Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sinkhole Lake Infiltration Of Contaminants Of Emerging Concern From Onsite Water Treatment Systems, Ethan A. Upton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advancement in synthetic chemicals commonly referred to as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and their application has led to an increase in environmental pollution. The use of septic tanks otherwise referred to as onsite water treatment systems (OWTS), promotes the introduction of CECs into the environment while allowing little in the way of remediation. In order to study the impacts of CECs from OWTS as they infiltrate the environment and the aquifer system, water, sediment, and vegetation samples were collected around a sinkhole lake surrounded by residential housing using OWTSs. The main question of this research project is what …

The Distribution And Biogeochemistry Of Subtropical Intertidal Microbial Mats, Bert D. Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Microbial mats have played an important role in the carbon (C) and nutrient cycles since the Archean Eon and modern mats are important contributors to the biogeochemistry of intertidal wetlands. Microbial mats are flat assemblages of microbes that are currently found in many unvegetated habitats globally. Intertidal salt pans are a common habitat for microbial mats, however little is known about the distribution of microbial mats within the intertidal landscape. Understanding the spatial distribution of microbial mats is critical to developing quantitative estimates of the impacts of microbial mats on their ecosystems. We photographically measured the presence and density of …

Habitat Suitability Index Model Of The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis Pratensis) In West-Central Florida, Courtney E. Buck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) is a state threatened endemic subspecies of the Sandhill Crane (Nesbitt & Tacha, 1997). With a population that was estimated at a maximum of 5,000 individuals in 2003 (Nesbitt & Hatchitt, 2008), it is imperative to identify potentially viable habitats, as Florida is rapidly developing. This research develops a Habitat Suitability Index model to determine unsuitable to optimally suitable habitat locations throughout west-central Florida. To do so, six suitability variables based on the crane’s life history were evaluated: Potential nesting area, immediate nesting area, wetland coverage, foraging area, brooding area, and road proximity. …

Synthesis, Discovery And Delivery Of Therapeutic Natural Products And Analogs, Zachary P. Shultz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Small molecule drug discovery relies heavily on synthetic organic chemistry to develop novel chemical entities that elicit desirable therapeutic effects. The development of targeted chemical syntheses is of paramount importance to access molecules for biological evaluation and is usually considered the bottleneck in most drug discovery campaigns. Targets for chemical syntheses commonly draw inspiration from molecules of natural origin. Nature harbors a wealth of chemical diversity that has established itself over millions of years through chemical and biological evolution. Organisms have an inherent ability to protect themselves from predators and harmful environments. In doing so, many of them evolve to …

Power Graphs Of Quasigroups, Dayvon L. Walker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We investigate power graphs of quasigroups. The power graph of a quasigroup takes the elements of the quasigroup as its vertices, and there is an edge from one element to a second distinct element when the second is a left power of the first. We first compute the power graphs of small quasigroups (up to four elements). Next we describe quasigroups whose power graphs are directed paths, directed cycles, in-stars, out-stars, and empty. We do so by specifying partial Cayley tables, which cannot always be completed in small examples. We then consider sinks in the power graph of a quasigroup, …

An Optimal Medium-Strength Regularity Algorithm For 3-Uniform Hypergraphs, John Theado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Szemere´di’s Regularity Lemma [32, 33] is an important tool in combinatorics, with numerous appli- cations in combinatorial number theory, discrete geometry, extremal graph theory, and theoretical computer science.

The Regularity Lemma hinges on the following concepts. Let G = (V, E) be a graph and let ∅ /= X, Y ⊂ V be a pair of disjoint vertex subsets. We define the density of the pair (X, Y ) by d_G(X, Y ) = |E[X, Y ]|/(|X||Y |) where E[X, Y ] denotes the …

Rethinking Map Literacy And An Analysis Of Quantitative Map Literacy, Ming Xie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maps are increasingly being used in traditional and virtual media, and civic discourse on political, social, and environmental issues, among others, is more and more becoming influenced by them. The often-used expression of a “picture tells a 1000 words” has never been so apt in our progressively more visual world. Despite this increased role and importance of maps, map literacy, as a field of research, remains rather underdeveloped. This is especially so for thematic maps, the very type of map that is finding increasing currency in discourse. As part of this under-developed nature of map literacy, the quantitative skills used …

Design And Testing Of A Reciprocating Wind Harvester, Ahmet Topcuoglu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Renewable energy sources are vital to reduce dependence on fossil fuels that are harmful for the environment and release greenhouse gases causing global warming. Wind energy is a natural source of energy that is abundant in the environment. While wind turbines are most popular, convenient, and used to harvest energy at large scales, there have been recent studies focusing on harvesting energy from the wind for microdevices. Such micro wind energy harvesters can decrease dependence on batteries.

