Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Experimental Investigation Characterizing The Tribological Performance Of Natural And Synthetic Biolubricants Composed Of Carboxylic Acids For Energy Conservation And Sustainability, Carlton Jonathan Reeves

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several decades the lubrication industry has been striving to bring bio-based lubricants known as biolubricants to prominence. The reasons for the increased environmental initiatives are due to depletion of oil reserves, increases in oil price, stringent government regulations on petroleum-based oils, and most importantly, concerns for protecting the environment. With an estimated, 50% of all lubricants entering the environment and much of these being composed of toxic mineral oils, biolubricants have begun to witness a resurgence. This experimental investigation seeks to develop a new class of ecofriendly biolubricants that are less toxic to the environment, derived from …

A Crowdsourced Hail Dataset: Potential, Biases, And Inaccuracies, Joseph Robert Pehoski

Theses and Dissertations

Hail is a substantial severe weather hazard in the USA, with significant damage to property and

crops occurring annually. Traditional methods of forecasting hail size have limited accuracy, and despite

improvements in remote sensing of precipitation, the fall characteristics of hail make quantification of

hail imprecise. Research into hail is ongoing, but traditional hail datasets have known biases and low

spatiotemporal resolution. The increased usage of smartphones creates the opportunity to use a

crowdsourced dataset provided by the Precipitation Identification Near the Ground (PING) program, a

program developed by the National Severe Storms Laboratory. PING data is compared to approximate …

Beyond The Standard Model: Lhc Phenomenology, Cosmology From Post-Inflationary Sources, And Dark Matter Physics, Brian J. Vlcek

Theses and Dissertations

It is the goal of this dissertation to demonstrate that beyond the standard model, certain theories exist which solve conflicts between observation and theory -- conflicts such as massive neutrinos, dark matter, unstable Higgs vacuum, and recent Planck observations of excess relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe. Theories explored include a D-brane inspired construct of U(3) × Sp(1) × U(1) × U(1) extension of the standard model, in which we demonstrate several possible observables that may be detected at the LHC, and an ability to stabilize the Higgs mechanism. The extended model can also explain recent Planck data …

Phylogeographic Inference Of Insular Mule Deer (Odocoileus Hemionus) Divergence In North America's Desert Southwest, Ona Alminas

Theses and Dissertations

Though mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) persist in robust populations throughout most of their North American distribution, nearly 60% of their historic range in México has declined due to habitat loss and unregulated hunting. Two of the six subspecies inhabiting México's deserts and Baja California peninsula are of conservation concern, occurring on land bridge islands in the Pacific Ocean (O. h. cerrosensis on Cedros Island: threatened) and in the Sea of Cortés (O. h. sheldoni on Tiburón Island: endangered). Focusing on the desert southwest (n=449 deer), we obtained 1,611 bp of mtDNA sequence (control region: 583 bp; cytochrome b gene: 1,028 …

Landscape Ecological Analysis Of Patterns Influencing Bat Activity In Southeast Glacial Plains Of Wisconsin, Angela Leckie Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Nearly half of the world's bat species are threatened by anthropogenic land use. To contribute to the conservation of these cryptic mammals, it is imperative to understand bat habitat selection in human-dominated landscapes. Bat activity was calculated using active acoustic surveys conducted June and July for three years along river and lake transects in an agricultural matrix. Using multiple logistic regression and ANOVA regression tree analyses, I examined the relationship between bat activity of four species and habitat structure at multiple scales.

Aquatic features were determined to be the greatest predictor of bat activity with rivers supporting greater amount of …

Protein Association In Living Cells Using Fret Spectrometry: Application To G-Protein Coupled Receptors, Suparna Patowary

Theses and Dissertations

Recent advancements in fluorescence microscopy coupled with newly developed fluorescent tags have transformed Fluorescence (Förster) Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) into a powerful tool studying in vivo molecular interactions with improved spatial (angstrom) resolution. Though widely used to study protein-protein interactions, generalizing and testing the FRET theory for oligomeric complexes containing multiple donors and acceptors has only become possible in recent years. Therefore, many aspects of it are yet unexplored.

