"This paper is an attempt on the part of the author to become familiar with the life and works of a novelist who is of interest to librarians. Chapter I is a biographical sketch of Hilton. In several places Hilton speaks for himself, giving his ideas on youth, eduction, literature and his own life. Chapter II treats his most important novels from the standpoint of plot and theme, and gives a representative sampling of critical judgments and opinions"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1959." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Louis Shores, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references.

"Miss Sawyer was selected as the subject of this study in the first place because of the writer's great admiration for her work, especially the Newbery Medal Award winner, Roller Skates. Also, it was felt that her children's works were important enough to make a useful study and of sufficient interest and quantity to be worthwhile. Therefore, it is the intent of this study to examine the books for children of Ruth Sawyer and to summarize criticism of these publications found in the usual book reviewing sources in an attempt to present and evaluate her juvenile work"--Introduction. / "August, 1958." / At head of title: Florida State University. / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Agnes Gregory, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-47).

"One of the major professional responsibilities of a school librarian is that of book selection. From the great volume of publications issuing from every publishing company the librarian must choose, within the limitations of his budget, books that meet the needs of his clientele. To select wisely from this wealth of material is not an easy task for it requires a wide knowledge of authors who are acceptable to both adults and young people. To gain this knowledge the librarian must not only read widely but evaluate what he reads as well. He must learn to separate the good from the worthless, always striving to raise the reading levels of the students under his supervision. As a step in the direction of this acquaintance with authors the writer has chosen to study the life and works of one of today's most popular authors of books for girls. Phyllis Whitney is a prolific writer of juvenile books and her contribution to good writing is such as to merit recognition from adults as well as young people"--Introduction. / "August, 1958." / At head of title: Florida State University. / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Agnes Gregory, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-43).

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Natural composites like wood are scale-integrated structures that range from molecular to the macroscopic scale. Inspired by this design, layer-by-layer (LbL) deposition technique was used to create lignocellulosic composites from isolated wood polymers namely cellulose and lignin, with a lamellar architecture. In the first phase of the study, adsorption of alkali lignin onto cationic surfaces was investigated using a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D). Complete coverage of the cationic surface with alkali lignin occured at low solution concentration; large affinity coefficients were calculated for this system at differing pH levels. Adsorption studies with organosolv lignin in an organic solvent, and spectroscopic analysis of mixtures of cationic polymer with alkali lignin revealed a non-covalent interaction. The work demonstrated how noncovalent interactions could be exploited to molecular organize thin polyphenolic biopolymers on cationic surfaces. The second phase of the study examined the adsorption steps during the LbL assembly process to create novel lignocellulosic composites. LbL assembly was carried out using oxidized nanocellulose (NC) and lignin, along with a cationic polymer poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA). QCM-D was used to follow the sequential adsorption process of the three different polymers. Two viscoelastic models, namely Johannsmann and Voigt, were respectively used to calculate the areal mass and thickness of the adsorbed layers. Atomic force microscopy studies showed a complete coverage of the surface with lignin in all the disposition cycles, however, surface coverage with NC was seen to increase with the number of layers. Free-standing composite films were obtained when the LbL process was carried out for 250 deposition cycles (500 bilayers) on a cellulose acetate substrate, following the dissolution of the substrate in acetone. Scanning electron microscopy of the cryo-fractured cross-sections showed a lamellar structure, and the thickness per adsorption cycle was estimated to be 17 nm. The third phase of the study investigated the effect of LbL ordering of the polymers versus a cast film composed of a blended mixture of the polymers, using dynamic mechanical analysis. A tan ï ¤ peak was observed in the 30 – 40 ºC region for both films, which was observed in the neat NC film. Heating of the samples under a compressive force produced opposite effects in the films, as the LbL films exhibited swelling, whereas the cast films showed densification. The apparent activation energy of this transition (65 – 80 kJ mol-1) in cast films, calculated based on the Arrhenius equation was found to be coincident to those reported for the ï ¢ transition of amorphous cellulose. The peak was seen to disappear in case of LbL films in the second heat, whereas it was recurring in case of cast films of the blended mixture, and neat NC films. Altogether, the together the work details a novel path to integrate an organized lignin and cellulose molecular structure, albeit modified from their native form, into a three-dimensional composite material. / Ph. D.