In this study, a novel, framed flag micro wind harvester was designed and tested, and its behavior at three different wind speeds was …

Determining The Impacts Of The Anthropocene Through Time-Calibrated Taphonomic Grading, Nicole Seiden, Gregory S. Herbert

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Global biodiversity loss threatens ecosystem integrity and related services for humans, but most communities lack baseline data to assess the magnitude of change. In marine conservation, molluscan death assemblages are increasingly being used as a proxy for baseline communities, and divergence between the live and the dead is assumed to reflect human impact. A drawback to partitioning an assemblage into live and dead is that inclusion of recently dead specimens in the baseline assemblage artificially reduces differences between before and after. In this study, we address this problem by using a radiocarbon- and amino acid-calibrated taphonomic grading scale to partition …

Measuring Influence Across Social Media Platforms: Empirical Analysis Using Symbolic Transfer Entropy, Abhishek Bhattacharjee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media platforms are interconnected environments that influence each other. Information from one social media platform spreads to another. This thesis proposes a platform-independent framework to analyze information transfer across social media platforms. This thesis uses Symbolic Transfer Entropy and Statistical Significance Test to measure influence and optimize the time window of influence between different platforms. To validate the framework, the thesis analyses the temporal activity dynamics and the information transfer across three different platforms, Reddit, Twitter and GitHub.

Two data driven studies are described in this thesis. The first study finds the optimum time windows of influence between the …

Prioritizing Rehabilitation Of Sanitary Sewers In Pinellas County, Fl, Jesse T. Hillman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following large rain events, extraneous freshwater contributions known as inflow and infiltration (I/I) bypass the storm sewer and enter the sanitary sewer system. In areas with a high water table, like Pinellas County and the surrounding Tampa Bay area, a majority of the wastewater infrastructure is submerged year round exacerbating the rate of groundwater infiltration. This excess flow overloads the existing wastewater infrastructure leading to sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs). These SSOs result in serious problems for municipalities and utilities across the country.

This study was performed in order to assist Pinellas County Utilities in rehabilitating their southern sewer system. To …

Autonomous Monocular Obstacle Detection For Avoidance In Quadrotor Uavs, Panos Valavanis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) research and development and applications have witnessed unprecedented levels of growth in the past two decades. Although military applications have dominated the market, it is anticipated and expected that civilian and public domain applications will be dominant in the future. Consequently, gradual and timely integration of unmanned aviation into the National Airspace System (NAS) is a real challenge, and roadmaps towards achieving full integration are already in place in the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and European Union (EU). However, before com- plete integration of manned-unmanned aviation, additional challenging problems need to be addressed and solved, …

Authentication And Sql-Injection Prevention Techniques In Web Applications, Cagri Cetin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the top two “most critical web-application security risks” by combining two high-level contributions.

The first high-level contribution introduces and evaluates collaborative authentication, or coauthentication, a single-factor technique in which multiple registered devices work together to authenticate a user. Coauthentication provides security benefits similar to those of multi-factor techniques, such as mitigating theft of any one authentication secret, without some of the inconveniences of multi-factor techniques, such as having to enter passwords or biometrics. Coauthentication provides additional security benefits, including: preventing phishing, replay, and man-in-the-middle attacks; basing authentications on high-entropy secrets that can be generated and updated automatically; …

Generalized Derivations Of Ternary Lie Algebras And N-Bihom-Lie Algebras, Amine Ben Abdeljelil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We generalize the results of Leger and Luks and other researchers about generalized derivations to the cases of ternary Lie algebras and n-BiHom Lie algebras. We investigate the derivations algebras of ternary Lie algebras induced from Lie algebras, we explore the subalgebra of quasi-derivations and give their properties. Moreover, we give a classification of the derivations algebras for low dimensional ternary Lie algebras.

For the class of n-BiHom Lie algebras, we study the algebras of generalized derivations and prove that the algebra of quasi-derivations can be embedded in the derivation algebra of a larger n-BiHom Lie algebra.

Landscape Grain Effect In Yancheng Coastal Wetland And Its Response To Landscape Changes, Peng Tian, Luodan Cao, Jialin Li, Ruiliang Pu, Xiaoli Shi, Lijia Wang, Ruiqing Liu, Hao Xu, Chen Tong, Zijing Zhou, Shuyao Shao

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The landscape grain effect reflects the spatial heterogeneity of a landscape and it is used as a research core of landscape ecology. The landscape grain effect can be used to not only explore spatiotemporal variation characteristics of a landscape pattern, but also to disclose variation laws of ecological structures and functions of landscapes. In this study, the sensitivity of landscape pattern indexes to grain sizes 50–1000 m was studied based on landscape data in Yancheng Coastal Wetland acquired in 1991, 2000, 2008, and 2017. Response of the grain effect to landscape changes was analyzed and an optimal grain size for …

