Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Productivity And Variability Of Pastures And Cover Crops In Lowland Rice-Pasture Rotations In Uruguay, Walter Ayala, J. Terra

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

No abstract provided.

Historical Analysis Of Urban Dust Generated By The Great Salt Lake Playa, Callum Flowerday, Jaron C. Hansen, Rebekah Stanley, Kaitlyn Brewster

ScholarsArchive Data

Historical PM10 filters, provided by the Utah Division of Air Quality, were analyzed for elemental composition of various metals. This was done using ICP-MS.

Also included, EPA PM10 historical data and bathymetry data provided by the Utah USGS.

Historical Ozone Isopleths For Salt Lake Valley, Ut, Usa, Callum Flowerday, Isaac Sudweeks, Brad Adams, Jaron C. Hansen

ScholarsArchive Data

EPA quality assured data, collected by the Utah Division of Air Quality, was used for this analysis.

Unimer Suppression Enables Supersaturated Homopolymer Swollen Micelles With Long-Term Stability After Glassy Entrapment, Eric R. Williams, Christian X. Ruff, Morgan Stefik

Faculty Publications

Micelle sizes are critical for a range of applications where the simple ability to adjust and lock in specific stable sizes has remained largely elusive. While micelle swelling agents are well-known, their dynamic re-equilibration in solution implies limited stability. Here, a non-equilibrium processing sequence is studied where supersaturated homopolymer swelling is combined with glassy-core (“persistent”) micelles. This path-dependent process was found to sensitively depend on unimer concentration as revealed by DLS, SAXS, and TEM analysis. Here, lower-selectivity solvent combinations led to the formation of unimer-homopolymer aggregates and eventual precipitation, reminiscent of anomalous micellization. In contrast, higher-selectivity solvents enabled supersaturated homopolymer …

History Of Clover Leaf Syndrome, Isabella Perez

Mako: NSU Undergraduate Student Journal

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the history of clover leaf syndrome and describe the newest advancements made to treat it. Clover leaf syndrome is more formally referred to as Kleeblattschadel syndrome. Information was gathered from several scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, and was condensed down into the key takeaways. This syndrome impacts the formation of the skull due to premature fusion of its sutures, creating a tri-lobar skull that resembles a clover leaf. This premature fusion is referred to as a type of craniosynostosis and has been linked to causing several other health complications ranging in severity. This is …

A Reliable Diabetic Retinopathy Grading Via Transfer Learning And Ensemble Learning With Quadratic Weighted Kappa Metric, Sai Venkatesh Chilukoti, Liqun Shan, Vijay Srinivas Tida, Anthony S. Maida, Xiali Hei

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The most common eye infection in people with diabetes is diabetic retinopathy (DR). It might cause blurred vision or even total blindness. Therefore, it is essential to promote early detection to prevent or alleviate the impact of DR. However, due to the possibility that symptoms may not be noticeable in the early stages of DR, it is difficult for doctors to identify them. Therefore, numerous predictive models based on machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) have been developed to determine all stages of DR. However, existing DR classification models cannot classify every DR stage or use a computationally heavy …

Harnessing The Synergy Of Fe And Co With Carbon Nanofibers For Enhanced Co, Kevin Arizapana, John Schossig, Michael Wildy, Daniel Weber, Akash Gandotra, Sumedha Jayaraman, Wanying Wei, Kai Xu, Lei Yu, Amos M Mugweru, Islam Mantawy, Cheng Zhang, Ping Lu

College of Science & Mathematics Departmental Research

Amid growing concerns about climate change and energy sustainability, the need to create potent catalysts for the sequestration and conversion of CO2 to value-added chemicals is more critical than ever. This work describes the successful synthesis and profound potential of high-performance nanofiber catalysts, integrating earth-abundant iron (Fe) and cobalt (Co) as well as their alloy counterpart, FeCo, achieved through electrospinning and judicious thermal treatments. Systematic characterization using an array of advanced techniques, including SEM, TGA-DSC, ICP-MS, XRF, EDS, FTIR–ATR, XRD, and Raman spectroscopy, confirmed the integration and homogeneous distribution of Fe/Co elements in nanofibers and provided insights into their catalytic …

Multi-Agent System For Portfolio Profit Optimization For Future Stock Trading, Usha Devi, Mohan R

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

Stock trading highly contributes to the economic growth of the country. The stock trading objective is to earn profits with buy/sell/hold decisions on the set of stocks in the portfolio. The portfolio optimization problem is finding the decision sequence that leads to higher profit and lower risk. Portfolio optimization is challenging due to complex price history patterns and an uncertain environment. Incorrect decisions in stock trading lead to massive losses. The proposed Multi-Agent System for Portfolio Profit Optimization (MASPPO) aims to optimize trading profit and reduce risk with accurate predictions. The proposed model integrates the Fuzzy c-means with the Deep …

