Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Chlorsulfuron, Ecological Risk Assessment, Final Report, Ensr International

All U.S. Government Documents (Utah Regional Depository)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), United States Department of the Interior (USDI), proposing a program to treat vegetation on up to six million acres of public lands annually in 17 western states in the continental United States (US) and Alaska. As part of this program, the BLM is proposing the use of ten herbicide active ingredients (a.i.) to control invasive plants and noxious weeds on approximately one million of the 6 million acres proposed for treatment. The BLM and its contractor, ENSR, are preparing a Vegetation Treatments Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to evaluate this and other proposed vegetation …

Vernal Fire Management Plan Environmental Assessment, United States Department Of The Interior, Bureau Of Land Management

All U.S. Government Documents (Utah Regional Depository)

This Environmental Assessment (EA) documents results of an analysis of proposed changes to the current management of wildland fire and hazardous fuels for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Vernal Field Office. Proposed revisions of the Vernal Fire Management Plan (FMP) serve as the Proposed Action for this EA. The revised FMP incorporates current planning requirements associated with fire management on public lands, including wildland fire suppression and fuel treatments. The EA analysis is designed to ensure compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It allows determinations to be made as to whether any significant impacts, as defined by …

Laser-Dressed Vacuum Polarization In A Coulomb Field, A. I. Milstein, Ivan S. Terekhov, Ulrich D. Jentschura, Christoph H. Keitel

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We investigate quantum electrodynamic effects under the influence of an external, time-dependent electromagnetic field, which mediates dynamic modifications of the radiative corrections. Specifically, we consider the quantum electrodynamic vacuum-polarization tensor under the influence of two external background fields: a strong laser field and a nuclear Coulomb field. We calculate the charge and current densities induced by a nuclear Coulomb field in the presence of a laser field. We find the corresponding induced scalar and vector potentials. The induced potential, in first-order perturbation theory, leads to a correction to atomic energy levels. The external laser field breaks the rotational symmetry of …

How To Keep Beavers From Plugging Culverts, Dale L. Nolte, Dale H. Arner, John Paulson, Jeanne C. Jones, Andy Trent

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Beaver populations increased dramatically during the last half century. Beavers and beaver dams now are found on rivers, streams, and creeks across the country. Although beavers dam streams for their own benefit, the ponds create habitats for birds, fish, and other wildlife. Unfortunately, as road engineers and maintenance crews know, beavers also plug culverts. When culverts are plugged (figure 1), roads can be washed away by flooding. Removing the beavers’ dams usually requires heavy equipment, which is costly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Missoula Technology and Development Center (MTDC) was asked to investigate methods to solve the …

Kinetic Evaluation Of Human Cloned Coproporphyrinogen Oxidase Using A Ring Isomer Of The Natural Substrate, Marjorie A. Jones, Christopher L. Cooper, Timothy D. Lash

Faculty Publications – Chemistry

Background: The enzyme coproporphyrinogen oxidase (copro'gen oxidase) converts coproporphyrinogen-Ill (GIII) to protoporphyrinogen-IX via an intermediary monovinyl porphyrinogen. The A ring isomer coproporphyrinogen-IV (C-IV) has previously been shown to be a substrate for copro'gen oxidase derived from avian erythrocytes. In contrast to the authentic substrate (GIII) where only a small amount of the monovinyl intermediate is detected, C-IV gives rise to a monovinyl intermediate that accumulates before being converted to an isomer of protoporphyrinogen-IX. No kinetic studies have been carried out using the purified human copro'gen oxidase to evaluate its ability to process both the authentic substrate as well as analogs. …

Entropic Characterization Of Mixing In Microchannels, Marco Camesasca, Ica Manas Zloczower, Miron Kaufman

Physics Faculty Publications

A methodology for rigorous mixing assessment in microchannels is presented. The analysis is based on numerical simulations of flow in different geometries coupled with mixing assessment using entropic measures. The results show enhanced mixing efficiency for the staggered herringbone micromixer by comparison with a mixer with straight diagonal ridges and a lack of mixing in a non-patterned channel. These results are in agreement with published experimental data.

