The second most common cause of cancer deaths in the developed world is bowel cancer. Improving the ability to detect and classify lesions as early as possible, allows treatment earlier. The work presented in this thesis is structured around the following detailed aims:Development of high frequency, broadband µUS (micro-ultrasound) imaging transducers through optimization of ultra-thinning processes for lithium niobate (LNO) and fabrication of novel ‘mass-spring’ matching layers using carefully controlled vacuum deposition is demonstrated. The effectiveness of this technique was quantified by applying multiple matching layers to 3 mm diameter 45 MHz LNO µUS transducers using carefully controlled vacuum deposition. The bandwidth of single mass-spring layer µUS transducer was measured to be 46% with an insertion loss of 21 dB. The bandwidth and insertion loss of a multiple matching layer µUS transducer was measured to be 59% and 18 dB respectively. The values were compared with an unmatched transducer which had a bandwidth and insertion loss of 28% and 34 dB respectively. All the experimentally measured values were in agreement with unidimensional acoustic model predictions. µUS tools that can detect and measure microscopic changes in precancerous tissue using a mouse small bowel model with an oncogenic mutation was developed. µUS transducer was used to test the hypothesis that the intestinal tissue morphology of WT (wild type) and ApcMin/+ (adenomatous polyposis coli) diverges with progressing age intervals (60, 90 and 120 days) of mice. A high frequency ultrasound scanning system was designed and the experiments were performed ex vivo using a focused 45 MHz, f-# = 2.85, µUS transducer. The data collected by scanning was used to compute the backscatter coefficients (BSC) and acoustic impedance (Z) of WT and ApcMin/+ mice. The 2D and 3D ultrasound images showed that µUS detects polyps < 500 µm in the scan plane. The measured values of BSC and Z showed differences between normal and precancerous tissue. The differences detected in precancerous murine intestine and human tissue using µUS were correlated with high resolution 3D optical imaging. This novel approach may provide a powerful adjunct to screening endoscopy for improved identification and monitoring, allowing earlier treatment of otherwise undetectable lesions.

Les composants optiques (miroirs, lentilles, hublots…) présents sur les chaînes du Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) sont susceptibles de s’endommager sous flux laser de forte énergie en particulier à la longueur d’onde 351 nm. Les dommages se présentent sous la forme de cratères de quelques micromètres de diamètre qui apparaissent et croissent en face arrière des optiques en silice. Dans ce contexte, le but de ces travaux est de développer des revêtements de protection qui visent, par leurs propriétés d’amortissement au choc, d’autocicatrisation, ou de post réparation, à limiter la croissance de ces dommages. Des couches minces, de quelques micromètres d’épaisseur ont été préparées par procédé sol-gel et déposées sur la face arrière des optiques. L’élaboration de ces couches s’effectue par la synthèse sol-gel d’une solution composée d’un précurseur de silice et d’un élastomère polydiméthylsiloxane (PDMS). / The optical devices (lents, mirrors, portholes…) that are set on the chains of the Laser Megajoule (LMJ) may be damaged by the high energy laser beam especially around the UV wavelength of 351 nm. The damages are micronics craters on the rear of the optics that grows exponentially after each laser shots. The study aim at developing some optical thin coatings on the rear of the optical substrates to prevent the growth of the damage by amortizing the laser shockwave, self-healing the craters that has appeared, or repairing the laser hole after the damage occurs. The thin coatings have been prepared by a sol-gel method by using silica precursor and a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer. The two species reacted together to get a hybrid organic-inorganic Ormosil (organically modified silica) material, by creating a silica network linked to the PDMS species with covalent and hydrogens bounds. The thin layers are obtained from the sol-gel solution by using a dip and spin coating method.

This is a supporting paper for a Master of Arts Graduate Exhibition entitled My Journey Home: A Study in Hand-Felted Wool, held at Slocumb Galleries October 30 through November 3, 2006. The work in the exhibition represents a concentrated study in the graduate program in Fiber Art at East Tennessee State University. My artwork is an expression of my feelings and emotions toward my family, particularly the women in my family. The paper begins with an introduction detailing my artistic research and culminates with a reflection of the work shown in the exhibition. The cultural and historical influences that shaped my family and the influences that developed the fiber construction techniques that I use are then discussed. I explain the methods and procedures I employ to construct my art work and discuss the contemporary artists who have had an influence upon my work and me. In the summary I conclude that the hand-felted wool I construct is an excellent medium to express my ideas and emotions toward my family and my home.

