Thesis (D. Min.)--Ashland Theological Seminary, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-193).

ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / Massive amounts of data are typically acquired in third generation full-waveform (FW) LIDAR systems to generate image-like depthmaps of a scene of acceptable quality. The sampling systems acquiring this data, however, seldom take into account the low information rate generally present in the FW signals and, consequently, they sample very inefficiently. Our main goal here is to compare two efficient sampling models and processes for the individual time-resolved FW signals collected by a LIDAR system. Specifically, we compare two approaches of sub-Nyquist sampling of the continuous-time LIDAR FW return pulses: (i) modeling FW signals as short-duration pulses with multiple bandlimited echoes, and (ii) modeling them as signals with finite rates of innovation (FRI).

ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / Instead of using a single data acquisition device, the distribute data acquisition system is broadly applied for onboard flight testing now. Therefore, the sync of data acquisition in varied devices and the real time data transportation have become the most important factors in a telemetry system. This paper presents a new approach to clock synchronization in a real time transportation network for a data acquisition system by using IRIG time code and an inner timer through network time recovery technique. This paper also illustrates how to keep the synchronization and continuity of a time tag used by each device through a precise estimation method for the difference of time resources and local inner timers.

ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / Third generation LIDAR full-waveform (FW) based systems collect 1D FW signals of the echoes generated by laser pulses of wide bandwidth reflected at the intercepted objects to construct depth profiles along each pulse path. By emitting a series of pulses towards a scene using a predefined scanning patter, a 3D image containing spatial-depth information can be constructed. Unfortunately, acquisition of a high number of wide bandwidth pulses is necessary to achieve high depth and spatial resolutions of the scene. This implies the collection of massive amounts of data which generate problems for the storage, processing and transmission of the FW signal set. In this research, we explore the recovery of individual continuous-time FW signals at sub-Nyquist rates. The key step to achieve this is to exploit the sparsity in FW signals. Doing this allows one to sub-sample and recover FW signals at rates much lower than that implied by Shannon's theorem. Here, we describe the theoretical framework supporting recovery and present the reader with examples using real LIDAR data.

Third generation full-waveform (FW) LIDAR systems image an entire scene by emitting laser pulses in particular directions and measuring the echoes. Each of these echoes provides range measurements about the objects intercepted by the laser pulse along a specified direction. By scanning through a specified region using a series of emitted pulses and observing their echoes, connected 1D profiles of 3D scenes can be readily obtained. This extra information has proven helpful in providing additional insight into the scene structure which can be used to construct effective characterizations and classifications. Unfortunately, massive amounts of data are typically collected which impose storage, processing and transmission limitations. To address these problems, a number of compression approaches have been developed in the literature. These, however, generally require the initial acquisition of large amounts of data only to later discard most of it by exploiting redundancies, thus sampling inefficiently. Based on this, our main goal is to apply efficient and effective LIDAR sampling schemes that achieve acceptable reconstruction quality of the 3D scenes. To achieve this goal, we propose on using compressive sampling by emitting pulses only into random locations within the scene and collecting only the corresponding returned FW signals. Under this framework, the number of emissions would typically be much smaller than what traditional LIDAR systems require. Application of this requires, however, that scenes contain many degrees of freedom. Fortunately, such a requirement is satisfied in most natural and man-made scenes. Here, we propose to use a measure of rank as the measure of degrees of freedom. To recover the connected 1D profiles of the 3D scene, matrix completion is applied to the tensor slices. In this paper, we test our approach by showing that recovery of compressively sampled 1D profiles of actual 3D scenes is possible using only a subset of measurements.

Ammonia removal is an important problem that Canadian municipalities are encountering in their wastewater treatment systems due to ammonia’s adverse environmental effects and its increasingly stringent discharge standards. Nitrogen compounds are generally removed from wastewater by a combination of nitrification and denitrification. In full nitrification, ammonia is first biologically oxidized to nitrite, which is then oxidized to nitrate by nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. In denitrification, the resulting nitrate has to be first reduced to nitrite in order to be converted to nitrous oxide, then nitric oxide, and finally to nitrogen gas. Since, nitrite is an intermediary compound in both nitrification and denitrification, it may be more efficient to produce a partial nitrification up to nitrite and then denitrification starting from this nitrite. In this research, EnviroPro Designer was used to simulate, optimize and compare process models for both full nitrification and partial nitrification. The Full System model simulates the traditional full nitrification followed by denitrification. Partial System-1 model simulates the partial nitrification process followed by denitrification directly from nitrite. Partial System-1 significantly reduced the ammonia and domestic waste concentrations in the effluent while achieving 1.5 times faster denitrification rates and utilizing 33% less oxygen. Partial System-1 was further optimized to develop a novel nitrogen removal process, Partial System-3, which incorporated an additional third anoxic stage while the aerobic stage in sludge treatment was removed. Partial System-3 successfully reduced the ammonia and nitrite concentrations in the effluent to values well within the current guidelines while consuming 50% less oxygen than the Full System, which reflected favorably on utility savings. It also showed 2 times faster denitrification rates, and displayed superior domestic waste consumption. Furthermore, the capital and operational costs were less than other nitrogen removal systems investigated in this thesis. The novel Partial System-3 appears to be the best option for removal of nitrogen from medium to high strength wastewater, and further experimental research is required to confirm the kinetic and yield constants assumed in the simulations.

