Biological management of populations plays an indispensable role in all areas of population biology. In deciding between possible management options, one of the most important pieces of information required by population managers is the likely population status under possible management actions. Population dynamic models are the basic tool used in deriving this information. These models elucidate the complex processes underlying the population dynamics, and address the possible consequences/merits of management actions. These models are needed to guide the population towards desired/chosen management goals, and therefore allow managers to make informed decisions between alternative management actions. The reliability that can be placed on inferences drawn from a model about the fate of a population is undoubtedly dependent on how realistically the model represents the dynamic process of the population. The realistic representation of population characteristics in models has proved to be somewhat of a thorn in the side of population biologists. This thesis focuses in particular on ways to represent environmental stochasticity and density dependence in population models. Various approaches that are used in building environmental stochasticity into population models are reviewed. The most common approach represents the environmental variation by changes to demographic parameters that are assumed to follow a simple statistical distribution. For this purpose, a distribution is often selected on the basis of expert opinion, previous practice, and convenience. This thesis assesses the effect of this subjective choice of distribution on the model predictions, and develops some objective criteria for that selection based on ecological and statistical acceptability. The more commonly used distributions are compared as to their suitability, and some recommendations are made. Density dependence is usually represented in population models by specifying one or more of the vital rates as a function of population density. For a number of reasons, a population-specific function cannot usually be selected based on data. The thesis develops some ecologically-motivated criteria for identifying possible function(s) that could be used for a given population by matching functional properties to population characteristics when they are known. It also identifies a series of properties that should be present in a general function which could be suitable for modelling a population when relevant population characteristics are unknown. The suitability of functions that are commonly chosen for such purposes is assessed on this basis. I also evaluate the effect of the choice of a function on the resulting population trajectories. The case where the density dependence of one demographic rate is influenced by the density dependence of another is considered in some detail, as in some situations it can be modelled with little information in a relatively function-insensitive way. The findings of this research will help in embedding characteristics of animal populations into population dynamics models more realistically. Even though the findings are presented in the context of slow-growing long-lived animal populations, they are more generally applicable in all areas of biological management.

<p>Medical X-ray imaging is an important tool in diagnostic radiology. The ionising-radiation dose to the patient is justified by the clinical benefit of the examination. Nonetheless, detectors that operate at even lower doses and provide more information to the radiologist are desired. A hybrid pixel detector has the potential to provide a leap in detector technology as it incorporates a more advanced signal-processing capability than currently used detectors.</p><p>The DIXI digital detector is a hybrid pixel detector developed for X-ray imaging. It consists of a readout chip and a semiconductor sensor. The division in two parts makes it possible to optimise each part individually. The detector is divided into square pixels with a size of 270 x 270 μm2. DIXI has the ability to count single photons and every readout pixel has two embedded counters to allow the acquisition of two images close in time. A discriminator enables the selection of photons with energies above a preset threshold level.</p><p>The readout chip Angie has been developed and its performance has been evaluated in terms of noise, threshold variation and capability to perform energy weighted counting. Silicon sensors have been fabricated, and a control system for DIXI has been designed and built. An electroless process for deposition of Ni/Au bumps on the chip and sensor has been optimised as a preparation for the assembly of a complete detector, which is being assembled by flip-chip bonding using anisotropic conductive film.</p><p>A simulation library for the DIXI detector has been set up and results on the image quality are reported for different exposures and working conditions. A theoretical model for hybrid pixel detectors based on the cascaded linear system theory has been developed. The model can be used to investigate and optimise the detector for different detector configurations and operating conditions.</p>

Graduation date: 2005

Die Untersuchungen, deren Ergebnisse in den Heften 32 und 33 der Potsdamer Studien zur Grundschulforschung vorgelegt wurden, gingen den Fragen nach, was Kinder am Anfang und am Ende des ersten Schuljahres über die Größe Geld wissen, welche elementaren Fähigkeiten sie im Umgang mit Geld haben und wie sich diese Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten im Verlaufe des ersten Schuljahres weiterentwickeln. Mit den nun vorliegenden Ergebnissen unserer dritten Studie zum Thema Geld knüpfen wir an diese vorangegangenen Studien an. In diesem Heft wird dargestellt, welche Kompetenzen die an unseren Untersuchungen beteiligten Kinder am Ende der Klasse 2 besitzen und wie sich diese Kompetenzen im Vergleich zu den anderen Messzeitpunkten verändert haben. Außerdem sind wir der Frage nachgegangen, ob Zusammenhänge zwischen dem Vorwissen der Kinder bezogen auf unseren Untersuchungsgegenstand und den Rechenfähigkeiten am Ende der Klasse 2 bestehen. Im Ergebnis dieser Studien haben wir ein Modell für das Größenkonzept der Größe Geld entwickelt.

