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2014

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Articles 6721 - 6750 of 7238

Full-Text Articles in Engineering

A Probabilistic Technique For Open Set Recognition Using Support Vector Machines, Matthew Scherreik Jan 2014

A Probabilistic Technique For Open Set Recognition Using Support Vector Machines, Matthew Scherreik

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Classification algorithms trained using finite sets of target and confuser data are limited by the training set. These algorithms are trained under closed set assumptions and do not account for the infinite universe of confusers found in practice. In contrast, classification algorithms developed under open set assumptions label inputs not present in the training data as unknown instead of assigning the most likely class. We present an approach to open set recognition, the probabilistic open set SVM, that utilizes class posterior estimates to determine probability thresholds for classification. This is accomplished by first training an SVM in a 1-vs-all configuration …

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Hierarchical Modulation Detection Of Underwater Acoustic Communication Signals Through Maximum Likelihood Combining, Josh Sanderson Jan 2014

Hierarchical Modulation Detection Of Underwater Acoustic Communication Signals Through Maximum Likelihood Combining, Josh Sanderson

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Modulation detection is important to many communication applications. Much research has been done in this area for radio frequency (RF) signals, but until recently little has carried over to the underwater communication world. Traditional methods include the use of fourth order cumulants or second order cyclostationary features to determine the modulation scheme being used. Many of these methods fail due to the complex and varying nature of the underwater channel. This thesis proposes a new form of hierarchy modulation detection for underwater acoustic communication signals using maximum likelihood combining. The proposed method for hierarchical modulation detection for this research is …

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Mining And Understanding Regret Tweets, Lu Zhou Jan 2014

Mining And Understanding Regret Tweets, Lu Zhou

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Inappropriate tweets may cause severe damages on the authors' reputation or privacy. However, many users do not realize until publishing them after a while. Once published, such tweets have lasting effects that may not be completely eliminated by simple deletion, because other users may have read them or third-party tweet analysis platforms have cached them. In this paper, we study the problem of identifying regret tweets for normal individual users, with the ultimate goal to reduce the occurrences of regret tweets. We develop a machine learning approach to extract a large collection of regret tweets from noisy deleted tweets. We …

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Java Implementation Of Grounded Circumscription For Owl, Ali Akhavan Karbasi Jan 2014

Java Implementation Of Grounded Circumscription For Owl, Ali Akhavan Karbasi

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The semantic web is a new development in the World Wide Web (WWW) supporting machine-readable and machine-understandable data in order to add the "understanding" aspect to current capabilities. This technology involves the use of semantic reasoners, which are software that can infer logical consequences from a set of facts or axioms. Inference can be done in different ways, e.g. based on what is called the open world assumption in which what is not known to be true is simply unknown, and its closed world assumption opposite, which considers what is not known to be true as false. Each of these …

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Amyna: A Security Generator And Performance Estimator Framework Against Memory-Based Attacks, Anna Trikalinou Jan 2014

Amyna: A Security Generator And Performance Estimator Framework Against Memory-Based Attacks, Anna Trikalinou

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

As we become more and more dependent on computer networks, using them for everything from banking and investing to shopping and communicating, computer security has emerged to be an increasingly important concern, due to undesirable cyber-security attacks. Thus, in response to this issue many efforts have been made towards accurate and robust computer security protection; however, the general problem is very challenging, diverse and ever-changing and remains still open. In this PhD dissertation we offer protection on one of these cyber-security attacks, the memory-based attacks, caused by one of the most critical software errors according to the MITRE ranking. When …

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A Context-Driven Subgraph Model For Literature-Based Discovery, Delroy Huborn Cameron Jan 2014

A Context-Driven Subgraph Model For Literature-Based Discovery, Delroy Huborn Cameron

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Literature-Based Discovery (LBD) refers to the process of uncovering hidden connections that are implicit in scientific literature. Numerous hypotheses have been generated from scientific literature using the LBD paradigm, which influenced innovations in diagnosis, treatment, preventions and overall public health. However, much of the existing research on discovering hidden connections among concepts have used distributional statistics and graph-theoretic measures to capture implicit associations. Such metrics do not explicitly capture the semantics of hidden connections. Rather, they only allude to the existence of meaningful underlying associations. To gain in-depth insights into the meaning of hidden (and other) connections, complementary methods have …

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3-D Scene Reconstruction From Line Correspondences Between Multiple Views, Michael Linger Jan 2014

3-D Scene Reconstruction From Line Correspondences Between Multiple Views, Michael Linger

