Bayesian kriging is a useful tool for estimating spatial distributions of metals; however, estimates are generally only verified statistically. In this study surface soil samples were collected on a uniform grid and analyzed for As, Cr, Pb, and Hg. The data were interpolated at individual locations by Bayesian kriging. Estimates were validated using a leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) stat...

In the first part of the thesis, chemical analyses were conducted for four populations of switchgrass, SW1-SW8. Each population consisted of 69% leaves, 27% internodes, and 4% nodes. The variations in carbohydrates, lignin, extractives content, Higher Heating Value (HHV), and syringyl:guaiacyl (S:G) ratio were determined among the populations and the morphological portions. The experimental res...

There are currently many vastly different areas of research involving adaptive learning. Among them are the two areas that concern neural networks and learning automata. This paper develops a method by which the general philosophies of vector quantization (VQ) and discretized automata learning can be incorporated for the computation of arbitrary distance functions. The latter is a problem which...

Internode length is one of the decisive factors affecting plant height (PH) and ear height (EH), which are closely associated with the lodging resistance, biomass and grain yield of maize. miRNAs, currently recognized as important transcriptional/ post-transcriptional regulators, play an essential role in plant growth and development. However, their roles in developing internodes under maize ea...

We propose a new topology for multicomputer networks, called recursive cireulant. Recursive circulant G(N, d) is defined to be a ciwulant graph with N nodes and jumps of powers of d, d 2 2. G(N,d) is node symmetric, has a hamiltonian cycle unless N 5 2, and can be recursively constructed when N = cdm, 1 5 c < d. We analyze various network metrics of G(cdm, d) such as connectivity, diameter, mea...

In large peer-to-peer overlay networks, nodes usually share resources to support all kinds of applications. In such networks, a subset of these nodes may assume the role of broker in order to act as intermediaries for finding suitable resources. When some notion of distance between nodes such as the internode latency is defined, brokers may be responsible for a group of nodes that are close to ...

Many real networks, including those in social, technological, and biological realms, are small-world networks. The two distinguishing characteristics of small-world networks are high local clustering and small average internode distance. A great deal of previous research on small-world networks has been based on probabilistic methods, with a rather small number of researchers advocating determi...