In many network applications, such as the Internet and infrastructure networks, nodes fail or get congested dynamically, but tracking this information about all the nodes in a network where some dynamical processes are taking place is a fundamental problem. In this work, we study the problem of inferring the complete set of failed nodes, when only a sample of the node failures are known---we will be referring to this particular problem as prob{} . We consider the setting in which there exists correlations between node failures in networks, which has been studied in the case of many infrastructure networks. We formalize the prob{} problem using the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle and we show that, in general, finding solutions that minimize the MDL cost is hard, and develop efficient algorithms with rigorous performance guarantees for finding near-optimal MDL cost solutions. We evaluate our methods on both synthetic and real world datasets, which includes the one from WAZE. WAZE is a crowd-sourced road navigation tool, that collects and presents the traffic incident reports. We found that the proposed greedy algorithm for this problem is able to recover $80%$, on average, of the failed nodes in a network for a given partial sample of input failures, which are sampled from the true set of failures at some predefined rate. Furthermore, we have also proved that this algorithm will find a solution that has MDL cost with an additive approximation guarantee of log(n) from the optimal. / Master of Science

Framing analyses have been among the most popular areas of research for scholars in political communication. Similarly, minimum wage legislation has been a popular topic for researchers in labor economics. However, few studies have used framing analysis to investigate the issue of minimum wage. This exploratory quantitative content analysis coded 45 variables in 236 lengthy press documents spanning 84 years of Democratic presidential administrations. More specifically, this study explored presence of generic frames, stakeholders, and ideological identities employed by Democratic presidential administrations since 1933. Results found that Democratic presidential administrations have been generally consistent in framing minimum wage policy. However, ideological discrepancies in Democratic presidents' actual framing practice were detected: a deepening pro-fairness attitude in specific frames and a growing pro-business empathy in stakeholder presence. The study concluded that framing minimum wage policy has become increasingly expressive: partisan identities transcend ideological positions. Democratic administrations generally maintain a single approach when highlighting minimum wage increase and endorse the Fair Labor Standards Act, albeit using different and even conflicting framing practices over time. To sustain the findings, this study suggests an equivalent study on Republican presidential administrations and their framing of minimum wage policy. / Master of Arts / Framing analyses have been among the most popular areas of research for scholars in political communication. Similarly, minimum wage legislation has been a popular topic for researchers in labor economics. However, few studies have used framing analysis to investigate the issue of minimum wage. This exploratory quantitative content analysis coded 45 variables in 236 lengthy press documents spanning 84 years of Democratic presidential administrations. More specifically, this study explored presence of generic frames, stakeholders, and ideological identities employed by Democratic presidential administrations since 1933. Results found that Democratic presidential administrations have been generally consistent in framing minimum wage policy. However, ideological discrepancies in Democratic presidents’ actual framing practice were detected: a deepening pro-fairness attitude in specific frames and a growing pro-business empathy in stakeholder presence. The study concluded that framing minimum wage policy has become increasingly expressive: partisan identities transcend ideological positions. Democratic administrations generally maintain a single approach when highlighting minimum wage increase and endorse the Fair Labor Standards Act, albeit using different and even conflicting framing practices over time. To sustain the findings, this study suggests an equivalent study on Republican presidential administrations and their framing of minimum wage policy

Eggplant grafting implemented implemented in two field sites in the Philippines, in Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan are used as proofs of concept to illustrate and validate the feasibility of an impact assessment framework for determining the nutritional impact of technology-oriented agricultural activities. Nutritional impacts are assessed by disaggregating the market demand curve into demand curves by income groups using their separate price elasticities of demand. Considering only price effects, the increase in yields following a per unit cost reduction due to eggplant grafting has positive effects on the daily caloric intake per capita in the different income classes with the greatest impact on the lowest income class for both sites. Net increases in calorie intake ranges between 0.09 and 0.6 kilocalories per capita per day. / Master of Science

