Engineering, Mechanical

Hutton, Timothy. M.S. Egr., Department of MechanicalEngineering, Wright State University, 2003. Innovative ForcedResponse Analysis Method Applied To A Transonic Compressor. A setof inlet guide vane (IGV) unsteady surface pressure measurementsof a transonic compressor is presented. Using a flexible pressuresensor array, unsteady IGV suction-surface and pressure-surfacepressures are acquired for six spanwise by five chordwiselocations for various speed lines and throttle settings.Measurements from...

Engineering, Mechanical

Daily, Jeremy S., M.S. Egr., Department of Mechanicaland Materials Engineering, Wright State University, 2003. PlasticDissipation Energy in Mixed-Mode Fatigue Crack Growth on DuctileBimaterial Interfaces. A new theory of fatigue crack growth inductile solids has recently been proposed based on the totalplastic energy dissipation per cycle ahead of the crack. This andprevious energy-based approaches in the literature suggest thatthe total plastic dissipation per cycle can be closely correlatedwit...

History, United States

Taking captives was an old and established custom inthe Americas long before Columbus arrived in 1492. Nevertheless,the coming of Europeans ushered in a new era in the taking ofcaptives, since the Native Americans could use the colonists asslaves, for ransom, and for adoption, to replace their dead. Theprospect of captivity placed an additional burden of fear on analready difficult life for the European colonists. Indianscaptured both men and women. However, because of the differentroles men and...

Biology, General

In the late 1980 s, a link was established betweenmutations in human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and certain humandiseases which affect neural and muscle tissue. Individuals whohave mtDNA diseases have both normal and mutant mtDNA. Increasingseverity of the disease is correlated with an increase in theproportion of mutant mtDNA. To understand the abnormal mtDNAprocesses which cause disease, we must first be able tounderstand normal mtDNA processes which haven t been entirelyelucidated. Today, the ...

Biology, General

The study of catabolite repression in Neurospora crassaexamines regulation of genetic expression in the presence ofvarious carbon sources. Certain mutant strains of N. crassa donot display preferential expression of genes for metabolizingpreferred carbon sources. An example is the sorbose restant sor-4strain. A cotransformation experiment was devised to determine ifthe gene relieving the sor-4 mutant strain of cataboliterepression was complementary to cre-1, a gene thought to beinvolved in the e...

History, Medieval

The work examines the pagan nostalgia and anti-clericalhostility in early Irish literature, from the inception of theCeltic Christian church to the eve of the Norman invasion in1171. The sentimental longing and animosity expressed throughthese tales was not an aversion to the Christian god, but rathera very human yearning for a romanticized past. A variety offactors inspired the urge for escape into pagan literature. Forexample, lay forces in Irish society used traditional storytelling as a vehi...

Education, Administration

This study examines the place of women in the cultureof the high school principal. I used feminist analysis as acritique of the positivist paradigm of educational bureaucracyand the masculinist discourse that forms the culture of the highschool principal. I used this culture as a microcosm of thelarger culture. Through semi-structured interviews with fivefemale high school principals from northern Ohio, I provided anopportunity for them to give voice to their discourses regardingtheir places in ...

Education, Administration

This post hoc, descriptive case study sought todetermine the utility of Tom Peters

Teacher Training; Education, Technology

Various states, supported by the Congress and thePresident, are mandating the use of computer relatedtechnologies, with special emphasis on the Internet. The teacherswho are expected to implement this use are not just unprepared inthe sense of technical training, they are unprepared in the senseof a fundamental perception. Central to the current vision ofcurriculum and instruction is the cognitive illusion that allthings are measurable. Rising from this illusion, a secondaryalmost mystical, beli...

Literature

As an educator of first and second language learners, Ihave implemented an expressivistic approach to the writing ofcomposition. Expressivism is one manifestation of the processtheory of writing. While the research on first language learnersand second language learners, or L1 and L2, remains a bit uneven,I have considered what has been researched and have attempted todraw connections from there. After implementing some of theseexpressivistic approaches in both classrooms, I have dedicated asecti...

In recent years, literary scholars have begun todistrust, challenge, and expand the canon, which formerly limitedstudents of literature to the study of dead, white, upper-classmale writers. In addition to contemporary writers, women writersand writers of color, the academy has begun to study writers whocome from and/or represent the causes of the working-class. Thissub-genre has served a transformative, political function,scholars, aided by the writing of Marx, have rightly recognizedthe class a...

; Biology, General

Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate therole of testosterone in regulating the relaxation of isolated ratcorpus cavernosum strips in vitro. Materials and Methods: Malerats were divided into treatment groups of intact, castrate, andcastrate with testosterone replacement. Norepinephrine was addedto contract each of the tissue strips. Next, sodiumnitroprusside, experiment I, or 8-bromo-cGMP, experiment II, wasadded to relax the cavernosum tissue. Percent relaxations wererecorded for eac...

The focus of the research presented here is thesynthesis, isolation and characterization of vinyl phosphatescontaining the bis(2,2,2-trifluorethyl) group. The first stepinvolved the synthesis of bis(2,2,2-trifluoroethoxy)phosphorochloridate. This reagent was then added to a ketoneenolate, formed by the reaction of LDA, prepared in situ fromdiisopropylamine and

Education, Art

This qualitative research thesis project centers onsingle women as parents, living in a sheltered environment withaccess to individual and group therapy. The study took place fortwelve weeks on Saturday mornings from 10:00 a.m. until 12:00p.m. The group ranged in size from three to six participants, andfrom 23 to 48 years of age. All women have at least one childunder thirteen years of age, and are enrolled in a post-secondaryeducational or technical program. The purpose of this qualitativeresea...

Biology, General

Rippling muscle disease has been previously describedby Torbergsen, as a rare autosomal dominant conditioncharacterized by: muscle stiffness after resting, localizedmounding of muscle after resting and electrically silent wavelike contractions after stretching (i.e. rippling muscles). In1990 Ansevin described a patient displaying electrically silentrippling muscles with no evidence of Myasthenia gravis. In 1995the patient returned for treatment for myasthenia gravis (MG). Atthe time of treatment...

Engineering, Environmental

The problem of soil erosion and sediment runoff in theIndian Run watershed (area 11,277 acres), a major tributary toMill Creek, is of serious concern to the Mill Creek Metroparksmanagement and the Youngstown metropolitan area community. MillCreek is primarily responsible for sediment deposition in LakeNewport that continues at an alarming rate. A nonpoint sourcesimulation was performed for the Indian Run watershed using theAgricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Model (AGNPS) waterquality model w...

Chemistry, General

Past research has shown that selective degradation ofenantiomers by microorganisms does occur. This work was done todetermine concentrations and enantiomeric ratios of severalchiral pesticides above an agricultural soil to determine ifvolatilization from the soil to the overlying air occurs.Quantitative analysis was done using gas chromatography withelectron capture detection on a DB-5 capillary column.Concentrations were determined for five compounds(trans-Chlordane, cis-Chlordane, trans-Nonach...

Biology, General

I examined the effects of microhabitat quality on thepopulation dynamics and the dispersal behavior of the meadowvole, Microtus pennsylvanicus, at the Browning FerrisIndustries-Carbon Limestone Landfill/CLD, Mahoning County, Ohio,to identify meadow vole microhabitat selection. Voles were livetrapped from May 19, 1998 to October 23, 1998 for a total of 80traps nights using 72 Sherman traaps (4 per 0.04ha) in 16experimental grassland patches varying in density and quality ofvegetative cover. Plant...

Biology, General

Keratoderma Hereditaria Mutilans (KHM) or Vohwinkel sSyndrome is a rare autosomal dominant skin disease characterizedprimarily by diffuse hyperkeratosis of both the palmar and theplantar regions of the skin. Other prominent features include anincrease in the levels of B-glucuronidase enzyme in both serumand urine. It has now been established that Vohwinkel s Syndromeis a direct result of a defect found in the gene encoding astructural protein located within the cornified cellular envelopeof the ...

Economics, General

In this paper, I investigate the determinants of therate of national saving in the United States over the period from1959 to 1999. My analysis focuses on the relationship betweenaggregate national income accounts data and demographic data.Specifically, I test whether or not current data supports thelife-cycle hypothesis with respect to changes in the agestructure of the population, measured by the dependency ratio,and find it to have a significant effect upon saving behavior.Additionally, income...

