Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Analysis Of Key Aspects Of Warm And Cool Season Flash Flooding In The Southern Appalachians, William Baldwin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Flash flooding kills more people in the United States than any other severe weather phenomenon. One of the most vulnerable areas for flooding is the southern Appalachians. These mountains lie in a geographical location that places them near the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, two major moisture source regions. This ample supply of moisture, mid-latitude circulation patterns, and orographic lifting leads to annual precipitation totals in the southern Appalachians that are comparable to locations along the Gulf coast. The present study investigates eight non-tropical flash flood events. Four of the events occurred in the cool season and four …

Loop Edge Estimation In 4-Regular Hamiltonian Graphs, Yale Madden

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In knot theory, a knot is defined as a closed, non-self-intersecting curve embedded in three-dimensional space that cannot be untangled to produce a simple planar loop. A mathematical knot is essentially a conventional knot tied with rope where the ends of the rope have been glued together. One way to sample large knots is based on choosing a 4-regular Hamiltonian planar graph. A method for generating rooted 4-regular Hamiltonian planar graphs with n vertices is discussed in this thesis. In the generation process of these graphs, some vertices are introduced that can be easily eliminated from the resulting knot diagram. …

Bvi Photometry And The Luminosity Functions Of The Globular Cluster M92, Nathaniel E. Q. Paust, Brian Chaboyer, Ata Sarajedini

Dartmouth Scholarship

We present new BVI ground-based photometry and VI space-based photometry for the globular cluster M92 (NGC 6341) and examine luminosity functions in B, V, and I containing over 50,000 stars ranging from the tip of the red giant branch to several magnitudes below the main-sequence turnoff. Once corrected for completeness, the observed luminosity functions agree very well with theoretical models and do not show stellar excesses in any region of the luminosity function. Using reduced-χ² fitting, the new M92 luminosity function is shown to be an excellent match to the previously published luminosity function for M30. These …

An Infrastructure To Support Interoperability In Reverse Engineering, Nicholas Kraft

All Dissertations

An infrastructure that supports interoperability among reverse engineering tools and other software tools is described. The three major components of the infrastructure are: (1) a hierarchy of schemas for low- and middle-level program representation graphs, (2) g4re, a tool chain for reverse engineering C++ programs, and (3) a repository of reverse engineering artifacts, including the previous two components, a test suite, and tools, GXL instances, and XSLT transformations for graphs at each level of the hierarchy. The results of two case studies that investigated the space and time costs incurred by the infrastructure are provided. The results of two empirical …

Random Vectors Over Finite Fields, Shannon Lockard

All Dissertations

The study of random objects is a useful one in many applications and areas of mathematics. The Probabilistic Method, introduced by Paul Erdos and his many collaborators, was first used to study the behavior of random graphs and later to study properties of random objects. It has developed as a powerful tool in combinatorics as well as finding applications in linear algebra, number theory, and many other areas. In this dissertation, we will consider random vectors, in particular, dependency among random vectors. We will randomly choose vectors according to a specified probability distribution. We wish to determine how many vectors …

Algorithms And Complexity For Alliances And Weighted Alliances Of Various Types, Lindsay Jamieson

All Dissertations

The concept of alliances was introduced in 2002 in a paper by Kristiansen, Hedetniemi and Hedetniemi. Although research has been published on the mathematical properties of various types of alliances, until recently, no research has been done to develop algorithms or establish the complexity of decision problems for alliances in graphs.
This thesis presents the first algorithmic study of alliances in graphs. We present linear algorithms for finding various alliance numbers in trees and series parallel graphs. These linear algorithms are designed using a new methodology based on the well-established Wimer methodology for designing polynomial algorithms on k-terminal graphs. Linear …

Functionalized Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Characterization, And Applications, Liangwei Qu

