after vibration endurance testing involves manual inspection only after the test is completed. An adaptable, reliable and low cost real time monitoring and diagnostic system that would interrupt the testing operation at the first onset of a failure is desired. This thesis describes accelerometer based, microphone (single and dualmicrophone) based and acoustic emission sensor based monitoring systems for automotive light assembly failure detection during endurance testing. Preliminary results from accelerometer based and dual-microphone based diagnostic systems show that significant differences between healthy and faulty fog light assemblies can be detected. Based on these initial testing results, subsequent testing and data analysis were conducted for accelerometer based and dual microphone based systems. Four data analysis methods have been used: (1) Averaging signals in the time domain, (2) FFT of time domain waveforms over a specified time, (3) Averaging frequency spectra, and (4) Statistical methods for time domain signals. Individual frequency spectra (from FFT) and the average of multiple frequency spectra have shown potential to distinguish between signals from faulty and healthy light assemblies. Statistical measures, such as, Arithmetic mean (μ) and Kurtosis (K) can also be used to differentiate healthy and faulty light assemblies. In general, this work has shown the good potential to develop methods for adaptable, reliable and low cost real time monitoring and diagnostic systems that would interrupt the testing operation at the first onset of a failure. / Thesis (Master, Mechanical and Materials Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-28 16:13:47.511

Code clones are duplicated code fragments that are copied to re-use functionality and speed up development. However, due to the duplicate nature of code clones, inconsistent updates can lead to bugs in the software system. Existing research investigates the inconsistent updates through analysis of the updates to code clones and the bug fixes used to fix the inconsistent updates. We extend the work by investigating other factors that affect clone evolution, such as the number of developers. On two levels of analysis, the method and clone class level, we conduct an empirical study on clone evolution. We analyze the factors affecting bug fixes and co-change (i.e. update cloned methods at the same time) using our new metrics. Our metrics are related to the developers, code complexity, and stages of development. We use these metrics to find ways to improve the maintenance of cloned code. We discover that one way to improve maintenance of code clones is the decrease of code complexity. We find that increased code complexity leads to a decrease in co-change, which can lead to bugs in the software. We perform our study on 6 applications. To maximize the number of clones detected, we use two existing code clone detection tools: SimScan and Simian. SimScan was used to find clones in 5 of the applications due to its versatility in finding code clones. Simian was used to detect clones due to its reliability to find code clones regardless of language or compilation problems. To analyze and determine the significance of the metrics, we use the R Statistical Toolkit. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-11-25 14:18:05.884

A PLL-based frequency shift measurement system for chemical and biological sensing was developed and implemented in the form of two discrete electronic assemblies. One of the assemblies consists of a VCO which contains a microwave resonator sensor while the other assembly contains commercially available PLL and MCU devices, as well as various other discrete components. When mated together, a PLL-based frequency synthesizer is realized, the output frequency of which is ~4.5 GHz. The system is used to measure the frequency shift exhibited by the frequency synthesizer when several commonly-known chemical substances are applied to the microwave resonator sensor test fixture. Because the amount of measured frequency shift is proportional to the dielectric constant of a given material under test (MUT), this system can potentially be used as part of a chemical identification system. This measurement system is also attractive in that it represents a stand-alone or 'self-contained' system which does not require usage of any additional expensive and bulky electronic diagnostic equipment such as a network analyzer or signal generator, making it a relatively inexpensive and portable solution. Attempts to use the system to measure frequency shift resulting from application of various common chemical substances to the sensor fixture results in derivation of dielectric constant values which hold very close agreement (+/-2%) to the published/theoretical dielectric constant values for each respective chemical substance.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an active microwave remote sensing system able to acquire high resolution images of the scattering behaviour of an observed scene. The contribution of SAR polarimetry (POLSAR) in detection and classification of objects is described and found to add valuable information compared to previous approaches. In this thesis, a new target detection/classification methodology is developed that makes novel use of the polarimetric information of the backscattered field from a target. The detector is based on a geometrical perturbation filter which correlates the target of interest with its perturbed version. Specifically, the operation is accomplished with a polarimetric coherence representing a weighted and normalised inner product between the target and its perturbed version, where the weights are extracted from the observables. The mathematical formulation is general and can be applied to any deterministic (point) target. However, in this thesis the detection is primarily focused on multiple reflections and oriented dipoles due to their extensive availability in common scenarios. An extensive validation against real data is provided exploiting different datasets. They include one airborne system: E-SAR L-band (DLR, German Aerospace Centre); and three satellite systems: ALOS-PALSAR L-band (JAXA, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency), RADARSAT-2 C-band (Canadian Space Agency) and TerraSAR-X X-band (DLR). The attained detection masks reveal significant agreement with the expected results based on the theoretical description. Additionally, a comparison with another widely used detector, the Polarimetric Whitening Filter (PWF) is presented. The methodology proposed in this thesis appears to outperform the PWF in two significant ways: 1) the detector is based on the polarimetric information rather than the amplitude of the return, hence the detection is not restricted to bright targets; 2) the algorithm is able to discriminate among the detected targets (i.e. target recognition).

