This thesis is sequestered till May 2014 / Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics

Dengue virus and West Nile virus are important mosquito-borne pathogens of Flaviviridae family affecting millions of people worldwide and causing a severe global healthcare threat. However, currently there are no approved effective antiviral drugs or vaccines available for the treatment of virus infection. This thesis describes the design, synthesis and discovery of two novel classes of reversible competitive inhibitors of Dengue Virus and West Nile Virus NS2B/NS3 protease. Structure-activity relationship studies have led to the identification of a low micromolar hit, which will be used in a hit-to-lead campaign to generate lead compounds that display superior ADMET and PK characteristics. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Chemistry

This dissertation has four major objectives: the first three ones are focused on the EOL of the advanced materials, while the fourth objective concerns the economic and environmental impacts of recycling aircraft materials. The major topics discussed are: (1) life cycle and nano-products: end-of-life assessment; (2) recycling of fiber reinforced composites and reusing in different fields as low cost products; (3) recycling of aircraft, and (4) evaluation of recycling efforts of aircraft companies in Wichita. The results of the study can be used to save primary resources for a longer materials life cycle; increase social awareness regarding the recycling and reusing issues; reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators. These results can be considered for many other manufacturing industries, such as automotive, electric and electronics, computers, telecommunications, ships, wood, paper, food, textiles, cosmetics, paint, defense, and others. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Wireless data communications, especially to and from portable mobile devices, is one of the fastest growing paradigms in the field of computer communications. This fast paced growth of wireless communication devices is making some communication frequency bands overcrowded. There exists legacy frequency spectrum that remains under utilized. As a result, there are great inefficiencies in how the overall available frequency spectrum is utilized, motivating the need for new technologies to solve this issue. Cognitive Radio (CR) is an emerging technology proposed over the past decade in order to deal with spectrum inefficiency and to help improving wireless communication performance. A CR has the capability to scan across the spectrum to find under utilized channels and use them for communications under some stipulated conditions. A key aspect of CRs is the "cognition" gained through a spectrum scanning process. The benefit of this cognition is apparent and well studied in terms of achieving better communication performance on selected spectrum and detecting the presence of primary users of licensed spectrum. The benefits in terms of reduced energy consumption in secondary users, however, due to easier channel access and less contention have not been quantified in prior work. Spectrum scanning to gain cognition is a power intensive process and the costs incurred in terms of energy lost need to be accounted for. Thus, it is not clear whether a cognitive radio based node would be more energy efficient than any conventional radio node, and if so, under what circumstances. As a result, the focus of this work is on the ad hoc Wireless LAN scenario that works in the highly congested ISM bands. In this dissertation three important contributions to research on ad-hoc WLAN cognitive radios are presented. First, a comprehensive survey on prior research in cognitive radio networks with a focus on the implications for energy consumption is presented. Second, the energy consumption of a radio that uses the CR technique is modeled and analyzed for a static scenario with fixed channel conditions and node populations. As part of this work four novel spectrum scanning algorithms are proposed and analytically evaluated for their energy consumption. Finally, the energy consumption of a radio that employs the CR technique through one of our four spectrum scanning schemes is studied through simulations for dynamic scenarios that include diverse channel conditions and varying node populations. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Growing rates of childhood obesity continue to be a major public health issue for this country. In order to impact childhood obesity at the population level it is necessary to shift our focus away from individual behaviors and towards the critical examination of the role that settings have in promoting or discouraging healthy eating. One relevant setting in the fight against childhood obesity is the school cafeteria. Since 1946, the National School Lunch Program has worked to ensure that schools can provide their students with affordable daily access to nutritional, well-balanced meals. However, "food served" does not necessarily equal "food consumed;" high rates of waste, especially of fruits and vegetables, are well documented. The current, mixed-method study examines the effectiveness of a low-cost intervention designed to increase student consumption of fruits and vegetables by altering the choice architecture of the cafeteria. This was done through the introduction of an active, forced choice into the school lunch service. Consumption was measured by observing (n=2,064) and weighing (n=84) student plate waste over two ten-day periods pre-intervention and during implementation. Results show an average daily 15% increase in consumption of both fruits and vegetables during the intervention period. Qualitative interviews (n=34) were conducted in order to better understand the environment of the school cafeteria and identify any barriers to healthy eating that may exist within the setting. Both quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that local schools can actively encourage students to take advantage of fruits and vegetables offered through the NSLP by implementing setting-level changes to the cafeteria environment. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology

This study examined the impact of rural residence on the earned income of older adults and the relationship of rural residence to possible structural, individual, and life course determinants of income. Using a sample of full-time workers age 50 and older drawn from the 2009 Current Population Survey, explanations of income based upon theories of dual economy, labor market segmentation, occupational sex segregation, human capital, rational choice, and the life course perspective were explored for both the full sample and for rural and urban workers. The research results found clear differences in income between rural and urban older workers, and differences by location in the predictive power of the segments in the proposed model. Strong support was found for the hypothesis that rural older workers have lower wage and salary income than urban older workers. Overall, urban older workers earned more than rural older workers, and in every condition except one, urban workers outearned rural workers / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Sociology.