In this work, we tested the kinetic theory of FRET using linked fluorescent proteins located in the cytoplasm or at the plasma membrane. We used a novel method developed in our …

Shaping Swarms Through Coordinated Mediation, Shin-Young Jung

Theses and Dissertations

A swarm is a group of uninformed individuals that exhibit collective behaviors. Without any information about the external world, a swarm has limited ability to achieve complex goals. Prior work on human-swarm interaction methods allow a human to influence these uninformed individuals through either leadership or predation as informed agents that directly interact with humans. These methods of influence have two main limitations: (1) although leaders sustain influence over nominal agents for a long period of time, they tend to cause all collective structures to turn in to flocks (negating the benefit of other swarm formations) and (2) predators tend …

Examining Spring And Autumn Phenology In A Temperate Deciduous Urban Woodlot, Rong Yu

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an intensive phenological study in a temperate deciduous urban woodlot over six consecutive years (2007-2012). It explores three important topics related to spring and autumn phenology, as well as ground and remote sensing phenology. First, it examines key climatic factors influencing spring and autumn phenology by conducting phenological observations four days a week and recording daily microclimate measurements. Second, it investigates the differences in phenological responses between an urban woodlot and a rural forest by employing comparative basswood phenological data. Finally, it bridges ground visual phenology and remote sensing derived phenological changes by using the Normalized Difference …

A Two-Echelon Location-Inventory Model For A Multi-Product Donation-Demand Driven Industry, Milad Khajehnezhad

Theses and Dissertations

This study involves a joint bi-echelon location inventory model for a donation-demand driven industry in which Distribution Centers (DC) and retailers (R) exist. In this model, we confine the variables of interest to include; coverage radius, service level, and multiple products. Each retailer has two classes of product flowing to and from its assigned DC i.e. surpluses and deliveries. The proposed model determines the number of DCs, DC locations, and assignments of retailers to those DCs so that the total annual cost including: facility location costs, transportation costs, and inventory costs are minimized. Due to the complexity of problem, the …

Extraction And Classification Of Drug-Drug Interaction From Biomedical Text Using A Two-Stage Classifier, Majid Rastegar-Mojarad

Theses and Dissertations

One of the critical causes of medical errors is Drug-Drug interaction (DDI), which occurs when one drug increases or decreases the effect of another drug. We propose a machine learning system to extract and classify drug-drug interactions from the biomedical literature, using the annotated corpus from the DDIExtraction-2013 shared task challenge. Our approach applies a two-stage classifier to handle the highly unbalanced class distribution in the corpus. The first stage is designed for binary classification of drug pairs as interacting or non-interacting, and the second stage for further classification of interacting pairs into one of four interacting types: advise, effect, …

Evaluation Of Vdr-Coactivator Inhibitors Using Biochemical And Cell-Based Assays, Athena Marie Baranowski

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

EVALUATION OF VDR–COACTIVATOR INHIBITORS USING BIOCHEMICAL AND CELL–BASED ASSAYS

by

Athena Baranowski

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2013

Under the Supervision of Dr. Alexander Arnold

The vitamin D receptor (VDR) is a ligand–dependent transcription factor, which belongs to the nuclear receptor superfamily. VDR–mediated gene regulation is governed by coregulators (coactivators and corepressors). VDR coregulator binding inhibitors (CBIs), which were discovered using high throughput screening (HTS), were evaluated using cell–based assays and biochemical assays to determine their ability to inhibit the interaction between VDR and steroid receptor coactivator–2 (SRC–2). Determining their ability to inhibit the VDR–SRC–2 interaction can lead to the …

Obstacles And Solutions To Studying Functional Adhesives Using Vibrational Sum-Frequency Generation Spectroscopy, Angela Renee Andersen

Theses and Dissertations

Important aspects of adhesion occur at interfaces, including structures that may be different from those in the bulk materials. However, probing the orientation of molecules in functional adhesives poses a significant challenge because adhesive molecules are always located at a buried interface. The limited penetration depth of surface-specific analysis prohibits the study of buried interfaces using those techniques. The large quantity of bulk molecules relative to the adhesive molecules interacting at the interface results in the bulk signal swamping out adhesive signal in bulk analysis techniques. An interface-specific technique is required to study functional adhesives. One such technique that has …

