Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Identification Of Human Gait Using Genetic Algorithm Tuned Fuzzy Logic, Abdallah Abdel-Rahman Hassan Mahmoud

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Data mining is concerned with the discovery of useful hidden information in large databases. Classification is a data mining task producing rules in which a set of attributes in data predict the value of a class attribute. Classifiers usually produce a large number of rules, most of which are not interesting to the user. Rule interestingness is a decisive factor. However, evaluating rule interestingness is challenging as it involves both objective (data-driven) and subjective (user-driven) aspects.

In this research, a fuzzy genetic algorithm is proposed to discover classification rules that are both accurate and interesting. Continuous attributes are fuzzified so …

Towards More Reliable Extrapolation Algorithms With Applications To Organic Chemistry, Jaime Nava

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

One of the main objectives of science and engineering is to predict the results of different situations. For example, in Newton's mechanics, we want to predict the positions and velocities of different objects (e.g., planets) at future moments of time.

In this Thesis, as a case study, we take the problem of predicting the properties of new chemical substances. One of the main objectives of chemistry is to design new molecules (and, more generally, new chemical compounds) which are useful for various practical tasks. New substances have already resulted in new materials for buildings and for spaceships, new explosives and …

Multi-Objective Network Reliability Optimization Using Evolutionary Algorithms, Franciso Oswaldo Aguirre

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This work presents a new multiple objective evolutionary algorithm to solve three well known network reliability allocation problems considering different conflicting objectives to be optimized simultaneously. The new algorithm is applied in the design of a telecommunication network that is formed for several stations or nodes interconnected by telecommunication links or paths. The problem presented in this work involves finding which links to activate in order to obtain connectivity in the nodes. The number of nodes that need to be connected depends of the case that is being evaluated. The three network reliability problems considered are: all-terminal, k-terminal, and two-terminal. …

Observed Superspin-Glass Behavior In Ni0.5zn0.5fe2o4 Nanoparticles, Antony Adair

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this investigation we seek to identify the magnetic behavior of Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles though AC-susceptibility and DC-magnetization measurements. Powder x-ray diffraction was performed to determine the purity and average diameter ( ~ 9nm) of the particles. Aditionally, structure was confirmed by comparison through the International Centre for Diffraction Data's Powder Diffraction File [52] (PDF # 08-0234).

Zero-field cooled and field cooled DC magnetization measurements (bifurcation and blocking temperature), as well as M(H) hysteresis (below and above the blocking temperature) lead us to initially suggest that the material may in fact be superparamagnetic. However, further investigation of the real AC susceptibility …

Appropriate Prosodic Variation Is Valued By Users, Rafael Escalante-Ruiz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Spoken dialog systems today do not vary the prosody of their utterances, although prosody is known to have many useful expressive functions. In a corpus of memory quizzes, I identified eleven dimensions of prosodic variation, each with its own expressive function. I identified the situations in which each was used, and how to detect these situations from the dialog context and the prosody of the interlocutor's previous utterance. I implemented the resulting response rules and had 21 users interact with two versions of the system. Overall they preferred the version in which the prosodic forms of the acknowledgments were chosen …

Sustainable Development Extension Plan (Sudex): Community Mobilization Through Proactive Participation And Synergistic Alliance To Alliviate Poverty And Achieve Sustainable Self Sufficiency, Stephen Forbes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation describes a sustainable development extension plan (Sudex Plan) to help communities in developing countries achieve Goal 1 of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Goal 1 focuses on reducing poverty and hunger by 50% by the year 2015, but all the MDG are interrelated and one can not be achieved without considering the others, and to attain any is an empty accomplishment without ways to ensure that they can be sustained and continuously improved with the means to pass on the information, knowledge and lessons learned from community to community, generation to generation. The Sudex Plan is …

New Algorithms For Optimal Portfolio Selection, Tanja Magoc

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Over the past four thousand years, numerous techniques have been developed and used to address problems in Finance. These techniques include simple arithmetic calculations and probabilistic methods as well as intelligent systems techniques such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, multi-agent systems, and support vector machines. The techniques have been developed to accurately and quickly collect, validate, analyze, and integrate data that change dynamically.

