This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

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We are now in a rapid growth digital age. Different kinds of digitized applications are affecting people's daily life in different ways. All of these digitized applications generate tremendous amounts of information every day. We need to archive the important information because of their enduring value. However, the storage of digital information over time is a complex and difficult task. Selecting reliable digital archiving media, choosing suitable digital archiving methods, and using appropriate file formats for digital archiving are essential elements for achieving this task.Many companies and organizations have invested in finding reliable and affordable storage media for digital archiving since the end of the last century. Compact Disc Recordable (CD-R) quickly became one of the most popular choices for preserving digital information because CD-R can provide reliable back up at a reasonable price. Nevertheless, recent studies revealed that CD-R as a recording media for long term information archiving is not as reliable as we wish [4]. Its recording media may suffer from lost data because of possible damage from heat, humidity and light.In order to improve the performance of CD-R for long term digital archiving, there has been some research on hardware and software solutions to address this potential problem. Still most existing improvements have limitations either in the need of changing current CD-R standards or significant changes in current optical media drives.The objective of this research is to design and implement a novel system that advances the state of the art in digital archiving using CD-R, especially in the area of digital image storage. The design proposes robust image storage methods for CD-Rs based on the JPEG2000 standard. These storage methods combine the virtual block interleaver, Reed Solomon codes, and the error resilience tools of JPEG2000 effectively to protect the images on CD-Rs against errors caused by possible physical damage.To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed digital data storage methods, numerous experiments are conducted. The results show that the robust digital archiving methods for CD-R are useful and efficient.

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Parallax is a distributed storage system that uses virtualization to provide storage facilities specifically for virtual environments. The system employs a novel archi-tecture in which storage features that have traditionally been implemented directly on high-end storage arrays and switches are relocated into a federation of storage VMs, sharing the same physical hosts as the VMs that they serve. This architecture retains the single administrative domain and OS agnosticism achieved by array- and switch-based approaches, while lowering the bar on hardware requirements and facilitating the development of new features. Parallax offers a comprehensive set of storage features including frequent, low-overhead snapshot of virtual disks, the “gold-mastering” of template images, and the ability to use local disks as a persistent cache to dampen burst demand on networked storage.

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The clogging of fine-porosity geotextiles by soil particles is considered to be a problem in applications of these fabrics to filtering of municipal and industrial effluents. However, the clogging phenomenon can be an advantage for certain purposes, such as the creation of near-watertight membranes for sealing manure holding tanks. The conceived advantages of non-woven needle-punctured geotextiles are that they are less expensive due to lower material quantity, they are more resistant to tensile stresses compared to impermeable plastics and concrete, and they are easily installed. This thesis describes experimental work on the permeability and clogging characteristics of a Non-woven Polyester Geotextile with three different porosities (13.4, 19.5 and 26.0mum) but the same hydraulic conductivity (Kw = 10-5 m/s), when subjected to different heads of cattle slurry at 1, 2 and 4% total solids (TS) concentrations. The resulting infiltration rates were used to establish the effect of geotextile pore size and manure TS on geotextile sealing and to find the location of the seal, whether at the surface or within the geotextile. After 100 days of experimentation, the lowest infiltration rate of 1.1 L/m2/d was reached with the 13.4mum geotextile. Manure TS had a significant effect on the sealing and at least 4% TS was required to minimize the geotextile's infiltration rate. Clogging occurred within the pores, suggesting that the seal remains even after removing the manure. / This advantage can be translated into economic benefit when fun cost comparisons with sealing liners such as geomembranes and concrete are undertaken. / This research also reviews and analyzes the physical, chemical and biological processes leading to clogging of geotextiles as well as a cost-benefit comparison with the other sealing materials. The analysis concludes that clogged geotextiles are a wise choice for Canadian livestock producers.