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Statistical analysis of concurrently active human motor units | null |
Management of a high mix production system with interdependent demands: global and decomposed optimization approaches for inventory control | In this work the management of a production system with a high mixture of products, interdependent demands and optional components is analyzed. An approach based on reorder point policy is proposed for both raw parts and finished goods inventory control. In the latter case, the solution of an optimization problem deter... |
Human perception and control of vehicle roll tilt in hyper-gravity | Pilots and astronauts experience a range of altered gravity environments in which they must maintain accurate perception and control of vehicle orientation for tasks such as landing and docking. To study sensorimotor function in altered gravity, a hyper-gravity test-bed was produced using a centrifuge. Previous experim... |
Anomalous transport in complex networks | The emergence of scaling in transport through interconnected systems is a consequence of the topological structure of the network and the physical mechanisms underlying the transport dynamics. We study transport by advection and diffusion in scale-free and Erdős-Rényi networks. Using stochastic particle simulations, we... |
Dynamic patterning of maternal messengerRibonucleic acids in the Early Caenorhabditis elegans embryo | Asymmetric segregation of maternally-encoded proteins is essential to cell fate determination during early cell divisions of the Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) embryo, but little is known about the patterning of maternal transcripts inside somatic lineages. In the first Chapter of this thesis, by detecting individ... |
Retooling Detroit's waterfront | With the recent strain of environmental disasters associated with poor environmental planning and the crash of the economic system that had propped up this type of development, it is clear that architecture's relationship to nature needs to be rethought. The thesis uses the waterfront of Detroit as a test site for an i... |
Participation as an end versus a means : understanding a recurring dilemma in urban upgrading | Since the 1920s, participatory approaches to urban upgrading in developing nations have demonstrated that involving the urban poor in the physical, social, and economic development of their settlements could improve their living conditions. These housing policies and projects have since been central to urban poverty re... |
Creating music by listening | Machines have the power and potential to make expressive music on their own. This thesis aims to computationally model the process of creating music using experience from listening to examples. Our unbiased signal-based solution models the life cycle of listening, composing, and performing, turning the machine into an ... |
Dynamics of dopamine signaling and network activity in the striatum during learning and motivated pursuit of goals | Learning to direct behaviors towards goals is a central function of all vertebrate nervous systems. Initial learning often involves an exploratory phase, in which actions are flexible and highly variable. With repeated successful experience, behaviors may be guided by cues in the environment that reliably predict the d... |
Training hierarchical networks for function approximation | In this work we investigate function approximation using Hierarchical Networks. We start of by investigating the theory proposed by Poggio et al [2] that Deep Learning Convolutional Neural Networks (DCN) can be equivalent to hierarchical kernel machines with the Radial Basis Functions (RBF).We investigate the difficult... |
Scale-up of a high technology manufacturing startup : failure tracking, analysis, and resolution through a multi-method approach | Product reliability, quality, and performance are essential for all companies, especially high technology manufacturing startups looking to scale-up successfully. Company image and reputation can be heavily impacted by product failures. The cost of failures in-house and at the customer will only increase as a company s... |
Custom built atomic force microscope for nitrogen-vacancy diamond magnetometry | The nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) center in diamonds have the potential to be an ultra-sensitive magnetic field sensor that is capable of detecting single spins. Implementing this sensor for general and nontransparent samples is not trivial. For N-V centers to be a useful probe, a way of positioning the NV center with nanomet... |
Tissue-specific interactions between oncogenic K-ras and the p19A̳r̳f̳_p53 pathway determine susceptibility to transformation | Tumor development is a multi-step process driven by the collective action of gain-of-function mutations in oncogenes and loss-of-function alterations in tumor suppressor genes. The particular spectrum of mutations in a given cancer is rarely the result of random chance but instead derives from the intimate connections ... |
A systematic approach for architecture-level energy estimation of accelerator designs | With Moore's law slowing down and Dennard scaling over, energy-ecient domain-specific accelerators have become a promising way for hardware designers to continue bringing energy eciency improvements to data and computation-intensive applications. To enable the fast exploration of the accelerator design space, architect... |
A metallurgical study of West African iron monies from Cameroon and Liberia | The aim of this thesis is to make a contribution to the study of West African iron monies through examination and analysis of a group of these objects in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. The selection of objects from the collection includes five distinct types, re... |
