Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Community Service-Learning In Statistics: Course Design And Assessment, Debra L. Hydorn

Mathematics

Service-learning projects are a useful method for students to learn both the practice and value of statistical methods. Effective service learning, however, depends on several factors and can be implemented according to a variety of models. In this article, different models for incorporating service-learning in statistics courses are presented along with example statistics courses. Principles for good service-learning practice will also be presented as a means for assessing the quality of a service-learning course component.

Water Resources Year In Review - Winter 2007, Vol. 20, No. 2, Annis Water Resource Institute

AWRI Reviews

No abstract provided.

Emissions From Forest Fires Near Mexico City, Robert J. Yokelson, S. P. Urbanski, E. L. Atlas, D. W. Toohey, E. C. Alvarado, J. D. Crounse, P. O. Wennberg, M. E. Fisher, C. E. Wold, T. L. Campos, K. Adachi, P. R. Buseck, Wei Min Hao

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The emissions of NOx (defined as NO (nitric oxide) + NO2 (nitrogen dioxide)) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN), per unit amount of fuel burned, from fires in the pine forests that dominate the mountains surrounding Mexico City (MC) are about 2 times higher than normally observed for forest burning. The ammonia (NH3) emissions are about average for forest burning. The upper limit for the mass ratio of NOx to volatile organic compounds (VOC) for these MC-area mountain fires was similar to 0.38, which is similar to the NOx/VOC ratio in the MC urban area emissions inventory of 0.34, but much larger …

The Tropical Forest And Fire Emissions Experiment: Overview And Airborne Fire Emission Factor Measurements, Robert J. Yokelson, T. Karl, Paulo Artaxo, Donald R. Blake, Ted J. Christian, David W. T. Griffith, Alex Guenther, Wei Min Hao

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The Tropical Forest and Fire Emissions Experiment (TROFFEE) used laboratory measurements followed by airborne and ground based field campaigns during the 2004 Amazon dry season to quantify the emissions from pristine tropical forest and several plantations as well as the emissions, fuel consumption, and fire ecology of tropical deforestation fires. The airborne campaign used an Embraer 110B aircraft outfitted with whole air sampling in canisters, mass-calibrated nephelometry, ozone by UV absorbance, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and proton-transfer mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) to measure PM(10), O(3), CO(2), CO, NO, NO(2), HONO, HCN, NH(3), OCS, DMS, CH(4), and up to 48 non-methane …

Capstone Mathematics And Technology: A Collection Of Mathematical Technology Enhanced Activities For Students And Teachers, Heidi Eastman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this project is to provide an introduction to how technology can be used in the mathematical classroom to enhance students' learning of mathematics, while at the same time leading students to a richer and deeper understanding of those mathematical concepts. The topics were selected based on their relevance to the Utah State Core Curriculum for middle and secondary mathematics courses. It was intended that each lesson plan would challenge a preservice mathematics educator to build relationships between different areas of mathematics and/or to create deeper understandings of specific mathematical concepts. At the same time many of the …

Damming Grand Canyon: The 1923 Usgs Colorado River Expedition, Diane E. Boyer, Robert H. Webb

All USU Press Publications

In 1923, America paid close attention, via special radio broadcasts, newspaper headlines, and cover stories in popular magazines, as a government party descended the Colorado to survey Grand Canyon. Fifty years after John Wesley Powell's journey, the canyon still had an aura of mystery and extreme danger. At one point, the party was thought lost in a flood. Something important besides adventure was going on. Led by Claude Birdseye and including colorful characters such as early river-runner Emery Kolb, popular writer Lewis Freeman, and hydraulic engineer Eugene La Rue, the expedition not only made the first accurate survey of the …

Predicting Magnetopause Crossings At Geosynchronous Orbit During The Halloween Storms, R. E. Lopez, S. Hernandez, M. Wiltberger, Chia-Lin L. Huang, E. L. Kepko, Harlan E. Spence, C. C. Goodrich, J. G. Lyon

Physics & Astronomy

[1] In late October and early November of 2003, the Sun unleashed a powerful series of events known as the Halloween storms. The coronal mass ejections launched by the Sun produced several severe compressions of the magnetosphere that moved the magnetopause inside of geosynchronous orbit. Such events are of interest to satellite operators, and the ability to predict magnetopause crossings along a given orbit is an important space weather capability. In this paper we compare geosynchronous observations of magnetopause crossings during the Halloween storms to crossings determined from the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry global magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the magnetosphere as well to predictions …

