Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Gamma/Hadron Separation For The Hawc Observatory, Michael J. Gerhardt

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a gamma-ray observatory sensitive to gamma rays from 100 GeV to 100 TeV with an instantaneous field of view of ~2 sr. It is located on the Sierra Negra plateau in Mexico at an elevation of 4,100 m and began full operation in March 2015. The purpose of the detector is to study relativistic particles that are produced by interstellar and intergalactic objects such as: pulsars, supernova remnants, molecular clouds, black holes and more. To achieve optimal angular resolution, energy reconstruction and cosmic ray background suppression for the extensive air showers detected by …

Magnetic Petrophysics Of The Vulcan Iron Formation (Michigan, Usa), Matthew Laird

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A detailed investigation of magnetic properties of the iron-bearing Traders and Curry members of the ~1.88 Ga Vulcan Iron Formation (Michigan’s eastern Upper Peninsula) was conducted using natural remanent magnetization, low-field magnetic susceptibility, anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility, thermomagnetic and magnetic hysteresis, and first-order reversal curve analyses. A set of samples were also investigated using electron scanning microscopy and energy dispersive spectrometry. Contrary to previously accepted views, our results indicate that the Traders and Curry members have substantially different properties. The older Traders member is a typical banded iron formation characterized by a higher relative amount of magnetite and stronger magnetic …

Multi-Modal And Short-Range Transmission Loss In Ice-Covered, Near-Shore Arctic Waters, Miles B. Penhale

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In the past century, extensive research has been done regarding the sound propagation in arctic ice sheets. The majority of this research has focused on low frequency propagation over long distances. One of the most commonly used excitation methods for air-ice-water layers has been explosives. However, environmental regulation has become more stringent, disallowing the use of almost all explosive excitation types. Due to changing climate conditions in these environments, new experimentation is warranted to determine sound propagation characteristics in, through, and under thin ice sheets, in shallow water, over short distances. In April, 2016 several experiments were conducted approximately 2 …

Developing A Gis Tool For Infinite Slope Stability Analysis (Gis-Tissa), Jonathon Sanders

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Probabilistic Infinite Slope Analysis model (PISA-m) is a widely used computer program that uses infinite slope equations to calculate the spatially varying Factor of Safety of slopes. ESRI’s ArcGIS software and accompanying geoprocessing tools have become a mainstay in spatial data processing, and received full support for Python with the release of version 10. With many of the geoprocessing tools now available as a Python function, the software can be used for physics-based spatial landslide hazard analysis. A model that mimics PISA-m and its processing of normally distributed soil properties was created using the Python utility as a tool …

Analysis Of Data From A Study To Identify Potential Biomarkers To Indicate Renal Injury, Mitchell D. Tahtinen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Ureteropelvic junction obstruction is a disease in which flow from the kidney to the bladder is obstructed for extended periods of time causing irreversible damage to the kidney. Current tests to detect kidney damage caused by obstruction are not effective until significant damage occurs. The purpose of this report is to identify a panel of biomarkers in urine to detect kidney damage earlier by analyzing data collected from a two-part study. Currently, two established urinary biomarkers to indicate kidney damage are NGAL and KIM-1. Biomarkers of interest in this study are CD13, CD10, and CD26. Results from the linear mixed …

Rock Magnetic Investigation Of The Michigan Basin Soils And Sediments Overlying The Oil-Bearing Silurian Pinnacle Reefs, Jake Tresnak

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A relationship between the hydrocarbon migration and magnetic properties of near-surface sediments was investigated from several hundreds of samples collected over the hydrocarbon-bearing Silurian pinnacle reef belt of the Michigan Basin. The collected samples were investigated using several rock magnetic methods and optical microscopy. The investigation has not revealed a straightforward relationship between the magnetic susceptibility and hydrocarbon reservoirs within the reef belt; both anomalously high and low susceptibility values were observed. The elevated values are associated with newly formed magnetite in the form of spheroidal grains produced by hydrocarbon-related diagenesis while the extremely low susceptibilities may reflect dissolution of …