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It has been shown that neutrons emitted from the same 252Cf fission event are preferentially detected within small angles of each other and at angles around 180 degrees. The distribution of this angular anisotropy is dependent upon the nuclide emitting the neutrons. Coincident neutrons can be detected from a shielded source, so a study of the angular anisotropy between coincident neutrons is useful for this context. This could allow for the dynamic determination of the ratio of the rate of (alpha,n) neutron production to the spontaneous fission neutron production (designated alpha) used in neutron coincidence counting for safeguards. This could also be used to identify neutron emitting isotopes in a homeland security application. An angular frequency distribution for coincident neutrons was produced via experiments using an array of cylindrical liquid scintillators and a 252Cf source. It was found, in accordance with previous experiments, that the angular frequency distribution peaks at small angles and at angles around 180 degrees. A Monte Carlo, physics-based simulation program was created to simulate the distribution of angles between neutrons from the same fission event from 252Cf and 240Pu sources. The resulting distributions were clearly distinguishable from each other. The code was benchmarked to measured results from a 252Cf source at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Knowledge of the unique angular distributions of coincident neutrons from various fissioning sources is useful for identification and verification purposes. Another practical application of angular anisotropy information for coincident neutrons from a given source is determining the ratio of the (alpha,n) to spontaneous fission rates for a source undergoing neutron coincidence counting. The utility of this was verified by using measurements made by faculty and students of the University of Michigan Nuclear Engineering Department for a MOX fuel pin at the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy. Good agreement between the predicted and declared values for alpha was found.

This dissertation deals with three research topics; i) the catcher bearings life prediction method, ii) the Morton effect, and iii) the two dimensional modified Reynolds equation. Firstly, catcher bearings (CB) are an essential component for rotating machine with active magnetic bearings (AMBs) suspensions. The CB's role is to protect the magnetic bearing and other close clearance component in the event of an AMB failure. The contact load, the Hertzian stress, and the sub/surface shear stress between rotor, races, and balls are calculated, using a nonlinear ball bearing model with thermal growth, during the rotor drop event. Fatigue life of the CB in terms of the number of drop occurrences prior to failure is calculated by applying the Rainflow Counting Algorithm to the sub/surface shear stress-time history. Numerical simulations including high fidelity bearing models and a Timoshenko beam finite element rotor model show that CB life is dramatically reduced when high-speed backward whirl occurs. Secondly, the theoretical models and simulation results about the synchronous thermal instability phenomenon known as Morton Effect is presented in this dissertation. A transient analysis of the rotor supported by tilting pad journal bearing is performed to obtain asymmetric temperature distribution of the journal by solving variable viscosity Reynolds equation, energy equation, heat conduction equation, and equations of motion for rotor. The tilting pad bearing is fully nonlinear model. In addition, thermal mode approach and staggered integration scheme are utilized in order to reduce computation time. The simulation results indicate that the temperature of the journal varies sinusoidally along the circumferential direction and linearly across the diameter, and the vibration envelope increased and decreased, which considers as a limit cycle that is stable oscillation of the envelope of the amplitude of synchronous vibration. Thirdly, the Reynolds equation plays an important role to predict pressure distribution in the fluid film for the fluid film bearing analysis. One of the assumptions on the Reynolds equation is that the viscosity is independent of pressure. This assumption is still valid for most fluid film bearing applications, in which the maximum pressure is less than 1 GPa. In elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) which the lubricant is subjected to extremely high pressure, however, the pressure independent viscosity assumption should be reconsidered. With considering pressure-dependent viscosity, the 2D modified Reynolds equation is derived in this study. The solutions of 2D modified Reynolds equation is compared with that of the classical Reynolds equation for the plain journal bearing and ball bearing cases. The pressure distribution obtained from modified equation is slightly higher pressures than the classical Reynolds equations. / PDF file replaced 10-21-2012 at the request of the Thesis Office.