Fentanyl has historically been used to reduce inhalant anesthetic requirements in the dog, with the end goal of reducing detrimental cardiovascular effects seen with their use. While fentanyl has been investigated in this context with the older agent enflurane, this agent is no longer in common use. In the current literature, no studies exist that compare the effects of low and high doses of fentanyl on cardiovascular function in dogs anesthetized with isoflurane. In previous literature, a high dose of fentanyl improved cardiovascular function in enflurane anesthetized dogs only following correction of bradycardia associated with its use. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of two doses of fentanyl on isoflurane requirement in the dog, followed by an evaluation of cardiovascular function in the isoflurane-anesthetized dog at equivalent depth of anesthesia. The hypothesis was that fentanyl would reduce inhalant requirements in a dose dependent fashion, and that cardiovascular function would increase with fentanyl administration only following correction of bradycardia. A total of 8 healthy adult male beagle dogs were enrolled in this study, which was performed in a randomized cross-over design. Minimum Alveolar Concentration (MAC) was determined in these dogs via a 30 mA electric stimulation both before and after administration of a low (loading dose 30 µg/kg, continuous rate infusion (CRI) of 0.2 µg/kg/minute) or high (loading dose 90 µg/kg, CRI 0.8 µg/kg/min) dose of fentanyl. A 7-day washout was observed between experimental days. Following MAC determination, in a subsequent anesthetic episode animals were placed at a MAC multiple of 1.3 and cardiovascular and blood gas parameters were evaluated before and after each fentanyl dose in the presence and absence of bradycardia. Fentanyl decreased MAC in a dose-dependent fashion (p < 0.001), with the low dose reducing MAC by about 42% and the high dose by about 77%. MAC reduction, however, did not translate into improvement in cardiovascular function, with a significant reduction in cardiac index and oxygen delivery noted with both doses (p < 0.01) that was not different between treatments. Normal mean arterial pressures were maintained with both treatments despite these effects. Only with the high dose, however, correction of bradycardia caused an increase in both cardiac index and oxygen delivery (p < 0.02) when compared to isoflurane alone. In clinically healthy dogs, administration of a high dose of fentanyl increased cardiac function following correction of bradycardia, but a decrease was observed when bradycardia went uncorrected. Further studies are needed in order to evaluate these effects in clinical patients. / Master of Science

Numerical modeling and prediction techniques are used to determine pressure drop, minimum fluidization velocity and segregation for bubbling fluidized beds. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchange (MFIX) is used to study a two-stage reactor geometry with a binary mixture. MFIX is demonstrated to accurately predict pressure drop versus inlet gas velocity for binary mixtures. A new method is developed to predict the pressure drop versus inlet gas velocity and minimum fluidization velocity for multi-component fluidized beds. The mass accounting in the stationary system (MASS) method accounts for the changing bed composition during the fluidization process by using a novel definition for the mass fractions of the bed not yet fluidized. Published experimental data for pressure drop from single-, binary- and ternary-component fluidized bed systems are compared to MFIX simulations and the MASS method, with good agreement between all three approaches. Minimum fluidization velocities predicted using correlations in the literature were compared with the experimental data, MFIX, and the MASS method. The predicted minimum fluidization velocity from the MASS method provided very good results with an average relative error of ±4%. The MASS method is shown to accurately predict when complex multi-component systems of granular material will fluidize. The MASS method and MFIX are also used to explore the occurrence and extent of segregation in multi-component systems. The MASS method and MFIX are both shown to accurately predict the occurrence and extent of segregation in multi-component systems. / Master of Science

Robust estimation of statistical parameters is traditionally believed to exist in a trade space between robustness and efficiency. This thesis examines the Minimum Hellinger Distance Estimator (MHDE), which is known to have desirable robustness properties as well as desirable efficiency properties. This thesis confirms that the MHDE is simultaneously robust against outliers and asymptotically efficient in the univariate location case. Robustness results are then extended to the case of simple linear regression, where the MHDE is shown empirically to have a breakdown point of 50%. A geometric algorithm for solution of the MHDE is developed and implemented. The algorithm utilizes the Riemannian manifold properties of the statistical model to achieve an algorithmic speedup. The MHDE is then applied to an illustrative problem in power system state estimation. The power system is modeled as a structured linear regression problem via a linearized direct current model; robustness results in this context have been investigated and future research areas have been identified from both a statistical perspective as well as an algorithm design standpoint. / Master of Science

