Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Progress On Understanding Atmospheric Mercury Hampered By Uncertain Measurements, Daniel A. Jaffe, Seth N. Lyman, Helen M. Amosl, Mae Sexauer Gustin, Jiaoyan Huang, Noelle E. Selin, Leonard Levin, Arnout Ter Schure, Robert P. Mason, Robert Talbot, Andrew Rutter, Brandon Finley, Lyatt Jaeglé, Viral Shah, Crystal Mcclure, Jesse Ambrose, Lynne Gratz, Steven Lindberg, Peter Weiss-Penzias, Guey-Rong Sheu, Dara Feddersen, Milena Horvat, Ashu Dastoor, Anthony J. Hynes, Huiting Mao, Jeroen E. Sonke, Franz Slemr, Jenny A. Fisher, Ralf Ebinghaus, Yanxu Zhang, Grant Edwards

USU Uintah Basin Faculty Publications

Mercury (Hg) is a potent neurotoxin and globally reducing environmental levels is seen as paramount for protecting human and wildlife health. In 2013, many countries finalized the negotiations on, and have now signed, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, which commits participating countries to reduce emissions and use of mercury. Successful implementation of the treaty will require adequate verification through global monitoring.

Late Quaternary Faulting History Of The Carrizal And Related Faults, La Paz Region, Baja California Sur, Mexico, Paul J. Umhoefer, Sara J. Maloney, Beverly Buchanan, J. Ramón Arrowsmith, Genaro Martinez-Gutiérrez, Graham Kent, Neal Driscoll, Alistair Harding, Darrell Kaufman, Tammy M. Rittenour

Geosciences Faculty Publications

The southwest margin of the Gulf of California has an array of active normal faults despite this being an oblique-divergent plate boundary with spreading centers that localized deformation along the plate boundary 2–3 million years ago. The Carrizal and Centenario faults form the western border fault of the Gulf of California marginal fault system within and south of La Paz Bay, and ∼20–30 km west of the capital city of La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Geologic and geomorphic mapping, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) geochronology, and paleoseismic investigations onshore, compressed high-intensity radar pulse (CHIRP) profiling offshore, and analysis of uplifted …

Sustainable Pastoralism In Ethiopia: Preliminary Results From Participatory Community Assessments On The North-Central Borana Plateau, D. Layne Coppock, Seyoum Tezera, Bedasa Eba, Jaldessa Doyo, Demisachew Tadele, Derege Teshome, Nizam Husein, Meiso Guru

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

The Borana Plateau is an important rangeland for Ethiopia. Livestock production has supported pastoralists here for many generations, and animals are now supplied to a variety of domestic and export markets. The aim of this Livestock Innovation Lab project is to find ways to improve the sustainable productivity of the pastoral system. This is a big challenge, as the rangelands have been badly degraded by decades of heavy pressure from growing human and livestock populations. As a result, there has been extensive bush encroachment on the grasslands and a recent acceleration of gully erosion. The research team used Participatory Rural …

Can Bush-Clearing, Deferred Grazing, Or Camels Help Mitigate Climate-Change And Population Effects For Borana Pastoralists? An Economic Analysis Of Potential Interventions, Brigham Forrest, Deevon Bailey, Ruby Ward, D. Layne Coppock

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

An economic analysis of strategies to increase the resiliency of pastoral communities on the Borana Plateau is presented. Populations of people and livestock have grown in recent decades in this area. As a result of overgrazing and lack of fire, woody bush has proliferated and reduced grass forage for cattle. Droughts here are also perceived to be more frequent and severe as a result of climate change. One consequence of an increasing population and more frequent drought is that food aid has become pervasive in the system, and pastoral communities have become less resilient to drought. This analysis is based …

Adapting Small-Farm Systems To Climate Change: Preliminary Results From Participatory Community Assessments In Bajura District, Nepal, D. Layne Coppock, Mahesh Shrestha, Nirmala Pandey, Arjun Basnet, Divakar Duwal, Dale Davis, Robert Gillies

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Western Nepal is a remote region that is home to a wide variety of small farm and livestock production systems. Communities here lack direct access to a suitable road infrastructure, and thus are isolated from the modern world. Farm families are often poverty stricken. Western Nepal is also enduring significant climate change, resulting in warmer and drier conditions that affect crop and livestock productivity. Our research team used Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) to convene the members of four small-farm communities in Bajura District, identify their priority problems and analyze how the production systems function. We then connected the prioritized problems …

Dust Mediated Transfer Of Phosphorus To Alpine Lake Ecosystems Of The Wind River Range, Wyoming, Usa, Janice Brahney, Ashley P. Ballantyne, P. Kociolek, Sarah A. Spaulding, Megan Otu, T. Porwoll, Jason C. Neff

