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Title: A PARAMETRIC STUDY OF THE THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF DOUBLE SKIN FACADES AT DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS USING ANNUAL ENERGY SIMULATION
Creator: Pekdemir, Emir Aykut
Date: 2011-11-28, 2011-12
Description: While Double Skin Façades [DSF] are considered one of the advanced techniques of designing energy efficient buildings, the decision to...
Show moreWhile Double Skin Façades [DSF] are considered one of the advanced techniques of designing energy efficient buildings, the decision to implement a DSF is usually driven by aesthetics. The project owners and unspecialized architects generally lack the knowledge of which types of DSFs are applicable in different climate zones. In some applications, DSF designs are increasing the energy costs of buildings due to incorrect assumptions during the system selection process. This research aims to come up with result patterns to show which types of DSFs are applicable in each American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers [ASHRAE] climate zone to guide project owners and unspecialized architects during their decision making process, when they choose to design a DSF. Using Building Energy Modeling [BEM] software, various types of DSFs are analyzed at different locations. The thermal performance of the DSF is determined by comparing the building energy use data of a generic office building. The BEM tool chosen to run the analysis is Virtual Environment by Integrated Environmental Solutions [IESVE]. The different types of DSFs are created following a set of parameters such as stratification type, permissibility of airflow, and width of interstitial space. The weather data for different locations is obtained from U.S. Department of Energy [DOE] website. Although there has been much research done regarding the thermal performance of DSFs, there is a significant gap in terms of parametric and location based evaluation. Moreover, previous research tend to focus on a very specific function or type of DSF, while this study aims to create a general guide for practitioners in the decision making level of the building construction industry.
M.S. in Civil Engineering, December 2011
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Title: NEW CLASS OF EMBEDDED SPACE TIME BLOCK CODE FOR MIMO WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Creator: Norouzi, Mandana
Date: 2015, 2015-12
Description: In this thesis a new class of space time block codes is proposed. Space time code is one solution for the multipath fading communication...
Show moreIn this thesis a new class of space time block codes is proposed. Space time code is one solution for the multipath fading communication systems that limit the reliability and data rate of the communication link. By organizing multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver, multipath fading can be turned into an advantage, allowing for greater reliability and higher data rates than would otherwise be possible. Without any extra cost of bandwidth, rate and reliability benefits can be achieved. Therefore, having multiple antenna technology is a foundation of current and future wireless systems. In space time coding information, symbols are encoded across two dimensions, the spatial dimension and the time dimension. Information that is transmitted corresponds to multiple antennas at the transmitter and to multiple signaling intervals. In this thesis, we consider the problem of designing a new class of linear space time block codes, in which the information symbols are linearly combined to form a twodimensional code matrix, wherein the rows of the code word matrix correspond to transmission across multiple antennas, and the columns of the matrix correspond to transmission in different time slots. The proposed space time code matrix is achieved based on eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) of the circulant, normal matrix and inverse fast Fourier transform definition (IFFT). These classes of codes have better performance with respect to symbolerror rate (SER) in comparison with other proposed linear space time code matrices in the literature. The proposed code has full rate and embedded diversity. The concept of embedded diversity has been defined in this research. According to that definition ourdesign supports embedded diversity and also has less decoding complexity at the receiver side. The proposed code has been applied to a relay network where nodes do not have four transmit antennas. In this thesis, performance of the code has also been evaluated when the receiver must rely on a noisy, imperfect, estimate of the channel. Channel estimation has been applied based on pilot sequence transmission. A group decodable full rate and full diversity space time block code also has been proposed for two transmit antennas and four time slots, which is applicable to the LTE-Advanced system. This new design also provides full diversity and full rate.
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, December 2015
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Title: AFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION: THE ROLE OF COUPLES’ EMOTIONS IN CARDIAC PATIENT HEALTH OUTCOMES
Creator: Pieczynski, Jessica
Date: 2011-12-12, 2011-12
Description: Research has found emotional expression is related to relationship satisfaction and cardiac health. The association between emotional...
