Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Estimation Of Beta In A Simple Functional Capital Asset Pricing Model For High Frequency Us Stock Data, Yan Zhang

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

This project applies the methods of functional data analysis (FDA) to intra-daily returns of US corporations. It focuses on an extension of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to such returns. The CAPM is essentially a linear regression with the slope coefficient β. Returns of an asset are regressed on index return. We compare the estimates of β obtained for the daily and intra-daily returns. The variability of these estimates is assessed by two bootstrap methods. All computations are performed using statistical software R. Customized functions are developed to process the raw data, estimate the parameters and assess their variability. …

Do Fee-Access Hunting Programs Conserve Wildlife Habitat? A Case Study Of Utah's Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit Program, Adam L. Perschon

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

Landscapes in the American West are undergoing dramatic changes as land-use patterns shift to accommodate the region’s explosive population growth. Trends toward low-density settlement patterns, or exurban development, compound the problem by consuming a disproportionately large amount of land compared to the population they support. The result is the rapid conversion of the West’s most highly productive agricultural and range lands, many of which provide benefits to biodiversity that surpass those found in permanently protected areas. Ruralists, ranchers, and conservationists alike are seeking ways to protect these ecologically important private lands from future development. One method purported to mitigate rural …

Charm Components Monitoring System (Ccms), Cemal Aktas

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

Integrated systems need to be monitored regularly for operational problems such as network failures, loss of data, bottle necks, and other process failures. One of the best ways to monitor a system is through a graphical visualization of system activities. Humans are good at spotting patterns in graphic visualizations. This report describes a monitoring facility for integrated systems that can present wide range of graphics visualizations. As a proof of concept, it is implemented for the CHARM system, which is a distributed system used by the Utah Department of Health.

Ranking Score Vectors Of Tournaments, Sebrina Ruth Cropper

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

Given , a tournament on vertices, Landau derived a method to determine how close is to being transitive or regular. This comparison is based on the tournament’s hierarchy number, ̅, a value derived from its score vector ̅ ( ). Let be the set of all score vectors of tournaments on vertices with the entries listed in non-decreasing order. A partial order, poset, exists on the set using the following binary relation. Given ̅ ̅ such that ̅ ̅, let ̅ ̅ if Σ Σ for and Σ Σ . Let this poset be represented as ( ) ( ) …

Log-Data Visualization Tool For Analyzing And Improving Performance Of Data De-Duplication Tool In Charm-Ii, Daniel Erickson

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

A de-duplication tool used in CHARM-II, called the CHARM Matcher, produces log files that record why it decides two records are or are not a match. This data, if properly analyzed, could help CHARM developers improve the Matcher over time by tuning its configuration. However, the log data is complex and recorded chronologically in the log files instead of in a way that would aid analysis. Further, visually studying the raw log data is a laborious and difficult task. This report describes a tool that parses and organizes the raw log data, and then produces graphical reports that summarize key …

Computational Efficiency Of A Hybrid Mass Concentration And Spherical Harmonic Modeling, Nathan Piepgrass

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Through Spherical Harmonics, one can describe complex gravitational fields. However as the order and degree of the spherical harmonics increases, the computation speed rises exponentially. In addition, for onboard applications of spherical harmonics, the processors are radiation hardened in order to mitigate negative effects of the space environment on electronics. But, those processors have outdated processing speeds, resulting in a slower onboard spherical harmonic program.

This thesis examines a partial solution to the slow computation speed of spherical harmonics programs. The partial solution was to supplant the gravity models in the flight software. The spherical harmonics gravity model can be …

Templates For Supporting Sequenced Temporal Semantics In Pig Latin, Dhaval Deshpande

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

This report describes proposed templates for supporting sequenced temporal semantics in Pig Latin, a dataflow language used primarily for the analysis of very large data sets. Sequence semantics says that if we take a relation and divide it into smaller relations based on timestamps, while still carrying out the regular Pig Latin program over it, the result should be the same as when carrying out the temporal Pig Latin program over the original relation. In real time, the relations can be enormous, and dividing such relations into smaller ones based on every possible timestamp creates an extremely large number of …

Utah Preschool Outcomes Data System, Sandeep Venigalla

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

In the State of Utah, both state and federal government agencies work together to provide special education services to eligible children. An important part of this effort is to document the effectiveness of the program, which can be measured in terms of the outcomes, namely, the progress of the individual children. This information can help identify both strengths and weaknesses of special education programs within the state, which in turn can lead to program improvements and better allocation of resources. This report describes a software system that supports the tracking of child and program outcomes for special education within Utah. …

Carbon Nanotube Growth Via Spray Pyrolysis, Robert Welch Call

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Spray pyrolysis is a promising method to create carbon nanotube forests (CNFs) on various surfaces. By injecting metallocene-hydrocarbon solutions into a heated quartz reactor, catalyst particles and carbon nanotubes can be formed simultaneously. Factors that affect CNF growth include the precursor concentration, injection rate and duration, carrier gas flow rate, substrate surface, growth temperature, and the composition of gases inside the reactor. The CNF morphologies affected by these factors will be presented and, hopefully, an optimum condition will be found.

Critical Issues In Middle And Secondary Mathematics Placement: A Case Study, Morgan E. Summers

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This qualitative research project focuses on the issues facing middle and secondary mathematics placement through an extensive literature review as well as a case study of a local school district. As students move from elementary school to middle and secondary schools, they are placed into classes that appear to be based on ability. One of the driving questions of this project is how is this ability level determined? Through an in-­‐depth look at one school district, it is found that a primary source of information is both norm-­‐referenced and criterion-­‐referenced assessments given to students in fifth and eighth grades. In …

Lidar User’S Manual, Lance William Peterson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This is intended to be a user’s manual for the upgraded USU Rayleigh lidar. As such, it begins with a discussion of the purpose of a lidar. This is followed by a brief explanation of the fundamentals of Rayleigh scatter lidar. Next the reasons for and benefits of upgrading the lidar are discussed and as well as how the upgrade was accomplished. After establishing this basis, instructions are provided for operating the lidar, performing basic maintenance, and aligning various components.

Application Of Habitat And Occupancy Modeling To A Wood Duck Next Box Program, Jason D. Carlisle

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Programs to augment wood duck (Aix sponsa) nesting habitat by providing artificial nest boxes are commonly implemented. In northern Utah, where such programs are relatively new, I proposed a method to identify sites suitable for deployment of next boxes through a combination of habitat and occupancy modeling using site-specific, biotic, and abiotic, data collected from 105 next boxes over one nesting season in Cache County, Utah. An inductive habitat model was first developed which identified possibly suitable habitat (8.74% of county) based on proximity to hydrologic features. Next, based on comparing competing single-species, single-season, occupancy models using a modified Akaike's …

Graph Kernels And Applications In Bioinformatics, Marco Alvarez Vega

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nowadays, machine learning techniques are widely used for extracting knowledge from data in a large number of bioinformatics problems. It turns out that in many of such problems, data observations can be naturally represented by discrete structures such as graphs, networks, trees, or sequences. For example, a protein can be seen as a cloud of interconnected atoms lying on a 3-dimensional space. The focus of this dissertation is on the development and application of machine learning techniques to bioinformatics problems wherein the data can be represented by graphs. In particular, we focus our attention on proteins, which are essential elements …

Study Of Geomagnetic Disturbances And Ring Current Variability During Storm And Quiet Times Using Wavelet Analysis And Ground-Based Magnetic Data From Multiple Stations, Zhonghua Xu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The magnetosphere-ionosphere contains a number of current systems. These currents vary on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales and physically couple with each other. To study the complicated behaviors of these coupled current systems, the ground-based magnetometer has been a useful tool, but the recorded magnetometer data are always multi-scaled and intermittent due to the nature of these current systems. To distinguish these geomagnetic effects with multiple temporal and frequency scales, the wavelet analysis technique is especially suitable because of its special abilities of presenting information in both temporal and frequency domains. In this dissertation, the geomagnetic disturbances …

Process-Based Management Of Downy Brome In Salt Desert Shrublands: Assessing Pre- And Post- Rehabilitation Soil And Vegetation Attributes, Merilynn Carol Hirsch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As an ecosystem driver, downy brome (Bromus tectorum L.) presents obstacles to land rehabilitation efforts, including restoring desirable species cover. Because damaged ecosystems may have crossed both abiotic and biotic thresholds, ecologically-based control strategies may assist with altering successional trajectories and restoring desirable plant species. My thesis research had three objectives: 1) assess soil and vegetation relationships in degraded salt desert ecosystems prior to implementing downy brome control treatments, 2) determine the effects of control treatments on soil properties and resident plant species, and 3) evaluate the relative importance of shrubland soil type, herbicide type, and herbicide rate on seedling …

The Transfer Of Agricultural Water To Municipal And Industrial Usages, Dallin Paul Stephens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The water that is available for beneficial use in Utah is quickly approaching full appropriation; water that has been claimed is nearing the amount that is available for use. The Division of Water Resources of the State of Utah has organized a three-part plan to "Plan, Conserve, Develop and Protect Utah's Water Resources." One of these three elements has a focus to "provide comprehensive water planning." Such planning is best achieved when current and accurate data on the uses of the state's water are available.

