Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Thermodynamic Properties Of Mixtures Of Aqueous Solutions Of Hydrochloric Acid And Cadmium Chloride, Copper Chloride, Manganese Chloride, And Zinc Chloride, Samia A. Kosa

Masters Theses

The densities of mixtures of aqueous solutions of hydrochloric acid and cadmium chloride, copper chloride, manganese chloride, and zinc chloride have been measured at constant ionic strengths of 1.0 and 3.0 molal at 25 °C. In the case of HCl, CdCl₂ , and ZnCl₂ the literature data were refit using Pitzer' s apparent molal volume equation and the binary solution parameters were determined. Density data were used to determine the volume of mixing (∆V_m). Data from Torok and Berecs were combined with our data for the mixtures with CuCl₂ and MnCl₂. Pitzer's volume …

A Study Of Aquifer Sensitivity And Vulnerability In Kalamazoo County, Michigan Based On Hydrogeologic And Agricultural Factors, Steven Douglas Chidester

Masters Theses

Groundwater in Kalamazoo County, Michigan has been impacted by human activities. This study presents a statistical method for predicting aquifer sensitivity/vulnerability within a glacio-hydrogeologic system.

Computerized data including 3620 water well records with partial chemical analyses, soil surveys, land use maps, and hydrogeologic reports were used to quantify aquifer parameters, nitrate-N contaminant concentrations, soil factors, and agricultural practices. Statistical analyses included simple t-tests , correlation, ANOV A, and multiple regression analyses.

The results indicate that there are statistically significant relationships between nitrate-N concentrations and depth of well submergence, well depth, clay thickness, partial clay thickness, land use, and soil slope. …

Design And Development Of A Heterogeneous Parallel Computing System, Eruch R. Rustomji

Masters Theses

A parallel and distributed processing environment can be defined as one where a set of workstations is configured in a certain topology (such as completely connected linear chain) to simulate the working of a particular parallel architecture. Such an environment provides an extremely useful means of experimenting with parallel algorithms, without the use of expensive dedicated parallel machines.

Several parallel and distributed processing environments exist, such as Parallel Virtual Machine, The Condor System and the Reactive Kernel System/ Cosmic Environment System. Each of these systems has some unique features and limitations. Other systems include p4, Hermes, Linda and Express.

This …

Separation Of Copper And Iron In Natural Waters By Solid-Phase Extraction, Charles Bui

Masters Theses

A separation scheme has been developed by utilizing Solid-Phase Extraction cartridges in order to isolate and characterize the charge of metals and their complexes in natural waters. These species can be analyzed by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS), Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP), and Ultraviolet-Visible Spectrophotometry (UVVIS).

This separation scheme would permit the determination of the concentration of metals, as well as providing information about the forms in which the metals exist, e.g., charge of metallic complexes.

Synthetic metal complexes were prepared in the laboratory in order to study the separation scheme as well as trying to understand the binding stability of …

Precipitation Dynamics In Kalamazoo, Sw Michigan: A Stable Isotope Perspective, Madhav V. Machavaram

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Size Imperfections In One-Dimensional Periodic Optical Arrays, Yan Zhong

Masters Theses

The concepts of band theory for electrons can also be employed to describe the behavior of electromagnetic waves propagating in periodic dielectric structures. These periodic structures can produce photonic band gaps in which the propagation of electromagnetic waves is strictly prohibited. The introduction of impurities in such system gives rise to donor and acceptor gap modes in electron system and to energy gap modes in photonic system.

In my thesis, the impurity modes in one-dimensional, periodic, dielectric system will be studied. These modes are introduced in the 1-d dielectric structure by altering the thickness of one slab in an otherwise …

A Study Of Automated Estimating Of Software Cost, Steven Shouli Wang

Masters Theses

The objectives of this thesis are to survey software cost estimation methods and to discuss how the methods can be applied as conceptual knowledge in a software cost estimation expert database system. The various applications of expert database systems are discussed. Consequently, a new method to approach the software cost estimation has been proposed.