Towards A Precision Measurement Of The Casimir Force In A Cylinder-Plane Geometry, M. Brown-Hayes, D. A.R. Dalvit, F. D. Mazzitelli, W. J. Kim, R. Onofrio

Dartmouth Scholarship

We report on a proposal aimed at measuring the Casimir force in the cylinder-plane configuration. The Casimir force is evaluated including corrections due to finite parallelism, conductivity, and temperature. The range of validity of the proximity force approximation is also discussed. An apparatus to test the feasibility of a precision measurement in this configuration has been developed, and we describe both a procedure to control the parallelism and the results of the electrostatic calibration. Finally we discuss the possibility of measuring the thermal contribution to the Casimir force and deviations from the proximity force approximation, both of which are expected …

Alignment Dynamics Of Slow Light Diffusion In Ultracold Atomic 85Rb, S. Balik, R. G. Olave, C. I. Sukenik, M. D. Havey, V. M. Datsyuk, I. M. Sokolov, D. V. Kupriyanov

Physics Faculty Publications

A combined experimental and theoretical investigation of time- and alignment-dependent propagation of light in an ultracold atomic gas of atomic ⁸⁵Rb is reported. Coherences among the scattering amplitudes for light scattering off excited hyperfine levels produce strong variations of the light polarization in the vicinity of atomic resonance. Measurements are in excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulations of the multiple scattering process.

Modification Of Precipitation By Coastal Orography In Storms Crossing Northern California, Curtis N. James, Robert A. Houze Jr.

Applied Aviation Sciences - Prescott

This study compiles and interprets three-dimensional Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) data during a 2.5-yr period and examines the typical orographic effects on precipitation mainly associated with winter storms passing over coastal northern California.The three-dimensional mean reflectivity patterns show echo structure that was generally stratiform from over the ocean to inland over the mountains. The flow above the 1-km level was strong enough to be unblocked by the terrain, and the mean echo pattern over land had certain characteristics normally associated with an unblocked cross-barrier flow, both on the broad scale of the windward slopes of the coastal mountains and …

Effects Of Gramicidin-A On The Adsorption Of Phospholipids To The Air–Water Interface, Samares C. Biswas, Shankar B. Rananavare, Stephen B. Hall

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Prior studies suggest that the hydrophobic surfactant proteins, SP-B and SP-C, promote adsorption of the lipids in pulmonary surfactant to an air–water interface by stabilizing a negatively curved rate-limiting structure that is intermediate between bilayer vesicles and the surface film. This model predicts that other peptides capable of stabilizing negative curvature should also promote lipid adsorption. Previous reports have shown that under appropriate conditions, gramicidin-A (GrA) induces dioleoyl phosphatidylcholine (DOPC), but not dimyristoyl phosphatidylcholine (DMPC), to form the negatively curved hexagonal-II (HII) phase. The studies reported here determined if GrA would produce the same effects on adsorption of DMPC and …

Exploiting Self-Adaptive Posture-Based Focus Estimation For Lecture Video Editing, Feng Wang, Chong-Wah Ngo, Ting-Chuen Pong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Head pose plays a special role in estimating a presenter’s focuses and actions for lecture video editing. This paper presents an efficient and robust head pose estimation algorithm to cope with the new challenges arising in the content management of lecture videos. These challenges include speed requirement, low video quality, variant presenting styles and complex settings in modern classrooms. Our algorithm is based on a robust hierarchical representation of skin color clustering and a set of pose templates that are automatically trained. Contextual information is also considered to refine pose estimation. Most importantly, we propose an online learning approach to …

Motion-Based Approach For Bbc Rushes Structuring And Characterization, Chong-Wah Ngo, Zailiang Pan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Mining Ontological Knowledge From Domain-Specific Text Documents, Xing Jiang, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional text mining systems employ shallow parsing techniques and focus on concept extraction and taxonomic relation extraction. This paper presents a novel system called CRCTOL for mining rich semantic knowledge in the form of ontology from domain-specific text documents. By using a full text parsing technique and incorporating both statistical and lexico-syntactic methods, the knowledge extracted by our system is more concise and contains a richer semantics compared with alternative systems. We conduct a case study wherein CRCTOL extracts ontological knowledge, specifically key concepts and semantic relations, from a terrorism domain text collection. Quantitative evaluation, by comparing with a state-of-the-art …

Spectroscopic And Thermodynamic Characterization Of The E151d And E151a Altered Leucine Aminopeptidases From Aeromonas Proteolytica, Krzysztof P. Bzymek, Sabina I. Swierczek, Brian Bennett, Richard C. Holz

Physics Faculty Research and Publications

Previous kinetic characterization of the glutamate 151 (E151)-substituted forms of the leucine aminopeptidase from Aeromonas proteolytica (Vibrio proteolyticus; AAP) has provided critical evidence that this residue functions as the general acid/base. The close proximity of similar glutamate residues to the bridging water/hydroxide of the dinuclear active sites of metalloenzymes (2.80 and 3.94 Å in carboxypeptidase G₂ and 3.30 and 3.63 Å in AAP), suggests it may also be involved in stabilizing the active-site metal ions. Therefore, the structural perturbations of the dinuclear active site of AAP were examined for two E151-substituted forms, namely E151D-AAP and E151A-AAP, by …

Erratum: Publisher's Note: Calculation Of The One- And Two-Loop Lamb Shift For Arbitrary Excited Hydrogenic States (Physical Review Letters (2005) 95 (180404)), Andrzej Czarnecki, Ulrich D. Jentschura, Krzysztof Pachucki

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Supramolecular Nanostructures Based On Calixarenes, Heng Xu

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

This dissertation describes a systematic approach towards the design, synthesis, characterization, and application of calixarene-based supramolecular nanostructures. Chapter 1 briefly overviews the field of supramolecular chemistry and highlights its horizons. Chapter 2 introduces a modular strategy towards synthesis of nanoscale receptor macromolecules--calix-peptide conjugates. This strategy combines the unique host-guest capabilities of calixarene chemistry with synthetically flexible peptide synthesis. A series of calixarene amino acids was prepared and further utilized to synthesize calixarene dipeptides. Through this approach, calixarene amino acids are now available to be incorporated into peptide networks and nanostructured biologically relevant materials. Chapter 3 demonstrates supramolecular applications of calixarene-peptide …

Supramolecular Chemistry Of Nitrogen Dioxide, Yanlong Kang

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

Supramolecular chemistry has been defined as "chemistry beyond molecules", and involves investigating molecular systems held together reversibly by inter-molecular forces, not by covalent bonds. This dissertation discusses a supramolecular approach towards sensing, entrapment and utilization of NO2/N2O4 gases. Chapter 1 briefly discusses supramolecular chemistry and supramolecular chemistry of gases. In chapter 2, the interaction of NOx with metalloporphyrins is described. Specifically, ruthenium nitrosyl derivatives hold a special place in mimicking bio-relevant NO-metal interactions. A previously unnoticed reaction between NO2/N2O4 and a Ru(II) porphyrin is described. It causes disproportionation of N2O4 and leads to a stable nitrosyl nitrato complex. Our findings …

A Geologic Record Of Methane Consumption Associated With Methane Gas Hydrates At Blake Ridge Region (Continental Rise, Offshore Southeastern United States), Walter S. Borowski, Kathryn G. Takacs, Matthew K. Thompson

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Geochemical signals locked within sedimentary rocks are a record of earth processes. Sulfide minerals (elemental sulfur, iron monosulfides, and pyrite) are formed within marine sediments by several different geochemical processes mediated by microbes. Investigating the concentration and sulfur isotopic composition (d³⁴S) of sulfide minerals gives clues about the relative importance of these competing geochemical processes.

