Humboldt-Univ., Diss.--Berlin, 2003.

MODRSP is program used for calculating drawdown, velocity, storage losses and capture response functions for multi - aquifer ground -water flow systems. Capture is defined as the sum of the increase in aquifer recharge and decrease in aquifer discharge as a result of an applied stress from pumping [Bredehoeft et al., 19821. The capture phenomena treated by MODRSP are stream- aquifer leakance, reduction of evapotranspiration losses, leakance from adjacent aquifers, flows to and from prescribed head boundaries and increases or decreases in natural recharge or discharge from head dependent boundaries. The response functions are independent of the magnitude of the stresses and are dependent on the type of partial differential equation, the boundary and initial conditions and the parameters thereof, and the spatial and temporal location of stresses. The aquifers modeled may have irregular -shaped areal boundaries and non -homogeneous transmissive and storage qualities. For regional aquifers, the stresses are generally pumpages from wells. The utility of response functions arises from their capacity to be embedded in management models. The management models consist of a mathematical expression of a criterion to measure preference, and sets of constraints which act to limit the preferred actions. The response functions are incorporated into constraints that couple the hydrologic system with the management system (Maddock, 1972). MODRSP is a modification of MODFLOW (McDonald and Harbaugh, 1984,1988). MODRSP uses many of the data input structures of MODFLOW, but there are major differences between the two programs. The differences are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. An abbreviated theoretical development is presented in Chapter 2, a more complete theoretical development may be found in Maddock and Lacher (1991). The finite difference technique discussion presented in Chapter 3 is a synopsis of that covered more completely in McDonald and Harbaugh (1988). Subprogram organization is presented in Chapter 4 with the data requirements explained in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 contains three example applications of MODRSP.

The Internet has become a very powerful tool in improving communication, making it easier, more convenient, and faster to access or exchange information. This project takes advantage of the strengths the Internet provides by improving communication by developing a web site for a transportation company.

The Web-based Independent Study Program (WISP) is an on-line database program used to create and store educational records for members of Dikaios. (Dikaios is a Christian educators association that offers an independent study program.) The database allows home educators to create, store, edit, view, and print the forms and records that are required by Dakaios administrators and by the state of California. Further, the database helps students and home educators monitor student progress towards meeting high school graduation requirements.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) employs the WATR Integrated Next Generation System (WINGS) for the processing and display of aeronautical flight data. This report discusses the post-mission segment of the WINGS architecture. A team designed and implemented a system for the near- and long-term storage and distribution of mission data for flight projects at DFRC, providing the user with intelligent access to data. Discussed are the legacy system, an industry survey, system operational concept, high-level system features, and initial design efforts.

Relational databases have proved inadequate for supporting new classes of applications, and as a consequence, a number of new approaches have been taken (Blaha 1998), (Harrington 2000). The most salient alternatives are denormalisation and conversion to an object-oriented database (Douglas 1997). Denormalisation can provide better performance but has deficiencies with respect to data modelling. Object-oriented databases can provide increased performance efficiency but without the deficiencies in data modelling (Blaha 2000). Although there have been various benchmark tests reported, none of these tests have compared normalised, object oriented and de-normalised databases. This research shows that a non-normalised database for data containing type code complexity would be normalised in the process of conversion to an objectoriented database. This helps to correct badly organised data and so gives the performance benefits of de-normalisation while improving data modelling. The costs of conversion from relational databases to object oriented databases were also examined. Costs were based on published benchmark tests, a benchmark carried out during this study and case studies. The benchmark tests were based on an engineering database benchmark. Engineering problems such as computer-aided design and manufacturing have much to gain from conversion to object-oriented databases. Costs were calculated for coding and development, and also for operation. It was found that conversion to an object-oriented database was not usually cost effective as many of the performance benefits could be achieved by the far cheaper process of de-normalisation, or by using the performance improving facilities provided by many relational database systems such as indexing or partitioning or by simply upgrading the system hardware. It is concluded therefore that while object oriented databases are a better alternative for databases built from scratch, the conversion of a legacy relational database to an object oriented database is not necessarily cost effective.

We study representation systems for relational data based on relational algebra expressions with unions, products, and singleton relations. Algebraic factorisation using the distributivity of product over union allows succinct representation of many-to-many relationships; further succinctness is brought by sharing repeated subexpressions. We show that these techniques are especially applicable to results of conjunctive queries. In the first part of the dissertation we derive tight asymptotic size bounds for two flavours of factorised representations of results of conjunctive queries. Any conjunctive query is characterised by rational parameters that govern the factorisability of its results independently of the database instance. We relate these parameters to fractional edge covers and fractional hypertree decompositions. Factorisation naturally extends from relational data to its provenance. We characterise conjunctive queries by tight bounds on their readability, which captures how many times each input tuple is used to contribute to an output tuple, and we define syntactically the class of queries with bounded readability. In the second part of the dissertation we describe FDB, a relational database engine that uses factorised representations at the physical layer to reduce data redundancy and boost query performance. We develop algorithms for optimisation and evaluation of queries with selection, projection, join, aggregation and order-by clauses on factorised representations. By introducing novel operators for factorisation restructuring and a new optimisation objective to maintain intermediate and final results succinctly factorised, we allow query evaluation with lower time complexity than on flat relations. Experiments show that for data sets with many-to-many relationships, FDB can outperform relational engines by orders of magnitude.

In order to fully examine the application of association analysis to medical data for the purpose of deriving medical diagnoses, we survey classical association analysis and approaches, the current challenges faced by medical association analysis and proposed solutions, and finally culminate this knowledge in a proposition for the application of medical association analysis to the identification of food intolerance. The field of classical association analysis has been well studied since its introduction in the seminal paper on market basket research in the 1990's. While the theory itself is relatively simple, the brute force approach is prohibitively expensive and thus, creative approaches utilizing various data structures and strategies must be explored for efficiency. Medical association analysis is a burgeoning field with various focuses, including diagnosis systems and gene analysis. There are a number of challenges faced in the field, primarily stemming from characteristics of analysis of complex, voluminous and high dimensional medical data. We examine the challenges faced in the pre-processing, analysis and post-processing phases, and corresponding solutions. Additionally, we survey proposed measures for ensuring the results of medical association analysis will hold up to medical diagnosis standards. Finally, we explore how medical association analysis can be utilized to identify food intolerances. The proposed analysis system is based upon a current method of diagnosis used by medical professionals, and seeks to eliminate manual analysis, while more efficiently and intelligently identifying interesting, and less obvious patterns between patients' food consumption and symptoms to propose a food intolerance diagnosis.

When learning mathematics, deaf children of primary school age experience difficulties due to their disability. In Jordan, little research has been undertaken to understand the problems facing deaf children and their teachers. Frequently, children are educated in special schools for the deaf; the majority of deaf children tend not to be integrated into mainstream education although efforts are made to incorporate them into the system. Teachers in the main stream education system rarely have knowledge and experience to enable deaf students to reach their full potential. The methodological approach used in this research is a mixed one consisting of action research and Human Computer interaction (HCI) research. The target group was deaf children aged nine years (at the third grade) and their teachers in Jordanian schools. Mathematics was chosen as the main focus of this study because it is a universal subject with its own concepts and rules and at this level the teachers in the school have sufficient knowledge and experience to teach mathematics topics competently. In order to obtain a better understanding of the problems faced by teachers and the deaf children in learning mathematics, semi-structured interviews were undertaken and questionnaires distributed to teachers. The main aim at that stage of research was to explore the current use and status of the e-learning environment and LMS within the Jordanian schools for the deaf in Jordan. In later stages of this research, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used again to ascertain the effectiveness, usability and readiness of the adopted e-learning environment “Moodle. Finally pre-tests and post-tests used to assess the effectiveness of the e-learning environment and LMS. It is important to note that it was not intended to work with the children directly but were used as test subjects. Based on the requirements and recommendations of the teachers of the deaf, a key requirements scheme was developed. Four open source e-learning environments and LMS evaluated against the developed key requirements. The evaluation was based on a software engineering approache. The outcome of that evaluation was the adoption of an open source e-learning environment and LMS called “Moodle”. Moodle was presented to the teachers for the purpose of testing it. It was found it is the most suitable e-learning environment and LMS to be adapted for use by deaf children in Jordan based on the teachers requirements. Then Moodle was presented to the deaf children’s to use during this research. After use, the activities of the deaf and their teachers were used and analysed in terms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) analysis. The analysis includes the readiness, usability, user satisfaction, ease of use, learnability, outcome/future use, content, collaboration & communication tools and functionality.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Computer Science / Master / Master of Philosophy