This proposed method is based upon a dozen years of analyzing software cost models which have been done by some dedicated scientists in universities, research organizations, and industry. A CASE tool called IASCE has been designed to assist the project manager to estimate a proposed project …

Optimizing Communication Routing In Parallel Computer Architectures, Nikolaos T. Liolios

Masters Theses

This thesis is a research effort to improve on existing algorithms for processor placement and routing on hypercube and 2d-transputer parallel architectures that perform communications through message propagation. Given a set of processors N, randomly distributed on the parallel computer network, the problem is to find an optimal communication routing that minimizes the number of required links and intermediate processors. It was concluded that the spanning tree is the best starting heuristic for the routing problem. For hypercubes an algorithm was developed that outperforms all algorithms in the literature. For 2d-transputers the method of overlap maximization used in VLSI routing, …

Carbonate Platform Response To Tectonism And Eustasy: The Middle Cambrian Carbonates Of The Lower And Middle Conasauga Group, East Tennessee, Eugene Carlton Rankey

Masters Theses

The Middle Cambrian Craig Limestone Member (Rogersville Shale) and Maryville Limestone are part of the thick Cambro-Ordovician pericratonic sedimentary package exposed in the Valley and Ridge province in East Tennessee. Exposures in the Dumplin Valley fault zone provide further details concerning the origin and development of these limestone formations.

Description of five sections, analysis of 125 thin sections and 98 slabs, and regional reconnaisance in the Dumplin Valley area reveal that the Craig Limestone Member represents "premature" demise of a carbonate shelf in that it did not develop as fully as the Maryville shelf and had no rimmed edge or …

Laboratory Studies Of Filter Pack Grain-Size Distributions And Hydrophobic Treatments To Enhance The Recovery Of Free-Phase Floating Hydrocarbons, Hugh Garret Heuvelhorst

Masters Theses

Experiments were conducted in laboratory sand tanks to evaluate filter pack design criteria in an effort to improve free-product hydrocarbon recovery from sand aquifers. Filter sands were prepared and installed in the test tanks to examine the relative efficiency of two different grain sizes and two different grain-size distributions to imbibe kerosene from the formation sand and release it to their respective wells. Treatments of different chemical products were applied to other filter sands to create a hydrophobic coating on the grains. The hydrophobic coatings were tested on filter sands of different grain sizes and grain-size distributions and compared to …

A Fracture Analysis Of Glacial Tills In Southwest Michigan, Ralph L. Freed

Masters Theses

Fractures were recorded and measured at seven southwest Michigan glacial till locations to identify geometry and spacing. Strong preferred orientations were shown at azimuths of 110° and 140° for two sites, and at azimuths of 85°, 110°, and 135°, and at 44° and 167° for two sites. Several sites had numerous oblique fractures.

Thirty-eight azimuthal Wenner arrays and four Schlumberger surveys show apparent resistivities vary widely with depth of penetration and material composition. Eleven percent of azimuthal surveys show an elliptical data array coinciding with preferred orientation of an adjacent fracture set. The relationship between azimuthal survey and fractures is …

The Effects Of Composting Of Yard Wastes On The Ground-Water Quality: Wmu Farms Site, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Bryan Kirk Allen

Masters Theses

In the rush to find alternatives to landfilling of yard waste, federal and state agencies have identified composting as the main solution. There is therefore a need to address the possible environmental problems which could be associated with such composting operations. Compost may contain nutrients, organic acids, pesticides, and metals which could leach through soils to the ground water posing a potential contamination problem.

At the WMU Farms Site, two sites have been used for the composting of leaves by the City of Kalamazoo. The physical and chemical hydrogeology of these sites were characterized.

