Tuesday Patent Class

Presentation slides of the patent and trademark information session presented at the Georgia Tech Library

Three essays on crop yield, crop insurance and climate change

The main subject of this dissertation includes the study of the impact of weather on crop yields and developing crop revenue insurance product. The dissertation limits its analysis to the state of Iowa because it\u27s a critical corn production area in the United States. Chapter 2 introduced a dynamic linear model to measure weather-adjusted trends in Iowa corn yields. The weather factors consist of the amount of rainfall, temperature and a measurement of soil moisture. Results show a significant improved yield growth in the 1990s, controlling for the impact of weather. Results also indicate that the critical temperature varies across the state of Iowa. The critical temperature is higher in the areas of the state with higher soil quality and is most suitable to grow corn. Chapter 3 develops a long-term corn revenue insurance product that provides crop growers with yield or revenue protection for as long as five years into the future. The premium rates are calculated at both county and farm level. Chapter 4 estimates the impact of projected climate change on Iowa corn yield. The climate projection indicates a significant increase in the daily maximum temperature in July, whereas a significant increment trend is not found in the amount of rainfall during June to August. Controlling for the uncertainty in yield projection, results indicate that projected climate change will cause a statewide reduction of corn yield by 10% at the end of this century. Controlling for uncertainty in climate projection and allowing for uncertainty in yield projections, results show that projected climate change reduces Iowa corn yield by 9%

Evaluating Fuel Consumption for Continuous Descent Approach Based on QAR Data

Fuel savings are a significant aspect for evaluating the current and future technologies of civil aviation. Continuous-Descent Approach (CDA), as a representative of new concepts, requires a method for evaluating its fuel benefits. However, because of unavailability of the practical operational data, it is difficult to validate whether the previous fuel consumption mechanisms are suitable. This paper presents a unique method for quantifying potential fuel benefits. This permits an easy evaluation for the new procedures without modelling before implementing field tests. The proposed method is detailed in this paper. It derives from the inherent mechanical characteristic of aircraft engine, and utilizes historical flight data, rather than modelling, to predict fuel flow rates by matching flight conditions from Quick Access Recorder (QAR) data. The result has been shown to predict fuel consumption for conventional descent with the deviation of ±0.73%. To validate such method, a case study for our designed CDA procedure is presented. Fuel consumptions in baseline scenarios are estimated to analyse the variable impacts on fuel consumption. The estimated fuel benefits are consistent with the results in the previous field tests. This analysis helps support Air Traffic Management decisions on eventual field test by reducing the validation time and cost.</p

Teaching Information Literacy Through Senior Projects

Presented at the 7th Annual Georgia Conference on Information Literacy, Savannah, GA, October 2010.Presentation on a library information literacy course given to students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Program