This thesis presents the results of a geologic investigation of the Rendezvous Peak area, Cache and Box Elder Counties, Utah (Figure 1). The area lies between the Bear River Range on the east and the Northern Wasatch Mountains on the west (Figure 2). It is south of Cache Valley in which Logan, Utah, is located and north of Ogden Valley, east of the Wasatch Range near Ogden, Utah.

The mapped area, in north-central Utah, is centered about 22.6 miles south of Logan, Utah. It measures about 3.8 miles in the north-south direction and 6.6 miles in the east-west direction. Stratigraphic units of Precambrian and Cambrian age underline most of the area. The Precambrian units are as follows: (1) Maple Canyon Formation, (2) Kelley Canyon Formation, (3) Orthoquartzite unit, (4) Argillite unit, (5) Mutual Formation, and (6) Volcanic unit. The Brigham Formation, which overlies the Precambrian volcanic unit, is probably of Cambrian age; however, the lower part may be Precambrian. The overlying Cambrian carbonate unit is not differentiated. The Salt Lake Formation of Tertiary age overlaps older rocks in the valley north of James Peak. The western part of James Peak, east of a major normal fault, consists of east-dipping Precambrian units. The oldest unit, which crops out on the eastern side of Broadmouth Canyon, is the Maple Canyon Formation. The rocks of the eastern part of James Peak also dip generally eastward. A continuous stratigraphic section extends from the Kelley Canyon Formation, exposed in Wolf Creek Canyon, northeastward to the Brigham Formation. The Cambrian carbonate unit seems to overlie the Brigham in normal stratigraphic succession. A thrust fault, which has about 1,000 feet of displacement, is present on the eastern side of James Peak. Another thrust fault, on the southeastern side of James Peak, places the Cambrian carbonate unit on Precambrian units. A block of the Brigham Formation, near the southeastern corner of the area, is thrust over the carbonate unit and the Brigham. The thrust faulting is part of the Laramide Orogeny that occurred late in the Mesozoic Era and early in the Teritary Period. Movement was generally eastward. Normal faulting began early in the Tertiary Period and continues at the present time.

<p>En effektiv och lönsam logistik kan företag använda som en konkurrensfördel. Det gäller att hitta en balans mellan att exempelvis ge hög service till kunderna och samtidigt tvingas ta hänsyn till höga kostnader för lagerhållning. Denna uppsats syftar till att beskriva och analysera hur Peak Performance hanterar denna balans mellan logistikkostnader, kapitalbindning, leveransservice och miljö. Tre av dessa delar är hämtade från en modell av Lumsden (1998). Vi har därefter modifierat modellen och tillfört den fjärde komponenten, miljö. För att besvara vårt syfte har vi genomfört två intervjuer med personer väl insatta i det vi avsåg studera. Vår slutsats är att Peak Performance fokuserar mest på logistikkostnader där låga transportkostnader prioriteras, kapitalbindning kommer i andra hand, sedan leveransservice och därefter kommer miljön. Balansen kan anses vara något skev idag. Låga tranportkostnader prioriteras på bekostnad av miljövänliga transportalternativ. Detta är något som vi anser att Peak i framtiden bör fokusera mer på då det skulle kunna utgöra en konkurrensfördel.</p>

This work presents a novel slack management technique, the Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique, for dynamic real-time distributed embedded systems targeting the reduction and management of energy consumption. Energy minimization is critical for devices such as laptop computers, PCS telephones, PDAs and other mobile and embedded computing systems simply because it leads to extended battery lifetime. Such systems being power hungry rely greatly upon the system design and algorithms for processing, slack and power management. This work presents an effcient dynamic slack management scheme for an energy aware design of such systems. The proposed Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique has been considered with two static(FCFS, WRR) and two dynamic(EDF, RBS) scheduling schemes used most commonly in distributed systems. A fault tolerance mechanism has also been incorporated into the proposed technique inorder to use the available dynamic slack to maintain checkpoints and provide for rollbacks on faults. Results show that in comparion to contemporary techniques, the proposed Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique provides for about 29% more perfor-mance/overhead savings when validated with real world and random benchmarks.

