Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Exploring The Chemistry Of Η5-Cyclopentadienyl-Cobalt-Η4-Cyclobutadiene Containing Polymers; Synthesis, Properties, And Self-Assembly, Mahboubeh Hadadpour

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Metal containing polymers (metallopolymers) bring together the synthetic efficiency and versatility of conventional organic polymers with unique redox, responsive, and catalytic properties of inorganic metals. Over the last decade, metallopolymers have gained increased attention because of their unique physical and chemical properties that arise from the incorporation of metal centers into a polymer. Since the first report on a metallocene-based metallopolymer in 1955, there has been growing interest in this class of material. Ferrocene-based metallopolymers represent the vast majority of metallocene containing polymers in the literature. In 1992, the Manners Group established a major milestone in the field of metallopolymers …

Ion Beam Modification Of Strontium Titanate And Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite, Olga Lobacheva

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Doping and structural modification affects such important characteristics as conductivity, catalytic activity, luminescent and magnetic properties of modern materials. Ion beam implantation is a conventional doping method which combines a low processing temperature with convenient control of concentration and distribution of dopant and irradiation damage. In this study, the ion beam implantation method was used to modify strontium titanate (STO) and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). Both materials have immense potential for applications in different areas of modern technology, including gas sensing, catalysis, electronics and spintronics. Fe-implanted STO and N- and O-implanted HOPG were examined with complementary experimental techniques, including …

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction Of An Upper Ordovician Rocky Shoreline: The Lindsay Formation Of Heywood And Partridge Islands, Ontario, Hiba-Tul Naseer Maheen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The islands of Heywood and Partridge, located northeast of Manitoulin Island in Georgian Bay, Ontario, preserve a major unconformity between the Paleoproterozoic Bar River and Lorrain Formation quartz arenite and Upper Ordovician Lindsay Formation carbonate and mudrock. The Lindsay Formation strata record two transgressive pulses of an epeiric sea that flooded the North American continent during the Late Ordovician. During this time, mountain building processes associated with the Taconic Orogeny were taking place to the present east, and the tectonic effects of this orogeny resulted in subsidence of the Michigan Basin. The Lindsay Formation of the Trenton Group was deposited …

Quantitative Techniques For Spread Trading In Commodity Markets, Mir Hashem Moosavi Avonleghi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates quantitative techniques for trading strategies on two commodities, the difference of whose prices exhibits a long-term historical relationship known as mean-reversion. A portfolio of two commodity prices with very similar characteristics, the spread may be regarded as a distinct process from the underlying price processes so deserves to be modeled directly. To pave the way for modeling the spread processes, the fundamental concepts, notions, properties of commodity markets such as the forward prices, the futures prices, and convenience yields are described. Some popular commodity pricing models including both one and two factor models are reviewed. A new …

An Approach To Artificial Society Generation For Video Games, Bryan Sarlo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Since their inception in the 1940s, video games have always had a need for non-player characters (NPCs) driven by some form of artificial intelligence (AI). More recently, researchers and developers have attempted to create believable, or human-like, agents by modeling them after humans by borrowing concepts from the social sciences. This thesis explores an approach to generating a society of such believable agents with human-like attributes and social connections. This approach allows agents to form various kinds of relationships with other agents in the society, and even provides an introductory form of shared or influenced attributes based on their spouse …

Exploration Of Spatial And Temporal Changes In Trophic Status Of Lakes In The Northern Temporal Forest Biome Using Remote Sensing, Aleksey Paltsev

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

There is a critical need for detailed surveys of lakes covering large spatial (>100 km²) and temporal scales (decades) to determine if there is an increase in the magnitude and frequency of phytoplankton blooms. Remote sensing was used to: (1) develop a regression model that relates chlorophyll a (chl-a) as a proxy of lake phytoplankton biomass to Landsat TM and ETM+ optical reflectance (r²=0.85, p

Design, Synthesis, And Reactivity Of Bimetallic Complexes Of Dimethylplatinum(Ii) Containing Ditopic Ligands, Matthew S. Mccready

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis describes a study of monometallic and bimetallic dimethylplatinum(II) complexes containing ditopic nitrogen donor ligands. This work details the design and synthesis of side-to-side and cofacial arranged ligands and their respective coordination chemistry. The study of the synthesis, characterization and reaction mechanisms of the various dimethylplatinum(II) complexes is outlined in detail with special emphasis focused on the reactivity of the complexes towards oxidative addition.