Mammography screening aims to reduce the number of breast cancer deaths by early detection of the disease, which is one of the leading causes of deaths for middle aged women in the western world. The risk from the x-ray radiation in mammography is relatively low but still a factor in the benefit-risk ratio of screening. The characterization and optimization of a digital mammography system is presented in this thesis. The investigated system is shown to be highly dose efficient by employing a photon counting detector in a scanning multislit geometry. A novel automatic exposure control (AEC) is proposed and validated in clinical practise. The AEC uses the leading detector edge to measure the transmission of the breast. The exposure is modulated by altering the scan velocity during the scan. A W-Al anode-filter combination is proposed. The characterization of the photon counting detector is performed using the detective quantum efficiency. The effect of the photon counting detector and the multislit geometry on the measurement method is studied in detail. It is shown that the detector has a zero-frequency DQE of over 70\% and that it is quantum limited even at very low exposures. Efficient rejection of image-degrading secondary radiation is fundamental for a dose efficient system. The efficiency of the scatter rejection techniques currently used are quantified and compared to the multislit geometry. A system performance metric with its foundation in statistical decision theory is discussed. It is argued that a photon counting multislit system can operate at approximately half the dose compared to several other digital mammography techniques. / QC 20100825

Incompleteness is a major feature of time-to-event data. As one type of incompleteness, truncation refers to the unobservability of the time-to-event variable because it is smaller (or greater) than the truncation variable. A truncated sample always involves left and right truncation. Left truncation has been studied extensively while right truncation has not received the same level of attention. In one of the earliest studies on right truncation, Lagakos et al. (1988) proposed to transform a right truncated variable to a left truncated variable and then apply existing methods to the transformed variable. The reverse-time hazard function is introduced through transformation. However, this quantity does not have a natural interpretation. There exist gaps in the inferences for the regular forward-time hazard function with right truncated data. This dissertation discusses variance estimation of the cumulative hazard estimator, one-sample log-rank test, and comparison of hazard rate functions among finite independent samples under the context of right truncation. First, the relation between the reverse- and forward-time cumulative hazard functions is clarified. This relation leads to the nonparametric inference for the cumulative hazard function. Jiang (2010) recently conducted a research on this direction and proposed two variance estimators of the cumulative hazard estimator. Some revision to the variance estimators is suggested in this dissertation and evaluated in a Monte-Carlo study. Second, this dissertation studies the hypothesis testing for right truncated data. A series of tests is developed with the hazard rate function as the target quantity. A one-sample log-rank test is first discussed, followed by a family of weighted tests for comparison between finite $K$-samples. Particular weight functions lead to log-rank, Gehan, Tarone-Ware tests and these three tests are evaluated in a Monte-Carlo study. Finally, this dissertation studies the nonparametric inference for the hazard rate function for the right truncated data. The kernel smoothing technique is utilized in estimating the hazard rate function. A Monte-Carlo study investigates the uniform kernel smoothed estimator and its variance estimator. The uniform, Epanechnikov and biweight kernel estimators are implemented in the example of blood transfusion infected AIDS data.

In this work we are concerned with the characterization of certain classes of stochastic processes via duality formulae. First, we introduce a new formulation of a characterization of processes with independent increments, which is based on an integration by parts formula satisfied by infinitely divisible random vectors. Then we focus on the study of the reciprocal classes of Markov processes. These classes contain all stochastic processes having the same bridges, and thus similar dynamics, as a reference Markov process. We start with a resume of some existing results concerning the reciprocal classes of Brownian diffusions as solutions of duality formulae. As a new contribution, we show that the duality formula satisfied by elements of the reciprocal class of a Brownian diffusion has a physical interpretation as a stochastic Newton equation of motion. In the context of pure jump processes we derive the following new results. We will analyze the reciprocal classes of Markov counting processes and characterize them as a group of stochastic processes satisfying a duality formula. This result is applied to time-reversal of counting processes. We are able to extend some of these results to pure jump processes with different jump-sizes, in particular we are able to compare the reciprocal classes of Markov pure jump processes through a functional equation between the jump-intensities.