Mobile ad hoc sensor networks are characterized by dynamic changes in communication links and network topology mainly due to node mobility. In such networks, it is a challenge to build a communication system that lasts longer and requires less reconfiguration and less communication overhead. In this study, we propose an on-demand topology reconfiguration approach for multi-agent systems aimed at enhancing the connectivity and performance. The proposed strategy groups nodes, elects cluster-heads and finally selects gateways for inter-cluster communication. This study, also, seeks to investigate the impact of topology structural characteristics on consensus building among multi-agent nodes. The structural properties evaluated are the algebraic connectivity ratio, average path, average cluster coefficient, average matching index, modularity and the average participation. The consensus is measured by nodes average state update. Statistical methods are employed to explore the interaction between these structural properties and the consensus. A theoretical analysis is provided to support the statistical results. Finally, a comparative study of three distributed strategies for task allocation in a multi-agent system is presented. The objective is to determine for each node its course of action and the tasks it needs to accomplish. The methods are based on self-organizing map technique, Hungarian method and a linear programming optimization formulation. A theoretical section is provided to support the dynamics of these techniques and some of the results. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Wind and solar energy are clean, free of fuel cost and likely to have great potential in the future. However, besides the technical difficulties associated with integrating variable sources of generation with the electric grid, high capital cost and other indirect costs to power system operations, such as ancillary service requirements, delay more widespread investment in wind and solar power plants. Current energy policies, especially renewable incentives and CO2 emission regulations, remain controversial and uncertain. Pumped-hydroelectric energy storage has proven to be valuable as bulk energy storage for energy arbitrage coordinating with conventional thermal generators. In the future grid, there are uncertainties, in terms of modeling and optimization, of assessing the value of bulk energy storage coordinating less with thermal generators and more with wind and solar. Moreover, the price of natural gas is predicted to have large variations in the next several decades. It is therefore necessary to construct a generation planning model with comprehensive modeling of wind, solar and energy storage under multiple scenarios of energy policies and natural gas prices. This dissertation presents such an optimal planning model using a multi-period optimization formulation and its implementation in the MATPOWER's extensible optimal power flow structure. A 3-bus test system is constructed to test the sensitivity of the planning model. This model is further applied to the reduced 240-bus Western Electric Coordinating Council (WECC) system to study more practical planning results. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant's life. In the United States, about three quarters of women start breastfeeding in the early postpartum period and less than half are still breastfeeding their infant at six months of age. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of breastfeeding interventions on breastfeeding rates in Kansas. Fifteen public health departments agreed to participate in this research. Women who had a live birth between July 1, 2010, and April 30, 2012, were eligible to participate. The Breastfeeding Initiative Evaluation Survey was designed and consisted of selected items from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System survey and additional items to investigate program impact. Two multiple regression analyses were conducted to assess predictors related to length of breastfeeding. One used demographics and the other used types of breastfeeding services as predictors of breastfeeding duration. The linear combination of demographic predictor variables was significantly related to duration, F(5,112) = 30.41, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.59, adjusted R2 = 0.57. The linear combination of types of service predictor variables was also significantly related to duration, F(6,77) = 6.82, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.37, adjusted R2 = 0.31. From a public health perspective, it is important that infants are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. This study demonstrates that the introduction of other liquids and solid food negatively influences breastfeeding duration. Additionally, the services from a breastfeeding educator and availability of breastfeeding equipment are critical in the success of breastfeeding interventions. This study's findings can be used to enhance breastfeeding services and their delivery. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology

We prove that under some conditions, the central fans of capillary surfaces exist and are stable. We perturb the contact angle of a capillary surface for a bounded domain which is not necessarily symmetric, that has a central fan, and prove that the central fan will continue to exist after the perturbation. We prove the result for some smooth conditions with sufficient regularity. We provide examples to illustrate the existence and stability of central fans. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics