Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Constraining Deformation Mechanisms Of Fault Damage Zones: A Case Study Of The Shallow San Andreas Fault At Elizabeth Lake, Southern California., Caroline Studnicky

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Earthquakes nucleate at depth and rupture along the fault plane up to the Earth’s surface releasing seismic energy as the fault propagates. This energy creates the shaking we feel on the surface. Some faults do not rupture and create shaking but deform slowly and smoothly accommodating fault slip over extended time periods. This process is referred to as aseismic slip or creep. Whether a fault ruptures or creeps depends on the properties of the rocks through which the fault plane extends. In order to model seismic hazards correctly, we need to characterize the composition, deformation structures, and alteration materials of …

An Empirical And Theoretical Investigation Of Random Reinforced Forests And Shallow Convolutional Neural Networks, Nikhil Ganta

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For many years, the global population of honey bees has been decreasing due to inconclusive reasons resulting in the syndrome Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This syndrome has been plaguing bees and affecting commercial agriculture pollination since 1998. Many researchers have suggested that pesticides, in-hive chemicals, pathogens, etc., might be the causes of CCD. Researchers also believe that any changes in a beehive can disturb the bees, which may negatively affect their health. Honey bees are the most vital among all the animal pollinators contributing to approximately 30% of the world’s commercial pollination services. As they are of keystone importance to …

Geologic Characterization Of The Nonconformity Interface Using Outcrop And Drillcore Analogs: Implications For Injection-Induced Seismicity, Kayla Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Starting around 2009, a greater number of earthquakes than anticipated have occurred in the midcontinent region of the United States. These earthquakes have been linked to increased rates and volumes of wastewater injection at several km’s depth into the Earth’s crust near a contact between crystalline metamorphic or igneous rock and overlying sedimentary rock, known as a nonconformity. While much is known about why these new earthquakes occur, comparatively little is known about the physical and chemical rock properties because the nonconformity contact is primarily buried under km’s of sedimentary rock in the midcontinent region. These rock properties are important …

Nitrogen Fertilizer Showed Little Effect On First- And Second-Year Corn Yield And Quality Following Alfalfa, Bailey Brent Shaffer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Silage corn (Zea mays L.) following alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a common crop rotation in Utah and southern Idaho. This is done, in part, to take advantage of residual nitrogen (N) fixed by bacteria that work in symbiosis with the roots of alfalfa. After alfalfa is terminated, much of the N that was fixed by the plant is released into the soil and becomes available for use by the rotational crop. This reduces the amount of N fertilizer that growers need to apply. The Utah Fertilizer Guide currently recommends an N credit to a rotational crop following …

A Phenological Model For A Southern Population Of Mountain Pine Beetle, Catherine E. Wangen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The mountain pine beetle (MPB, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) attacks living Pinus trees across a widespread area of western North America, causing significant ecological and economic damage. The ability to make accurate predictions of how MPB populations across this range will respond to temperatures, which affect MPB progress through life stages, is essential. Northern and southern populations of MPB are genetically different in response to temperature, requiring geographic-specific model parameters. There is not currently a predictive model for the southern MPB life cycle, despite concerns that those populations may be more susceptible to increased numbers of generations per year, which would …

Plug-And-Play Sql, Shubham Swami

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

We present an efficient model to retrieve data from a database by implementing plug-and-play queries using the query guards. The model is efficient in the sense that it saves time when writing a query and promotes query portability and reuse. A plug-and-play query is a freestanding query that can couple to any data socket and self determine whether it can be evaluated reliably on the data. We use hierarchies to improve SQL querying in a way that eliminates the need to write a view to construct virtual tables or a set of tables to run a query. The hierarchy is …

Metaxmorph: Hierarchical Transformation Of Data With Metadata, Shubham Airan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This research is about transforming data. Data comes in different shapes; it can be structured as a graph, a tree, a collection of tables, or some other shape. In this thesis, we focus on data structured as a tree, which is known as hierarchical data. The same data could be structured in many different tree shapes. Previously it was shown how to transform data from one tree shape, one hierarchy to another without losing any information. But sometimes the pieces of the hierarchy are annotated or associated with metadata, that is, with data about the data itself. The metadata can …

