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The work presented in this thesis has demonstrated that the use of elemental profiles for the quality control of herbal medicines can be applied to multiple stages of processing. A single method was developed for the elemental analysis of a variety of St John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) preparations using Inductively Coupled Plasma – Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The optimised method consisted of using 5 ml of nitric acid and microwave digestion reaching temperatures of 185⁰C. Using NIST Polish tea (NIST INCT-TL- 1) the method was found to be accurate and the matrix effect from selected St John’s Wort (SJW) preparations was found to be ≤22%. The optimised method was then used to determine the elemental profiles for a larger number of SJW preparations (raw herbs=22, tablets=20 and capsules=12). Specifically, the method was used to determine the typical concentrations of 25 elements (Al, As, B, Ba, Be, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, In, Mg, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Pt, Sb, Se, Sr, V, Y and Zn) for each form of SJW which ranged from not detected to 200 mg/g. To further interpret the element profiles, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was carried out. This showed that different forms of SJW could be differentiated based on their elemental profile and the SJW ingredient used (i.e. extract or raw herb) identified. The differences in the profiles were likely due to two factors: (1) the addition of bulking agents and (2) solvent extraction. In order to further understand how the elemental profile changes when producing the extract from the raw plant, eight SJW herb samples were extracted with four solvents (100% water, 60% ethanol, 80% ethanol and 100% ethanol) and analysed for their element content. The results showed that the transfer of elements from the raw herb to an extract was solvent and metal dependent. Generally the highest concentrations of an element were extracted with 100% water, which decreased as the concentration of ethanol increased. However, the transfer efficiency for the element Cu was highest with 60% ethanol. The solvents utilised in industry (60% and 80% ethanol) were found to preconcentrate some elements; Cu (+119%), Mg (+93%), Ni (+183%) and Zn (+12%) were found to preconcentrate in 60 %v/v ethanol extracts and Cu (+5%) and Ni (+30%). PCA of the elemental profiles of the four types of extract showed that differentiation was observed between the different solvents and as the ethanol concentration increased, the extracts became more standardised. Analysis of the bioactive compounds rutin, hyperoside, quercetin, hyperforin and adhyperforin followed by subsequent Correlation Analysis (CA) displayed relationships between the elemental profiles and the molecular profiles. For example strong correlations were seen between hyperoside and Cr as well as Quercetin and Fe. This shows potential for tuning elemental extractions for metal-bioactive compounds for increased bioactivity and bioavailability; however further work in needed in this area.

Thesis advisor: Rudolph Hon / This study characterizes the current state of water quality of surface streams and rivers in the eastern New England region. A set of water quality data for nine rivers, part of the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program was statistically evaluated to identify natural and anthropogenic persistent influential factors on water quality in surface waters. Binary analysis and multivariate analysis, mainly Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Factor Analysis (FA) were applied to determine the least number of independent relationships among multiple chemical components in the data set. Statistical results show that in eight of the nine rivers included in this study, four principal components can explain about 80% of the total variance of the original data. The most significant contributing factors can be identified with: (1) chemical weathering; (2) road salt applications; (3) nutrient cycling; and (4) agricultural/waste water. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Geology and Geophysics.

This thesis investigates the application of principal component analysis to the Australian stock market using ASX200 index and its constituents from April 2000 to February 2014. The first ten principal components were retained to present the major risk sources in the stock market. We constructed portfolio based on each of the ten principal components and named these “principal portfolios

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2002-08-20Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:03:34Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 martel_jhi_dr_jabo.pdf: 1142341 bytes, checksum: d5876bdaae6caa03d42f9ab8eff903df (MD5) / A pupunheira tem um potencial econômico e social muito grande, sendo a palmeira mais importante na América pré-colombiana, constituindo junto com o milho e a mandioca, a base da alimentação dos povos primitivos. Os principais produtos extraídos são o palmito e os frutos para o consumo humano direto, alimento animal, farinhas para consumo humano e óleo vegetal. Os objetivos do presente trabalho foram de utilizar uma lista de descritores morfológicos recomendada, para discriminar primeiramente as raças Pará e Putumayo e após sua validação estatística, verificar também a existência da raça Solimões, que até hoje tem sido negada. Foram aplicadas técnicas estatísticas univariadas e multivariadas na tentativa de discriminar as raças. Dos 42 descritores iniciais, 25 apresentaram diferenças significativas entre as raças e 15 tiveram aproximação normal. A análise discriminante mostrou que a raça Pará possuía 15% das plantas mal classificadas e Putumayo 14%, já com a seleção de desenvolmer para componentes principais, as percentagens foram 9 e 19%, respectivamente, para as duas raças. A população de Manacapuru, não formou grupo nas duas primeiras análises de agrupamento e nem com componentes principais. As três análises em conjunto, conseguiram discriminar as raças Pará, Putumayo e Solimões, sendo os descritores mais importantes nesta discriminação e classificação das raças: número de espigas por cacho, comprimento da ráquis, peso dos frutos, espessura das cascas, facilidade para descascar os frutos, peso das cascas, sabor dos frutos, espessura da polpa, distância morfológica dos frutos e peso das sementes. / The peach palm has a economic and social potential very great being the palm most important in the América pre-Colombian, contribuiting together with the maize and the cassava in the indenous feeds. The target of the present work was: to use a morphological descriptor list recommended, to discriminate between two landraces and descriptors validation , to verify the existence of solimoes landraces. Univariated and multivariated statistical techniques were used to attemp discriminate the landraces. Form fort yone initial descriptors, twenty five had presented significant difference between the landraces and fifteen had presented normal approach. The discriminant analysis have showed that Pará landrace possessed fifteen percent of the plant badly c1assified and Putumayo about fourteen percent to it. In the analysis of principal component, the percentages were nine and nineteen percent, respectively, for the two landraces. Manacapuru population did not form c1usterin in the two first one analysis of and nor with principal components. Three joint analysis in the set had obtained to discriminate the Pará, Putumayo and Solimoes landraces and the discrimnant analysis with three landraces, c1assified Manacapuru of the Putumayo landrace inside. The most important descriptors in the discrimination between landraces were: numbers of ears per raceme, raquis length, fruit weight, thickness of fruits bark, facility to peel fruits, weight of fruit bark, fruit flavor, pulp thickness, morphological distance between fruits and seed weight.

