Theses and Dissertations

The role of the small rurban community will become increasingly prominent in future community development in the Northeastern United States. As technological improvements, particularly in transportation, take place and as the economy of the Northeast region continues to grow, the small rurban community will attain a higher social status – the most often cited reason for movement to the small rurban community.

Motivated by the advantages of two-electrode flash sintering over normal sintering, we have investigated the effect of an external electric field on the viscosity of glass. The results show remarkable electric field-induced softening (EFIS) as application of DC field significantly lowers the softening temperature of glass. To establish the origin of EFIS, the effect is compared for single vs. mixed-alkali silicate glasses with fixed mole% of the alkali ions such that the mobility of alkali ions is greatly reduced while the basic network structure does not change much.

This thesis introduces a new method for automatically finding important events from video game replays. We use these events to control the movement of the camera in the Dota 2 game. This method is based on the idea of finding landmarks, which are events that always takes place in a game. Our method automatically highlights important events in the Dota 2 game. The method combines two algorithms: one assigning weights to events and another one computing similarities between events.

This thesis is addressed to the problem of inventory and inventory centralization strategy for repairable items with low demand but widespread utilization in systems providing essential services. The investigation concentrates upon methods of inventory of multiple items, numbers of inventory centralization points, and levels of inventory in the system.

Developing advanced microfabrication technologies have been regarded as an important direction since many opportunities in technological innovations depend on the ability to fabricate novel structures in microscale. Commercially, high-throughput devices fabricated by cost-effective and efficient techniques that are suitable for mass production are highly desired. Scientifically, the ability to generate unconventional microstructures for improving the design and control experiments has attracted great interest of scientists.

The events that Leggett helped to put into motion in New York City eventually spread throughout the country, bringing about in the end, a national Democratic Party which is directly connected to the present day Party.

The present study examined how mothers' attachment representations (secure base script knowledge [SBSK]) and vagal regulation (i.e., vagal withdrawal/augmentation, as indexed by change in respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) worked together in predicting m

Alcoa XA-16, a high-reactivity alumina, is shown to embrace several characteristics of a non-ideal powder -- a distribution of particle sizes, non-spherical particle shape, and modification of surface and bulk chemistry. An analytical technique is presented for establishing the cumulative particle size distribution of a sub-micron powder and a statistical 'effectiveness of correction ' parameter is added to the initial stage analysis of Johnson and Cutler.

This thesis investigated a remote thermocouple technique for sensing cutting-tool temperatures in a turning operation with cutting fluid. The purpose of the investigation was to determine what factors, if any, influence the thermocouple outputs. The feasibility of the thermocouple temperature as a predictor of tool crater wear was also studied.

In recent years, data science has played a significant role in how people make decisions. Properly trained deep learning models enable computers to perform certain tasks better than some human beings, such as face recognition, reading comprehension, and t

Beyond anything else, this paper is intended to be an affirmation of the unity of The Merchant of Venice. It should be seen, after a detailed investigation of the spiritual planes of meaning which run parallel to the natural story, that the allegory organizes the total work and demonstrates its fundamental unity. The allegorical level is maintained throughout by the use of metaphors, conceits, exempla, imagery by word and narrative, symbolic characterization, and references to the Bible, both direct and indirect.

Mercury (Hg) assimilation by microbes in aquatic environments is an important step in bioaccumulation and bioconcentration in the food web. The bioavailability of Hg is in turn strongly influenced by dissolved organic matter (DOM), the bioavailability of which is dependent upon its molecular structure and elemental composition.

Nonsmooth optimization arises in many scientific and engineering applications, such as optimal control, neural network training, and others. Gradient sampling and bundle methods are two ef- ficient types of algorithms for solving nonsmooth optimization problems. Quadratic optimization (commonly referred to as QP) problems arise as subproblems in both types of algorithms. This thesis introduces an algorithm for solving the types of QP problems that arise in such methods. The proposed algorithm is inspired by one proposed in a paper written by Krzysztof C. Kiwiel in the 1980s.

Teachers are required to meet the needs of every student, but relatively limited research has been conducted with secondary students who have behavior problems. Further, there is essentially no research pertaining to secondary students who have almost entirely withdrawn from school. This study evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention consisting of incremental goal setting and positive feedback on the engagement of secondary age students with emotional and behavioral problems and significant academic disengagement.

The main text deals with Sino-Tibetan relations from 1940-1959 with particular emphasis on the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1950 and the revolt against Chinese rule in 1959.