Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Integrated Environment For Problem Solving And Program Development, Fadi Pierre Deek

Dissertations

A framework for an integrated problem solving and program development environment that addresses the needs of students learning programming is proposed. Several objectives have been accomplished: defining the tasks required for program development and a literature review to determine the actual difficulties involved in learning those tasks. A comprehensive Study of environments and tools developed to support the learning of problem solving and programming was then performed, covering programming environments, debugging aids, intelligent tutoring systems, and intelligent programming environments. This was followed by a careful analysis and critique of these systems, which uncovered the limitations that have prevented them from …

Modeling Study On The Neopentyl+ O2 Reaction System And Experimental And Modeling Study On Mtbe Pyrolysis And Oxidation, Ru Wei

Dissertations

A modeling study on neopentyl radical + O₂ reaction system is conducted in this study. Thermodynamic parameters on all species and important transition states are calculated. A thermochemical kinetic analysis is performed.

Thermodynamic parameters are estimated using group additivity with HBI groups. Transition state energies are evaluated from experimental and theoretical data in the literature, combined with elementary reaction modeling to account for temperature effects. Transition state structures, vibration frequencies and entropies are determined from semi-empirical calculations, MOPAC PM3. Kinetics are analyzed with quantum RRK theory for k(E) coupled with modified strong collision analysis of Gilbert et al for …

Diffusive And Wavelike Phenomena In Thermal Processing Of Materials, John A. Pelesko

Dissertations

Contemporary materials science abounds with novel processing methods. Devices such as lasers, microwave sources, and electron beam guns, provide unprecedented control over the deposition of energy within a material. The modern materials scientist has the ability to deposit energy volumetrically, to precisely control the location of energy deposition within a material, and to deposit energy in extremely short intervals of time. While making possible numerous thermal processing methods, these devices also push the limits of our understanding of the response of materials to energy deposition. In order to optimize and control these processing methods, it becomes necessary to further our …

Structured Document Comparison And Scientific Data Mining On The World Wide Web, Philip B. Johnson

Theses

The usefulness and accessibility of programs and systems have become important issues for users and researchers alike. A program's usefulness can lw measured by the frequency with which it is used. From the author's or maintainer's point of view, the frequency of usage can be determined by how often a request for the software is received. In the past, a user became aware of a particular tool through various means, and contacted the author or maintainer to obtain a copy of it. This presented difficulties, ranging from language barriers to machine incompatibilities to control of the use of the program. …

Interactive And Batch Creation Of Oodb Medical Vocabularies, Muhammad Arif

Theses

Controlled vocabularies are becoming popular for knowledge representation and querying. They are particularly helpful in the medical field since they can unify disparate terminologies and provide information in a compact, comprehensible manner. In this thesis, we present a mechanism to create OODB controlled medical vocabularies from flat-file format. We also describe a tool by which a user can interactively create, edit and browse the vocabulary. For better understanding of the structure of the vocabulary we designed our interface as a graphical editor and browser. The user of this interface will typically be a medical expert who either wants to add …

Testing Statistical Significance In Sequence Classification Algorithms, Tom Tien-Hua Shih

Theses

Multiple sequence alignment has proven to be a successful method of representing and organizing of protein sequence data. It is crucial to medical researches on the structure and function of proteins.

There have been numerous tools published on how to abstract meaningful relationship from an unknown sequence and a set of known sequences. One study used a method for discovering active motifs in a set of related protein sequences. These are meaningful knowledge abstracted from the known protein database since most protein families are characterized by multiple local motifs. Another study abstracts knowledge regarding the input sequence using a preconstructed …

Analysis Of The Protocol For The Handover In A Micro-Cell Packet Switched Mobile Network, Anna M. Thomas

Theses

The overlay of microcells over macrocells offers new opportunities and is cost effective, which makes the handover in such a micro-cellular environment an important issue. The objective of this study is to analyze and prove the truthfulness of a new protocol proposed, which guarantees no packet loss during the handoff. The study here emphasizes on the data integrity issue, since it is the key factor affecting the throughput performance of the transport layer. It is shown that usage of the Internet Protocol leads to packet loss in the presence of handover. Simulation results reveal that the proposed new protocol preserves …

Algorithms And Tools For Splicing Junction Donor Recognition In Genomic Dna Sequences, Maisheng Yin

