No description available.

The focus of my thesis is to create an architectural wrap through a development of layers in a system. This investigation starts with the design of a golf clubhouse on the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. / Master of Architecture

This study discusses how migrating a legacy system to an object-oriented language works, and what kind of effect it generates. There are various methods that an organization can use when they want to migrate their legacy systems. The three most common procedures we found are reengineering, wrapping and redevelopment. The study will focus on how migration can be done and what the impact might be. Our case study has involved studying a public authority which has mainly used redevelopment when implementing the migration, but they have also used both reengineering and wrapping on certain occasions. In summary, there are many problems that can occur when the system is to be moved away from COBOL to other languages and we will mainly focus on the decisions underlying its implementation, the different ways they can be carried through, and how the problems that can arise are handled during migration. The study showed that the aspects that had a major impact on the choice of method the time and funding. The authorities’ reason for the migration was to have better flexibility and availability which they have succeeded and is now, for example, available around the clock. The redevelopment that the authority has used in our case study does not show that migration makes maintenance costs decrease; rather increase because it added more features and the systems became more complex which resulted in higher expenses. The authorities’ migration project has had big delays and that is a trademark problem with redevelopment. One reason for this is because they are migrating the systems iteratively and migrates parts of systems when there is time and funding. This resulted in a big delay but they have also never failed a project in the aspect that they had to go back to COBOL or abort it. The study thereby shows that a project which uses iterative redevelopment will not work ideally if the work is time- or budget sensitive but the results will be beneficial and will increase mainly functionality and flexibility.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-121). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Queen's University, 1999. / Cover title. Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-282). Also available in electronic form via the World Wide Web.

The objective of this work is to investigate whether the game physics based modelling is accurate enough to be used in modelling the motion of the human body, in particular musculoskeletal motion. Hitherto, the implementation of game physics in the medical field focused only on anatomical representation for education and training purposes. Introducing gaming platforms and physics engines into orthopaedics applications will help to overcome several difficulties encountered in the modelling of articular joints. Implementing a physics engine (PhysX), which is mainly designed for video games, handles intensive computations in optimized ways at an interactive speed. In this study, the capabilities of the physics engine (PhysX) and gaming platform for modelling and simulating articular joints are evaluated. First, a preliminary validation is carried out for mechanical systems with analytical solutions, before constructing the musculoskeletal model to evaluate the consistency of gaming platforms. The developed musculoskeletal model deals with the human joint as an unconstrained system with 6 DOF which is not available with other joint modeller. The model articulation is driven by contact surfaces and the stiffness of surrounding tissues. A number of contributions, such as contact modelling and muscle wrapping, have been made in this research to overcome some existing challenges in joint modelling. Using muscle segmentation, the proposed technique effectively handles the problem of muscle wrapping, a major concern for many; thus the shortest path and line of action are no longer problematic. Collision behaviour has also shown a stable response for colliding as well as resting objects, provided that it is based on the principles of surface properties and the conservation of linear and angular momentums. The precision of collision detection and response are within an acceptable tolerance controllable by varying the mesh density. An image based analysis system is developed in this thesis, mainly in order to validate the proposed physics based modelling solution. This minimally invasive method is based on the analysis of marker positions located at bony positions with minimal skin movement. The image based system overcomes several challenges associated with the currently existing methods, such as inaccuracy, complication, impracticability and cost. The analysis part of this research has considered the elbow joint as a case study to investigate and validate the proposed physics based model. Beside the interactive 3D simulation, the obtained results are validated by comparing them with the image based system developed within the current research to investigate joint kinematics and laxity and also with published material, MJM and results from experiments performed at the Brunel Orthopaedic Research and Learning Centre. The proposed modelling shows the advantageous speed, reliability and flexibility of the proposed model. It is shown that the gaming platform and physics engine provide a viable solution to human musculoskeletal modelling. Finally, this thesis considers an extended implementation of the proposed platform for testing and assessing the design of custom-made implants, to enhance joint performance. The developed simulation software is expected to give indicative results as well as testing different types of prosthetic implant. Design parameterization and sensitivity analysis for geometrical features are discussed. Thus, an integrated environment is proposed to link the real-time simulation software with a manufacturing environment so as to assist the production of patient specific implants by rapid manufacturing.

LD2668 .T4 1949 W32 / Master of Science

No description available.

The study is limited to a survey of the gift-wrapping departments of selected stores in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton.

<p dir="ltr">In computer-aided drug discovery, methods that are approximate, but computationally inexpensive play an essential role during the initial phase of the discovery process. Although often inaccurate, they enable the screening of vast drug libraries to identify potential inhibitors with favorable activities, before large amounts of computational resources could be dedicated to studying these individual molecules. This thesis presents<b> </b>such an approach, based on the concept of hydrogen bond wrapping, to study protein-ligand interactions in the context of drug discovery. The ‘wrapping’ refers to the tendency of hydrophobic groups to surround a hydrogen bond in water, leading to its desolvation, thereby stabilizing it.</p><p dir="ltr">Herein, a molecular descriptor was employed, which quantifies the extent of hydrophobic wrapping around a protein’s backbone hydrogen bonds (BHBs) and could help speed up the discovery process by providing cues for the design or optimization of inhibitors. Additionally, these insights could help tailor not just the binding affinity of inhibitors, but also their specificity toward an intended target protein. The human transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2) was used as an illustrative target protein due to the pressing need for COVID-19 therapeutics, and since the current understanding of the binding mechanisms of known TMPRSS2 inhibitors is limited.</p><p dir="ltr">Molecular docking with a Generalized Born - surface area (GBSA) scoring function was first performed to virtually screen for TMPRSS2 inhibitors. The molecular descriptor was then used to analyze the change in wrapping groups of TMPRSS2 BHBs due to docked ligands, with the aim of identifying BHBs with a high propensity for desolvation. The BHBs involving residues Cys437, Gln438, Asp440, and Ser441 of TMPRSS2 were seen to have some of the largest average increases in wrapping. These general results were also compared to results from docking of the known TMPRSS2 inhibitors, camostat, and nafamostat.</p><p dir="ltr">The data generated from docking were then used to examine potential applications of the wrapping molecular descriptor using machine learning techniques: (i) for prediction of the solvent-accessible surface area term ΔG_sa of the GBSA score using regression and (ii) for classifying the solvent interactions of a TMPRSS2-inhibitor complex as favorable or unfavorable. The descriptor was seen to be only weakly related to ΔG_sa; the best-performing regression model had a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.76 between the predictions and the actual values. The ability of the descriptor to classify solvent interactions was more satisfactory, with a highest value for area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.75.</p><p dir="ltr">The descriptor was then used to analyze the effect of inhibitor binding on the dynamics of TMPRSS2 BHBs. For this, molecular dynamics simulation was carried out for the uncomplexed TMPRSS2, as well as its complex with known inhibitors and hit molecules from docking. The binding of these ligands was seen to improve the stability of TMPRSS2; certain BHBs which were unstable or not formed in the uncomplexed case, showed increased stability. These prominently included a couple of BHBs identified from docking as having gained a large increase in wrapping. The improved stability coincided with an increase in wrapping groups in several cases. The descriptor also successfully rationalized the desolvation of a few BHBs due to inhibitor binding.</p><p dir="ltr">This work demonstrates the potential application of the concept of hydrogen bond wrapping in understanding the mechanism of inhibitor binding and the resultant desolvation effects on a protein’s BHBs, without computationally expensive calculations. While the analysis methods require further improvement, the wrapping descriptor shows promising results and could be developed into a simple, yet powerful tool for drug discovery.</p>