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Alpine lakes receive a large fraction of their nutrients from atmospheric sources and are consequently sensitive to variations in both the amount and chemistry of atmospheric deposition. In this study we explored the spatial changes in lake water chemistry and biology along a gradient of dust deposition in the Wind River Range, Wyoming. Regional differences were explored using the variation in bulk deposition, lake water, sediment, and bedrock geochemistry and catchment characteristics. Dust deposition rates in the Southwestern region averaged 3.34 g m−2 year−1, approximately three times higher than deposition rates in the Northwestern region (average 1.06 g m−2 year−1). …

Creating Hertzprung-Russel Diagrams Of Open Clusters, Margaret Jensen

Physics Capstone Projects

This research project is meant to set up Utah State University’s 20 inch diameter telescope and use imaging techniques to do research science with stellar clusters. Using known information taken from stellar catalogues, open clusters will be selected to image. From the im- age, absolute magnitudes or luminocities will be collected from each star in the cluster using imaging software. We will then compare these to their spectral types, or tem- peratures, to create Hertzprung-Russell diagrams of the open clusters. A Hertzprung-Russell (H-R) diagram is a scatter plot of luminocity vs spectral type for stars. The following report will explain …

Rainich Geometrization Of Real Massless Scalar Fields, Dionisios Krongos

Physics Capstone Projects

Rainich geometrization is the process of eliminating the source from Einstein's field equations and thus expressing the equations solely with geometric quantities. This report briefly covers the theory, due to Kuchar, involved in the Rainich geometrization of a real massless scalar field with no cosmological constant. The theory contains the conditions which the Ricci tensor must satisfy such that the spacetime permits the scalar field and also explains the method used to reconstruct the field. Two procedures are written which automate this process and they are used extensively through the rest of the paper to both verify existing solutions, such …

Improved Measurements In Conductivity For Highly Disorganized Resistive Materials, Phil Lundgreen

Senior Theses and Projects

Determining the electrical properties of highly insulating materials can be a challenging task. These materials are designed to greatly resist the flow of electrical current. This makes them useful for various applications including terrestrial transmission lines, spacecraft charging, and capacitor-driven charge storage devices. Every year over 370 billion kWhr are lost during transportation along power lines in the US. That is roughly $36B which is thrown away each year due to inefficiency in our power transmission network (1). Due to the fact that satellites are isolated from ground, charging caused by the plasma environment found at typical orbital radii (2) …

Improved Measurements In Conductivity For Highly Disorganized Resistive Materials, Phil Lundgren

Physics Capstone Projects

Determining the electrical properties of highly insulating materials can be a challenging task. These materials are designed to greatly resist the flow of electrical current. This makes them useful for various applications including terrestrial transmission lines, spacecraft charging, and capacitor-driven charge storage devices. Every year over 370 billion kWhr are lost during transportation along power lines in the US. That is roughly $36B which is thrown away each year due to inefficiency in our power transmission network (1). Due to the fact that satellites are isolated from ground, charging caused by the plasma environment found at typical orbital radii (2) …

Analyzing Solutions To The Einstein Equations Using Differential Geometry, Jordan Rozum

Physics Capstone Projects

In part one, I walk through some examples using the Minkowski metric.

In part two, I continue analyzing the Minkowski metric by looking at its isometry algebra in more detail.

In part three, I go over how to use MetricSearch to retrieve cataloged metrics and analyze a couple of example metrics.

In part four, I provide the code, with minimal introduction, that I used to automate the procedures discussed in the previous tutorials.

Gaspacs Structure: Designing To Survive, John Ellis

Physics Capstone Projects

The USU Get Away Special (GAS) Team is creating a self-­‐stabilizing CubeSat through the utilization of a deploying boom and panel combination. Commercially available CubeSat frame cannot accommodate any deployable panels and have no space to fit a packed boom. Therefore a custom frame needed to be designed from the ground up to meet the mission needs while still conforming to the designated specifications produced by Cal Poly. The frame needs to be a 10 cm cube, hold together during liftoff, and not melt the avionics boards within the satellite. Several models were designed and tested through the use of …

Probable Causes Of The Abnormal Ridge Accompanying The 2013-14 California Drought: Enso Precursor And Anthropogenic Warming Footprint, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

The 2013–2014 California drought was initiated by an anomalous high-amplitude ridge system. The anomalous ridge was investigated using reanalysis data and the Community Earth System Model (CESM). It was found that the ridge emerged from continual sources of Rossby wave energy in the western North Pacific starting in late summer and subsequently intensified into winter. The ridge generated a surge of wave energy downwind and deepened further the trough over the northeast U.S., forming a dipole. The dipole and associated circulation pattern is not linked directly with either El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or Pacific Decadal Oscillation; instead, it is correlated …

High Cognitive Test Item Development And Implementation, Ashley Salisbury

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In secondary math classrooms there has been a movement toward discovery and problem solving based instruction. This type of instruction requires teachers to teach on what is often considered a higher level of cognition and allows students to discover more ideas and concepts on their own as opposed to traditional lecture style. Teachers with well thought-out examples, questions, and activities provide students with tools to solve problems on their own requiring students to make mathematical discoveries and connections. These skills not only benefit students in their math class but are analytical skills students can use throughout their lives.