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Three-dimensional scene reconstruction from 2-D images has many applications, such as surveillance, mission planning, autonomous navigation systems, cartography, and target recognition. Of specific interest to this research is the reconstruction of urban scenes containing man-made structures, such as roads and buildings, to support the burgeoning surveillance industry. Using 3-D maps to augment existing mission planning cartography products (DTED/SRTM, CADRG, CIB), mission and event planners will be able to compute strategic line-of-sight coverage for threat avoidance or threat prosecution. Forensic video analysts can use these models to recreate crime scenes, while law enforcement can build flight plans to minimize occlusions from …

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Computational Investigation Of Rotary Engine Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition Feasibility, Michael Irvin Resor Jan 2014

Computational Investigation Of Rotary Engine Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition Feasibility, Michael Irvin Resor

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been investigating the heavy fuel conversion of small scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). One particular platform is the Army Shadow 200, powered by a UEL Wankel rotary engine. The rotary engine historically is a proven multi-fuel capable engine when operating on spark ignition however, little research into advanced more efficient compression concepts have been investigated. A computational fluid dynamics model has been created to investigate the feasibility of a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) rotary engine. This research evaluates the effects, rotor radius to crankshaft eccentricity ratio, known as K factor, equivalence ratio, …

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A Multi-Modal Continuous-Systems Model Of A Novel High-Q Disk Resonator In A Viscous Liquid, Mohamad S. Sotoudegan, Stephen M. Heinrich, Fabien Josse, Isabelle Dufour, Oliver Brand Jan 2014

A Multi-Modal Continuous-Systems Model Of A Novel High-Q Disk Resonator In A Viscous Liquid, Mohamad S. Sotoudegan, Stephen M. Heinrich, Fabien Josse, Isabelle Dufour, Oliver Brand

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

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Design And Development Of An Integrated Web-Based System For Tropical Rainfall Monitoring, Edgar Marko Trono, Maria Leonora Guico, Rollyn T. Labuguen, Andrei Navarro, Nathaniel Joseph C. Libatique, Gregory L. Tangonan Jan 2014

Design And Development Of An Integrated Web-Based System For Tropical Rainfall Monitoring, Edgar Marko Trono, Maria Leonora Guico, Rollyn T. Labuguen, Andrei Navarro, Nathaniel Joseph C. Libatique, Gregory L. Tangonan

Electronics, Computer, and Communications Engineering Faculty Publications

This study is about the design and development of an integrated web-based system for tropical rainfall monitoring. The system gathers data using a network of low-cost, Android-based acoustic rainfall sensors, a nationwide infrastructure of 5 GHz wireless broadband links, and remote weather stations. The low-cost Android-based acoustic rainfall sensors are deployed at high densities over a local area and the 5 GHz wireless broadband sensors gather rainfall information on a nationwide scale. The sensor network provides information about spatial-variations that are characteristics of tropical rain rates, and complement data from the scarcely deployed remote weather stations. Gathered data is then …

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Impedance Control And Internal Model Formation When Reaching In A Randomly Varying Dynamical Environment, C. D. Takahashi, Robert A. Scheidt, D. J. Reikensmeyer Jan 2014

Impedance Control And Internal Model Formation When Reaching In A Randomly Varying Dynamical Environment, C. D. Takahashi, Robert A. Scheidt, D. J. Reikensmeyer

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We investigated the effects of trial-to-trial, random variation in environmental forces on the motor adaptation of human subjects during reaching. Novel sequences of dynamic environments were applied to subjects' hands by a robot. Subjects reached first in a “mean field” having a constant gain relating force and velocity, then in a “noise field,” having a gain that varied randomly between reaches according to a normal distribution with a mean identical to that of the mean field. The unpredictable nature of the noise field did not degrade adaptation as quantified by final kinematic error and rate of adaptation. To achieve this …

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Bone Material Properties In Osteogenesis Imperfecta: A Matter Of Quantity Over Quality, Carolyne Albert, John Jameson, Gerald F. Harris, Peter Smith Jan 2014

Bone Material Properties In Osteogenesis Imperfecta: A Matter Of Quantity Over Quality, Carolyne Albert, John Jameson, Gerald F. Harris, Peter Smith

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

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Design Considerations For A Rotating Retractable Stadium Roof, Charles S. Jenkins Jan 2014

Design Considerations For A Rotating Retractable Stadium Roof, Charles S. Jenkins

Honors Theses

This thesis presents a novel type of retractable roof, adapting the pivot-based retraction system used in Miller Park to a stadium without a circular geometry. Existing stadiums with retractable roofs are reviewed, and lessons learned are used to present theoretical structural engineering design for a roof truss and recommendations for carriers. The presented concept likely requires light-weight structural systems and closely-spaced roof trusses to minimize loads on roof carriers. Actual mechanical designs of the roof carriers are quite complex as they must be able to roll in two directions and pivot about a third. The design herein is incomplete for …

