The fusion reaction ²⁰⁸Pb (⁵⁰Ti, xn) ²⁵⁸⁻x Rf (x = 1-3) was studied to determine PCN (probability that the mononucleus system evolves to form a compound nucleus inside the fission saddle point) and to establish the value of Wsur (survival probability) for the given reaction experimentally. The fission excitation function...
This thesis explores open questions regarding molecular forms and interactions of natural and synthetic aromatic compounds present in soils and sediments.
Plant biomass-derived black carbon (biochar) generated through incomplete natural and anthropogenic combustion processes is a major source of aromaticity in terrestrial ecosystems. Chapter one represents a detailed account of...
There is an urgent need to lower the concentration of sulfur in diesel fuels. Growing concern over environmental effects caused by burning sulfur-containing diesel has led the world to higher standards in fuel refinement. Because of these lower standards, many techniques have been researched to remove sulfur containing compounds or...
Symbiosis is the close and protracted interaction between organisms. The molecular interactions that occur during symbiosis are complex with multiple barriers that must be overcome. Many Gram-negative, host-associated bacteria use a type III secretion system to mediate associations with their eukaryotic hosts. This secretion system is a specialized apparatus for...
The increased use of mobile wireless devices that we have recently been witnessing, such as smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and WiFi enabled devices in general, is driving an unprecedented increase in the amount of data traffic. This fast market adoption of the wireless technology along with the tremendous success of multimedia...
In eukaryotes, the defined loci on each chromosome, the centromeres, accomplish
the critical task of correct cell division. In some organisms, centromeres are
composed of a euchromatic central core region embedded in a stretch of
heterochromatin and the inheritance and maintenance of centromeres are controlled
by dynamic epigenetic phenomena. Although...
This dissertation addresses a hybrid-flow shop scheduling problem with dual resource constraints in a supply chain. Most of the traditional scheduling problems deal with machine as the only resource. However, other resources such as labor is not only required for processing jobs but are often constrained. Considering the second resource...
In many regions of the world, a significant portion of the surface water originates in mountain headwaters where the timing and magnitude of streamflow is largely dictated by the seasonal storage of precipitation as snowpack and long-term storage as glaciers. Accumulation, persistence, and melt of snow and ice are functions...
Empirical studies have shown that programmers spend up to one-third of their time navigating through code during debugging. Although researchers have conducted empirical studies to understand programmers’ navigation difficulties and developed tools to address those difficulties, the resulting findings tend to be loosely connected to each other. To address this...
Recognizing human actions in videos is a long-standing problem in computer vision with a wide range of applications including video surveillance, content retrieval, and sports analysis. This thesis focuses on addressing efficiency and robustness of video classification in unconstrained real-world settings. The thesis work can be broadly divided into four...