Show moreResearch has found emotional expression is related to relationship satisfaction and cardiac health. The association between emotional expression and these outcomes within the context of couple interactions has not been studied. This study examined the role that positive and negative affect have on the relationship satisfaction and cardiac health of couples where one individual has a cardiac illness. Forty four couples were enrolled in the study and emotional expression was coded using naïve raters. The use of naïve raters was found to be reliable for measuring general emotional constructs, but not specific emotions. The results indicated that Empathic Engagement was associated with cardiac patient mental health and physical health, but did not significantly mediate the association between relationship satisfaction and mental health. Partners’ expression of Hostility and Affection were associated with patients’ relationship satisfaction. These results underscore the importance of targeting couples communication for cardiac interventions.
M.S. in Psychology, December 2011
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Title: ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN SCHEDULING UNITS AND ITS EFFECTS ON CONSTRUCTION DELAY
Creator: Nayak, Shruti
Date: 2011-07-14, 2011-07
Description: n/a
M.S. in Civil Engineering, July 2011

Title: Leader-Member Exchange as A Mediator Between Negative Affectivity and Work-Family Conflict
Creator: Pugliese, Stephanie
Date: 2012-04-11, 2012-05
Description: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between work-family conflict, negative affectivity, and leader-member exchange....
Show moreThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between work-family conflict, negative affectivity, and leader-member exchange. Survey data was collected from a sample of union employees (n = 358). As hypothesized, leader-member exchange significantly mediated the relationship between negative affectivity and work interfering with family conflict (WIF). Contrary to prediction, leader-member exchange did not mediate the relationship between negative affectivity and family interfering with work conflict (FIW). Discussion of results and implications for practice are provided. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of leaders in helping employees manage work-family conflict.
M.S. in Psychology, May 2012
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Title: EFFECT OF ABUSIVE STORAGE CONDITIONS ON THE SUBSEQUENT INACTIVATION OF SALMONELLA ON THE SURFACES OF BLACK PEPPERCORNS BY ATMOSPHERE PRESSURE PLASMA
Creator: Sun, Shengqian
Date: 2013-04-30, 2013-05
Description: Outbreaks of salmonellosis associated with low moisture foods have raised public concerns. Meanwhile, fulfillment of consumers’ demand for...
Show moreOutbreaks of salmonellosis associated with low moisture foods have raised public concerns. Meanwhile, fulfillment of consumers’ demand for safety and wish quality on the fresh products has increased the interest of the food industry to adopt innovative processes for food decontamination and preservation. The FDA Food Code (2005) requires a 5-log bacterial reduction for a product to be labeled pasteurized. Compared to thermal processing, some emerging technologies rely on physical and chemical processes, such as high hydrostatic pressure, ionizing radiation, ultra-sound, pulsed electric fields, ultraviolet radiation and atmosphere pressure plasma (APP) have potential to decontaminate microorganisms at ambient temperature or sub-lethal temperature. APP of these treatments is one of the more desirable microbial inactivation technologies. The purpose of this research was to study the effect of abusive storage conditions on the subsequent inactivation of Salmonella on the surfaces of black peppercorns by APP. This was achieved by investigating the survival of Salmonella cocktails: Oranienburg, Tennessee, Anatum and Enteritidis under storage condition of 25°C, 33% RH; 25°C, 97% RH; and, 37°C, 33% RH for 10 days and additionally at 25°C, 33% RH for 1 and 30 days. Results showed that Salmonella populations decreased significantly (p<0.05) with respect to the treatment time. Approximately a 4.5 to 5.5 log reduction in population was achieved after 60 to 80 s treatment after storage at abusive condition. This study also determined that rate of destruction did not differ (p>0.05) with respect to the prior storage temperature and RH as well as storage time. The storage condition did not significantly (p>0.05) impacted the microbial inactivation by APP. xi xii Based on the previous work, the equipment was adding moisture to investigate the effect of the destruction of Salmonella cocktails that had been previously stored under the conditions of 25°C, 33% RH by APP with the second gas Air. The results showed that approximately a 2.5 to 3.5 log reduction in population was achieved after 60 to 80 s treatment. The reason might be that the moisture consumed energy to split H2O molecules into H2, O2 & O3 while plasma generated. These findings help advance our understanding of APP has the potential to decontaminate Salmonella on the surfaces of black peppercorns.