All Dissertations

Due to their unique electronic, optical, catalytic and mechanical properties, nanomaterials (nanoparticles and nanotubes) have been attracting much attention over the past decades. In this dissertation, polymeric nanoparticles bearing derivatized D-mannose and galactose molecules were prepared via dispersion polymerization and their interactions with various bacterial cells were studied. The results show that there are strong adhesin-specific interactions of the nanoparticles with E. coli cells, resulting significant nanoparticles-madiated cell agglutination.
Poly(ethylene glycol)-coated magnetic polymer nanoparticles were synthesized through miniemulsion polymerization by using macromonomer as both a comonomer and a surfactant. The resulting magnetic polymer nanoparticles were successfully used for bio-detection and …

Extraction Method Development And In Vivo And In Vitro Toxicity Studies Of The Etiologic Agent Of Avian Vacuolar Myelinopathy, Faith Wiley

All Dissertations

Avian vacuolar myelinopathy (AVM) is a neurological disease affecting birds in the southeastern United States. The cause of the disease has not yet been determined but is believed to be a naturally produced toxin and is associated with aquatic vegetation. Current research on AVM is limited to in vivo studies utilizing whole tissue or vegetative samples. The objectives of this research were to develop extraction methods for isolating the putative AVM toxin from vegetative samples and to develop an in vitro bioassay for detection and study of the toxin. Samples of vegetation were collected from reservoirs known to be affected …

Ets (Efficient, Transparent, And Secured) Self-Healing Service For Pervasive Computing Applications, Shameem Ahmed, Moushumi Sharmin, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

To ensure smooth functioning of numerous handheld devices anywhere anytime, the importance of self-healing mechanism cannot be overlooked. Incorporation of efficient fault detection and recovery in device itself is the quest for long but there is no existing self-healing scheme for devices running in pervasive computing environments that can be claimed as the ultimate solution. Moreover, the highest degree of transparency, security and privacy attainability should also be maintained. ETS Self-healing service, an integral part of our developing middleware named MARKS (Middleware Adaptability for Resource discovery, Knowledge usability, and Self-healing), holds promise for offering all of those functionalities.

Use Of Logic Game To Improve High School Students' Logical Reasoning Skills : Results Of A Teaching Experiment, Frank Forte

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

High school students often struggle with the concept of logical reasoning. A study conducted with 37 ninth grade geometry students involved a teaching experiment. This study documented whether instruction on a logic game called the Color of the Board Game helped students’ logical reasoning skills, and if those skills could be reflected in a “‘pencil and paper” test. Each student in a control and treatment group received a pre-test with 25 multiple-choice logic questions and an open-ended question. Multiple-choice questions were based on geometry and contextual logic. The treatment group received the Color of the Board Instructional Unit between the …

The Effects Of Using The Geometer’S Sketchpad On Student Learning Of Transformations In The Coordinate Plane, Leeann Elizabeth Gennett

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate how grade nine honors geometry students and grade ten regular geometry students learn and retain information about three basic rigid geometric transformations with the support of the software package The Geometer’s Sketchpad in comparison to the traditional, non-software supported method of instruction.

The study was conducted in a high school with two tenth grade regular geometry classes and two ninth grade honors geometry classes. The researcher and another teacher each conducted a one-week instructional unit on the three basic, isometric transformations. Thirty-four students agreed to participate in the study. Nineteen students …

Parallel Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Algorithms For Hyperspectral Images, Lukasz Grzegorz Maciak

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Hyperspectral imaging is a branch of remote sensing which deals with creating and processing aerial or satellite pictures that capture wide range of wavelengths, most of which are invisible to the naked eye. Hyperspectral images are composed of many bands, each corresponding to certain light frequencies. Because of their complex nature, image processing tasks such as feature extraction can be resource and time consuming. There are many unsupervised extraction methods available. A recently investigated one is Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF), a method that given positive linear matrix of positive sources, attempts to recover them. In this thesis we designed, implemented …

Seasonal Variations In Fish Assemblages Of Small Warmwater Streams In Four Southeastern National Parks, Joseph Carl Zimmerman

