Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Tectonic Evolution Of The West-Central Portion Of The Newton Window, North Carolina Inner Piedmont: Timing And Implications For The Emplacement Of The Paleozoic Vale Charnockite, Walker Top Granite, And Mafic Complexes, Heather Elizabeth Byars

Masters Theses

Detailed geologic mapping of portions of the Banoak, Reepsville, Lincolnton West, and Cherryville 7.5-minute quadrangles has confirmed the easternmost exposure of the Brindle Creek fault, which frames the Newton window. The Brindle Creek fault is a terrane boundary that separates the overlying Siluro-Devonian assemblage of metasedimentary rocks and Devonian-Mississippian anatectic plutons of the Cat Square terrane from the Neoproterozoic(?)-Ordovician metasedimentary and igneous rocks of the Tugaloo terrane. Structures related to six deformational events have been identified in this portion of the Inner Piedmont. The Brindle Creek fault has been folded multiple times, resulting in a sinuous outcrop pattern and the …

Underwater Observation And Habitat Utilization Of Three Rare Darters (Etheostoma Cinereum, Percina Burtoni, And Percina Williamsi) In The Little River, Blount County, Tennessee, Robert Trenton Jett

Masters Theses

The Little River in Blount County is home to one of the richest darter faunas in East Tennessee. Increases in agriculture and development on several tributaries and the main stem of the Little River are suspected as causes for reduced abundance in fish populations. Earlier research on the Little River identified three species, Etheostoma cinereum (ashy darter), Percina burtoni (blotchside logperch), and P. williamsi (sickle darter), as having low densities. From May – October 2009, snorkel observations were made at 16 predetermined sites along the mainstem of the river to determine abundance and habitat association of these target species, as …

Enterprise Users And Web Search Behavior, April Ann Lewis

Masters Theses

This thesis describes analysis of user web query behavior associated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Enterprise Search System (Hereafter, ORNL Intranet). The ORNL Intranet provides users a means to search all kinds of data stores for relevant business and research information using a single query. The Global Intranet Trends for 2010 Report suggests the biggest current obstacle for corporate intranets is “findability and Siloed content”. Intranets differ from internets in the way they create, control, and share content which can make it often difficult and sometimes impossible for users to find information. Stenmark (2006) first noted studies of corporate …

Digital Aperture Photometry Utilizing Growth Curves, William Chandler Overcast

Masters Theses

Point source extraction is critical to proper analysis of images containing point sources obtained by focal plane array cameras. Two popular methods of extracting the intensity of a point source are aperture photometry and point spread function fitting. Digital aperture photometry encompasses procedures utilized to extract the intensity of an imaged point source. It has been used by astronomers in various forms for calculating stellar brightness. It is also useful for doing analysis of data associated with other unresolved radiating objects. The various aperture photometry methods include the two-aperture method, aperture correction, and growth curve method.

The growth curve method …

Comparative Ecophysiology Of American Chestnut Under Different Planting Treatments On Reclaimed Mine Sites, Christopher Ryan Miller

Masters Theses

American chestnut was once an abundant species that dominated the Eastern U.S. deciduous forests. Although this species is currently functionally extinct due to the chestnut blight, researchers are working on blight-resistant hybrids in hopes of restoring the species. As one potential vector for chestnut reintroduction and dispersal, the reclamation of mine sites are being considered. Recent research has found that reforestation efforts on these reclaimed mine sites provide productive tree growth while also complying with mine-reclamation laws. Understanding how American chestnut performs physiologically on mine sites will aid in the restoration of this species and reclamation of mine sites.

The …

The Origins Of Mathematical Societies And Journals, Eric S. Savage

Masters Theses

We investigate the origins of mathematical societies and journals. We argue that the origins of today’s professional societies and journals have their roots in the informal gatherings of mathematicians in 17th century Italy, France, and England. The small gatherings in these nations began as academies and after gaining government recognition and support, they became the ancestors of the professional societies that exist today. We provide a brief background on the influences of the Renaissance and Reformation before discussing the formation of mathematical academies in each country.

