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Program And Proceedings The Nebraska Academy Of Sciences: 139th Anniversary Year, One Hundred-Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, April 12, 2019, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska, Nebrtaska Academy Of Sciences

Nebraska Academy of Sciences: Programs and Proceedings

PROGRAM AT-A-GLANCE

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2019

7:30 a.m. REGISTRATION OPENS - Lobby of Lecture Wing, Olin Hall

8:00 Aeronautics and Space Science, Session A – Acklie 109

Aeronautics and Space Science, Session B – Acklie 111

Collegiate Academy; Biology, Session B - Olin B

Biological and Medical Sciences, Session A - Olin 112

Biological and Medical Sciences, Session B - Smith Callen Conference Center

Chemistry and Physics; Chemistry - Olin A

8:00 “Teaching and Learning the Dynamics of Cellular Respiration Using Interactive Computer Simulations” Workshop – Olin 110

9:30 “Life After College: Building Your Resume for the Future” Workshop – …

Notes And Discussion Piece: Status Of The Topeka Shiner In Iowa, Clay L. Pierce, Nicholas T. Simpson, Alexander P. Bybel, Courtney L. Zambory, Michael J. Weber, Kevin J. Roe

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Topeka shiner Notropis topeka is native to Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota and has been federally listed as endangered since 1998. Our goals were to determine the present distribution and qualitative status of Topeka shiners throughout its current range in Iowa and characterize the extent of decline in relation to its historic distribution. We compared the current (2016–2017) distribution to distributions portrayed in three earlier time periods. In 2016–2017 Topeka shiners were found in 12 of 20 HUC10 watersheds where they occurred historically. Their status was classified as stable in 21% of the HUC10 watersheds, possibly …

Board Invited Review: Prospects For Improving Management Of Animal Disease Introductions Using Disease-Dynamic Models, Ryan S. Miller, Kim M. Pepin

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Management and policy decisions are continually made to mitigate disease introductions in animal populations despite often limited surveillance data or knowledge of disease transmission processes. Science-based management is broadly recognized as leading to more effective decisions yet application of models to actively guide disease surveillance and mitigate risks remains limited. Disease-dynamic models are an efficient method of providing information for management decisions because of their ability to integrate and evaluate multiple, complex processes simultaneously while accounting for uncertainty common in animal diseases. Here we review disease introduction pathways and transmission processes crucial for informing disease management and models at the …

Improved Evolutionary Support Vector Machine Classifier For Coronary Artery Heart Disease Prediction Among Diabetic Patients, Narasimhan B, Malathi A Dr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Soft computing paves way many applications including medical informatics. Decision support system has gained a major attention that will aid medical practitioners to diagnose diseases. Diabetes mellitus is hereditary disease that might result in major heart disease. This research work aims to propose a soft computing mechanism named Improved Evolutionary Support Vector Machine classifier for CAHD risk prediction among diabetes patients. The attribute selection mechanism is attempted to build with the classifier in order to reduce the misclassification error rate of the conventional support vector machine classifier. Radial basis kernel function is employed in IESVM. IESVM classifier is evaluated through …

Index

Bulletin of the University of Nebraska State Museum

No abstract provided.

Environmental Controls On The Seasonal Variation In Gas Exchange And Water Balance In A Near-Coastal Mediterranean Pinus Halepensis Forest, Mariangela N. Fotelli, Evangelia Korakaki, Spyridon A. Paparrizos, Kalliopi Radoglou, Tala Awada, Andreas Matzarakis

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis Mill.) is widespread in most countries of the Mediterranean area. In Greece, Aleppo pine forms natural stands of high economic and ecological importance. Understanding the species’ ecophysiological traits is important in our efforts to predict its responses to ongoing climate variability and change. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the seasonal dynamic in Aleppo pine gas exchange and water balance on the leaf and canopy levels in response to the intra-annual variability in the abiotic environment. Specifically, we assessed needle gas exchange, water potential and δ13C ratio, as well as tree sap flow …