A Novel Spam Campaign In Online Social Networks, Yufeng Zhen

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing popularity of the Online Social Networks (OSNs)\nomenclature{$OSNs$}{Online Social Networks} has made the OSNs major targets of spammers. They aim to illegally gather private information from users and spread spam to them. In this paper, we propose a new spam campaign that includes following key steps: creating fake accounts, picking legitimate accounts, forming friendships, earning trust, and spreading spam. The unique part in our spam campaign is the process of earning trust. By using social bots, we significantly lower the cost of earning trust and make it feasible in the real world. By spreading spam at a relatively low …

Regularization Methods For Predicting An Ordinal Response Using Longitudinal High-Dimensional Genomic Data, Jiayi Hou

Theses and Dissertations

Ordinal scales are commonly used to measure health status and disease related outcomes in hospital settings as well as in translational medical research. Notable examples include cancer staging, which is a five-category ordinal scale indicating tumor size, node involvement, and likelihood of metastasizing. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), which gives a reliable and objective assessment of conscious status of a patient, is an ordinal scaled measure. In addition, repeated measurements are common in clinical practice for tracking and monitoring the progression of complex diseases. Classical ordinal modeling methods based on the likelihood approach have contributed to the analysis of data in …

Review And Extension For The O’Brien Fleming Multiple Testing Procedure, Hanan Hammouri

Theses and Dissertations

O'Brien and Fleming (1979) proposed a straightforward and useful multiple testing procedure (group sequential testing procedure) for comparing two treatments in clinical trials where subject responses are dichotomous (e.g. success and failure). O'Brien and Fleming stated that their group sequential testing procedure has the same Type I error rate and power as that of a fixed one-stage chi-square test, but gives the opportunity to terminate the trial early when one treatment is clearly performing better than the other. We studied and tested the O'Brien and Fleming procedure specifically by correcting the originally proposed critical values. Furthermore, we updated the O’Brien …

The Pseudo-Rigid-Body Model For Fast, Accurate, Non-Linear Elasticity, Anthony R. Hall

Theses and Dissertations

We introduce to computer graphics the Pseudo-Rigid-Body Mechanism (PRBM) and the chain algorithm from mechanical engineering, with a unified tutorial from disparate source materials. The PRBM has been used successfully to simplify the simulation of non-linearly elastic beams, using deflections of an analogous spring and rigid-body linkage. It offers computational efficiency as well as an automatic parameterization in terms of physically measurable, intuitive inputs which fit naturally into existing animation work flows for character articulation. The chain algorithm is a technique for simulating the deflection of complicated elastic bodies in terms of straight elastic elements, which has recently been extended …

Response Adaptive Design Using Auxiliary And Primary Outcomes, Shuxian Sinks

Theses and Dissertations

Response adaptive designs intend to allocate more patients to better treatments without undermining the validity and the integrity of the trial. The immediacy of the primary response (e.g. deaths, remission) determines the efficiency of the response adaptive design, which often requires outcomes to be quickly or immediately observed. This presents difficulties for survival studies, which may require long durations to observe the primary endpoint. Therefore, we introduce auxiliary endpoints to assist the adaptation with the primary endpoint, where an auxiliary endpoint is generally defined as any measurement that is positively associated with the primary endpoint. Our proposed design (referred to …

Improving The Efficiency Of Fall Applied N With Cover Crops, Corey Lacey

Theses and Dissertations

Nitrate loss studies in Midwestern tile-drained fields have found that fall applied nitrogen (N) resulted in elevated nitrate concentrations in tile water during both the corn and soybean year of a 2 year rotation. The effectiveness of cover crops to reduce nitrate leaching when N is spring applied has been well demonstrated, however there is a dearth of knowledge on the ability of cover crops to reduce nitrate leaching in a system where N is fall applied. Thus, the objectives of this research were to (i) investigate the efficacy of winter cover crops to reduce nitrate leaching from fall applied …

Analiza Forenzike E Regjistrit Të Windows-It, Avdush Jashari

Theses and Dissertations

Kjo temë do të prezantoj data bazën e Windows Regjistrit dhe do të shpjegojë se sa është e rëndësishme në ekzaminimet forenzike kjo data bazë për ekzaminuesit e fushës së forenzikës digjitale. Në esencë tema do të diskutoj disa lloje të ndryshme të gjurmëve të regjistrit dhe do të hulumtojmë se çfarë informacione të rëndësishme mund të marrim duke bërë një ekzaminim forenzik.