Measuring, Mapping, And Managing Outdoor Recreation On Public Lands In Utah With Social Media Data, Hongchao Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Social media platforms allow people to post photos, text, and video clips that include embedded information about the geographic location, time, and date that of the posts. Recently, researchers have utilized these data to study outdoor recreation management. In particular, geotagged social media posts can be used to understand outdoor recreation behavior and visitation patterns on public lands. Consequently, it can be used to inform the decisions of agencies and organizations that manage recreational uses of public land. I conducted three studies to explore the ways social media information can help provide recreation managers with a better understanding of visitor …

Predicting Flow Through The Causeway Of The Great Salt Lake Using Hydrodynamic Simulations And Artificial Neural Networks, Som Dutta, Brian Mark Crookston, Michael Rasmussen, Eric Larsen

Reports

At the Great Salt Lake, the northern and southern portions of the lake are divided by an east-to-west causeway that disrupts natural lake currents and significantly increases salt concentrations in the norther portion. To support management efforts to address rising environmental and economic concerns, the causeway was recently modified to include a new breach that typically exhibits a strong density-driven bidirectional flow pattern. To obtain much needed insights into the hydraulic performance of this hydraulic structure and the exchange between the two sections of the lake, a field campaign coupled with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling and an artificial neural …

Spatial And Long-Term Temporal Changes In Water Quality Dynamics Of The Tonle Sap Ecosystem, Savoeurn Soum, Peng Bun Ngor, Thomas E. Dilts, Sapana Lohani, Suzanne Kelson, Sarah E. Null, Flavia Tramboni, Zeb S. Hogan, Bunyeth Chan, Sudeep Chandra

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Tonle Sap lake-river floodplain ecosystem (TSE) is one of the world’s most productive freshwater systems. Changes in hydrology, climate, population density, and land use influence water quality in this system. We investigated long term water quality dynamics (22 years) in space and time and identified potential changes in nutrient limitation based on nutrient ratios of inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus. Water quality was assessed at five sites highlighting the dynamics in wet and dry seasons. Predictors of water quality included watershed land use, climate, population, and water level. Most water quality parameters varied across TSE, except pH and nitrate that remained …

Improving Communication Of Uncertainty And Risk Of High-Impact Weather Through Innovative Forecaster Workshops, Brian A. Colle, Rosemary Auld, Kenneth Johnson, Christine O'Connell, Temis G. Taylor, Joshua Rice

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

It is challenging to communicate uncertainty for high-impact weather events to the public and decision-makers. As a result, there is an increased emphasis and training within the National Weather Service (NWS) for “impact-based decision support.” A Collaborative Science, Technology, And Research (CSTAR) project led by Stony Brook University (SBU) in collaboration with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, several NWS forecast offices, and NWS operational centers held two workshops at SBU on effective forecast communication of probabilistic information for high-impact weather. Trainers in two 1.5-day workshops helped 15–20 forecasters learn to distill their messages, engage audiences, and more effectively …

A Look Into User Privacy And Third-Party Applications In Facebook, Sovantharith Seng, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen, Matthew Wright

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

Purpose

A huge amount of personal and sensitive data are shared on Facebook, which makes it a prime target for attackers. Adversaries can exploit third-party applications connected to a user’s Facebook profiles (i.e. Facebook apps) to gain access to this personal information. Users’ lack of knowledge and the varying privacy policies of these apps make them further vulnerable to information leakage. However, little has been done to identify mismatches between users’ perceptions and the privacy policies of Facebook apps. This paper aims to address this challenge in the work.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a lab study with 31 participants, where …

Landscape-Scale Drivers Of Resistance And Resilience To Bark Beetles: A Conceptual Susceptibility Model, Marcella A. Windmuller-Campione, R. Justin Derose, James N. Long

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Bark beetle (Dendroctonus spp.) outbreaks in the middle latitudes of western North America cause large amounts of tree mortality, outstripping wildfire by an order of magnitude. While temperatures play an important, and direct role in the population dynamics of ectothermic bark beetles, an equally important influence is the nature of the host substrate—the structure and composition of forested communities. For many of the dominant tree species in the western United States, “hazard” indices have been developed for specific bark beetles, which generally include three key variables—host tree size, absolute or relative density of the stand, and percentage of host composition. …

Understanding User Behavior, Information Exposure, And Privacy Risks In Managing Old Devices, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen, Tanjina Tamanna, Swapnil Nandy, Huzeyfe Kocabas

Computer Science Student Research

The goal of this study is to understand the behavior of users from developing countries in managing an old device (e.g., computer, mobile phone), which has been replaced by a new device, or suffers from technical issues providing a notion that it may stop working soon. The prior work explored the ecology and challenges of repairing old devices in developing regions. However, it is still understudied how the strategies of people from developing countries in managing their personal information on old devices could impact their digital privacy. To address this gap in existing literature, we conducted semi-structured interview with 52 …

