Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Are Occupancy Models Feasible Alternatives To Collecting Breeding Data?, Morgan D. Niccoli

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Methylmercury Exposure Affects Risk-Taking Behaviors In Zebra Finches: Tradeoffs Between Eating And Being Eaten, Megan Elizabeth Kobiela

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Polymeric Radiation Shielding For Applications In Space: Polyimide Synthesis And Modeling Of Multi-Layered Polymeric Shields, Clinton Cleveland Schiavone

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Tracelab: Reproducing Empirical Software Engineering Research, Evan Alexander Moritz

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Network Traffic Aware Smartphone Energy Savings, Andrew Joseph Pyles

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In today's world of ubiquitous Smartphone use, extending the battery life has become an important issue. A significant contributor to battery drain is wireless networking. Common usage patterns expect Smartphones to maintain a constant Internet connection which exacerbates the problem.;Our research entitled A Network Traffic Approach to Smartphone Energy Savings focuses on extending Smartphone battery life by investigating how network traffic impacts power management of wireless devices. We explore 1) Real-time VoIP application energy savings by exploiting silence periods in conversation. WiFi is opportunistically placed into low power mode during Silence periods. 2.) The priority of Smartphone Application network traffic …

Distribution And Feeding Ecology Of Bathylagus Euryops (Teleostei: Microstomatidae) Along The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge From Iceland To The Azores, Christopher J. Sweetman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, from Iceland to the Azores (MAR), ranges in depth from 800 – 4500 m and extends over an area of 3.7 million km2. Recent evidence from MAR-ECO, a Census of Marine Life field project, reported increased abundance and biomass of deep-pelagic fishes below 1000 m on the MAR. Among the fishes sampled, Bathylagus euryops was found to be the biomass-dominant species and ranked third in total abundance. In this thesis, we characterize the distribution and feeding ecology of B. euryops as a function of physical, biological, and life history parameters along a mid-ocean ridge system. Multiple …

Unprecedented Restoration Of A Native Oyster Metapopulation, David M. Schulte

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Movements, Growth, And Mortality Of Chesapeake Bay Summer Flounder Based On Multiple Tagging Technologies, Mark J. Henderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The research projects presented in this dissertation used multiple tagging technologies to examine the movements, growth, and mortality rates of summer flounder tagged and released in Chesapeake Bay. In the first two chapters, I used acoustic, archival, and conventional tags to examine the behavior of summer flounder on different spatial scales. Investigating the movement behavior of individuals on different scales is an important step towards understanding how large-scale distributions of a population are established. Based on the observed behaviors of summer flounder, I hypothesize that the movements of these fish are primarily related to foraging behavior while they are resident …

Developing An Unstructured Grid, Coupled Storm Surge, Wind Wave And Inundation Model For Super-Regional Applications, Yi-Cheng Teng

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

During extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes and nor'easters, both the currents and wind waves generated by the atmospheric forces are important. Although they may act and dominate on different temporal and spatial scales, their interactions and combined effects are without doubt significant. In this dissertation, a major effort has been made to couple an unstructured grid circulation model SELFE (semi-implicit, Eulerian-Lagrangian finite element model) and the WWM II (Wind Wave model II). Moreover, this new coupled model system can be executed in a parallel computational environment. After the coupled model was successfully built, the model was verified with ideal …

Patterns Of Population Structure And Historical Dispersal In Squaloid Sharks: A Species-Level Approach Using Molecular Markers, Ana Christina Pimenta Verissimo

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Squaloids (Order Squaliformes) are a highle diverse group of mostly deepwater habitats (> 200 m). Many species are regularly caught in commercial fisheries worldwide but their low productivity and correspondingly low intrinsic rebound potentials make them particularly vulnerable to population depletion and overexploitation. of special concern to fisheries management and conservation efforts are the spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias, the leafscale gulper shark Centrophorus squamosus and the Portuguese dogfish Centroscymnus coelolepis. These taxa have recently been declared overfished in several parts of each species' distribution but management efforts have been made to recover the "stocks" without a good understanding of the …

Life History And Ecology Of The Freshwater Amphipods Gammarus Pseudolimnaeus And Gammarus Fasciatus In Southeastern Virginia, Lindsey L. Postaski

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Nucleophile Strength On Selectivity In Bibr3 Catalyzed Cyclic Ether Construction, Ajara A. Rahman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Small Carboxylic Acids During Poly(Amide) 11 Hydrolysis, John-Andrew Samuel Hocker

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Benthic Nitrogen Fixation As A Source Of New Nitrogen To The New River Estuary, Nc, Meaghan L. Whitehead

