Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Study Of Hippocampal Microglia Distribution In Pre-Adolescent Mice Chronically Exposed To Lead, Salvador Dominguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Lead is a major unresolved child health hazard. Children are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of lead exposure, which include disruption of brain development and brain function. How lead exposure alters brain development and brain function is not currently known. Our laboratory has been developing a mouse model to understand effects of low-level lead exposure in the developing brain. In previous studies, we have shown that early chronic low level lead exposure diminished the number of microglia in the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus, an area responsible for learning and memory. Building on the results of the previous …

Evaluation Of Cryptic Sulfur Cycling In Marine Sediments, Michael Ngari Mathuri

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite the importance of marine sediments as a carbon sink and many efforts to integrate microbiological with geochemical and geological data, the understanding of microbial organic carbon mineralization processes in marine sediments remains incomplete. There is growing evidence for the existence of an unrecognized oxidative sulfur cycling (cryptic sulfur cycling) above, within and below of the main sulfate reduction zone. For example, sulfate exists in supposedly sulfate-free methanogenic marine sediments from the Aarhus Bay and Black Sea. This implies that sulfur cycling is an ongoing process in the deep biosphere. Quantification of cryptic sulfur cycling is a major challenge because …

A Quantitative Analysis Of The Fretted Terrain Valleys, Arabia Terra, Mars, Kelsey Anne Mason

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Fretted terrain describes regions on Mars with low-lying, flat valleys separated by steep cliffs that often form polygonal-shaped mesas. The fretted terrain valleys have a morphology distinct from other valleys found on Mars, and their unknown origin may hold insights into critical questions about Mars' tectonic, magmatic, and hydrologic history. Current hypoThesis for the formation of the fretted terrain include fracturing as well as hydrological flow processes such as fluvial or glacial erosion. The region for this study is located in eastern Arabia Terra and is the type-location for fretted terrain. By qualitatively and quantitatively documenting the planform, or map-view, …

Classification Of Radar Jammer Fm Signals Using A Neural Network Approach, Ariadna Estefania Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A Neural Network (NN) used to classify radar signals is proposed for the purpose of military survivability and lethality analysis. The goal of the NN is to correctly differentiate Frequency-Modulated (FM) signals from Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) using limited signal pre-processing. The FM signals used to test the NN approach are the linear or chirp FM and the power-law FM. Preliminary simulations using the moments of the signals in the time and frequency domain yielded better results in the frequency domain, suggesting that time domain training would not be as effective frequency domain training. To test this hypoThesis, we …

Cycling Of Gypsiferous White Sands Aerosols In The Shallow Critical Zone At White Mountain, New Mexico, Patrick Richard Rea

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Dry deposition significantly affects evolution of the critical zone by nutrient supply and contributing to soil genesis. Dust influx and cycling in soils are difficult to quantify because dust sources can be chemically similar to local soils. White Sands, New Mexico, emits gypsum dust with a unique chemical and isotopic signature, providing an opportunity to investigate dust deposition and its movement in soils. This study evaluated the mobility of White Sands dust particles in the critical zone at White Mountain, New Mexico, a highland 100 km downwind. Four soil profiles were collected over limestone, igneous, mixed limestone and dolostone, and …

Complementary Charged Molecular Imprints Of West Nile Virus Antibodies, Julio Rincon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a significant demand for robust and stable receptor molecules that can mimic biological molecules, such as antibodies. Relying only on natural recognition molecules have greatly limited the uses and capabilities of many aspects of health sciences due to product expense and stability. This is especially important in medically underserved areas where the lack of resources and faulty or limited cold-chain makes antibody based diagnostics very difficult to implement.

With molecular imprinting, it is possible to recognize diseases with the added advantage of product stability, long term use, fast preparation and ease of scalability, all while being cost effective. …

Seismic Investigation Of The Kunlun Fault: Analysis Of The Indepth Iv 2-D Active-Source Seismic Dataset, William Seelig

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Tibetan Plateau has experienced significant crustal thickening and deformation since the continental subduction and collision of the Asian and Indian plates in the Eocene. Deformation of the northern Tibetan Plateau is largely accommodated by strike-slip faulting. The Kunlun Fault is a 1000-km long strike-slip fault near the northern boundary of the Plateau that has experienced five magnitude 7.0 or greater earthquakes in the past 100 years and represents a major rheological boundary. Active-source, 2-D seismic reflection/ refraction data, collected as part of project INDEPTH IV (International Deep Profiling of Tibet and the Himalaya, phase IV) in 2007, was used …

Bimetallic Centers With Open Coordination Sites And Magnetic Nanocomposites For Water Remediation, Karen Ventura

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The development of effective, renewable and environmentally friendly energy sources is essential to supply the growing global energy demands. The use of fossil fuels to fulfill those energy demands have led to the increase of greenhouse gases and water contamination. The extraction of oil and gas requires a large amount of pressurized water, resulting in contaminated water as a byproduct. Meanwhile, ensuring access to clean water is one of the greatest global challenges of this century.

