Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a common eye disease that could lead to irreversible vision loss but hard to be noticed by carriers in early stages. On the path of recognizing DR stages by multi-scale color uniform local binary pattern in retinopathy ima . . .

Multidrug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, a common etiologic agent of severe nosocomial infections in compromised hosts, usually harbors aac(6’)-Ib. This gene codes for an aminoglycoside acetyltransferase that modifies amikacin and other aminoglyco . . .

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain condition that affects 2% to 4% of the population. Many patients with FM report a history of depression and child abuse. Childhood abuse affects both physical and mental health in adulthood. Negative mood regulation . . .

Past research has demonstrated an association between peer victimization and internalizing problems. Nonetheless, there are some children who seem to be undamaged by their experiences of peer victimization. In an effort to understand this resilience, . . .

Infiltration is an important aspect to the hydrologic cycle as it allows for groundwater recharge. In California especially, groundwater is used for agriculture, industrial usage, and as drinking water. This Thesis presents an analytical model for tim . . .

Landslides, which have been existing around the world, are considered as environmental hazards. The number of landslide hazard is increasing every year. Although there are different causes of landslides, two major causes are rainfall and earthquake. R . . .

The union wage premium has been a topic of heated debate among labor economists for over 50 years. Researchers have attempted to account for selection of workers into unions by employing numerous, often creative econometric strategies to remove unobse . . .

Large amounts of waste materials such as waste tires, rubbers, etc. are discarded into our surrounding environment. Thus, they are a major cause of contamination and pollution, which, as a result, could eventually lead to many problems including healt . . .

Solar energy is probably the most abundant renewable energy which is of great importance to fundamentally solve the energy crisis problem if can be harvested extensively and efficiently. This dissertation reviews the solar energy conversion systems an . . .

Soil is unlike other construction materials such as steel and concrete for which humans can control their properties. Therefore, it is important to investigate and test soil in order to predict its response to the construction loading. The coefficient . . .