No / Bio-energy availability, its potential and production, challenges, and opportunities in Europe are addressed in this chapter. In addition, a comprehensive comparison of different generations of biofuels, types of bioenergy resource availability for various EU countries, and the prediction of the supply rate has been explained. This book chapter helps us understand the progress of consumable bioenergy resources and expected future trends, which is highly important to know. The basis of this chapter is on the agreements in the European energy institutes and related policies. Furthermore, the potential resources of bio-energy in Europe, environmental impacts, and the challenges and barriers that may be faced in the present and future have been investigated.

In this thesis, we provide solutions to two different bio-inspired algorithms. The first is enhancing the performance of bio-inspired test generation for circuits described in RTL Verilog, specifically for branch coverage. We seek to improve upon an existing framework, BEACON, in terms of performance. BEACON is an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based test generation framework. Similar to other ACO frameworks, BEACON also has a good scope in improving performance using parallel computing. We try to exploit the available parallelism using both multi-core Central Processing Units (CPUs) and Graphics Processing Units(GPUs). Using our new multithreaded approach we can reduce test generation time by a factor of 25 — compared to the original implementation for a wide variety of circuits. We also provide a 2-dimensional factoring method for BEACON to improve available parallelism to yield some additional speedup. The second bio-inspired algorithm we address is for Deep Neural Networks. With the increasing prevalence of Neural Nets in artificial intelligence and mission-critical applications such as self-driving cars, questions arise about its reliability and robustness. We have developed a test-generation based technique and metric to evaluate the robustness of a Neural Nets outputs based on its sensitivity to its inputs. This is done by generating inputs which the neural nets find difficult to classify but at the same time is relatively apparent to human perception. We measure the degree of difficulty for generating such inputs to calculate our metric. / MS / High-level Hardware Design Languages (HDLs) has allowed designers to implement complicated hardware designs with considerably lesser effort. Unfortunately, design verification for the same circuits has failed to scale gracefully in terms of time and effort. Not only has it become more difficult for formal methods due to exponential complexity from increasing path explosion, but concrete test generation frameworks also face new issues such as the increased requirement in the volume of simulations. The advent of parallel computing using General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) has led to improved performance for various applications. We propose to leverage both the multi-core CPU and the GPGPU for RTL test generation. This is achieved by implementing a test generation framework that can utilize the SIMD type parallelism available in GPGPUs and task level parallelism available on CPUs. The speedup achieved is extracted from both the test generation framework itself and also from refactoring the hardware model for multi-threaded test generation. For this purpose, we translate the RTL Verilog to a C++ and a CUDA compilable program. Experimental results show that considerable speedup can be achieved for test generation without loss of coverage. In recent years, machine learning and artificial intelligence have taken a substantial leap forward with the discovery of Deep Neural Networks(DNN). Unfortunately, apart from Accuracy and FTest numbers, there exist very few metrics to qualify a DNN. This becomes a reliability issue as DNNs are quite frequently used in safety-critical applications. It is difficult to interpret how the parameters of a trained DNN help store the knowledge from the training inputs. Therefore it is also difficult to infer whether a DNN has learned parameters which might cause an output neuron to misfire wrongly, a bug. An exhaustive search of the input space of the DNN is not only infeasible but is also misleading. Thus, in our work, we try to apply test generation techniques to generate new test inputs based on existing training and testing set to qualify the underlying robustness. Attempts to generate these inputs are guided only by the prediction probability values at the final output layer. We observe that depending on the amount of perturbation and time needed to generate these inputs we can differentiate between DNNs of varying quality.