Classes of defense for computer systems | Computer security incidents often involve attackers acquiring a complex sequence of escalating capabilities and executing those capabilities across a range of different intermediary actors in order to achieve their ultimate malicious goals. However, popular media accounts of these incidents, as well as the ensuing liti... |
Advanced aircraft seat design : the webbing concept | Air travel is so common in this day and age that any significant improvement in seat comfort on board a commercial passenger jet is likely to affect almost everybody. A proposed design concept in this project is the use of webbing as the substitute for current foam cushioning in the seat back. The result is a webbing-f... |
Hydraulically-actuated microscale traveling energy recovery | As the demand for portable electrical power grows, alternatives to chemical stored energy may enable users with additional system capabilities. This thesis presents a miniature hydroelectric turbine system for use in wearable energy harvesting applications. A radial outflow turbine, which trades performance for manufac... |
Assessing the costs of solar power plants for the Island of Roatàn | This is an analysis assessing the installation costs of different solar power plant technologies and the current commercial availability for installation on the Island or Roatàn. Commercial large-scale power plants have been in use for decades and their technical feasibility has been documented as well as their high in... |
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act : how will it affect the real estate securitization market | This thesis investigates one of the United States' most sweeping regulatory responses since the New Deal legislation passed in the 1930's, the Dodd Frank Act. While the Dodd Frank Act will affect numerous financial markets, this thesis will focus on the implications of this regulation on the real estate securitization ... |
Large eddy simulations of premixed turbulent flame dynamics : combustion modeling, validation and analysis | High efficiency, low emissions and stable operation over a wide range of conditions are some of the key requirements of modem-day combustors. To achieve these objectives, lean premixed flames are generally preferred as they achieve efficient and clean combustion. A drawback of lean premixed combustion, however, is that... |
Evaluation of spatial-spectral filtering in non-paraxial volume holographic imaging systems | In this thesis, the properties of transmission-mode volume phase holograms as spatial-spectral filters in optical systems for microscopic medical imaging are evaluated. In experiment, the relationship between the angle of incidence and diffraction efficiency are invesitgated for wavelength-detuned multiplex holograms t... |
Reconfigurable Autonomous Surface Vehicles : perception and trajectory optimization algorithms | Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) are a highly active area of robotics with many ongoing projects in search and rescue, environmental surveying, monitoring, and beyond. There have been significant studies on ASVs in riverine, coastal, and sea environments, yet only limited research on urban waterways, one of the most b... |
User-centered automation process in synthetic biology research | By designing and re-designing biological system, synthetic biology is advancing a wide range of domains from biotherapeutics for fatal cancers to biofuels and artificial meat to improve the global environment and food security. As the scale and complexity of synthetic biology endeavors are increasing, designing automat... |
Enabling a consumer headset in product development | Manufacturing-intensive companies like Ford Motor Company have come to the realization that they need to have a strong consumer focus to survive in today's competitive world. Ford has just recently announced steps to further align its program team centers more strongly with their consumers, yet the lower levels of the ... |
Beyond the lean startup : applying the lean startup methodology in established firms | The lean startup methodology has been successfully applied to product development at startup companies, however many of its principles may also be of benefit to established firms. The purpose of this research was to explore the benefits of the lean startup methodology in established organizations. An electronic survey ... |
Career path analysis of professionals selected by MIT undergraduates | For current MIT undergrads, life after graduation can seem daunting. With uncertainty about job duration, graduate school, and career paths in general, many undergraduates enter the real world unsure of what the future holds, or if what they have decided to do post-graduation is the "best" option. As such, MIT undergra... |
3D virus scaffolds for energy storage and microdevice applications | With constantly increasing demand for lightweight power sources, electrode architectures that eliminate the need for conductive and organic additives will increase mass specific energy and power densities. The increased demand for lightweight power is coupled with increasing device miniaturization. As the scale of devi... |
Reprogramming cellular fate using defined factors | Embryonic stem (ES) cells have a vast therapeutic potential given their pluripotency, or the ability to differentiate into tissues from all three germ layers. One of the ultimate goals of regenerative medicine is to isolate pluripotent stem cells from patients. Nuclear reprogramming offers the possibility of creating p... |