Observation Of Single Top Quark Production In Association With A Z Boson In Proton-Proton Collisions At √S = 13 Tev, A. M. Sirunyan

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The observation of single top quark production in association with a Z boson and a quark (tZq) is reported. Events from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV containing three charged leptons (either electrons or muons) and at least two jets are analyzed. The data were collected with the CMS detector in 2016 and 2017 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 77.4fb⁻¹. The increased integrated luminosity, a multivariate lepton identification, and a redesigned analysis strategy improve significantly the sensitivity of the analysis compared to previous searches for tZq production. The tZq signal is …

Establishing Relationships Between Drought Indices And Wildfire Danger Outputs: A Test Case For The California-Nevada Drought Early Warning System, Daniel J. Mcevoy, Mike Hobbins, Timothy J. Brown, Kristin Vander Molen, Tamara Wall, Justin L. Huntington, Mark D. Svoboda

Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Relationships between drought indices and fire danger outputs are examined to (1) incorporate fire risk information into the National Integrated Drought Information System California–Nevada Drought EarlyWarning System and (2) provide a baseline analysis for application of drought indices into a fire risk management framework. We analyzed four drought indices that incorporate precipitation and evaporative demand (E0) and three fire indices that reflect fuel moisture and potential fire intensity. Seasonally averaged fire danger outputs were most strongly correlated to multi-scalar drought indices that use E0 (the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)) at approximately annual …

Testing Quantum Coherence In Stochastic Electrodynamics With Squeezed Schrödinger Cat States, Wayne Cheng-Wei Huang, Herman Batelaan

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The interference pattern in electron double-slit diffraction is a hallmark of quantum mechanics. A long-standing question for stochastic electrodynamics (SED) is whether or not it is capable of reproducing such effects, as interference is a manifestation of quantum coherence. In this study, we used excited harmonic oscillators to directly test this quantum feature in SED. We used two counter-propagating dichromatic laser pulses to promote a ground-state harmonic oscillator to a squeezed Schrödinger cat state. Upon recombination of the two well-separated wavepackets, an interference pattern emerges in the quantum probability distribution but is absent in the SED probability distribution. We thus …

Seasonal Salinization Decreases Spatial Heterogeneity Of Sulfate Reducing Activity, Valerie A. Schoepfer, Amy J. Burgin, Terry D. Loecke, Ashley M. Helton

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Evidence of sulfate input and reduction in coastal freshwater wetlands is often visible in the black iron monosulfide (FeS) complexes that form in iron rich reducing sediments. Using a modified Indicator of Reduction in Soils (IRIS) method, digital imaging, and geostatistics, we examine controls on the spatial properties of FeS in a coastal wetland fresh-to-brackish transition zone over a multi-month, drought-induced saltwater incursion event. PVC sheets (10 - 15 cm) were painted with an iron oxide paint and incubated vertically belowground and flush with the surface for 24 h along a salt-influenced to freshwater wetland transect in coastal North Carolina, …

Observation Of Two Excited B+C States And Measurement Of The B+C (2s) Mass In Pp Collisions At √S = 13 Tev, A. M. Sirunyan

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

Signals consistent with the B⁺_c (2S) and B*_c⁺(2S) states are observed in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV, in an event sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 143 fb⁻¹, collected by the CMS experiment during the 2015–2018 LHC running periods. These excited []c states are observed in the B⁺_c π⁺π⁻ invariant mass spectrum, with the ground state B⁺_c reconstructed through its decay to J/ψπ⁺. The two states are reconstructed as two well-resolved peaks, separated in mass by 29.1 ± 1.5(stat) ± …

A Case Study Analysis Of Two Heavy Snowfall Events And Road Weather Implications In 2018 For Nebraska, Nancy Barnhardt