Gjithashtu do të diskutohet edhe për shumë çelësa të regjistrit (Registry KEY) të cilët janë shumë të domosdoshëm në një ekzaminim. Forenzika Kompjuterike (Forenzika Digjitale) është aplikimi i teknikave të hetimit dhe analizimit për të mbledhur dhe …

Përmbledhje E Teknologjive Për Mbrojtjen E Privatësisë Online, Driton Tahiri

Theses and Dissertations

Me zhvillimin e hovshëm teknologjik, gjithnjë e më shumë është shtuar përdorimi i shërbimeve të ndryshme online. Me këtë, edhe shpërndarja e të dhënave personale të shfrytëzuesve tek ofrues të ndryshëm të shërbimeve ka bërë që shfrytëzuesit të humbin gjithnjë e me shume kontrollin ndaj të dhënave të tyre personale, shpesh edhe pa dituri të mjaftueshme. Në këtë mënyrë, privatësia e shfrytëzuesve është vënë në rrezik gjithnjë e më të madh.

Për këtë arsye, në këtë punim të bachelor, kam vendosur që të sjell një përmbledhje të teknologjive që kanë për synim vënien e të dhënave personale në kontroll të …

Implementimi I Gps Sistemit Në Pajisje Mobile, Emin Hyseni

Theses and Dissertations

Në dekadën e fundit popullariteti i përdorimit të GPS në pajisjet mobile është në rritjen eksponenciale të numrit të përdoruesve anë e banë botës. Ky numër kaq i madh i pajisjeve mobile e bën më të përdoshëm GPS në të gjitha sferat e jetes. E tëra kjo është si pasojë e zhvillimit të madh të teknologjis së telefonave mobil. Java si gjuhë e lartë programuese mundëson lidhshmërinë në mes të pajisjeve haduerike(hardware) të telefonave të mençur me aplikacionet e sistemit operativ. Java është gjuha e vetme e që është shkruar sistemi operativ ANDROID. Njëhiherit edhe aplikacionet e tjera duhet të …

Siguria E Aplikacioneve, Fatjon Shala

Theses and Dissertations

Me lindjen e internetit dhe rritja gjithnjë më e madhe e kompleksitetit të softverit dhe sistemeve, nevoja për aplikacjone të sigurta është bërë urgjente. Megjithate organizatat përballen me sfida të ndryshme për ti mbajtur programet e tyre të sigurta edhe pse kërcenimet evoluojn kohë pas kohë. Pra interneti ofron mundësi të shumta për një sulmues (haker) për tu lidhur me aplikacjon e për ta shkelur sigurin e ti. Pavarsisht nga shqetësimi në rritje rreth kërkesave për aplikacjone të sigurta me personele të përfshir si zhvillues, administrator planifikues të projekteve etj. megjithate e kanë të vështir të gjejn mënyra për të …

Rrjetet Sociale Si Mundësi Për Të Bërë Marketing, Valon Rexhepi

Theses and Dissertations

Në vitin 2003, dy rrjete sociale u lansuan që më vonë do ta ndryshonin përgjithmonë mënyrën që ne komunikojm me njëri tjetrin: Facebook dhe MySpace. Në atë kohë askush nuk do të mund ta imagjinonte sa sa produktive dhe influencuese do të bëheshin këto rrjete sociale.