The ditopic ligand 6-dppd, 1,4-di(2-pyridyl)-5,6,7,8,9,10-hexahydrocycloocta[d]pyridazine, was observed to coordinate only a single equivalent of a platinum(II) center. The inability to coordinate a second equivalent, even through an assisted bridging atom, is presumed to be due …

Stellar Spectroscopy: New Methods And Insights, Sanaz S. Golriz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The study of the chemical evolution of stars is of crucial importance since they play a major role in the enrichment of the chemistry of the universe. Throughout their lifetime, stars undergo several processes that can alter their chemistry. Gradually, the nucleosynthesis products from the interior of the star are radiatively and convectively levitated and mixed with the upper layers of the atmosphere. In the later stages of their evolution, low to intermediate mass stars (0.8-8.0~M☉) eject a significant fraction of these nucleosynthesis products, resulting in a circumstellar envelope of gas and dust around the central star with a very …

On Spectral Invariants Of Dirac Operators On Noncommutative Tori And Curvature Of The Determinant Line Bundle For The Noncommutative Two Torus, Ali Fathi Baghbadorani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

We extend the canonical trace of Kontsevich and Vishik to the algebra of non-integer order classical pseudodifferntial operators on noncommutative tori. We consider the spin spectral triple on noncommutative tori and prove the regularity of eta function at zero for the family of operators $e^{th/2}De^{th/2}$ and the couple Dirac operator $D+A$ on noncommutative $3$-torus. Next, we consider the conformal variations of $\eta_{D}(0)$ and we show that the spectral value $\eta_D(0)$ is a conformal invariant of noncommutative $3$-torus. Next, we study the conformal variation of $\zeta'_{|D|}(0)$ and show that this quantity is also a conformal invariant of odd noncommutative tori. This …

Interactive Visualization For Deep Organizational Data, Arash Khosravi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

During the last decade, there has been a growing interest in investigating how and why people use organizational data to solve problems, make decisions, and perform other cognitive activities, especially in the social network, healthcare, and education domains. Working with organizational data is challenging because of the complex and multi-structured nature of it. One way to support cognitive activities with organizational data is through the use of interactive visualization tools that provide different representations and mechanisms for interacting with deep layers of the data. In this research, we have deep organizational data which is mainly about collaborations inside universities. The …

Inclusions Among Mixed-Norm Lebesgue Spaces, Wayne R. Grey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A mixed L^P norm of a function on a product space is the

result of successive classical L^p norms in each variable,

potentially with a different exponent for each. Conditions to

determine when one mixed norm space is contained in another are

produced, generalizing the known conditions for embeddings

of L^p spaces.

The two-variable problem (with four L^p exponents, two for

each mixed norm) is studied extensively. The problem's ``unpermuted"

case simply reduces to a question of L^p embeddings. The other,

``permuted" case further divides, depending on the values of the

L^p exponents. Often, …

Geological Object Recognition In Extraterrestrial Environments, Gregory M. Elfers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

On July 4 1997, the landing of NASA’s Pathnder probe and its rover Sojourner marked the beginning of a new era in space exploration; robots with the ability to move have made up the vanguard of human extraterrestrial exploration ever since. With Sojourners landing, for the rst time, a ground traversing robot was at a distance too far from earth to make direct human control practical. This has given rise to the development of autonomous systems to improve the e?ciency of these robots,in both their ability to move,and their ability to make decisions regarding their environment. Computer Vision comprises a …

Online Nonparametric Estimation Of Stochastic Differential Equations, Xin Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The advent of the big data era presents new challenges and opportunities for those managing portfolios, both of assets and of risk exposures, for the financial industry. How to cope with the volume of data to quickly extract actionable information is becoming more crucial than ever before. This information can be used, for example, in pricing various financial products or in calculating risk exposures to meet (ever changing) regulatory requirements.

Stochastic differential equations are often used to model the risk factors in finance. Given the presumption of a functional form for the coefficients of these equations, the required parameters can …

Extensions Of The Cross-Entropy Method With Applications To Diffusion Processes And Portfolio Losses, Alexandre Scott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Rare event simulation is a crucial part of simulations. In financial mathematics, the study of rare events appear naturally when we consider risk measures such as the conditional value at risk. This thesis is composed of three related papers treating the rare event simulations subject: the first paper addresses rare event simulations using for diffusion processes, the second paper addresses rare event simulations for the normal and the Student t-copula model while the last paper addresses rare event simulations for a portfolio model where there is a correlation structure between the loss-given-default and the probability of default.

Determination Of Lie Superalgebras Of Supersymmetries Of Super Differential Equations, Xuan Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Superspaces are an extension of classical spaces that include certain (non-commutative) supervariables. Super differential equations are differential equations defined on superspaces, which arise in certain popular mathematical physics models. Supersymmetries of such models are superspace transformations which leave their sets of solutions invariant. They are important generalization of classical Lie symmetry groups of differential equations.