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

Weather-related car accidents make up approximately a quarter of all crashes even though the amount of time during the year in which they can occur is minimal in comparison to fair weather day crashes. Maintenance Decision Support Systems (MDSS) were developed to help mitigate the number of crashes that occur during winter weather through improved operations along with reducing chemical usage. An MDSS uses weather information to recommend road treatments based on current and future weather conditions. To evaluate the limitations and capabilities of the Nebraska Department of Transportation Maintenance Decision Support System (NDOT-MDSS), case study analysis was performed on …

Leveraging Image Analysis For High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping, Sruti Das Choudhury, Ashok Samal, Tala Awada

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The complex interaction between a genotype and its environment controls the biophysical properties of a plant, manifested in observable traits, i.e., plant’s phenome, which influences resources acquisition, performance, and yield. High-throughput automated image-based plant phenotyping refers to the sensing and quantifying plant traits non-destructively by analyzing images captured at regular intervals and with precision. While phenomic research has drawn significant attention in the last decade, extracting meaningful and reliable numerical phenotypes from plant images especially by considering its individual components, e.g., leaves, stem, fruit, and flower, remains a critical bottleneck to the translation of advances of phenotyping technology into genetic …

Protocol Implementation Plan For Cave Water Quality Monitoring In The Northern Great Plains Network, Narrative Version 1.0, Isabel W. Ashton, Justin S. Mills, Marc Ohms, Daniel Austin, Michael Wiles, Kara Paintner-Green

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network includes thirteen park units located in five northern Great Plains states across six ecoregions. Two park units, Jewel Cave National Monument (JECA) and Wind Cave National Park (WICA), protect significant cave resources. These two caves are among the longest caves in the world and have an assortment of underground water resources ranging from drip sites to cave lakes. Subsurface water quantity and quality in the caves is a concern due to groundwater depletion and groundwater contamination from pesticides (aboveground applications), hydrocarbons (vehicle use and related activities), and wastewater effluent (sewage …

Droughtscape- Spring 2019, Cory Matteson

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Contents

From the director............... 2

Wet and cool conditions bring drought relief to the West................ 3

Notable numbers from Q1.................. 5

Drought impact summary, 1st quarter 2019................ 6

New research examines drought effects on state recreation areas................ 8

At Ethiopian space science workshop, NDMC climatologist sees promise in preparing for drought.......... 9

U.S.- affiliated Pacific Islands now part of U.S. Drought Monitor.............. 11

Water conservation tips for drought, flood and other disasters.............. 12

Upcoming events..............13

Determinants Of Incidence And Hessian Matrices Arising From The Vector Space Lattice, Saeed Nasseh, Alexandra Seceleanu, Junzo Watanabe

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

Let V = ⁿi= _o V^I bethe lattice of subspaces of the n-dimensional vector space over the finite field Fq, and let A be the graded Gorenstein algebra defined over Q which has V as a Q basis. Let F be the Macaulay dual generator for A. We explicitly compute the Hessian determinant j 2F= Xi Xj j, evaluated at the point X1 = X2 = ... = XN = 1, and relate it to the determinant of the incidence matrix between V1 and Vn-1. Our exploration is motivated by the fact that both of these matrices naturally …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- April 2019, Natalie Umphlett, Rezaul Mamood, Warren Pettee, Paul Flanagan, Bill Sorensen, Jamie Lahowetz, Emily Brown, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

Climate4Cities.......................2-3

Product highlight....................4

Update on regional climate conditions..................................4

THREDDS workshop...............5

AASC webinar...........................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

Analysis And Comparison Of Multiple Approaches For Software Development Management As Applied To A Design Studio Project, Bethany Hage

Honors Theses

This research analyzes multiple approaches to software development management through the lens of my experience in the Raikes Design Studio capstone program. The Design Studio project I participated in was a project for the company Hudl, and throughout its course we used techniques from the Agile framework of Scrum. I compared the Scrum principles to my team’s own application over the course of the project, and I researched other software development methodologies such as Extreme Programming and Lean in order to determine whether they could improve the effectiveness of the current Design Studio experience. The proposed solution to this question …

Putting The I In Science, Naomi Kirkvold

Honors Expanded Learning Clubs

This club gets kids interested in science in ways that they may not have experienced in a classroom by doing weekly experiments.