Megjithatë, gjatë dy viteve në vazhdim dy shërbime tjera do të lansoheshin që do ta zgjeronin edhe më shumë arritjen dhe rëndësin e rrjeteve sociale: Youtube (2005) dhe Twitter (2006). Me këto dy zbulime të reja, përdouresit tani më do të mund të kalonin në një fazë tjetër, e cila e kalon komunikimim me …

Cloud Computing Dhe Teknologjia E Gjelbër, Yll Konjufca

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Laser Vaporization Methods For The Synthesis Of Metal And Semiconductor Nanoparticles; Graphene, Doped Graphene And Nanoparticles Supported On Graphene, Parichehr Afshani

Theses and Dissertations

The major objective of the research described in this dissertation is the development of new laser vaporization methods for the synthesis of metal and semiconductor nanoparticles, graphene, B- and N-doped graphene, and metal and semiconductor nanoparticles supported on graphene. These methods include the Laser Vaporization Controlled Condensation (LVCC) approach, which has been used in this work for the synthesis of: (1) gold nanoparticles supported on ceria and zirconia nanoparticles for the low temperature oxidation of carbon monoxide, and (2) graphene, boron- and nitrogen-doped graphene, hydrogen-terminated graphene (HTG), metal nanoparticles supported on graphene, and graphene quantum dots. The gold nanoparticles supported …

Α-Hydroxyhippuric Acid Derivatives: Ph-Dependent Aqueous Kinetics And Buffer Catalysis., Kati Feken

Theses and Dissertations

Synthesis and kinetic investigations of the aqueous breakdown of α-hydroxyhippuric acid derivatives as a function of pH were performed to acquire an understanding of the reactivity of this biologically relevant carbinolamide functionality.

A Topics Analysis Model For Health Insurance Claims, Jared Anthony Webb

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematical probability has a rich theory and powerful applications. Of particular note is the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for sampling from high dimensional distributions that may not admit a naive analysis. We develop the theory of the MCMC method from first principles and prove its relevance. We also define a Bayesian hierarchical model for generating data. By understanding how data are generated we may infer hidden structure about these models. We use a specific MCMC method called a Gibbs' sampler to discover topic distributions in a hierarchical Bayesian model called Topics Over Time. We propose an innovative use …

Quality Of Service Control In Wireless Local Area Networks, Adelina Hasanmetaj

Theses and Dissertations

Today wireless internet access, especially the IEEE 802.11 family WLANs, has become widely available. Public hotspots emerge everywhere, from hotels to airports. In addition, private usage also grows rapidly due to the offered convenience.

The current WLAN standard 802.11b does not offer service differentiation. Therefore the quality of an offered service is often not guaranteed. However, a new standard 802.11e has been proposed to improve the quality of service provisioning. This new standard introduces different Traffic Classes for different services and can prioritize the traffic accordingly.

This report covers both the 802.11b and the 802.11e WLANs. In the first place …

Privaciteti Në Internet, Bujar Morina

Theses and Dissertations

Duke e marr parasysh se internet ka qenë si synim i krijimtarisë së një bote të lirë të të dhënave, që në fillim nuk është parashikuar ndonjë metodë për mbrojtjen e informacioneve, mirpo tani kjo është njëra prej qështjeve më shqetësuese e përdoruesve të internetit. Në këtë punim është trajtuar tema mbi privacitetin në internet dhe mundësitë e surfimit anonim për arsye të mbrojtjes së të dhënave shumë personale të shfrytëzuesve të internetit. Së pari janë cekur mundësitë e marrjes së informacioneve personale nëpërmjet internetit, ku shfrytëzuesit i lënë ato nga veprimtaritë e ndryshme në internet. Pastaj është bërë një …

Evuluimi I Telefonisë Mobile, Përfshirë Rastin E Kosovës, Lorik Fetahu

Theses and Dissertations

Teknlogjit mobile ndryshe të njohura si teknologjit për komunikime mobile, janë teknologjitë me zhvillimin më të shpejtë në botën e telekomunikacionit. Secila teknologji siguron të jetë me e shpejte, më e sigurt, më e qendrueshme dhe me kosto më efektive se teknologjitë paraprake. Evoluimi i telefonisë mobile del të jetë mjaft konkuruese ndaj rrjetit tradicional të telefonisë fikse dhe kapciteteve te internetin qe ofronen tek shfrytezuesit e fundit me një çmimë mjaft të lart. Fokus i këtij punimi do të jetë evoluimi i gjeneratave të telefonisë mobile duke theksuar dallimin në mes tyre dhe shtrirjen e tyre në vende të …