Engineering Commons^™

Automatic Emotion Identification From Text, Wenbo Wang

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

People's emotions can be gleaned from their text using machine learning techniques to build models that exploit large self-labeled emotion data from social media. Further, the self-labeled emotion data can be effectively adapted to train emotion classifiers in different target domains where training data are sparse.

Emotions are both prevalent in and essential to most aspects of our lives. They influence our decision-making, affect our social relationships and shape our daily behavior. With the rapid growth of emotion-rich textual content, such as microblog posts, blog posts, and forum discussions, there is a growing need to develop algorithms and techniques for …

Ultrafine Particle Generation And Measurement, Qiaoling Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Ultrafine particles (UFPs) with diameters smaller than 100 nm are omnipresent in ambient air. They are important sources for fine particles produced through the agglomeration and/or vapor condensation. With their unique properties, UFPs have also been manufactured for industrial applications. But, from the toxicological and health perspective, ultrafine particles with high surface-to-volume ratios often have high bio-availability and toxicity. Many recent epidemiologic studies have evidence UFPs are highly relevant to human health and disease. In order to better investigate UFPs, better instrumentation and measurement techniques for UFPs are thus in need. The overall objective of this dissertation is to advance …

Regulation Of Motoneuron Firing Properties: Intrinsic And Circuit-Based Mechanisms, Adam S. Deardorff

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Body and limb movements are controlled by regulating the activity of motor pools and their constituent motoneurons. An extensive complement of tightly regulated ion channels and second messenger systems determine active motoneuron spiking behavior, while segmental propriospinal circuits ensure the faithful execution of motor commands by providing real time sensory feedback to motoneurons and other somatosensory centers. However, current mechanistic understanding is incomplete for critical factor regulating motoneuron firing properties. Fundamental gaps in knowledge exist regarding (a) the spatial distribution and organization of specific ion channels in motoneurons, (b) the contribution of specific channels to motoneuron intrinsic properties, (c) the …

Design Of A 10-Bit 1.2 Gs/S Digital-To-Analog Converter In 90 Nm Cmos, Tyler J. Moody

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Digital analog converters bridge the gap between digital signal processing chips, and power amplifiers that transmit analog signals. Communications systems require ever increasing bandwidth, however data converters are typically the bottleneck in these systems. This thesis presents the design of a high speed current steering DAC using CMOS 90 nm technology. The resolution of the converter is 10 bits, segmented into 6 thermometer encoded MSB current cells, and 4 binary weighted LSB current cells. Each of the sub-components, such as the binary-thermometer encoder, digital latch, current cell, reconstruction filter, are discussed in detail. The current cells were designed with transistor …

Investigation Of Cultural Bias Using Physiological Metrics: Applications To International Business, Renee Nicole Rigrish

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In today's world, many business transactions and interactions are conducted cross-culturally. When going to a business meeting, it is essential avoid a major cultural faux pas in order to not offend your business partners. The Cultural Lens model is used to understand the origins of cultural mismatches. An individual must adjust their approach to a situation to create a cultural match. In adjusting this approach, cognitive biases are a potential result in cross-cultural scenarios. We investigate the Mirror Imaging Bias, which has been found to be a common result of a shortcut to decide how to act in a situation. …

Wideband Automatic Gain Control Design In 130 Nm Cmos Process For Wireless Receiver Applications, Joseph Benito Strzelecki

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

An analog automatic gain control circuit (AGC) and mixer were implemented in 130 nm CMOS technology. The proposed AGC was intended for implementation into a wireless receiver chain. Design specifications required a 60 dB tuning range on the output of the AGC, a settling time within several microseconds, and minimum circuit complexity to reduce area usage and power consumption.

