CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / The petrochemical industry or petroleum deserves special attention because, in practically all stages (drilling, refining, storage and distribution), residues that harm the environment and is a challenge to those responsible for their management are generated. Among the various wastes generated by the oil industry, are the Soils Contaminated by Petroleum Products (SCPD). In Cearà state, the generation of this type of waste is coming from a refinery that is located in Fortaleza city. During maintenance performed on the steps of refining and storage of petroleum, can occur contact derivatives with soil, contaminating it, thus generating SCPD which finishes stored in drums, requiring alternative for correct final disposal. Given the above, was decided to study the incorporation of SCDP in the granular layers of the floor so that it ensures no damage to the environment. A new methodology was developed allowing the assessment of the technical feasibility of using SCDP (natural or stabilized) in Road Paving, using the encapsulation technique with cement. In the experimental program developed, the characterization tests, compaction, California Bearing Ratio (CBR), Simple Compression Strength (RCS), Diametrical Compression (RTCD), Resilience Modulus (MR), durability were executed, thus as the achievement of the environmental tests of leaching and solubilization. Observed after conducting of the experimental program, there are technical possibility for the incorporation of SCDP in granular pavement layers. The results shown an incorporation of residue to the natural ground, in other words, a particle size stabilization already has considerable gains, since it increases the index support. By adding cement, significant gains were obtained from CBR, MR, RCS and RT, and a condition of reasonable durability. However, environmentally, in an initial assessment, the feasibility of using the SCDP on pavements was not possible, because the mix without cement and mixing with cement evaluated, obtained concentrations of the parameters analyzed in the assay solubilization above permitted. However, it is important to note that the current method of assessing contaminant parameters does not take into consideration conditions that might be encountered in the field, thus there is a need to design of a model to evaluate the mechanical and environmental properties for waste that may be incorporated in the pavement construction process. Thus, the encapsulation technique contaminants cannot be ignored as an alternative to incorporating SCDP granular layers of paving. / A indÃstria petroquÃmica ou do petrÃleo merece atenÃÃo especial. Em praticamente todas as etapas (perfuraÃÃo, refino, armazenamento e distribuiÃÃo) sÃo gerados resÃduos nocivos ao ambiente que representam um desafio para os responsÃveis pelo seu gerenciamento. Dentre os diversos resÃduos gerados pela indÃstria petrolÃfera, estÃo os Solos Contaminados por Derivados de PetrÃleo (SCPD). No estado do CearÃ, a geraÃÃo desse tipo de resÃduo à proveniente de uma refinaria que fica localizada na cidade de Fortaleza. Durante as manutenÃÃes realizadas nas etapas de refino e armazenamento do petrÃleo, pode ocorrer o contato de derivados com o solo, contaminando-o, gerando assim, o SCPD. Esse resÃduo acaba estocado em tambores, necessitando de alternativas para uma disposiÃÃo final correta. Diante do exposto, resolveu-se estudar a incorporaÃÃo do SCDP nas camadas granulares dos pavimentos de forma que se garanta a ausÃncia de danos ao meio ambiente. Elaborou-se uma metodologia que permitiu avaliar a viabilidade tÃcnica do uso do SCDP (natural ou estabilizado) na PavimentaÃÃo RodoviÃria, usando a tÃcnica de encapsulamento com cimento. No programa experimental desenvolvido foram executados os ensaios de caracterizaÃÃo, compactaÃÃo, Ãndice de Suporte CalifÃrnia (CBR), ResistÃncia à CompressÃo Simples (RCS), ResistÃncia à TraÃÃo por CompressÃo Diametral (RTCD), MÃdulo de ResiliÃncia (MR), durabilidade, bem como a realizaÃÃo dos ensaios ambientais de lixiviaÃÃo e solubilizaÃÃo. Observou-se, apÃs a realizaÃÃo do programa experimental, que hà possibilidade tÃcnica para a incorporaÃÃo do SCDP em camadas granulares de pavimentos. Os resultados mostram que a incorporaÃÃo de resÃduo ao solo natural, ou seja, uma estabilizaÃÃo granulomÃtrica, jà traz bons ganhos, uma vez que eleva o Ãndice de suporte das misturas. Ao se adicionar cimento, foram obtidos ganhos significativos para CBR, MR, RCS e RTCD, bem como uma razoÃvel condiÃÃo de durabilidade. PorÃm, ambientalmente, em uma primeira avaliaÃÃo, as concentraÃÃes dos parÃmetros analisados no ensaio de solubilizaÃÃo ficaram acima do permitido. No entanto, à importante ressaltar que o mÃtodo atual de avaliaÃÃo dos parÃmetros contaminantes nÃo leva em consideraÃÃo as condiÃÃes que poderÃo ser encontradas em campo. Logo hà a necessidade da concepÃÃo de um modelo de avaliaÃÃo das propriedades mecÃnicas e ambientais para resÃduos que venham a ser incorporados no processo de construÃÃo de pavimentos. Assim, a tÃcnica de encapsulamento de contaminantes nÃo pode ser desconsiderada como alternativa à incorporaÃÃo do SCDP em camadas granulares de pavimentos.

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>