The particular problem that we address in this Dissertation is the construction of efficient algorithms for the problem of an optimal portfolio selection, that is, algorithms that would accurately and in real time determine the best distribution …

Semi-Automated Frame Transformations Using Fft Analysis On 2-D Images, Francisco Javier Osuna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cassini entered Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004 beginning a four-year exploration of Saturn. In 2008 the mission was extended, and Cassini continues to collect and transmit images and data collected during its mission. In order to accurately interpret images, it is necessary to know the location and orientation of the camera provided the field of view when the image was collected. While the mission managers provide initial estimates of this orientation, scientific analysis requires better estimates than the initial data provided. Navigation is a process for improving the estimation of the true camera pointing vector as determined by features …

Pdi, Reactive Oxygen Species Stress And Polyphenolic Phytochemicals: Implications For Neurodegenerative Diseases, Rituraj Pal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

PDI, protein disulfide isomerase, is one of the most versatile proteins and highly expressed in mammalian cells because there is a vast number of proteins that must undergo processing before secretion to their final destinations. PDI has several functions: oxidation of nascent proteins and isomerization of existing disulfide bonds. It also possesses chaperone activity and participates in protein degradation. Because of its structure, PDI can exist in a reduced or oxidized form. In mammalian cells it is mostly reduced due to the high demand of disulfide bond shuffling of secreted proteins within the ER, PDI a, a', and b' posses …

Computational Modeling Studies Of The Structures And Properties Of Organotin(Iv) And Stannyl-Thioether Systems With Comparisons To X-Ray Crystallography, Michelle R. Stem Joseph

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Controlling the toxic effects of organotin(IV) compounds involves engineering the structure of the molecules to optimize their properties. Molecular engineering, coupled with improved capabilities to generate reliable computational optimization models (COMs), will enable researchers to have greater success at harnessing the highly specific cytotoxicity of organotins. For example, as the thio_n ligand phenyl groups were replaced with Cl atoms, the S-Sn intramolecularity was strengthened, the bond distance decreased, and the stannyl tetrahedral structure was deformed from its triphenyl conformation. With each substitution, conformation deformations lowered the damaging bioactivity levels of thio_n. Bonding various ligands to organotin(IV) compounds …

Using The Taguchi Design And The Central Composite Design To Increase The Robustness Of A Process From Its Raw Material Variability, Alvaro Cuevas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research presents an experimental study where four controllable and one noise factor are analyzed using the Taguchi approach and the Central Composite Design (CCD) in order to induce robustness in a process that is being designed to treat residual grease from small restaurants. Three response variables are analyzed separately to establish the parameters conditions to obtain the most robust process output. These suggested conditions are validated conducting confirmation runs that are compared statistically to the predictions from the Taguchi prediction model for the Taguchi approach, and the Response optimizer for the CCD. The accuracy of each method is measured …

Supporting Novice Application Users In Learning By Trial And Error And Using Help, Oscar Daniel Andrade

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines three related topics in analyzing user preferences for troubleshooting application usability problems and the kinds of issues that influence such preferences. The goal of this thesis is to propose (1) ways in which users can be supported to learn to use applications and (2) a model to rewrite help such that users are able to adapt its contents dynamically.

The consensus of documentation research is that users rarely use help, usually preferring to muddle through. To increase use of help, tutorials for novice users could be changed from guided presentations toward using the application's help system. To …

Silica Removal From Brine By Using Ion Exchange, Carlos R. Acevedo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Local governments have been forced to look for additional water sources to satisfy the ever increasing demand for fresh water. Very often, the new water sources such as the underground water in continental territories have high salt content. Currently, reverse osmosis technology (RO) is one of the most common processes for water desalination. However, this process is limited by high silica and salt concentrations in water. At high concentrations silica clogs the membranes used in the RO process, reducing their life and increasing operational costs. In this study, quaternary ammonium resins and sulfonic acid resins were used to remove silica …

Microwave Assisted Solid-Supported Organic Synthesis: A Novel Methodology To Obtain 2,3-Disubstituted-1,4-Naphthoquinones, Israel Garcia-Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research focuses on the combinatorial solid phase organic synthesis (SPOS) of different bioactive compounds utilizing transition metal mediated reactions via microwave assisted organic synthesis (MAOS).

A microwave-assisted solid-supported Dötz benzannulation of chromium Fischer carbene complexes with various alkynes has been reported. The oxidative cleavage of the resulting resin-bound 1,4-naphthols affords 2,3-disubstituted-1,4-naphthoquinone derivatives in good to moderate yields with high purities. We demonstrated that solid phase organic synthesis of naphthoquinones via conventional heating is limited due to their long reaction times and high temperatures. The products decompose leading to low yields and purities.2 Microwave assisted synthesis of these naphthoquinones will …

Improving Throughput Of Simultaneous Multithreaded (Smt) Processors Using Shareable Resource Signatures And Hardware Thread Priorities, Mitesh Ramesh Meswani