Marine sediments of the Blake Ridge(offshore South Carolina and Georgia) contain sulfide minerals that point to anaerobic methane oxidation (AMO) as an important diagenetic process both today and in the recent geological past (Miocene). At the present-day methane-sulfate interface, upward-diffusing methane is consumed …

Coordinated Cluster/Double Star Observations Of Dayside Reconnection Signatures, M. W. Dunlop, M. G. G. T. Taylor, J. A. Davies, C. J. Owen, F. Pitout, A. N. Fazakerley, K. Nykyri, Et Al.

Publications

The recent launch of the equatorial spacecraft of the Double Star mission, TC-1, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to monitor the southern hemisphere dayside magnetopause boundary layer in conjunction with northern hemisphere observations by the quartet of Cluster spacecraft. We present first results of one such situation where, on 6 April 2004, both Cluster and the Double Star TC-1 spacecraft were on outbound transits through the dawnside magnetosphere. The observations are consistent with ongoing reconnection on the dayside magnetopause, resulting in a series of flux transfer events (FTEs) seen both at Cluster and TC-1, which appear to lie north and …

Book Review: The Scientific Legacy Of Fred Hoyle, T. D. Oswalt

Publications

This document is Dr. Oswalt’s review of The Scientific Legacy of Fred Hoyle ed. by Douglas Gough Cambridge, 2004 249p, 0521824486 $75.00.

Particular Solutions For Axisymmetric Helmholtz-Type Operators, A.S. Muleshkov, M.A. Golberg, C.S. Chen

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we consider the solution of the axisymmetric heat equation with axisymmetric data in an axisymmetric domain in R-3. To solve this problem, we remove the time-dependence by various transform or time-stepping methods. This converts the problem to one of a sequence of modified inhomogeneous Helmholtz equations. Generalizing previous work, we consider solving these equations by boundary-type methods. In order to do this, one needs to subtract off a particular solution, so that one obtains a sequence of modified homogeneous Helmholtz equations. We do this by modifying the usual Dual Reciprocity Method (DRM) and approximating the right-hand sides …

Geodetic Gps Measurements In South Iceland: Strain Accumulation And Partitioning In A Propagating Ridge System, P. C. Lafemina, Timothy H. Dixon, R. Malservisi, T. Arnadottir, E. Sturkell, F. Sigmundsson, P. Einarsson

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

GPS observations in south Iceland between 1994 and 2003 are compared with two-dimensional elastic half-space and viscoelastic coupling models for two parallel rift zones, representing the Western and Eastern volcanic zones (WVZ, EVZ). GPS data from the Hreppar block, between the WVZ and EVZ, fit a rigid block model within uncertainties. Spreading rates across the WVZ increase from 2.6 ± 0.9 mm/yr in the northeast to 7.0 ± 0.4 mm/yr in the southwest. Conversely, spreading rates in the EVZ decrease from 19.0 ± 2.0 mm/yr in the northeast to 11.0 ± 0.8 mm/yr in the southwest, the direction of ridge …

Querying Microarray Databases, Zoe Alexandra Raja

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Microarray technology has rapidly taken a key position among bioinformatics research tools. After the completion of the Human Genome Project, microarray databases have become particularly important to the management and analysis of genomic data. These databases are ideal tools for many research areas involving gene expression patterns under different experimental conditions. This work attempts to assess the querying capabilities of current public microarray database implementations by evaluating their data management, query interfaces, and results presentation. We are not aware of any comparative study available to date that evaluates this important class of biological databases. We examine and evaluate how several …

Repclass: Cluster And Grid Enabled Automatic Classification Of Transposable Elements Identified De Novo In Genome Sequences, Nirmal Ranganathan