M.S. in Food Safety and Technology, May 2013
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Title: DEVELOPMENT OF A DIGITAL HUMAN BRAIN ATLAS
Creator: Zhang, Shengwei
Date: 2013, 2013-05
Description: A digital human brain atlas plays a crucial role in brain mapping for the neuroimaging community. Traditionally, a digital brain atlas...
Show moreA digital human brain atlas plays a crucial role in brain mapping for the neuroimaging community. Traditionally, a digital brain atlas contains anatomical information, while structural properties are not presented. Recent development of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) allows for unique acquisition of information regarding the microstructure of brain tissue. The accuracy of the spatial normalization and subsequent comparisons is contingent upon the use of a DTI template representative of the micro-architecture of the human brain. The previously developed “IIT DTI brain template” was produced in ICBM-152 space. However, low-dimensional registration was used, leading to a mismatch of DTI information across subjects and a mismatch of the anatomy in the IIT and ICBM-152 templates. In this thesis, a significantly improved DTI brain template in ICBM-152 space was developed. The accuracy of spatial normalization in DTI data depends on the quality of data, the effectiveness of the registration technique, and the characteristics of the DTI brain template. Both study-specific and standardized human brain DTI templates exist. The role of both types of templates in spatial normalization warrants further investigation. In this thesis, the effect of standardized and study-specific human brain DTI templates on the accuracy of spatial normalization was investigated. Conventional atlas-based white matter (WM) segmentation is widely used for automated selection of ROI on DTI investigations. However, it suffers from misregistration and inaccurate spatial transformation across subjects. Skeletonized atlasbased segmentation was recently adopted in several DTI studies. However, the use of xiii skeletonized atlas-based segmentation in studies of WM ROIs has not yet been evaluated. In this thesis, the effects of conventional and skeletonized atlas-based segmentation on DTI investigations of WM ROIs were compared. An accurate digital human brain atlas containing different types of high quality MRI data and anatomical labels for both WM and gray matter (GM) in standardized space is desirable for a variety of brain imaging studies. The IIT2 DTI template was developed recently in ICBM-152 space. In this thesis, the quality of the IIT2 template was further enhanced. Furthermore, this publicly available resource was extended into a comprehensive GM atlas of the human brain.
PH.D in Biomedical Engineering, May 2013
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Title: MODELING AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF WIND TURBINE PERFORMANCE IN RAINY CONDITIONS USING A MULTIPHASE FLOW APPROACH
Creator: Cai, Ming
Date: 2012-04-25, 2012-05
Description: Wind energy is becoming one of the key renewable sources of energy in the United States and the world due to its environmental and economic...
Show moreWind energy is becoming one of the key renewable sources of energy in the United States and the world due to its environmental and economic advantages and absence of water requirements. The performance of a wind turbine is largely affected by surrounding environments and the total power output of a wind farm is closely related to meteorological phenomena such as rain and icing. Investigating the effects of these phenomena is necessary to improve the design and performance of the wind turbines. In this research, we focused on the study of wind turbine performance in rainy conditions as the stepping stone to the future study of icing. We applied Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology to investigate the impact of rain on wind turbines. A novel model coupling the Lagrangian method with the Eulerian method was developed. The rain droplet was tracked in the Lagrangian frame due to its discrete nature, and the film formed on the wind turbine was simulated with the Eulerian Volume of Fluid Model (VOF). The performance loss and impact on the flow field were also studied. Numerical studies have been conducted on 2-Dimensional S809 airfoils and 3- Dimensional Horizontal Axial Wind Turbines (HAWT). The performance loss under heavy rain conditions was observed and the flow field was analyzed. The impact of air moisture content on wind turbine performance was also studied using our 3-D model. Due to the lack of experimental data on wind turbine performance under heavy rain conditions, our coupled two phase flow model was applied to a NACA 64-210 airfoil to compare with the experimental data in rainy conditions. Simulation results using our model showed good agreement with the experimental data.