Desired AGC functionality was achieved through the use of four nonlinear variable gain amplifiers (VGAs) and a single LC filter in the forward path of the circuit and a control loop containing an RMS power detector, a multistage comparator, and a …

A Language For Inconsistency-Tolerant Ontology Mapping, Kunal Sengupta

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Ontology alignment plays a key role in enabling interoperability among various data sources present in the web. The nature of the world is such, that the same concepts differ in meaning, often so slightly, which makes it difficult to relate these concepts. It is the omni-present heterogeneity that is at the core of the web. The research work presented in this dissertation, is driven by the goal of providing a robust ontology alignment language for the semantic web, as we show that description logics based alignment languages are not suitable for aligning ontologies.

The adoption of the semantic web technologies …

Compressive Sensing Analog Front End Design In 180 Nm Cmos Technology, Julin Mukeshkumar Shah

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In order to accurately reconstruct signal waveform a signal must be sampled at least twice as fast as the bandwidth of the signal. Ultra Wideband (UWB) signals have extraordinary potential for high information transmission while a central focus of wireless has been the mobile communication. It is an emerging area that involves development of RF sensing and spectral applications over multiple GHz bandwidths. Even though our technology is improving, it is very challenging to build ADC's that are compatible and keep up with the growth of ultra-wideband range. Compressive sensing does "sampling" and "compressing" at the same time and exploits …

Evaluating Warehouse Strategies For Two-Product Class Distribution Planning, Bradley R. Guthrie

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Distribution networks often manage products with varying life-cycles, where demand for some products is relatively stable throughout the year (basic products) and the demand for others is short-lived (fashion products). Beyond the coordination of inventory and transportation decisions, decisions at the warehouse must be considered as its resources are frequently shared by both product classes simultaneously. For this two-product class distribution planning problem, we focus on characterizing three real-world distribution strategies observed in industry and evaluating them based on total distribution cost and warehouse measures (e.g., workforce plan and workload variation) against a benchmark ILS-based heuristic. Experimental results suggest that …

Orthogonal Moment-Based Human Shape Query And Action Recognition From 3d Point Cloud Patches, Huaining Cheng

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

With the recent proliferation of 3D sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), it is essential to develop feature representation methods that can best characterize the point clouds produced by these devices. When these devices are employed in targeting and surveillance of human actions from both ground and aerial platforms, the corresponding point clouds of body shape often comprise low-resolution, disjoint, and irregular patches of points resulted from self-occlusions and viewing angle variations. The prevailing method of depth image analysis has the limitation of relying on 2D features that are not native representation of 3D spatial relationships. On the …

Mixed Signal Detection And Parameter Estimation Based On Second-Order Cyclostationary Features, Dong Li

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Signal detection and radio frequency (RF) parameter estimation have received a lot of attention in recent years due to the need of spectrum sensing in many military and civilian communication applications. In most of existing work, the target signal is assumed to be a single RF signal with no overlapping with other RF signals. However, in a spectrally congested and spectrally contested environment, multiple signals are often mixed together at the signal detector with significant overlap in spectrum. Conventional frequency analysis through Fourier transform is not capable of detecting mixed signals with significant spectral overlap. In this thesis, we first …

Modern Digital Chirp Receiver: Theory, Design And System Integration, Stephen Ray Benson

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Chirp signals can achieve a high range resolution without sacrificing SNR or maximum range, making them a strong candidate for use in radar and sonar applications. Chirp signals are also power efficient and resistant to interference, making them well suited for communication applications as well. The proposed digital high chirp rate receivers will showcase the use of digital instantaneous frequency measurement (IFM) devices for high chirp rate measurement. The receivers are paired with a high resolution time-of-arrival algorithm, capable of detecting the TOA and TOD of a pulse with an average error of less than 2ns. The high resolution pulse …

A Novel Function For Fancj Helicase In Microsatellite Stabilization During Replication Stress, Joanna Barthelemy