Masters Theses

Small warm-water streams in the southeastern United States experience significant differences in temperature, as well as changes in physical parameters due to seasonal fluctuations. It has been generally thought that fish assemblage patterns change as a direct result of these seasonal variations. This study was designed to determine the effects of variable flow regimes on fish species composition, diversity, and abundance. Eight small warm-water streams in four national parks (Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Fort Donelson National Battlefield, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site, and Russell Cave National Monument) were sampled May-June 2005 for the summer trials, October-November 2005 …

Supporting Ad-Hoc Resource Sharing On The Web: A Peer-To-Peer Approach To Hypermedia Link Services, Jing Zhou, Wendy Hall, David De Roure, Vijay Dialani

Vijay Dialani

The key element to support ad-hoc resource sharing on the Web is to discover resources of interest. The hypermedia paradigm provides a way of overlaying a set of resources with additional information in the form of links to help people find other resources. However, existing hypermedia approaches primarily develop mechanisms to enable resource sharing in a fairly static, centralized way. Recent developments in distributed computing, on the other hand, introduced peer-to-peer (P2P) computing that is notable for employing distributed resources to perform a critical function in a more dynamic and ad-hoc scenario. We investigate the feasibility and potential benefits of …

Arrays Of Interacting Nanostructures: Ferromagnetic And Superconducting Cases, Andrei Ursache

Andrei E. Ursache

No abstract provided.

A Content-Driven Reputation System For The Wikipedia, B. Thomas Adler, Luca De Alfaro

Luca de Alfaro

We present a content-driven reputation system for Wikipedia authors. In our system, authors gain reputation when the edits they perform to Wikipedia articles are preserved by subsequent authors, and they lose reputation when their edits are rolled back or undone in short order. Thus, author reputation is computed solely on the basis of content evolution; user-to-user comments or ratings are not used. The author reputation we compute could be used to flag new contributions from low-reputation authors, or it could be used to allow only authors with high reputation to contribute to controversial or critical pages. A reputation system for …

Fast Global Kernel Density Mode Seeking: Applications To Localization And Tracking, Chunhua Shen, Michael Brooks, Anton Van Den Hengel

Chunhua Shen

Tracking objects in video using the mean shift (MS) technique has been the subject of considerable attention. In this work, we aim to remedy one of its shortcomings. MS, like other gradient ascent optimization methods, is designed to find local modes. In many situations, however, we seek the global mode of a density function. The standard MS tracker assumes that the initialization point falls within the basin of attraction of the desired mode. When tracking objects in video this assumption may not hold, particularly when the target's displacement between successive frames is large. In this case, the local and global …

Designing Resource-Bounded Reasoners Using Bayesian Networks: System Health Monitoring And Diagnosis, Ole J. Mengshoel

Ole J Mengshoel

In this work we are concerned with the conceptual design of large-scale diagnostic and health management systems that use Bayesian networks. While they are potentially powerful, improperly designed Bayesian networks can result in too high memory requirements or too long inference times, to they point where they may not be acceptable for real-time diagnosis and health management in resource-bounded systems such as NASA’s aerospace vehicles. We investigate the clique tree clustering approach to Bayesian network inference, where increasing the size and connectivity of a Bayesian network typically also increases clique tree size. This paper combines techniques for analytically characterizing clique …

Coarsening Of “Clouds” And Dynamic Scaling In A Far-From-Equilibrium Model System, D. A. Adams, Beate Schmittmann, R. K. P. Zia

Beate Schmittmann

A two-dimensional lattice gas of two species, driven in opposite directions by an external force, undergoes a jamming transition if the filling fraction is sufficiently high. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the growth of these jams (‘‘clouds’’), as the system approaches a nonequilibrium steady state from a disordered initial state. We monitor the dynamic structure factor S(kx,ky;t) and find that the kx=0 component exhibits dynamic scaling, of the form S(0,ky;t)=tβS̃ (kytα). Over a significant range of times, we observe excellent data collapse with α=1/2 and β=1. The effects of varying filling fraction and driving force are discussed.

Nevada Risk Assessment/Management Program (Nramp) – Phase 2: Quarterly Progress Report January 1, 2007 Through March 31, 2007, Klaus J. Stetzenbach

Nevada Risk Assessment/Management Program

Work conducted in this second quarter consisted of continuing the detailed data and information acquisition; review of the received document contents, and interpretation of significance in light of previous DOE documents. This included telephone and in-person discussions with DOE NVO personnel at the March Waste Management Symposia in Tucson. As a result of these discussions and review of the supporting data and methodologies, a more specific listing of activities was developed, and DOE provided a confirmatory note to HRC in March.

Much of the review of the received information does indicate significant changes in data, methodologies, and baseline assumptions over …

Suburban Coyote Management And Research Needs: A Northeast Perspective, Paul D. Curtis, Daniel A. Bogan, Gordon Batcheller

Wildlife Damage Management Conference Proceedings

Several factors may be responsible for increasing predator abundance in suburbia. These include an enhanced forage base associated with residential sprawl, and protection of predator species that were once persecuted and suppressed by hunters, trappers, and landowners. In the Northeast, anecdotal reports of coyotes (Canis latrans) killing pets in backyards are on the rise. The bulk of coyote complaints, concerns, and questions received from the public by state wildlife agencies are from areas with high human populations. Scant research exists on coyote behavioral ecology in human-altered landscapes. Biologists and managers need to understand changes in the social structure …

Total Dissociative Electron Attachment Cross Sections Of Selected Amino Acids, A.M. Scheer, P. Mozejko, Gordon A. Gallup, Paul Burrow

Gordon Gallup Publications

Total dissociative electron attachment cross sections are presented for the amino acids, glycine, alanine, proline, phenylalanine, and tryptophan, at energies below the first ionization energy. Cross section magnitudes were determined by observation of positive ion production and normalization to ionization cross sections calculated using the binary-encounter-Bethe method. The prominent 1.2 eV feature in the cross sections of the amino acids and the closely related HCOOH molecule is widely attributed to the attachment into the –COOH π * orbital. The authors discuss evidence that direct attachment to the lowest σ * orbital may instead be responsible. A close correlation between the …

Meso- And Bathypelagic Fish Interactions With Seamounts And Mid-Ocean Ridges, Tracey Sutton, Filipe M. Porteiro, John K. Horne, Cairistiona I. H. Anderson

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures

The World Ocean's midwaters contain the vast majority of Earth's vertebrates in the form of mesoand bathypelagic ('deep-pelagic,' in the combined sense) fishes. Understanding the ecology and variability of deep-pelagic ecosystems has increased substantially in the past few decades due to advances in sampling/observation technology. Researchers have discovered that the deep sea hosts a complex assemblage of organisms adapted to a “harsh” environment by terrestrial standards (i.e., dark, cold, high pressure). We have learned that despite the lack of physical barriers, the deep-sea realm is not a homogeneous ecosystem, but is spatially and temporally variable on multiple scales. While there …

High Temperature Heat Exchanger Project: Quarterly Progress Report January 1, 2007 Through March 31, 2007, Anthony Hechanova

Publications (NSTD)

• The variation of sulfur dioxide production (throughput) of the baseline design of the Ceramatec sulfuric acid decomposer with total mass flow rate of reacting flow has been calculated. According to the calculations, the sulfur dioxide production increases as the total mass flow rate of reacting flow increases regardless of the fact that decomposition percentage of sulfuric trioxide decreases. A parametric study of the baseline design of the Ceramatec sulfuric acid decomposer was performed.