Protein And Polysaccharide-Based Optical Materials For Biomedical Applications., Gianna Riviello, Brendan Connor, Jake Mcbrearty, Gianna Rodriguez, Xiao Hu

College of Science & Mathematics Departmental Research

Recent advances in biomedical research, particularly in optical applications, have sparked a transformative movement towards replacing synthetic polymers with more biocompatible and sustainable alternatives. Most often made from plastics or glass, these materials ignite immune responses from the body, and their production is based on environmentally harsh oil-based processes. Biopolymers, including both polysaccharides and proteins, have emerged as a potential candidate for optical biomaterials due to their inherent biocompatibility, biodegradability, and sustainability, derived from their existence in nature and being recognized by the immune system. Current extraction and fabrication methods for these biomaterials, including thermal drawing, extrusion and printing, mold …

02-26-2024 Orsp Newsletter, Liz Williamson

ORSP Newsletter

No abstract provided.

02-12-2024 Orsp Newsletter, Liz Williamson

ORSP Newsletter

I-RED Program, Training on Python and R available, Christy White spotlight, UM Researchers Find Turmeric, Thyme Oils Repel Fire Ants

02-05-2024 Orsp Newsletter, Liz Williamson

ORSP Newsletter

NSF Revises PAPPG, Mickey McLaurin spotlight, ORSP Training Available: NSF Project Summary, Inclusive Entrepreneurship Event

An Itpa Enzyme With Improved Substrate Selectivity, Nicholas E. Burgis, Kandise Vanwormer, Devin Robbins, Jonathan Smith

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Recent clinical data have identified infant patients with lethal ITPA deficiencies. ITPA is known to modulate ITP concentrations in cells and has a critical function in neural development which is not understood. Polymorphism of the ITPA gene affects outcomes for both ribavirin and thiopurine based therapies and nearly one third of the human population is thought to harbor ITPA polymorphism. In a previous site-directed mutagenesis alanine screen of the ITPA substrate selectivity pocket, we identified the ITPA mutant, E22A, as a gain-of function mutant with enhanced ITP hydrolysis activity. Here we report a rational enzyme engineering experiment to investigate the …

Long Term Sustainable Use Of Demersal Gillnet And Demersal Longline In Western Australia’S Temperate Shark Fisheries - Fisheries Research Report 340, Matias Braccini, Jack Parker, Daniela Waltrick, Maddison Watt, Nick Blay, Clinton Syers

Fisheries research reports

The Temperate Demersal Gillnet and Demersal Longline Fisheries (TDGDLF) are one of the main commercial shark fisheries in Australia. Most fishers in the TDGDLF use demersal gillnets to target sharks with scalefish taken in smaller amounts. Demersal longlines are also permitted but are not widely used. Demersal gillnets are size selective, but they do not necessarily discriminate among species, catching target and non-target species.

The Western Australian Fishing Industry Council (WAFIC) received funding as part of the Australian Government’s Our Marine Parks Grants Program to undertake research on the TDGDLF. This project was administered under the direction of a steering …

College Of Natural Sciences 2023 Year-End Publication, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 3 Department Highlights
Page 4 One Day for State
Page 5 Noble Prize Winner Speaks on Campus
Page 6-7 Faculty Excellence
Page 8-9 Student Excellence
Page 10 Outreach Program
Page 10 Events and Traditions
Page 11 Connections Abroad
Page 12 Student Spotlight
Page 13 Alumni Spotlight
Page 14 First Ever Drone Day
Page 15 Grand Opening of POET Bioproducts Center
Page 16 Work Anniversaries

Agricultural Groundcover Update January 2024, Justin Laycock

Natural resources published reports

Summary

• About 94% of the grainbelt had adequate (more than 50%) vegetative groundcover to prevent wind erosion in January 2024.
• In the northern half of the grainbelt, a larger-than-average area has 51–60% groundcover, which is expected to decrease to below 50% over the coming months.
• Just under 6% of the grainbelt (855,000 ha) had less than 50% groundcover, which is inadequate to prevent wind erosion. West Midlands Ag Soil Zone had the highest risk of wind erosion and 14.5% of this farmland had inadequate groundcover.
• Less than 0.5% of the grainbelt had a high to very high risk of wind …

Investigating The Mass Mortality Induced Factors Of Pearl Oyster (Pinctada Radiata) At Abu Dhabi Pearls Farm, Uae, Hamad Ahmed Almansoori

Theses

The aquaculture of shellfish plays a crucial role in enhancing maritime environments by mitigating algal blooms and improving water quality through the filtration of organic matter, nutrients, and bacteria. This study investigated the environmental factors influencing oyster (Pinctada radiata) mortalities through a comprehensive analysis of water quality in Al Mirfa and Al Mughirah farming sites of Abu Dhabi (UAE), from February 2021 to February 2022. To reach such understanding of the main factors led to mass mortalities of cultivated oysters, different monthly sampling and both chemical and biological analyses of the farm water, sediments as well as for both living …