Theses

The consensus sequences at splicing junctions in genomic DNA are required for pre-mRNA breaking and rejoining which must be carried out precisely. Programs currently available for identification or prediction of transcribed sequences from within genomic DNA are far from being powerful enough to elucidate genomic structure completely[4]. In this research, we develop a degenerate pattern match algorithm for 5' splicing site (Donor Site) recognition.. Using the Motif models we developed, we can mine out the degenerate pattern information from the consensus splicing junction sequences. Our experimental results show that, this algorithm can correctly recognize 93% of the total donor sites …

Removal And Recovery Of Vocs And Oils From Surfactant-Flushed Recovered Water By Membrane Permeation, Ashish Nagnath Saraf

Theses

Surfactant-enhanced subsurface remediation appears to be capable of removing efficiently contaminants from the source area as well as the concentrated plume. Initial research was conducted on separate removal of trichloroethylene (TCE) and an oil. It was found that oil permeation and modified pervaporation are effective techniques of removing oil and TCE respectively from the simulated feed. It was found that the oil permeation technique can effectively remove 98-99% of oil from an oil-in-water emulsion. The subsurface-entrapped organic pollutants often have high boiling components along with the VOCs. A combined permeation technique is applied here to simultaneously remove TCE and n-dodecane …

Efficient Parallel Processing With Optical Interconnections, Lili Hai

Dissertations

With the advances in VLSI technology, it is now possible to build chips which can each contain thousands of processors. The efficiency of such chips in executing parallel algorithms heavily depends on the interconnection topology of the processors. It is not possible to build a fully interconnected network of processors with constant fan-in/fan-out using electrical interconnections. Free space optics is a remedy to this limitation. Qualities exclusive to the optical medium are its ability to be directed for propagation in free space and the property that optical channels can cross in space without any interference. In this thesis, we present …

An Investigation Of The Oxygraphic Response Of Stressed Bovine Blood, Cristin Mckenna

Dissertations

Oxygraphic profiles of stressed bovine blood in a temperature controlled 2 ml reactor vessel provide the basis for an investigation of blood's response to various conditions. This response is broken down into an initial response (within 3 seconds), the response over 1 hour and the response over 24 hours. Fast-assay runs which investigate the initial response display a dose-response relationship when chemically stressed by phenol. Phenol concentrations in the 1,000 ppm range indicate a decrease in dissolved oxygen (DO) and higher phenol concentrations of over 20,000 an increase in DO. In addition to phenol concentration, other factors investigated with respect …

Multi-Wavelength Infrared Imaging Computer Systems And Applications, Jun Li

Dissertations

This dissertation presents the development of three computer systems for multi-wavelength thermal imaging.

Two computer systems were developed for the multi-wavelength imaging pyrometers (M-WIPs) that yield non-contact temperature measurements by remotely sensing the surface of objects with unknown wavelength-dependent emissivity. These M-WIP computer systems represent the state-of-art development in remote temperature measurement system based on the multi-wavelength approach. The dissertation research includes M-WIP computer system integration, software development, performance evaluation, and also applications in monitoring and control of temperature distribution of silicon wafers in a rapid thermal process system.

The two M-WIPs are capable of data acquisition, signal processing, system …

High Speed Protocols For Dual Bus And Dual Ring Network Architectures, Yaling Zhou

Dissertations

In this dissertation, two channel access mechanisms providing fair and bandwidth efficient transmission on dual bus and dual ring networks with high bandwidth-latency product are proposed. In addition, two effective priority mechanisms are introduced to meet the throughput and delay requirements of the diverse arrays of applications that future high speed networks must support.

For dual bus architectures, the Buffer Insertion Bandwidth Balancing (BI_BWB) mechanism and the Preemptive priority Bandwidth Balancing (P_BI_BWB) mechanism are proposed. BI_BWB can significantly improve the delay performance of remote stations. It achieves that by providing each station with a shift register into which the station …

Sampling And Analysis Of Trace Level Volatile Organic Compounds From Air Via Membrane Permeation, Naihong Zhu

Dissertations

The objective of this study is to develop air sampling techniques using membrane permeation. Two novel techniques for sampling and analysis of trace level VOCs from air via membrane permeation are presented:

1. selective concentration of VOCs into a canister using a membrane permeator;
2. on-line membrane extraction for direct introduction of VOCs from air emissions into a gas chromatograph.

In the membrane permeator-canister sampling system (MPCS), the air sample containing trace level VOCs as well as some interferences such as moisture are passed through the membrane module. Polydimethyl siloxane membrane used in this research is highly permeable to organic compounds, but …

On Document Filing Based Upon Predicates, Zhijian Zhu

Dissertations

This dissertation presents a formal approach to modeling documents in a personal office environment, proposes a heterogeneous algebraic query language to manipulating objects (folders) in the document model, and investigates a predicate-driven document filing system for automatically filing documents.

