Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Canopy Spectral Reflectance Detects Oak Wilt At The Landscape Scale Using Phylogenetic Discrimination, Gerard Sapes, Cathleen Lapadat, Anna K. Schweiger, Jennifer Juzwik, Rebecca Montgomery, Hamed Gholizadeh, Philip A. Townsend, John A. Gamon, Jeannine Cavender-Bares

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The oak wilt disease caused by the invasive fungal pathogen Bretziella fagacearum is one of the greatest threats to oak-dominated forests across the Eastern United States. Accurate detection and monitoring over large areas are necessary for management activities to effectively mitigate and prevent the spread of oak wilt. Canopy spectral reflectance contains both phylogenetic and physiological information across the visible near-infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) ranges that can be used to identify diseased red oaks. We develop partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models using airborne hyperspectral reflectance to detect diseased canopies and assess the importance of VNIR, SWIR, …

Search For Strongly Interacting Massive Particles Generating Trackless Jets In Proton–Proton Collisions At √S = 13tev, A. Tumasyan

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

A search for dark matter in the form of strongly interacting massive particles (SIMPs) using the CMS detector at the LHC is presented. The SIMPs would be produced in pairs that manifest themselves as pairs of jets without tracks. The energy fraction of jets carried by charged particles is used as a key discriminator to suppress efficiently the large multijet background, and the remaining background is estimated directly from data. The search is performed using proton–proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 16.1 fb⁻¹, collected with the CMS detector in 2016. No significant excess of events …

Seasonally And Diurnally Varying Cold Front Effects Along The Minnesotan North Shore Of Lake Superior, Matthew S. Van Den Broeke

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Cold fronts are typically associated with cooling, drying and a strengthening wind that shifts to have a northerly component. Cold front effects at a particular point, however, are dependent upon pre-existing air mass characteristics. Here, we examine 634 passages of synoptic-scale cold fronts in northeastern Minnesota from 2010 to 2018. While these fronts are associated with the expected effects in some areas, they are often associated with warming and enhanced drying in the region directly influenced by an air mass from Lake Superior (coastal sites). Coastal sites experience warming during more than half of cold frontal passages, in contrast to …

Virtual Training Prepared For The Former Afghanistan Ministry Of Energy And Water—Streamgaging, Fluvial Sediment Sampling, Bathymetry, And Streamflow And Sediment Modeling, Joel T. Groten, Joshua F. Valder, Brenda K. Densmore, Logan W. Neal, Justin Krahulik, Thomas J. Mack

United States Geological Survey: Water Reports and Publications

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) created a virtual training series for the Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW), now known as the National Water Affairs Regulation Authority (NWARA), to provide critical hydrological training as an alternative to an in-person training. The USGS was scheduled to provide in-person surface-water training for NWARA during 2020; however, travel was halted because of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID–19) pandemic. The virtual training consisted of prerecorded and live presentations that were scheduled during 4 weeks in August 2021. However, the training was halted after the second week due to the collapse of the …

Resource Selection Of Deer Hunters In Georgia's Appalachian Mountains, Jacalyn P. Rosenberger, Andrew R. Little, Adam C. Edge, Cheyenne J. Yates, David A. Osborn, Charlie H. Killmaster, Kristina L. Johannsen, Karl V. Miller, Gino J. D'Angelo

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

White‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and hunters on 2 Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) within the Chattahoochee National Forest of northern Georgia, USA, significantly declined in number from the 1980s to 2018. Managers were interested in understanding how they could manipulate hunter distribution according to deer management goals. To understand the spatial distribution of hunting pressure and factors driving hunter resource selection, we analyzed GPS tracking data from 58 deer hunters over the 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 hunting seasons. We evaluated hunter selection on 3 spatial scales relative to elevation, slope, and distance from roads, trails, wildlife openings, deciduous forest, mixed …

Application Of Linear Algebra Within The High School Curriculum: Designing Activities To Stimulate An Interest In Upper-Level Math, Shelby Castle

Honors Theses

This senior project outlines potential lecture activities for a guest speaker or teacher in a high school classroom to present interesting applications of linear algebra. These applications are meant to be pertinent to things students at this age level are already learning or are interested in. The activities are designed such that the ideas of upper-level math are introduced in a very guided and non-intense way. The intent of the activities is mostly applications and interesting results rather than mathematical lecturing or instruction.