Bombs unbuilt : power, ideas and institutions in international politics | Nuclear weapons are the most powerful weapons in human history, but contrary to virtually every prediction by scholars, relatively few states have acquired them. Why are there so few nuclear weapons states? What factors lead governments to reject and even renounce the ultimate weapon? What do the disconfirmed predictio... |
Littoral wetlands and lake inflow dynamics | Wetlands are increasingly recognized as important water treatment systems, which efficiently remove nutrients, suspended sediments, metals and anthropogenic chemicals through sediment settling and various chemical and biological processes. This thesis tackles three interconnected aspects of wetland physics. The first i... |
Essays on debt markets | This thesis consists of three chapters on debt markets. In chapter 1, I consider the interaction between domestic banking and growth in a DSGE model of sovereign default in order to address (i) the joint existence of sovereign debt and international reserves, and (ii) the occurrence of twin (domestic banking and sovere... |
A quantitative analysis and assessment of the performance of image quality metrics | Image quality assessment addresses the distortion levels and the perceptual quality of a restored or corrupted image. A plethora of metrics has been developed to that end. The usual mean of success of an image quality metric is their ability to agree with the opinions of human subjects, often represented by the mean op... |
New polymeric biomaterial interfaces for biosensor applications | To fabricate living cell-based immunological sensors, we have examined two PEO-based biomaterials that can be patterned to generate cellular array templates: poly(allylamine)-g- poly(ethylene glycol) graft-copolymer and poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate hydrogel. Poly(allylamine)-g-poly(ethylene glycol) polycation g... |
Tailoring light with photonic crystal slabs : from directional emission to topological half charges | Photonic crystal slabs are a versatile and important platform for molding the flow of light. In this thesis, we consider ways to control the emission of light from photonic crystal slab structures, specifically focusing on directional, asymmetric emission, and on emitting light with interesting topological features. Fi... |
Examination of corporate mental models for derivative product creation and their impact on customers | Companies in highly competitive industries often develop incremental products to meet diverse customer needs or to gain share from competitors. However, in order to help customers to choose between derivatives, companies also present more detailed product specifications or features to their customers, resulting in cust... |
Comparison of data-driven analysis methods for identification of functional connectivity in fMRI | Data-driven analysis methods, such as independent component analysis (ICA) and clustering, have found a fruitful application in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data for identifying functionally connected brain networks. Unlike the traditional regression-based hypothesis-driven analysis meth... |
Study of density fluctuations and particle transport at the edge of I-mode plasmas | The wide range of plasma parameters available on Alcator C-Mod has led to the accessibility of many regimes of operation. Since its commissioning, C-Mod has accessed the Linear ohmic confinement, Saturated ohmic confinement, L-Mode and ELM-free, ELMy and Enhanced D[alpha] H-Mode regimes. Recently, another novel regime,... |
Hochschild homology / cohomology of preprojective algebras of ADET quivers | Preprojective algebras [Pi]q of quivers Q were introduced by Gelfand and Ponomarev in 1979 in order to provide a model for quiver representations (in the special case of finite Dynkin quivers). They showed that in the Dynkin case, the preprojective algebra decomposes as the direct sum of all indecomposable representati... |
Adaptive error estimation in linearized ocean general circulation models | Data assimilation methods, such as the Kalman filter, are routinely used in oceanography. The statistics of the model and measurement errors need to be specified a priori. In this study we address the problem of estimating model and measurement error statistics from observations. We start by testing the Myers and Taple... |
Genetic noise in the cyanobacterial circadian oscillator | Clocks are generally considered as quintessential examples of accurate and precise devices. Biological clocks however, are continually subjected to intracellular and extracellular fluctuations that might reduce the fidelity of this periodic timer. One fundamental limitation that might set an upper bound on the fidelity... |
Stress-engineering of nanopatterned membranes to produce three-dimensional structures | Microdevice fabrication is done on the surface of polished flat semiconductor substrates with a series of material depositions, etches and lithography steps. These processes are inherently planar and well suited for the fabrication of billions of micrometer-thick transistors over 300 mm diameter substrates, but impract... |
Canonical correlation of shipping forward curves | The behavior and interrelations between the main shipping forward curves are analyzed using multivariate statistics after removing the volatility distortions dictated by the Samuelson hypothesis. Principal Components Analysis and Canonical Correlation analysis were used to demonstrate how the task of explaining the var... |