Defining, Measuring, And Applying Soil Quality: An Unresolved Debate, Salvador Ramirez Ii

Doctor of Plant Health Program: Dissertations and Student Research

Paradigm shifts occur periodically in the sciences. Proposed paradigm shifts offer opportunities to reexamine extant paradigms and evaluate new ones. Soil science experienced a controversy resembling a proposed paradigm shift in the late 1990s and early 2000s when it grappled with the idea of soil quality (SQ). The most contentious points in the SQ debates were (1) the word “quality” itself and designing a functional definition, (2) identifying appropriate soil quality indicators, (3) the integration of soil quality indicators, and (4) the interpretation of soil quality indicators. The latter three disagreements were rooted in the established, fundamental, soil science paradigm. …

Development Of Nanomaterial Supports For The Study Of Affinity-Based Analytes Using Ultra-Thin Layer Chromatography, Allegra Pekarek

Department of Chemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Ultra-thin layer chromatography (UTLC) is a growing field in analytical separations. UTLC is a branch of planar and liquid chromatography that is related to thin layer chromatography. The main advantage of UTLC compared to other techniques is it uses much less material, allowing for faster and more sensitive separations to take place. The UTLC devices fabricated in this project used either silicon oxide or silicon nanopillars deposited on a glass slide using glancing angle deposition (GLAD). Even a thin layer of these nanopillars deposited on a glass slide provide a large surface area for the analyte to be separated. GLAD …

Analysis Of Drug-Protein Interactions During Diabetes By High-Performance Affinity Chromatography, Pingyang Tao

Department of Chemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

High-performance affinity chromatography (HPAC) is a type of liquid chromatography in which solutes are separated based on their binding to a stationary phase that is a biologically-related agent. Sulfonylurea drugs have significant binding to proteins in blood, with most of this binding is believed to occur with human serum albumin (HSA). HSA is known to be modified as a result of the high serum levels of glucose that is present during diabetes, which may also alter the function of HSA as a binding agent for many drugs in circulation. Some modifications of HSA that can occur during diabetes involves early …

Gaindroid: General Automated Incompatibility Notifier For Android Applications, Bruno Vieira Resende E Silva

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

With the ever-increasing popularity of mobile devices over the last decade, mobile apps and the frameworks upon which they are built frequently change. This rapid evolution leads to a confusing jumble of devices and applications utilizing differing features even within the same framework. For Android apps and devices, representing over 80% of the market share, mismatches between the version of the Android operating system installed on a device and the version of the app installed, can lead to several run-time crashes, providing a poor user experience.

This thesis presents GAINDroid, an analysis approach, backed with a classloader based program analyzer, …

Feasibility And Security Analysis Of Wideband Ultrasonic Radio For Smart Home Applications, Qi Xia

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Smart home Internet-of-Things (IoT) accompanied by smart home apps has witnessed tremendous growth in the past few years. Yet, the security and privacy of the smart home IoT devices and apps have raised serious concerns, as they are getting increasingly complicated each day, expected to store and exchange extremely sensitive personal data, always on and connected, and commonly exposed to any users in a sensitive environment. Nowadays wireless smart home IoT devices rely on electromagnetic wave-based radio-frequency (RF) technology to establish fast and reliable quality network connections. However, RF has its limitations that can negatively affect the smart home user …

Sequential Differences In Nabla Fractional Calculus, Ariel Setniker

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

We study the composition of nabla fractional differences of unequal orders, known as "sequential" nabla fractional differences. The sequential differences we examine possess different bases — specifically, we establish the outer operator as having a base larger than the inner operator by at least an integer factor of 1. Further, we consider two cases of orders: first the case when the outer difference has a larger power, and second when the inner difference has a larger power.