The high school level courses explored in this project are chemistry, economics, and health/physical education. For these …

Agricultural Carbon Markets: How Could They Work?, Andrew Havens

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

The resurgence of voluntary markets in which consumers can purchase carbon credits generated by agricultural carbon sequestration has brought up many questions for farmers looking to potentially enter the market. Past carbon markets, such as the Chicago Climate Exchange, ended when a recession hit, causing demand for credits to swiftly decline. How can modern voluntary markets face these challenges along with new ones and be successful? This research paper, completed as an undergraduate thesis project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, examines the economic and scientific factors behind soil carbon sequestration credits. An extended literature review combined with estimation of a …

Agricultural Carbon Markets: How Could They Work?, Andrew Havens

Honors Theses

The resurgence of voluntary markets in which consumers can purchase carbon credits generated by agricultural carbon sequestration has brought up many questions for farmers looking to potentially enter the market. Past carbon markets, such as the Chicago Climate Exchange, ended when a recession hit, causing demand for credits to swiftly decline. How can modern voluntary markets face these challenges along with new ones and be successful? This research paper, completed as an undergraduate thesis project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, examines the economic and scientific factors behind soil carbon sequestration credits. An extended literature review combined with estimation of a …

Analysis Of Groundwater Recharge In Mongolian Drylands Using Composite Vadose Zone Modeling, Khulan Batsukh, Vitaly A. Zlotnik, Paolo Nasta

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Knowledge of groundwater recharge (GR) is important for the effective management of water resources under semi-arid continental climates. Unfortunately, studies and data in Mongolia are limited due to the constraints in funding and lack of research infrastructures. Currently, the wide accessibility of freely available global-scale digital datasets of physical and chemical soil properties, weather data, vegetation characteristics, and depths to the water table offers new tools and basic information that can support low-cost physically based and process-oriented models. Estimates of GR over 41 study sites in Mongolia were obtained using HYDRUS-1D in a 2-m-thick soil profile with root …

Lefschetz Properties Of Some Codimension Three Artinian Gorenstein Algebras, Nancy Abdallah, Nasrin Altafi, Anthony Iarrobino, Alexandra Seceleanu, Joachim Yaméogo

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

Codimension two Artinian algebras A have the strong and weak Lefschetz properties provided the characteristic is zero or greater than the socle degree. It is open to what extent such results might extend to codimension three AG algebras - the most promising results so far have concerned the weak Lefschetz property for such algebras. We here show that every standard-graded codimension three Artinian Gorenstein algebra A having low maximum value of the Hilbert function - at most six - has the strong Lefschetz property, provided that the characteristic is zero. When the characteristic is greater than the socle degree of …

Toward The Understanding Of The 2018 Arnold, Ne Earthquake Cluster: Relocation Of Hypocenters And Establishment Of New Gravity Base Stations, Kris Guthrie

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 2018, 27 unexpected earthquakes occurred in central Nebraska near Arnold. These earthquakes have no readily apparent cause and no evidence of the responsible fault system is seen at the surface. A joint analysis of vintage, regional gravity and magnetic datasets before the first earthquake revealed a lineament that could represent a pre-existing fault system. New high resolution potential fields data are needed to confidently map the subsurface features around the cluster. To design a survey and collect the data, the following tasks need to be addressed: [1] The earthquakes’ hypocenters need to be improved (relocated) to increase the efficiency …

Irrigation’S Impact On A Precipitation Event During Grainex In Nebraska, Usa, Daniel Whitesel

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Numerous precipitation events were observed during the Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX). However, the precipitation event that was observed the morning of 23 July 2018 is the focus of this thesis. Six experiments were conducted which involved increasing or decreasing soil moisture by 5% increments over the irrigated cropland. An additional experiment, which changed the irrigated land use to grassland, showed precipitation increases. It was found that regardless of strength of irrigation, average precipitation decreased. Average precipitation decreased by up to 72% when irrigation increased compared to the control simulation and decreased by up to 85% when irrigation decreased compared …

Autonomous, Long-Range, Sensor Emplacement Using Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Adam Plowcha, Justin Bradley, Jacob Hoberg, Thomas Ammon, Mark Nail, Brittany Duncan, Carrick Detweiler

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Automated, in-ground sensor emplacement can significantly improve remote, terrestrial, data collection capabilities. Utilizing a multicopter, unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for this purpose allows sensor insertion with minimal disturbance to the target site or surrounding area. However, developing an emplacement mechanism for a small multicopter, autonomy to manage the target selection and implantation process, as well as long-range deployment are challenging to address. We have developed an autonomous, multicopter UAS that can implant subsurface sensor devices. We enhanced the UAS autopilot with autonomy for target and landing zone selection, as well as ensuring the sensor is implanted properly in the ground. …

The Research And Design Of Sustainlnk: An Online Hub Of Sustainability Resources In Lincoln, Nebraska, Kayla Kremke

Honors Theses

SustainLNK (www.sustainlnk.org) is a website serving as a hub of sustainability resources in Lincoln, Nebraska. The site began as a personal project before becoming my UNL Honors Program Senior Project in Spring 2021, and consists of a website of resources along with two social media accounts providing more timely updates on sustainability-related events. This document outlines the thought and planning that was behind the development of the resource, along with relevant links to grow a deeper understanding of this new community resource.