• The thermal performance using various channel geometries for the decomposer was studied. The baseline design (straight channels) has 89.5% thermal efficiency while the thermal efficiency …

Object-Relational Mapping As A Persistence Mechanism For Object-Oriented Applications, Jeffrey M. Barnes

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

Many object-oriented applications created today, especially Web applications, use relational databases for persistence. Often there is a straightforward correspondence between database tables on the one hand and application classes on the other. Application developers usually write a great deal of code to connect to and query the database, code which differs little from class to class and is often tedious to write. Moreover, the parallel class and table structures constitute a duplication of information, which requires duplication of work and increases the likelihood of errors. Ideally, we could automate this duplication, rendering it invisible to developers. This is the idea …

Reality Properties Of Conjugacy Classes In Algebraic Groups., Anupam Kumar Singh Dr.

Doctoral Theses

In this thesis we denote a field by k. We consider fields of characteristic not 2 unless stated otherwise. The notation ¯k and ks denotes an algebraic closure and separable closure of k respectively. The symbols Q, R, C will denote fields of rational, real, complex numbers respectively. The symbol Z will denote the set of integers. We denote by cd(k) the cohomological dimension of k.We use G to denote an algebraic group and G(k) to denote the group of k rational points of G. Sometimes we abuse notation and denote the group of ¯k points of G by G. …

Spectral Procedures Enhance The Analysis Of Three Agricultural Time Series, D. Meek, J. Prueger, M. Tomer, R. Malone

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

Many agricultural and environmental variables are influenced by cyclic processes that occur naturally. Consequently their time series often have cyclic behavior. This study develops time series models for three different phenomena: (1) a 60 year-long state annual average crop yield record, (2) a four year-long daily stream flow record with values aggregated to weekly averages, and (3) a half-hour long wind speed record sampled at 10 hertz with values aggregated to 0.5 min averages. Trend tests, simple high pass filtering, and spectral analysis on original and detrended and residual data series are used to guide model development. Next, as a …

Sample Size Determination In Animal Health Studies, Zhanglin Cui, Alan G. Zimmermann, Daniel H. Mowrey

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

Oftentimes in animal health studies, a treatment group is randomly assigned to a pen of animals, and the pen of animals as a whole is treated (fed the same medicated feed or water) together. In this scenario, the pen of animals is the experimental unit and the individual animal may be an observational unit. In addition to having the pen as the experimental unit, if multiple sites are used and site is treated as a random factor, this adds complexity to the study. To properly design the study, it is necessary to determine the number of animals in a pen, …

Using A Nonlinear Crossed Random Effects Model With Three-Way Treatment Structure For Describing Circadian Patterns Of Serum Prolactin Concentrations In Heat Stressed Holsteins, M. Zhou, A. M. Parkhurst, B. C. Pollard, R. J. Collier

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

A modified Gaussian model with three-level crossed and nested random effects is used to describe circadian patterns of serum prolactin concentrations in a crossover experiment. Testing of three-way treatment effects and carryover effects are incorporated with the model building process as is the within-group correlation. We found that the interaction between environment and parity had significant effect (p<0.05) on both initial serum prolactin concentration and range of the prolactin concentration. There was no significant effect of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) on either the initial value or concentration of serum prolactin. The inclusion of carryover effects in the model significantly improves the fit of the multilevel nonlinear mixed effects model. We present in detail a general approach to nonlinear crossed random effects model building and three-way treatment effects testing.

Using Nonlinear Fixed And Mixed Models With Switching Functions To Allow For Hormesis In Growth Of Escherichia Coli, C. Tu, A. M. Parkhurst, L. M. Durso, R. W. Hutkins

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

Individual Escherichia coli (E. coli) strains can be characterized by measuring growth rate. Strains better adapted to the environment are expected to grow faster. Classic bacterial growth curves display an increase in optical density over time. In this paper, we use the logistic function to model growth in optical density of E. coli over time. We examine 16 curves for 8 E. coli strains originally isolated from cattle and found many curves have a paradoxical dip at the beginning that is indicative of hormesis (an initial contrarian response showing, stimulation or suppression of growth). We examine several switching functions that …