Thesis (M.S.C.E.)--University of Toledo, 2006. / Typescript. "A thesis [submitted] as partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering." Bibliography: leaves 104-108.

The Germania Unit is located in Midland County, 12 miles east of Midland, Texas and is part of the Spraberry Formation in the Midland Basin which is one of the largest known oil reservoirs in the world bearing between 8.9 billion barrels and 10.5 billion barrels of oil originally in place. The field is considered geologically complex since it comprises typically low porosity, low permeability fine sandstones, and siltstones that are interbedded with shaly non-reservoir rocks. Natural fractures existing over a regional area have long been known to dominate all aspects of performance in the Spraberry Trend Area. Two stages of depletion have taken place over 46 years of production: Primary production under solution gas drive and secondary recovery via water injection through two different injection patterns. The cumulative production and injection in Germania as of July 2003 were 3.24 million barrels and 3.44 million barrels respectively and the production level is 470 BOPD through 64 active wells with an average rate per well of 7.3 BOPD and average water cut of 60 percent. This performance is considered very low and along with the low amount of water injected, waterflood recovery has never been thoroughly understood. In this research, production and injection data were analyzed and integrated to optimize the reservoir management strategies for Germania Spraberry Unit. This study addresses reservoir characterization and monitoring of the waterflood project with the aim of proposing alternatives development, taking into account current and future conditions of the reservoir. Consequently, this project will be performed to provide a significant reservoir characterization in an uncharacterized area of Spraberry and evaluate the performance of the waterflooding to provide facts, information and knowledge to obtain the maximum economic recovery from this reservoir and finally understand waterflood management in Spraberry. Thus, this research describes the reservoir, and comprises the performance of the reservoir under waterflooding, and controlled surveillance to improve field performance. This research should serve as a guide for future work in reservoir simulation and reservoir management and can be used to evaluate various scenarios for additional development as well as to optimize the operating practices in the field. The results indicate that under the current conditions, a total of 1.410 million barrels of oil can be produced in the next 20 years through the 64 active wells and suggest that the unit can be successfully flooded with the current injection rate of 1600 BWPD and pattern consisting of 6 injection wells aligned about 36 degrees respect to the major fracture orientation. This incremental is based in both extrapolations and numerical simulation studies conducted in Spraberry.

Le monitorage de la transmission neuromusculaire consiste à évaluer la contraction d’un muscle en réponse à des trains d’impulsions électriques délivrés sur son nerf moteur. Le curare ayant pour effet de bloquer la communication entre le nerf et le muscle, les réponses musculaires seront maximales avant injection de la drogue et s’atténueront au fur et à mesure du blocage neuromusculaire, jusqu’à atteindre une paralysie complète. Au regard des principales limitations des moniteurs de curare actuels et des avantages qu'apporte le monitoring sur une variété de muscles, le monitorage par EMG semble être la meilleure alternative. Ce sont essentiellement les insuffisances dans la détection et la gestion des artefacts et des perturbations électriques qui rendent les moniteurs EMG actuels insuffisamment fiables et mal adaptés à l’usage clinique. L'objectif de ce travail est dès lors d'identifier les causes de perturabations et apporter les remèdes nécessaires pour faire de l'EMG une méthode de confiance à la fois pour la recherche et la pratique quotidienne.

Community Based monitoring (CBM): How facilitators can help Dalit and Adivassi communities in rural villages to participate in government programs to improve their health, educate their children, receive social security benefits and pensions, access rural work programs, enroll in pre and post natal care programs, and buy from government sponsored discount shops for basic necessities. In many parts of rural India the Dalit (lower caste) and Adivassi (tribal) populations are unjustly discriminated against and denied access to many government sponsored programs that could greatly improve their lives. Unnati is a NGO based in Gujarat with a location in Rajasthan. From the Rajasthan office, Unnati and partner organizations worked through facilitators to help citizens in 50 different villages form citizen collectives. These collectives were trained in basic community based monitoring techniques. Through CBM (Community Based Monitoring), these citizens with help from their facilitators, Unnati, and partner NGOs begin taking a more active role in six government sponsored programs or schemes. The facilitator manual I helped create is being used to further train current facilitators in Rajasthan and Gujarat. The manual will also be shared with other NGOs so that this program can be replicated with ease. The manual consists of an introduction to CBMs, criteria for being an Unnati facilitator, the facilitator roles and responsibilities, facilitator and village collectives’ goals, and a case study of two villages. Unnati asked me to undertake this project so that documentation exists for best practices as the CBM project continues. The CBM project began in April 2011. Survey results were recorded beginning in May. In June, surveys were reformatted and the current format has remained in place till December of 2011. Additionally, a part of the manual includes survey results as a model of correct and incorrect ways to document information as well as to show the importance of each question and what it indicates in terms of overall community health.

