Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2004. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-56). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2006. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-44). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Bonn, 1989. / Bibliography: p. 71-72.

Inaug.-Diss.--Rheinsche Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 1986. / Bibliography: p. 101-104.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-100).

Ontologies are descriptions of the knowledge about a domain of interest encoded in computer processable languages, e.g., Description Logics, which are decidable fragments of First Order Logic. The main aim of ontologies is to define unambiguous vocabularies to facilitate knowledge sharing and integration. A critical issue with ontologies consists of their increasing complexity. To address this problem several notions of modularity have been recently proposed. Modularity notions can help in two ways: 1) If we know what sub-part of the ontology we want to work with, obtaining the appropriate module will allow us to work with that sub-part in a principled way; 2) a notion of module might induce a modular structure which allows users to explore the entire ontology in a sensible manner (perhaps finding appropriate sub-parts to work on). However, the most popular notion --- locality based modules --- while excelling at modular extraction have thus far resisted attempts to induce a modular structure. Indeed, due to their nature, locality based modules tend to occur in unfeasible numbers in ontologies. We tackle this problem by identifying basic building blocks of modules as sets of axioms which 'cling together', that is, sets of axiom such that if any element appears in a module, then all the rest due. This notion of an 'atom'' proves key to defining a useful family of locality based modular structures, the (Labelled) Atomic Decompositions ((L)ADs). In this thesis, we define (L)AD and explore its properties. We show that ADs are efficiently computable and, with appropraite labellings, provide a reasonably terse representation of the entire set of locality based modules. From ADs, we are able to distinguish so-called "genuine" modules, i.e., modules that cannot be decomposed further as the union of two or more modules. Finally, we explore several of the applications to which (L)ADs have been applied including module extraction, ontology comprehension, and modular reasoning.

We have designed and fabricated a biomicroviscometer platform for measurement of microflows of biological fluids. The biomicroviscometer combines an optically clear biocompatible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channel with on-chip integrated microfluidic differential pressure sensors and capabilities of modular channel geometries. This setup allows for a direct measurement of the change in pressure and flow rate, increasing the overall accuracy of the measurement of viscosity and optical observation. We present an introduction of this combined method of measurement with different channel dimensions, using Newtonian and non Newtonian fluids, and the corresponding calculations. This measurement technique has potential applications in measuring rheological properties at the micro level to further blood disease analysis, and lab-on-a-chip fabrication and analysis.

To the average American citizen, the thought of constructing a public building is completely unachievable. With price points in the millions of dollars (Building Journal), average citizens rely upon the government, wealthy individuals, or corporations to construct the communities they live in. However, the contemporary landscape of financing buildings has provided an alternative: crowdfunding. Crowdfunding, or the pooling of money from a large number of individuals in order to collectively reach a larger funding goal (Davies), injects a democratic system into the traditional construction process, allowing individuals to vote on projects they support by either choosing to fund or not to fund the project. At this time, buildings that use crowdfunding strategies are designed in the same manner as those funded from traditional sources. However, this reliance on traditional design methods is proving to be detrimental to crowdfunded projects with 70% of all projects failing. By divorcing crowdfunded buildings from e design methodologies that are used to design traditional buildings, a new mode of design can be created that is more beneficial to crowdfunded projects. This new mode of design will capitalize on the differences in how these types of projects and traditional projects are funded. Crowdfunded projects are formed through the accumulation of resources over a length of time whereas traditional projects are given all of their resources at once. In order to take advantage of this rate of accumulation, crowdfunded projects should be defined by the aggregation of individual parts which can be funded independently. As parts are funded, they are added to a growing whole. While the final form will be unknown to the advocates of the project and the project designer, they will be responsible for designing the elements that will amount to the building and composing the strategy for how the elements will be organized. This process will allow the project to adapt the resources at hand and the desires of the community, gene ting a manifestation of the project's support by the community in real time. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Thesis advisor: Dubi Kelmer / We compute effective error rates for the equidistribution of translates of diagonal orbits on Hilbert modular varieties. The translation is determined by n real parameters and our results require the assumption that all parameters are non-zero. The error rate is given in explicit polynomial terms of the translation parameters and Sobolev type norms of the test functions. The effective equidistribution is applied to give counting estimates for binary quadratic forms of square discriminant over real number rings. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Mathematics.

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