The purpose of this study was to describe depositional and diagenetic characteristics of the (Jurassic) Smackover formation and subsequently identify and rank the quality of flow units within Grayson field, Columbia County, Arkansas. The field has production from the Smackover, a reservoir which consists mainly of highly altered peloidal grainstones. This was a four part study including a lithological analysis of ten cores, a petrographical study of 97 thin sections, a petrophysical study of reservoir properties from core analyses and borehole logs, and predictive mapping of quality ranked flow units across the field. Examination of the cores and thin sections revealed H1a as the main pore type in Grayson field, which was a hybrid of both depositional and diagenetic processes with dominantly interparticle pores. The lowest ranked reservoir quality corresponded to intraparticle and intercrystalline pore types, which occurred mainly in the wackestone/mudstone and packstone/wackestone facies. The highest ranked reservoir quality corresponded to the H1a pore type which occurred mainly in the grainestone/packstone facies 1 and 2. The reservoir quality maps identified the spatial distribution of the facies within the field, which could be used to locate zones for possible in-fill drilling. These results should aid in the economical development of Grayson field and other similar fields.

Adult female Formosan macaques were observed to collect data on the acquisition and stabilization of ranking, troop fission and to compare the female ranking system and nepotistic hierarchy. Behavioral observations were recorded from 1 October 2006 to 30 April 2008. Behavioral sampling methods included scan sampling of macaque troop members, all occurrences sampling of adult females¡¦ affiliative behaviors, and focal animal sampling of aggressive behaviors. In addition, demographic and ranking records were collected from 1998 until 2008. When females attained four years of age, they gained adult female hierarchy, and 88 % (n = 43) of them were middle or low ranking. Individual traits, ageing and mother¡¦s relative rank have significant effects on the ranking of adult females who were 5 to 11 years of age (P < 0.05), and the ranking of 47 % (n = 58) mothers were close to their daughters. When females were 5 to 11 years of age, their relative ranks had positive linear relationships to their mother¡¦s relative rank (P < 0.05). Maternal hierarchy affected the ranking of reminders in troop C, and the dominance matrilineal females stabilized high ranking. But, most subordinate matrilineal females were middle or low ranking. The ranking of 86.4 % (n = 22) of females who immigrated to branch troops was middle or low. Matrilineal members and the ranking before troop fission had effects on the female ranking after troop fission. The ranking of 59.4 % (n = 32) of mothers was higher than that of their daughter. When females reached 9 years old or older while their mothers were alive, mean relative rank of other matrilineal female and mother¡¦s relative rank had significant effects on their ranking (P < 0.05). However, individual traits, mean relative rank of other matrilineal female, ageing, and the number of adult daughters have significant iv effects on female ranking (P < 0.05). When females were 9 to 15 years of age, the rank maintaining ratio of female with mature daughter was 0.82 (¡Ó 0.12), which is significant higher than the ratio of female without mature daughter (P < 0.05). About 50 % (n = 18) of younger sisters outranked their older sisters. The ranking relationships of sister dyads had positive linear relationships (P < 0.05). The proximity index of mother and younger sister was significantly higher than the proximity index of mother and older sister (P < 0.05), but that is independent of whether females outrank their sister or not. Only 4 % (n = 423) female aggression data were recorded that 13 supporters helped attackers to attack victims. The kin and non-kin supporter were 46.1 % and 53.9 % respectively (n = 13). Maternal hierarchy affected the adult female ranking and half of the females outranked their older sisters. However, daughters could also outrank mothers. Therefore, female ranking system of Formosan macaques follows a weakly nepotistic hierarchy. Sterck EHM, Watts DP, vanSchaik CP (1997) The evolution of female social relationships in nonhuman primates. Behav Ecol Sociobio 41:291-309 Su HH (2003) Acquirement of social ranks of females in one group of Taiwanese macaques (Macaca cyclopis) at Fushan Experimental Forest, Taiwan. Am J Phys Anthropol:203-203 Su HH, Birky WA (2007) Within-group female-female agonistic interactions in Taiwanese macaques (Macaca cyclopis). Am J Primatol 69:199-211 Su HH, Lee LL (2001) Food habits of Formosan rock macaques (Macaca cyclopis) in Jentse, northeastern Taiwan, assessed by fecal analysis and behavioral observation. Int J Primatol 22:359-377 Suzuki S, Hill DA, Sprague DS (1998) Intertroop transfer and dominance rank structure of nonnatal male Japanese macaques in Yakushima, Japan. Int J Primatol 19:703-722 Thierry B (1990) Feedback loop between kinship and dominance: the macaque model. J Theor Biol 145:511-521 Wu HY, Lin JF (1992) Life history variables of wild troop of Formosan macaques (Macaca cyclopis) in Kenting, Taiwan. Primates 33:85-97