The following study is presented in three sections. In the first section, a bimetallic system with open coordination sites that can be used as …

Computational Methods For Prediction And Classification Of G Protein-Coupled Receptors, Khodeza Begum

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) constitute the largest group of membrane receptor proteins in eukaryotes. Due to their significant roles in many physiological processes such as vision, smell, and inflammation, GPCRs are the targets of many prescribed drugs. However, the functional and structural diversity of GPCRs has kept their prediction and classification based on amino acid sequence data as a challenging bioinformatics problem. As existing computational methods to predict and classify GPCRs are focused on mammalian (mostly human) data, the ultimate goal of our project is to establish an ensemble approach and implement a web-based software that can be used reliably …

Dft Study Of Adsorption Of Trimetallic Endohedral Fullerenes On Graphene, Nakul Nitin Karle

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A density functional theory (DFT) study on the geometric and electronic structure of C60 and Sc3N@C80 along with their adsorption on pristine single layer graphene (SLG) is presented. C60 is found to adsorb in two nearly degenerate configurations: (i) with a pentagon facing the SLG, which is the most stable one, and (ii) with a hexagon facing the SLG in a face-to-face perfect alignment, rarely common in Ï?â??Ï? interactions, 0.06 eV higher in energy. The calculated binding energy of 0.76 eV, which includes dispersion effects, is in good agreement with previous theoretical and experimental reports. On the contrary, Sc3N@C80 adsorption …

Deep Learning Method Vs. Hand-Crafted Features For Lung Cancer Diagnosis And Breast Cancer Risk Analysis, Wenqing Sun

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Breast cancer and lung cancer are two major leading causes of cancer deaths, and researchers have been developing computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system to automatically diagnose them for decades. In recent studies, we found that the techniques in CAD system can also be used for breast cancer risk analysis, like feature design and machine learning. Also we noticed that with the development of deep learning methods, the performance of CAD system can be improved by using computer automatically generated features. To explore these possibilities, we conducted a series of studies: the first two studies focused on transferring the original CAD …

Raman Microscopic Analysis Of Internal Stress In Boron-Doped Diamond Thin Films, Emma M.A. Sundin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The correlations between induced stress on undoped and boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin films, sample chemical composition, and fabrication substrate are investigated in this study via confocal Raman microspectroscopic analysis. Stability of BDD films is relevant to fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, as film delamination and dislocation of BDD-coated electrodes that can occur during neurosurgical electrode implantation can negatively impact the biosensing reliability of this technique. Electrodes were fabricated by coating cylindrical tungsten rods using a custom-built chemical vapor deposition reactor. The results of the analysis reveal a direct correlation between regions of pure diamond and enhanced material stress, as well as preferential …

Label-Free Raman Imaging To Monitor Breast Tumor Signatures, John Ciubuc

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Methods built on Raman spectroscopy have shown major potential in describing and discriminating between malignant and benign specimens. Accurate, real-time medical diagnosis benefits in substantial improvements through this vibrational optical method. Not only is acquisition of data possible in milliseconds and analysis in minutes, Raman allows concurrent detection and monitoring of all biological components. Besides validating a significant Raman signature distinction between non-tumorigenic (MCF-10A) and tumorigenic (MCF-7) breast epithelial cells, this study reveals a label-free method to assess overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) in tumor cells. EGFR overexpression sires Raman features associated with phosphorylated threonine and serine, and …

Imaging Live Drosophila Brain With Two-Photon Fluorescence Microscopy, Syeed Ehsan Ahmed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Two-photon fluorescence microscopy is an imaging technique which delivers distinct benefits for in vivo cellular and molecular imaging. Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), a second messenger molecule, is responsible for triggering many physiological changes in neural system. However, the mechanism by which this molecule regulates responses in neuron cells is not yet clearly understood. When cAMP binds to a target protein, it changes the structure of that protein. Therefore, studying this molecular structure change with fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) imaging can shed light on the cAMP functioning mechanism. FRET is a non-radiative dipole-dipole coupling which is sensitive to small distance …