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Performance And Stability For Room Temperature Ionic Liquid Membranes For The Dehumidification Of Methane, Dora Frances Sullivan-González Jan 2014

Performance And Stability For Room Temperature Ionic Liquid Membranes For The Dehumidification Of Methane, Dora Frances Sullivan-González

Honors Theses

The biogas production from organic waste—animal, sewage, landfill material— could be a valuable renewable fuel. Before this biogas—predominately bio-methane— can be converted to fuel, it must be dehumidified. Typically membrane-based gas dehumidification uses hydrophilic polymer membrane materials, such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and cellulose acetate (CA). The main problems with polymer dehumidification membranes are methane loss and the susceptibility of polymer materials to plasticization by H2O. Room temperature ionic liquid membranes (RTIL- membranes), according to recent literature, are not plasticized by water and have large water/CH4 selectivities. We built on the initial literature RTIL-dehumidification data by looking at a series of …

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Fault-Tolerant Trajectory Tracking Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Immunity-Based Model Reference Adaptive Control, Brenton K. Wilburn Jan 2014

Fault-Tolerant Trajectory Tracking Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Immunity-Based Model Reference Adaptive Control, Brenton K. Wilburn

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation presents the design, development, and simulation testing of an adaptive trajectory tracking algorithm capable of compensating for various aircraft subsystem failures and upset conditions. A comprehensive adaptive control framework, here within referred to as the immune model reference adaptive control (IMRAC) algorithm, is developed by synergistically merging core concepts from the biologically- inspired artificial immune system (AIS) paradigm with more traditional optimal and adaptive control techniques. In particular, a model reference adaptive control (MRAC) algorithm is enhanced with the detection and learning capabilities of a novel, artificial neural network augmented AIS scheme. With the given modifications, the MRAC …

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Modeling Of Pollutant Transport In The Nile Delta, Egypt, Mohamed Khaled Elsayed Mostafa Jan 2014

Modeling Of Pollutant Transport In The Nile Delta, Egypt, Mohamed Khaled Elsayed Mostafa

All ETDs from UAB

Poor water quality is one of the biggest problems faced by most countries and especially by developing countries such as Egypt. The mismanagement of potable water resources constitutes one of the main reasons for the depletion of water. This research was carried out in the Nile River delta, a region in which toxic dumping and water quality degradation exist. The Nile delta receives pollution loads from industrial, agricultural, and domestic activities located along its path leading to the spread of water-related diseases such as hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, and kidney failure [Safe Drinking Water Foundation, 2009]. The main objective of this …

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Quantum Computation Approach To Information Theoretic Modeling And Analysis Of Systems, Luai Najim Jan 2014

Quantum Computation Approach To Information Theoretic Modeling And Analysis Of Systems, Luai Najim

All ETDs from UAB

The modeling of systems has been addressed in the physical sciences from the perspective of Energy and matter. The 3rd original idea of Communication as a means of modeling systems has been established and applied. In this study, we apply the 3rd original idea of communication to systems on a quantum level. By marrying Shannon's noisy communication channel to Feynman QED and Quantum Computing, we realize a visual model for the representation of the entropy of a noisy communication channel on a quantum scale. We also use that visual representation concept to define a geometric view into the superposition of …

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Control Design And Performance Analysis For Autonomous Formation Flight Experiments, Caleb M. Rice Jan 2014

Control Design And Performance Analysis For Autonomous Formation Flight Experiments, Caleb M. Rice

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Autonomous Formation Flight is a key approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and managing traffic in future high density airspace. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) have made it possible for the physical demonstration and validation of autonomous formation flight concepts inexpensively and eliminates the flight risk to human pilots. This thesis discusses the design, implementation, and flight testing of three different formation flight control methods, Proportional Integral and Derivative (PID); Fuzzy Logic (FL); and NonLinear Dynamic Inversion (NLDI), and their respective performance behavior. Experimental results show achievable autonomous formation flight and performance quality with a pair of low-cost unmanned research fixed …

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Utilization Of Dual Energy Computed Tomography Based Metal Artifact Reduction To Improve Radiation Treatment Planning In Patients With Implanted High-Z Materials, Evan Thomas Jan 2014

Utilization Of Dual Energy Computed Tomography Based Metal Artifact Reduction To Improve Radiation Treatment Planning In Patients With Implanted High-Z Materials, Evan Thomas