Mechanical Engineering

The periodically fully developed laminar heat transfer and pressure drop of arrays with non-uniform plate length aligned at angle to the flow direction of Non-Newtonian and Newtonian fluids are studied by numerical analysis. The body-fitted coordinate system is adopted to retain the corresponding periodic relation of the lines in physical coordinate system and computational domains in body-fitted coordinate system. The computations are carried out in one periodic cycle.Power law model non-Newton...

Geology and Planetary Science

Owens Lake is situated in a mostly-closed basin fed by water and sediments derived primarily from the eastern Sierra Nevada range. Radiogenic isotope variations in USGS Owens Lake core OL-92 were used in conjunction with major and trace element concentrations in streams draining the eastern Sierras to investigate sediment provenance, the chemical weathering and transport of rare earth elements (REE) in the Owens Lake drainage basin, and possible climate-related shifts in weathering patterns of t...

Biological Sciences

Recent empirical studies conducted in disparate ecosystems have shown that greater species diversity has positive effects on ecosystem functioning; however, other studies have found neutral or sometimes negative results. It is still unclear why the relationship between biodiversity and functioning varies among studies, but perhaps, investigating this relationship across spatial and temporal scales will lead to further understanding. One theory predicts that local niche complementarity among spec...

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Current American steel building and bridge design specifications (AISC 1999, AASHTO 1998) simplify the flexural design of both homogeneous and hybrid I-shaped members by treating local and global inelastic stability phenomenon independently. According to both specifications, if a homogeneous or hybrid section is compact and sufficiently braced against lateral instability, the member will achieve or exceed its theoretical plastic moment capacity and maintain this capacity so as to allow sufficien...

Cell Biology and Molecular Physiology

The endocytic and postendocytic trafficking pathways in polarized epithelial cells was examined. First, sorting of fluid and membrane internalized from the apical plasma membrane was analayzed. Internalized fluid and membrane were intially delivered to apical early endosomes (AEE). Fluid remained in the AEE while membrane was rapidly sorted and delivered to the Rab11+ apical recycling endosome (ARE). The delivery of membrane markers to the ARE was microtubule-dependent. Transferrin, a marker of ...

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The present study employs experimentally verified nonlinear finite elementmodeling techniques for the study of high performance steel (HPS) I-shaped bridgegirders. Evaluations as to the appropriateness of using the current AISC LRFD StructuralSteel Building Design Specificatio n (1999) and AASHTO LRFD Bridge DesignSpecification (1998) provisions for maintaining cross-sectional compactness, anappropriate lateral bracing placement, and a sufficient lateral bracing stiffness for thepurpose of plast...

Geology and Planetary Science

The objective of this study was to develop data that are broadly applicable to the release of trace metals from fly ash, and to quantify the rate of release as a function of the composition of the ash. Thirty-two samples of Class F fly ash from pulverized coal combustion boilers were leached with seven leaching solutions simulating natural fluids. The leachate was analyzed for 21 cations that were major, minor, or trace constituents of the ash. The rate at which metal ions are released from fly ...

Bioengineering

A diseased artery often becomes blocked, compromising blood flow to downstream tissues and organs. One common surgical intervention is to bypass this blocked region with a vascular graft. However, these grafts can fail due to an overhealing response, known as intimal hyperplasia (IH), which occurs at the graft/artery junction (i.e., anastomosis). The goal of this research was to determine if a quantitative correlation exists between the hemodynamic phenomena at the distal anastomosis of a vascul...

Industrial Engineering

Cooperative query answering for approximate answers has been utilized in various problem domains. Many challenges in manufacturing information retrieval, such as: classifying parts into families in group technology implementation, choosing the closest alternatives or substitutions for an out-of-stock part, or finding similar existing parts for rapid prototyping, could be alleviated using the concept of cooperative query answering.Most cooperative query answering techniques proposed by researcher...

Bioengineering

ABSTRACTEFFECTS OF HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY ON SYSTEMIC ARTERIAL PROPERTIES IN POST-MENOPAUSAL WOMENEric Alps Chen, B.S.University of Pittsburgh, 2002Vascular stiffness properties contribute significantly to the arterial system hydraulic load. There is evidence that vascular stiffness plays a role in cardiovascular remodeling and may be an independent cardiovascular risk factor. Menopause accelerates age-associated increase in arterial stiffness and estrogen administration, which has vasodila...