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) allows multiple hardware threads to execute concurrently on a processor core, potentially increasing the utilization and throughput of the processor core by a factor of the degree of multithreading. However, such performance gains may not be achieved due to contention for resources shared by the threads. Hardware thread priorities can be used to control the ratio of decode cycles allocated to the hardware threads of a processor core and, therefore, the degree of resource contention among the threads. The IBM POWER5, which has two hardware threads associated with each of its two cores, supports hardware thread priorities. …

Real-Time Image-Based Motion Detection Using Color And Structure, Manali Chakraborty

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Motion detection is an important problem in computer vision and has multiple applications in the real world, including surveillance-related activities, gaming, and human-robot interactions. These systems need to be robust enough to handle fluctuations in light intensity and other external factors like noise and compression artifacts. In this thesis a method is proposed for detecting the regions of motion from a video sequence in real time. The main idea of this work is to detect motion based on both structure and color. Structure-based detection is carried out using information from the Census Transform computed on gradient images obtained with Sobel …

Toxicity Of Zinc Oxide And Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles To Mesquite, Jose Angel Hernandez Viezcas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The impact of metal nanoparticles (NPs) in biological systems is still not well understood. Little is known about the response of plants, the first trophic level, to NP exposure; consequently, their possible role on the fate and transport of NPs in ecosystems is unknown. The aim of this research was to determine the response of mesquite (Prosopis juliflora-velutina), a native desert plant, to ZnO and CeO2 (nanoceria) NPs. Mesquite seedlings were grown for 15 days in hydroponics with of ZnO (10 nm) and CeO2 NPs (10 nm) at concentrations varying from 500 to 4000 mg L-1. In the present study, …

Characterizing The Deformation Of Reservoirs Using Interferometry, Gravity, And Seismic Analyses, Cara Schiek

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this Dissertation, I characterize how reservoirs deform using surface and subsurface techniques. The surface technique I employ is radar interferometry, also known as InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar). The subsurface analyses I explore include gravity modeling and seismic techniques consisting of determining earthquake locations from a small-temporary seismic network of six seismometers. These techniques were used in two different projects to determine how reservoirs deform in the subsurface and how this deformation relates to its remotely sensed surface deformation.

The first project uses InSAR to determine land subsidence in the Mimbres basin near Deming, NM. The land subsidence measurements …

Multiplicative Riesz Decomposition On The Ring Of Matrices Over A Totally Ordered Field, Julio Cesar Urenda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Riesz Decomposition Theorem for lattice ordered groups asserts that when G is an l-group and when a nonnegative element a is bounded by a product of nonnegative elements b1,...,bn, then a can be decomposed into a product of nonnegative elements b'1,...,b'n, i.e., a = b'1·...·b' n, with the property that b'i ≤ bi for any i = 1,...,n. In this work we characterize all nonnegative matrices for which this decomposition is possible with respect to matrix multiplication. In addition, we show that this result can be applied to ordered semigroups.

Taste Of Dirt, Brianna Lynn Heisey

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Taste of Dirt is a novel about a young female wildland fire fighter and her travels across the western U.S with her fire crew. The forest, the open road, the animals, and the men and women she meets along the way help her overcome her fears and re-discover her place in nature. This Thesis is approximately 240 pages and includes a dedication, acknowledgements, a table of contents, a 25 page introduction, 16 complete chapters and a curriculeam vita. Enjoy.

Zinc And Copper Isotopes As Tracers Of Anthropogenic Contamination In A Sediment Core From An Urban Lake, Anita Thapalia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Concentration data alone are often insufficient to resolve metal sources. This study applies stable Zn and Cu isotopes to fingerprint and track the sources of these metals in a sediment core from Lake Ballinger near Seattle, Washington, USA. The base of the Lake Ballinger core pre-dates settlement in the region, while the upper sections record the impact of atmospheric emissions from the nearby Tacoma smelter, as well as Cu and Zn inputs from urban sources. δ⁶⁶Zn and δ⁶⁵Cu varied by 0.42 / and 0.29 /, respectively, over the >300 year core record. Isotopic changes were correlated …

Using Chromium Stable Isotopes To Monitor Chromium Reactive Transport: Oxidation Experiments And Field Studies, Alejandro Villalobos Aragon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Chromium (Cr) is a common contaminant found at a number of sites globally. Cr sources can be either anthropogenic or natural. Cr occurs in nature in two valences, with Cr(VI) being carcinogenic, more toxic and mobile than Cr(III). Reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) is a common remediation strategy, but monitoring Cr reduction using only concentration and speciation analyses is a difficult endeavor because concentrations can be affected by dilution and advection in addition to reduction. Cr isotopes are fractionated during reduction processes, so monitoring isotopic changes in Cr may be a faster and more effective way to monitor reduction. This …

Electroweak Scale Neutrinos, Enrique Diaz-Mendez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

We study a model of neutrino mass generation at the Electroweak scale (EW), where Lepton number is broken by the vacuum expectation value of a Standard Model singlet complex scalar field. No energy scales higher than the EW scale are introduced in the model and neutrinos can still get their tiny masses through the general seesaw mechanism. The neutrino Yukawa couplings need not be more suppressed than that of the electron. As part of our results we present the branching ratios of the possible Higgs decays, which should be detectable at near future colliders.