Existence And Uniqueness Of Minimizers For A Nonlocal Variational Problem, Michael Pieper

Honors Theses

Nonlocal modeling is a rapidly growing field, with a vast array of applications and connections to questions in pure math. One goal of this work is to present an approachable introduction to the field and an invitation to the reader to explore it more deeply. In particular, we explore connections between nonlocal operators and classical problems in the calculus of variations. Using a well-known approach, known simply as The Direct Method, we establish well-posedness for a class of variational problems involving a nonlocal first-order differential operator. Some simple numerical experiments demonstrate the behavior of these problems for specific choices of …

Communicating Science With Little (Or No) Budget: Design Rules And Tricks For The Non-Artist, Kiyomi D. Deards

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Conference Presentations and Speeches

This presentation is for the self-proclaimed non-artist scientist who wants to communicate science effectively but has little (or no) budget to hire professionals to create and edit images (artwork, tables, graphs), websites, presentation slides, and publications. For this scientist, learning basic easy-to-apply design rules and tricks can facilitate the preparation of scientific material. The speaker has experience designing formal and informal presentations, creating videos and podcasts, working with graphic designers, and designing websites. The speaker will provide tips and suggestions based on her own experiences, collaborations, and acting as a consultant for informal science communication projects. Moreover, strategies for using …

Nebraska Statewide Groundwater-Level Monitoring Report 2021, Aaron R. Young, Mark E. Burbach, Leslie M. Howard, Sue Olafsen Lackey, Robert Matthew Joeckel

Conservation and Survey Division

This report is a synthesis of groundwater-level monitoring programs in Nebraska. It is a continuation of the series of annual reports and maps produced by the Conservation and Survey Division (CSD) of the University of Nebraska in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since the 1950s. Groundwater-level monitoring began in Nebraska in 1930 in an effort to survey the state’s groundwater resources and to observe changes in its availability on a continuing basis. The CSD and USGS cooperatively developed, maintained, and operated an observation-well network throughout the state. These two agencies were responsible for collecting and archiving this information, …

Adaptation, Transformation And Resilience In Healthcare Comment On “Government Actions And Their Relation To Resilience In Healthcare During The Covid-19 Pandemic In New South Wales, Australia And Ontario, Canada”, David G. Angeler, Harris A. Eyre, Michael Berk, Craig R. Allen, William Hynes, Igor Linkov

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Adaptive capacity is a critical component of building resilience in healthcare (RiH). Adaptive capacity comprises the ability of a system to cope with and adapt to disturbances. However, “shocks,” such as the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, can potentially exceed critical adaptation thresholds and lead to systemic collapse. To effectively manage healthcare systems during periods of crises, both adaptive and transformative changes are necessary. This commentary discusses adaptation and transformation as two complementary, integral components of resilience and applies them to healthcare. We treat resilience as an emergent property of complex systems that accounts for multiple, often disparately distinct …

Synthesis And Evaluation Of 11c-Labeled Triazolones As Probes For Imaging Fatty Acid Synthase Expression By Positron Emission Tomography, James M. Kelly, Thomas M. Jeitner, Nicole N. Waterhouse, Wenchao Qu, Ethan J. Linstad, Banafshe Samani, Clarence Williams Jr., Anastasia Nikolopoulou, Alejandro Amor-Coarasa, Stephen G. Dimagno, John W. Babich

Chemistry Department: Faculty Publications

Cancer cells require lipids to fulfill energetic, proliferative, and signaling requirements. Even though these cells can take up exogenous fatty acids, the majority exhibit a dependency on de novo fatty acid synthesis. Fatty acid synthase (FASN) is the rate-limiting enzyme in this process. Expression and activity of FASN is elevated in multiple cancers, where it correlates with disease progression and poor prognosis. These observations have sparked interest in developing methods of detecting FASN expression in vivo. One promising approach is the imaging of radiolabeled molecular probes targeting FASN by positron emission tomography (PET). However, although [¹¹C]acetate uptake by …

