Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Geobiological Investigation Of The Mazon Creek Concretions Of Northeastern Illinois, Mechanisms Of Formation And Diagenesis, Andrea S. Fernandes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Siderite concretions from the mid-Pennsylvanian Francis Creek Shale of the Mazon Creek area, in northeastern Illinois, contain exceptionally preserved soft-tissue fossils. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry and micro-x-ray diffraction on polychaete worm, jellyfish and holothurian samples highlighted detrital clay and quartz grains in siderite cement. The worm and jellyfish are pyritised and surrounded by pyrite halos, whereas the holothurian is preserved as a weathered impression. Specimens possessed either microbial textures or framboidal pyrite, in carbon-enriched zones. The carbon-enriched zones contained organic compounds, indicating that extensive degradation associated with high temperature diagenesis did not …

Effects Of Chemical And Mechanical Weathering Processes On The Degradation Of Plastic Debris On Marine Beaches, David A. Cooper

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Plastics are an integral part of everyday life, and the use of plastic products for consumer goods, food packaging, recreational and commercial fishing and medical and sanitary applications continues to increase. The durability, low cost, light weight and hydrophobic nature of plastic make it a desirable material for numerous applications; however, these same characteristics make plastic debris in natural environments a pervasive problem. Increases in plastic use and low economic incentive for recovery, result in accumulation of debris in marine environments. Degradation of plastics through chemical weathering occurs in the open ocean or along shorelines where polymers are exposed to …

Miniaturized Fractionation And Purification Of Analytes Of Interest In Complex Mixtures: Protein Enrichment And Purification With Capillary Electrophoresis And Identification Of Pesticide Chemicals In Bio-Oils, Christina J. Booker

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The ability to isolate and detect an analyte of interest is vital for many different facets of life today, from disease detection to environmental safety. The goal of the method development discussed within this thesis is to isolate and identify unique analytes from complex matrices and to do so in a scaled down approach. Removal of an analyte from a diverse background of molecules is often required for successful detection and determination of analyte properties. As well, many samples are only available at low volumes and at trace levels so miniaturized techniques that only require small sample volumes are designed …

Relationships Between Earthquake Ground Motions And Modified Mercalli Intensity, Andrea Sweny

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With widespread Internet use, web-based earthquake reports are a valuable source of felt intensitydata with broad geographical coverage. Paired with ground motion data, Internet surveys like theUSGS Did You Feel It? (DYFI) website can be used to derive relationships between ground motionparameters and Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI). These are particularly important for regionswith sparse seismographic coverage where the quality and density of intensity data may be superiorto ground motion data. MMI-ground motion relationships are also needed to infer ground motionsof historical earthquakes.

Using well-documented earthquakes in across North America, we analyze correlations betweenfelt intensity and ground motions, including peak ground …

Syntheses, Hydrogen Bonding, And Metal Coordination Studies Of New Ferrocene Peptide Conjugates, Craig D. Colquhoun

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The main goal of the research was the synthesis of new ferrocene peptideconjugates, to study the role of hydrogen bonding interactions, and the coordinationproperties of these systems. Ferrocene peptide conjugates have been extensivelystudied as models of protein secondary structures. Of particular interest weredisubstituted ferrocene derivatives such as ferrocene dicarboxylic acid, which have beenshown to be important in the design of peptide mimics. The inter-ring spacing betweentwo cyclopentadienyl rings in ferrocene has shown to be appropriate for forminghydrogen bonds between conjugated peptide chains, which are attached to the twocyclopentadienyl rings. Inter-ring spacing has proven to be of great importance for theformation …

Autonomic Database Management: State Of The Art And Future Trends, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam Am Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In recent years, Database Management Systems (DBMS) have increased significantly in size and complexity, increasing the extent to which database administration is a time-consuming and expensive task. Database Administrator (DBA) expenses have become a significant part of the total cost of ownership. This results in the need to develop Autonomous Database Management systems (ADBMS) that would manage themselves without human intervention. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the current state of autonomous database systems and identifies gaps and challenges in the achievement of fully autonomic databases. In addition to highlighting technical challenges and gaps, we identify one human factor, gaining the trust …