Suswa Volcano, Kenya Rift: Evidence Of Magma Mixing, Na-F Complexing And Eruptions Triggered By Recharge, Vanessa Veronica Espejel Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Cenozoic East African rift system (EARS) is a sequence of grabens, intraplate transforms, accommodation zones, and abundant magmatism. The Central Kenya Peralkaline Province (CKPP) includes a variety of volcanic rocks -trachyte, pantellerite, comendite, phonolite, trachy-basalt, basaltic trachy-andesite, and basalt- which erupted from volcanoes including: Mount Kenya; Eburru and the Greater Olkaria volcanic complexes; Longonot, Menengai, and Suswa volcanoes; and Ndabibi, Elmenteita, and Tandamara mafic volcanic fields. Only two of the volcanoes, Mount Kenya (on the flank of the central graben) and Suswa (the southernmost of the CKPP volcanoes), have phonolites as part of their assemblage.

The evolution of Suswa …

Examples Of Hyperbolic Knots With Distance 3 Toroidal Surgeries In The 3-Sphere, Cesar Garza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

By the work of Thurston, any surgery on a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere produces a hyperbolic 3-manifold except in at most finitely many cases. So far, the figure-8 knot seems to be the best candidate for a hyperbolic knot with the most (8) non-trivial exceptional surgeries. In recent years, much progress has been made in the classification of hyperbolic knots admitting more than one exceptional toroidal surgery. In fact, such classification is known for toroidal surgeries with distance at least 4.

We give a classification of hyperbolic knots in $S^3$ admitting two toroidal surgeries at distance 3, whose slopes …

Insight Into The Physics Of Rupture: Dynamic Triggering Seismicity, Hector Gonzalez-Huizar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Seismic waves can trigger earthquakes and tremor at large distances from the causable event. Dynamic triggering occurs when the surface waves from large earthquakes change the stresses conditions on previously overstressed faults, promoting failure. To understand the causative stresses and environments behind dynamic triggering, we model the change in the stress field that the passing of Rayleigh and Love waves cause on a fault plane of arbitrary orientation relative to the direction of propagation of the waves, and apply a Coulomb failure criterion to calculate the potential of these stress changes to trigger seismicity. We apply our model to three …

Exponential Dichotomy Of Ode's, Nada Farid Al-Hanna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I present an elementary Functional Analytic proof of the roughness of Exponential Dichotomy of Ordinary Differential Equations (with exponential growth) on an arbitrary Banach Space.

Two-Dimensional Gravity Modeling Of The Rattlesnake Springs Watershed, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, Nikolay D. Boykov

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A series of non-invasive geophysical investigations at the Rattlesnake Springs part of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, were performed in an effort to better delineate the watershed of the springs. The goal of this project is to determine possible locations of fractures and faults that may control the distribution of groundwater that feeds Rattlesnake Springs. Once the water flow paths are identified, the park will be able to better protect Rattlesnake Springs from environmental hazards, such as oil and gas drilling, as well as from upstream water development. As part of this effort I conducted a precision gravity survey …

An Optimization Approach For The Cascade Vulnerability Problem, Christian Servin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In inter-connected systems, where several computers share information with each other, problems may arise when inappropriate information starts to flow through. For example, let us consider a simple scenario of a university composed of three departments: payroll, financial aid, and academic services. We know that the payroll department deals with sensitive information, such as social security numbers, dates of birth, amounts of wages, etc. The financial aid department may use information that payroll owns. Similarly, the academic department communicates with the financial aid department. An intruder can take advantage of this network connectivity and create an inappropriate flow of information …

Experimental Study Of The Response Of Semiconductor Detectors For Edxrf Analysis., Sunil Kumar Valaparla

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This present work relates to the study and characterization of the response function of an energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometer. The problems of energy, efficiency and resolution calibration of the system operating in the energy (5-60 keV) range are discussed. We present the operation characteristics of the portable pyro-electric x-ray generator (COOL-X) and the application of the calibrated response spectrum in the elemental analysis using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF).

We study the response of the Si(Li)-Pin XR-100CR semiconductor detector to low energy photons. The photopeak efficiency was determined experimentally by using radioisotopes and compared against a theoretical efficiency curve. The efficiency for gamma …