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

In the last few years many computer and laboratory improvements in the production and analysis of DNA sequences have made possible the complete sequencing of whole genomes. This provides us with a wealth of raw genomes that needs to be processed and annotated. 5% to 80% of eukaryotic genomes contain repetitive DNA consisting of transposable elements and tandem repeats which needs to be identified, classified and annotated in order to sequence and annotate the entire genome accurately. Existing tools allow us to identify and annotate transposable elements (TE) but no tool exists for their classification. This thesis work introduces REPCLASS …

Application Of Graph-Based Data Mining To Biological Networks, Chang Hun You

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

A huge amount of biological data has been generated by long-term research. It is time to start to focus on a system-level understanding of bio-systems. Biological networks are networks of biochemical reactions, containing various objects and their relationships. Understanding of biological networks is a starting point of systems biology. Multi-relational data mining finds the relational patterns in both the entity attributes and relations in the data. A widely used representation for relational data is a graph consisting of vertices and edges between these vertices. Graph-based data mining, as one approach of multi-relational data mining, finds relational patterns in a graph …

Enhancements To The Sam-Grid Infrastructure, Bimal Balan

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

SAM-Grid is a grid computing infrastructure for high energy physics (HEP) experiments in Fermilab. It is composed of data handling, job management and information management components. There are several challenges when the number of sites participating in the experiment increases. This thesis presents the enhancements made on the SAM-Grid infrastructure. This includes scalability and performance related enhancements. The enhancements mainly affect the batch adapter, monitoring and security layers. As a scalability aspect, Monitoring and Information services required changes to make it easier for monitoring large number of jobs. SAM-Grid is integrated with Sun Grid Engine (SGE) batch system. The batch …

Adaptive Agent Communities For Providing Services In Dynamic Networks, Nayantara Mallesh

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

New network applications are being created everyday to accommodate diverse user needs. Delivering services to the user in a timely manner taking into account network conditions, resources allocated and network load is a challenge. Multiprotocol Label Switching attempts to overcome best-effort service by providing a method for routing traffic around network congestion, resource reservation and quality of service (QoS) capabilities. IntServ and DiffServ are two other QoS models in use today. IntServ provides per-flow guarantee of quality while DiffServ is based on aggregate service classes. Adaptive Network Service (ANS) is a community of adaptive, collaborating agents residing in the network …

Multi-Dimensional Indexing For Xml Data, Do Youn Kim

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is becoming a dominant standard for exchanging and retrieving data over the internet. As XML in data exchanging grows, various XML indexing techniques have been proposed for fast and efficient query processing. A survey of theses techniques [9] categorized them into sequence-based indexes, structural indexes, dimension-based indexes and keyword-based indexes based on their properties. In this thesis, we focus on the multi-dimensional XML indexing; more precisely, it can be categorized as a 2-dimension based indexing, which is used in this paper. We studied the properties of multi-dimensional XML indexing and created an implementation to evaluate …

Adaptive, Multimodal, Application Independent User Interfaces For People With Disabilites Using Computers, Padmapriya Sambath

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

The goal of this thesis is to create more adaptive and flexible user interfaces for people with disabilities and presenting information to everyone and on every device at any time. Delivering information at any time leads to situations such as a person walking with a mobile device having a small screen wanting to make a flight reservation. The intention of presenting information to everybody immediately raises the question of how much of the available information reach people with disabilities. We have suggested a content based user interface language that may be used by external services to interact with the user. …

Service Discovery By Automated Structural And Semantic Matching, Alan Walker

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Pervasive computing systems need to locate and use services dynamically. Current models of service location and interaction rely on a fixed contract, or service description, located by name and/or a combination of keywords. This implies a priori agreement on the service description, leading to fragility and the inability for systems to interoperate unless they were built to match an existing standard. This thesis implements a technique for relaxing the fixed contract assumption, so that the nearest match amongst a set of services can be located. The system takes into account structural, data type and naming differences. The naming differences are …