Paradigm Versus Paradox On The Prairie: Testing Competing Stream Fish Movement Frameworks Using An Imperiled Great Plains Minnow, Zachary D. Steffensmeier, Maeghen Wedgeworth, Lauren Yancy, Noah Santee, Shannon K. Brewer, Joshuah S. Perkin

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Background: Movement information can improve conservation of imperiled species, yet movement is not quantified for many organisms in need of conservation. Prairie chub (Macrhybopsis australis) is a regionally endemic freshwater fish with unquantified movement ecology and currently considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The purpose of this study was to test competing ecological theories for prairie chub movement, including the colonization cycle hypothesis (CCH) that posits adults must make upstream movements to compensate for downstream drift at early life stages, and the restricted movement paradigm (RMP) that describes populations as heterogeneous mixes of mostly stationary …

On The Asymptotic Behavior Of Solutions To A Structure Acoustics Model, Baowei Feng, Yanqiu Guo, Mohammad A. Rammaha

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

This article concerns the long term behavior of solutions to a structural acoustic model consisting of a semilinear wave equation defined on a smooth bounded domain Ω ⊂ R³ which is coupled with a Berger plate equation acting on a flat portion of the boundary of . The system is influenced by several competing forces, in particular a source term acting on the wave equation which is allowed to have a supercritical exponent.

Our results build upon those obtained by Becklin and Rammaha [8]. With some re- strictions on the parameters in the system and with careful analysis involving …

A Review Of The Impacts Of Invasive Wild Pigs On Native Vertebrates, Matthew T. Mcdonough, Stephen S. Ditchkoff, Mark D. Smith, Kurt C. Vercauteren

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The wild pig (Sus scrofa) is a successful invasive species that has become well established outside of its native range in Eurasia. The invasive wild pig is the result of released or escaped domesticated livestock becoming feral, or Eurasian boar introduced for hunting purposes. The global spread of wild pigs has recently been exacerbated in some areas, such as the USA, by anthropogenically assisted dispersal. Once established in novel ecosystems, wild pigs have the potential to have significant negative impacts on the ecosystem, and the scientific literature is replete with examples. It is generally accepted that wild pigs …

Chemical Reversible Crosslinking Enables Measurement Of Rna 3d Distances And Alternative Conformations In Cells, Ryan Van Damme, Kongpan Li, Minjie Zhang, Jianhui Bai, Wilson H. Lee, Joseph D. Yesselman, Zhipeng Lu, Willem A. Velema

Chemistry Department: Faculty Publications

Three-dimensional (3D) structures dictate the functions of RNA molecules in a wide variety of biological processes. However, direct determination of RNA 3D structures in vivo is difficult due to their large sizes, conformational heterogeneity, and dynamics. Here we present a method, Spatial 2′-Hydroxyl Acylation Reversible Crosslinking (SHARC), which uses chemical crosslinkers of defined lengths to measure distances between nucleotides in cellular RNA. Integrating crosslinking, exonuclease (exo) trimming, proximity ligation, and high throughput sequencing, SHARC enables transcriptome-wide tertiary structure contact maps at high accuracy and precision, revealing heterogeneous RNA structures and interactions. SHARC data provide constraints that improves Rosetta-based RNA 3D …

Use Of A Direct, Rapid Immunohistochemical Test For Diagnosis Of Rabies Virus In Bats, Charles E. Rupprecht, Lolita Van Pelt, April D. Davis, Richard B. Chipman, David L. Bergman

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Rabies, a zoonotic encephalitis due to transmission of a lyssavirus, such as rabies virus (RABV), has the highest case fatality of any infectious disease. A global program for the elimination of human rabies caused by dogs is proposed for realization by 2030. Sensitive, specific, and inexpensive diagnostic tests are necessary for enhanced surveillance to detect infection, inform public health and veterinary professionals during risk assessments of exposure, and support overall programmatic goals. Multiple laboratory techniques are used to confirm a suspect case of rabies. One method for the detection of lyssavirus antigens within the brain is the direct rapid immunohistochemical …

Rethinking Sampled-Data Control For Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Xinkai Zhang, Justin M. Bradley

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Unmanned aircraft systems are expected to provide both increasingly varied functionalities and outstanding application performances, utilizing the available resources. In this paper, we explore the recent advances and challenges at the intersection of real-time computing and control and show how rethinking sampling strategies can improve performance and resource utilization. We showcase a novel design framework, cyber-physical co-regulation, which can efficiently link together computational and physical characteristics of the system, increasing robust performance and avoiding pitfalls of event-triggered sampling strategies. A comparison experiment of different sampling and control strategies was conducted and analyzed. We demonstrate that co-regulation has resource savings similar …