No description available.

In this thesis, a new method has been proposed for calculating the frequencydependent parameters of underground cables. The method uses full wave formulation for calculating the modal electromagnetic fields and corresponding voltages and currents and then extracting frequency-dependent per unit length parameters of underground cables. The proposed method can be used for any cross-sectional shape of cables.

熱電材料被視為其中一種可以解決能源問題的材料，其中具有高功率因子(power factor)的Heusler系統近年來被廣泛的研究。這篇論文中，我們利用取代效應探討鐵釩鎵(Fe2VGa) Heusler系統的熱電性質以及磁性性質，其中包括鈦原子(Ti)取代釩原子(V)跟矽原子(Si)取代鎵原子(Ga)。我們使用電弧熔煉法合成所有樣品，包括Fe2V1-xTixGa (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25) 和 Fe2VGa1-xSix (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2)。在X光繞射的分析中，我們展示了所有樣品都是L21的晶體結構還有每個樣品的晶格常數；同時，我們利用能量分散式光譜儀揭露了樣品的化學計量式。當取代濃度大於0.1時，兩個不同取代系統的功率因子(power factor=S2/ρ)皆會大幅度的提升，這現象可以歸功於能態密度中費米能階的移動。由能帶計算中我們得知鐵釩鎵系統的費米能階坐落在pseudo gap中，然而取代效應使費米能階移出pseudo gap，進而跟能態密度有交錯，導致Seebeck常數上升，而功率因子又與Seebeck常數成平方正比的關係，所以兩個不同取代系統的功率因子皆大幅度的提升。因為合金效應的關係，使所有有取代樣品的傳熱性都大幅度被壓抑，其中Fe2VGa0.8Si0.2的熱傳導性被抑制了兩倍。因為傳熱性的抑制以及同時功率因子的提升，使得Fe2V0.8Ti0.2Ga的熱電優值在420 K時較未被Ti取代之母材Fe2VGa提高了10倍。另外，我們也介由觀察樣品的磁化率以及磁化量探討了這些樣品的磁性性質。 / Thermoelectric application has been considered as a possible solution for electric crises, and, recently, Heusler alloys have been studied for its large power factor near room temperature. In this thesis, we investigate the thermoelectric and magnetic properties of Ti-substituted (p-type) and Si-substituted (n-type) Heusler alloy Fe2VGa. All samples including Fe2V1-xTixGa (with x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25) and Fe2VGa1-xSix (with x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2) are prepared through arc-melting method. The X-ray refinement shows their L21 crystal structure and corresponding lattice parameters, while the Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) reveals the stoichiometry. With proper substitution, with x > 0.1, the power factor of both systems is dramatically enhanced, which can be attributed to the Fermi level shifting. According to the theoretical calculation for the density of state, the Fermi level of the un-doped sample is located within the pseudogap, while the Fermi level starts to move out the pseudogap since the substituting effect applying, and it will consequently intercept with the conduction or valence band. Due to the alloying effect, the thermal conductivity of Fe2VGa0.8Si0.2 sample is significantly suppressed by a factor of 2. Therefore, we observed that the figure of merit (zT) in Fe2V0.8Ti0.2Ga sample is enhanced by 10 times at 420 K as compared with the parent compound Fe2VGa. Their magnetic properties are also investigated by means of susceptibility and magnetization measurements.

This research study focused on early childhood education programs that were implemented by public school districts in Indiana. The research questions addressed in this study were as follows: 1. What benefits related to student achievement does an investment of financial and human resources in preschool and/or full-day kindergarten programs show for students and for a school district? 2. What means of funding do school districts utilize to implement an early childhood education program? 3. What characteristics do successful early childhood programs possess, as determined by school district administrators? The online survey, which was utilized to collect this data, was developed by the researcher. This survey was distributed to public school superintendents of 164 small and mid-sized school corporations in Indiana, of which 43 were small school corporations (0 to 1,000 students) and 121 were mid-sized school corporations (1,001 to 5,000 students). Of the total sample of 164 school districts, 48 surveys were returned, which resulted in a 29.3% response rate. The data collected in this study showed the following results: 1. Students in the preschool programs showed increased acquisition of socialization skills and improved motivation in school. 2. School districts utilized a combination of federal funds, state funds, and federal grants to support their preschool programs. 3. The preschool programs were designed to incorporate the best practice characteristics of a curriculum based on the state early learning standards. The programs also were staffed with teachers who have four-year college degrees and have small class sizes of 20 students, with a staff-to-child ratio of ten students per adult (10:1). These school districts could serve as a model for other school districts that are planning to implement a preschool program through a review of their experiences in designing the program, staffing the program, funding the program, and supporting the academics in the program. / Department of Educational Leadership