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Noncanonical DNA structure-forming sequences, such as hairpin structures, stall replication forks in vivo, expand or contract during DNA replication, and colocalize with chromosome fragile sites. Since the frequency of hairpin formation is higher than the frequency of expansion or contraction, the cell may possess mechanisms to resolve hairpin structures prior to replication fork stalling. One possible activity for hairpin resolution is the FANCJ DNA helicase, known to unwind noncanoncial DNA structures in vitro. Indeed, mutations or loss of any of the nineteen FANC genes, including FANCJ, leads to genome instability and the cancer-prone syndrome Fanconi anemia (FA). To test whether …

Performance Prediction Of Quantization Based Automatic Target Recognition Algorithms, Matthew Steven Horvath

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The difficulty of designing automatic target recognition (ATR) systems is that there are many sources of potential variation in the data, often referred to as operating conditions (OCs). Typical evaluation methodologies rely on empirical simulations on fixed datasets, where it can be difficult to fully sample the variations the algorithm will see in application. Here we focus on analytic performance prediction approaches to quantization based algorithms where the sources of variation are assumed conditionally independent. We have focused on three algorithms in particular: multinomial pattern matching (MPM), quantized grayscale matching (QGM), and a quantized mean-squared error approach (QMSE). The first …

Silver Nanoparticles: The Immediate Benefits Of Low Bacterial Resistance And The Long-Term Risk Of Persistent Stress In Mammalian Cells, David Harold Ellis

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are the fastest growing sector of nanotechnology, due mostly to their antibacterial properties. The antibacterial effectiveness of AgNPs is well known and derives from the shedding of silver ions which have multiple antibacterial targets in the bacterial cell. Due to their continuous release of ions and demonstrated antibacterial potency, some predict that AgNPs have a low potential for resistance development, which would make them a valuable asset in wound management. The ability for AgNPs to cause oxidative imbalance in mammalian cells is also well known, but the potential long-term impact of such a stress has not been …

Design Of A Low-Cost Wireless Nirs System With Embedded Linux And A Smartphone Interface, Diogo Da Silva Dias

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Wireless near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) systems can help to reduce movement artifacts, and distraction due cables. Utilizing Embedded Linux (EL) can reduce size, development time, cost of a project and allow portability. The goal of this project is to develop a low-cost wireless small-sized NIRS system using EL and a Smartphone as the interface. This was achieved using a BeagleBone Black (BBB) with a deployed custom EL that: (1) controls two sources, (2) receives data from photodetectors (PDs), (3) processes, stores and transmits data via Bluetooth to an Android Smartphone. This device was implemented in under US$150 and its dimension was …

High Temperature Transient Creep Analysis Of Metals, Sara Mirmasoudi

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The ability to design vehicles capable of reaching hypersonic speeds has become a necessity to satisfy industry requirements, hence requiring the need for better understanding of creep behavior of materials. Although the steady state creep of metals has been analyzed rigorously, there is little known about transient creep of many metals. Understanding transient creep behavior of metals is crucial in analysis and design of short term hypersonic flight applications. Hence, a transient creep analysis of 304SS, Al7075-T6, Al2024-T6, Inconel 625, Inconel 718, and Rene N4 is carried out focusing on the microstructural behavior of these metals undergoing high temperature operating …

Neural Correlates Of Convergence Eye Movements In Convergence Insufficiency Patients Vs Normal Binocular Vision Controls: An Fmri Study, Chirag Bharatkumar Limbachia

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Convergence Insufficiency is a binocular vision disorder, characterized by reduced ability of performing convergence eye movements. Absence of convergence causes, eye strain, blurred vision, doubled vision, headaches, and difficulty reading due frequent loss of place. These symptoms commonly occur during near work. The purpose of this study was to quantify neural correlates associated with convergence eye movements in convergence insufficient (CI) patients vs. normal binocular vision (NBV) controls, and to examine statistical differences between them. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were collected using a 3T Siemens scanner. A disparity-driven convergence task was designed using a standard block design approach, …

Measuring Brain Activation Through Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Fmri) During Visual Task Learning, Mohd Saif Usmani

