Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mesospheric Gravity Waves Observed Near Equatorial And Low-Middle Latitude Stations: Wave Characteristics And Reverse Ray Tracing Results, C. M. Wrasse, T. Nakamura, H. Takahshi, A. F. Medeiros, Michael J. Taylor, D. Gobi, C. M. Denardini, J. Fechine, R. A. Buriti, A. Salatun, Suratno, E. Achmad, A. G. Admiranto

All Physics Faculty Publications

Gravity wave signatures were extracted from OH airglow observations using all-sky CCD imagers at four different stations: Cachoeira Paulista (CP) (22.7° S, 45° W) and São João do Cariri (7.4° S, 36.5° W), Brazil; Tanjungsari (TJS) (6.9° S, 107.9° E), Indonesia and Shigaraki (34.9° N, 136° E), Japan. The gravity wave parameters are used as an input in a reverse ray tracing model to study the gravity wave vertical propagation trajectory and to estimate the wave source region. Gravity waves observed near the equator showed a shorter period and a larger phase velocity than those waves observed at low-middle latitudes. …

Public Engagement To Prioritize The Pastoral Research Agenda At The Pastoral And Agro-Pastoral Research Center Of Oari In Ethiopia, D. Layne Coppock, Getachew Gebru, Lemma Gizachew, Sintayehu Mesele, Mohammed Hassena, Solomon Desta

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

The Oromia Agricultural Research Institute (OARI) has a mandate to conduct agricultural and livestock research throughout the Regional State of Oromia in Ethiopia. OARI has recently opened a facility near Yabello town on the Borana Plateau called the Pastoral and Agro-Pastoral Research Center. A meeting was held in August 2006 at Yabello that involved representatives from pastoral communities, the private sector, government, and non-governmental organizations. The aim was to engage stakeholders in a process of problem prioritization and set the stage to create new partnerships to better address pressing problems. The final priorities included: addressing a general decline in forage …

Changes In Land Cover And Soil Conditions For The Yabelo District Of The Borana Plateau, 1973-2003, D. Layne Coppock, Sintayehu Mesele, Heluf Gebrekidan, Lemma Gizachew

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

It has been proposed that the Borana Plateau has markedly changed in terms of land cover and land use in recent decades, but no hard data have been available to critically assess this claim. In addition, systematic analysis of soil properties has been limited. Research was designed to measure changes in land cover/land use over 30 years in the 400-km2 Yabelo District of southern Ethiopia using three satellite images taken at an average interval of 15 years. Samples were also collected to assess variation in the physical and chemical properties of dominant soils. Results indicated that Yabelo District has indeed …

From Herd Diversification To Livelihood Diversification As A Response To Poverty: The Case Of The Waso Boran Of Northern Kenya, D. Layne Coppock, Abdullahi D. Jillo, Abdillahi A. Aboud

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

The Waso Boran of northern Kenya used to have large, mobile, and diverse herds of livestock that exploited equally large and diverse rangelands. Forty years of human population growth, drought, environmental change, and lack of relevant policies have altered this situation, however, with the majority of Waso Boran today being livestock poor and engaged in a variety of non-pastoral activities to diversify their livelihoods. One-third of 540 households we surveyed in Isiolo District now have ten head of cattle or less, and a larger census suggests that only 15 percent of households can currently be categorized as mobile pastoralists. The …

A Linear Modulation Osl Study Of The Unstable Ultrafast Component In Samples From Glacial Lake Hitchcock, Massachusetts, Usa, R. J. Goble, Tammy M. Rittenour

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Optical ages were determined for samples from delta and sand dune deposits associated with Glacial Lake Hitchcock near Amherst, Massachusetts using the single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) technique. However, a strong unstable ultrafast component caused initial rejection of data from a large proportion of aliquots. A linearly modulated blue OSL (LM-OSL) study was undertaken on the sample with the strongest ultrafast component, with the data modelled using the equation of Bulur et al. (2000) as 5 fast, medium and slow components, and 1 ultrafast component.