Graduate Studies In Marine Science, Nova Southeastern University

Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Performance Measurement For The E-Government Initiatives: A Comparative Study, Willy C. Isaac

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of performance measurement in public organizations is to support better decision-making by management, leading to improved outcome for the community, and to meet external accountability requirements. There are different performance measurement models to measure the e-Government initiatives and different studies differ in identifying the key factors and measurement indicator. Many measurement instruments take a too simplistic view and focus on measuring what is easy to measure. Much challenge faced by the existing e-Government studies is understanding what citizens, businesses and government agencies wants and how to measure the return on government's Internet investment. Government administrations, international organizations …

Measuring The Effect Of E-Learning On Job Performance, Heidi Kramer

CCE Theses and Dissertations

E-learning is becoming a leading delivery method in workplace-learning settings across organizations of various sectors and of varying sizes. The ultimate goal is to drive business results. Managers need to provide evidence of a positive impact on corporate strategy and investment objectives. If the business goal cannot be identified, there should be a query on why it is there in the first place. Transfer of the knowledge learned in the training session to the work situation is not built into most skills training delivery, especially those provided through e-learning. The outcomes and the effects of training on job performance are …

Measuring Factors That Influence The Success Of E-Government Initiatives, Ronnie Park

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The success of e-government initiatives is contingent upon its citizens ' willingness to use the services. Citizens are more likely to use e-government services if they believe that they get better value than from the conventional government services. Understanding how citizens value e-government services is critical to the success of these initiatives. This study utilizes two concepts from the field of decision analysis. These are mean-ends chains and value-focused thinking. The research that follows describes the development of a model to identify factors that influence value judgments of citizens.

Based on the data of 21 0 responses from e-government service …

Painting The Voice: Weblogs And Writing Instruction In The High School Classroom, Marilyn V. Olander

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Writing is a complex cognitive skill, a technology for capturing speech whose forms and conventions began in the dawn of civilization and were in place and stable by the Middle Ages. Writing and reading are the foundation of literacy, fundamental to success in school and in the adult world. No comprehensive theory of composition guides the teaching of writing, although historically two approaches have been favored: writing as a skill acquired through the memorization and recognition of principles of grammar and usage, and more recently, writing as a process of recursive strategies of pi arming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. …

Spectropolarimetric Survey Of Hydrogen-Rich White Dwarf Stars, Adéla Kawka, Stéphane Vennes, Gary D. Schmidt, Dayal T. Wickramasinghe, Rolf Koch

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

We have conducted a survey of 61 southern white dwarfs searching for magnetic fields using Zeeman spectropolarimetry. Our objective is to obtain a magnetic field distribution for these objects and, in particular, to find white dwarfs with weak fields. We found one possible candidate (WD 0310-688) that may have a weak magnetic field of -6.1 ±2.2 kG. Next, we determine the fraction and distribution of magnetic white dwarfs in the solar neighborhood and investigate the probability of finding more of these objects based on the current incidence of magnetism in white dwarfs within 20 pc of the Sun. We have …

The Quality Indicators Of Delivering E-Learning For Dementia Care To Nurses, Zhengyu Zhang, Ping Yu

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

The inadequate supply of trained professionals to provide quality care for people with dementia is a big problem. Elearning could provide an effective solution to this challenge. Although e-learning is not a new teaching method, a quality framework is lack that can be used to judge the quality of e-learning delivery for working nurses. This gap thus should be overcomed. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to identify the quality indicator for effective elearning delivery. Based on these indicators, a quality framework of e-learning packages that teach nurses to deliver dementia care is constructed. The approach taken is …

Vulnerability Assessment Of A Large Sized Power System Considering A New Index Based On Power System Loss, Ahmed M. Haidar, Azah Mohamed, Aini Hussain

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

The concept of power system vulnerability assessment combines information on the level of system security as well as information on a wide range of situations, events and contingencies with regards to which a system is vulnerable. This paper attempts to investigate and evaluate the effect of line outage, generation outage and amount of load disconnected on the power transmission network losses of a large size power system. These effects will be investigated and evaluated using new proposed method based on vulnerability index of power system loss. The objectives of this work is to evaluate and compare the efficiency of the …

Data Mining Of Misr Aerosol Product Using Spatial Statistics, Tao Shi, Noel A. Cressie