In this thesis, we consider finite-dimensional Lie supersymmetry groups of super differential equations. Such supergroups are locally uniquely determined by their associated Lie superalgebras, and in particular by the structure constants of those algebras. The main work of this thesis is providing an algorithmic method …

Methods And Results Toward Measuring Magnetic Fields In Star-Forming Regions, Scott C. Jones

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Star formation is a fundamental process in the evolution of the cosmos. Yet given the abundance of stellar constituents, it remains prescient as to why the number of stars is not correspondingly large. If we cannot satisfactorily explain how stars are formed, then many further avenues of research are hindered. This thesis makes claims about one of the foremost theories as to the relative lack of stars, interstellar magnetic fields. These fields have been observationally verified on multiple scales. I will use the most direct method to probe magnetic fields in known star-forming regions, polarization, at millimetre/submillimetre wavelengths. In particular …

Trust Based Privacy Policy Enforcement In Cloud Computing, Karthick Ramachandran

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cloud computing offers opportunities for organizations to reduce IT costs by using the computation and storage of a remote provider. Despite the benefits offered by cloud computing paradigm, organizations are still wary of delegating their computation and storage to a cloud service provider due to trust concerns. The trust issues with the cloud can be addressed by a combination of regulatory frameworks and supporting technologies. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) and remote attestation provide the technologies for addressing the trust concerns. PET provides proactive measures through cryptography and selective dissemination of data to the client. Remote attestation mechanisms provides reactive measures …

Chromite Crystal Structure And Chemistry Applied As An Exploration Tool, Patrick H.M. Shepherd

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The spinel group minerals have long been of interest to the geosciences due to their use as indicator minerals. Unit cell is a structural measure controlled by composition but is also affected by pressure and temperature relations through order-disorder. This study attempted to look at the applications of unit cell in exploration. The implementation of µXRD for this purpose required the creation the Slice Integration Technique to improve signal over background. Compositions of binary spinels can be approximated through their correlation with unit cell. Possible applications include gemology and curatorial studies, where the nondestructive nature of µXRD is highly advantageous …

Nitrate Sources In The Old Ausable River Channel And Adjacent Aquifers In Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario Canada, Samuel Dj Russell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Old Ausable River Channel (OARC) is located parallel to the shoreline of Lake Huron between the towns of Grand Bend and Port Franks, Ontario, Canada. Largely isolated from other water bodies, OARC water levels are mostly maintained by shallow groundwater. It is periodically in a state of eutrophication; a state commonly attributed to local anthropogenic nitrate loading. The primary goal of this work is to identify and quantify the sources of nitrate in the OARC watershed by measuring the oxygen and nitrogen isotope compositions of nitrate.

We have developed a dual method approach to measure the δ¹⁵N, …

A Study Of Volatile Organic Compounds From Transgenic Arabidopsis Thaliana And Solanum Lycopersicum Plants And Analytical Characterization Of Pyrolysis Bio-Oil, Luis A. Caceres

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A dynamic headspace method was developed for the non-targeted analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in Arabidopsis and Micro-Tom plants. The method allowed to determine differences from wild type (WT) and transformed plants overexpressing the carotene cleavage dioxygenase 1 (CCD1) genes. In the Arabidopsis study it was revealed the presence of unsaturated hydrocarbons, aromatic derivatives, alcohols, and terpenes. Among extracted volatiles, the apocarotenoid compound β-ionone was also detected, four-fold higher in the transgenic plants than the WT. There were not significant differences in the VOCs between the HS of Micro-Tom tomato plants overexpressing the CCD1 genes and WT. …

Metagenome Assembly, Wenjing Wan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The advent of the next generation sequencing technology (NGS) makes it possible to study metagenomics data which is directly extracted and cloned from assemblage of micro-organisms. Metagenomics data are diverse in species and abundance. Because most genome assemblers are designed for single genome assembly, they could not perform well on metagenomics data. To deal with the mixed and not uniformly distributed metagenomics reads, we developed a novel metagenomic assembler named MetaSAGE, on the platform of the existing SAGE assembler. MetaSAGE finds contigs from the overlap graph based on the minimum cost flow theory and uses mate-pair information to extract scaffolds …

An Investigation Of Cognitive Implications In The Design Of Computer Games, Robert Haworth

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Computer games have been touted for their ability to engage players in cognitive activities (e.g., decision making, learning, planning, problem solving). By ‘computer game’ we mean any game that uses computational technology as its platform, regardless of the actual hardware or software; games on personal computers, tablets, game consoles, cellphones, or specialized equipment can all be called computer games. However, there remains much uncertainty regarding how to design computer games so that they support, facilitate, and promote the reflective, effortful, and conscious performance of cognitive activities. The goal of this dissertation is to relieve some of this uncertainty, so that …

A Study Of Photon Trapping And The Ac Stark Effect In Photonic Crystals And Dispersive Materials, Iftekharul Haque