Fluids And Melts At The Magmatic-Hydrothermal Transition, Recorded By Unidirectional Solidification Textures At Saginaw Hill, Arizona, Usa, Wyatt M. Bain, Pilar Lecumberri-Sanchez, Erin E. Marsh, Matthew Steele-Macinnis

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Fluid exsolution and melt evolution at the magmatic-hydrothermal transition are critical processes driving the metal enrichment of porphyry systems. Coeval fluid and melt inclusion assemblages in unidirectional solidification textures (USTs) at Saginaw Hill—a small, porphyry Cu system in southwestern Arizona—record a dynamic and repetitious process of fluid accumulation and release. The cores of quartz crystals throughout the UST bands host coeval silicate melt and brine inclusions but lack vapor-rich inclusions. This could indicate preferential expulsion of vapor and trapping of high-density brine during episodes of fracturing or the direct exsolution of single-phase high-salinity brine from the silicate melt. In contrast, …

Decomposition Of Organic Peroxides And Hydrogen Peroxide By The Iron Thiolates And Related Complexes, Patrick H. Dussault, Andrew Olson

Chemistry Department: Faculty Publications

Disclosed herein is a method of reducing or disproportionating peroxide, comprising combining an organic chalcogenide, an iron salt, and the peroxide in the presence of an additional reductant, which can be the organic chalcogenide. The method can be used to, e.g., prepare alcohols from peroxides and to disproportionate hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen.

Optimizing Management Of Invasions In An Uncertain World Using Dynamic Spatial Models, Kim M. Pepin, Amy J. Davis, Rebecca S. Epanchin-Niell, Andrew M. Gormley, Joslin L. Moore, Timothy J. Smyser, H. Bradley Shaffer, William L. Kendall, Katriona Shea, Michael C. Runge, Sophie Mckee

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Dispersal drives invasion dynamics of nonnative species and pathogens. Applying knowledge of dispersal to optimize the management of invasions can mean the difference between a failed and a successful control program and dramatically improve the return on investment of control efforts. A common approach to identifying optimal management solutions for invasions is to optimize dynamic spatial models that incorporate dispersal. Optimizing these spatial models can be very challenging because the interaction of time, space, and uncertainty rapidly amplifies the number of dimensions being considered. Addressing such problems requires advances in and the integration of techniques from multiple fields, including ecology, …

An Efficient Method Of Evaluating Multiple Concurrent Management Actions On Invasive Populations, Amy J. Davis, Randy Farrar, Brad Jump, Parker Hall, Travis Guerrant, Kim M. Pepin

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Evaluating the efficacy of management actions to control invasive species is crucial for maintaining funding and to provide feedback for the continual improvement of management efforts. However, it is often difficult to assess the efficacy of control methods due to limited resources for monitoring. Managers may view effort on monitoring as effort taken away from performing management actions. We developed a method to estimate invasive species abundance, evaluate management effectiveness, and evaluate population growth over time from a combination of removal activities (e.g., trapping, ground shooting) using only data collected during removal efforts (method of removal, date, location, number of …

Allodb: An R Package For Biomass Estimation At Globally Distributed Extratropical Forest Plots, Erika Gonzalez-Akre, Camille Piponiot, Mauro Lepore, Valentine Herrmann, James A. Lutz, Jennifer L. Baltzer, Christopher W. Dick, Gregory S. Gilbert, Fangliang He, Michael Heym, Alejandra I. Huerta, Patrick A. Jansen, Daniel J. Johnson, Nikolai Knapp, Kamil Král, Dunmei Lin, Yadvinder Malhi, Sean M. Mcmahon, Jonathan A. Myers, David Orwig, Diego I. Rodríguez-Hernández, Sabrina E. Russo, Jessica Shue, Xugao Wang, Amy Wolf, Tonghui Yang, Stuart J. Davies, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Allometric equations for calculation of tree above-ground biomass (AGB) form the basis for estimates of forest carbon storage and exchange with the atmosphere. While standard models exist to calculate forest biomass across the tropics, we lack a standardized tool for computing AGB across boreal and temperate regions that comprise the global extratropics. Here we present an integrated R package, allodb, containing systematically selected published allometric equations and proposed functions to compute AGB. The data component of the package is based on 701 woody species identified at 24 large Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) forest dynamics plots representing a wide diversity …