Methods For Producing Graphene From Petroleum By-Products, Eva M. Deemer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

N/A

Optimization Of Neural Network Architecture For Classification Of Radar Jamming Fm Signals, Alberto Soto

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Radar jamming signal classification is valuable when situational awareness of radar systems is sought out for timely deployment of electronic support measures. Our Thesis shows that artificial neural networks can be utilized for effective and efficient signal classification. The goal is to optimize an artificial Neural Network (NN) approach capable of distinguishing between two common radar waveforms, namely bandlimited white Gaussian jamming noise (BWGN) and the ubiquitous linearly frequency modulated (LFM) signal. This is made possible by creating a theoretical framework for NN architecture testing that leads to a high probability of detection (PD) and a low probability of false …

Synthesis Of New Fullerene Derivatives For Photovoltaic And Biological Applications, Edison Castro

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Functionalized fullerenes exhibit improved solubility and different chemical and physical properties that allow applications in multiple fields such as photovoltaic and biological applications. Currently, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are the most rapidly developing type of solar cells with certified efficiencies rising from 3.8% in 2009 to 22.1% in 2016. The good electron transporting and solution processable properties of most fullerene derivatives make them the most popular electron transporting materials (ETMs) in inverted perovskite solar cells (PSCs).

The work is reported in 11 chapters. We start with a fullerene overview followed by cleaver and elegant methodologies that allow the synThesis of …

Airborne Lead In El Paso, Texas, Usa, Lisa Marie Paz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite significant strides to minimize lead in our air, water, soil, food, homes, workplaces, and consumer products, sporadic and systemic lead poisoning persists in industrial societies, e.g., the contemporary Flint (Michigan, USA) municipal water tragedy. Because lead exposure is cumulative, the sum of exposure from all sources, it is important to document and update potential community or neighborhood exposure levels from such environmental compartments as air, water, and housing. Here we present ambient airborne lead levels in El Paso, Texas, USA, parsed by particulate matter (PM) size fraction, geography, and season. Dichotomous samplers at 8 stations collected particulate matter continuously …

Combining Interval, Probabilistic, And Other Types Of Uncertainty In Engineering Applications, Andrew Martin Pownuk

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In many practical application, we process measurement results and expert estimates. Measurements and expert estimates are never absolutely accurate, their result are slightly different from the actual (unknown) values of the corresponding quantities. It is therefore desirable to analyze how this measurement and estimation inaccuracy affects the results of data processing.

There exist numerous methods for estimating the accuracy of the results of data processing under different models of measurement and estimation inaccuracies: probabilistic, interval, and fuzzy. To be useful in engineering applications, these methods should provide accurate estimate for the resulting uncertainty, should not take too much computation time, …

Study Of Electron Gas On A Neutron-Rich Nuclear Pasta, Enrique Ramirez-Homs

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study used a classical molecular dynamics model to observe the role of electron gas on the formation of nuclear structures at subsaturation densities (Ï?<0.015 fm^-3) and low temperatures (T< 1MeV ). The simulations were performed by varying the Coulomb interaction strength on systems of isospin symmetric and asymmetric matter with periodic boundary conditions. The effect was quantified on the fragment size multiplicity, the inter-particle distance, the isospin content of the clusters, the nucleon mobility and cluster persistence, and on the nuclear structure shapes. The existence of the nuclear pasta structures was observed even with the absence of the Coulomb interaction but with a modication of the shapes formed. It was found that the presence of the electron gas tends to distribute matter more evenly, forms less compact objects, decreases the isospin content of clusters, modies the nucleon mobility, reduces the persistence and the fragment size multiplicity, but does not alter the inter-particle distance in clusters. The degree of these effects also varied on the nuclear structures and depended on their isospin content, temperature, and density.