The primary purpose of this thesis was to provide an evaluation, from data collected on …

Stratigraphic, Microfossil, And Geochemical Analysis Of The Neoproterozoic Uinta Mountain Group, Utah: Evidence For A Eutrophication Event?, Dawn Schmidli Hayes

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Several previous Neoproterozoic microfossil diversity studies yield evidence for a relatively sudden biotic change prior to the first well‐constrained Sturtian glaciations. In an event interpreted as a mass extinction of eukaryotic phytoplankton followed by bacterial dominance, diverse assemblages of complex acritarchs are replaced by more uniform assemblages consisting of simple leiosphaerid acritarchs and bacteria. Recent data from the Chuar Group of the Grand Canyon (770‐742 Ma) suggest this biotic change was caused by eutrophication rather than the direct effects of Sturtian glaciation; evidence includes total organic carbon increases indicative of increasing primary productivity followed by iron speciation values that suggest …

Piano Key Weir Head Discharge Relationships, Ricky M. Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A piano key (PK) weir is a type of nonlinear (labyrinth-type) weir developed specifically for free-surface flow control structures with relatively small spillway footprints. Currently, no generally accepted standard PK weir design procedure is available. This is due, in part, to the large number of geometric parameters and a limited understanding of their effects on discharge efficiency (discharge efficiency is quantified by the discharge coefficient of the standard weir equation). However, Hydrocoop, a non-profit French dam spillways association, has recommended a PK weir design and a head-discharge relationship specific to that geometry.

To develop a better understanding of the effects …

Novel Application Of Neutrosophic Logic In Classifiers Evaluated Under Region-Based Image Categorization System, Wen Ju

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Neutrosophic logic is a relatively new logic that is a generalization of fuzzy logic. In this dissertation, for the first time, neutrosophic logic is applied to the field of classifiers where a support vector machine (SVM) is adopted as the example to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of neutrosophic logic. The proposed neutrosophic set is integrated into a reformulated SVM, and the performance of the achieved classifier N-SVM is evaluated under an image categorization system. Image categorization is an important yet challenging research topic in computer vision. In this dissertation, images are first segmented by a hierarchical two-stage self organizing …

Graphshop: An Interactive Software Environment For Graph Theory Research And Applications, Aaron Andersen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Graph Theory is the mathematical study of the structure of abstract relationships between objects. Although these constructions (graphs) are themselves purely theoretical, their ability to model pair-wise relationships in systems of arbitrary complexity yields abundant direct correspondence with numerous important physical and societal systems in the real world. Additionally, the simple discrete nature of fundamental graph structures allows for easy pseudo-geometric visualization of graphs in a wide variety of ways. Taken together, these two properties suggest that graph theory teaching, research, and applications would benefit greatly from the use of a unified software environment for graph construction, interaction, and visualization. …

Surface Morphology Implications On Langmuir Probe Measurements, Padmashri Suresh

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Langmuir probes are extensively employed to study the plasmas in space and laboratory environments. Successful measurements require a comprehensive modeling of both the plasma environment and the probe conditions in the form of current collection models. In this thesis, the surface morphology implications on the probe current collection are investigated. This problem is applied and solved in the context of a CubeSat regime. The first problem that is investigated is the consequence of surface structural variability on the current measurements. A new model for dealing with non-uniformity of the probe surface structure is developed in this paper. This model is …

Examining Child Sexual Abuse And Future Parenting: An Application Of Latent Class Modeling, Kimberly W. D'Zatko

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was designed to empirically derive latent classes of mothers who were sexually abused during childhood and to assess the association between depression, alcohol/drug use, supportive intimate partner, and specific classes.

One hundred six women between the ages of 20 and 44 years (M = 27) who reported having been sexually abused during childhood (CSA) and 158 non-CSA mothers between the ages of 20 and 43 years (M = 23) were interviewed and assessed along six parenting dimensions. Logistic regression models evaluated the association between psychoemotional variables and specific classes.