The ultrafast component dominates the LM–OSL, almost completely obscuring the fast component. …

Community Perceptions Concerning Key Ecological Resources At Risk In Baringo District, Kenya, D. Layne Coppock, Mark N. Mutinda, Abdillahi A. Aboud

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Key ecological resources in arid and semi-arid lands are often characterized by small patches of seasonal grazing and important water points that lend critical support to entire production systems. When key resources are degraded or lost, production systems can be badly compromised. The Baringo District of north-central Kenya is well known for enduring decades of environmental degradation and food relief. As an initial part of an effort to map and characterize key ecological resources at risk in Baringo, we interviewed 136 resident leaders from pastoral and agro-pastoral areas. We asked them to identify and rank their most vulnerable ecological resources, …

Collective Action By Women’S Groups To Combat Drought And Poverty In Northern Kenya, D. Layne Coppock, Solomon Desta, Getachew Gebru, Adan Wako, Ibrahim Aden, Chachu Tadecha, Seyoum Tezera

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Collective action can be an effective means of local development and risk reduction among rural people, but few examples have been documented in pastoral areas. We conducted extensive interviews for 16 women’s groups residing in northern Kenya. Our objectives were to understand how groups were formed, governed, and sustained and what activities they have pursued. The groups we interviewed were 10 years old, on average. Charter memberships averaged about 24 women, 20 of whom were illiterate. Half of the groups formed after facilitation by a development partner and half formed spontaneously. Groups are governed under detailed constitutional frameworks with elected …

Solutions For The Cell Cycle In Cell Lines Derived From Human Tumors, B. Zubik-Kowal

Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The goal of the paper is to compute efficiently solutions for model equations that have the potential to describe the growth of human tumor cells and their responses to radiotherapy or chemotherapy. The mathematical model involves four unknown functions of two independent variables: the time variable t and dimensionless relative DNA content x. The unknown functions can be thought of as the number density of cells and are solutions of a system of four partial differential equations. We construct solutions of the system, which allow us to observe the number density of cells for different t and x values. …

Origin And Tectonic Evolution Of The Southern Appalachian Neoacadin Crystalline Core: Evidence From The Geology Of The Gilreath 7.5-Minute Quadrangle, North Carolina, Crystal Gayle Wilson

Masters Theses

Detailed geologic mapping of the Gilreath 7.5-minute quadrangle recognizes the northernmost continuation of the Brindle Creek fault, a terrane boundary that separates Neoproterozic-Ordovician metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks of the western Tugaloo terrane (western Inner Piedmont) from Silurian-Devonian metasedimentary rocks and Devonian-Mississippian anatectic granitoids of the Cat Square terrane (eastern Inner Piedmont). The Brindle Creek fault is folded in the study area and exposes the Ordovician Brooks Crossroads Granite in a reentrant. Low high-field strength element concentrations and a flatter rare earth element patterns typical of western Inner Piedmont granitoids, support a footwall setting for the Brooks Crossroads Granite.

New geochemical …

Applications Of Mass Spectrometry To Synthetic Copolymers, Elizabeth Angela Stewart

Masters Theses

Over the last decade, application of mass spectrometry has grown immensely especially in polymer characterization. The focus of this thesis is to assess and extend the applicability of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI MS) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI MS) in the analysis of synthetic copolymers.

Characterization of a non-ionic copolymer was attempted. The copolymer was styrene-co-maleic anhydride, which is in a class of copolymers that are used for commercial applications where low viscosity, high polarity and/or high reactivity are needed. MALDI-TOF MS was employed to obtain weight and number average molecular weight values (M_w and …

The Prairie Naturalist, Volume 38, 2006: Reviewers, Author Index, And Subject Index, Elmer J. Finck, Hilary Gillock

The Prairie Naturalist

The list of reviewers, author index, and subject index for volume 38 (2006) of The Prairie Naturalist published by the Great Plains Natural Science Society out of Fort Hays State University in Kansas, United States.

Evaluation Of Habitat Enhancement Structure Use By Spotted Bass, Stanley L. Proboszcz, Christopher S. Guy

The Prairie Naturalist

Habitat enhancement is a common and effective method used to positively influence fish populations. However, there is a paucity of speciesspecific evaluations of stream habitat enhancement structures for warmwater fishes. We evaluated use of half-log, rootwad enhancement structure, and simulated undercut bank (LUNKERS) by adult and juvenile spotted bass (Micropterus punctulatus) in natural and experimental streams. Enhancement structures were installed in Otter Creek, Kansas. Adult spotted bass use of natural and enhancement structure was documented weekly during summer and fall of 2001 and 2002 with radiotelemetry. Mean total length (TL) of adult fish was 292 mm (SE = …

Sexual Interactions: Why We Should Talk About Sex In Hci, Johanna Brewer, Joseph Jofish Kaye, Amanda Williams, Susan Wyche