Many cities in North America have stated goals in their Official Plans, Transportation Plans, and other municipal documents related to cycling. A common objective is to increase the number and proportion of cyclists for either utilitarian or both utilitarian and recreational trips. To determine whether they are progressing towards achieving their goals, it is necessary that cities periodically and accurately monitor and measure their levels of cycling. This thesis aims to assess the different methods used for monitoring cycling in Canadian cities, as well as individual cities’ overall monitoring programs. The advantages and disadvantages of different methodologies and technologies are discussed, and best practices are provided. Four case study cities: Vancouver, Halifax, Calgary and Toronto are assessed according to a list of best practices developed by Hudson et al. (2010). Themes and patterns emerge and the cities are compared and contrasted. A summary of Canadian cities’ efforts is presented and the cities are ranked in the following order: #1 Vancouver; #2 Toronto; #3 Calgary; and #4 Halifax. In addition, the results of two surveys from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area are compared at the census tract (CT) level to assess their reliability. The Bicycling Share of Work Trips (BSWT) from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) and Statistics Canada’s Canadian Census (the Census) is examined to identify whether research from different sources is producing the same results. Geographic Information Systems are used to examine and compare the spatial patterns of the survey results and descriptive statistics are used to quantify the differences. It was found that the surveys are producing significantly different results and that there appears to be little spatial pattern in the difference between them. This research allows Canadian cities and other interested parties to learn about the various methods for monitoring cycling, to see which methods are being used in Canadian cities, to decide which methods are best for their specific needs, and to more comprehensively understand the BSWT from the Census and the TTS.

The main objective for this degree project is to implement an Application Availability Monitoring (AAM) system named Softek EnView for Fujitsu Services. The aim of implementing the AAM system is to proactively identify end user performance problems, such as application and site performance, before the actual end users experience them. No matter how well applications and sites are designed and nomatter how well they meet business requirements, they are useless to the end users if the performance is slow and/or unreliable. It is important for the customers to find out whether the end user problems are caused by the network or application malfunction. The Softek EnView was comprised of the following EnView components: Robot, Monitor, Reporter, Collector and Repository. The implemented system, however, is designed to use only some of these EnView elements: Robot, Reporter and depository. Robots can be placed at any key user location and are dedicated to customers, which means that when the number of customers increases, at the sametime the amount of Robots will increase. To make the AAM system ideal for the company to use, it was integrated with Fujitsu Services’ centralised monitoring system, BMC PATROL Enterprise Manager (PEM). That was actually the reason for deciding to drop the EnView Monitor element. After the system was fully implemented, the AAM system was ready for production. Transactions were (and are) written and deployed on Robots to simulate typical end user actions. These transactions are configured to run with certain intervals, which are defined collectively with customers. While they are driven against customers’ applicationsautomatically, transactions collect availability data and response time data all the time. In case of a failure in transactions, the robot immediately quits the transactionand writes detailed information to a log file about what went wrong and which element failed while going through an application. Then an alert is generated by a BMC PATROL Agent based on this data and is sent to the BMC PEM. Fujitsu Services’ monitoring room receives the alert, reacts to it according to the incident management process in ITIL and by alerting system specialists on critical incidents to resolve problems. As a result of the data gathered by the Robots, weekly reports, which contain detailed statistics and trend analyses of ongoing quality of IT services, is provided for the Customers.