Understanding User's Behavior And Protection Strategy Upon Losing, Or Identifying Unauthorized Access To Online Account, Huzeyfe Kocabas, Swapnil Nandy, Tanjina Tamanna, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Student Research

A wide-range of personal and sensitive information are stored in users’ online accounts. Losing access, or an unauthorized access to one of those accounts could put them into the risks of privacy breach, cause financial loss, and compromise their accessibility to important information and documents. A large body of prior work focused on developing new schemes and strategies to protect users’ online security. However, there is a dearth in existing literature to understand users’ strategies and contingency plans to protect their online accounts once they lose access, or identify an unauthorized access to one of their accounts. We addressed this …

Collaborative Research: A Fossil Ecosystem Under The Ice: Deciphering The Glacial And Vegetation History Of Nothwest Greenland Using Long Lost Camp Century Basal Sediment, Tammy M. Rittenour

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Data From: Expansion Of Aromaticity Magnetic Criteria On Multi-Layer Structures. Magnetic Response And Spherical Aromaticity Of Matryoshka-Like [Sn@Cu12@Sn20]12- Cluster, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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Structural characterization of the discrete [Sn@Cu12@Sn20]12− cluster exposed a fascinating architecture composed of three concentric structural layers in which an endohedral Sn atom is enclosed in a Cu12 icosahedron, which in turn is embedded in an Sn20 dodecahedron. Herein, the possibility of sustaining aromatic behavior for this prototypical multilayered species was evaluated, in order to extend this concept to more complex clusters on the basis of magnetic response and bonding analysis by the AdNDP approach. This revealed characteristic features of spherical aromatics, given by the ability to sustain the shielding cone property, similar to archetypal aromatics.

Data From: Hydrated Sulfate Clusters So4(2-)(H2o)N(N=1-40): Charge Distribution Through Solvation Shells And Stabilization, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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In the current work, we report our computational study of hydrated sulfate clusters SO4(2–)(H2O)n (n = 1–40) in order to understand the nature of stabilization of this important anion by water molecules. We showed that the most significant charge transfer from dianion SO4(2–) to H2O takes place at a number of H2O molecules n ≤ 7. The SO4(2–) directly donates its charge only to the first solvation shell and surprisingly, a small amount of electron density of 0.15|e| is enough to be transferred in order to stabilize the dianion.

Data From: Σ-Aromaticity In The Mos2 Monolayer, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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As is shown using the SSAdNDP approach, Mo and S form 2-centered bonds and there is a lone pair on each S. Most importantly, the remaining electrons are distributed over Mo atoms and form conjugated aromatic σ-bonds inside every hexagonal ring, which makes molybdenum the main carrier of σ-aromaticity.

Data From: Spherical Aromaticity In Inorganic Chemistry, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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Chapter "14 - Spherical aromaticity in inorganic chemistry" in a book "Aromaticity - Modern Computational Methods and Applications"

Data From: High-Resolution Photoelectron Imaging Of Irb3-: Observation Of A P-Aromatic B3+ Ring Coordinated To A Transition Metal, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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In a high-resolution photoelectron imaging and theoretical study of the IrB3− cluster, two isomers were observed experimentally with electron affinities (EAs) of 1.3147(8) and 1.937(4) eV. Quantum calculations revealed two nearly degenerate isomers competing for the global minimum, both with a B3 ring coordinated with the Ir atom.

Data From: Periodic F-Defects On The Mgo Surface As Potential Single-Defect Catalysts With Non-Linear Optical Properties, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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In this paper we suggest a new type of a single-atom (or single-defect) catalyst – MgO with periodic defects on the (0 0 1) surface – which possesses noticeable non-linear optical properties. Periodicity of these defects leads to the significant extensive increase in the activity of a catalyst by growth of the concentration of active sites. In this work we showed the presence of diffuse electride-like multi-center bonds inside every periodic F-center. We also discovered that MgO with periodic defects on the surface gains non-linear optical properties due to electride-like polarizable bonds inside every defect. And most importantly, such defective …

Data From: 'Bottled' Spiro-Doubly Aromatic Trinuclear [Pd2ru]+ Complexes, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Maksim Kulichenko

