research: Considerations And Recommendations, Georg J.P. Link, Kevin Lumbard, Kieran Conboy, Michael Feldman, Joseph Feller, Jordana George, Matt Germonprez, Sean Goggins, Debora Jeske, Gaye Kiely, Kristen Schuster, Matt Willis

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

Researchers, governments, and funding agencies are calling on research disciplines to embrace open data - data that is publicly accessible and usable beyond the original authors. The premise is that research efforts can draw and generate several benefits from open data, as such data might provide further insight, enabling the replication and extension of current knowledge in different contexts. These potential benefits, coupled with a global push towards open data policies, brings open data into the agenda of research disciplines – including Information Systems (IS). This paper responds to these developments as follows. We outline themes in the ongoing discussion …

Investigation On The Behavior Of Rigid Polyvinylchloride Pipes Subjected To Uniaxial Compression Loads, Alhamati Abdullah Ali Nasser, Ghazali Abdul Halim, Norzaie Jamalodin

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

The objective of this research was to investigate the capability of rigid Polyvinylchloride (PVC-U) pipes to sustain axial loads. The behavior of PVC-U pipes specimens subjected to short-term uniaxial compression loads were experimentally investigated. Results of the load-displacement tests on pipes of different wall thickness, diameter, and specimen heights were recorded. The experimental test results show that the PVC-U pipes are capable of supporting loads greater than the required design load (3.4 kN). Increasing the pipe specimen height decreases the pipe strength for supporting the axial loads. Euler buckling was observed in the pipe specimens with small diameter and long …

Time Effect Of Water Injection On The Mechanical Properties Of Coal And Its Application In Rockburst Prevention In Mining, Xiaofei Liu, Guang Xu, Chong Zhang, Biao Kong, Jifa Qian, Dong Zhu, Mingyao Wei

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Coal seam water injection is widely used to prevent rockbursts in coal mines, and the duration of water injection is an important parameter related to the effectiveness of rockburst prevention, making it of practical importance to optimize the effective water injection duration. This paper presents the test results of the mechanical properties and pore structure of samples with different soaking time, obtained from a working face where rockburst occurred. Soaking time changes the mechanical properties of samples, and this time effect differs with the coal size (from centimeter to nanometer size). Results of numerical simulation and on-site tests in the …

3d Printed Tcp-Based Scaffold Incorporating Vegf-Loaded Plga Microspheres For Craniofacial Tissue Engineering, Farahnaz Fahimipour, Morteza Rasoulianboroujeni, Erfan Dashtimoghadam, Kimia Khoshroo, Mohammadreza Tahriri, Doug Lobner, Lobat Tayebi

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Objective

Vascularization is a critical process during bone regeneration/repair and the lack of tissue vascularization is recognized as a major challenge in applying bone tissue engineeringmethods for cranial and maxillofacial surgeries. The aim of our study is to fabricate a vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-loaded gelatin/alginate/β-TCP composite scaffold by 3D printing method using a computer-assisted design (CAD) model.

Methods

The paste, composed of (VEGF-loaded PLGA)-containing gelatin/alginate/β-TCP in water, was loaded into standard Nordson cartridges and promptly employed for printing the scaffolds. Rheological characterization of various gelatin/alginate/β-TCP formulations led to an optimized paste as a printable bioink at room …

Fast On-Line Kernel Density Estimation For Active Object Localization, Anthony D. Rhodes, Max H. Quinn, Melanie Mitchell

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A major goal of computer vision is to enable computers to interpret visual situations—abstract concepts (e.g., “a person walking a dog,” “a crowd waiting for a bus,” “a picnic”) whose image instantiations are linked more by their common spatial and semantic structure than by low-level visual similarity. In this paper, we propose a novel method for prior learning and active object localization for this kind of knowledge-driven search in static images. In our system, prior situation knowledge is captured by a set of flexible, kernel-based density estimations— a situation model—that represent the expected spatial structure of the given situation. These …

On The Temporal Effects Of Mobile Blockers In Urban Millimeter-Wave Cellular Scenarios, Margarita Gapeyenko, Mikhail Gerasimenko, Andrey Samuylov, Dmitri Moltchanov, Sarabjot Singh, Mustafa Riza Akdeniz, Ehsan Aryafar, Nageen Himayat, Sergey Andreev, Yevgeni Koucheryavy