An Investigation Of Gas Bubble Generation And Measurement In Water And Mercury, Stuart A Walker

Masters Theses

The pressure increase attributed to the energy deposition in the liquid metal target of the Spallation Neutron Source results in cavitation and pitting erosion of the target pressure boundary. Introducing compressibility in the form of small gas bubbles will extend the lifetime of the target vessel. The pressure rise caused by the beam energy deposition occurs in one microsecond, which encourages use of bubbles of radius less than 20 microns, such that the bubble response to pressure change is adequately fast. Gas volume fraction near 0.5% is sufficient to accommodate the mercury volumetric expansion and reduce the pressure rise. Bubble …

Seismic Interpretation And Reservoir Characterization Of The Middle Frio Formation In The Stratton Field Gulf Coast Basin Of South Texas Using Three-Dimensional Seismic And Well Log Data, Uchenna H. Aboaja

Masters Theses

"The Stratton field is a large mature gas field located between Nueces County and Kleberg County in the northwest Gulf Coast Basin of south Texas. The Oligocene middle Frio Formation is one of the major progradational units within the Stratton field. It is characterized by rapid deposition and high subsidence rates that create complex internal facies architecture. The reservoir facies architecture of the middle Frio Formation is described as channel-fill deposits, crevasses-splay deposits, and floodplain mudstones. Previous two-dimensional seismic studies indicate some level of compartmentalization. Three-dimensional seismic and well log data provided by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the …

Laryngeal Apparatus And Call Structure In North American Hylids, Barbara Ann Catherine Fears

Masters Theses

"Although the ecological implications and structure of frog calls have been the subject of much study, little is known about the association between the laryngeal apparatus morphology and call structure in North American hylids. In this study linear measurements of the laryngeal apparatus were captured and compared to the call structures of thirteen species of North American hylids. Species examined included: Pseudacris crucifer, P. triseriata, P. ocularis, Acris crepitans blanchardi, Hyla avivoca, H. cinerea, H. gratiosa, H. chrysoscelis, H. versicolor, H. squirella, H. femoralis, H. arenicolor, and H. eximia. Six homologous landmark points were identified, and the lengths between them …

2-D Path Planning For Direct Laser Deposition Process, Swathi Routhu

Masters Theses

"The zigzag and offset path have been the two most popular path patterns for tool movement in machining process. Different from the traditional machining processes, the quality of parts produced by the metal deposition process is much more dependent upon the choice of deposition paths. Due to the nature of the metal deposition processes, various tool path patterns not only change the efficiency but also affect the deposition height, a critical quality for metal deposition process. This thesis presents the research conducted on calculating zigzag pattern to improve efficiency by minimizing the idle path. The deposition height is highly dependent …

Closed-Form Solutions To Discrete-Time Portfolio Optimization Problems, Mathias Christian Goeggel

Masters Theses

"In this work, we study some discrete time portfolio optimization problems. After a brief introduction of the corresponding continuous time models, we introduce the discrete time financial market model. The change in asset prices is modeled in contrast to the continuous time market by stochastic difference equations. We provide solutions for these stochastic difference equations. Then we introduce the discrete time risk-measure and the portfolio optimization problems. We provide closed form solutions to the discrete time problems. The main contribution of this thesis are the closed form solutions to the discrete time portfolio models. For simulation purposes the discrete time …

An Artificial Life Approach To Evolutionary Computation: From Mobile Cellular Algorithms To Artificial Ecosystems, Shivakar Vulli

Masters Theses

"This thesis presents a new class of evolutionary algorithms called mobile cellular evolutionary algorithms (mcEAs). These algorithms are characterized by individuals moving around on a spatial population structure. As a primary objective, this thesis aims to show that by controlling the population density and mobility in mcEAs, it is possible to achieve much better control over the rate of convergence than what is already possible in existing cellular EAs. Using the observations and results from this investigation into selection pressure in mcEAs, a general architecture for developing agent-based evolutionary algorithms called Artificial Ecosystems (AES) is presented. A simple agent-based EA …

Minimize End-To-End Delay Through Cross-Layer Optimization In Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks, Yibo Xu

Masters Theses

"End-to-end delay plays a very important role in wireless sensor networks. It refers to the total time taken for a single packet to be transmitted across a network from source to destination. There are many factors could affect the end-to-end delay, among them the routing path and the interference level along the path are the two basic elements that could have significant influence on the result of the end-to-end delay. This thesis presents a transmission scheduling scheme that minimizes the end-to-end delay when the node topology is given. The transmission scheduling scheme is designed based on integer linear programming and …

Multi Axis Slicing For Rapid Prototyping, Divya Kanakanala

Masters Theses

"With multi-axis capability, direct laser deposition process can produce a metal part without the usage of support structures. In order to fully utilize such a capability, a slicing method for multi-axis metal deposition process is discussed. Using the geometry information of adjacent layers, the slicing direction and layer thickness can be changed as needed. A hierarchy structure is designed to manage the topological information which is used to determine the slicing sequence. The parallel slicing process is studied to build hollow type structure. With such a character, the hole like feature can be deposited directly to save the required machining …