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Within the CHI community there is growing interest in moving beyond cognition and expanding into the social, emotional, and bodily aspects of the human-computer experience. Sex lies at the intersection of these concerns, and indeed outside of HCI, has become a central topic for anthropology, behavioral sciences, and other areas of intellectual inquiry. Examining sex and themes related to it has benefited these disciplines and we intend to understand how it can contribute to HCI. There is a tendency to desexualize technology, despite the presence of sex and sexuality in a variety of interactions, including the use of the internet …

A Bayesian Approach For Bandwidth Selection In Kernel Density Estimation With Censored Data, Chinthaka Kuruwita

All Theses

Estimating an unknown probability density function is a common problem arising frequently in many scientific disciplines. Among many density estimation methods, the kernel density estimators are widely used. However, the classical kernel density estimators suffer from an intrinsic problem as they assign positive values outside the support of the target density. This problem is commonly known as the `Spill over` effect. A modification to the regular kernel estimator is proposed to circumvent this problem. The proposed method uses a lognormal kernel and can be used even in the presence of censoring to estimate any density with a positive support without …

Yellow Tree: A Distributed Main-Memory Spatial Index Structure For Moving Objects, Hariharan Gowrisankar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mobile devices equipped with wireless technologies to communicate and positioning systems to locate objects of interest are common place today, providing the impetus to develop location-aware applications. At the heart of location-aware applications are moving objects or objects that continuously change location over time, such as cars in transportation networks or pedestrians or postal packages. Location-aware applications tend to support the tracking of very large numbers of such moving objects as well as many users that are interested in finding out about the locations of other moving objects. Such location-aware applications rely on support from database management systems to model, …

Diel And Tidal Rhythms Of Emercenge Events Based On Acousitc Observations In A Shallow Estuary, Mei Sato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Field observations of emergence events by epibenthic animals were conducted with two Tracor Acoustic Profiling Systems (TAPS) in the Damariscotta River estuary, Maine, in fall 2005 and summer 2006. Spectral analysis revealed that periodic temporal variability of the acoustic signals was concentrated at four periods. One was the solar day (24 h) and the other three were lunar tidal periods of 25.82 (diurnal or Oi), 12.42 (semidiurnal or M2) and 6.21 h (half the semidiurnal period). The mysid Neomysis americana showed strong nocturnal migration patterns of water-column activity during its peak summer emergence season, regulated by the diel cycle. Toward …

Production Of Ethanol From Hardwood, Jay Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Diminishing crude oil and natural gas supplies, along with concern about greenhouse gas are major driving forces in the search for efficient renewable energy sources. The conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to energy and useful chemicals is a component of the solution. Ethanol is most commonly produced by enzymatic hydrolysis of complex carbohydrates to simple sugars followed by fermentation using yeast.

C₆H_l0O₅ + H₂O −Enxymes→ C₆H₁₂O₆ −Yeast→ 2CH₃CH₂OH + 2C0₂

In the U.S. corn is the primary starting raw material for commercial ethanol production. …

Raccoon Predation As A Potential Limiting Factor In The Success Of The Green Iguana In Southern Florida, Henry T. Smith, Walter E. Meshaka Jr., Richard M. Engeman, Steven M. Crossett, Mark E. Foley, Gary Bush

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The Green Iguana, Iguana iguana, is a well established, large-bodied, exotic species in Florida (Meshaka et al. 2004a. The Exotic Amphibians and Reptiles of Florida, Krieger Publishing Company, Malabar, Florida. 155 pp.; Meshaka et al. 2004b. Iguana 11:154-161). Limiting factors of populations and causes of Green Iguana mortality in Florida are poorly understood and the only documented predators are the domestic dog (Canus familiaris) (Meshaka et al. 2004a), Yellow-crowned Night-heron (Nyctanassa violacea) (Engeman et al. 2005. Herpetol. Rev. 36:320), Florida Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia floridana) (McKie et al. 2005. Florida Field Nat. 33:125-127), …

Nesting Success Of Grassland And Savanna Birds On Reclaimed Surface Coal Mines Of The Midwestern United States, Edward W. Galligan, Travis L. Devault, Steven L. Lima

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Reclaimed surface coal mines in southwestern Indiana support many grassland and shrub/ savanna bird species of conservation concern. We examined the nesting success of birds on these reclaimed mines to assess whether such ‘‘unnatural’’ places represent productive breeding habitats for such species. We established eight study sites on two large, grassland-dominated mines in southwestern Indiana and classified them into three categories (open grassland, shrub/savanna, and a mixture of grassland and shrub/savanna) based on broad vegetation and landscape characteristics. During the 1999 and 2000 breeding seasons, we found and monitored 911 nests of 31 species. Daily nest survival for the most …

