Design & Develop A Satellite Telemetry Display Application

The purpose of this thesis project is to design and implement an extensible and adaptable GUI for viewing satellite telemetry. The software available today to view satellite telemetry is very crude, hard to understand, and is not very reliable. Software is usually built from scratch for each new satellite system. This project will build a GUI that can be used to display all types of satellite telemetry. The GUI will be built in Java, have an easy to use interface, and be very customizable. The GUI will allow users to run the software on Windows and UNIX based operating systems. It will allow the user to set up the telemetry viewing pages as he or she fits. The goals for this project are to design and build the software application

Health and sexuality: An examination of the influences of sexuality on mental and physical health

This dissertation provides critical contributions in the field of sexual health across the life course by examining the role of various contextual factors on risky sexual behavior, physical health, and mental health. Two studies were conducted. First, the longitudinal impact of hooking up at sexual debut in adolescence on risky sexual behavior among low-income, urban emerging adults was assessed. This was evaluated alongside advantages (e.g., mother/child relationship quality and parental monitoring) and disadvantages (e.g., mental health symptoms and delinquent behavior). Second, the associations between family support, community connectedness, and patient perceived comfort of medical practitioner and physical and psychological health were assessed among gender and sexual minorities (GSMs). Findings from the first study illustrate that, while hooking up in adolescence predicts risky sexual behavior at the bivariate level, factors such as mother/child relationship quality and parental monitoring had a stronger influence in reducing risky sexual behaviors in multivariate analysis. Findings from the second study illustrate that family support, LGBT community connectedness, and patient perceived comfort of medical practitioner were all positively associated with mental health and the latter two factors were associated with physical health. Limitations, implications, and future directions in the field of sexual health are discussed

Parenting and Motocross: The Whoops and Downs

Parenting is a key contributor to socialization (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000). Many studies address the influences of parenting and contextual factors on child development (Belsky, 1984). Although long-term contextual factors have been shown to be associated with parenting behaviors (La Placa & Corlyon, 2016), little research exists on the degree to which short-term situational contexts may affect parenting. This study addressed two research questions 1) to identify both predictors and results of changes in parenting behaviors during the high investment sport of motocross bike racing and 2) to understand what effect the activity has on family dynamics. Survey data was collected from 33 parents at several child/adolescent competitions held at a Pronational Motocross track in Minnesota. A series of regression analyses were conducted followed by a path analysis. First, results indicated that levels of family cohesion, conflict, and achievement orientation affected parenting behavior before and after the race. Cohesion was positively related to increases in warmth expressed by the coaching parent, or the parent who spends the most time with the child trackside. Conflict was found to negatively predict expressed warmth by the coaching parent. Second, the results indicated that change in parenting behavior before and after a race was also associated with child behavior after the race

Machine learning with Lipschitz classifiers

Magdeburg, Univ., Fak. für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik, Diss., 2010André Stuhlsat

Predicting organic acid concentration from UV/vis spectrometry measurements – A comparison of machine learning techniques

The concentration of organic acids in anaerobic digesters is one of the most critical parameters for monitoring and advanced control of anaerobic digestion processes. Thus, a reliable online-measurement system is absolutely necessary. A novel approach to obtaining these measurements indirectly and online using UV/vis spectroscopic probes, in conjunction with powerful pattern recognition methods, is presented in this paper. An UV/vis spectroscopic probe from S::CAN is used in combination with a custom-built dilution system to monitor the absorption of fully fermented sludge at a spectrum from 200 to 750 nm. Advanced pattern recognition methods are then used to map the non-linear relationship between measured absorption spectra to laboratory measurements of organic acid concentrations. Linear discriminant analysis, generalized discriminant analysis (GerDA), support vector machines (SVM), relevance vector machines, random forest and neural networks are investigated for this purpose and their performance compared. To validate the approach, online measurements have been taken at a full-scale 1.3-MW industrial biogas plant. Results show that whereas some of the methods considered do not yield satisfactory results, accurate prediction of organic acid concentration ranges can be obtained with both GerDA and SVM-based classifiers, with classification rates in excess of 87% achieved on test data

Predicting organic acid concentration from UV/vis spectrometry measurements – A comparison of machine learning techniques

The concentration of organic acids in anaerobic digesters is one of the most critical parameters for monitoring and advanced control of anaerobic digestion processes. Thus, a reliable online-measurement system is absolutely necessary. A novel approach to obtaining these measurements indirectly and online using UV/vis spectroscopic probes, in conjunction with powerful pattern recognition methods, is presented in this paper. An UV/vis spectroscopic probe from S::CAN is used in combination with a custom-built dilution system to monitor the absorption of fully fermented sludge at a spectrum from 200 to 750 nm. Advanced pattern recognition methods are then used to map the non-linear relationship between measured absorption spectra to laboratory measurements of organic acid concentrations. Linear discriminant analysis, generalized discriminant analysis (GerDA), support vector machines (SVM), relevance vector machines, random forest and neural networks are investigated for this purpose and their performance compared. To validate the approach, online measurements have been taken at a full-scale 1.3-MW industrial biogas plant. Results show that whereas some of the methods considered do not yield satisfactory results, accurate prediction of organic acid concentration ranges can be obtained with both GerDA and SVM-based classifiers, with classification rates in excess of 87% achieved on test data

Defining Hooking-Up: Anything from Kissing to Sex?

This study used 727 participants\u27 survey responses to analyze definitions of hooking-up as well as look at differing definitions with regards to gender. Respondents were asked to report whether specific sexual behaviors represented hooking-up or not. Participants were asked to respond the question: If this were the only behavior that happened between two people, ________________ would be considered a hook-up. Frequencies of sexual behaviors being reported as hooking-up were analyzed. Gender difference between frequency of positive reports were found in the activities of fondling-clothes off, fondling-under clothes, deep kissing without tongue, and spending the night. For all of these activities, women reported the behavior to be a hook-up with higher frequency than men. (Editor’s Note: This presentation may contain adult themes, content, or imagery.