Soft Skills Requirements In Software Development Jobs: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Study, Faheem Amed, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Salah Bouktif, Piers Campbell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Purpose: Most of the studies carried out on human factor in software development concentrate primarily on personality traits. However, soft skills which largely help in determining personality traits have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether employers’ soft skills requirements, as advertised in job postings, within different roles of software development, are similar across different cultures.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors review the literature relating to soft skills before describing a study based on 500 job advertisements posted on well-known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations, including North America, Europe, …

Evolution Of Software Engineers’ Personality Profile, Daniel Varona, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Arif Raza

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has been applied to several studies that explore various dimensions of human factors in software engineering. Accordingly, this work reviews the results of these studies to explore existing trends. In order to attain a greater understanding of human resources in the software industry, we have reviewed sixteen studies that had been performed between 1985 and 2011. This review concludes that the changes in the complexity of software processes and products have created new roles and demanded new skills for software engineers.

Ontology–Based Representation Of Simulation Models, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam A.M. Capretz, José R. Marti, Krishan D. Srivastava

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Ontologies have been used in a variety of domains for multiple purposes such as establishing common terminology, organizing domain knowledge and describing domain in a machine-readable form. Moreover, ontologies are the foundation of the Semantic Web and often semantic integration is achieved using ontology. Even though simulation demonstrates a number of similar characteristics to Semantic Web or semantic integration, including heterogeneity in the simulation domain, representation and semantics, the application of ontology in the simulation domain is still in its infancy. This paper proposes an ontology-based representation of simulation models. The goal of this research is to facilitate comparison among …

An Iterative Association Rule Mining Framework To K-Anonymize A Dataset, Michael Hayes, Miriam A M Capretz, Jefferey Reed, Cheryl Forchuk

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Preserving and maintaining client privacy and anonymity is of utmost importance in any domain and specially so in healthcare, as loss of either of these can result in legal and ethical implications. Further, it is sometimes important to extract meaningful and useful information from existing data for research or management purposes. In this case it is necessary for the organization who manages the dataset to be certain that no attributes can identify individuals or group of individuals. This paper proposes an extendable and generalized framework to anonymize a dataset using an iterative association rule mining approach. The proposed framework also …

‘Looking After Country Two-Ways’: Insights Into Indigenous Community-Based Conservation From The Southern Tanami, Karissa Preuss, Madeline Dixon

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

This paper offers insights and practical lessons for a ‘two-way’ approach to combining Indigenous and non-Indigenous ecological knowledge in environmental planning and management. It is based on the experience of developing an Indigenous Protected Area to conserve 10 million hectares of biologically and culturally significant land in the Southern Tanami region of Central Australia

The Carter Constant For Inclined Orbits About A Massive Kerr Black Hole: Near-Circular, Near-Polar Orbits, Sree Ram Valluri, Peter Komorowski, Martin Houde

Physics and Astronomy Publications

In an extreme mass-ratio binary black hole system, a non-equatorial orbit will list (i.e. increase its angle of inclination, iota) as it evolves in Kerr spacetime. The abutment, a set of evolving, near-polar, retrograde orbits, for which the instantaneous Carter constant (Q) is at its maximum value (Q_X) for given values of latus rectum (˜l) and eccentricity (e), has been introduced as a laboratory in which the consistency of dQ/dt with corresponding evolution equations for d˜l/dt and de/dt might be tested independently of a specific radiation back-reaction model. To demonstrate the use of the abutment as such a …

Evaluating The Demand For Soft Skills In Software Development, Faheem Ahmed, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Piers Campbell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

An analysis of 500 advertisements for IT positions focuses on the soft skills mentioned in the ads, revealing which soft skills are in high demand for software development and which ones are neglected despite their importance.