Impact Of Management Status, Gender, And Level Of Project Involvement On Corporate Governance In A Role-Based Enterprise Portal Environment, Daniel Augusto Pereira Brás Sequeira

Masters Theses

"The underlying objective of this research project is to investigate the impact of management status, gender, and level of project involvement on corporate governance in a role-based enterprise portal environment. This is achieved through a case study which included the development of a role-based enterprise portal site prototype assessed through surveys targeted at different stakeholders at the case company. Six hypotheses were formulated addressing the core research question. The outcomes of the hypotheses testing suggest employees' perceptions of role-based enterprise portal's effectiveness, usability, and corporate identity design are, in general, not influenced by the employees' management role, gender, and project …

Intelligent Computational Argumentation For Evaluating Performance Scores In Multi-Criteria Decision Making, Rubal Wanchoo

Masters Theses

"Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a discipline aimed at assisting multiple stakeholders in contemplating a decision paradigm in an uncertain environment. The decision analysis to be performed involves numerous alternative positions assessed under varied criterion. A performance score is assigned for each alternative in terms of every criterion and it represents satisfaction of the criteria by that alternative. In a collaborative decision making environment, performance scores are either obtained when a consensus can be reached among stakeholders on a particular score or in some cases or controversial when stakeholders do not agree with each other about them. In the …

Water Analysis For Emerging Environmental Contaminants, Xiaoliang Cheng

Masters Theses

"The presence of emerging environmental contaminants in water bodies used either as drinking water or for recreational purpose has received considerable attention in the recent years. The emerging environmental contaminants can be defined as a wide range of chemicals that have been determined in the environment which may present serious health risks for humans. The occurrence of these contaminants indicate that both household and industrial chemicals have been introduced to water resources, a wide variety of chemicals, such as disinfection byproducts, pharmaceutical and personal care products and so on, have been detected at cetiain levels in either water bodies or …

Etherannotate: A Transparent Malware Analysis Tool For Integrating Dynamic And Static Examination, Joshua Michael Eads

Masters Theses

"Software security researchers commonly reverse engineer and analyze current malicious software (malware) to determine what the latest techniques malicious attackers are utilizing and how to protect computer systems from attack. The most common analysis methods involve examining how the program behaves during execution and interpreting its machine-level instructions. However, modern malicious applications use advanced anti-debugger, anti-virtualization, and code packing techniques to obfuscate the malware's true activities and divert security analysts. Malware analysts currently do not have a simple method for tracing malicious code activity at the instruction-level in a highly undetectable environment. There also lacks a simple method for combining …

Inverse Limits With Upper Semi-Continuous Set Valued Bonding Functions: An Example, Christopher David Jacobsen

Masters Theses

"While there is a wealth of information pertaining to inverse limits with single valued bonding maps, comparatively little is known about inverse limits with upper semi-continuous set valued bonding functions. In order to add somewhat to the communal knowledge on the subject, this paper provides an example of an inverse limit with a single upper semi-continuous set valued bonding function. It is then shown that the space is a continuum, and its structure is examined via its arc components and through various of its properties, such as dimension and decomposability"--Abstract, page iii.

Degradation Of Organic Matter In Water In The Presence Of Catalyst And Uv Radiation, Bimali Bandaranayake

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Nanoporous High Surface Area Silicas With Chelating Groups For Heavy Metal Ion Adsorption From Aqueous Solution, Kothalawalage Nuwan Kothalawala

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Ditopic Dithiophosphonates And Their Related Rotaxanes, Robert Ray Baum Jr.

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Pilot Study In An Application Of Text Mining To Learning System Evaluation, Nitsawan Katerattanakul

Masters Theses

"Text mining concerns discovering and extracting knowledge from unstructured data. It transforms textual data into a usable, intelligible format that facilitates classifying documents, finding explicit relationships or associations between documents, and clustering documents into categories. Given a collection of survey comments evaluating the civil engineering learning system, text mining technique is applied to discover and extract knowledge from the comments. This research focuses on the study of a systematic way to apply a software tool, SAS Enterprise Miner, to the survey data. The purpose is to categorize the comments into different groups in an attempt to identify "major" concerns from …