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Nitrogen (N) has been shown to limit primary production in many estuarine systems, including the New River Estuary (NRE), NC, a moderately eutrophied system with large areas of photic sediment. The NRE receives major inputs of allochthonous nutrients from agriculture and confined animal feeding operations as well as other sources. Autochthonous sources of N in the NRE include both remineralization and Nfixation. Whereas allochthonous sources are usually most important in winter/spring and during periods of high fresh water discharge, autochthonous sources are likely to become more important in summer. N-fixation, which can be performed by both autotrophic cyanobacteria and heterotrophic …

Detecting Abnormal Behavior In Web Applications, Zi Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The rapid advance of web technologies has made the Web an essential part of our daily lives. However, network attacks have exploited vulnerabilities of web applications, and caused substantial damages to Internet users. Detecting network attacks is the first and important step in network security. A major branch in this area is anomaly detection. This dissertation concentrates on detecting abnormal behaviors in web applications by employing the following methodology. For a web application, we conduct a set of measurements to reveal the existence of abnormal behaviors in it. We observe the differences between normal and abnormal behaviors. By applying a …

A Learning-Based Approach To Exploiting Sensing Diversity In Performance Critical Sensor Networks, Matthew Alexander Keally

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Wireless sensor networks for human health monitoring, military surveillance, and disaster warning all have stringent accuracy requirements for detecting and classifying events while maximizing system lifetime. to meet high accuracy requirements and maximize system lifetime, we must address sensing diversity: sensing capability differences among both heterogeneous and homogeneous sensors in a specific deployment. Existing approaches either ignore sensing diversity entirely and assume all sensors have similar capabilities or attempt to overcome sensing diversity through calibration. Instead, we use machine learning to take advantage of sensing differences among heterogeneous sensors to provide high accuracy and energy savings for performance critical applications.;In …

Locality Enhancement And Dynamic Optimizations On Multi-Core And Gpu, Zheng Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Enhancing the match between software executions and hardware features is key to computing efficiency. The match is a continuously evolving and challenging problem. This dissertation focuses on the development of programming system support for exploiting two key features of modern hardware development: the massive parallelism of emerging computational accelerators such as Graphic Processing Units (GPU), and the non-uniformity of cache sharing in modern multicore processors. They are respectively driven by the important role of accelerators in today's general-purpose computing and the ultimate importance of memory performance. This dissertation particularly concentrates on optimizing control flows and memory references, at both compilation …

Sublethal Effects Of Methylmercury On The Songbird Immune Response: An Experimental Study, Catherine Ann Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Fluorescence Quenching Of Ppv-So And Bodipy-Naphthalene Systems, Brooklynd Dawn Saar

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Microburst Damage Assessment And Forest Composition Reconstruction After Hurricane Isabel In The College Woods, Williamsburg, Va, Kjarstin Alane Carlson-Drexler

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Poverty Shelf, New Zealand From The Holocene To Present: Stratigraphic Development And Event Layer Preservation In Response To Sediment Supply, Tectonics And Climate, Lila Eve Rose Pierce

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The small, high sediment yield Waipaoa River is located on the tectonically active, mountainous Poverty Margin on the east coast of the North Island, New Zealand. In contrast to sedimentary sequences on passive margin shelves, active margins, such as the Poverty Margin, can preserve continuous records of changing geological and environmental conditions at the land-sea interface during rapid sea-level rise. Two subsiding mid-shelf basins on the Poverty Shelf contain thick transgressive sequences which provide a record of evolving river, climate, landscape, and oceanographic conditions since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This dissertation investigates the stratigraphic development of Poverty Shelf, including …

A Study Of Vertical Patterns And Mechanisms Of Along-Channel Estuarine Circulation, Qubin. Qin

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The classical theory of estuarine dynamics has been challenged by a number of recent studies regarding the important contributions of tidal, lateral, and Coriolis effects to the subtidal dynamics at leading order. Although the classical theory excluded these processes, Hansen and Rattray’ ( R65) b subtidal circulation. However, the success of the predictive skill is not well understood. In this thesis, a perturbation approach is introduced to derive a “ ” (GS) of subtidal along-channel velocity profile for estuarine circulation incorporating the effects of tidal and lateral processes, which allows us to evaluate the possible circulation patterns, the underlying mechanisms, …

The Consequences Of Shoreline Development For Near-Shore Communities In Chesapeake Bay, Usa: A Before-After Control-Impact Study, Theresa M. Davenport