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) propagation is known to be severely affected by the blockage of the line-of-sight (LoS) path. In contrast to microwave systems, at shorter mmWave wavelengths such blockage can be caused by human bodies, where their mobility within environment makes wireless channel alternate between the blocked and non-blocked LoS states. Following the recent 3GPP requirements on modeling the dynamic blockage as well as the temporal consistency of the channel at mmWave frequencies, in this paper a new model for predicting the state of a user in the presence of mobile blockers for representative 3GPP scenarios is developed: urban micro cell …

The Difference Between English And Math High School Teachers' Attitudes And Perceptions Toward The Inclusion Of English Language Learner Students, Ashley Sibert Williamson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Within the last 10 years, the United States experienced an influx of non-English speaking students, which challenged teachers, administrators, and other educational stakeholders on how to successfully accommodate these English Language Learners (ELL). This causal-comparative study examined the attitudes and perceptions of secondary English and math teachers in relation to ELL inclusion. Specifically, the study presented the main question of whether there is a difference between English and math teachers’ attitudes and perceptions toward the inclusion of ELLs. Teacher attitudes have been found to play a role in determining student academic achievement; therefore, assessing teacher attitudes toward ELLs could be …

Student Engagement: An Assessment Of Motivation Processes During Late Elementary School, Christine A. Akagi

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Based in Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Effectance Theories, this correlational study of student engagement assessed the impacts of basic psychological need satisfaction upon engagement in the context of prior achievement during late elementary school. The purpose of the study is to offer another tool for educators to use as they continue personalizing interventions. Multiple regression analyses assessed the predictive value of prior achievement levels alongside present satisfaction levels of each basic psychological need – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – upon engagement. In post-hoc analyses, The Johnson-Neyman technique was also used for the purpose of determining regions of significance across the …

Chaotic Behavior In High-Gain Interleaved Dc-Dc Converters, Ahmad Alzahrani, Pourya Shamsi, Mehdi Ferdowsi, Cihan H. Dagli

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, chaotic behavior in high gain dc-dc converters with current mode control is explored. The dc-dc converters exhibit some chaotic behavior because they contain switches. Moreover, in power electronics (circuits with more passive elements), the dynamics become rich in nonlinearity and become difficult to capture with linear analytical models. Therefore, studying modeling approaches and analysis methods is required. Most of the high-gain dc-dc boost converters cannot be controlled with only voltage mode control due to the presence of right half plane zero that narrows down the stability region. Therefore, the need of current mode control is necessary to …

Energy-Efficient Fpga-Based Parallel Quasi-Stochastic Computing, Ramu Seva, Prashanthi Metku, Minsu Choi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The high performance of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) in image processing applications is justified by its flexible reconfigurability, its inherent parallel nature and the availability of a large amount of internal memories. Lately, the Stochastic Computing (SC) paradigm has been found to be significantly advantageous in certain application domains including image processing because of its lower hardware complexity and power consumption. However, its viability is deemed to be limited due to its serial bitstream processing and excessive run-time requirement for convergence. To address these issues, a novel approach is proposed in this work where an energy-efficient implementation of SC …

Using Competition Assays To Quantitatively Model Cooperative Binding By Transcription Factors And Other Ligands., Jacob Peacock, James B Jaynes

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: The affinities of DNA binding proteins for target sites can be used to model the regulation of gene expression. These proteins can bind to DNA cooperatively, strongly impacting their affinity and specificity. However, current methods for measuring cooperativity do not provide the means to accurately predict binding behavior over a wide range of concentrations.

METHODS: We use standard computational and mathematical methods, and develop novel methods as described in Results.