Dynamics Of Wild Red Raspberry (Rubus Idaeus L.) And The Influence On Tree Regeneration Within Silvicultural Openings In A Northern Hardwood Stand, Matthew J. Widen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Previous studies have investigated how the abundance of raspberries (Rubus idaeus L.) impacts tree regeneration, but few have linked these impacts to location within canopy openings with a legacy tree. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated the presence, abundance, and location of raspberries within openings containing legacy trees and the resulting impacts on tree regeneration. During the winter of 2003, 49 openings were created of three sizes: small, medium, large and 20 reference single-tree selection sites in a northern hardwood stand in Ford Forest near Alberta, Michigan. Tree regeneration and vegetative species cover were recorded in 2005 and …

Laboratory, Computational And Theoretical Investigations Of Ice Nucleation And Its Implications For Mixed Phase Clouds, Fan Yang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Ice particles in atmospheric clouds play an important role in determining cloud lifetime, precipitation and radiation. It is therefore important to understand the whole life cycle of ice particles in the atmosphere, e.g., where they come from (nucleation), how they evolve (growth), and where they go (precipitation). Ice nucleation is the crucial step for ice formation, and in this study, we will mainly focus on ice nucleation in the lab and its effect on mixed-phase stratiform clouds.

In the first half of this study, we investigate the relevance of moving contact lines (i.e., the region where three or more phases …

Direct Sampling Methods For Inverse Scattering Problems, Ala Mahmood Nahar Al Zaalig

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Recently, direct sampling methods became popular for solving inverse scattering problems to estimate the shape of the scattering object. They provide a simple tool to directly reconstruct the shape of the unknown scatterer. These methods are based on choosing an appropriate indicator function f on R^d, d=2 or 3, such that f(z) decides whether z lies inside or outside the scatterer. Consequently, we can determine the location and the shape of the unknown scatterer.

In this thesis, we first present some sampling methods for shape reconstruction in inverse scattering problems. These methods, which are described in Chapter 1, …

The Intrinsic Variability Of The Water Vapor Saturation Ratio Due To Mixing, Jesse Anderson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The water vapor concentration plays an important role for many atmospheric processes. The mean concentration is key to understand water vapor's effect on the climate as a greenhouse gas. The fluctuations about the mean are important to understand heat fluxes between Earth's surface and the boundary layer. These fluctuations are linked to turbulence that is present in the boundary layer. Turbulent conditions are simulated in Michigan Tech’s multiphase, turbulent reaction chamber, the π chamber. Measurements for temperature and water vapor concentration were recorded under forced Rayleigh- Bénard convection at several turbulent intensities. These were used to calculate the saturation ratio, …

Massively Parallel Algorithms For Point Cloud Based Object Recognition On Heterogeneous Architecture, Linjia Hu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

With the advent of new commodity depth sensors, point cloud data processing plays an increasingly important role in object recognition and perception. However, the computational cost of point cloud data processing is extremely high due to the large data size, high dimensionality, and algorithmic complexity. To address the computational challenges of real-time processing, this work investigates the possibilities of using modern heterogeneous computing platforms and its supporting ecosystem such as massively parallel architecture (MPA), computing cluster, compute unified device architecture (CUDA), and multithreaded programming to accelerate the point cloud based object recognition. The aforementioned computing platforms would not yield high …

On The Equivalence Between Bayesian And Frequentist Nonparametric Hypothesis Testing, Qiuchen Hai

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Testing of hypotheses about the population parameter is one of the most fundamental tasks in the empirical sciences and is often conducted by using parametric tests (e.g., the t-test and F-test), in which they assume that the samples are from populations that are normally distributed. When the normality assumption is violated, nonparametric tests are employed as alternatives for making statistical inference. In recent years, the Bayesian versions of parametric tests have been well studied in the literature, whereas in contrast, the Bayesian versions of nonparametric tests are quite scant (for exception, Yuan and Johnson (2008) ) in the literature, mainly …

Musical Exercise For People With Visual Impairments, Ridwan Ahmed Khan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

However, it is hard specifically for people with visual impairments to do exercise without proper guidance. They have accessibility issues and thus, without others ’ help, they cannot be sure if they are doing exercise in a consistent form. To address this problem, I have developed a Musical Exercise platform for people with visual impairments . With the help of audio feedback of Musical Exercise, people with visual impairments can perform exercises in a good form consistently. To assess usability of the system and compare different audio profiles of the system, I designed six different con ditions, including blindfolded or …