En effektiv och lönsam logistik kan företag använda som en konkurrensfördel. Det gäller att hitta en balans mellan att exempelvis ge hög service till kunderna och samtidigt tvingas ta hänsyn till höga kostnader för lagerhållning. Denna uppsats syftar till att beskriva och analysera hur Peak Performance hanterar denna balans mellan logistikkostnader, kapitalbindning, leveransservice och miljö. Tre av dessa delar är hämtade från en modell av Lumsden (1998). Vi har därefter modifierat modellen och tillfört den fjärde komponenten, miljö. För att besvara vårt syfte har vi genomfört två intervjuer med personer väl insatta i det vi avsåg studera. Vår slutsats är att Peak Performance fokuserar mest på logistikkostnader där låga transportkostnader prioriteras, kapitalbindning kommer i andra hand, sedan leveransservice och därefter kommer miljön. Balansen kan anses vara något skev idag. Låga tranportkostnader prioriteras på bekostnad av miljövänliga transportalternativ. Detta är något som vi anser att Peak i framtiden bör fokusera mer på då det skulle kunna utgöra en konkurrensfördel.

The purpose of this research was to identify the contributors to optimal sexual experiences. At present, there is a lack of clinical knowledge, research knowledge and in-depth public discourse concerning the nature of healthy sexuality. The theoretical and research literature in this area has focused almost exclusively on defining and conceptualizing sexual dysfunctions with little attention paid to either normal or satisfactory experiences. Very little theory exists on the nature and components of optimal sexuality. To date, no empirical investigations have been done to determine the contributors to optimal sexual experiences. In order to identify the contributors to optimal sexual experiences, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 individuals who reported having experienced “great sex”. A phenomenologically-oriented content analysis was performed on interview transcripts to determine the contributors to optimal sexual experiences. Analysis led to the identification of seven major contributors, two pathways towards optimal sexual experiences and two minor contributors. The major contributors included developmental contributors, individual qualities overall, individual qualities in-the moment, skills, relationship qualities overall, relationship qualities in-the-moment and environmental, situational and preparatory contributors. Each of these larger themes was also characterized by a variety of more specific themes. The two pathways that led to optimal sexual experiences included individual qualities that facilitated relationship qualities and relationship qualities that facilitated individual qualities. Finally, the minor contributors consisted of personal proclivities and miscellaneous contributors. Noteworthy findings of this investigation are discussed and then compared and contrasted with existing research and theory. The implications of this work for the general public, sex therapy, sex education, theory and research are considered as well as the strengths and limitations of this study.

The nature of electrical power requires specific infrastructure in order to operate adequately. Currently, the United States electricity grid contains a number of bottlenecking inefficiencies that arise from the aging infrastructure of the system. This paper examines the current state of the United States electricity grid, how potential changes in weather variables can affect the electricity consumption of residential consumers, and how implementation of Smart Grid technology can potentially mitigate these issues. It is determined through regression analysis that each weather variable that was tested proves significant for at least one of the consumers compared. This indicates that there is an enormous magnitude of individual variables that factor into residential electricity consumption and that more efficient and integrated electricity practices are necessary to optimize efficiency.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy technique is becoming exceedingly significant due to its capability of studying protein structures in solution. However, NMR protein structure determination has remained a laborious and costly process until now, even with the help of currently available computer programs. After the NMR spectra are collected, the main road blocks to the fully automated NMR protein structure determination are peak picking from noisy spectra, resonance assignment from imperfect peak lists, and structure calculation from incomplete assignment and ambiguous nuclear Overhauser enhancements (NOE) constraints. The goal of this dissertation is to propose error-tolerant and highly-efficient methods that work well on real and noisy data sets of NMR protein structure determination and the closely related protein structure prediction problems. One major contribution of this dissertation is to propose a fully automated NMR protein structure determination system, AMR, with emphasis on the parts that I contributed. AMR only requires an input set with six NMR spectra. We develop a novel peak picking method, PICKY, to solve the crucial but tricky peak picking problem. PICKY consists of a noise level estimation step, a component forming step, a singular value decomposition-based initial peak picking step, and a peak refinement step. The first systematic study on peak picking problem is conducted to test the performance of PICKY. An integer linear programming (ILP)-based resonance assignment method, IPASS, is then developed to handle the imperfect peak lists generated by PICKY. IPASS contains an error-tolerant spin system forming method and an ILP-based assignment method. The assignment generated by IPASS is fed into the structure calculation step, FALCON-NMR. FALCON-NMR has a threading module, an ab initio module, an all-atom refinement module, and an NOE constraints-based decoy selection module. The entire system, AMR, is successfully tested on four out of five real proteins with practical NMR spectra, and generates 1.25A, 1.49A, 0.67A, and 0.88A to the native reference structures, respectively. Another contribution of this dissertation is to propose novel ideas and methods to solve three protein structure prediction problems which are closely related to NMR protein structure determination. We develop a novel consensus contact prediction method, which is able to eliminate server correlations, to solve the protein inter-residue contact prediction problem. We also propose an ultra-fast side chain packing method, which only uses local backbone information, to solve the protein side chain packing problem. Finally, two complementary local quality assessment methods are proposed to solve the local quality prediction problem for comparative modeling-based protein structure prediction methods.