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive imaging modality that has significantly contributed to the quantitative assessment of ocular diseases. Another tool available to ophthalmic clinicians is in-vivo confocal microscopy, which allows anatomical structures to be observed live at the cellular level. Incorporating both of these modalities for imaging the cornea allows us to take structural measurements to characterize disease-related changes in corneal anatomy. Notable diseases that directly impact or correlate with corneal structures include glaucoma and diabetic neuropathy. Given glaucoma's impact as the second leading cause of blindness in the world, great efforts have been made in researching and understanding the disease. Correlations have been found between the central corneal thickness (CCT) and the risk of developing visual field loss in patients diagnosed with glaucoma. It should come as no surprise that measuring CCT among glaucoma suspects has also now become a clinical standard of practice. Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases where the body experiences high blood sugar levels over prolonged periods of time. It is a prominent disease that affects millions of Americans each day. While not necessarily an ocular disease in its own right, it has been shown that diabetes can still affect the corneal structures. Diabetics have decreased corneal sensitivity and a significant link has been established between neuropathic severity in diabetic patients and corneal nerve fiber density. Given the availability of these imaging tools and the significant impact these prominent diseases have on society a growing focus has developed on relating corneal structure measurements and ophthalmic diseases. However, manually acquiring structural measures of the cornea can be a labor intensive and daunting task. Hence, experts have sought to develop automatic alternatives. The goals of our work includes the ability to automatically segment the corneal structures from anterior segment-optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) and in-vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) to provide useful structural information from the cornea. The major contributions of this work include 1) utilizing the information of AS-OCT imagery to segment the cornea layers simultaneously in 3D, 2) increasing the region-of-interest of IVCM imagery using a feature-based registration approach to develop a panorama from the images, 3) incorporating machine-learning techniques to segment the corneal nerves in the IVCM imagery, and 4) extracting structural measurements from the segmentation results to determine correlations between the structural measurements known to differ from the corneal structures in various subject groups.

Nanostructures have received much attention from the physical and engineering communities in the past few years. The understanding of the behavior of nanostructures in various conditions is warranted since the applications of such materials in optics, electronics, and mechanics is ever expanding. This thesis investigates a specific type of structure, a concentric cylindrical. More specifically, the dispersion relation of radiating and non-radiating plasmon polaritons (quasi-particles resulting from interactions of photons and surface electrons) is studied under varying conditions. We intend to show the influence of changing the thickness of the layers, the number of layers, the curvature of each layer, and the type of material the layers has on the dispersion relation. By first solving Maxwell's equations in cylindrical coordinates and applying boundary conditions, we developed a matrix equation through which we were able to obtain the dispersion relation for an N layered cylindrical system characterized by a specified dielectric function placed into a background. For the non-radiative modes we used the bisection method to obtain the dispersion relation; however, since radiative modes encompass virtual modes, which contain real and imaginary components, a Newton method was used to gather that data. The dielectric functions for silver and carbon dielectric functions were used to describe the material layers within the radiative and non-radiative regimes. The results show that curvature changes influence the surface plasmon polariton dispersion by either red shifting or blue shifting the energetics. Lifetimes and damping are seen to be influenced by the curvature as well. The addition of more layers to the system results in an increase in the complexity of the dispersion energetics. The results obtained would help provide better scanning tips within the optical microscopy field. Also, these results can have direct application to the field of photonics. Finally, these results also help provide the foundations to understanding the fundamentals of long-ranged forces in cylindrical layered structures.

This dissertation study describes the development of novel heteroepitaxial growth of 3C-SiC layers by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). It was hypothesized that chloride addition to the "traditional" propane-silane-hydrogen precursors system will enhance the deposition growth rate and improve the material quality via reduced defect density. Thermodynamic equilibrium calculations were performed to obtain a criterion for which chloride specie to select for experimentation. This included the chlorocarbons, chlorosilanes, and hydrogen chloride (HCl) chloride containing groups. This study revealed no difference in the most dominant species present in the equilibrium composition mixture between the groups considered. Therefore, HCl was the chloride specie selected to test the hypothesis. CVD computerized fluid dynamic simulations were developed to predict the velocity, temperature and concentration profiles along the reactor. These simulations were performed using COMSOL Multiphysics and results are presented. The development of a high-temperature (1300 °C -1390°C) 3C-SiC growth process resulted in deposition rates up to ~38 µm/h. This is the highest value reported in the literature to date for 3C-SiC heteroepitaxy. XRD FWHM values obtained varied from 220 to 1160 arcsec depending of the process growth rate or film thickness. These values are superior or comparable to those reported in the literature. It was concluded from this study that at high deposition temperatures HCl addition to the precursor chemistry had the most significant impact on the epitaxial layer growth rate. Low-temperature (1000-1250°C) 3C-SiC growth experiments evidenced that the highest deposition rate that could be attained was ~2.5 µm/h. The best quality layer achieved in this study had a FWHM of 278 arcsec; which is comparable to values reported in the literature and to films grown at higher deposition temperatures in this study. It was concluded from this work that at lower deposition temperatures the HCl addition was more beneficial for the film quality by enhancing the surface. Surface roughness values for films grown with HCl additive were 10 times lower than for films grown without HCl. Characterization of the epitaxial layers was carried out via Nomarski optical microscopy, FTIR, SEM, AFM, XRD and XPS.