Environmental and Occupational Health

Maternal cigarette smoke exposure during pregnancy has been identified as a risk factor for adverse reproductive outcomes, a major public health concern. However, little is known about genetic susceptibility and possible interactions with environmental factors to increase risk of these events. This study was designed to investigate relative contributions of genetic and maternal environmental risk factor interactions to adverse reproductive outcomes. Maternal peripheral and umbilical cord blood s...

Slavic Languages and Literatures

My dissertation argues that while Thaw cultural producers believed that they had abandoned Stalinist cultural practices, their works continued to generate, in revised form, the major tropes of Stalinist culture: the positive hero, and family and war tropes. Although the cultural Thaw of the 1950s and 60s embraced new values, it merely reworked Stalinist artistic practices. On the basis of literary and cinematic texts, I examine how these two media reinstantiated the fundamental tropes of Russo-S...

Psychology

This dissertation is an investigation into the memory mechanisms that support parsing and how they constrain parsing success. Constraints can occur from two directions: the ability to store items participating in grammatical dependencies, or else the dependencies themselves, and the ability to retrieve items required for creating grammatical dependencies. A review of available evidence regarding memory constraints on parsing suggests that although attention has more often been focused on the sto...

Geology and Planetary Science

This work examines lava emplacement processes by characterizing surface units using field and remote sensing analyses in order to understand the development of lava flow fields. Specific study areas are the 1969-1974 Mauna Ulu compound flow field, (Kilauea Volcano, Hawai i, USA), and five lava flow fields on Venus: Turgmam Fluctus, Zipaltonal Fluctus, the Tuli Mons/Uilata Fluctus flow complex, the Var Mons flow field, and Mylitta Fluctus.Lava surface units have been examined in the field and wit...

Geology and Planetary Science

This thesis presents a new environmental geophysical analysis derived from airborne and ground measurements of electromagnetics and total magnetic field collected from the Muddy and Roaring Creek watersheds located in northeastern Preston County, West Virginia. This region is referred to as the T&T mine area. In the simplest representation, with respect to subsurface Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) impacted water systems, the subsurface regions can be thought of as containing three pools of AMD...

Pharmaceutical Sciences

Organ transplantation is an accepted therapy for diseases that result in chronic irreversible failure of various organs. During transplantation, the transplanted organ is subjected to two inflammatory processes, alloantigen-independent (ischemia/reperfusion injury) and alloantigen-dependent (rejection), both of which involve release of cytokines.The objectives of this dissertation were to evaluate the effect of acute rejection of liver in rats on hepatic and extra-hepatic drug metabolizing capac...

Chemical Engineering

Many special cases of cofiring biomass with coal has been examined in the past, with the growing concern for global climate change, it is now time to demonstrate its feasibility in practical use. Since 1997, the Engineering Program of Biomass Energy at the University of Pittsburgh has conducted a series of demonstrations, which focused on the utilization of clean urban waste in stoker boilers. In this paper, two demonstrations of cofiring biomass (clean urban waste wood) with coal in stoker boil...

Bioengineering

Diabetes Mellitus is one of the predominant contributors to morbidity and mortality worldwide. Prior to the advent of insulin therapy, patients suffering from Type I diabetes generally did not survive past childhood. Even with insulin therapy, a physiologically normal insulin response to increased systemic glucose cannot be achieved. Pancreatic islet transplantation has been shown to restore the physiological response to glucose, but risks associated with chronic immune suppression outweigh the ...

Materials Science and Engineering

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids are dispersions of fine (~ 0.05-10 micron) magnetically soft, multi-domain particles. The apparent yield strength of these fluids can be changed significantly within milliseconds by the application of an external magnetic field. MR fluid devices are being used and developed for shock absorbers, clutches, brakes, and seismic dampers. The major goals of this research were to advance the science of MR fluids. More specifically, the goals were: (a) influence of interpa...

Anthropology

All households in prehistoric communities without well established sociopolitical hierarchies were concerned, first and foremost, with meeting their subsistence needs. Because the emergence of non-food producing elite households means that, at some point, they began to focus on other activities, the domestic economy is where complexity begins to develop. Participation in craft production and exchange activities can provide opportunities for some households to accumulate wealth and/or prestige; t...

Intelligent Systems

The rapid advance of distance learning and networking technology has enabled universities and corporations to reach out and educate students across time and space barriers. This technology supports structured, on-line learning activities, and provides facilities for assessment and collaboration. Structured collaboration, in the classroom, has proven itself a successful and uniquely powerful learning method. Online collaborative learners, however, do not enjoy the same benefits as face-to-face le...

Chemical Engineering

In this thesis an integrated software tool: MetaboLogic was developed. This software not only integrates most of the techniques developed in Metabolic Flux Analysis (MFA), but also two mathematical techniques for finding multiple optimal solution and designing tracer experiments. MetaboLogic is designed to allow users to construct arbitrary network model visually through a friendly graphic user interface.The functions of the software can be classified into two groups. The first group is to compu...

Intelligent Systems

This thesis raises objections to the use of causal reasoning with equilibrium models. I consider two operators that are used to transform models: the {em Do} operator for modeling manipulation and the {em Equilibration} operator for modeling a system that has achieved equilibrium. I introduce a property of a causal model called the {em EMC Property} that is true iff the {em Do} operator commutes with the {em Equilibration} operator. I prove that not all models obey the EMC property, and I demons...

Rehabilitation Science

The purpose of this project was to develop the Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM), a self-reported HRQL instrument specific to those with lower leg musculoskeletal disorders. The FAAM consists of the ADL and Sports subscales. Data analysis was done in two stages. Stage I consisted of item selection based on factor loading patterns, inter-item correlations, item to total score correlations, item characteristic curves and the test information functions. 914 subjects participated in the analyses...

Mechanical Engineering

ABSTRACTEFFECT OF PENETRATOR CONFIGURATION AND SIZE ON THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF COMPOSITE MATERIAL UNDER HIGH STRAIN RATE LOADINGOlorunfemi B. Ojo (M.SC)University of Pittsburgh, 2003Dynamic test was carried out on a plain weave carbon epoxy composites plate of different thickness (12, 16 and 24 layers) to determine the penetration and perforation threshold energies for each specimen using penetrators of different sizes and geometries namely: Protruding spherical, protruding hemispherical and con...

Materials Science and Engineering

Molybdenum base alloys with the addition of small amounts of silicon (2 4.5 wt%) and boron (~1 wt%) can form a passivating layer protecting the alloy from further rapid oxidation. When such molybdenum base alloys are exposed to oxidizing environments at high temperatures, a borosilicate glass layer can form that will reduce the transport of oxygen to the alloy for further oxidation. Oxidation is then controlled by the diffusion through the borosilicate glass layer. The focus of this research was...

Psychology

Recently a number of researchers have found that asking participants to imagine engaging in unlikely childhood events can increase their estimation that those events actually took place. This imagination inflation effect has been assumed to result from the process of imagination. However, this conclusion may be premature since prior studies investigating imagination have been confounded with repetition; i.e., participants receive more exposure to the target items (i.e., those items which are ima...

Business Administration

The use of Information Technology (IT) in the delivery of Human Resource (HR) services a traditionally laborious, paper-intensive operationis spearheading a revolution in the way personnel services are delivered. Based on a thorough review of practitioner and academic research literatures, this dissertation studies the determinants of assimilation for the following HR Information Technologies (HRITs): (1) HR functional applications; (2) Integrated HR software suites; (3) Interactive (or Automate...

Statistics

The main objective of this dissertation is to introduce a framework for two-stage adaptive procedures in which the blind is broken at the end of Stage I. Using our framework, it is possible to control many aspects of an experiment including the Type I error rate, power and maximum total sample size. Our framework also enables us to compare different procedures under the same formulation. We conduct an ANOVA type study to learn the effects of different components of the design specification on th...

Chemical Engineering

The delivery of therapeutic DNA to patients with genetic or acquired disorders has evolved into a realistic alternate treatment to surgery, drug delivery, or as an adjuvant to therapies. A specific area of this research is to transduce CD34+ cells with therapeutic DNA containing vectors developed from viruses. Explanted CD34+ progenitor cells are exposed to these vectors and then are transplanted to a host. Despite the positive advances, major limitations exist in the ability to efficiently tran...