All ETDs from UAB

High quality computed tomography (CT) scans are integral to the successful cancer radiation therapy treatment plan. Metal streak artifact in the CT image originates when a high density medical implant (dental, orthopedic, etc.) disproportionally attenuates the imaging beam and corrupts the imaging data. This impairs the physician's task of identifying important boundaries between tumor and healthy issue. The ability of treatment planning software to accurately compute vital radiation dosimetry metrics is also compromised. Many methods have been explored to mitigate the complications of streak artifact; however, none have been found effective and efficient for routine clinical use. This work explores …

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Corrosion Prevention And Control Training In An Immersive Virtual Learning Environment, Rustin Deane Webster Jan 2014

Corrosion Prevention And Control Training In An Immersive Virtual Learning Environment, Rustin Deane Webster

All ETDs from UAB

The majority of military education and training has not veered far from the days of chalk and talk instruction. Often with technological breakthroughs comes the proposal of the next revolution in multimedia instruction. Motion pictures to radios to educational television programs have all seemed to come and gone. The next wave of multimedia learning may involve more than a PowerPoint® presentation and lecture. Researchers continue to propose that Virtual Reality (VR) will find its true application and/or market in education and training. The objective of the project was to develop and provide a low-cost, scalable, and portable VR system containing …

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Drag Coefficients For Highway Variable Message Sign Structures, Joseph Phillips Jan 2014

Drag Coefficients For Highway Variable Message Sign Structures, Joseph Phillips

All ETDs from UAB

Variable Message Signs (VMS) are becoming an integral part of transportation infrastructure on US interstates and highways. VMS structures are vital in ensuring the safety of motorists by relaying messages concerning potential road hazards such as fog, traffic congestion, highway construction, and lane closures. These structures are larger and heavier than typical flat panel signs, and thus behave differently when subjected to wind loads. The design of VMS structures is specified in the 2013 edition of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals. The AASHTO …

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Long Life Electrochemical Diodes For Continuous Electrowetting, Mehdi Khodayari, Ben Hahne, Nathan B. Crane Jan 2014

Long Life Electrochemical Diodes For Continuous Electrowetting, Mehdi Khodayari, Ben Hahne, Nathan B. Crane

Faculty Publications

The rate of electrochemical reactions in some systems varies with the polarity of the overpotential on the working electrode, introducing diode-like behavior at the electrode/electrolyte interface. However, with repeated bipolar cycling, the electrochemical current damages the electrodes. We have connected electrochemical diodes in series with opposing polarities to reduce the diode current while charging a capacitive circuit. We have previously used this capacitive circuit arrangement to actuate aqueous droplets continuously using the electrowetting (EW) effect. In this study, the performance of electrochemical diodes under repeated voltage cycles is investigated. Aluminum and titanium electrodes in contact with three electrolyte solutions (0.1 …

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Chloramination And Corrosion: Case Studies, Utility Experience, And Statistical Comparisons With Chlorination, Jason Heberling Jan 2014

Chloramination And Corrosion: Case Studies, Utility Experience, And Statistical Comparisons With Chlorination, Jason Heberling

All ETDs from UAB

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began implementing the Stage 2 Disinfectant By-products (DBP) Rule (Stage 2) in 2012. The purpose of this regulation is to protect water utility customers from potentially harmful DBP's, most importantly, total trihalomethanes (TTHM) and haloacetic acids (HAA). DBP's have been directly linked to health problems, especially bladder cancer. Regulated DBP's are formed by the chemical reaction of chlorine and naturally occurring organic matter. Chloramines do not produce TTHM's and HAA's and water utilities have used chloramines in place of chlorine in an attempt to meet Stage 2 rules. However, a possible problem of …

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Construction Of 3d Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Emergency Scenarios For First Responder Pre-Nursing Training On Stereoscopic Display Systems, Alanzo Deon Granville Jan 2014

Construction Of 3d Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Emergency Scenarios For First Responder Pre-Nursing Training On Stereoscopic Display Systems, Alanzo Deon Granville

All ETDs from UAB

In today's society there is a need to have well prepared medical staff, especially in cases of cardiac arrest, and nurses are one of the first lines of defenses against cardiac arrest. They play a crucial role as first responders to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to patients in need of resuscitation, but CPR history has demonstrated CPR as a difficult process to learn for both medical professionals and laypersons. There are consistent recurring changes in guidelines to improve CPR practice which may promote changes within CPR knowledge, and the administration of CPR may also differ in complexity depending on the …

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Development Of A Concept Exploration Based Teaching Methodology For Undergraduate Chemistry Education, Nicole D. Gray Jan 2014

Development Of A Concept Exploration Based Teaching Methodology For Undergraduate Chemistry Education, Nicole D. Gray

