<p>The objective of this study was to evaluate the long-term effects that early life events have on heifer growth up to 400 d of age, heifer conception rate, survivability through first lactation, and first lactation milk production of calves raised in automatic calf feeders. Chapter one evaluates possible early life variables that would affect heifer growth and lifetime production as well as research that has been done to predict future growth. The major points discussed include pre-weaning feeding strategies, automatic calf feeding systems, respiratory disease and ways to diagnose cattle with this disease, and the impact of early life growth on the future productivity of the dairy cow.<br></p> <p>The second chapter discusses in detail the process of creating a predictive equation using significant early life variables that affect Holstein heifer growth up to 400 d of age. Variables collected for the growth analysis included sixty d cumulative milk consumption (MC), serum total protein values, respiratory disease and scours incidences, genetic body size, birthweights, and incremental body weight variables on a commercial dairy farm from October 1, 2015 to January 1, 2019. Calves were fed pasteurized whole milk through an automated calf feeding system (feeders = 8) for 60 d (range: 48 – 126d), with a 30% Crude Protein (CP) and 5% Crude Fat enhancer added at 20 g/L of milk. Calves were weighed at birth and several other times prior to calving. Average birth weight of calves was 40.6 ± 4.9 kg (mean ± SD), serum total protein was 6.7 ± 0.63 g/dL, and cumulative 60 d MC was 508.1 ± 67.3 L with a range of 179.9 to 785.1 L. Daily body weights were predicted for individual animals using a third order orthogonal polynomial to model growth curves. The linear and quadratic effects of cumulative 60 d milk consumption, birthweight, feeder, yr born, season born, respiratory incidence, and genetic body size score were significant (<i>P</i><0.0001) when predicting heifer body weight at 400 d (pBW₄₀₀) of age (R²=0.31). There was up to a 263 kg difference in pBW₄₀₀between the heaviest and lightest animal. Birthweight had a significant effect on predicted weights up to 400 d (<i>P</i><0.0001), and for every 1 kg increase in birthweight, there was a 2.5 kg increase in pBW₄₀₀. The quadratic effect of cumulative 60 d MC was significant for pBW₄₀₀ (<i>P</i><0.0001). When 60 d MC was divided into quartiles, heifers had the highest pBW₄₀₀in the third quartile, when 60 d MC was between 507.8 and 552.5 L. Body size composite (genomic index) showed a 21.5 kg difference in pBW₄₀₀ between the top and bottom 25^th percentile of heifers. Heifers were 4.2 kg lighter at 400 d if treated for respiratory disease 3+ times during the first 60 d of life, compared to heifers not treated for respiratory disease.</p> <p>The third chapter utilizes the data described in chapter two and followed those heifers through breeding and first lactation. Heifer conception age and 280 d first lactation milk production (280M) were collected. Average age at conception was 437.5 ± 45.0 d; range of 308 to 631 d (n=5,193), and average 280M was 9,305 ± 1,371.8 kg; range of 712-13,358 kg (n=1,324). Heifer conception age was impacted by season, yr, and the quadratic effects of predicted bodyweight at 300 d of age (pBW₃₀₀) and ADG (0-400; all <i>P</i> < 0.05; total model R² = 0.08). Season born, ADG (0 - 400 d), genomic milk, and the linear effect of heifer conception age had a significant impact on 280M (all <i>P</i> < 0.05; R² = 0.28). For every 1 kg increase in genomic milk value there is 1.42 kg increase in first lactation 280M. Calves not diagnosed with bovine respiratory disease (BRD) from 60-120 d old had a significantly higher chance for survival to first lactation than animals treated three or more times for BRD (hazard ratio = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.574 to 0.886, <i>P </i>= 0.0023, Table 3.3). Heifers treated twice or more for BRD had reduced likelihood to become pregnant than heifers not treated for BRD from 60-120 d (twice <i>P </i>= 0.02; three or more <i>P </i>= 0.05). </p> <p>In conclusion, the results from this thesis support that early life events in Holstein heifers continue to influence future growth and productivity. Future research aims to validate the predictive equation generated in chapter two on farm as well as adapt the equation to other farms allowing them to utilize it as well. The goal is to have farms utilize this tool to aid in their replacement heifer management decisions and to select the most productive heifers for the future of their herds. </p>