We develop rules for sequential nabla fractional differences and present connections between the sign of a sequential difference of a function and the …

Perturbative Generalization Of Nonparaxial Ultrashort Tightly-Focused Elegant Laguerre-Gaussian Beams, Andrew M. Vikartofsky

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An analytical method for calculating the electromagnetic fields of a nonparaxial elegant Laguerre-Gaussian (eLG) vortex beam is presented for arbitrary pulse duration, spot size, and LG mode. This perturbative approach provides a numerically tractable model for the calculation of arbitrarily high radial and azimuthal LG modes in the nonparaxial regime, without requiring integral representations of the fields. A key feature of this perturbative model is its use of a Poisson-like frequency spectrum, which allows for the proper description of pulses of arbitrarily short duration. The time-domain representation of this model is presented as a non-recursive closed-form expression to any order …

Magnetization Reversal And Local Switching Fields Of Ferromagnetic Co/Pd Microtubes With Radial Magnetization, Norbert Puwenberg, Christopher F. Reiche, Robert Streubel, Mishal Khan, Dipankar Mukherjee, Ivan V. Soldatov, Michael Melzer, Oliver G. Schmidt, Bernd Büchner, Thomas Mühl

Robert Streubel Papers

Three-dimensional nanomagnetism is a rapidly growing field of research covering both noncollinear spin textures and curved magnetic geometries including microtubular structures. We spatially resolve the field-induced magnetization reversal of free-standing ferromagnetic microtubes utilizing multifrequency magnetic force microscopy (MFM). The microtubes are composed of Co/Pd multilayer films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy that translates to an anisotropy with radial easy axis upon rolling-up. Simultaneously mapping the topography and the perpendicular magnetostatic force derivative, the relation between surface angle and local magnetization configuration is evaluated for a large number of locations with slopes exceeding 45 degrees. The angle-dependence of the switching field is …

Combination Of Searches For Higgs Boson Pair Production In Proton-Proton Collisions At √S = 13 Tev, A. M. Sirunyan

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

This Letter describes a search for Higgs boson pair production using the combined results from four final states: bbγγ, bbττ, bbbb, and bbVV, where V represents a W or Z boson. The search is performed using data collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment from LHC proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb⁻¹. Limits are set on the Higgs boson pair production cross section. A 95% confidence level observed (expected) upper limit on the nonresonant production cross section is set at 22.2 (12.8) times the standard model …

Flow Alteration-Ecology Relationships In Ozark Highland Streams: Consequences For Fish, Crayfish And Macroinvertebrate Assemblages, Dustin T. Lynch, Douglas R. Easure, Daniel D. Magoulick

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

We examined flowalteration-ecology relationships in benthic macroinvertebrate, fish, and crayfish assemblages in Ozark Highland streams, USA, over two years with contrasting environmental conditions, a drought year (2012) and a flood year (2013). We hypothesized that: 1) there would be temporal variation in flow alteration-ecology relationships between the two years, 2) flow alteration-ecology relationshipswould be stronger during the drought year vs the flood year, and 3) fish assemblages would show the strongest relationships with flow alteration. We used a quantitative richest-targeted habitat (RTH) method and a qualitative multihabitat (QMH) method to collect macroinvertebrates at 16 USGS gaged sites during both years. …

Flow Alteration-Ecology Relationships In Ozark Highland Streams: Consequences For Fish, Crayfish And Macroinvertebrate Assemblages, Dustin Thomas Lynch, Douglas R. Leasure, Daniel D. Magoulick

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

We examined flowalteration-ecology relationships in benthic macroinvertebrate, fish, and crayfish assemblages in Ozark Highland streams, USA, over two years with contrasting environmental conditions, a drought year (2012) and a flood year (2013). We hypothesized that: 1) there would be temporal variation in flow alteration-ecology relationships between the two years, 2) flow alteration-ecology relationshipswould be stronger during the drought year vs the flood year, and 3) fish assemblages would show the strongest relationships with flow alteration. We used a quantitative richest-targeted habitat (RTH) method and a qualitative multihabitat (QMH) method to collect macroinvertebrates at 16 USGS gaged sites during both years. …