The document model was initially proposed in [38] which adopts a very natural view for describing the office documents using the relational and object-oriented paradigms. The model employs a dual approach to classifying and categorizing office documents by defining both a document type hierarchy and a folder organization. This dissertation extends and specifies formally the document model. Documents are partitioned into …

Development Of Methods For Field Determination Of Chromium (Vi) In Water And Groundwater, David John Chesbro

Theses

In this study, methods for the determination of chromium (VI) in fresh water at low ppb levels for the use under field conditions were developed. The plan was to devise a simple and inexpensive on-site field method which would be useable by people who are not professional chemists. An investigation was carried out to develop a preconcentration and determination procedure for the analysis of chromium (VI) using anion-exchange membranes and/or resins. The chromium (VI) would be sorbed to the solid support and then treated with 1 ,5-diphenylcarabzide, a specific colorimetric reagent for chromium (VI), which forms a red complex upon …

Assessment Of Potential Operating Benefits Incurred By Implementing Iso 14001 : Five Case Studies From The New Jersey Chemical Industry, Stefanie Gitter

Theses

Environmental management is an important aspect of strategic planning and competitiveness for many businesses. Environmental management systems (EMS) are operating policies that are established to help a company measure progress towards goals set forth in a strategic environmental plan. A growing number of EMS models are being used by countries and industry groups, so the International Standards Organization (ISO) developed one model to prevent duplicate efforts which can result when companies try to meet the import requirements of different countries.

The ISO-EMS model is a series of standards, and ISO 14001 is the first to be published. Companies will be …

A Graphical Environment For Change Detection In Structured Documents, Girish A. Patel

Theses

Change detection in structured documents (e.g. SGML is important in data warehousing, digital libraries and Internet databases. This thesis presents a graphical environment for detecting changes in the structured documents. We represent. each document by alp ordered labeled tree based on the underlying markup language. We then compare two documents by invoking previously developed algorithms for approximate pattern matching and pattern discovery in trees. Several operators are developed to support. the comparison of the documents; graphical devices are provided to facilitate the use of the operators. We believe the proposed tool is useful for not only document management, but also …

Object Oriented Partitioning For A Medical Vocabulary Based On Semantic Network, Mansnimar Singh

Theses

Computers have become ubiquitous and indispensable part of everyday life both for personal use and in the workplace. Medicine is one of the few domains that has not fully adopted computerization. One impediment to this emanates from a communication gap between the computer science professional and the medical professional. Besides, medical terminology is full of synonyms and medical professionals use them according to their personal preferences. This lack of common terminology has prevented sharing of knowledge and automating data processing, resulting in the healthcare information explosion.

Semantic network models have been developed to represent medical concepts and to provide a …

Design And Implementation Of On-Line Metrics, Ashok Vantipalli

Theses

The performance of a software product plays an important role in the software industry to survive the tough competition given by the other software vendors. The real test for a software product starts after its release when it is extensively used by the end users and in different environments. And the software goes through a number of tests by the end users which can be very different and insufficient from the regression tests the software vendor performed on it. This critical issue; requires each vendor to have a department mainly dealing with the testing and analysing the performance of a …

Least Space-Time First Scheduling Algorithm : Scheduling Complex Tasks With Hard Deadline On Parallel Machines, Bo-Chao Cheng

Dissertations

Both time constraints and logical correctness are essential to real-time systems and failure to specify and observe a time constraint may result in disaster. Two orthogonal issues arise in the design and analysis of real-time systems: one is the specification of the system, and the semantic model describing the properties of real-time programs; the other is the scheduling and allocation of resources that may be shared by real-time program modules.

The problem of scheduling tasks with precedence and timing constraints onto a set of processors in a way that minimizes maximum tardiness is here considered. A new scheduling heuristic, Least …

Massively Parallel Reasoning In Transitive Relationship Hierarchies, Yugyung Lee

Dissertations

This research focuses on building a parallel knowledge representation and reasoning system for the purpose of making progress in realizing human-like intelligence. To achieve human-like intelligence, it is necessary to model human reasoning processes by programs. Knowledge in the real world is huge in size, complex in structure, and is also constantly changing even in limited domains. Unfortunately, reasoning algorithms are very often intractable, which means that they are too slow for any practical applications. One technique to deal with this problem is to design special-purpose reasoners. Many past Al systems have worked rather nicely for limited problem sizes, but …

Safe Code Transfromations For Speculative Execution In Real-Time Systems, Mohamed Mohamed Younis