This study focuses on cyclical behavior in the restaurant industry, types of strategy choices made by the casual dining industry, and the use of the industry cycle to make a timing decision of strategy choice. The main idea of this study is that the phases of the industry cycle differently support a firm's strategy choice, so the use of the cycle allows firms to find the right time for a particular strategy choice. This is done by developing and understanding of the restaurant industry cycle and determining the phase of the cycle that possesses different opportunities and threats. This is followed by identifying strategy choices adopted by casual dining firms through a content analysis. Next, a casual dining firm's responses to phases of the industry cycle are investigated. Using an individual firm's data regarding performance and the emphasis of strategy choice over the industry cycle, this study undertakes an investigation into whether the effect of a strategy choice adopted by a firm varies according to the phase of the restaurant industry cycle. The results of the study revealed that the movements of the restaurant industry cycle have unique timing, duration, and amplitude, and that casual dining firms adopt thirteen distinct types of strategy choices. Firms change strategy choices to respond to change in the industry cycle phase. Summarizing these findings, the study found that the effects of strategy choices on firm performance differed according to the cyclical change of the industry environment so adjusting strategy choices over the industry cycle is critical to outperform competitors This study aims at providing a relevant framework for using the industry cycle as a tool for well-timed strategy choices in the casual theme restaurant industry. In practice, by utilizing the industry cycle, executives would be better able to assess possible success or failure of a particular strategy at different phase of the industry cycle, and to determine the timing relevance as it relates to new investments or asset allocation. Managing the industry cycle allows firms to have an appropriate strategic portfolio to maximize their outcomes and sustain competitive advantage over long periods of time. / Ph. D.

With the rapid growth of data exfiltration carried out by cyber attacks, Covert Timing Channels (CTC) have become an imminent network security risk that continues to grow in both sophistication and utilization. These types of channels utilize inter-arrival times to steal sensitive data from the targeted networks. CTC detection relies increasingly on machine learning techniques, which utilize statistical-based metrics to separate malicious (covert) traffic flows from the legitimate (overt) ones. However, given the efforts of cyber attacks to evade detection and the growing column of CTC, covert channels detection needs to improve in both performance and precision to detect and prevent CTCs and mitigate the reduction of the quality of service caused by the detection process. In this article, we present an innovative image-based solution for fully automated CTC detection and localization. Our approach is based on the observation that the covert channels generate traffic that can be converted to colored images. Leveraging this observation, our solution is designed to automatically detect and locate the malicious part (i.e., set of packets) within a traffic flow. By locating the covert parts within traffic flows, our approach reduces the drop of the quality of service caused by blocking the entire traffic flows in which covert channels are detected. We first convert traffic flows into colored images, and then we extract image-based features for detection covert traffic. We train a classifier using these features on a large data set of covert and overt traffic. This approach demonstrates a remarkable performance achieving a detection accuracy of 95.83% for cautious CTCs and a covert traffic accuracy of 97.83% for 8 bit covert messages, which is way beyond what the popular statistical-based solutions can achieve.

This thesis presents a timing error detector (TED) used in the symbol timing synchronization subsystem for digital communications. The new timing error detector is designed to minimize the probability of symbol decision error, and it is called minimum symbol error rate TED (MSERTED). The new TED resembles the TED derived using the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion but gives rise to faster convergence relative to MLTED. The new TED requires shorter training sequences for symbol timing recovery. The TED operates on the outputs of the matched filter and estimates the timing offset. The S-curve is used as a tool for analyzing the behavior of the TEDs. The faster convergence of the new TED is shown in simulation results as compared to MLTED. The new TED works well for any two-dimensional constellation with arbitrarily shaped decision regions.