Water infrastructure systems worldwide use large amounts of energy to operate. Energy efficiency efforts are relevant because even relatively small gains in efficiency have the potential to bring significant benefits to these utilities in terms of financial savings and enhanced sustainability and resiliency. In order to achieve higher efficiency levels, energy usage must be measured and controlled. A common tool used to measure energy efficiency in water utilities and perform comparisons between utilities is metric benchmarking. Energy benchmarking scores are intended to measure how efficient water systems are among their peers, in a simple and accurate fashion. Although many different benchmarking methods are currently used, we chose to use the segregated benchmarking scores proposed by Carlson on his research report from 2007 (Carlson, 2007). The research objective is to improve these production energy use and treatment energy use benchmarking scores by analyzing the system's particular characteristics that might skew the results, such as topology, water loss and raw water quality. We propose that benchmarking metrics should be always used within a particular context for each specific utility being analyzed. A complementary score (Thermodynamic Score) was developed to provide context on how energy efficient is the utility not only compared with other utilities, but also compared with the potential maximum efficiency the utility can reach itself. We analyzed eight utilities from Virginia to obtain production and treatment energy use benchmarking scores and also thermodynamic scores using the minimum required energy approach. Benchmarking scores were skewed in 50% of the studied utilities. This means that benchmarking scores should never be used as a black box. The thermodynamic score proved to be useful for measurement of energy efficiency of a water utility on its production phase. In addition, some utilities can detect significant financial saving opportunities using the minimum required energy analysis for production operations. / Master of Science

No / We have studied the performance of multidimensional signaling techniques using wavelets based modulation within an orthogonally multiplexed communication system. The discrete wavelets transform and wavelet packet modulation techniques have been studied using Daubechies 2 and 8, Biothogonal1.5 and 3.1 and reverse Biorthognal 1.5 and 3.1 wavelets in the presence of Rayleigh multipath fading channels with AWGN. Results showed that DWT based systems outperform WPM systems both in terms of BER vs. SNR performance as well as processing. The performances of two different equalizations techniques, namely zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE), were also compared using DWT. When the channel is modeled using Rayleigh multipath fading, AWGN and ISI both techniques yield similar performance.

Yes / Probability density function (PDF) control strategy investigates the controller design approaches where the random variables for the stochastic processes were adjusted to follow the desirable distributions. In other words, the shape of the system PDF can be regulated by controller design.Different from the existing stochastic optimization and control methods, the most important problem of PDF control is to establish the evolution of the PDF expressions of the system variables. Once the relationship between the control input and the output PDF is formulated, the control objective can be described as obtaining the control input signals which would adjust the system output PDFs to follow the pre-specified target PDFs. Motivated by the development of data-driven control and the state of the art PDF-based applications, this paper summarizes the recent research results of the PDF control while the controller design approaches can be categorized into three groups: (1) system model-based direct evolution PDF control; (2) model-based distribution-transformation PDF control methods and (3) data-based PDF control. In addition, minimum entropy control, PDF-based filter design, fault diagnosis and probabilistic decoupling design are also introduced briefly as extended applications in theory sense. / De Montfort University - DMU HEIF’18 project, Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province [grant number 201701D221112], National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 61503271 and 61603136]

Thesis advisor: Joseph Quinn / This thesis explores the debate surrounding the impact of minimum wage increases on employment, dissecting the conflicting results and methodological divergences in the existing economic literature. It engages in a detailed meta-analysis of seminal studies, with a particular focus on how differing research methodologies and definitions of employment have contributed to the lack of consensus among economists. The analysis reveals that while some studies, like those by Card and Krueger (1994), find no negative effects on employment, others, such as Neumark and Shirley (2022), report significant adverse impacts, particularly on low-skilled and younger workers. This thesis examines the prevalent methodological approaches and highlights the role of controlling for spatial heterogeneity and the careful selection of control groups in assessing the true effects of minimum wage policies. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics. / Discipline: Departmental Honors.