The final model consisted of three classes—53.2%, …

The Effect Of Stream Restoration On Preferred Cutthroat Trout Habitat In The Strawberry River, Utah, Nicolas R. Braithwaite

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Stream restoration has become a popular management tool for attempting to increase and/or restore fish populations by improving habitat. A section of the Strawberry River, Utah recently underwent a stream restoration project, where the main goals of the project included increasing spawning activity, rearing potential, and resident populations of Bear Lake cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkia utah. The impact of the restoration project on cutthroat trout was investigated by first characterizing preferred habitat for different life stages, investigating habitat as a limiting factor in the system, and then assessing the quality of available habitat by comparing restored/unrestored sections of stream …

Spatiotemporal Modeling Of Threats To Big Sagebrush Ecological Sites In Northern Utah, Alexander J. Hernandez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study tested the performance of classification, regression, and ordination techniques to evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics of threats to big sagebrush ecological sites. The research was focused on invasion by annual exotic grasses and encroachment by woodlands.

We sought to identify those areas that have had a persistent coverage of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) in big sagebrush ecological sites. We took advantage of the contrast in greenness between multi-temporal (within one year) remotely sensed vegetation indices captured in the spring and summer to find a distinct phenological signature that allowed mapping cheatgrass. We utilized support vector machines (SVM) to classify three …

Great Salt Lake Watershed: Its Role In Maintaining The Wetlands Of The Great Salt Lake, Danny C. White Jr.

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

The following bioregional planning study is a direct result of the 2009- 2010 studio project initiated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The FWS contacted the study team and asked them to determine how the future growth and development of the Bear River Watershed would impact the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge (BRMBR). The study looked at all of the physical and biophysical systems within the Bear River Watershed to identify the issues that had an effect on the BRMBR.

It became apparent from the original project that the future of the BRMBR and other Great Salt …

Controlling Error Rates With Multiple Positively-Dependent Tests, Abdullah Al Masud

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

It is a typical feature of high dimensional data analysis, for example a microarray study, that a researcher allows thousands of statistical tests at a time. All inferences for the tests are determined using the p-values; a smaller p-value than the α-level of the test signifies a statistically significant test. As the number of tests increases, the chance of observing some small p-values is very high even when all null hypotheses are true. Consequently, we make wrong conclusions on the hypotheses. This type of potential problem frequently happens when we test several hypotheses simultaneously, i.e., the multiple testing problem. …

The 3 Creeks Grazing Allotment: A Study Of Livestock Grazing Management Across Public And Privately Owned Land, Taylor M. Payne

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

Livestock ranching is the most common use of public rangeland in the western United States (Gates, personal communication). The newly formed 3 Creeks Grazing Allotment which consists of 136,000 acres and has 29 permittees serves as an example of scientifically based public land management using grazing livestock as a management tool. It is believed that livestock grazing is the most underutilized tool in natural resource management (Hopkin, personal communication). The newly formed allotment will consolidate nine separate allotments into one management unit. This unit is holistically developed to sustain grazing livestock and rural economies while benefitting the range resources including …

Metadata Management System For Healthcare Information Systems, Ketan Shripat Patil

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

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) uses multiple and diverse healthcare information systems for managing, maintaining, and sharing the health information. To keep track of the important details about these information systems such as the operational details, data semantics, data exchange standards, and personnel responsible for maintaining and managing it is a monumental task, with several limitations. This report describes the design and implementation of the Metadata Management System (MDM) that addresses the problem of documenting multiple information systems and exchange of data between them. The purpose of the MDM is to provide efficient and usable means of storing, accessing, …

Alternative Futures For The Upper Colorado River Ecosystem: Phase Ii, Temis G. Taylor

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

Wildlife habitat and biodiversity in the Upper Colorado River Ecosystem are threatened by growth of urban areas, subdivision of rural lands, and exploitation of natural resources. The White-Yampa, Colorado Headwaters, and Gunnison River Watersheds within the region were investigated to discover areas supporting high biodiversity that would be possible candidates for conservation efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Using an alternative futures planning process and principles of landscape ecology, development of energy of the resources in the region was found to be the primary driver for land use and impacts to wildlife habitat. Through application of geospatial modeling …

Open Space Changes: A Formal Analysis In Cache Valley, Utah, Cameron Scott Bodine

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Open spaces are a valuable amenity that people often overlook. Open spaces allow for a system of water treatment, wildlife habitat, agricultural production, and recreation destinations. Too often, however, open space systems are systematically devoured by development with little regard of what that can mean for the future of a community. This thesis suggests that when open space systems are analyzed as having structure, shape, and a dynamic nature, interconnected with development, then an explanation of how it transforms and evolves can emerge. This thesis seeks to present a new method of describing open space change through understanding development trends …