Gene expression arrays are a technology used to measure quantities of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). Application of the technology involves a variety of physical processes beginning with the acquisition of mRNA samples and ending with the fluorescence imaging of a…

Nearly 2% of all live births are very premature (gestational age less than 32 weeks), and 50% of all new cases of cerebral palsy occur in survivors of premature birth (gestational age less than 37 weeks). Because of their underdeveloped…

This study presents a theoretical model for predictions of near-shore hydrodynamic characteristics and the local sediment transport rate along long, straight beaches. The wave may be periodic or random, the beach may be plane or barred, and the bed may…

Background: Local adaptation of guidelines may increase compliance with guidelines that have been developed at a national level and are often not used in practice because of contextual factors. We have developed a representation scheme known as HieroGLIF, that facilitates…

This thesis developed and applied tools to bridge the gap between available data and action for urban air quality management, focusing on strategies to reduce particle concentrations. One of the principal thesis contributions is a Bayesian method to exploit the…

(cont.) which is expected, given their additional knowledge resources. The respondents' urgency in looking for the relevant knowledge is the primary explanation for this difference between the two networks. This difference in knowledge networking among the different groups did not…

Effective document retrieval using domain knowledge and semantics is one of the major challenges in Information Retrieval. Over the last years, there has been a growing interest in ontologies as an artifact for human knowledge representation and a critical component…

This thesis examines the evolution of Internet based knowledge networks (e-knowledge networks) in the domain of sustainable development. The objective of this thesis is to use an engineering systems approach to understand knowledge networks, identify the barriers to their sustainability…

A fuzzy controller is usually designed by formulating the knowledge of a human expert into a set of linguistic variables and fuzzy rules. As it is well known, the use of prior knowledge can dramatically improve the performance and quality…

The IMS Learning Design specification provides a potential means for capturing units of instruction in a machine-readable, consistent way. However, in order for the IMS Learning Design specification to be used widely by educators and instructional designers for whom it…