El treball presentat en aquesta tesi doctoral te com objectiu principal la contribució en el camp de la microbiologia per entendre el biofilms i el possible control de desenvolupament mitjançant l’ús de mètodes i enfoc multidisciplinari. Els biofilms estan definits com comunitats de microorganismes que creixen envoltats en una matriu exopolisacárida i s’adhereixen a una superfície inert o teixit viu. La formació dels biofilms bacterians tenen un gran interès en microbiologia clínica degut al desenvolupament d’infeccions que son causades pel contacte directe o per colonització de dispositius mèdics implantats i pròtesis. Actualment es consideren causa de més del 60 % de les infeccions bacterianes. El problema dels biofilms bacterians a nivell clínic es que mostren millor resistència a antibiòtics arribant inclús a ser de 500 a 5000 cops més resistents a agents antimicrobians comparant amb la mateixa bactèria planctònica (bactèria en suspensió). Hi ha hagut moltes temptatives d’adaptar mètodes a laboratoris clínics on es reprodueixen les condicions pel desenvolupament de biofilms, però encara no s’ha arribat a obtenir òptims protocols estàndard per a aquest propòsit de monitoritzar la formació i toxicitat a temps real. Ha crescut l’interès en disseny, desenvolupament i utilització de dispositius de microfluídica que poden emular els fenòmens biològics que ocorren amb diferents geometries, dinàmica de fluids i restriccions de transport de biomassa en microambients fisiològics. La recerca descrita en aquesta tesis s’ha dut a terme amb diferents mètodes “label-free” basats en la variació acústica y/o propietats elèctriques per a la monitorització de biofilms. El treball presentat en la monografia descriu un dispositiu “custom-made” per a la utilització d’Espectroscòpia de impedància electroquímica com a eina útil per a l’obtenció d’informació d’adherència i formació de biofilms. El fet d’afegir nanopartícules com a segon biosensor permet la correlació de biofilm amb la seva toxicitat a temps real per a la detecció del punt òptim de tractament de biofilms. Finalment el disseny d’aquesta tecnologia s’utilitza per l’assaig de la resposta de biofilms a antibiòtics com a model in vitro d’infeccions causades per biofilms. / El trabajo presentado en esta tesis doctoral tiene como principal objetivo la contribución en el campo de la microbiología para entender los biofilms y el posible control de desarrollo mediante el uso de métodos y enfoque multidisciplinar. Los biofilms están definidos como comunidades de microorganismos que crecen embebidos en una matriz exopolisacárida y se adhieren a una superficie inerte o tejido vivo. La formación de los biofilms bacterianos tiene un gran interés en microbiología clínica debido al desarrollo de infecciones que son causadas por contacto directo o por colonización de dispositivos médicos implantados y prótesis. Actualmente se consideran la causa de más del 60 % de las infecciones bacterianas. El problema de los biofilms bacterianos a nivel clínico es que muestran mejor resistencia a antibióticos llegando incluso a ser de 500 a 5000 veces más resistentes a agentes antimicrobianos comparado a la misma bacteria planctónica (bacteria en suspensión). Ha habido muchas tentativas de adaptar métodos a laboratorios clínicos donde se reproducen las condiciones para el desarrollo de biofilms, pero aún no se ha llegado a obtener óptimos protocolos estándar para este propósito de monitorizar la formación y toxicidad en tiempo real. Ha crecido el interés en diseño, desarrollo y utilización de dispositivos de microfluídica que puedan emular los fenómenos biológicos que ocurren con diferentes geometrías, dinámica de fluidos y restricciones de transporte de biomasa en microambientes fisiológicos. La investigación descrita en esta tesis se lleva a cabo con diferentes métodos “label-free” basados en variación acústica y/o propiedades eléctricas para la monitorización de biofilms. El trabajo presentado en esta monografía describe un dispositivo “custom-made” para la utilización de Espectroscopia de impedancia electroquímica como herramienta útil para obtener información de adherencia y formación de biofilms. El hecho de añadir nanopartículas como segundo biosensor permite la correlación de biofilm con su toxicidad en tiempo real para la detección del punto óptimo del tratamiento de biofilms. Finalmente el diseño de esta tecnología es usada para el ensayo de la respuesta de biofilms a antibióticos como modelo in vitro de infecciones causadas por biofilms. / The work presented in this thesis has the main aim to contribute in the field of clinical microbiology to understand the biofilms and the possible of development through the use of methods with multidisciplinary approach. Biofilms are defined as communities of microorganisms that grow embedded in a matrix of exopolysaccharides and adhering to an inert surface or living tissue. The formation of bacterial biofilms has an interest in clinical microbiology with the development of infections that usually arise from either direct contact or the colonization of implanted medical devices and prostheses. Currently they are considered the cause of over 60% of bacterial infections. The problem of bacterial biofilms at clinical level is showing great resistance to antibiotics, so that the biofilm bacteria are 500 to 5000 times more resistant to antimicrobial agents that the same bacteria grown in planktonic cultures (bacteria in suspension). There have been attempts to adapt methods to clinical laboratories where they reproduce the conditions of biofilms, but have not yet adopted an optimal standard protocol for this purpose to follow-up the formation and toxicity in real-time. There has been a growing interest in design, development and utilization of microfluidic devices that can emulate biological phenomena that occur in different geometries, fluid dynamics and mass transport restrictions in physiological microenvironments. The research described in this thesis deals with different label-free methods based on variation of acoustic and electric properties for biofilm monitoring. The work presented in this monograph describe a custom-made device for using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) as useful tool to obtain information of adherence and formation of biofilms. The addition of nanoparticles as toxicity biomarker allows the correlation of biofilm formation with its toxicity in real-time for detention of the optimal point for biofilm treatment. Finally the design of this technology is used for testing the biofilm response to antibiotic as in vitro model of biofilm-related infection.