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, we study light-matter interaction in the contexts of coherent population trapping (CPT) and the ac Stark effect in nanoparticles embedded (doped) in two important classes of reservoirs -- photonic crystals and dispersive materials. These materials have gaps in their energy spectra and are studied widely due to their unusual optical properties and potential for novel applications. We consider that the reservoirs are doped with an ensemble of five-level nanoparticles, each with a single Λ core (consisting of a lower doublet and an upper energy level), which interact with both the host reservoir and external radiation fields. We …

Edge States And Quantum Hall Phases In Graphene, Pavlo Piatkovskyi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The focus of this thesis is the dynamical symmetry breaking in monolayer and bilayer graphene in a magnetic field and the edge excitations in these systems. Due to the spin and valley degrees of freedom, the Coulomb interaction in graphene can lead to various broken-symmetry quantum Hall phases. The transport properties of each phase are affected by the low-energy edge excitations, and understanding the edge state properties can be crucial for identifying the true nature of the ground state. We study edge states in biased bilayer graphene in a magnetic field within the four-band continuum model. The analysis is done …

The Influence Of Long-Term Gamma-Radiation And Initially Dissolved Chemicals On Aqueous Kinetics And Interfacial Processes, Pamela A. Yakabuskie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis presents work focusing on the long-term effect of gamma-radiation on aqueous solution kinetics. Ionizing radiation drives the decomposition of water to form both oxidizing (•OH, O₂, H₂O₂) and reducing (•e_aq⁻, •O₂⁻, •H, H₂) chemical species. Over time, these radiolysis products can react with dissolved solutes and participate in interfacial reactions. This can lead to significant changes in the eventual solution redox condition, and gas phase composition, and in certain cases result in the formation of solid species. Understanding the long-term solution kinetics for radiolysis …

Geography Aware Virtual Machine Migrations And Replications For Distributed Cloud Data Centers, Sakif Shahriar Pritom

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cloud computing provides access to computing resources for a fee. Client applications and services can be hosted in clouds. Cloud computing typically uses a network of data centers that are geographically dispersed. The distance between clients and applications is impacted by geographical distance. The geographical distribution of client requests can be random and difficult to predict. This suggests a need to reconsider the placement of services at run-time through migration. This thesis describes a framework based on software-defined networking (SDN) principles. It demonstrates algorithms that are periodically executed and determine candidate services to migrate and replicate as well as target …

Gamma-Radiation Induced Redox Reactions And Colloidal Formation Of Chromium And Cobalt Oxide Nanoparticles, Leena M. Alrehaily

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The main goal of this thesis research is to develop a mechanistic understanding of radiation-induced chromium oxide and cobalt oxide nanoparticle formation in aqueous solutions containing initially dissolved metal ions. When exposed to ionizing radiation, water decomposes to form a range of chemically reactive radical and molecular products. This redox agents can readily change the oxidation state of dissolved metal ions. The solubility of a transition metal ion can vary by several orders of magnitude depending on its oxidation state and the solution pH. Thus, reactions that can alter the oxidation state of a dissolved ion can lead to the …

Rationality Of The Spectral Action For Robertson-Walker Metrics And The Geometry Of The Determinant Line Bundle For The Noncommutative Two Torus, Asghar Ghorbanpour

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In noncommutative geometry, the geometry of a space is given via a spectral triple $(\mathcal{A,H},D)$. Geometric information, in this approach, is encoded in the spectrum of $D$ and to extract them, one should study spectral functions such as the heat trace $\Tr (e^{-tD^2})$, the spectral zeta function $\Tr(|D|^{-s})$ and the spectral action functional, $\Tr f(D/\Lambda)$.

The main focus of this thesis is on the methods and tools that can be used to extract the spectral information. Applying the pseudodifferential calculus and the heat trace techniques, in addition to computing the newer terms, we prove the rationality of the spectral action …

Regionally-Adjustable Generic Ground-Motion Prediction Equation, Emrah Yenier

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

We develop a simulation-based generic ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE) that can be adjusted for use in any region by simple modifications to its key modeling parameters.

First, we determine how to treat ground-motion saturation effects observed at close distances to large magnitude earthquakes in a point-source sense. We model the source and attenuation attributes of well-recorded M ≥ 6 events, considering ground motions originate from an equivalent point source placed at an overall effective distance such that the empirically-observed saturation effects are successfully reproduced. We investigate the trade-offs between source and attenuation modeling parameters through analysis of Fourier amplitudes for …

A Real-Time N-Gram Approach To Choosing Synonyms Based On Context, Brian J. Moore

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Synonymy is an important part of all natural language but not all synonyms are created equal. Just because two words are synonymous, it usually doesn’t mean they can always be interchanged. The problem that we attempt to address is that of near-synonymy and choosing the right word based purely on its surrounding words. This new computational method, unlike previous methods used on this problem, is capable of making multiple word suggestions which more accurately models human choice. It contains a large number of words, does not require training, and is able to be run in real-time. On previous testing data, …