The Programmatic Manipulation Of Planar Diagram Codes To Find An Upper Bound On The Bridge Index Of Prime Knots, Genevieve R. Johnson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The “bridge index” of a knot is the least number of maximal overpasses taken over all diagrams of the knot. A naïve method to determine the bridge index of a knot is to perform Reidemeister moves on diagrams of the knot, and this method quickly becomes tedious to implement by hand. In this paper, we introduce a sequence of Reidemeister moves which we call a “drag the underpass” move and prove how planar diagram codes change as Reidemeister moves are performed. We then use these results to programatically perform Reidemeister moves using Python 2.7 to calculate an upper bound on …

พอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/พอลิไวนิลแอลกอฮอล์/แกรฟีนนาโนคอมพอสิต, จาฬุพักต์ รัตนคช

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

งานวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อพัฒนาวิธีการเตรียมพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/พอลิไวนิลแอลกอฮอล์/แกรฟีนนาโนคอมพอสิต รวมถึงศึกษาอิทธิพลของการเติมอนุภาคแกรฟีนต่อสัณฐานวิทยา สมบัติเชิงกล สมบัติทางความร้อน และสมบัติการนำไฟฟ้าของวัสดุนาโนคอมพอสิตที่เตรียมได้ โดยเริ่มด้วยการสังเคราะห์แกรฟีนจากแกรไฟต์ด้วยวิธีของฮัมเมอร์ และใช้กรดแอลแอสคอร์บิกเป็นตัวรีดิวซ์ พิสูจน์เอกลักษณ์ของอนุภาคแกรฟีนที่เตรียมได้ด้วยเทคนิคอินฟราเรดสเปกโทรสโกปีและเทคนิคเอกซเรย์ดิฟแฟรกชัน จากนั้นเตรียมของผสมระหว่างพอลิไวนิลแอลกอฮอล์กับแกรฟีนที่ปริมาณต่าง ๆ ด้วยวิธีแช่เยือกแข็ง แล้วนำไปผสมกับพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิดด้วยเครื่องอัดรีดสกรูคู่และขึ้นรูปเป็นชิ้นงานด้วยกระบวนการอัดแบบ ศึกษาสัณฐานวิทยาเพื่อวิเคราะห์อันตรกิริยาของผสมระหว่างพอลิไวนิลแอลกอฮอล์กับแกรฟีนด้วยกล้องจุลทรรศน์แบบคอนโฟคอล และวิเคราะห์ภาคตัดขวางของชิ้นงานคอมพอสิตด้วยกล้องจุลทรรศน์อิเล็กตรอนแบบส่องกราด ผลการทดสอบสมบัติเชิงกล สมบัติทางความร้อน และสมบัติการนำไฟฟ้าของวัสดุนาโนคอมพอสิตที่เตรียมได้ พบว่าปริมาณผลึกลดลงเมื่อปริมาณแกรฟีนเพิ่มขึ้น แต่ไม่ส่งผลต่ออุณหภูมิกลาสทรานสิชัน อุณหภูมิหลอมเหลวผลึก และอุณหภูมิการเกิดผลึก อีกทั้งการเติมแกรฟีนที่มีการใช้พอลิไวนิลแอลกอฮอล์เป็นตัวพาลงในพอลิเมอร์เมทริกซ์ ทำให้ความทนแรงดึง และความยืดสูงสุด ณ จุดขาด มีแนวโน้มลดลงด้วย อย่างไรก็ดีการเติมแกรฟีนในปริมาณน้อย ๆ สามารถช่วยเพิ่มความทนแรงดึงได้เมื่อเปรียบเทียบกับงานวิจัยก่อนหน้าที่ไม่มีการเติมตัวพาหรือตัวช่วยเพิ่มการกระจายตัว นอกจากนี้พบว่าปริมาณแกรฟีนที่เพิ่มขึ้น ทำให้ค่าการนำไฟฟ้าของคอมพอสิตเมื่อเทียบกับพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิดบริสุทธิ์เพิ่มขึ้น คอมพอสิตที่พัฒนาขึ้นสามารถนำไปประยุกต์ในงานที่ต้องการสมบัติการต้านทานไฟฟ้าสถิตย์ได้

นาโนคอมพอสิตของพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/เอทิลีนไวนิลแอซีเทตโคพอลิเมอร์เติมด้วยนาโนไฮบริด พอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/ซิลิกา, จัสมิน พงค์เกษม

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

นาโนคอมพอสิตของพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/เอทิลีนไวนิลแอซีเทตโคพอลิเมอร์ (อีวีเอ) ถูกเตรียมด้วยนาโนซิลิกาและนาโนไฮบริดของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกา (1, 3 และ 5 ส่วนโดยน้ำหนักต่อเรซินร้อยส่วน) ด้วยการผสมแบบหลอมเหลวในเครื่องผสมแบบปิดตามด้วยเครื่องอัดแบบ โดยนาโนเลเท็กซ์ของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกาถูกสังเคราะห์ด้วยกระบวนการเกิดพอลิเมอร์ ‘อิน ซิทู’ ดิฟเฟอเรนเชียลไมโครอิมัลชัน ซึ่งนาโนไฮบริดของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกาที่เตรียมได้มีร้อยละการกราฟต์เท่ากับร้อยละ 90.9 และมีขนาดอนุภาคเฉลี่ยและพื้นที่ผิวเท่ากับ 43.4 นาโนเมตร และ 71.3 ตารางเมตรต่อกรัม ตามลำดับ จากการศึกษาสัณฐานวิทยา พบว่า อนุภาคนาโนไฮบริดแสดงลักษณะโครงสร้างแบบแก่น-เปลือก ที่มีนาโนซิลิกาเป็นแก่นกลางและพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลตเป็นเปลือก ขั้นแรกพอลิเมอร์ผสมพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/อีวีเอที่อัตราส่วนต่างๆ (อีวีเอ ร้อยละ 10-30 โดยน้ำหนัก) ได้ถูกเตรียม และพบว่า ความทนแรงกระแทกและการยืดตัว ณ จุดขาดได้รับการปรับปรุง ขณะที่ยังส์มอดุลัสและเสถียรภาพทางความร้อนมีค่าลดลงเมื่อเติมอีวีเอลงในพอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด เนื่องด้วยพอลิเมอร์ผสม 90/10 พอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/อีวีเอมีสมบัติเชิงกลที่เหมาะสม จึงถูกเลือกเพื่อเตรียมนาโนคอมพอสิตด้วยนาโนซิลิกาและนาโนไฮบริดของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกา จากผลการทดลอง พบว่าการเติมนาโนซิลิกาหรือนาโนไฮบริดของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกาในพอลิเมอร์ผสม 90/10 พอลิแล็กทิกแอซิด/อีวีเอ ได้ปรับปรุงความทนแรงกระแทกและเสถียรภาพทางความร้อน หากแต่การยืดตัว ณ จุดขาดมีค่าลดลง นอกจากนี้ การเติมนาโนซิลิกาส่งผลให้ความทนแรงดึงและยังส์มอดุลัสมีค่าลดลง ขณะที่ความทนแรงดึงและยังส์มอดุลัสของนาโนคอมพอสิตด้วยนาโนไฮบริดของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกา มีค่าเพิ่มขึ้น โดยสรุป พบว่านาโนไฮบริดของพอลิเมทิลเมทาคริเลต/นาโนซิลิกา แสดงประสิทธิภาพในการเสริมแรงได้ดีกว่านาโนซิลิกาที่ปริมาณการเติมสารตัวเติมที่เท่าๆ กัน เนื่องจากมีแรงยึดเหนี่ยวระหว่างพอลิเมอร์-สารตัวเติมที่มากกว่า

Balanced Truncation Model Reduction Of Nonlinear Cable-Mass Pde System, Madhuka Hareena Lochana Weerasinghe

Doctoral Dissertations

We consider model order reduction of a cable-mass system modeled by a one dimensional wave equation with interior damping and dynamic boundary conditions. The system is driven by a time dependent forcing input to a linear mass-spring system at the left boundary of the cable. A mass-spring model at the right end of the cable includes a nonlinear stiffening force. The goal of the model reduction is to produce a low order model that produces an accurate approximation to the displacement and velocity of the mass in the nonlinear mass-spring system at the right boundary. We believe the nonlinear cable-mass …

Acquisition Of Active Multichannel Analysis Of Surface Waves (Masw) Data In Karst Terrain, Ghassan Salem Alsulaimani

Doctoral Dissertations

"This study was designed to verify the effects and data reproducibility when the length of receiver array, receiver spacing, source offset and array orientation parameters are changed for data acquired using multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW), at intended target depth of 30ft (9m), and to compare the results with electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) data obtained for the same study site.