With this …

Recovering The Moca River: An Exploration Through Sustainable Strategies For Developing Countries, Marleny Santana Diaz

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Natural watercourses are being negatively affected by growing urbanization in different cities of the world. Within these circumstances the concept of river restoration has gained relevance, becoming a worldwide priority in water management. In developing countries, river restoration plans, conditioned by social and economic limitations, are mainly focused on a single approach, typically relying on short-term, low technology strategies.

In the long term, these strategies tend to fail because they usually avoid integral solutions that address the interconnected factors contributing to river degradation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a framework of river restoration planning for developing …

Mvgst: Tools For Multivariate And Directional Gene Set Testing, Dennis S. Mecham

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

There are many platforms available for simultaneously measuring the relative activity, or expression, levels of all genes in an organism. Genes that have systematically dier- ent expression levels between experimental factor levels are called \dierentially expressed". Because genes are annotated based on their known roles in biological processes (BP), molec- ular functions (MF) and cellular components (CC), gene expression levels can be used to determine relative activity levels of individual BP, MF, or CC between experimental fac- tor levels (this is called gene set testing). Often multiple experimental dierences are of interest simultaneously, which necessitates multivariate gene set testing. Only …

Geomorphic Change Detection Using Multi-Beam Sonar, James Hensleigh

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The emergence of multi-beam echo sounders (MBES) as an applicable surveying technology in shallow water environments has expanded the extent of geomorphic change detection studies to include river environments that historically have not been possible to survey or only small portions have been surveyed. The high point densities and accuracy of MBES has the potential to create highly accurate digital elevation models (DEM). However, to properly use MBES data for DEM creation and subsequent analysis, it is essential to quantify and propagate uncertainty in surveyed points and surfaces derived from them through each phase of data collection and processing. Much …

The Optimal Release Of Sterile Males In Pest Management, Sergio Ramirez

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

With an application of the sterile insect technique, it is our goal to know the optimal rate of production of sterile males in order to control an insect pest invasion and protect crops. Starting with a fundametal relationship between costs of production and feeding rates, we construct an objective functional. We then use the relationships between the dierent stages of female reproduction to build the state equations. Once, we have dened the optimal control problem, we use the simulated annealing algorithm to determine the amount of sterile males to be released at each discrete time event. Multiple calculations are made …

Modeling Asset Volatility Using Various Resources, Isaac G. Blackhurst

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Volatility is of central interest in modern financial econometrics. This thesis evaluates three different methods of measuring volatility.

Mapit - A Mapping Application For Freshwater Invertebrate Taxa, Sirisha Pratha

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

With the increasing popularity of the World Wide Web among internet users across the world, the need for building web based applications is increasing with time. The Western Center for Monitoring and Assessment of Freshwater Ecosystems (WMC) and the National Aquatic Monitoring Center (NAMC) jointly host a central database containing biological data that is used to assess the condition of aquatic ecosystems. The information stored in the database contains biological and, - geographical data. This information is made available easily through a simple but effective tool called MAPIT. MAPIT is a search engine which can be used to search through …

Csilm: Interactive Learning Modules For Computer Science, Srinivasa Santosh Kumar Allu

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

CSILM is an online interactive learning management system designed to help students learn fundamental concepts of computer science. Apart from learning computer science modules using multimedia, this online system also allows students talk to professors using communication mediums like chat and implemented web analytics, enabling teachers to track student behavior and see student’s interest in learning the modules,. Integrating social media in to the existing portal also makes it possible for students to share the modules they have created, helping students work together.