This semester thesis is focused on automated measurement of ECG signal. The theoretical part describes the rise and options ECG signal. Furthermore, the issue is staged principal components analysis, whose output is used as input signal for seasons. They describe the basic methods used in measurement to ECG signal. The practical part is designed in measurement algorithm for ECG signal that has been tested on basic CSE database. The results are discussed in the conclusion.

Early detection and mitigation of wildfires can reduce devastating property damage, firefighting costs, pollution, and loss of life. This thesis proposes the method of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of images in the temporal domain to identify a smoke plume in wildfires. Temporal PCA is an effective motion detector, and spatial filtering of the output Principal Component images can segment the smoke plume region. The effective use of other image processing techniques to identify smoke plumes and heat plumes are compared. The best attributes of smoke plume detectors and heat plume detectors are evaluated for combination in an improved wildfire detection system. PCA of visible blue images at an image sampling rate of 2 seconds per image effectively exploits a smoke plume signal. PCA of infrared images is the fundamental technique for exploiting a heat plume signal. A system architecture is proposed for the implementation of image processing techniques. The real-world deployment and usability are described for this system.

Objective: Patient-specific musculoskeletal models have emerged as a reliable method to study how tibiofemoral joint (TFJ) morphology influences anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries. However, there are no such models for adolescent populations that can be scaled to accommodate growth. To serve as the foundation for such models, the objective of this thesis was therefore to i) build a patient-specific model of natural knee motion in an ACL-injured (ACLi) adolescent sample using joint congruency and ii) to attempt to reconstruct patient-specific simplified articular contacts using principal component analysis (PCA). Design: Twelve magnetic resonance images (MRI) of ACi adolescents were segmented and used to generate spheres of simplified TFJ articulations. A congruence-based optimization algorithm was used to determine the envelope of tibiofemoral configurations that optimize joint congruency. Descriptive statistics were used to compare model outputs to existing literature. Combinations of marker trajectories and anthropometrics were used to determine the feasibility of reconstructing articular sphere simplifications using PCA. Root-mean squared error (RMSE) was used to compare predicted sphere contacts to MRI-extracted contacts. Results: Average knee joint anglesof the femur with respect to the tibia was slightly abducted and externally rotated, with a range of motion (ROM) of 1.60º ± 0.66 and 7.64 º ± 2.34 across 102° of flexion respectively. The percent elongation of the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) varied the most across participants (8.65 ± 6.2%) compared to the ACL (2.34 ± 2.1%), MCL (1.41 ± 0.5%) and LCL (1.75 ± 1.6%) respectively. The combination of femur markers and anthropometrics was able to reconstruct simplified tibiofemoral articulations the best, but not within 5 mm of RMSE. Conclusion: Inter-subject variability in passive kinematic motion derived from patient-specific morphology highlights the need for personalized and accessible musculoskeletal models in growing populations. Furthermore, simplified distal femur morphology can be reconstructed from anthropometrics and marker positions, but proximal tibia morphology requires more information.

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This work deals with fouling in the recovery boiler at Montes del Plata, Uruguay. Multivariate data analysis has been used to analyze the large amount of data that was available in order to investigate how different parameters affect the fouling problems. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Square Projection (PLS) have in this work been used. PCA has been used to compare average values between time periods with high and low fouling problems while PLS has been used to study the correlation structures between the variables and consequently give an indication of which parameters that might be changed to improve the availability of the boiler. The results show that this recovery boiler tends to have problems with fouling that might depend on the distribution of air, the black liquor pressure or the dry solid content of the black liquor. The results also show that multivariate data analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing these types of fouling problems. / Detta arbete handlar om inkruster i sodapannan pa Montes del Plata, Uruguay. Multivariat dataanalys har anvands for att analysera den stora datamangd som fanns tillganglig for att undersoka hur olika parametrar paverkar inkrusterproblemen. Principal·· Component Analysis (PCA) och Partial Least Square Projection (PLS) har i detta jobb anvants. PCA har anvants for att jamfora medelvarden mellan tidsperioder med hoga och laga inkrusterproblem medan PLS har anvants for att studera korrelationen mellan variablema och darmed ge en indikation pa vilka parametrar som kan tankas att andras for att forbattra tillgangligheten pa sodapannan. Resultaten visar att sodapannan tenderar att ha problem med inkruster som kan hero pa fdrdelningen av luft, pa svartlutens tryck eller pa torrhalten i svartluten. Resultaten visar ocksa att multivariat dataanalys ar ett anvandbart verktyg for att analysera dessa typer av inkrusterproblem.