All ETDs from UAB

Science in general has traditionally been noted as a difficult subject because of its specialized language, mathematical and abstract concepts, and the amount of content to be learned in a semester. In particular, students are believed to base their attitudes towards science-related disciplines on their perceived abilities in understanding or succeeding in a course. Other factors may also contribute to this lack of interest, such as students' metacognitive skills. Concept mapping and computer-aided tools may be used to assist students in building hierarchical knowledge bases that allow them to visually represent connections between concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this study …

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Mitigating Fatigue Of Cantilevered Overhead Sign Structures Due To Natural And Truck-Induced Wind Gusts, Mohamed S. Gallow Jan 2014

Mitigating Fatigue Of Cantilevered Overhead Sign Structures Due To Natural And Truck-Induced Wind Gusts, Mohamed S. Gallow

All ETDs from UAB

Cantilevered overhead sign structures (COSS) are widely used across highways in the U.S. Several cases of failures have been reported for such structures due to fatigue wind loads. The structure’s dynamic characteristics such as natural frequency and critical damping are responsible for its behavior to these loads. When the frequency of wind gusts load matches the fundamental frequency of the OSS, resonance occurs, which causes excessive vibrations. Consequently, fatigue stresses increase and may exceed the fatigue critical limit, resulting in failure. Vibrations and fatigue stresses amplitudes are dependent on the structure’s natural frequency. The objective of this study is investigating …

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Topographical Optimization Of Structures For Use In Musical Instruments And Other Applications, William Brandon Kirkland Jan 2014

Topographical Optimization Of Structures For Use In Musical Instruments And Other Applications, William Brandon Kirkland

All ETDs from UAB

Mallet percussion instruments such as the xylophone, marimba, and vibraphone have been produced and tuned since their inception by arduously grinding the keys to achieve harmonic ratios between their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd transverse modes. In consideration of this, it would be preferable to have defined mathematical models such that the keys of these instruments can be produced quickly and reliably. Additionally, physical modeling of these keys or beams provides a useful application of non-uniform beam vibrations as studied by Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories. This thesis work presents a literature review of previous studies regarding mallet percussion instrument design …

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Bridge Rail Design Procedure, Emad Badiee Jan 2014

Bridge Rail Design Procedure, Emad Badiee

All ETDs from UAB

The AASHTO Bridge Specifications recommend a yield line theory analysis to determine the structural capacity of concrete bridge railing based on static strength of concrete. However, this analysis technique has been shown to significantly underestimate the capacity of concrete bridge rails to withstand high speed truck impacts. Traditionally this shortcoming has been mitigated by artificial reductions in bridge rail design loads implemented into the design specifications. Fear of litigation associated with failure of a bridge rail to contain and redirect an errant vehicle has made continuing this policy unacceptable for most state highway agencies. On the other hand, existing barrier …

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Advancement Of The In-Situ Polymerization Process For Glass Fiber/Nylon-6 Laminates With Nanographite Platelets, Peter William Barfknecht Jan 2014

Advancement Of The In-Situ Polymerization Process For Glass Fiber/Nylon-6 Laminates With Nanographite Platelets, Peter William Barfknecht

All ETDs from UAB

The in-situ polymerization process of anionic polyamide-6 (APA-6) presents the opportunity for a new class of composite materials with excellent performance and wide applicability in the automotive, energy, transportation, and aerospace industries. Despite the inherent advantages of the process, industrial adoption is virtually nonexistent. The following work advances the APA-6 process in three distinct ways. First, the applicability of graphite-based nanoparticles to improve the processability and final performance of the material was evaluated. Nanographite platelets (NGPs) were selectively incorporated into a woven glass fiber/APA-6 laminate via a spraying technique. The polymerization kinetics were unaffected by the presence of NGPs. Mechanical …

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A Low-Power Multichannel Telemetry System For High-Speed Wireless Neural Recordings, Yang-Guo Li Jan 2014

A Low-Power Multichannel Telemetry System For High-Speed Wireless Neural Recordings, Yang-Guo Li

All ETDs from UAB

The advances in microelectronics and wireless communication are going to change our lifestyles and benefit our healthcare system in the foreseeable future. New conception named "Ubiquitous Healthcare" has been proposed. It envisions a continuous, real-time, remote monitoring on the health conditions of people through the wireless communication network. Traditional biosignal monitoring devices need wire-connections for the recording, which may cause skin rupture and body infection. The physical connections also limited the number of the integrated recording channels. A low-power implantable multichannel telemetry system which can be implanted in the body and transmit recordings wirelessly can solve the problem of the …

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