Malicious Manipulation In Service-Oriented Network, Software, And Mobile Systems: Threats And Defenses, Dakun Shen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three approaches we have been designed to tackle threats and challenges in network, software, and mobile security. The first approach demonstrates a new class of content masking attacks against the Adobe PDF standard, causing documents to appear to humans dissimilar to the underlying content extracted by information-based services. The second work protects sensitive data in binaries from being corrupted by cyber attackers. The last work proposes a mechanism which utilizes the unique walking patterns inherent to humans and differentiate our work from other walking behavior studies by using it as first-order authentication and developing matching methods fast …

Probabilistic And Statistical Prediction Models For Alzheimer’S Disease And Statistical Analysis Of Global Warming, Maryam Ibrahim Habadi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The importance and applicability of data-driven statistical models have increased significantly. This current study, we have utilized statistical techniques in interdisciplinary research, including environmental and health.

Environmentally, global warming is considered one of the critical issues facing our planet. It is the increase in average global temperatures caused mostly by increases in Carbon Dioxide CO₂. The excessive rise of carbon dioxide from the average level as the side effect of the industrial revolution has a significant impact on blocking the heat and increase the temperature within the Earth’s atmosphere. Based on the record of total CO₂ emissions …

Functional Porous Materials: Applications For Environmental Sustainability, Briana Amaris Aguila

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Resource depletion, clean water shortages, and global climate change have led to environmental sustainability being of primary concern for both governmental and industrial practices. Current methods to address these challenges typically come as a double-edged sword, fixing one problem while contributing to another. As introduced in chapter one of this dissertation, adsorbent materials are seen as a promising alternative remediation system due to their low energy consumption and minimal chemical waste production. However, many traditional adsorbents, such as activated carbon, metal oxides, and resins, are hindered in practice. This is because they lack the structural tunability to have long-term effectiveness …

Morphological And Mineralogical Evidence For Ancient Bat Presence In Cova Des Pas De Vallgornera (Llucmajor, Mallorca, Western Mediterranean), Antoni Merino, Joan J. Fornós, Antoni Mulet, Joaquín Ginés

International Journal of Speleology

Cova des Pas de Vallgornera is a unique karst cave located at the Llucmajor coastal platform that stands out not only because of its length, more than 78 km, but also for its particular morphological suite, richness and variety of speleothems and mineral infillings. Although the mineralogy of speleothems and minerals related to hypogene morphologies has been studied and described, the existence of minerals derived from guano deposits was still poorly investigated. The cave hosted bat colonies until the collapse of its natural entrances, circa 2.4 My ago, since then until its discovery in 1968, the cave remained sealed. These …

The Multifactorial Nature Of Beak And Skull Shape Evolution In Parrots And Cockatoos (Psittaciformes), Jen A. Bright, Jesús Marugán-Lobón, Emily J. Rayfield, Samuel N. Cobb

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Background: The Psittaciformes (parrots and cockatoos) are characterised by their large beaks, and are renowned for their ability to produce high bite forces. These birds also possess a suite of modifications to their cranial architecture interpreted to be adaptations for feeding on mechanically resistant foods, yet the relationship between cranial morphology and diet has never been explicitly tested. Here, we provide a three-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis of the developmental and biomechanical factors that may be influencing the evolution of psittaciformes’ distinctive cranial morphologies.

Results: Contrary to our own predictions, we find that dietary preferences for more- or less- mechanically resistant …

Illuminating Changes In Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions About Teaching Elementary Mathematicsin An Introductory Methods Course, Elaine Cerrato

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Producing highly skilled elementary mathematics teachers capable of facilitating mathematics learning in ways aligned with The Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), is a common objective of teacher preparation programs (National Governors Association & Chief Council of State School Officers, 2010). After decades of effort, Brown (2003) argues, teachers continue to teach in the way they were taught; thus, they disregard mathematics standards. As Abell, Appleton, and Hanuscin (2010) note, students’ preexisting ideas relevant to the nature of learning and teaching stem from experiences in their schooling, life, and …

The Potential Of Marine Microbes, Flora And Fauna In Drug Discovery, Santana Alexa Lavonia Thomas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Natural products are chemical compounds synthesized by a living organism. These compounds have been utilized by humans from ancient times to the present for their pharmacological and biological activities. Terrestrial organisms are considered a lucrative source of bioactive compounds and chemical diversity. Within the past 60 years, the marine environment has presented its potential as a validated source for structural diversity and biologically active compounds. Technology has given access from shallow waters down to the abyssal plane for exploration and investigation of the inhabitants. Marine organisms have displayed their benefits in the pharmaceutical industry with the approval of several marine-derived …

Phase Evolution And Dynamic Behavior In Materials With Noncollinear Spin Textures, Eleanor M. Clements