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand the brain activity associated with learning a visual task by utilizing the applications of functional magnetic resonance imaging in cognitive neuroscience. The study was performed using two visual tasks referred to as aircraft and control, respectively. We compared the brain activation of these two visual tasks to understand the learning process of the participants. Fifteen young adults, ten males and five females, ranging in age from 19 to 35 years, participated in a ten-week study. Eight participants dropped out either voluntarily or were excluded for different reasons. The data analysis was completed …

Ontology Pattern-Based Data Integration, Adila Alfa Krisnadhi

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Data integration is concerned with providing a unified access to data residing at multiple sources. Such a unified access is realized by having a global schema and a set of mappings between the global schema and the local schemas of each data source, which specify how user queries at the global schema can be translated into queries at the local schemas. Data sources are typically developed and maintained independently, and thus, highly heterogeneous. This causes difficulties in integration because of the lack of interoperability in the aspect of architecture, data format, as well as syntax and semantics of the data. …

Ambiguity-Based Classification Of Phase Modulated Waveforms, Anthony Buchenroth

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Accurate classification or recognition of phase modulated radar waveforms, typically accomplished via the combination of pulse parameter estimates and matched?filtering, poses a simple problem in ideal conditions. Recognition of these waveforms aids in various spectrum management, surveillance, and electronic warfare (EW) applications. In less than ideal conditions, carrier frequency, time offset, pulse amplitude, initial phase, and bandwidth are unknown to the EW receiver rendering the application of a matched filter futile. This effort investigates the use of features extracted from the ambiguity function of an intercepted pulse. Specifically, this effort will expand upon the methodology of previous work done which …

Learning To Rank Algorithms And Their Application In Machine Translation, Tian Xia

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we discuss two issues in the learning to rank area, choosing effective objective loss function, constructing effective regresstion trees in the gradient boosting framework, as well as a third issus, applying learning to rank models into statistcal machine translation. First, list-wise based learning to rank methods either directly optimize performance measures or optimize surrogate functions of performance measures that have smaller gaps between optimized losses and performance measures, thus it is generally believed that they should be able to lead to better performance than point-and pair-wise based learning to rank methods. However, in real-world applications, state-of-the-art practical …

The Effects Of Proximity Compatibility And Graphics On Spatio-Temporal Situation Awareness For Navigation, Chang-Geun Oh

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

While aircraft pilots must attain awareness of both pertinent spatial and temporal navigation information in the Next Generation Air Transportation System, current flight decks present spatial and temporal information separately. This research explored display design to enhance situation awareness (SA) while conducting navigation with spatial and temporal constraints (space-time navigation). For Experiment 1, static maps were developed for space-time navigation including scheduled/estimated time of arrival for passengers at bus stops on public bus routes. The maps varied time status representation and format of indicated time into four conditions. To examine SA, the test program provided 23 non-pilot participants with the …

Experimental Validation Of The Calphad Approach Applied To Multi-Principle Element Alloys, Nathan J. Bryant

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

High entropy alloys (HEAs) are a recent area of research in materials science. Their namesake is because their high entropy of mixing due to multiple metallic elements in a near equimolar ratio. The high entropy of mixing is supposed to suppress unwanted, brittle, ordered intermetallic phases, and form a single, randomly mixed solid solution phase. This phenomena makes HEAs a good candidate for structural applications. However, this entropy of mixing may not be enough to suppress all intermetallic phases. For this reason, the CALculation of PHAse Diagrams (CALPHAD) approach is being explored to predict phase equilibrium in HEAs. This study …

Advanced Thermo-Mechanical Characterization Of Organic Materials By Piezoresistive Organic Resonators, D. Thuau, C. Ayela, E. Lemaire, Stephen M. Heinrich, P. Poulin, Isabelle Dufour