The John Muir Newsletter, Winter 2006/2007, The John Muir Center For Environmental Studies

Muir Center Newsletters (1981-2015)

The John Muir EWSLETTEB Two California Lions: John Muir & Luther Burbank by Roberta M. McDow, Stockton, CA I have long wanted to know you," John Muir wrote from his home in Martinez, California on January 6, 1910. "Strange how people so near are so long kept apart."1 His message accompanied a receipt dated December 29, 1909 for five dollars, about one hundred in today's currency, contributed to the Society for the Preservation of National Parks.2 A day later, Muir's letter arrived at its destination in Santa Rosa. The recipient was Luther Burbank. Burbank had lived in the area since …

Regularization Of The Particle-Particle Interaction In The Nuclear Density Functional Theory, Piotr Jerzy Borycki

Doctoral Dissertations

In this work we show how to regularize the ultraviolet divergences appearing in the local pairing term of the energy density functional. Our approach, entirely rooted in the framework of the Density Functional Theory, is based on the regularization of local densities and currents and can be applied to various classes of energy density functionals. We demonstrated, that for the particular choice of the pairing term of energy density functional, our procedure gives the same regularization scheme to the one obtained earlier by the means of the pairing gap regularization.

We also investigated the non-unitarity of the Bogoliubov tranformation due …

Retaining Information Technology Employees In Higher Education, Mary Holmes

Dissertations

The retention of qualified Information Technology (IT) employees is at an all time low within higher education institutions. IT personnel are essential for higher education institutions to effectively integrate technology into their educational programs. These IT employees contribute to their institution's teaching/learning mission, while simultaneously supporting complex and highly visible administrative operations. Yet, all previous research regarding IT employee retention issues had only been conducted within corporate settings.

To examine factors related to IT employees' retention within public higher education, an internet-based study was sent to IT employees in all four-year public universities throughout Michigan. The survey included questions within …

On The Use Of Modis Evi To Assess Gross Primary Productivity Of North American Ecosystems, Daniel A. Sims, Abdullah Rahman, Vicente D. Cordova, Bassil Z. El-Masri, Dennis D. Baldocchi, Lawrence B. Flanagan, Allen H. Goldstein, David Y. Hollinger, Laurent Misson, Russell K. Monson, Walter C. Oechel, Hans P. Schmid, Steven C. Wofsy, Liukang Xu

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

[1] Carbon flux models based on light use efficiency (LUE), such as the MOD17 algorithm, have proved difficult to parameterize because of uncertainties in the LUE term, which is usually estimated from meteorological variables available only at large spatial scales. In search of simpler models based entirely on remote‐sensing data, we examined direct relationships between the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and gross primary productivity (GPP) measured at nine eddy covariance flux tower sites across North America. When data from the winter period of inactive photosynthesis were excluded, the overall relationship between EVI and tower GPP was better than that between …

Measuring Qualities Of Articles Contributed By Online Communities, Ee Peng Lim, Ba-Quy Vuong, Hady W. Lauw, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Using open source Web editing software (e.g., wiki), online community users can now easily edit, review and publish articles collaboratively. While much useful knowledge can be derived from these articles, content users and critics are often concerned about their qualities. In this paper, we develop two models, namely basic model and peer review model, for measuring the qualities of these articles and the authorities of their contributors. We represent collaboratively edited articles and their contributors in a bipartite graph. While the basic model measures an article's quality using both the authorities of contributors and the amount of contribution from each …

Rapid Identification Of Column Heterogeneity, Bing Tian Dai, Nick Koudas, Beng Chin Ooi, Divesh Srivastava, Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Novel Functions And Physiological Significance Of Ral Interacting Protein - Rlip76 In In Vitro And In Vivo Models, Ewa L. Zajac

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

This dissertation is divided into four parts. The first part is an introduction of energy dependent xenobiotic transporters and their relevance in multidrug resistance. However, the main focuse is the description of RLIP76 protein, non-ABC transporter, which it the most efficient transporter of glutathione conjugates and anti-cancer drugs. The second part describes materials and methods that were used in two investigated projects. The third part explains the correlation of RLIP76 with signaling protein POB1 and an involvement of these two proteins in apoptosis of lung cancer cells. The effect of recombinant POB1 and its deletion mutant POB11-512, on transport activity …

Acoustic Scattering From Mud Volcanoes And Carbonate Mounts, Charles W. Holland, Thomas C. Weber, Giuseppe Etiope

