This thesis describes evaluation of a novel self-sealing chewable sustained release tablet that can maintain controlled release of drug regardless of compaction, crushing, or chewing. The new formulation contains polyethylene oxide which produces a sealant effect for cracks produced in the polymer coating during compaction. Dissolution studies were conducted and...
In this thesis we develop a theoretical framework for the identification of situations where the equal frequency (EF) or equal variance (EV) subclassification may produce lower bias and/or variance of the estimator. We conduct simulation studies to examine the EF and EV approaches under different types of model misspecification. We...
The genetic engineering made possible by the discovery of recombinant DNA has played an increasingly important role in agricultural research. The present study employs a knowledge production model to assess the efficacy of, and relationship between, basic and applied research in agricultural biotechnology, allowing for both complementarity and substitutability between...
Researchers have hypothesized that if we could estimate the probability that a fault in a code component will a cause a failure, we could use this estimate to improve the fault-detection effectiveness of code-coverage-based testing. If this hypothesis could be supported, it would motivate further research in this area and...
The goal of this study was to determine whether annual growth ring variables of
young coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii [Mirb.] Franco.)
growing in progeny tests are sensitive to availability of soil moisture during the growing season. If ring variables are found to respond to soil moisture deficit (SMD)...
Significant improvements in production effectiveness have resulted from
implementing cellular manufacturing systems (CMS). Following the cell formation, an
important issue that needs to be addressed is the unequal cell (or department/facility)
layout problem, which is the sub-issue in the CF problem. The work reported in this
thesis illustrates the assignment...
The importance of pheromones in insect control relies both on
their ability to reduce pest populations and on their relatively benign
effects on nontarget organisms. This study was conducted to test the
effectiveness of a pheromone application for mating disruption of the
ponderosa pine tip moth, Rhyacionia zozana (Kearfott), and...
Image segmentation continues to be a fundamental problem in computer vision and image understanding. In this thesis, we present a Bayesian network that we use for object boundary detection in which the MPE (most probable explanation) before any evidence can produce multiple non-overlapping, non-self-intersecting closed contours and the MPE with...
Xylem conducting tissue or sapwood is an important storage organ
for water, carbohydrates, and nutrients, and this storage helps trees
accommodate environmental change. However, the living ray parenchyma
cells in sapwood, which store the carbohydrates and nutrients,
require energy for maintenance. I examined how sapwood maintenance
costs vary among species,...