The MASW data acquired for 34 sites, along four profiles for each site using variable source offsets of 10ft (3m) and 30ft (9.1m), and variable receiver spacings of 2.5ft (0.76m) and 5.0ft (0.76m), concurrently. Out of the 272 profiles …

Local Holomorphic Extension Of Cauchy Riemann Functions, Brijitta Antony

Doctoral Dissertations

"The purpose of this dissertation is to give an analytic disc approach to the CR extension problem. Analytic discs give a very convenient tool for holomorphic extension of CR functions. The type function is introduced and showed how these type functions have direct application to important questions about CR extension. In this dissertation the CR extension theorem is proved for a rigid hypersurface M in C² given by y = (Re ω)^m(Im ω)ⁿ where m and n are non-negative integers. If the type function is identically zero at the origin, then there is no CR extension. …

Data Analytics Methods For Attack Detection And Localization In Wireless Networks, Yi Ling

Doctoral Dissertations

"Wireless ad hoc network operates without any fixed infrastructure and centralized administration. It is a group of wirelessly connected nodes having the capability to work as host and router. Due to its features of open communication medium, dynamic changing topology, and cooperative algorithm, security is the primary concern when designing wireless networks. Compared to the traditional wired network, a clean division of layers may be sacrificed for performance in wireless ad hoc networks. As a result, they are vulnerable to various types of attacks at different layers of the protocol stack. In this paper, I present real-time series data analysis …

T-Closed Sets, Multivalued Inverse Limits, And Hereditarily Irreducible Maps, Hussam Abobaker

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation consists of three subjects: T-closed sets, inverse limits with multivalued functions, and hereditarily irreducible maps.

For a subset A of a continuum X define T(A) = X \ {x ∈ X : there exists a subcontinuum K of X such that x ∈ int_xX(K) ⊂ K ⊂ X \ A}. This function was defined by F. Burton Jones and extensively investigated in the book [20] by Sergio Macias. A subset A of a continuum X is called T-closed set if T(A) = A. A characterization of T-closed set is given using generalized …

Discrete Ordinates Ct Organ Dose Simulator (Doctors), Edward T. Norris

Doctoral Dissertations

"Computed tomography (CT) has become pervasive in medical diagnostics as improved imaging techniques and processing algorithms provide higher quality information to doctors. However, the exponentially increasing usage of CT has raised concerns regarding long term low-dose radiological risks.

Currently, the dose to patients is computed using Monte Carlo methods and experimental tests. In other areas of radiation transport, deterministic codes have been shown to be much faster than Monte Carlo codes.

Currently, no deterministic methodology exists to automatically generate a spatially distributed dose profile from a CT voxel phantom. This work proposes a new code, Discrete Ordinate CT Organ Dose …

Advanced Analytical Strategies To Determine Biomedical Parameters For Medical Diagnostics, Drug Delivery, And Therapy, Sisi Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

"Biomedical parameters are critical for diseases prognosis, diagnosis and therapy. Many research groups have dedicated their studies to develop analytical instrumentation and apply analytical methods to determine biomedical parameters that have the potential to help with disease control and increase public health. This dissertation focuses on three major aspects of analytical strategies development and applications: 1) detection of pH changes caused by nanotoxicity (induced by TiO₂ nanoparticles) using newly developed micro-pH sensor, 2) quantification of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) biomarkers by high-performance liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS), and 3) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies of porous wall …

Theoretical Calculations For Electron Impact Ionization Of Atoms And Molecules, Sadek Mohamed Fituri Amami

