2011 UMKC Theses - Freely Available Online
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Item Satellite-based assessment of invasive vegetation in Lake Chad Basin, West Africa(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012-01-31) Aligeti, Naresh, 1984-; Adegoke, Jimmy O.Invasive plants are a huge threat not only to the biological integrity of the world's natural ecosystems but also the economies that are supported by those ecosystems. Today, governments worldwide are spending millions of dollars to address this issue. Invasive species pose great danger to the natural habitat, sometimes causing irreversible change. Typha australis - an aquatic weed locally known as ―Kachalla‖ in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) is an example of an invasive species of major concern. This study presents a method to identify and characterize this weed on a large scale using medium resolution LANDSAT, MODIS satellite imagery and high resolution QUICKBIRD satellite imagery. The satellite imagery was augmented with ground truth data obtained during field work in the LCB by a UMKC team of scientists and students in 2009. Land Use Land Change (LULC) classification was carried out using Landsat and MODIS Imagery. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was generated for every year from 2000 to 2010 on MOD13GQ and for every month in 2009. MOD13GQ is a product of MODIS. Simultaneously, a Quickbird satellite image was used to more accurately track the weed using 500 meter buffered GPS points collected during field work in the LCB. The resultant classification was then overlaid on Landsat and MODIS Imagery to randomly pick signature points of the weed and to train the software for classification. Supervised classification was done on both of the images, accuracy assessment was conducted and statistics were generated respectively. The end result is a classified medium resolution LULC map of the LCB and a high resolution map of a subset area of the LCB with a well defined LULC category that we could identify, with reasonable certainty, as an invasive species category.Item Monitoring water balance of a rain garden by installation of flow monitoring devices on a residential property(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012-01-30) Nall, Jason F.; O'Bannon, DeborahRain gardens are infiltration best management practices that are installed in existing and new construction for the purposes of water quality in receiving waters and stormwater volume reduction. Nationally, rain gardens are transitioning from landscaping features with beneficial environmental effects to facultative engineered systems for meeting water quality standards or providing peak flow attenuation in combined sewersheds. The objectives of this study were to site, design, install, and monitor the hydraulic characteristics of a typical rain garden installation on a private residential property. Infiltration tests by infiltrometer and full-inundation methods were conducted yielding results that indicate infiltration rates in current rain garden design guidance may be too conservative. Guidance for the design and installation of rain gardens are provided that may improve their large-scale implementation as part of a watershed management plan.Item Distributed querying of clinical documents modeled as HL7 version 3 standard(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012-01-30) Komaraswami, Tivakar; Rao, Praveen R.We present a software tool called Collaborative Data Network (CDN) for distributed querying of clinical documents modeled using HL7 v3 standard (e.g., Clinical Document Architecture). HL7 Version 3 standard was developed to enable semantic interoperability in healthcare data interchange. XML is used to encode the data. In this thesis, we focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of three key components in CDN. The first component supports distributed XQuery processing in a peer-to-peer network once the publishers of relevant documents are known. The second component enables secure exchange of messages and data during query processing by applying wellknown cryptographic techniques. This is necessary for HIPAA compliance. Third component provides a user interface for posing clinical queries by clinicians and researchers. A comprehensive performance evaluation of CDN has been conducted on a local cluster using real-world clinical discharge summaries that were modeled using HL7 CDA standard.Item Delay based approach to support low priority users in preemptive wireless networks(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012-01-27) Chandra, Aashish; Beard, CoryAt times of serious disasters (natural or man-made), wireless networks are quickly congested due to the sheer volume and stress on network resources, and, preferential treatment is necessary for National Security/Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) users to combat the disaster by responding effectively and potentially save many lives. Under such circumstances, with scarce resources, the new request for sessions are denied and worse even, active sessions are dropped for general public whilst they have come to rely on these resources and depend on them especially during distressed times. Prior research has been conducted to examine upper limit (UL) and preemptive approaches to support emergency users but the traditional approach of blocking the capacity for emergency users is, from one perspective, restrictive to the general public. In this thesis, we propose the delay-based soft preemptive approach to support the low priority users and provide an alternative to several preemptive policies by further examining them. We provide a queuing algorithm in the network that warns the low priority users with an active session of scarce resources thereby giving them an opportunity to complete their session prior to reducing the quality of service (QoS) of their session and moving their bandwidth to emergency users, if blocked. The emergency users in turn wait for the resources to become available and are on hold until resources become available. By creating a queuing modeling system for this algorithm, we present simulation model in C with results of our delay-based soft preemptive approach and examine other preemptive approaches to provide a comparative analysis. The results demonstrate that increasing the warning time also increases the number of sessions blocked for emergency users as well as general public due to further constraining the resources, however, this reduces the inconvenience of preemption caused to the low priority users.Item Rapping gender and violence? Addressing violence and gender with a content analysis of rap lyrics(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012-01-26) Campbell, Misty Kay; Like, Toya Z.The purpose of this study is to examine violence in contemporary rap music and to address if the violence is gender specific. Utilizing the Billboard Top Ten Rap Singles from 1997-2007 this study analyzed 100 songs using content analysis. Findings indicate that male violence against other males is the most common theme throughout the sample. In addition, the use of misogynistic terms was present throughout the sample as well.