Dissertations

Although compiler optimization techniques are standard and successful in non-real-time systems, if naively applied, they can destroy safety guarantees and deadlines in hard real-time systems. For this reason, real-time systems developers have tended to avoid automatic compiler optimization of their code. However, real-time applications in several areas have been growing substantially in size and complexity in recent years. This size and complexity makes it impossible for real-time programmers to write optimal code, and consequently indicates a need for compiler optimization. Recently researchers have developed or modified analyses and transformations to improve performance without degrading worst-case execution times. Moreover, these optimization …

Size-Frequency Distribution Of Palaemonetes Pugio In Two New Jersey Estuaries And Predator-Prey Interactions With Fundulus Heterocolitus, Celine Santiago

Theses

Predation by Fundulus heteroclitus is known to be an important factor regulating the abundance and size distribution of Palaemonetes pugio in the salt marsh habitat.

A preliminary study showed that P. pugio from a polluted estuary, Piles Creek, were relatively larger than those found in a more pristine estuary, Little Sheepshead Creek. Possible causes could be differences in competition, inherent environmental components, reproductive effort, or predation. To investigate the differences in size frequency, data on relative abundances of both species and size frequency distribution of P. pugio were collected for comparison from the two estuaries.

It was determined that P. …

Oxidative Response Of Immobilized Bovine Blood To The Model Pollutant Phenol, Michael George Nickey

Theses

The primary purpose of this work is to determine if bovine blood can be studied in an immobilized cell bioreactor to determine if a phenol induced oxygen releasing optimum exists. This method of study has the potential to be used to determine what effects xenobiotics have on the oxidative activities of blood.

Three blood fractions containing approximately 21, 44, and 70% red blood cells (RBCs) were immobilized and placed in a recirculating bioreactor. These fractions were exposed injections of 0 ml, 3 ml, or 10 ml amounts of 2000 ppm phenol. The most active fraction was the 21% red cell …

Oxidized Sterols In Patients With Diabetic Heart Disease And Microwave-Mediated Stereoselective Synthesis Of 3-Keto Cholesterol And Cholesterol Epoxide, Cholesteryl Ester Epoxides, Meenakashi N. Kothavale

Theses

Oxidized low density lipoproteins (ox-LDL) may play important role in mediating hypercholesterolemic endothelial dysfunction. The uptake of modified LDL by macrophages to form foam cells has been implicated in the enhancement of atherosclerosis. Recent reports have suggested that when LDL undergoes oxidation in vitro , it is accompanied by a substantial loss of free and esterified cholesterol leading to the formation of oxidation products of cholesterol ( oxysterols). These compounds are present in human atherosclerotic plaques and in human foam cells.

In this regard we have recently studied the plasma sterol composition in diabetic heart patients We have found cholesterol …

Application Of Geometric Hashing Techniques To Retrieval Of High Dimensional Objects In Scientific Databases, Joyce Ye Lu

Theses

An approach to designing very fast algorithms for tackling the problem of approximate object matching in very large databases of high-dimensional objects is proposed. Given are a target object C and a database D containing information about a set of high-dimensional objects each of which is represented as a set of points. Our algorithms have an off-line object preprocessing (shape representation) phase and a recognition phase. The described algorithms determine those objects from D which are the closest to object C, according to delete or insert some points, move and rotation. All of these can be achieved very efficiently with …

Catalytic Control Of Nitric Oxide With Gaseous Or Solid Reducing Materials, Xiaoyong Tang

Theses

Air pollution from mobile sources is an increasingly serious problem throughout most of the industrialized would. Diesel powered vehicles, because of their higher thermal efficiency, tend to emit less carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons than gasoline vehicles, but emit significant quantities of NO_x. Therefore, it is essential to develop improved emission control equipment in diesel engines. A fixed bed catalytic reactor was used to study the decomposition of NO and the reduction of NO to N₂ by different reductants that can be found in diesel exhaust, such as hydrocarbons, CO and elemental carbon over different catalysts. The …

Abstraction Of An Object-Oriented Vocabulary By Providing A Standardized Interface, Hemant Kothavade

Theses

Controlled vocabularies are ubiquitous in varied application fields. They are particularly helpful in the medical field since they can unify disparate terminologies and provide information in a compact, comprehensible manner. In this thesis, we present a mechanism to efficiently retrieve and update knowledge stored in a controlled vocabulary modeled as an Object-Oriented Database (OODB) system. We aim to provide a standardized interface to the vocabulary, such that the implementation details of the vocabulary are transparent to all users. The user of this standardized interface will typically be an application programmer who is trying to provide the vocabulary's knowledge-base to end …