Dynamic Ant Colony Optimization For Globally Optimizing Consumer Preferences, Pavitra Dhruvanarayana

Masters Theses

"Consumer preference for any product or product feature can be expressed in the form of a utility function. Many such utility functions form a part of a preference map, where each of these are expressed in terms of the attributes defining the product or the product feature. In order to optimize the design, it is required to optimize the overall utility function obtained by a mathematical combination of individual utility functions defined in the preference map. The objective of this research is to devise and implement an algorithm to optimize all the individual utility functions comprised in a preference map …

Analysis Of Eurycea Hybrid Zone In Eastern Missouri, Bonnie Jean Beasley

Masters Theses

"Evolutionary mechanisms are often difficult to observe in action because evolution generally works slowly over time. Hybrid zones provide a unique opportunity to observe many evolutionary processes, such as reinforcement, because of the rapid changes that tend to occur in these zones. Salamanders provide an ideal model for examining the rapid changes in populations that result from hybridization because many closely-related species lack reproductive barriers. In Missouri, a well-documented hybridization zone exists among the two subspecies Eurycea longicauda longicauda (long-tailed salamander) and E. L. melanopleura (dark-sided salamander). These salamanders inhabit caves, limestone creek beds, and abandoned mine shafts. A closely …

Contribution-Based Priority Assessment In A Web-Based Intelligent Argumentation Network For Collaborative Software Development, Maithili Satyavolu

Masters Theses

"Decision making is an important aspect of the collaborative software development process which usually involves complex process of conflict resolution. Stakeholders approach decision making process from multiple perspectives and their priorities play a vital role in it. The priority assessment methods used in the argumentation process so far are usually static. Priorities remain constant throughout the decision making process. In order to make the collaborative system more closely replicate real-world scenarios, this work incorporates dynamic priority assessment into a web-based collaborative system which is based on intelligent computational argumentation. It evaluates priorities dynamically for each cycle of decision process based …

Event Detection From Click-Through Data Via Query Clustering, Prabhu Kumar Angajala

Masters Theses

"The web is an index of real-world events and lot of knowledge can be mined from the web resources and their derivatives. Event detection is one recent research topic triggered from the domain of web data mining with the increasing popularity of search engines. In the visitor-centric approach, the click-through data generated by the web search engines is the start up resource with the intuition: often such data is event-driven. In this thesis, a retrospective algorithm is proposed to detect such real-world events from the click-through data. This approach differs from the existing work as it: (i) considers the click-through …

Content Based Image Retrieval For Bio-Medical Images, Vikas Nahar

Masters Theses

"Content Based Image Retrieval System (CBIR) is used to retrieve images similar to the query image. These systems have a wide range of applications in various fields. Medical subject headings, key words, and bibliographic references can be augmented with the images present within the articles to help clinicians to potentially improve the relevance of articles found in the querying process. In this research, image feature analysis and classification techniques are explored to differentiate images found in biomedical articles which have been categorized based on modality and utility. Examples of features examined in this research include: features based on different histograms …

Comparing The Chelating Abilities Of N-Acetylcysteine And N-Acetylcysteine Amide In Vitro For Lead Poisoning Treatment, Weiqing Chen

Masters Theses

"Lead poisoning is a perennial and serious health problem around the world. The daily widespread use of lead has dramatically increased the degree and longevity of its exposure to humans, exacerbating the task of lead poisoning treatment. Lead exerts adverse effects on cardiovascular, central nervous, renal, gastrointestinal, and reproductive systems. The common treatment for lead poisoning is chelation therapy. Chelators were proposed to treat lead poisoning a very long time ago. However, chelators have severe side effects that could cause more problems, in addition to lead poisoning. Therefore, another group of drugs has been suggested --- antioxidants. This type of …

Calcium Carbonate Precipitation Mechanisms And Geochemical Analysis Of Particulate Material Found Within The Waters Of Maramec Spring, St. James, Missouri, Kyle Steven Rybacki

Masters Theses

"The purpose of the present study is to determine whether a mineral phase is precipitating from solution in the natural Maramec Spring system giving the spring water a milky blue color, to identify the mineral phase, and to investigate potential mechanisms for inducing precipitation. Maramec Spring is a first-order magnitude spring located 11 km southeast of St. James, Missouri. The water that expels from Maramec Spring varies between being near saturation, but undersaturated in calcium, with respect to calcite (saturation index of 0.994 mg/L). Moving downstream, away from the conduit, the spring waters increase in pH and temperature. Eh is …