M.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, May 2012
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Title: CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TRACKING INVENTORY CONTROL SYSTEM USING SMART BLUETOOTH/NFC TRACKING DEVICES
Creator: Moiitat, Amir Ghasem
Date: 2016, 2016-05
Description: Inventory control on a construction site is typically performed by an individual who regularly visits the storage area, directs personnel to...
Show moreInventory control on a construction site is typically performed by an individual who regularly visits the storage area, directs personnel to forward components to the construction area, and reports to the site office about the quantities remaining in the storage area. Automating this process is expected to reduce mistakes and save significant time. In this study, the potential use of Bluetooth technology is investigated in construction inventory control as a tracking device. Commercial Bluetooth tracking devices were examined to understand the different devices’ capabilities and to extract usable attributes and characteristics about each brand. After an extensive examination of several brands, one of the commercial Bluetooth tracking devices with the most suitable capabilities was chosen for this study. The Android smartphone was selected to act as a scanner in the storage area and a basic workflow was designed around the Android smartphone and the Bluetooth tracking device. In addition, to improve the performance of the Bluetooth tracking device, it was paired with Near Field Communication (NFC) tags that expedited the material tracking process. The “hybrid” tracking device is introduced as the key element of the inventory control system and an Android smartphone is used as an in-house scanner that captures the tracking device’s information and sends it to a server for analysis. An automated inventory control system that is designed to use the proposed tracking device can contribute greatly to construction site productivity.
M.S. in Civil Engineering, May 2016
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Title: INCREASING METHANE STORAGE CAPACITY USING POROUS SOLID SORBENT
Creator: Wu, Xiaoqiao
Date: 2013, 2013-12
Description: In a pathway toward sustainable energy, natural gas is an excellent transitional fuel to displace coal, resulting in lower net carbon...
Show moreIn a pathway toward sustainable energy, natural gas is an excellent transitional fuel to displace coal, resulting in lower net carbon emissions. Thus natural gas is becoming one of the major resources of energy in near future. One of the key challenges to transport natural gas and use it in transportation industry, is how to store methane in a safe and cheap way. Adsorbed natural gas on porous material has been studied as a better storage method than compressed natural gas, because it requires the lower pressure (500 psig versus 3000 psig) and lower capital and maintenance costs. However, increasing methane storage capacity is still remaining as a major challenge. In the present work, different activated carbons were used and experimental methane adsorption and desorption runs have been conducted. Methane isotherm was obtained at 293.15 K at different pressures. Furthermore, the overall adsorption and desorption rate were calculated during adsorption and desorption procedures. The effect of the surface area and particle size distribution were also studied. After eight successive adsorption and desorption tests using activated carbons at different pressures, no change in the material capacity was observed. Our experimental results show that the adsorption capacity of activated carbon particles will be increased using smaller particles with wide particle size distribution. This is mainly due to accumulation of smaller particles in space between large particles which in turn increase total material available for adsorption in a specific volume.
M.S. in Chemical Engineering, December 2013
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Title: CLAIMS IN CONSTRUCTION: ANALYSES OF CLAIMS BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND GREEN/SUSTAINABLE BUILDING CONSTRUCTION
Creator: Tackey-otoo, Ebenezer
Date: 2014, 2014-07
Description: Construction professionals, irregardless of their experience, go through all these problems. These problems which in turn becomes disputes...
Show moreConstruction professionals, irregardless of their experience, go through all these problems. These problems which in turn becomes disputes arise from the various stages or phases in the construction process - the pre-design stage, the design stage, bidding/negotiating stage and the construction stage. The introduction of green/sustainable building construction has raised a lot of questions in the construction industry. Unlike the traditional building process, disputes in the green building construction process are not well known, with issues ranging from materials through to the certification process. This research seeks to analyze the different disputes that arise from both the traditional and green building processes and determine which process has more risk associated with it.
M.S. in Civil Engineering, July 2014
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Title: THE IMPACT OF TRUST ON LEADER EMPOWERING BEHAVIOR
Creator: Sternburgh, Angela M.
Date: 2011-04-22, 2011-05
Description: This study examined the relationship between trust and leader empowering behaviors across 250 matched pairs of leaders and employees in a...