Foodmask: Real-Time Food Instance Counting, Segmentation And Recognition, Huu-Thanh Nguyen, Yu Cao, Chong-Wah Ngo, Wing-Kwong Chan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Food computing has long been studied and deployed to several applications. Understanding a food image at the instance level, including recognition, counting and segmentation, is essential to quantifying nutrition and calorie consumption. Nevertheless, existing techniques are limited to either category-specific instance detection, which does not reflect precisely the instance size at the pixel level, or category-agnostic instance segmentation, which is insufficient for dish recognition. This paper presents a compact and fast multi-task network, namely FoodMask, for clustering-based food instance counting, segmentation and recognition. The network learns a semantic space simultaneously encoding food category distribution and instance height at pixel basis. …

Trends In Catch Rates Of Sawfish On The Australian North West Shelf, C. Wakefield, S. J. Newman, M. Braccini, A. Harry

Fisheries Research Articles

Northwestern Australia is thought to have some of the world’s last remaining viable sawfish populations, although little quantitative data exists on their status or trends. This study examined 17 years of logbook bycatch records (n = 815) for green sawfish Pristis zijsron and narrow sawfish Anoxypristis cuspidata from a trawl fishery operating on the Australian North West Shelf. Incidental sawfish captures by the fishery are rare, occurring approximately once every 75 trawls (~199 trawl hours). To standardize catch rates and account for excess zeros in the data, we employed generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape (GAMLSSs) using a …

Local Habitat Composition And Complexity Outweigh Seascape Effects On Fish Distributions Across A Tropical Seascape, Molly Moustaka, Richard D. Evans, Gary A. Kendrick, Glenn A. Hyndes, Michael V. W. Cuttler, Tahlia J. Bassett, Michael J. O’Leary, Shaun K. Wilson

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Context: The distribution of animals is influenced by a complex interplay of landscape, environmental, habitat, and anthropogenic factors. While the effects of each of these forces on fish assemblages have been studied in isolation, the implications of their combined influence within a seascape remain equivocal. Objectives: We assessed the importance of local habitat composition, seascape configuration, and environmental conditions for determining the abundance, diversity, and functional composition of fish assemblages across a tropical seascape. Methods: We quantified fish abundance in coral, macroalgal, mangrove, and sand habitats throughout the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. A full-subsets modelling approach was used that incorporated …

Salmonella In The Environment: A Review On Ecology, Antimicrobial Resistance, Seafood Contaminations, And Human Health Implications, Mohammad Maruf Billah, Md Saydur Rahman

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Salmonella is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria that is responsible for numerous food poisoning outbreaks worldwide. With 93.8 million food-borne illnesses and 155,000 fatalities annually, it has emerged as a significant global public health issue. There are currently more than 2,500 distinct Salmonella serotypes, and more than half of them are associated with Salmonella enterica. An increasing global public health concern for humans and animals is antimicrobial resistance by Salmonella species worldwide. Salmonella infections can be lethal; conditioned with an increased prevalence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains in the future. The emergence of MDR Salmonella serotypes is considerably …

Towards Sociobiogeochemistry: Critical Perspectives On Anthropogenic Alterations To Soil Nitrogen Chemistry Via U.S. Urban And Suburban Development, Christopher D. Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ecological impacts of changes to land use are relevant to concerns about climate change, eutrophication of waterbodies, and reductions in biodiversity. As a foundational component of ecosystem functioning, changes to soil biogeochemistry have significant effects on overall ecosystem health. With cities continuing to grow and develop in extent, the impacts of urbanization and suburbanization on soils are of particular concern. Despite a wide range of natural climatic and geologic conditions, several factors have driven similar patterns of land transformation and management across the United States. In particular, federal initiatives including the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, …

Rational Design Of Peptide-Based Materials Informed By Multiscale Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Dhwanit Rahul Dave

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The challenge of establishing a sustainable and circular economy for materials in medicine and technology necessitates bioinspired design. Nature's intricate machinery, forged through evolution, relies on a finite set of biomolecular building blocks with through-bond and through-space interactions. Repurposing these molecular building blocks requires a seamless integration of computational modeling, design, and experimental validation. The tools and concepts developed in this thesis pioneer new directions in peptide-materials design, grounded in fundamental principles of physical chemistry. We present a synergistic approach that integrates experimental designs and computational methods, specifically molecular dynamics simulations, to gain in-depth molecular insights crucial for advancing the …