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Noncentrosymmetric magnetic materials have gained special attention due to their ability to stabilize topologically nontrivial magnetic states via the competition between symmetric exchange and the antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction. The spin struc- tures in these materials have become a center of interest for spintronics applications due to their stable, particle-like properties, and high degree of tunability via control of external parameters, such as magnetic and/or electric field and temperature. Understanding how these robust magnetic structures stabilize, evolve, dynamically respond, and adhere to existing models, all in the presence of external stimuli, are topics of fundamental interest. In this dissertation, the …

Water And Salt At The Lipid-Solvent Interface, James M. Kruczek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lipid bilayers are important biological structures. The changes in bilayer properties are induced by the composition of the bilayer as well as the solvent. In this work, we study the effects of different molecular makeups of lipids and ionic solvents with molecular dynamics simulations to determine their effect on the bilayer interface. In particular, we look at how different carbon chain bindings affect water viscosity at the interface and allow for a less permeable bilayer. Additionally, we examine the changes to the bilayer due to the presence of the most biologically relevant salt ions. Lastly, we show how the pharmacological …

Cooperation In Community Colleges, Frederic S. Gore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the mounting pressures on institutions of higher education to do more with limited resources, the opportunity to collaborate with other colleges has emerged as a viable tool to create efficiencies and obtain valuable knowledge otherwise unattainable by an institution, even if that collaboration takes place with a competing institution. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are critical to managing student information and college operations, but can be challenging for colleges to implement. Consortia present a unique solution to colleges to address gaps in their expertise and skills needed to achieve a successful ERP implementation. This study explores the factors that …

Documenting Evolution: Comparing And Contrasting Late Mesozoic And Late Cenozoic Molluscan Patterns, Joshua Slattery

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite major advances, evolutionary theory still has numerous shortcomings in terms of fully understanding the controls on speciation and diversification. A major factor limiting our knowledge is how biology and paleobiology view speciation from separate micro- and macro-evolutionary perspectives, respectively. Biologists typically examine microevolutionary changes within species from various biogeographic, behavioral, morphological, and genetic perspectives, which contrasts to the macroevolutionary approach of most paleobiologists, who have examined the same phenomena at larger scales but with the standpoint of time, have also concentrated on aspects of global or regional diversification (e.g., richness, origination rates, and extinction rates) over the long-term. Noticeably …

Essays On Time Series And Machine Learning Techniques For Risk Management, Michael Kotarinos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Capital Asset Pricing Model combined with the Sharpe ratio is a standard method for choosing assets for selection in a portfolio. However, this method has many structural issues and was designed for a time when high dimensional computing was in its infancy. An alternative to these methods using a mix of Multi-Level Time Series Clustering, the MACBETH algorithm and traditional time series techniques was constructed that minimized data loss and allow for customized portfolio construction for investors with different risk profiles and specialized investment needs. It was shown that these methods are adaptable to cloud computing environments and allow …

Studies Of The Long-Term Change Of Global Mean And Regional Sea Surface Height, Yingli Zhu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sea level change could have profound impacts on our society. We report here on three related sea level change problems. First, a variety of regression models have predicted different rates for global mean sea level rise over the past century. Some of these models are accelerating and others are not. We ask whether we can distinguish between these using a new nonparametric noise model that we have developed. Simulations show that we can, and further imply that GMSL is rising at an accelerating rate. Second, historical global mean sea level is reconstructed from tide gauges that are located along coastlines …

Volcanic Electrification: A Multiparametric Case Study Of Sakurajima Volcano, Japan, Cassandra M. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electrical activity at volcanoes has been recently recognized as a potential new remote sensing technique for plume-forming eruptions. Volcanic electrical activity takes place in the conduit and plume and therefore has the benefit of being a direct indicator of surface activity. This is unlike seismic signals, which indicate magma/gas movement underground, and infrasound signals, which indicate a surface explosion but not necessarily the formation of an ash plume. There are two distinct types of volcanic electrical discharges: volcanic lightning and continual radio frequency (CRF) impulses. This dissertation explores the relationships between these two electrical signals and other commonly monitored volcanic …

High-Resolution Investigation Of Event Driven Sedimentation: Response And Evolution Of The Deepwater Horizon Blowout In The Sedimentary System, Rebekka A. Larson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This Dissertation combines the investigation of the sedimentological impacts of the Deepwater Horizon (DwH) blowout event in the deep-sea benthos, with the refinement and advancement of methods and approaches for high-resolution investigations of events preserved in sedimentary records. An approach that combined, rapid collection of cores, a continued annual time series collection of cores, and high-resolution sampling and analyses, in particular short-lived Radioisotopes (SLRad), enabled the temporal resolution required to detect the sedimentary response to the short-duration DwH event, and evaluate post-event sedimentation patterns at a comparable time scale (months).

The collection of 179 sediment cores from 80 sites between …