Show moreThis study examined the relationship between trust and leader empowering behaviors across 250 matched pairs of leaders and employees in a Fortune 500 Midwestern U.S. company. The relationships between propensity to trust, trustworthiness, trust, a meta-perception of trust, and leader empowering behavior were examined. The goal of this study was to test the mediating role of trust and/or the metaperception of trust on the relationship between trustworthiness and leader empowering behavior. This study obtained both leader and employee ratings, which permitted the examination of both single source and multi source data. Results supported a partial mediation effect indicating that trust and the meta-perception of trust partially mediated the relationship between trustworthiness and leader empowering behavior. This study is important because previous research has predominantly focused on examining employee perceptions of trust, this was the first study to explore the meta-perception of trust, and this study transferred measures of leader empowering behaviors to more behaviorally based statements. Implications of this study are explored.
Ph.D. in Psychology, May 2011
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Title: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND SUBORDINATE STRESS: THE ROLE OF LEADER-SUBORDINATE DYAD GENDER COMPOSITION
Creator: Pinkus-huizenga, Elizabeth A.
Date: 2015, 2015-07
Description: This study was about the relations between transfonnationalleaders, job stressors, and gender dyad composition to indicate potential...
Show moreThis study was about the relations between transfonnationalleaders, job stressors, and gender dyad composition to indicate potential situations and pairings that will increase and decrease subordinate job stress. One hundred and sixteen leader and subordinate dyads from industrial and educational organizations responded to surveys. Leaders provided self-report on a transfonnationalleadership scale and subordinates reported their stress with leader, tasks, and job. Correlations and general linear models were used to test the study's hypotheses. Results showed that employees in industrial organizations compared to educational organizations experienced more stress with their leader. Additionally, the stress with leader and stress with task were highly, positively significant. Unfortunately, the hypotheses were not supported. Key Words: transfonnationalleadership; transfonnationalleader; gender dyad composition; job stress; subordinate stress; role conflict; role ambiguity; role overload
M.S. in Psychology, July 2015
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Title: BARRIERS FACED BY PARTIES TO A PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP (PPP) IN THE PRE-AGREEMENT PHASE
Creator: Thakkar, Rushit
Date: 2014, 2014-07
Description: Several infrastructure developments worldwide have been completed by public private partnerships (PPPs) with diverse results. PPP projects...
Show moreSeveral infrastructure developments worldwide have been completed by public private partnerships (PPPs) with diverse results. PPP projects enco unter a variety of barriers in the pre-agreement phase that may be serious enough for the cancellation of the project. This paper uses the literature to identify the most common PPP barriers, These barri ers are classified into six categories: (1) legal baniers (2) political baniers (3) social barriers (4) financial baniers (5) economic baniers (6) coordination barriers. The extent of the impact of these barriers was obtained by conducting a structured questionnaire survey that was administered to public owners in India and private consortia. The relative significance of the criteria within each barrier was statistically analyzed for internal consistency and reliability. The differences were evaluated by using the Mann Whitney U test between public owners and private consortia. The findings indicate that public owners and private consortia agree on the impact of all six aggregate barriers to PPP. Social barriers have the least impact, while financi al barriers have the highest impact on PPPs. Public owners and private consortia had statistic ally different views in only five of the 41 barriers considered in this study. Keywords. Public Private Partnership (PPP ), Public owners, Private consortia, Preagreement phase, Legal barriers , Political barriers, Social baniers, Financial barriers, Economic barriers, Coordination barriers , Aggregate PPP barrie rs, Questionnaire survey, Statistical analysis, Mann-Whitney U tests.
M.S. in Civil Engineering, July 2014
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Title: HIERARCHICAL SECURITY ARCHITECTURE FOR FUTURE NETWORKS
Creator: Pandirkar, Pravin C.
Date: 2012-07-16, 2012-07
Description: A new mixed-initiative hierarchical framework of humans and agents that is well suited to protecting computational infrastructures. The...