A Standard Network Adapter For Spacecraft And Payloads, Colby Russell Salmon

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

SNAP reduces space mission cost by providing an advanced modular, open systems approach to software. As part of the space modernization efforts, SMC is sponsoring an effort to develop advanced network architectures for spacecraft systems. Government and DoD agencies are looking to the hosted payload concept to reduce space mission cost in the current budget constrained environment. The hosted payload paradigm poses significant system integration challenges due to payloads being developed independently of the host spacecraft. SNAP is an adapter that uses software and hardware interfaces to provide network connectivity and protocol translation to integrate a spacecraft and payload. In …

Multiversejava, Vishal Sharma

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Sequenced semantics, which was first proposed in the context of temporal databases, is the semantics for the evaluation of a program on values annotated with time metadata. The time metadata records when each value is “live” (is valid or has existence). Sequenced semantics stipulates that a computation on values annotated with temporal metadata must be equivalent to, in effect, running the computation at every time point with only the values alive at that time. Sequenced semantics is challenging to program because it is more than just a re-interpretation of the run-time behavior of a program; for instance, a sequenced “if-else” …

The Kimama Core: A 6.4 Ma Record Of Volcanism, Sedimentation, And Magma Petrogenesis On The Axial Volcanic High, Snake River Plain, Id, Katherine Elizabeth Potter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Snake River Plain (SRP) is one of the best-preserved examples of continental hotspot volcanis, with a continuous record of volcanism that extends over 16 Ma to the present. Yellowstone-Snake River Plain records the migration of plume-tail volcanism from inception at the Bruneau-Jarbridge caldera complex at 12.6 Ma to its present locus, under the Yellowstone Plateau.

Records kept by the Snake River Plain volcanic actions include rhyolite lavas and ignimbritesm minor coeval basalts, and an overlying veneer of younger basalts. The central SRP has received comparatively little attention in the past. The Kimama core hole was drilled as part of …

Landscape Evolution Of The Needles Fault Zone, Utah, Investigated Through Chronostratigraphic And Terrain Analyses, Faye L. Geiger

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Arcing eastward from the deep gorge of Cataract Canyon on the Colorado River is a series of aligned valleys (graben) and ridges (horst). This unusual landscape has formed as subsurface salt deforms toward the river and dissolves away, causing the overlying rocks to fault, slide, and subside. Geologists have long been interested in this actively evolving area they call the Needles fault zone, because understanding its mechanics and origin may shed light on how faults work in general and similar, yet inaccessible places like offshore rift zones or even the surface of the Moon. Despite this interest, the timing and …

Automated Reverse Engineering Of Malware To Develop Network Signatures To Match With Known Network Signatures, Dan Sinema

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Illicit software that seeks to steal user information, deny service, or cause general mayhem on computer networks is often discovered after the damage has been done. The ability to discover network behavior of software before a computer network is utilized would allow administrators to protect and preserve valuable resources. Static reverse engineering is the process of discovering in a offline environment how a software application is built and how it will behave. By automating static reverse engineering, software behavior can be discovered before it is executed on client devices. Fingerprints are then built from the discovered behavior which is matched …

A Customer Data Acquisition Application For Android, Richard William Preece

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This report discusses the development process and walkthrough of an application that is intended to aid businesses with two issues that they face on a consistent basis: customer data acquisition and eliminating expiring inventory.

In developing an application that can quickly and effortlessly acquire contact information from a customer, businesses can continue to offer deals that are of interest to customers. This can help to use inventory that would otherwise go to waste, as well as increase customer engagement by providing incentives to become a repeat customer.

Lifetime Modeling Of Deficient Bridges In New York, Levi Phippen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Given the importance of bridges to a state's economy and strength, and the costs involved in building and maintaining bridges, maximizing their service life is essential. In order to safely extend a bridge's utility as long as possible, an understanding of its lifetime processes is needed. This paper attempts to model the lifetime of a bridge in New York once it has become deficient. Lifetime is defined to be the length of time between deficiency classification and failure. A bridge is considered deficient when certain structural components receive a poor rating in the National Bridge Inventory, which is compiled annually …

A Petrographic Analysis Of The Relationship Between Porosity And Organic Matter In The Permian Phosphoria Formation Of Northeastern Utah, Larry Tackett

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The Permian Phosphoria Formation is a reservoir for oil and gas in the western United States, as well as a major source of phosphate. This study examined the relationship between phosphate richness and porosity exhibited in the formation. Petrographic analysis was carried out on rock samples collected from the Phosphoria (Park City) Formation located north of Vernal, Utah, on the southern flank of the Uinta Mountains.

The analysis demonstrated an inverse relationship between organic richness and porosity in the Phosphoria Formation. Porosity is controlled by lithology, amount of cementation, weathering, and amount of fecal pellets, which are the source of …

Pathway Pioneer: A Web-Based Graphical Tool For The Organization And Flux Analysis Of Metabolic Networks, Sumit Kumar Singh

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Every so often the field of genome-scale metabolic networks undergoes radical changes, each bringing its own complexity and challenges. The existing visualization tools, owing to their inability to assist in generating layouts suitable for easy readability and conceptualization, hinder further advancement. The lack of in-depth comprehensible representation of the intricacies of interaction and arrangements within the network topology prevents researchers from being able to advance at a faster speed despite the growing number of networks and systems. The far and wide diverse standards, layout schemas and network formats of the biological realm contribute to the existing challenges of developing visualization …