Disease marketing and patient coping : a research study | BACKGROUND: There is a high prevalence of disease marketing actions in the United States that are targeted towards patients with chronic illness. However, no study has assessed the direct effects of these marketing actions on patient coping attitudes and behaviors. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to investigate whether the... |
Cooperative autonomous tracking and prosecution of targets using range-only sensors | Autonomous platforms and systems are becoming ever more prevalent. They have become smaller, cheaper, have longer duration times, and now more than ever, more capable of processing large amounts of information. Despite these significant technological advances, there is still a level of distrust for the public autonomou... |
Predictive modeling of combustion processes | Recently, there has been an increasing interest in improving the efficiency and lowering the emissions from operating combustors, e.g. internal combustion (IC) engines and gas turbines. Different fuels, additives etc. are used in these combustors to try to find the optimal operating conditions and fuel combination whic... |
Design by grammar : algorithmic design in an architectural context | An experimental study was performed to explore the practical applicability of the rule based design method of shape grammars. The shape grammar method is used for the analysis and synthesis of the hayat house type in a particular context. In the analysis part, the shape grammar method is used to extract basic compositi... |
Essays in microeconomic theory | Three essays are presented which explore how strategic decision-making on a micro level translates into macro effects. Careful attention is paid to how asymmetric information and free-riding exert strong influences on t.he behavior of individuals. In the first chapter, a simple model of open-source software development... |
Metropolitan governance and local land use planning in Boston, Denver, and Portland | Metropolitan areas across the U.S. are characterized by sprawling development which uses larger amounts of open space than necessary, leads to the inefficient use of energy and water, increases social inequality, and causes a variety of other negative externalities. One way to prevent this type of development is to pro... |
Evaluating Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Developments through existing models of green urbanism | The U.S. Green Building Council, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council are currently developing a rating system aimed at evaluating the environmental sustainability of new neighborhood developments. The system, known as LEEDND (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Nei... |
Supply chain design and site selection for the expansion of international manufacturing capacity | The research conducted for this thesis was performed at "Company X", a U.S.-based engineered goods manufacturer. This project focused on Company X's overall manufacturing strategy, with an emphasis on how global expansion of manufacturing can allow the company to achieve greater international sales growth. Company X's ... |
Functional role of TM poroelasticity in cochlear mechanics | The tectorial membrane (TM) is an extracellular matrix that overlies the mechanically sensitive hair bundles of sensory receptor cells in the inner ear. Based on this strategic position, it has long been accepted that the TM plays a critical role in the stimulation of sensory hair cells. Early measurements demonstrated... |
Towards high performing hospital enterprise architectures : elevating hospitals to lean enterprise thinking | This research is motivated by the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine's joint call for research in healthcare, promoting the application of principles, tools, and research from engineering disciplines, and complex systems in particular. In 2005, the US healthcare expenditure represented 16% of... |
Boycott Toolkit : collaborative research for collective economic action | Many modern social movements advocate boycotts as a mechanism to pursue social change. However, these campaigns are often broad in scope and limited to committed activists as potential adherents. This thesis describes a web-based platform to organize highly targeted boycotts, perform collaborative research, and dissemi... |
Hedge funds and private equity versus real assets | The current world economy confronts investors with many challenges, especially investors managing institutional portfolios. Global GDP growth has been slowed, and the performance of traditional assets - equities and bonds - alone are often not able to satisfy the various risk and return objectives that institutional in... |
Pyrolytic graphite production : automation of material placement | This research examines the process and challenges associated with the addition of an autonomous transfer robot to a manufacturing line for AvCarb Material Solutions for use in production of pyrolytic graphite. Development of the system included the design and fabrication of an end-effector, selection of a SCA RA roboti... |
self-tuning one-hundred watt wireless power transfer system | This thesis presents a new method of controlling wireless power transfer suitable for highly resonant magnetically coupled systems. An application of this system is unattended autonomous operation such as recharging of autonomous underwater vehicles or underwater sensor networks. Special attention is given to maximizin... |
Power processing and active protection for photovoltaic energy extraction | Solar photovoltaic power generation is a promising clean and renewable energy technology that can draw upon the planet's most abundant power source - the sun. However, relatively high levelized cost of energy (LCOE), the ratio of the total cost of ownership to the total energy extracted over the lifetime of the generat... |