The delivery of nutrients to the surface of marine algae can be controlled by the local hydrodynamic regime: in higher flow velocities, the Diffusive Boundary Layer (DBL) at the uptake surface is thinner, which can increase the flux of dissolved chemicals to the algal surface. If the primary productivity of an alga is controlled by the availability of a dissolved chemical, increased water flow should result in greater primary productivity due to increased chemical flux. To test the hypothesis that increased water flow will increase Photosystem II kinematics (PSII) in the green alga Caulerpa we used a Diving Pam Fluorometer to measure the maximum relative electron transport rate (Pmax), Saturation Irradiance (Ik), Non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), the light limited slope of photosynthesis vs. irradiance curve (α) and photo-chemical quenching (qP) and compared these measured values among treatments of varying flow speeds in a portable laboratory flume. We also measured the influence of water flow on values of Pmax, Ik, α , qP and NPQ in the field. Results showed that in C. racemosa collected from Tampa bay, and tested in a laboratory flume, values of Pmax and Ik were positively correlated to increase water flow, possibly indicating mass-transfer limitation. C. mexicana, collected from the Florida Keys, showed a decrease in values of Pmax, and Ik with increasing water velocity in flume experiments, indicating that the increased flow was resulting in physiological stress. This result was supported with field measurements for C. sertularioides, which showed a negative correlation between Pmax and flow velocity and Ik and flow velocity.

<p>The boundary layer is the part of the atmosphere that is in direct contact with the ground via turbulent motion. At mid-latitudes the boundary layer is usually one or a few kilometers deep, while in the Arctic it is much more shallow, typically a few hundred meters or less. The reason is that here the absolute temperature increases in the lowest kilometer, making the boundary layer semi-permanently stably stratified. The exchange of heat, momentum and tracers between the atmosphere, ocean and ground under stable stratification is discussed from an observational, modeling and climate-change point of view. A compilation of six observational datasets, ordered by the Richardson number (rather than the widely used Monin-Obukhov length) reveals new information about turbulence in the very stably stratified regime. An essentially new turbulence closure model, based on the total turbulent energy concept and these observational datasets, is developed and tested against large-eddy simulations with promising results. The role of mesoscale motion in the exchange between the atmosphere and surface is investigated both for observations and in idealized model simulations. Finally, it is found that the stably stratified boundary layer is more sensitive to external surface forcing than its neutral and convective counterparts. It is speculated that this could be part of the explanation for the observed Arctic amplification of climate change.</p>

<p>The aim of this thesis was to study chickens of an F7 intercross between red junglefowl and White Leghorn layers in five behavioural tests to see if there were any correlations between traits in the intercross. 80 animals were used (40 males, 40 females); they were tested in a tonic immobility test, an open field, a fear of human test, an aggression test and lastly a sociality test. The results indicate a pair of correlations between the different variables; chickens with long tonic immobility duration were less aggressive, and chickens with a high fear of humans were more social towards other chickens, which could suggest a correlation between fear and social behaviour/aggression. The results from this study also support previous studies showing that one QTL controls chickens’ behaviour in the tonic immobility test based on the correlations found between the variables in the tonic immobility test. Differences between the genders were found in variables that correlated with each other; this could lead to a speculative suggestion that those behaviours are affected by genes on the X-chromosome. There was also a significant relationship between the weight of the male chickens and their behaviour in the open field test and in the fear of human test, in which the heavier males were less fearful than the lighter ones.</p>

<p>A new large eddy simulation (LES) code is developed and used to investigate non-local features of turbulent planetary boundary layers (PBLs). The LES code is based on filtered Navier-Stokes equations, which describe motions of incompressible, Boussinesq fluid at high Reynolds numbers. The code computes directly large-scale, non-universal turbulence in the PBL whereas small-scale, universal turbulence is parameterized by a dynamic mixed subgrid closure. The LES code is thoroughly tested against high quality laboratory and field data. </p><p>This study addresses non-local properties of turbulence which emphasis on the stable stratification. Its basic results are as follows. The flow stability in PBLs is generally caused by two mechanisms: the negative buoyancy force (in the stable density stratification) and the Coriolis force (in the rotating system). The latter stabilizes the flow if the earth’s vorticity and the turbulent vorticity are anti-parallel. The Coriolis force stability suppresses large-scale turbulence and makes large eddies asymmetric. The density stratification suppresses vertical scales of turbulence. Joint actions of the Coriolis and the buoyancy forces result in a more complex behavior of turbulence. Particularly, the layers of vigorous turbulence may appear in the course of development of low-level jets in baroclinic atmosphere. </p><p>Non-local effects determine integral measures of PBLs, first of all the PBL depth. This study clearly demonstrates its pronounced dependences on the Coriolis parameter, the Kazanski-Monin internal stability parameter, and newly introduced imposed-stability and baroclinicity parameters. An LES database is created and used to validate an advanced PBL-depth formulation. LES support the idea that PBLs interact with the stably stratified free flow through the radiation of gravity waves, excited by large turbulent eddies at the interface. </p>