En el Perú, la gestión de los RSH1 (Residuos Sólidos Hospitalarios) es un tema que ha estado llamando la atención de las instituciones públicas y privadas, con el transcurso de los años. En 1987, la empresa Servicios Municipales de Limpieza de Lima, realizó un estudio sobre los residuos hospitalarios en Lima Metropolitana, el cual concluyó que dichos residuos eran una gran preocupación para los administradores de dichos establecimientos, pero su manejo era tan precario que los resultados podían ser impredecibles. Para el año 1998, el MINSA elaboró un informe técnico acerca de las “Tecnologías de Tratamiento de Residuos Sólidos de Establecimientos de Salud”, donde identificaba las 4 tecnologías de tratamiento más usadas a nivel mundial que son incineración, esterilización a vapor (autoclave), desinfección por microondas y tratamiento químico. El método más empleado para eliminar los RSH era la incineración al interior de los establecimientos; sin embargo, dichas incineraciones no empleaban filtros para las emanaciones ocasionadas por la combustión2. En consecuencia, durante la quema de residuos hospitalarios se liberaban dioxinas3, por lo que dicho método ha sido prohibido, a menos que cuenten con un mecanismo que procese los gases expulsados. Hoy en día, entre los principales problemas originados por los residuos sólidos destacan: la contaminación al medio ambiente, el hacinamiento en los rellenos sanitarios, el reciclaje indebido y su uso como alimento en las chancherías. Actualmente, el método más empleado consiste en el recojo y transporte de residuos hospitalarios al relleno sanitario sin un tratamiento previo; por lo que se propone implementar una planta de tratamiento de residuos sólidos hospitalarios. En síntesis, el objetivo de este proyecto es establecer una mejor opción para el tratamiento de los residuos hospitalarios, que el simple almacenamiento en los rellenos sanitarios. Por lo cual, se planea implementar una planta de tratamiento de residuos en la provincia de Lima, en donde se someterán a un tratamiento que reducirá su volumen y peso en un 80% y 75% respectivamente, empleando un hydroclave para su desinfección y trituración, antes de ser trasladados al relleno sanitario, logrando así eliminar los niveles de toxicidad de los residuos, evitar su reciclaje o su uso como alimentos en chancherías y aminorar el hacinamiento de los rellenos sanitarios. / Tesis