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We present the piezoresistive transduction of an all-organic microelectromechanical system (MEMS) based resonant sensor fabricated through a low-cost and highly versatile process. The MEMS resonator consists of a U-shaped cantilever beam resonator made of a thin layer of a piezoresistive nanocomposite (SU/8 epoxy resin filled with industrially produced carbon nanotubes, or CNTs) deposited on flexible substrates such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) and paper. The structures have been fabricated using a commercially available vinyl cutting machine. External piezoelectric actuation has been used to drive the devices into resonance while integrated piezoresistive transduction has been chosen as the resonance …

Prediction Of Load Capacity Variation In Frp Bonded Concrete Specimens Using Brownian Motion, Tayyebeh Mohammadi, Baolin Wan, Jian-Guo Dai, Chao Zhu

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

In wet lay-up process, dry fiber sheets are saturated with a polymer and applied to the concrete surface by hand. This causes relatively large variation in properties of the cured FRP composite material. It is hard to know the exact mechanical properties of the FRP constructed by wet lay-up process. In addition, the stiffness of FRP changes during debonding process due to different amount of concrete attached to the debonded FRP at different locations. It is also inevitable to have considerable variations in the strength of concrete. Therefore, the behaviour of FRP bonded concrete members varies among specimens even when …

The Impact Of Triclosan On The Spread Of Antibiotic Resistance In The Environment, Daniel E. Carey, Patrick J. Mcnamara

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Triclosan (TCS) is a commonly used antimicrobial agent that enters wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and the environment. An estimated 1.1 × 10⁵ to 4.2 × 10⁵ kg of TCS are discharged from these WWTPs per year in the United States. The abundance of TCS along with its antimicrobial properties have given rise to concern regarding its impact on antibiotic resistance in the environment. The objective of this review is to assess the state of knowledge regarding the impact of TCS on multidrug resistance in environmental settings, including engineered environments such as anaerobic digesters. Pure culture studies are reviewed …

Biocorrosion Rate And Mechanism Of Metallic Magnesium In Model Arterial Environments, Patrick Bowen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A new paradigm in biomedical engineering calls for biologically active implants that are absorbed by the body over time. One popular application for this concept is in the engineering of endovascular stents that are delivered concurrently with balloon angioplasty. These devices enable the injured vessels to remain patent during healing, but are not needed for more than a few months after the procedure. Early studies of iron- and magnesium-based stents have concluded that magnesium is a potentially suitable base material for such a device; alloys can achieve acceptable mechanical properties and do not seem to harm the artery during degradation. …

Sheep Updates 2015 - Merredin, Bruce Mullan, Kate Pritchett, Kimbal Curtis, Chris Wilcox, Lynne Bradshaw, Geoff Lindon, Katherine Davies, Joe Young, Stephen Lee, Dawson Bradford, Khama Kelman, Lucy Anderton, Jaq Pearson, Jackie Jarvis, Ben Patrick

Sheep Updates

This session covers fourteen papers from different authors:

1. The Sheep Industry Business Innovation project, Bruce Mullan, Sheep Industry Development Director, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia

2. Western Australian sheep stocktake, Kate Pritchett and Kimbal Curtis, Research Officers, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia

3. Wool demand and supply - short term volatility, long term opportunities, Chris Wilcox, Principal of Poimena Analysis

4. Myths, Facts and the role of animal welfare in farming, Lynne Bradshaw, president, RSPCA WA

5. Latest research and development on breech strike prevention, Geoff Lindon, Manager Productivity and Animal Welfare, AWI

6. …

Visualization Of 4d Q2psk And Ce Q2psk In Ideal Bandlimited Channels, Milton I. Quinteros, Edit J. Kaminsky, Kenneth V. Cartwright

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents new visualization techniques for 4D Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Q2PSK), Saha’s Constant Envelope (CE) Q2PSK, and Cartwright’s CEQ2PSK in ideal bandlimited channels. The signal diagrams analyzed are: time-signal eye patterns for 4D passband signals, 2D complex trajectory diagrams of baseband signals, and time-signal eye patterns for the 1D outputs of the baseband matched filter. These methods may be applied to other multidimensional modulation systems to obtain insight into the effects of noise, interference, and channel filtering.