Fast scanning two-photon microscope | Fast scanning two-photon microscopy coupled with the use light activated ion channels provides the basis for fast imaging and stimulation in the characterization of in vivo neural networks. A two-photon microscope capable of fast scanning using acousto-optic deflectors was designed and implemented. The software control... |
Molecular systems analysis of a cis-encoded epigenetic switch | An ability to control the degree of heterogeneity in cellular phenotypes may be important for cell populations to survive uncertain and ever-changing environments or make cell-fate decisions in response to external stimuli. Cells may control the degree of gene expression heterogeneity and ultimately levels of phenotypi... |
Visualizing adversaries : transparent pooling approaches for decision support in cybersecurity | Using coevolutionary algorithms to find solutions to problems is a powerful search technique but once solutions are identified it can be difficult for a decision maker to select a solution to deploy. ESTABLO runs multiple competitive coevolutionary algorithm variants independently, in parallel, and then combines their ... |
Classroom web application facilitating peer feedback & discussion | Peer-to-peer interactions, either through discussion forums or the peer review process, provide students with essential articulation skills as they reflect and respond to the ideas of others. Unfortunately, many students lack confidence in the value of their thoughts and feedback, or students experience difficulty main... |
Numerical implementations of holographic duality via the fluid/gravity correspondence | The fluid/gravity correspondence describes an map from relativistic fluid dynamics to general relativity in an anti de Sitter (AdS) background in one more dimension. This is a specific example of a more general principle known as holographic duality, in which a quantum field theory (QFT) is dual to a gravitational theo... |
Romantic regressions : an analysis of behavior in online dating systems | Online personal advertisements have shed their stigma as matchmakers for the awkward to claim a prominent role in the social lives of millions of people. Web sites for online dating allow users to post lengthy personal ads, including text and photos; search the database of users for potential romantic partners; and con... |
Distributed mode estimation through constraint decomposition | Large-scale autonomous systems such as modern ships or spacecrafts require reliable monitoring capabilities. One of the main challenges in large-scale system monitoring is the difficulty of reliably and efficiently troubleshooting component failure and deviant behavior. Diagnosing large-scale systems is difficult becau... |
Standardized system for ballistic missile guidance data analysis | This thesis had the goals of standardizing and automating guidance data analysis at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. (Draper). This was accomplished via, the first ever machine understandable knowledge of Portable Engineering Testing Stations (PETS) variables located in a comprehensive MySQL database. Automati... |
Optimizing the distribution network of perishable products to Small Format Stores | FoodCo is a leading foods company that has reputed brands and global operations with revenues in excess of USD 5Bn. Although FoodCo's sales to Small Format Stores (SFS) customers are a small part of the overall sales, it is a fast growing segment where FoodCo sees future. However, distribution to the SFS channel is a c... |
Calculation of the axial charge of a heavy nucleon in Lattice QCD | In this thesis, we aim to calculate the non-renormalized axial charge gA of a heavy nucleon made out of quarks at the physical mass of the strange quark. We present the framework of Lattice QCD which makes the calculation of such observables attainable from first principles. The data used for the estimation of gA were ... |
Assessing land conservation strategies : the case of the Florida Everglades | South Florida's Everglades is home to 67 threatened and endangered species. By 2100 it is estimated that sea level rise will inundate over 20% of existing conservation lands. Species will be dislocated and migrate to new land. Simultaneously, more than 500,000 people are moving to the region annually. The new populatio... |
Inhibitory synapses are repeatedly assembled and removed at persistent sites in vivo | Structural plasticity, the rewiring of synaptic connections, occurs not only during development, but is prevalent in the adult brain and likely represents the physical correlate of learning and memory. Removal or addition of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs onto a neuron can affect their relative influence on ... |
Crashworthiness analysis of ultralight metal structures | In the design of light weight crashworthy metal structures, thin-walled prismatic components have been widely used in aircraft, high speed trains, fast ships, and automobiles. Two new types of such components are proposed, both of which consist of a thin-walled member and an ultralight metal core such as an aluminum ho... |
Learning from the unique public realm of the long distance train | The Long Distance American Train is a unique, meaningful, and somewhat mysterious site. These ephemeral, mobile societies exhibit remarkable qualities, including intensive interactions with strangers, conviviality amongst diverse groups, imagination and reflection, and immersion in the American landscape. I conducted p... |