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

Submarine mud volcanoes occur in many parts of the world’s oceans and form an aperture for gas and fluidized mud emission from within the earth’s crust. Their characteristics are of considerable interest to the geology, geophysics, geochemistry, and underwater acoustics communities. For the latter, mud volcanoes are of interest in part because they pose a potential source of clutter for active sonar. Close-range (single-interaction) scattering measurements from a mud volcano in the Straits of Sicily show scattering10–15dB above the background. Three hypotheses were examined concerning the scattering mechanism: (1) gas entrained in sediment at/near mud volcano, (2) gas bubbles and/or …

The Effect Of Mobile Phase Composition And Temperature On The Adsorption Behavior Of Tryptophan, Tarab Jamil Ahmad

Doctoral Dissertations

Single-component adsorption isotherm data were acquired by frontal analysis for tryptophan on a C₁₈-Kromasil packed column, using acetonitrile-water solutions of various compositions (2.5, 5, and 7.5% ACN + 1% ACOH). These isotherms have a complex behavior, exhibiting at least one clear inflection point at an intermediate concentration and, possibly, another such point, close to the origin. The isotherm for 2.5 % ACN has the strongest curvature. At high concentrations, all these isotherms tend toward a limit, showing that the adsorbent has a finite saturation capacity. At low concentrations, these isotherms seem to exhibit langmuirian behavior. The isotherm model …

Cuore: An Experiment To Investigate For Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay By Cooling 750 Kg Of Teo2 Crystals At 10 Mk, J. Beeman, M. Dolinski, T.D. Gutierrez, E.E. Haller, R. Maruyama, A.R. Smith, N. Xu, A. Giuliani, M. Pedretti, S. Sangiorgio, M. Barucci, E. Olivieri, L. Risegari, G. Ventura, M Balata, C. Bucci, S. Nisi, E. Palmieri, A. De Waard, E.B. Norman, C. Arnaboldi, C. Brofferio, S. Capelli, F. Capozzi, L. Carbone, M. Clemenza, O Cremonesi, E. Fiorini, C Nones, A. Nucciotti, M. Pavan, G Pessina, S Pirro, E Previtali, M. Sisti, L Torres, L Zanotti, R. Ardito, G. Maier, E. Guardincerri, P Ottonello, M Pallavicini, D.R. Artusa, F. T. Avignone Iii, I. Bandac, R.J. Creswick, H.A. Farach, C. Rosenfeld, S Cebrian, P. Gorla, Ig Irastorza, F Bellini, C Cosmelli, I Dafinei, M Diemoz, F Ferroni, C Gargiulo, E Longo, S Morganti

Physics

CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) is an experiment proposed to infer the effective Majorana mass of the electron neutrino from measurements on neutrinoless double beta decay (0νDBD). The goal of CUORE is to achieve a background rate in the range 0.001 to 0.01 counts/keV/kg/y at the 0νDBD transition energy of ¹³⁰Te (2528 keV). The proposed experiment, to be mounted in the underground Gran Sasso INFN National Laboratory, Italy, is realized by cooling about 1000 TeO₂ bolometers, of 750 g each, at a temperature of 10mK. We will describe the experiment, to be cooled by an extremely …

Upper Bounds On Parity-Violating Gamma-Ray Asymmetries In Compound Nuclei From Polarized Cold Neutron Capture, M. T. Gericke, J. D. Bowman, R. D. Carlini, T. E. Chupp, K. P. Coulter, M. Dabaghyan, M. Dawkins, D. Desai, S. J. Freedman, T. R. Gentile, R. C. Gillis, G. L. Greene, F. W. Hersman, T. Ino, Gordon L. Jones, M. Kandes, B. Lauss, M. Leuschner, W. R. Lozowski, R. Mahurin, M. Mason, Y. Masuda, G. S. Mitchell, S. Muto, H. Nann, S. A. Page, S. I. Penttila, W. D. Ramsay, S. Santra, P.-N. Seo, E. I. Sharapov, T. B. Smith, W. M. Snow, W. S. Wilburn, V. Yuan, H. Zhu

Articles

Parity-odd asymmetries in the electromagnetic decays of compound nuclei can sometimes be amplified above values expected from simple dimensional estimates by the complexity of compound nuclear states. Using a statistical approach, we estimate the root-mean-square of the distribution of expected parity-odd correlations (s) over right arrow (n)center dot(k) over right arrow (gamma), where (s) over right arrow (n) is the neutron spin and (k) over right arrow (gamma) is the momentum of the gamma, in the integrated gamma spectrum from the capture of cold polarized neutrons on Al, Cu, and In. We present measurements of the asymmetries in these and …