RESULTS: We explore some complexities of cooperative binding, and develop an improved method for relating in vitro measurements to in vivo function, based on ternary complex formation. We derive …

Teaching Note - Bridging The Gap Between The Classroom And Business: A View From Geology, Michael Penzo

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Kelt-20b: A Giant Planet With A Period Of P ~ 3.5 Days Transiting The V ~ 7.6 Early A Star Hd 185603, M. B. Lund, J. E. Rodriguez, G. Zhou, B. S. Gaudi, K. G. Stassun, M. C. Johnson, A. Bieryla, R. J. Oelkers, D. J. Stevens, K. A. Collins, K. Penev, S. N. Quinn, D. W. Latham, S. Villanueva Jr., J. D. Eastman, J. F. Kielkopf, T. E. Oberst, Eric L.N. Jensen, David H. Cohen, M. D. Joner, D. C. Stephens, H. Relles, G. Corfini, J. Gregorio, R. Zambelli, G. A. Esquerdo, M. L. Calkins, P. Berlind, D. R. Ciardi, C. Dressing, R. Patel, P. Gagnon, E. Gonzales, T. G. Beatty, R. J. Siverd, J. Labadie-Bartz, R. B. Kuhn, K. D. Colón, D. James, J. Pepper, B. J. Fulton, K. K. Mcleod, C. Stockdale, S. Calchi Novati, D. L. Depoy, A. Gould, J. L. Marshall, M. Trueblood, P. Trueblood, J. A. Johnson, J. Wright, N. Mccrady, R. A. Wittenmyer, S. A. Johnson, A. Sergi, M. Wilson, D. H. Sliski

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

We report the discovery of KELT-20b, a hot Jupiter transiting a early A star, HD 185603, with an orbital period of days. Archival and follow-up photometry, Gaia parallax, radial velocities, Doppler tomography, and AO imaging were used to confirm the planetary nature of KELT-20b and characterize the system. From global modeling we infer that KELT-20 is a rapidly rotating ( ) A2V star with an effective temperature of K, mass of , radius of , surface gravity of , and age of . The planetary companion has a radius of , a semimajor axis of au, and a linear ephemeris …

A Note On Time-Dependent Additive Functionals, Adrien Barrasso, Francesco Russo

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Essential Sets For Random Operators Constructed From An Arratia Flow, Andrey A. Dorogovtsev, Ia. A. Korenovska

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

One Dimensional Complex Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Operator, Yong Chen

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Resilience Of Honeybee Colonies Via Common Stomach: A Model Of Self-Regulation Of Foraging, Thomas Schmickl, Istvan Karsai

ETSU Faculty Works

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. We propose a new regulation mechanism based on the idea of the “common stomach” to explain several aspects of the resilience and homeostatic regulation of honeybee colonies. This mechanism exploits shared pools of substances (pollen, nectar, workers, brood) that modulate recruitment, abandonment and allocation patterns at the colony-level and enable bees to perform several survival strategies to cope with difficult circumstances: Lack of proteins leads to …

Out In The Field - Learning About Plant Diversity, Stephani Beyea, Brooke A. Whitworth

Publications

How do we help students understand the world they live in? How do we make the science we teach relevant and relatable to their everyday environment? One approach to making science come alive for students is to engage in place-based education opportunities. Place-based education engages students with their local culture, ecology, and landscapes (PEEC 2010). It encourages students to use the land and resources in their community to learn and to better understand the environment in which they live. Research indicates that place-based education can increase student achievement and help students develop a connection to their environment (PEEC 2010). It …

Highly Compressible Origami Bellows For Harsh Environments, Jared J. Butler

Theses and Dissertations

The use of origami-based bellows is of interest in fields where traditional metal bellows are incapable of meeting compression, mass, or flexibility constraints. Metal bellows are often used in space applications but frequently complicate spacecraft design. Origami-based bellows capable of meeting design constraints while adequately shielding sensitive spacecraft parts may be advantageous to space mechanism design. The design and testing of a highly compressible origami bellows for harsh environments is described. Several origami patterns were evaluated and the Kresling fold pattern was designed to meet constraints and selected for use in the bellows design. Origami bellows were prototyped in five …

Hybrid Extended Kalman Filtering And Noise Statistics Optimization For Produce Wash State Estimation, Vahid Azimi, Daniel Munther, Seyed Abolfazl Fakoorian, Thang Tien Nguyen, Daniel J. Simon

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Food-borne diseases associated with fresh produce consistently cause serious public health issues. Although sanitization measures are utilized to enhance the safety of fresh produce, strategies that neglect the dynamic nature of commercial wash processes are limited, creating the potential for pathogen cross-contamination and major disease outbreaks. In light of this risk, there is an urgent need for new control approaches during produce washing to reduce the probability of outbreaks. As an important step in this direction, a hybrid extended Kalman filter (HEKF) and particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based noise statistics optimization are designed for a produce wash system. The HEKF uses …