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The central unit of the synthesized structure is a Ru atom which is the vertex of the [RuPd2]+ triangle being the first example of mixed triangles among these metals. Moreover, Ru is involved in both σ- and π-aromaticity. σ-aromaticity is realized as the d-AO based multicenter bond which is delocalized over the inner [RuPd2]+ triangle with considerable contribution from the sulfur electron density. Besides, transition metals are known to interact with the electron cloud of benzene which, in turn, leads to the charge transfer and formation of conjugated electron density between the TM and benzene. The second type of aromaticity, …

Data From: Can Aromaticity Be A Kinetic Trap? Example Of Mechanically Interlocked Aromatic [2-5]Catenanes Built From Cyclo[18]Carbon, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Nikita Fedik

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Project reports the analysis of interlocked C18 rings as building blocks for polycatenanes.

Data From: Boron-Made N2: Realization Of A Bb Triple Bond In The B2al3- Cluster, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Nikita Fedik

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Project reports B2Al3- cluster, which mimics triple bond N2 molecule.

Data From: Two Names Of Stability: Spherical Aromatic Or Superatomic Intermetalloid Cluster [Pd3sn8bi6]4−, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Nikita Fedik

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Project reports the aromaticity in the intermetalloid cluster [Pd3Sn8Bi6]4−.

Plant-Soil Feedbacks Help Explain Biodiversity-Productivity Relationships, Leslie E. Forero, Andrew Kulmatiski, Josephine Grenzer, Jeanette M. Norton

Wildland Resources Student Research

Species-rich plant communities can produce twice as much aboveground biomass as monocultures, but the mechanisms remain unresolved. We tested whether plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) can help explain these biodiversity-productivity relationships. Using a 16-species, factorial field experiment we found that plants created soils that changed subsequent plant growth by 27% and that this effect increased over time. When incorporated into simulation models, these PSFs improved predictions of plant community growth and explained 14% of overyielding. Here we show quantitative, field-based evidence that diversity maintains productivity by suppressing plant disease. Though this effect alone was modest, it helps constrain the role of factors, …

Data From: A Sandwich-Type Cluster Containing Ge@Pd3 Planar Fragment Flanked By Aromatic Nonagermanide Caps, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Nikolay Tkachenko

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Sandwich-type clusters with the planar fragment containing a heterometallic sheet have remained elusive. In this work, we introduce the [K(2,2,2-crypt)]4{(Ge9)2[η6-Ge(PdPPh3)3]} complex that contains a heterometallic sandwich fragment. The title compound is structurally characterized by means of single-crystal X-ray diffraction, which reveals the presence of an unusual heteroatomic metal planar fragment Ge@Pd3. The planar fragment contains a rare formal zerovalent germanium core and a peculiar bonding mode of sp2-Ge@(PdPPh3)3 trigonal planar structure, whereas the nonagermanide fragments act as capping ligands. The chemical bonding pattern of the planar fragment consists of three 2c-2e Pd-Ge σ-bonds attaching Pd atoms to the core Ge …

Data From: Novel Strongly Correlated Europium Superhydrides, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Nikolay Tkachenko

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We conducted a joint experimental–theoretical investigation of the high-pressure chemistry of europium polyhydrides at pressures of 86–130 GPa. We discovered several novel magnetic Eu superhydrides stabilized by anharmonic effects: cubic EuH9, hexagonal EuH9, and an unexpected cubic (Pm3n) clathrate phase, Eu8H46. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that cubic EuH9 has antiferromagnetic ordering with TN of up to 24 K, whereas hexagonal EuH9 and Pm3n-Eu8H46 possess ferromagnetic ordering with TC = 137 and 336 K, respectively. The electron–phonon interaction is weak in all studied europium hydrides, and their magnetic ordering excludes s-wave superconductivity, except, perhaps, for distorted pseudohexagonal EuH9. The equations of …

Data From: Chemical Bonding Analysis Of Excited States Using The Adaptive Natural Density Partitioning Method, Alexander I. Boldyrev, Nikolay Tkachenko

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A novel approach to chemical bond analysis for excited states has been developed. Using an extended adaptive natural density partitioning method (AdNDP) as implemented in AdNDP 2.0 code, we obtained chemically intuitive bonding patterns for the excited states of H2O, B5+, and C2H4+ molecules. The deformation pathway in the excited states could be easily predicted based on the analysis of the chemical bond pattern. We expect that this new method of chemical bonding analysis would be very helpful for photochemistry, photoelectron spectroscopy, electron spectroscopy and other chemical applications that involved excited states.