A Causal Inference Approach For Spike Train Interactions, Zach Saccomano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the 1960s, neuroscientists have worked on the problem of estimating synaptic properties, such as connectivity and strength, from simultaneously recorded spike trains. Recent years have seen renewed interest in the problem coinciding with rapid advances in experimental technologies, including an approximate exponential increase in the number of neurons that can be recorded in parallel and perturbation techniques such as optogenetics that can be used to calibrate and validate causal hypotheses about functional connectivity. This thesis presents a mathematical examination of synaptic inference from two perspectives: (1) using in vivo data and biophysical models, we ask in what cases the …

Vibmilk: Non-Intrusive Milk Spoilage Detection Via Smartphone Vibration, Yuezhong Wu, Wei Song, Yanxiang Wang, Dong Ma, Weitao Xu, Mahbub Hassan, Wen Hu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Quantifying the chemical process of milk spoilage is challenging due to the need for bulky, expensive equipment that is not user-friendly for milk producers or customers. This lack of a convenient and accurate milk spoilage detection system can cause two significant issues. First, people who consume spoiled milk may experience serious health problems. Secondly, milk manufacturers typically provide a “best before” date to indicate freshness, but this date only shows the highest quality of the milk, not the last day it can be safely consumed, leading to significant milk waste. A practical and efficient solution to this problem is proposed …

Monitoring The Abundance Of American Shad And River Herring In Virginia's Rivers: 2023 Annual Report, Eric J. Hilton, Patrick E. Mcgrath, Ashleigh Magee, Timothy Hoyt

Reports

This report describes the results of the twenty-sixth year of a continuing study to estimate the relative abundance and assess the status of American shad (Alosa sapidissima) stocks in Virginia by monitoring the spawning runs in the James, York and Rappahannock rivers in spring 2023, evaluating hatchery programs, and contributing to coast-wide assessments (ASMFC 2007, ASMFC 2020). We also report on two fisheryindependent monitoring programs using anchor gillnets in the Rappahannock River (year 6) and a major tributary of the James River, the Chickahominy River (year 9), to determine relative abundance and stock structure for the adult spawning run of …

A Computational Profile Of Invasive Lionfish In Belize: A New Insight On A Destructive Species, Joshua E. Balan

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Since their discovery in the region in 2009, invasive Indonesian-native lionfish have been taking over the Belize Barrier Reef. As a result, populations of local species have dwindled as they are either eaten or outcompeted by the invaders. This has led to devastating losses ecologically and economically; massive industries in the local nations, such as fisheries and tourism, have suffered greatly. Attempting to combat this, local organizations, from nonprofits to ecotourism companies, have been manually spear-hunting them on scuba dives to cull the population. One such company, Reef Conservation Institute (ReefCI), operating out of Tom Owens Caye outside of Placencia, …

Designing Dual-Purpose Management Strategies For Sheep Production And Pollinators In Dryland Pastures, Mia Caudillo, Andony Melathopoulos, Mary Smallman, Sarah A. Kinkaid, David E. Prado-Tarango, Serkan Ates

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Development of novel grazing management practicesfor both livestock production and pollinator health is becoming increasingly crucial in pasture-based farming systems. The effect of pasture type and spring closing dates on lamb liveweight gain, pasture production, botanical composition, bloom density and bee visitation was monitored over 2 years at the Oregon State University in Corvallis. Total annual dry matter yield (DMY) of diverse pastures in 2020/2021 was 8.8 t DM ha^-1 and this was greater (P-1) and legume pastures (6.6 t DM ha^-1). In successive years, lambs grew faster in legume pastures (287, 215 g per head d …

Tillering Of ‘Marandu’ Brachiaria Under Different Nitrogen Rates In The Brazilian Savannah, A. B. O. Assis, A. L. Bocchi, T. C. Pedrosa, A. O. Matos, A. P. B. Soares

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The tiller is the basic unit of grass growth and tiller density determines the horizontal ground cover, leaves production and pastures perennially. The objective in this study was to quantify the number of aerial and basal tillers and basal:aerial tillers ratio in Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu, established in Brazilian savannah, submitted to nitrogen doses (0, 50, 100 and 150 kg N/ha). The experiment was carried out in the Forage and Pasture Sector of Jataí Federal University (UFJ) and after soil correction and fertilization, plots were established with Marandu palisade grass in a randomized block design, with four replications and four …

Effect Of Soil Source And Variety On The Heavy Metal Contents Of Guinea Grass, C. C. Anotaenwere, P. O. Bankole, P. A. Dele, Alaba O. Jolaosho

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The aim of this study was to evaluate the heavy metal content in soils and grasses planted on selected contaminated soils. The study was a 3 x 2 factorial experiment in a completely randomized design comprising of two factors which are: 3 soil sources (i.e., industrial site, dump site and Fadama (a lowland around a river/stream) which was used as the control) and 2 varieties of Megathyrsus maximus (var. Local and Ntchisi) replicated four times. Soils were collected from the three sites and planting was done in a greenhouse. Soil samples were collected before and after planting. Samples of the …