Show moreA new mixed-initiative hierarchical framework of humans and agents that is well suited to protecting computational infrastructures. The framework, Cooperative Infrastructure Defense (CID), is designed to rapidly adapt to new cyber attacks via swarming software agents while enabling humans to supervise the system at an appropriate level. We interpose a hierarchy of rational software agents between the swarm and the human supervisors to provide a channel for system guidance and feedback. Using various kinds of rationality actually turns false positives into beneficial forms of positive feedback and improves system performance. CID represents a revolutionary new way of looking at system control for cyber security. Traditionally, humans control the entire system assisted by automated tools and subsystems. In CID, agents share the decision-making power, handling most of the real-time portion autonomously but enabling human involvement at all levels. The human supervisor does not directly control the system rather humans exert supervisory influence sharing the initiative for action with their software agents. CID is designed to be a scalable, dynamic, and robust framework for securing increasingly complex computational infrastructures.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, July 2012
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Title: PRIORITY MECHANISM DESIGN FOR INCOMING TRAFFIC IN 4G LTE NETWORK
Creator: Desai, Niraj N.
Date: 2012-11-27, 2012-12
Description: Long Term Evolution (LTE) is currently being used for commercial networks and the same technology will also be used for Public Safety (PS)...
Show moreLong Term Evolution (LTE) is currently being used for commercial networks and the same technology will also be used for Public Safety (PS) applications. As a way to maximize network usage and also to allow PS users to share the commercial networks especially during emergency or disaster situations, PS users need to co-exist with commercial users in a shared network environment. To ensure proper assignment of resources in a network originated call scenario, priority mechanisms have been proposed in this report. Priority mechanism in terms of assignment of resources for the user plane, for scheduling of resources in the control plane, and for meeting Quality of Service (QoS) requirements have been discussed. To provide priority treatment, the use of a new parameter named Call Priority Number (CPN) generated by the Policy control and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) is proposed. This parameter signifies the priority of a call in terms of the caller priority, the callee priority and the priority of the application. For incoming calls, the functionality of providing priority mechanism for resource assignment using CPN is proposed to be in the Mobility Management Entity (MME). The functionality for scheduling resources in the control plane, for performing paging, for priority mechanism functionality that uses CPN and the implementation of using different paging cycles for the users based on their priority resides in the evolved NodeB (eNodeB). For managing the priority based on QoS, a mapping of the priority of applications served by LTE networks to the Differentiated Services has been proposed. The mapping can be implemented in the Packet data network Gate Way (PGW). The proposals are verified by simulation. The results show that the PS users are assigned the x required resources for the user plane, they get prioritized QoS treatment within the LTE network, and the PS users are given higher priority over the commercial users. As a result of the techniques proposed in this report, the time it takes to set up a call between PS users is reduced, the number of dropped calls for the PS user decrease, and the PS users have a faster access to network resources.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, December 2012
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Title: AUTOMATIC SUMMARIZATION OF CLINICAL ABSTRACTS FOR EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE
Creator: Summerscales, Rodney L.
Date: 2013, 2013-12
Description: The practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) encourages health professionals to make informed treatment decisions based on a careful analysis...
Show moreThe practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) encourages health professionals to make informed treatment decisions based on a careful analysis of current research. However, after caring for their patients, medical practitioners have little time to spend reading even a small fraction of the rapidly growing body of medical research literature. As a result, physicians must often rely on potentially outdated knowledge acquired in medical school. Systematic reviews of the literature exist for speci c clinical questions, but these must be manually created and updated as new research is published. Abstracts from well-written clinical research papers contain key information regarding the design and results of clinical trials. Unfortunately, the free text nature of abstracts makes it di cult for computer systems to use and time consuming for humans to read. I present a software system that reads abstracts from randomized controlled trials, extracts key clinical entities, computes the e ectiveness of the proposed interventions and compiles this information into machine readable and human readable summaries. This system uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques to extract the key clinical information describing the trial and its results. It extracts the names and sizes of treatment groups, population demographics, outcome measured in the trial and outcome results for each treatment group. Using the extracted outcome measurements, the system calculates key summary measures used by physicians when evaluating the e ectiveness of treatments. It computes absolute risk reduction (ARR) and number needed to treat (NNT) values complete with con dence intervals. The extracted information and computed statistics are automatically compiled into XML and HTML summaries that describe the details and results of the trial. xiii Extracting the necessary information needed to calculate these measures is not trivial. While there have been various approaches to generating summaries of medical research, this work has mostly focused on extracting trial characteristics (e.g. population demographics, intervention/outcome information). No one has attempted to extract all of the information needed, nor has anyone attempted to solve many of the tasks needed to reliably calculate the summary statistics.