Policies to manage electronics waste : an analysis of US and EU regulatory initiatives | Policies to address the environmental challenges associated with the disposal of electronics waste are being developed in the US and the EU. This paper offers a standard critique of those policies and also analyzes them in terms of the likelihood they will induce innovation in response to their requirements. The US pro... |
An imperative extension to alloy and a compiler for its execution | This thesis presents an extension of the Alloy specification language with the standard imperative programming constructs, allowing for the natural specification of dynamic systems. Using this extension, programmers can express stateful behavior directly, mixing declarative and imperative styles as desired. A relationa... |
The role of large-scale government-supported research institutions in development : lessons from Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) for developing countries | This thesis seeks to examine the extent of the role that the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) played in Taiwan's high-technological development and whether developing countries of today can promote such development by creating similar institutional arrangements. Literature on innovation systems was revie... |
Applications of three-manifold Floer Homology | In this thesis we give an exposition of some of the topological preliminaries necessary to understand 3-manifold Floer Homology constructed by Peter Kronheimer and Tomasz Mrowka in [16], along with some properties of this theory, calculations for specific manifolds, and applications to 3-manifold topology. |
Decentralized control of multi-robot systems using partially observable Markov Decision Processes and belief space macro-actions | Planning, control, perception, and learning for multi-robot systems present signicant challenges. Transition dynamics of the robots may be stochastic, making it difficult to select the best action each robot should take at a given time. The observation model, a function of the robots' sensors, may be noisy or partial, ... |
Tissue oxymetry using magnetic resonance spectroscopy | A noninvasive method for in vivo measurement of tissue oxygen concentration has been developed. Several techniques currently used suffer limitations that prevent their practical clinical use. Our method is to use the paramagnetism of molecular oxygen to build a method for noninvasive tissue oxymetry. By using paramagne... |
Execution cost optimization for hierarchical planning in the now | For robots to effectively interact with the real world, they will need to perform complex tasks over long time horizons. This is a daunting challenge, but human ability to routinely solve these problems leads us to believe that there is underlying structure we can leverage to find solutions. Recent advances using hiera... |
The challenge for liquidity in small stock exchanges and trading portals : the case of the Belgian Stock Exchange | The world-wide consolidation in the electronic trading industry has provided evidence that small exchanges and trading portals need to deliver more than sophisticated technology, streaming quotes and market data. In order to deliver value and survive, they need to provide liquidity. Noteworthy among the most recent ind... |
Lean-burn characteristics of a gasoline engine enriched with hydrogen from a plasmatron fuel reformer | If a small amount of hydrogen is added to a gasoline fueled spark ignition engine the lean limit of the engine can be extended. Lean running engines are inherently more efficient, and have the potential for significantly lower NOx emissions. Hydrogen addition reduces the combustion variability. In this engine concept s... |
Transport of proteins, biopharmaceuticals and small pharmaceutical compounds into normal and injured cartilage by Sangwon Byun. | Traumatic joint injury can induce acute damage to cartilage and surrounding joint tissues accompanied by an inflammatory response, which can significantly increase the risk of developing Qsteoarthritis. The mechanism by which joint injury results in disease development is not fully understood. However, chondrocyte meta... |
The self-aware city | This thesis explores the idea of real-time urban space management. While increasing amounts of real-time information about the city, specifically the location of people and resources, appear, it becomes necessary to explore how different strategies of distributing real-time location information can be used as urban des... |
High-resolution temporal records of magmatism, sedimentation, and faulting at evolving plate boundaries | This dissertation uses high-precision U-Pb zircon geochronology to document the spatial and temporal distribution of magmatism, deformation, and sedimentation during Paleogene ridge-trench interaction in western Washington. Chapter 1 creates a regional stratigraphy for nonmarine sedimentary and volcanic rocks throughou... |
Optimization and visualization of strategies for platforms, complements, and services | This thesis probes the causal elements of product platform strategies and the effects of platform strategy on a firm. Platform strategies may be driven by internal or external forces, and the lifecycle of a firm and of a platform strategy evolve over time in response to both the needs of the firm and the changes in the... |
Spatial laws of urban micro-agglomerations. | Intercity studies have shown that a city's characteristics -ranging from infrastructure to crime-scale as a power of its population. These studies, however, have not been extended to the intra-city scale, leaving open the question of how urban characteristics are distributed within a city. Here we study the spatial org... |