Doctoral Dissertations

"In the last twenty years, significant progress has been made for the theoretical treatment of electron impact ionization (e,2e) of atoms and molecules and, for some cases, very nice agreement between experiment and theory has been achieved. In particular, excellent agreement between theory and experiment and theory has been achieved for ionization of hydrogen and helium. However, agreement between experiment and theory is not nearly as good for ionization of larger atoms and molecules. In the first part of this dissertation, different theoretical approaches will be employed to study the triply differential cross section (TDCS) for low and intermediate energy …

Cognition-Based Approaches For High-Precision Text Mining, George John Shannon

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research improves the precision of information extraction from free-form text via the use of cognitive-based approaches to natural language processing (NLP). Cognitive-based approaches are an important, and relatively new, area of research in NLP and search, as well as linguistics. Cognitive approaches enable significant improvements in both the breadth and depth of knowledge extracted from text. This research has made contributions in the areas of a cognitive approach to automated concept recognition in.

Cognitive approaches to search, also called concept-based search, have been shown to improve search precision. Given the tremendous amount of electronic text generated in our digital …

The Maculoprotective Effect Of A Thiol Antioxidant In Retinal Degeneration Models, Hsiu-Jen Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

"Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of irreversible blindness among adults, age 60 and older, in developed countries. While oxidative stress is implicated in the pathogenesis of AMD, clinical studies have shown that dietary antioxidants can delay progression of AMD. Currently, there is no FDA-approved treatment for AMD. Therefore, we hypothesized that N-acetylcysteine amide (NACA), a thiol antioxidant, would protect retinal pigment epithelium and impede the progression of retinal degeneration. The goal of this work was to evaluate the efficacy of NACA in preventing retinal pigment epithelial cell and photoreceptor death in AMD models. To achieve this, we …

Application Of Nearly Linear Solvers To Electric Power System Computation, Lisa L. Grant

Doctoral Dissertations

"To meet the future needs of the electric power system, improvements need to be made in the areas of power system algorithms, simulation, and modeling, specifically to achieve a time frame that is useful to industry. If power system time-domain simulations could run in real-time, then system operators would have situational awareness to implement and avoid cascading failures, significantly improving power system reliability. Several power system applications rely on the solution of a very large linear system. As the demands on power systems continue to grow, there is a greater computational complexity involved in solving these large linear systems within …

Biomarker Discovery Using Urinary Metabolomics For Noninvasive Early Cancer Detection, Casey Franklin Burton

Doctoral Dissertations

"The development of new screening methods for the early detection of cancer remains one of the foremost challenges facing modern cancer research. The emergence of new analytical technologies and their application to 'omics'-based approaches has provided researchers with powerful new tools for molecular biomarker discovery that may benefit early screening of cancer. This dissertation outlines several key advances made toward the application of urinary metabolomics to cancer biomarker discovery. The term urinary metabolomics here refers to the investigation of small metabolites in urine as potential disease biomarkers. The advantage of using this approach lies in its noninvasive sampling characteristics and …

In-Situ Assessment Of Concrete Bridge Decks And Pavements Using Stress-Wave Based Methods, Mengxing Li

Doctoral Dissertations

"Concrete infrastructure of United States is aging and deteriorating. Accurate assessment the condition of concrete infrastructure is critical for its maintenance and rehabilitation. Stress-wave based methods, including ultrasonic surface wave (USW) and impact echo (IE), are becoming popular for characterizing defects and mechanical properties of concrete infrastructures. In this dissertation, a comprehensive literature review of seismic wave theory and common types of defects identified in concrete infrastructures, as well as stress-wave based methods used for concrete infrastructure monitoring and characterizing on a selected concrete bridge deck and two concrete pavement segments are present. The utility and reliability of both methods …

Rapid Quantification Of Trypsin Inhibitors In Food And Feed Formulations With Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry, Radheshyam Panta

Doctoral Dissertations

"Presence of anti- nutrients deteriorate the nutritional value of animal foods and feed formulations. The important one being trypsin inhibitors. Trypsin inhibitors in food and feed formulations lower the protein supplement and hence the ultimate consequence is the decrease in growth and development of animals. It is therefore, crucial to monitor trypsin inhibitors in animal food and feed formulations. Research work mentioned in this dissertation is based on the development of rapid, more accurate and robust method for determination of trypsin inhibitor in food and feed formulations. The developed method includes extraction of trypsin inhibitor from food and feed formulation …