Today's modern agriculture is totally dependent on phosphorus to sustain their large yields. Several studies have recently expressed a concern for a future phosphorus deficiency. These studies are based on data for estimated reserves which have been increased with more than a fourfold since 2010. Some argue that these concerns are unfounded, despite the fact that only Morocco account for the bulk of these new reserves. This report provides new forecast for the world phosphorus production based on the new available reserve data. These forecasts are using bell shaped curve models to examine how individual countries' future production of phosphate rock affects a global production peak. Estimates of the size of several reserves are highly uncertain and it is therefore difficult to make an accurate forecast of future phosphorus extraction. Despite this uncertainty, a global production peak is likely to occur within this century. The global production will depend largely on China and Morocco's production as they hold a large share of the reserves and the current production. China's production will probably peak in 10-20 years at current production trend. It is uncertain if Morocco can increase production enough to replace China's production in the future. It is not likely that Morocco will be able to produce as much as would be required to meet the highest scenarios. This is mainly due to a number of bottlenecks in production such as water scarcity, increasing proportion of impurities and a decreasing concentration of phosphorus in the phosphate rock.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy technique is becoming exceedingly significant due to its capability of studying protein structures in solution. However, NMR protein structure determination has remained a laborious and costly process until now, even with the help of currently available computer programs. After the NMR spectra are collected, the main road blocks to the fully automated NMR protein structure determination are peak picking from noisy spectra, resonance assignment from imperfect peak lists, and structure calculation from incomplete assignment and ambiguous nuclear Overhauser enhancements (NOE) constraints. The goal of this dissertation is to propose error-tolerant and highly-efficient methods that work well on real and noisy data sets of NMR protein structure determination and the closely related protein structure prediction problems. One major contribution of this dissertation is to propose a fully automated NMR protein structure determination system, AMR, with emphasis on the parts that I contributed. AMR only requires an input set with six NMR spectra. We develop a novel peak picking method, PICKY, to solve the crucial but tricky peak picking problem. PICKY consists of a noise level estimation step, a component forming step, a singular value decomposition-based initial peak picking step, and a peak refinement step. The first systematic study on peak picking problem is conducted to test the performance of PICKY. An integer linear programming (ILP)-based resonance assignment method, IPASS, is then developed to handle the imperfect peak lists generated by PICKY. IPASS contains an error-tolerant spin system forming method and an ILP-based assignment method. The assignment generated by IPASS is fed into the structure calculation step, FALCON-NMR. FALCON-NMR has a threading module, an ab initio module, an all-atom refinement module, and an NOE constraints-based decoy selection module. The entire system, AMR, is successfully tested on four out of five real proteins with practical NMR spectra, and generates 1.25A, 1.49A, 0.67A, and 0.88A to the native reference structures, respectively. Another contribution of this dissertation is to propose novel ideas and methods to solve three protein structure prediction problems which are closely related to NMR protein structure determination. We develop a novel consensus contact prediction method, which is able to eliminate server correlations, to solve the protein inter-residue contact prediction problem. We also propose an ultra-fast side chain packing method, which only uses local backbone information, to solve the protein side chain packing problem. Finally, two complementary local quality assessment methods are proposed to solve the local quality prediction problem for comparative modeling-based protein structure prediction methods.