Design And Prototyping Of A Shape-Changing Rigid-Body Human Foot In Gait, Tanner N. Rolfe

Honors Theses

Traditional ankle-foot prostheses often replicate the physiological change in shape of the foot during gait via compliant mechanisms. In comparison, rigid-body feet tend to be simplistic and largely incapable of accurately representing the geometry of the human foot. Multi-segment rigid-body devices offer certain advantages over compliant mechanisms which may be desirable in the design of ankle-foot devices, including the ability to withstand greater loading, the ability to achieve more drastic shape-change, and the ability to be synthesized from their kinematics, allowing for realistic functionality without prior accounting of the complex internal kinetics of the foot. This work focuses on applying …

Design And Prototyping Of A Shape-Changing Rigid-Body Human Foot In Gait, Tanner N. Rolfe

Honors Theses

Traditional ankle-foot prostheses often replicate the physiological change in shape of the foot during gait via compliant mechanisms. In comparison, rigid-body feet tend to be simplistic and largely incapable of accurately representing the geometry of the human foot. Multi-segment rigid-body devices offer certain advantages over compliant mechanisms which may be desirable in the design of ankle-foot devices, including the ability to withstand greater loading, the ability to achieve more drastic shape-change, and the ability to be synthesized from their kinematics, allowing for realistic functionality without prior accounting of the complex internal kinetics of the foot. This work focuses on applying …

Funding Tennessee's Public Colleges And Universities, The Outcomes-Based Funding Formula, Tennessee. Comptroller Of The Treasury.

Office of Research and Education Accountability

No abstract provided.

Patterns Of Nutrient Export For A Typical Non-Point Source, Meadowbrook Farm, Madison County, Kentucky, James Scott Winter, Walter S. Borowski, Jonathan M. Malzone

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Excess nutrients are found in watersheds originating from active farmland often causing poor water quality and eutrophication in natural waters. Use of fertilizer and animal husbandry can contaminate both surface water and groundwater. Eastern Kentucky University’s Meadowbrook Farm raises crops and livestock and is typical of farms that contribute excess nutrient contaminants to watersheds as non-point sources. An instrumented weir is positioned within a key sub-watershed of the Farm that empties into Muddy Creek, a tributary of the Kentucky River. This drainage is the largest outlet from the Farm that is representative of the Farm’s collective activities.

We measured flow …

Private Life Safety Provision In Digital Age, Olga Anatolyevna Kuznetsova, Natalia Bondarenko

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Digital technology nowadays covers all the spheres of life of an individual and society’s activities. With this, it is not a secret that it can be used both for the benefit and to the detriment of the person. In digital age, private life is becoming most vulnerable to arbitrary interference. This article considers various violations of the rights to privacy, communication safety and inviolability of privacy security brought in by the digital revolution. The article concludes that the most important task in the sphere of private life safety is to find a balance of interests of the state, the society …

Unsupervised Topic Hypergraph Hashing For Efficient Mobile Image Retrieval, Lei Zhu, Jialie Shen, Liang Xie, Zhiyong Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hashing compresses high-dimensional features into compact binary codes. It is one of the promising techniques to support efficient mobile image retrieval, due to its low data transmission cost and fast retrieval response. However, most of existing hashing strategies simply rely on low-level features. Thus, they may generate hashing codes with limited discriminative capability. Moreover, many of them fail to exploit complex and high-order semantic correlations that inherently exist among images. Motivated by these observations, we propose a novel unsupervised hashing scheme, called topic hypergraph hashing (THH), to address the limitations. THH effectively mitigates the semantic shortage of hashing codes by …

Understanding Inactive Yet Available Assignees In Github, Jing Jiang, David Lo, Xinyu Ma, Fuli Feng, Li Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context In GitHub, an issue or a pull request can be assigned to a specific assignee who is responsible for working on this issue or pull request. Due to the principle of voluntary participation, available assignees may remain inactive in projects. If assignees ever participate in projects, they are active assignees; otherwise, they are inactive yet available assignees (inactive assignees for short). Objective Our objective in this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of inactive yet available assignees in GitHub. Method We collect 2,374,474 records of activities in 37 popular projects, and 797,756 records of activities in 687 projects …