The results suggest that the presence …

Enhanced Retroreflection Of Light From Rough Metal Surfaces, Sivakumar Natarajan

Masters Theses

The optical constants n and k measured by Johnson and Christy (1972) for the noble metals (gold, silver and copper) are used to analyze the relationship between the surface characteristics and the peak height and half-width of the backscattering peak which is observed in the angular distribution of the intensity of diffusely reflected light at a vacuum-metal interface in a direction antiparallel to the original incident beam. Surfaces with surface roughness of heights less than 200 A to 300 A will be considered and a recently developed perturbation treatment will be used in these studies.

The backscattering of light from …

Investigation Of Electron Transfer From Carbonylmetallate Anions To Electron Acceptors, Joseph Kofi Agyin

Masters Theses

This study investigated electron transfer potential of the carbonyl-metallate anions cyclopentadienylirondicarbonyl and methylcyclopentadienyliron-dicarbonyl anions to the electron acceptors 2,2-dinitropropane, 1,1-dinitrocyclohexane, $\alpha$,p-dinitrocumene, methyl cyclopentadienyl-mercury(II) chloride and iodide.

The findings from this study indicated that: (a) the expected products could not be obtained from reactions of the anions with the dinitro-substrates, and (b) the mercurials reacted with the anions but the expected products, (ferrocene and methylferrocene), was the minor product and an unexpected (methyl) cyclopentadienylirondicarbonylmercury(II)-chloride or iodide was the major product.

Signal Processing With Neural Networks, Pero Smrzlic

Masters Theses

In this study, we introduce the Adaptive Back Propagation (ABP) learning algorithm, computationally superior to the standard Back Propagation. The ABP is based on the new activation function, with its corresponding adaptive learning parameter. By using the combination of computer simulations and analysis in the domain of activation function, the Method of One Hidden layer was developed for the effective utilization of units in one-hidden layer networks. A parallel version of the ABP was designed and implemented on a nCUBE-2 supercomputer with 128 processors.

The simulation results suggested a strong correlation between frequency of signals and the role of hidden …

On Clock Routing Techniques For Vlsi Synchronous Systems, Wasim A. Khan

Masters Theses

The clock signal is vital in maintaining proper dataflow, and thus the total throughput, of a high performance synchronous system.

In this thesis, we develop a clock distribution scheme for high performance systems which maximizes the operating clock frequency. We develop an algorithm which routes a planar clock tree with zero skew, minimum source to sink pathlength, and minimal total wirelength. The algorithm also provides a smooth tradeoff between maximum source to sink pathlength and total wirelength while keeping the clock skew at zero.

In many microprocessor designs, multi-phase clocks are used for improved system design. Routing a multiple clock …

The Hydrogeology Of Bonnie Castle And Dustin Lakes And Its Relationship To Groundwater Contamination From The Kl Avenue Landfill, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, Joseph S. Hobin

Masters Theses

The objectives of this investigation were to explain the hydrogeology of Bonnie Castle and Dustin Lakes and to assess the water quality of the lake environments with respect to possible impact from the KL Avenue Landfill.

The surface water/groundwater relationship was determined by the installation of mini-piezometer nests and seepage meters at selected study stations along the shoreline of each lake. Field data were augmented with groundwater and surface water chemical analyses, lake depth profiles and geologic cross-sections.

The result of this research was the characterization of Bonnie Castle Lake as a perched recharge lake and Dustin Lake as a …

Groundwater Chemistry Analysis Of The Saginaw Formation In Delhi Township, Michigan, Sam L. Kitchin

Masters Theses

Groundwater chemistry and well data provided by the Ingham County (Michigan) Health Department were used to evaluate the distribution of inorganic chemical constituents in the groundwater flow system of the Saginaw Formation, in Delhi Township, Michigan. The data also were used to study the distribution of chemical constituents with respect to different rock types of the Saginaw Formation. The data were analyzed to examine if variations in the concentrations of the chemical constituents and the values of other chemical parameters relate to rock-water interactions, groundwater flow systems, or groundwater contamination.