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Hardened shorelines and their construction introduce stressors to a system by altering near-shore habitats. They can reduce biodiversity and abundance of benthic infauna and marsh-edge nekton and epifauna. In this study, I investigated the impacts of shoreline development on near-shore communities using a temporal and spatial approach, by use of a before-after control-impact (BACI) study design at four sub-estuaries within Chesapeake Bay that represent three different types of shoreline change. The BACI study was used to examine infaunal density, biomass, and diversity for two size classes of infauna (3-mm: larger species and adults, 500-!m: smaller species and juveniles), as well …

Transport And Fate Of Sediment On The Waipaoa River Continental Shelf: Implications For The Formation And Reworking Of Flood Deposits, Julia M. Moriarty

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

As part of a large interdisciplinary study, particulate fluxes in the Waipaoa River sedimentary system in New Zealand have been studied from the terrestrial headlands of the catchment to the oceanic basin over timescales spanning storm events, seasons, and the Holocene. Here, we complement prior efforts by evaluating the formation and reworking of riverine deposits during episodic flood and wave events, and considering their role in accumulation patterns created over longer timescales on the Waipaoa shelf. Using a numerical hydrodynamic and sediment transport model, sediment fluxes and deposition were analyzed from January 2010 through February 2011.

A version of the …

Microzooplankton Community Structure And Grazing Impact Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Lori M. Price

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Microzooplankton (zooplankton 20 – 200 μm) are an integral part of aquatic food webs as they can be significant grazers of phytoplankton and bacteria, remineralizers of nutrients, and prey for higher trophic levels. The importance of microzooplankton in many pelagic ecosystems has been established, yet compared to larger zooplankton, microzooplankton are understudied in the Southern Ocean. I quantified microzooplankton community composition and grazing rates along the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) as part of the Palmer Antarctica Long-Term Ecological Research project (PAL LTER). This region is experiencing rapid warming, causing declines in sea ice and changes in the marine food web. …

Effects Of Life History And Physical Variables On Winter Distribution Of Blue Crabs In Chesapeake Bay, Gabrielle G. Saluta

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Myctophid Feeding Ecology And Carbon Transport Along The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Jeanna M. Hudson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) is the largest topographic feature in the Atlantic Ocean, yet little is known about the food web structure and trophic ecology of fishes inhabiting mesopelagic waters along the MAR. To better understand the food web structure and to compare the feeding ecology of abundant MAR fishes to those in offridge areas, MAR-ECO, a Mid-Atlantic Ridge ecosystem field project of the Census of Marine Life, sampled the pelagic fauna of the northern MAR (Iceland to the Azores) during June-July, 2004. Samples were collected with two midwater trawls outfitted with multiple opening and closing cod ends to sample …

Interannual And Regional Differences In Krill And Fish Prey Quality Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Kate E. Ruck

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Polar zooplankton and fish safeguard against the seasonality of food availability by using the summer months to build large reserves of lipids, which in turn are utilized to meet the metabolic demands of apex predators such as penguins, seals, and whales. A warming trend in the northern part of the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) has led to a decrease in perennial and summer sea ice, an increase in heat content over the shelf, and lower phytoplankton biomass, which could affect prey quality. We compared prey quality, including elemental (C, N) content and ratios, total, neutral, and polar lipid content, and …

Quantifying Watershed Loads To A Low Relief, Coastal Plain Estuary, The New River Estuary, N.C, Brittani J. Koroknay

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Watershed modeling is an important tool for quantifying the inputs of fresh water, sediments, and nutrients into receiving estuaries and potential changes in those loads under scenarios including changes in land use and climate. There are a variety of existing watershed loading models available, from simple to complex, but a spectrum of these models have yet to be applied and compared in a low relief, coastal plain setting. This project has been conducted as part of the Defense Coastal/Estuarine Research Program (DCERP), which has focused on the impact of Marine Corp Base Camp Lejeune (MCBCL) and activities in the surrounding …

Relationships Among Fine Sediment Settling And Suspension, Bed Erodibility, And Particle Type In The York River Estuary, Virginia, Kelsey A. Fall

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In order to understand the processes controlling the temporal variability in settling velocity (Ws) and bed erodibility (ε), in the middle reaches of the York River estuary, VA, the relationships between the hydrodynamics and particle types were investigated with a near-­‐bed Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) and the York River 3-­‐D Hydrodynamic Cohesive Bed Model.

ADV observations of the flow characteristics that occurred over a strong temporal transition period indicated that Ws and ε were characterized by two distinct regimes with contrasting sediment and water column characteristics: (i) a physically-­‐dominated regime (Regime 1) which was a period dominated by flocculated muds …