Due to the information explosion on the Internet, effective information search techniques are required to retrieve the desired information from the Web. Based on much analysis on users' search intention and the variant forms of Web content, we find that both the query and the indexed web content are often associated with various context information, which can provide much essential information to indicate the ranking relevance in Web search. This dissertation seeks to develop new search algorithms and techniques by taking advantage of rich context information to improve search quality and consists of two major parts. In the first part, we study the context of the query in terms of various ranking objectives of different queries. In order to improve the ranking relevance, we propose to incorporate such query context information into the ranking model. Two general approaches will be introduced in the following of this dissertation. The first one proposes to incorporate query difference into ranking by introducing query-dependent loss functions, by optimizing which we can obtain better ranking model. Then, we investigate another approach which applies a divide-and-conquer framework for ranking specialization. The second part of this dissertation investigates how to extract the context of specific Web content and explore them to build more effective search system. This study is based on the new emerging social media content. Unlike traditional Web content, social media content is inherently associated with much new context information, including content semantics and quality, user reputation, and user interactions, all of which provide useful information for acquiring knowledge from social media. In this dissertation, we seek to develop algorithms and techniques for effective knowledge acquisition from collaborative social media environments by using the dynamic context information. We first propose a new general framework for searching social media content, which integrates both the content features and the user interactions. Then, a semi-supervised framework is proposed to explicitly compute content quality and user reputation, which are incorporated into the search framework to improve the search quality. Furthermore, this dissertation also investigates techniques for extracting the structured semantics of social media content as new context information, which is essential for content retrieval and organization.

Zugl.: Düsseldorf, Univ., Diss., 2009

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Mathematics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 65).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Restricted until October 2004. Bibliography: leaves 99-101.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is concerned about the widening gap between preservation needs and available funding. Funding levels are not adequate to meet the preservation needs of the roadway network; therefore projects listed in the 4-Year Pavement Management Plan must be ranked to determine which projects should be funded now and which can be postponed until a later year. Currently, each district uses locally developed methods to rank and prioritize projects. These ranking methods have relied on less formal qualitative assessments based on engineers’ subjective judgment. It is important for TxDOT to have a rational 4-Year Pavement Management Plan. The objective of this study is to develop a conceptual framework that describes the development of the 4-Year Pavement Management Plan and a proposed ranking process. It can be largely divided into three steps; (1) Network-Level preliminary project screening process, (2) Project-Level project ranking process, and (3) Economic Analysis. A rational pavement management procedure and a project ranking method that are accepted by districts and the TxDOT administration will maximize efficiency in budget allocations and help improve pavement condition. As a part of this study, based on the data provided by the Austin District Pavement Engineer, the Network-Level Project Screening (NLPS) tool, including the candidate project selection algorithm and the preliminary project screening matrix, is developed. The NLSP tool has been used by the Austin District Pavement Engineer (DPE) to evaluate the PMIS (Pavement Management Information System) data and to prepare a preliminary list of candidate projects for further evaluation. The automated tool will help TxDOT engineers easily incorporate the developed mathematical algorithm into their daily pavement maintenance management. / text

published_or_final_version / Statistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

The use of functional foods by individuals to address health issues has become increasingly common. Pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products contain phytochemicals, including several antioxidants that may have benefits when consumed as a functional food. The production of pomegranates in the United States is concentrated in California; yet pomegranates can be grown successfully in other regions. The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to address the market potential and consumer preferences for pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products in Texas and 2) to address issues of experimental auction design and estimation in regards to novel products and health benefits of food products. A nonhypothetical experimental procedure was developed that combined preference rankings with a uniform nth-price auction to elicit preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for pomegranate fruit products. Demographic and behavioral characteristics were collected from a representative sample of subjects in the Bryan-College Station area of Texas. Subjects submitted baseline preference rankings and bids on six pomegranate products and a control fruit product, all with the same retail price. Most participants had never purchased or tasted a pomegranate product. Additional information on the pomegranate products was provided in three forms: tasting information, health and nutrition information, and anti-cancer information. Subjects had the greatest WTP for the control product, followed by the juice product, followed by the ready-to-eat products; the whole pomegranate fruits had the lowest WTP. The preference rankings indicated the same order of preferences for the baseline round, but the ranking of the juice product dropped and the ranking of the ready-to-eat and Texas whole fruits rose when additional information was provided. Estimations of the WTP were done using random-effects tobit models and mixed linear models on the full bids and individual changes in bids. Unengaged bidders and bid censoring were addressed. Demographic variables were typically not predictors of WTP with the exception of previous purchases of pomegranates and household size. There were differences in WTP across information treatments, with tasting information having a greater effect than either health and nutrition information or anti-cancer information. Providing a reference price also increased WTP. Preference rankings were estimated using a rank-ordered logit and a mixed rank-ordered logit model. There was an interaction effect of each information treatment with the product characteristics, indicating that studies of effects of information treatments on preferences are not generalizable across products. There was divergence in the results for the preference rankings from the results of the experimental auction; preference rankings and bids gave different results for the same products.

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