The results indicate that patterns of increasing or decreasing concentrations …

Non-Resonant Transfer And Excitation For S^13+ Projectiles Colliding With Neutral Gas Targets, Liang Duo

Masters Theses

Non-resonant Transfer and Excitation (NTE) by 20-70 Mev S,3+ projectiles in collisions with neutral gas targets of He, Ne and Ar is investigated. For NTE, positively charged projectiles undergo excitation and electron capture in a single collision in which the capture and excitation processes are independent events. The mechanisms involved in the NTE process are electron-nucleus interactions, and the combination of projectile excitation and capture is a two-step process. In this work, NTE cross sections, along with total K x-ray production cross sections and total single-electron capture and loss cross sections, were measured as a function of projectile energy. The …

Topology Based Routing Algorithms For Multilayer Ic Layout Design, Moazzem Hossain

Masters Theses

In this thesis, we consider the multilayer topological routing problem and also the geometric routing problem based on topological routing solution. We show that the problem of multilayer topological planar routing for any arbitrary routing region can be modeled as a problem in a simple closed routing region. We also show that the solution to the multilayer planar routing leads to a better result of the topological via minimization problem. We present a provably-good approximation algorithm for the multilayer topological planar routing problem for different routing regions.

We also propose a graph theoretic algorithm to find 2-layer topological solutions that …

Impurity Modes In Photonic Band Structures, Yi-Fen Chang

Masters Theses

In this thesis I study a theoretical model of one-dimensional dielectric array (a layered system of dielectric slabs) which forms a periodic dielectric system in which band gaps are opened in the frequency spectrum. Specifically, we study such a one-dimensional array with linear impurities introduced in the periodic dielectric system. In these impurity structures narrow resonant modes are found in the band gaps as impurity modes and these impurity modes change with the dielectric constant. This impurity problem is similar to the donor and acceptor state problem in electronic semiconductors. The calculations presented in this thesis are based on numerically …

Ground-Water Contamination By Volatile Organic Compounds: Sources Of Error, Temporal And Spatial Variability, Gary Thomas Blinkiewicz

Masters Theses

Data on the distributions of VOC’s (volatile organic compounds), principally trichloroethane and dichloroethylenes, in a shallow sand and gravel aquifer near Rockford, IL have been collected for a number of years. Synoptic sampling events from a dense monitoring well network within a greater than 4 mi^2 area, provide the basis for the evaluation of sources of variability in concentrations in space and time. Sampling, and analysis-related variability in these data contribute less than 10% of total variance. Spatial and temporal variability over periods of months to years are significant Results suggest that contaminant distributions can be resolved best by using …

Improved Filter-Pack Design For Hydrocarbon Recovery Wells In Unconsolidated Aquifers, Thomas R. Barrett

Masters Theses

Laboratory sand tank experiments and two field studies were conducted to determine filter-pack designs that would increase the hydrocarbon flow rate into hydrocarbon recovery wells. Previous laboratory experiments have shown that using filter-packs of Teflon chips or sands treated with a water repellent spray will increase the rate of hydrocarbon recovery into wells in laboratory bail down test experiments.

The results of the laboratory investigations suggest that using a hydrophobic filter-pack with a median grain-size of 2.5-3.5 greater than that of the aquifer will provide the greatest rate of hydrocarbon recovery.

In two field studies, wells constructed with a hydrophobic …

Middle Terminal Cell Models For Efficient Over-The-Cell Routing, Siddharth Bhingarde

Masters Theses

In this thesis, we introduce a new class of cell models called Middle Terminal Models (MTM) which combines the advantages of existing cell models: BTM and CTM. This class contains the models 2MTM, 3MTM-V, and 3MTM+V depending on the number of metal layers and the permissibility of vias in over-the-cell areas. In MTM, two rows of terminals are located in the middle of the cell. This partitions over-the-cell area into three regions and allows allocation of more nets to over-the-cell area in congested channels. We prove that when vias are allowed over-the-cell, in "almost all" cases the MTM based layouts …

Vegetation And Tree Survival In A Savanna Restoration Project, Vermilion County, Illinois, Mary Claire Hruska

Masters Theses

This study involved pre-burn and post-burn inventories of herbaceous and woody vegetation, a post-burn tree survival survey, the development and implementation of a management plan for the savanna restoration site and the development of general guidelines for savanna restoration. An herbarium collection was made, 242 species representing 64 families were found on the site.