In the models analyzed in this paper, there exists an incumbent politician with one objective, two choices, and voters who remember the past differently. The politician's primary goal is to get reelected, which is done by maximizing the number of votes on the day of election. The politician can increase their chances of reelection if they influence the state of the economy over time and ensure the economy is in its 'best' state on the days leading up to the election. In conducting this research, I wanted to study how different rates of memory decay influences the choices the politician makes during the course of their term. Also, I wanted to explore how long a politician would wait to have an election if that were a choice they could make. I found that voters who remember more of the past place a greater constraint on the incumbent leading to moderate fluctuations in the economy and frequent elections.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified many common genetic variants that are associated with women’s reproductive timing characteristics including ages at menarche and at natural menopause. However, the associations of these variants with other human health related phenotypes such as blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and body height growth have not been well studied. No published studies to our knowledge have directly assessed the genetic influence of reproductive timing related variants on the aforementioned common traits. A better understanding of pleiotropic effects of these variants is important because it will help elucidate the precise mechanisms of common traits/diseases such as hypertension which have not been fully understood so far, and give clues for developing better solutions for disease prevention and treatment. We, therefore, conducted three studies to explore genetic variant effects on blood pressure and body height growth. In the first study, we analyzed data from a local cohort of 601 healthy adolescents from Indianapolis schools. Mixed effect model analysis revealed that 11 reproductive related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were significantly associated with blood pressure in the study subjects. In order to assess if these genetic effects extended to the adult blood pressure, we performed the second study to investigate the genetic effect on blood pressure in adults. We used the summary statistics obtained from the two large international GWAS consortia, the Blood Pressure Consortium and the ReproGen Consortium. Bivariate analyses showed that more than 100 SNPs were associated with both blood pressure and reproductive timing. As the blood pressure development is closely related to somatic growth, we conducted the third study to exam the genetic effect of reproductive-timing related variants on the linear growth from the aforementioned local cohort. We identified 8 genetic variants significantly associated with the catch-up of linear growth in the study subjects. In conclusion, these three studies collectively provided evidence in support of the pleiotropic effects of the reproductive timing variants, suggesting the common genetic basis underlying the correlated traits. Future research is needed to validate the findings. / 2 years

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The brain is composed of multiple systems that interact during cognition and behavior. Concurrently performing two or more tasks that compete for processing from a common system resource typically results in decremented performance, referred to as interference, for one or more of the tasks as compared to single-task performance. This interference is a hallmark of the dual-task experimental design. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the involvement of cerebellar cortex in trace eyeblink conditioning by utilizing the traditional dual-task design. Timed-interval finger tapping, a motor function mediated by the cerebellar cortex, and several different cognitive tasks representing dissociable distributed brain memory systems were co-administered with trace eyeblink conditioning. If cerebellar cortex is involved in trace eyeblink conditioning, then timed-interval finger tapping should significantly interfere with acquisition rate for conditioned responding. Performance variables from trace eyeblink conditioning were analyzed to investigate interference effects of timed-interval finger tapping and the various cognitive tasks. Results from a series of mixed model repeated measures ANOVAs indicate that the acquisition rate and magnitude of trace conditioning was not significantly reduced in the timed-interval tapping group compared to the control group, although participants did demonstrate evidence of inferior learning. This finding suggests that cerebellar cortex is not critically involved during acquisition of trace conditioning, however it is to be interpreted with caution as methodological and theoretical confounds may preclude a straightforward conclusion. / Psychology

Research was conducted in 2013 and 2014 to evaluate the postemergence control of Palmer amaranth [Amaranthus palmeri (S.) Wats.] with mesotrione alone and in mixtures with fomesafen and/or glyphosate and to evaluate the impact of lactofen and planting date on growth, development, and yield of indeterminate soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]. Studies included a greenhouse evaluation of different rates of mesotrione on the control of 5- and 10-cm Palmer amaranth and field studies evaluating the control of 5- to 10-cm Palmer amaranth with three rates of mesotrione applied alone and in mixtures with fomesafen and/or glyphosate. Lactofen studies include a planting date study evaluating one rate of lactofen applied at V2 soybean stage with planting dates of April 15, May 1, May 15, and June 1 and a lactofen timing study where one rate of lactofen was applied at soybean growth stages ranging from V1 to R5.

Studies were conducted in the field and in containers in Mississippi from 2017-2019 to optimize Italian ryegrass control in corn production. Most fall-applied residual herbicides provided ≥ 90% Italian ryegrass control 56 days after treatment (DAT) in both field and container experiments. Oxyflurofen provided 95% Italian ryegrass control 28 DAT but only 81% control 56 DAT in field plots. S-metolachlor plus atrazine followed by paraquat produced the highest return on investment for both site-years. The timing of removal study indicates the optimum time to remove Italian ryegrass relative to corn planting is approximately three to four weeks prior to planting. In the droplet size study, Italian ryegrass control when S-metolachlor was sprayed with the TTI was lower than when S-metolachlor was sprayed with the AIXR in containers 28 DAT. Italian ryegrass control when paraquat was sprayed with the AIXR was greater than when paraquat was sprayed with the TTI.