Thesis (M.S.) -- New Jersey Institute of Technology, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--Western Kentucky University, 2009 / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 28-31).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Computer Science." Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-214). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Samuel E. Buttrey, Lyn R. Whitaker. Includes bibliographical references (p. 147-148). Also available online.

This work focuses on an examination of the high-accuracy extrapoloated ab initio thermochemistry (HEAT) protocol of determining molecular atomization energies. The HEAT protocol does not utilize experimental data or empirical scaling effects. The accuracy of the approach is tested via comparison to ATcT data, and all molecules fall within 1 kcal/mol of accepted values. There are several important points to note about this treatment: namely, that we have used atomic natural orbital (ANO) basis sets for the calculation of the zero point energy and that we have made determinations for larger molecules than previously done with HEAT. The molecules in this paper were chosen to provide benchmark numbers for the homodesmotic reaction heirarchy as described by Wheeler et al.[3] The relative accuracy of the approach is considered, as well as a discussion of possible remaining sources of error. / text

The task of multi-body motion segmentation refers to segmenting feature trajectories in a sequence of images according to their 3D motion affinity without knowing the number of motions in advance. It is critical for understanding and reconstructing a dynamic scene. This problem essentially consists of two subproblems, segmenting features and detecting the number of motions. While the state-of-the-art LBF algorithm achieves segmentation accuracy as high as 96.5%, it is still disturbed by a phenomenon called over-locality. A novel mode seeking algorithm with an adaptive distance measure is proposed to avoid this problem, and improves the accuracy to 98.1%. The LBF algorithm is incapable of detecting the number of motions itself. A randomized version of the mode seeking algorithm is presented, which could detect the number as well as preserve satisfactory segmentation accuracy. To detect the number of motions, a kernel optimization method locates it via kernel alignment. However, it suffers from over-locality and over-detects the number of motions. An intersection measure and two mutual information measures are presented to solve this problem. Using these measures, the proposed clustering consensus framework recasts the motion number detection problem to a clustering consensus problem. It extends the kernel optimization method from two-clustering consensus to multiple-clustering consensus. A large number of experiments and comparisons have been done, and convincing results are obtained. / published_or_final_version / Computer Science / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In disease outbreak situations, the media are considered (and relied upon) by authorities to “translate” information across disciplinary boundaries. A reporter covering the 2003 SARS outbreak observed that journalists “are often conscious of their role as participants in a human crisis” (World Health Organization). Consequently, a pandemic presents a unique rhetorical situation to journalists. As significant intermediaries in public health messaging, journalist-rhetors help frame the narrative of a disease outbreak for lay audiences and influence whether those audiences implement protective behavioral changes. While the literature implicitly acknowledges issues of motivation in the media industry as a whole, little work has yet appeared to examine strategies specific to individual acts of reportage. Through comparative analyses of media portrayals of the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak before the nature of the threat became clear, this project explores rhetorical characteristics of the coverage in order to uncover implicit assumptions guiding public understanding of a high-risk health threat. Kenneth Burke’s method of cluster analysis yields insight into the symbolic processes embedded in a rhetorical artefact, enabling an interpretation of the rhetor’s worldview. Resulting worldviews can then be examined through a dramatistic lens. Burke also described the strategic adoption of “role” as an element of symbolic action. This study found that journalists purveyed widely different, even contradictory, worldviews, each with different impacts on audiences in terms of the interpretation and appropriate response to the threat. I argue that such divergences occur due to alienation arising from individual ethos in conflict with formal constraints in the new pandemic “scene.” Responses to alienation manifested in identifiably distinct roles. Identification with a particular role in pandemic reportage was reflected in the terminology of journalists studied. Through clusters of association and dissociation, journalists classed the threat as “mild” and rejected the term “pandemic,” as a serious threat but one that could be managed, or as an apocalyptic threat against which there was no defence, with all stances occurring simultaneously in time. Ramifications for the lay public ranged from the location of protection with public health officials, invitations to engage in processes of Othering, or the amplification of the cataclysmic nature of the scene. As these stances differed in their portrayals of impacts on the lay public and thus ability to motivate behavioral change, an improved understanding of journalistic experience in the pandemic “scene” is crucial to improving communication aiming to protect the health of lay publics.

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