There were several significant changes in the density and frequency of vegetation after the burn. The following herbaceous species increased significantly in frequency: Agalinis tenuifolia (Vahl.) Raf, Ambrosia artemisiifolia L., Carex spp., Cassia fasciculata Michx., Desmodium glabellum (Michx.) DC., Dichanthelium acuminatum (Sw.) Gould & Clark var. …

An Object Oriented Preemptive Multitasking Kernel, Lee Gene Shipman

Masters Theses

“This paper describes a preemptive multitasking kernel designed and coded using C++ using an object oriented paradigm. The kernel design, while implemented on an Intel 80386 based IBM PC running MS-DOS 4.01, can be ported to any platform, rewriting only the low level, hardware specific code.

The kernel, in application framework form, enables the applications developer to create real-time multitasking applications. This can be done in a systematic way by capitalizing on the power of object oriented program development.

A simulation was created to verify the correctness of the kernel against a traditional non-multitasking approach. This simulation provides the proof …

X.500 Directory Service Support For Electronic Mail, Mihai G. Sirbu

Masters Theses

"One of the difficult problems on the Internet is finding the electronic mail addresses of users. In practice, there are some indirect ways of finding these addresses such as the finger program in UNIX, but almost all of these methods require the user to know the exact host name of the destination. What is most desirable is an automated mechanism which provides the e-mail addresses of users if some minimal information about the destination site is known.

This thesis describes the design of such a directory service support system, based on the X.500 Series of CCITT Recommendation, for the elm …

A Preliminary Study Using The Willow Cutting Method To Reduce Lake Shoreline Erosion, Jeffrey L. Bushur

Masters Theses

The Charleston Side-Channel Reservoir has been experiencing extensive shoreline erosion since its completion in 1982. A diagnostic/feasibility study of the reservoir in 1992 rated shoreline erosion as the second largest source of sedimentation. Sedimentation reduces the reservoir volume, increases nutrient loading, and increases water turbidity.

As a part of Clean Lakes Program Phase II, the use of willow cuttings for bank stabilization was proposed as a possible treatment for shoreline erosion. While the use of willows for streambank stabilization has been extensively reported, lake documentation is rare. This experiment determined the feasibility of such action for the Charleston Side-Channel Reservoir …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Transition Metal Polypyridyl Complexes With A Novel 1,10-Phenanthropteridinedione Ligand, Huakai Huang

Masters Theses

A new alloxazine ligand (1; "Pptd"), produced by the condensation of 1,10-phenanthroline-5,6-dione with 5,6-diamino-1,3-dimethyluracil, and several transition metal complexes containing this ligand, have been synthesized. The Pptd ligands attach to Ru(II), Co(II), or Re(I) metal centers through the phenanthroline linkage to form stable polypyridyl complexes. The spectral and the electrochemical characterization of Pptd complexes of Ru(II), Co(II), and Re(I) is presented.

Pptd is capable of being reduced (across the pyrazine nitrogens) by two H-atoms. When coordinated to Ru(II), Pptd forms stable complexes which retain the robust characteristics and electrochemical activity of other Ru(II) polypyridyl species. In addition, Ru(II) complexes of …

Method Development In Coal Extraction, Yunsong Tong

Masters Theses

Organic sulfur compounds in coal should be removed as completely as possible in order to make coal "clean" during its usage. Before any method for coal desulfurization can be investigated, the structure of coal should be known. Soluble substances in coal are more easily analyzed by spectroscopic methods than is the insoluble coal. The goal of this research is to separate soluble organic sulfur compounds from the original coal by pyridine extraction. The weight percentages of the coal extracts obtained from three different coal samples by single step extractions ranged from 8% to 30%. The coal extractability could also be …