For its high overall cost during product development, program debugging is an important aspect of system development. Debugging is a hard and complex activity, especially in time-sensitive systems which have limited resources and demanding timing constraints. System tracing is a frequently used technique for debugging embedded systems. A specific use of system tracing is to monitor and debug control-flow problems in programs. However, it is difficult to implement because of the potentially high overhead it might introduce to the system and the changes which can occur to the system behaviour due to tracing. To solve the above problems, in this work, we present a sampling-based approach to program execution monitoring which specifically helps developers trace the program execution in time-sensitive systems such as real-time applications. We build the system model and propose three theorems which determine the sampling period or the optimal in different scenarios. We also design seven heuristics and an instrumentation framework to extend the sampling period which can reduce the monitoring overhead and achieve an optimal tradeoff between accuracy and overhead introduced by instrumentation. Using this monitoring framework, we can use the information extracted through sampling to reconstruct the system state and execution paths to locate the deviation. Based on the statistically significant data, we also model the trend of the sampling period with the instrumentation steps. Based on the modelling results, we devise a scheme for predicting the number of markers we need to reach a certain sampling period. Last, we build a tool chain to instrument and monitoring the software system and further prove the soundness of our approach.

This thesis utilized the concept of an optically stimulated Contact Potential Difference (osCPD) sensor to monitor oil properties. The osCPD technique is a variant of the contact potential difference (CPD) method used to obtain surface properties of materials. The technique uses modulated light to stimulate electron charge carriers in silicon coated with a layer of oil. Demonstration of this oil monitoring design was done by placing different oil samples on the silicon surface and monitoring the corresponding electrical signal with the osCPD sensor. Experiments showed that the osCPD sensor produced an electrical signal that was related to the amount of time an oil sample was aged in an engine (or mileage). Further, a linear relationship was found between the relative conductivity of these oils and the osCPD signal. It is theorized that this osCPD signal is dependant on the charge transfer at the silicon and oil interface. Investigation of this interaction was carried out. Experiments showed that adding a silicon nitride passivation layer on the silicon surface eliminated the change in osCPD signal with oil properties. A model of this charge interaction was developed.

Knowledge of viscosity of flow streams is essential for the design and operation of production facilities, drilling operations and reservoir engineering calculations. The determination of the viscosity of a reservoir fluid at downhole conditions still remains a complex task due to the difficulty of designing a tool capable of measuring accurate rheological information under harsh operational conditions. This dissertation presents the evaluation of the performance of a novel device designed to measure the viscosity of a fluid at downhole conditions. The design investigated in this study addresses several limitations encountered in previous designs. The prototype was calibrated and tested with fluids with viscosities ranging from 1 to 28 cp under temperatures ranging from 100 to 160oF. Viscosity measurements were validated with independent measurements using a Brookfield viscometer. We proposed a mathematical model to describe the performance of the device for Power-law fluids. This model describes the response of the device as a function of the rheology of the fluid and the physical dimensions of the device. Experimental data suggests the validity of the model to predict the response of the device under expected operating conditions. This model can be used to calculate optimal dimensions of the device for customized target applications.

To implement sustainable ex-situ management of big ungulate herds such as African Waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus), one strategy is to place a vasectomized male with females during the sub-optimal season for breeding and subsequently replace him with an intact male during the optimal breeding season. However, information is needed on the effects of vasectomy and the long-term effects on social well-being of individuals used in this "bull-switching" treatment, which is designed to enhance well-being of the whole herd. In this study, behavioral observations were conducted in three periods (pre-treatment, treatment, post-treatment) 2-months in length. Focal individual observations were used to systematically record (a) continuous samples on video (6-min duration; n = 595), (b) instantaneous samples of proximity (n = 951), and (c) field notes of all-occurrences of social interaction (courting and antagonistic). The quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed a significant effect of treatment on three (courtship, escalation, and proximity) out of four measures (deescalation was not affected). Courtship and escalation behaviors increased significantly during the treatment (G2 = 46.35; df=1, P <0.001; z=6.60). The treatment was associated with a significant change in proximity for females (G2 = 17.21; df=1; P <0.001; z=2.31) and other males (G2 =16.10; df=1; P <0.001; z=-3.57). Overall, (1) there was no substantial change with social well-being of the vasectomized male before removal and after reintroduction; (2) the male proximity did not fluctuate significantly with the juvenile males, calves, and other species; and (3) the vasectomized male and the intact male exhibited similar social well-being characteristics. Considering current environmental changes, the treatment did not result in a decline of the social well-being of females and calves, but it did for non-breeding males. Courtship declined in post-treatment, but this was due to the increased percent of pregnant females. During post-treatment, a change in ratio of green grass and supplementary feed pellets possibly affected de-escalation in the context of interspecies interactions. The change of the proximity of the herd was associated with increased heat and use of shaded areas in the pasture. The treatment resulted in a change in relationship with the satellite male and juvenile males in the herd.