PH.D in Computer Science, December 2013
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Title: ORGANIZATIONAL FLEXIBILITY IN CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES
Creator: Taghizadeh Khamesi, Hossein
Date: 2016, 2016-05
Description: Flexibility is a key factor for an organization survival in a changing environment. Considering the cyclical nature of construction demand,...
Show moreFlexibility is a key factor for an organization survival in a changing environment. Considering the cyclical nature of construction demand, organizational flexibility is of special importance in construction company management. Most previous studies tried to categorize the response strategies of construction contractors to business and environmental changes. However, there is gap in the literature about the dynamic effect of organizational flexibility on the growth and competitiveness in construction companies. The objective of this study is to investigate the organizational flexibility of top construction contractors in the U.S. Engineering News-Records (ENR) top 400 contractors lists were used to collect data for the 52-year period 1963-2015. Using the collected data, several analyses were performed to find the relationship between organizational flexibility and competitive success. This attempt did not indicate a distinct relationship between organizational flexibility and competitiveness. It was found however that organizational flexibility is affected by change in the economy and that it was linked to company expansion/contraction. It is concluded that organizational flexibility is an essential advantage for construction contractors. Those contractors that are consistently ranked in the top 400 contractors list respond well to economic changes by expanding and contracting. On the other hand, different size contractors respond to changes in the economy differently, based on their resources and the nature of their work. In addition, this study concluded that those contractors that seek high growth rates face more fluctuations in their growth path and need more flexibility in response to them.
M.S. in Civil Engineering, May 2016
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Title: Effect of Transformatinoal Leadership on Student Engagement, Reactions and Learning
Creator: Widlak, Izabela
Date: 2011-05-02, 2011-05
Description: 124 participants were recruited from thirteen undergraduate psychology courses and responded to online surveys over the course of a semester,...
Show more124 participants were recruited from thirteen undergraduate psychology courses and responded to online surveys over the course of a semester, rating their instructors' behaviors, their own behaviors and experience with their course. Results supported the hypothesized main effect of transformational leadership on students' class-engagement and satisfaction with a course. Additionally, student engagement mediated the relationship between the leadership style and satisfaction. Results also indicated that transformational leadership has an indirect effect of on two measures of student performance (final course grades and students' expected course grades) through student engagement. In conclusion, the findings of this research indicate the transformational leadership has a significant and positive role in engagement, satisfaction and learning, further supporting the value of examining instructor behavior as leader behavior.
M.S. in Psychology, May 2011
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Title: CONGESTION CONTROL AND PACKET REORDERING FOR MULTIPATH TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROTOCOL
Creator: Ghose, Nirnimesh
Date: 2012-04-20, 2012-05
Description: Modern devices are equipped with multiple network interfaces. Traditionally, only one of these is in use at any given time. However,...
Show moreModern devices are equipped with multiple network interfaces. Traditionally, only one of these is in use at any given time. However, simultaneous use of these mul- tiple interfaces will lead to better user experience. Support for this multi-interface scenario has led to the development of Multipath Transmission Control Protocol or MPTCP. MPTCP, as proposed by the IETF working group mptcp, allows a single data stream to be split across multiple paths. This has obvious benefits for reliability, and it can also lead to more efficient use of network resources. But a major problem in MPTCP is the congestion control and the eventual packet reordering at the desti- nation. Various techniques for congestion control for MPTCP have been given, but the packet reordering at the destination is not considered. Efficient packet reordering schemes can drastically improve the throughput for the MPTCP protocol. Therefore, in this work various available packet reordering techniques available for single path TCP are tested in the multipath situation. These algorithms are Duplicate Selective Acknowledgement (DSACK), Eifel and Forward Retransmission Timeout (F RTO). Various network topologies are simulated in a network simulator ns-3 and measure- ments are taken for various path characteristics to see which algorithm works best for the multipath scenario.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, May 2012
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