A study of the decayτ → π⁻ π⁻ π⁺ π⁰ π⁰ ν(τ) is presented. The results presented here could be used to inform and improve the Monte Carlo simulations.

No description available.

No description available.

An anti-diuron scAb fragment was produced and expressed in <I>E. coli.</I> Characterization by ELISA demonstrated that the scAb displayed a similar binding profile to the parent monoclonal antibody, although its binding sensitivity appeared to be 10-50 times lower. Analysis of purified samples by HPLC showed the presence of scAb in both monomeric and dimeric forms. Expression yield of the anti-diuron scAb was low (0.05 mg/l culture volume), and attempts to reduce the toxicity of production in <I>E. coli</I>, using alternative expression vectors, were not successful. Production in an <I>E. coli</I> strain which allowed cytoplasmic folding resulted in an increase in yield of soluble scAb, but this antibody material showed reduced stability. The anti-atrazine scAb was expressed in tobacco. Although the levels of scAb produced were lower than might have been expected (0.014% total soluble protein), the scAb was fully functional and exhibited a binding affinity similar to that of bacterially-produced scAb. BIAcore analysis of affinity purified samples indicated a binding affinity comparable to that of the parental Mab. In competition ELISA, the scAb showed a concentration-dependent reduction in antigen binding in the presence of free atrazine. Binding sensitivity of the scAb for atrazine, and for the closely related triazine propazine, were very similar, while binding sensitivity for simazine was 10 times lower. Bacterially-produced anti-atrazine scAb demonstrated similar binding sensitivities for the atrazine analogues.

No description available.

Driver fatigue is responsible for up to 30% of fatal car accidents. This issue has been addressed by many scholars in order to save thousands of lives and reduce many costs. The goal of this work is to reduce the number of car accidents caused by mental fatigue or drowsiness. In order to achieve this goal, we propose a personalized Bayesian Network (BN) to detect driver’s fatigue. The detection of driver fatigue is enhanced by combining data that reflects the driver’s performance with context-aware information. The parameters of the system are the angular velocity of the steering wheel, the pressure applied to the gas and brake pedals, the grip force on the steering wheel, weather conditions, current traffic, and time of day. The aforementioned parameters of the network are updated on a regular basis, which makes fatigue detection more reliable. Besides, these parameters allow the system to detect a driver’s fatigue through driving performance which is both individualized and context aware. In our experiment, subjects drove a driving simulator game during six sessions, for a total of one hour. After each session, every subject used the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) to rate her fatigue’s level. The system was trained on the data collected separately from each user, allowing BN to be personalized for each subject. The proposed system showed an average accuracy of 96%, and ability to overcome the issue of individual differences and uncertainties which are involved in fatigue detection process.