What is the experience like for individuals residing in a community solely composed of gas stations and corner stores? How does the constant presence of these establishments, which primarily offer packaged and unhealthy food options, affect the health of the residents? Food deserts are typically defined as urban areas where it is challenging to access affordable and high-quality fresh food. According to the USDA, a food desert is an area where 100 households are located more than half a mile away from a supermarket. In 2010, approximately 19 million people lived in areas with limited supermarket access. While these statistics provide insight into the impact of food deserts, they fail to convey the personal experiences of those affected. In the wake of the pandemic, Washington DC ranks second in the country for food insecurity, with over 75% of food deserts located in Wards 7 and 8. This thesis explores the pressing need for healthier food options in urban environments and proposes the development of a farm-to-table community in Marshall Heights, a vibrant neighborhood in Washington DC's Ward 7. By incorporating livestock and public garden spaces, this community aims to provide its residents with access to fresh, nutritious food while fostering a deeper connection to the natural world. The design choices implemented in this community will enable individuals to witness the growth of their food and participate in its preparation, thereby promoting healthier lifestyles and sustainable practices within an urban setting. Through a multidisciplinary approach that considers the historical, cultural, and environmental aspects of Marshall Heights, this thesis offers a blueprint for an alternative way of life that prioritizes health and well-being. / Master of Architecture / This thesis explores the pressing need for healthier food options in urban environments and proposes the development of a farm-to-table community in Marshall Heights, a vibrant neighborhood in Washington DC's Ward 7. By incorporating livestock and public garden spaces, this community aims to provide its residents with access to fresh, nutritious food while fostering a deeper connection to the natural world. The design choices implemented in this community will enable individuals to witness the growth of their food and participate in its preparation, thereby promoting healthier lifestyles and sustainable practices within an urban setting. Through a multidisciplinary approach that considers the historical, cultural, and environmental aspects of Marshall Heights, this thesis offers a blueprint for an alternative way of life that prioritizes health and well-being.

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This thesis is missing page vi, the page is not present in the other copies of this thesis. -Digitization Centre / This thesis deals with the design and implementation of a micro-computer controlled cutting table used to prepare large scale patterns for Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) devices. This automated cutting table simplifies the creation of many SAW patterns and makes previously unattainable patterns possible. The design is extremely versatile and can cut as well as straight lines in any direction in two dimensions. A commercially available, 44 inch square, cutting table was automated by mounting stepping motors on each of the two axis. The motion of the motors is controlled by an SDK-85 micro-computer and several peripherals. A full description of the hardware, software and a successful experimental test is included. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

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Modeling ground-water hydrology is critical in low-gradient, high water table watersheds where ground-water is the dominant contribution to streamflow. The Hydrological Simulation Program-FORTRAN (HSPF) model has two different subroutines available to simulate ground water, the traditional ground-water (TGW) subroutine and the high water table (HWT) subroutine. The HWT subroutine has more parameters and requires more data but was created to enhance model performance in low-gradient, high water table watershed applications. The objective of this study was to compare the performance and uncertainty of the TGW and HWT subroutines when applying HSPF to a low-gradient watershed in the Coastal Plain of northeast North Carolina. One hundred thousand Monte Carlo simulations were performed to generate data needed for model performance comparison. The HWT model generated considerably higher Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) values while performing slightly worse when simulating the 50% lowest and 10% highest flows. Model uncertainty was assessed using the Average Relative Interval Length (ARIL) metric. The HWT model operated with more average uncertainty throughout all flow regimes. Based on the results, the HWT subroutine is preferable when applying HSPF to a low-gradient watershed and the accuracy of simulated stream discharge is important. In situations where a balance between performance and uncertainty is called for, the choice of which subroutine to employ is less clear cut. / Master of Science

In digital forensics, source camera identification of digital images has drawn attention in recent years. An image does contain information of its camera and/or editing software somewhere in it. But the interest of this research is to find manufacturers (henceforth will be called make and model) of a camera using only the header information, such as quantization table and huffman table, of the JPEG encoding. Having done research on around 110, 000 images, we reached to state that "For all practical purposes, using quantization and huffman tables alone to predict a camera make and model isn't a viable approach". We found no correlation between quantization and huffman tables of images and makes of camera. Rather, quantization or huffman table is determined by the quality factors like resolution, RGB values, intensity etc.of an image and standard settings of the camera.

Decision trees are one of the most commonly used tools in decision analysis, knowledge representation, machine learning, etc., for its simplicity and interpretability. We consider an extension of dynamic programming approach to process the whole set of decision trees for the given decision table which was previously only attainable by brute-force algorithms. We study decision tables with many-valued decisions (each row may contain multiple decisions) because they are more reasonable models of data in many cases. To address this problem in a broad sense, we consider not only decision trees but also inhibitory trees where terminal nodes are labeled with “̸= decision”. Inhibitory trees can sometimes describe more knowledge from datasets than decision trees. As for cost functions, we consider depth or average depth to minimize time complexity of trees, and the number of nodes or the number of the terminal, or nonterminal nodes to minimize the space complexity of trees. We investigate the multi-stage optimization of trees relative to some cost functions, and also the possibility to describe the whole set of strictly optimal trees. Furthermore, we study the bi-criteria optimization cost vs. cost and cost vs. uncertainty for decision trees, and cost vs. cost and cost vs. completeness for inhibitory trees. The most interesting application of the developed technique is the creation of multi-pruning and restricted multi-pruning approaches which are useful for knowledge representation and prediction. The experimental results show that decision trees constructed by these approaches can often outperform the decision trees constructed by the CART algorithm. Another application includes the comparison of 12 greedy heuristics for single- and bi-criteria optimization (cost vs. cost) of trees. We also study the three approaches (decision tables with many-valued decisions, decision tables with most common decisions, and decision tables with generalized decisions) to handle inconsistency of decision tables. We also analyze the time complexity of decision and inhibitory trees over arbitrary sets of attributes represented by information systems in the frameworks of local (when we can use in trees only attributes from problem description) and global (when we can use in trees arbitrary attributes from the information system) approaches.

<p>Nuvarande implementationer av distribuerade hashtabeller (DHT) har en begränsad storlek för data som kan lagras, som t.ex. OpenDHTs datastorleks gräns på 1kByte. Är det möjligt att lagra filer större än 1kByte med DHT-tekniken? Finns det någon lösning för att skydda de data som lagrats utan att försämra prestandan? Vår lösning var att utveckla en klient- och servermjukvara. Mjukvaran använder sig av DHT tekniken för att dela upp filer och distribuera delarna över ett serverkluster. För att se om mjukvaran fungerade som tänkt, gjorde vi ett test utifrån de inledande frågorna. Testet visade att det är möjligt att lagra filer större än 1kByte, säkert med DHT tekniken utan att förlora för mycket prestanda.</p> / <p>Currently existing distributed hash table (DHT) implementations use a small storage size for data, such as OpenDHT’s storage size limitation of 1kByte. Is it possible to store larger files than 1kByte using the DHT technique? Is there a way to protect the data without losing to much performance? Our solution was to develop a client and server software. This software uses the DHT technique to split files and distribute their parts across a cluster of servers. To see if the software worked as intended we created a test based on our opening questions. This test shows that it indeed is possible to store large files securely using the DHT technique without losing any significant performance.</p>

An introduction to Chord Algorithm.

Source is converted into pdf format. An introduction to Chord Algorithm.