Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Old English Character Recognition Using Neural Networks, Sattajit Sutradhar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Character recognition has been capturing the interest of researchers since the beginning of the twentieth century. While the Optical Character Recognition for printed material is very robust and widespread nowadays, the recognition of handwritten materials lags behind. In our digital era more and more historical, handwritten documents are digitized and made available to the general public. However, these digital copies of handwritten materials lack the automatic content recognition feature of their printed materials counterparts. We are proposing a practical, accurate, and computationally efficient method for Old English character recognition from manuscript images. Our method relies on a modern machine learning …

Some New And Generalized Distributions Via Exponentiation, Gamma And Marshall-Olkin Generators With Applications, Hameed Abiodun Jimoh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Three new generalized distributions developed via completing risk, gamma generator, Marshall-Olkin generator and exponentiation techniques are proposed and studied. Structural properties including quantile functions, hazard rate functions, moment, conditional moments, mean deviations, R\'enyi entropy, distribution of order statistics and maximum likelihood estimates are presented. Monte Carlo simulation is employed to examine the performance of the proposed distributions. Applications of the generalized distributions to real lifetime data are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the models.

Multiclass Classification Using Support Vector Machines, Duleep Prasanna W. Rathgamage Don

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we discuss different SVM methods for multiclass classification and introduce the Divide and Conquer Support Vector Machine (DCSVM) algorithm which relies on data sparsity in high dimensional space and performs a smart partitioning of the whole training data set into disjoint subsets that are easily separable. A single prediction performed between two partitions eliminates one or more classes in a single partition, leaving only a reduced number of candidate classes for subsequent steps. The algorithm continues recursively, reducing the number of classes at each step until a final binary decision is made between the last two classes …

A Comparison Of Bridge Deterioration Models, Toktam Naderimoghaddam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Predicting how bridges will deteriorate is the key to budgeting financial and personnel resources. Deterioration models exist for specific components of a bridge, but no models exist for the sufficiency rating which is an overall measure of the condition and relevance of a bridge used for determining eligibility for federal funds.

We have 25 years worth of data collected by the Georgia Department of Transportation from 1992 to 2016 about all bridges in the State of Georgia. More precisely, each row in this data set includes the characteristics of each bridge along with the sufficiency rating of that bridge in …

Examining The Issue Of Compliance With Personal Protective Equipment Among Wastewater Workers Across The Southeast Region Of The United States, Tamara L. Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wastewater workers are exposed to different occupational hazards such as chemicals, gases, viruses, and bacteria. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is a significant factor that can reduce or increase the probability of an accident from hazardous exposures to chemicals and microbial contaminants. The purpose of this study was to identify wastewater worker’s beliefs and practices on wearing PPE and protections offered by PPE through the integration of the Health Belief Model (HBM). Participants were workers in the wastewater industry, which included wastewater operators, laboratory analysts, maintenance workers, wastewater collection workers, equipment operators, managers, and supervisors (n=272). The instrument was a self-administered …