The Former Asarco Demolition Fallout, A Post Study On Lead Soil Concentrations And Environmental Agents Of Redistribution In El Paso, Texas, Stephanie A. Robinson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The former El Paso ASARCO Smelting and Refining Co. operated between 1877 and 1999, the pyrometallurgic activity was estimated to have discharged excess of a 1,000 tons of lead (Pb) into the atmosphere from 1969-71. It was estimated 96 tons of (Pb) were emitted on an annual basis from the standing ore and fluid beds. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that lead (Pb) is the heavy metal of the highest concentration within the vicinity of the smelter. After the smelter production ceased, flash flooding common to the southwest, such as the 2006 historic flood, increased transportation of superficial contaminants …

Why Most Bright Stars Are Binary But Most Dim Stars Are Single: A Simple Qualitative Explanation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

It is known that most visible stars are binary: they have a nearby companion star, and these two stars orbit around each other. Based on this fact, until recently, astronomers believed that, in general, most stars are binary. A few years ago, a surprising paper showed that while most bright stars are indeed binary, most dim stars are single. In this paper, we provide a simple qualitative explanation for this empirical fact.

Fuzzy Pareto Solution In Multi-Criteria Group Decision Making With Intuitionistic Linguistic Preference Relation, Bui Cong Cuong, Vladik Kreinovich, Le Hoang Son, Nilanjan Dey

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this paper, we investigate the multi criteria group decision making with intuitionistic linguistic preference relation. The concept of Fuzzy Collective Solution (FCS) is used to evaluate and rank the candidate solution sets for modeling under linguistic assessments. Intuitionistic linguistic preference relation and associated aggregation procedures are then defined in a new concept of Fuzzy Pareto Solution. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate computing procedures. The results affirm efficiency of the proposed method.

Towards An Algebraic Description Of Set Arithmetic, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To describe the state of the world, we need to describe the values of all physical quantities. In practice, due to inevitable measurement inaccuracy, we do not know the exact values of these quantities, we only know the sets of possible values for these quantities. On the class of such uncertainty-related sets, we can naturally define arithmetic operations that transform, e.g., uncertainty in a and b into uncertainty with which we know the sum a + b.

In many applications, it has been useful to reformulate the problem in purely algebraic terms, i.e., in terms of axioms that the basic …

A Heuristic Solution Of The Toll Optimal Problem With Congestion Affected Costs, Vyacheslav Kalashnikov, José Guadalupe Flores Muñiz, Nataliya Kalashnykova

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

An important problem concerning the toll roads is the setting of appropriate costs for driving along paid arcs of a transportation network. Our paper treats this problem as a bilevel programming model. At the upper level, decisions are made by a public regulator/private company that administers the toll roads endeavoring to elevate their benefits. At the lower level, several transportation companies/individual users appease the existing demand for transportation of goods or passengers while selecting the routes that would minimize their total travel costs. In contrast to the previous models, here the lower level problem assumes quadratic costs implied by the …

Yes- And No-Gestures Explained By Symmetry, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In most cultures, "yes" is indicate by a vertical head movement (nod), while "no" is indicated by a left-right movement (shake). In this paper, we show that basic symmetries can explain this cultural phenomenon.

Why Product "And"-Operation Is Often Efficient: One More Argument, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

It is an empirical fact that the algebraic product is one the most efficient "and"-operations in fuzzy logic. In this paper, we provide one of the possible explanations of this empirical phenomenon.

Towards Decision Making Under Interval Uncertainty, Andrzej Pownuk, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we know the exact form of the objective function, and we know the optimal decision corresponding to each values of the corresponding parameters x_i. What should we do if we do not know the exact values of x_i, and instead, we only know each x_i with uncertainty -- e.g., with interval uncertainty? In this case, one of the most widely used approaches is to select, for each i, one value from the corresponding interval -- usually, a midpoint -- and to use the exact-case optimal decision corresponding to the selected values. …

Why Rsa? A Pedagogical Comment, Pedro Barragan Olague, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the most widely used cryptographic algorithms is the RSA algorithm in which a message m encoded as the remainder c of m^e modulo n, where n and e are given numbers -- forming a public code. A similar transformation c^d mod n$, for an appropriate secret code d, enables us to reconstruct the original message. In this paper, we provide a pedagogical explanation for this algorithm.

A Simple Geometric Explanation Of Occam's Razor, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Occam's razor states that out of possible explanations, plans, and designs, we should select the simplest one. It turns out that in many practical situations, the simplest explanation indeed turns out to be the correct one, the simplest plan is often the most successful, etc. But why this happens is not very clear. In this paper, we provide a simple geometric explanation of Occam's razor.