Generating single-domain antibodies against fibronectin splice variants | Here, I describe the process of generating single-domain antibodies which bind to splice variants of fibronectin containing EIIIA or EIIIB. Alpacas were immunized with either purified antigen cocktails, or from the ECM of tumor samples, and antibody libraries were generated. Using these libraries to pan against, I sele... |
Statistical models in medical image analysis | Computational tools for medical image analysis help clinicians diagnose, treat, monitor changes, and plan and execute procedures more safely and effectively. Two fundamental problems in analyzing medical imagery are registration, which brings two or more datasets into correspondence, and segmentation, which localizes t... |
Design of interactive maps for ocean dynamics data | Comprehensive spatiotemporal modeling and forecasting systems for ocean dynamics necessitate robust and efficient data delivery and visualization techniques. The multi-disciplinary simulation, estimation, and assimilation systems group at MIT (MSEAS) focuses on capturing and predicting diverse ocean dynamics, including... |
Molecular modeling of hydrate-clathrates via ab initio, cell potential, and dynamic methods | High level ab initio quantum mechanical calculations were used to determine the intermolecular potential energy surface between argon and water, corrected for many- body interactions, to predict monovariant and invariant phase equilibria for the argon hydrate and mixed methane-argon hydrate systems. A consistent set of... |
Diagrams of affine permutations and their labellings | We study affine permutation diagrams and their labellings with positive integers. Balanced labellings of a Rothe diagram of a finite permutation were defined by Fomin- Greene-Reiner-Shimozono, and we extend this notion to affine permutations. The balanced labellings give a natural encoding of the reduced decompositions... |
Automated trading informed by event driven data | Models of stock price prediction have traditionally used technical indicators alone to generate trading signals. In this paper, we build trading strategies by applying machine-learning techniques to both technical analysis indicators and market sentiment data. The resulting prediction models can be employed as an artif... |
Interactions of cadmium, zinc, and phosphorus in marine Synechococcus : field uptake, physiological and proteomic studies | A combination of uptake field studies on natural phytoplankton assemblages and laboratory proteomic and physiological experiments on cyanobacterial isolates were conducted investigating the interactions of cadmium (Cd), zinc (Zn), and phosphorus (P) in marine Synechococcus. Enriched stable isotope field uptake studies ... |
Framework for feminist technology intervention | This thesis describes a feminist framework for technological interventions. I first define the problem by contrasting studies from psychology with research from other social sciences to determine that the primary reason for the gender imbalance in technological spaces is based in hostile work environments and not in th... |
Evaluation of the economic feasibility of core-shell baroplastic polymers and a comparison to traditional thermoplastic elastomers | Baroplastic materials are pressure miscible systems that can be molded by the application of pressure at low/room temperature. They have the potential to replace traditional thermoplastic elastomers in many applications. To quantitatively determine the competitiveness of baroplastic materials in current markets, a deta... |
Architecture sandwiched : tuning anisotropy through variable thickness and hetereogeneous laminar assemblies | Much of architecture's earliest material palettes and construction methods are often referred to today as legacy materials - those primarily consisting of various types of stone and masonry construction. While these materials are often conceptually thought of as being solid, monolithic, and even homogeneous, in actuali... |
PROTOTOUCH a system for prototyping ubiquitous computing environments mediated by touch | Computers as we know them are fading into the background. However, interaction modalities developed for "foreground" computer systems are beginning to seep into the day-to-day interactions that people have with each other and the objects around them. The Prototouch system allows user interface designers to quickly prot... |
Seismic and magnetic constraints on the strucutre of upper oceanic crust and fast and slow spreading ridges | The upper ocean crust contains a comprehensive record of the shallow geological processes active along the world's mid-ocean ridge system. This thesis examines the magnetic and seismic structure of the upper crust at two contrasting ridges-the fast spreading East Pacific Rise (EPR) and the slow spreading Mid-Atlantic R... |
A consumer guide to the benefits and obstacles of transitioning to the hydrogen fuel cell | Hydrogen Fuel Cells are a much talked about technology often represented as promising virtually unlimited amounts of non-polluting power by chemically reacting hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, with oxygen without combustion. Our analysis indicates that fuel cells are indeed a promising technology st... |
The politics of proximity : local redistribution in developed democracies | Over the last few decades, countries across the European Economic Area (EEA) have granted local governments considerable discretion over social policy. This project examines the consequences of these reforms. Drawing on unique data from over 28,000 European local governments, it demonstrates that decentralization has n... |
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