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

In climate models, aerosol forcing is the major source of uncertainty in climate forcing, over the industrial period. To reduce this uncertainty, instruments on satellites have been put in place to collect global data. However, missing and noisy observations impose considerable difficulties for scientists researching global aerosol distribution, aerosol transportation, and comparisons between satellite observations and global-climate-model outputs. In this paper, we propose a Spatial Mixed Effects (SME) statistical model to predict the missing values, denoise the observed values, and quantify the spatial-prediction uncertainties. The computations associated with the SME model are linear scalable to the number of data points, …

Query Streaming For Multimedia Query By Content From Mobile Devices, Kevin Adistambha, S. J. Davis, Christian H. Ritz, I. Burnett

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Formulating and processing of multimedia queries using mobile devices presents many challenges. This is due to the limitations of the devices themselves and the cost of the bandwidth involved in transmitting multimedia data between servers and devices. In this paper we propose a novel approach: “query streaming” which uses Reverse Polish Notation to perform multimedia query-by-example on a mobile device and server. An important advantage of query streaming is the ability to perform a query within the previous result set. To solve the problem of limited resources, the concept of result set examination using Fragment Request Units and Fragment Update …

E-Government Evaluation: A User-Centric Perspective For Public Value Proposition, Akemi Takeoka Chatfield, Omar Alhujran

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Academic research and institutional reports present evidence of e-government project failures and stalled or cancelled initiatives. Prior research concludes that e-government evaluation is under developed and calls for improving egovernment evaluation practice. Stages of growth models have been used in IS research and more recently in e-government research. While egovernment stage models provide potentially useful tools for e-government evaluation, there are different e-government stage models that are sometimes contradictory in development stages and perspectives. Drawing on the concept of public value proposition, this research surveys existing egovernment stage models from a user-centric perspective and develops a user-centric, demandside model that …

Creating Mathematical Learning Resources - Combining Audio And Visual Components, Elahe Aminifar, Anne Porter, R. Caladine, Mark Nelson

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Students commencing science and engineering degrees at the Uni-versity of Wollongong are given mathematics skills tests in the first and fourth weeks of session. An evaluation of the results from these tests indicate that the majority of students' basic mathematical skills were insufficient to adequately support the prescribed first year math-ematics curriculum. To address this problem a pilot study was set up to develop video solutions. These solutions permit students to see the development of each solution in a step-by-step manner. An audio Contents C935 commentary on each worked solution assists learning by providing stu-dents with an explanation of the …

Modulation Solutions For Nematicon Propagation In Non-Local Liquid Crystals, Antonmaria Minzoni, Noel Smyth, Annette L. Worthy

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

The propagation of solitary waves, so-called nematicons, in a nonlinear nematic liquid crystal is considered in the nonlocal regime. Approximate modulation equations governing the evolution of input beams into steady nematicons are derived by using suitable trial functions in a Lagrangian formulation of the equations for a nematic liquid crystal. The variational equations are then extended to include the effect of diffractive loss as the beam evolves. It is found that the nonlocal nature of the interaction between the light and the nematic has a significant effect on the form of this diffractive radiation. Furthermore, it is this shed radiation …

Stabilization Of Vortex Solitons In Nonlocal Nonlinear Media, Antonmaria Minzoni, Noel Smyth, Annette L. Worthy, Yuri Kivshar

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

We study the evolution of vortex solitons in optical media with a nonlocal nonlinear response. We employ a modulation theory for the vortex parameters based on an averaged Lagrangian, and analyze the azimuthal evolution of both the vortex width and diffractive radiation. We describe analytically the physical mechanism for vortex stabilization due to the long-range nonlocal nonlinear response, the effect observed earlier in numerical simulations only.

Mathematical Modelling Of The Self-Heating Process In Compost Piles, Harvinder Sidhu, Mark Nelson, Thiansiri Luangwilai, Xiao Dong Chen

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

We model the increase in temperature in compost piles or landfill sites due to micro-organisms undergoing exothermic reactions. The model incorporates the heat release due to biological activity within the pile and the heat release due to the oxidation of cellulosic materials. The heat release rate due to biological activity is modelled by a function which is a monotonic increasing function of temperature over a particular range and followed by a monotone decreasing function of temperature. This functionality represents the fact that micro-organisms die or become dormant at high temperatures. The heat release due to the oxidation reaction is modelled …

Analysis Of A Model For Ethanol Production Through Continuous Fermentation, Simon Watt, Harvinder Sidhu, Mark Nelson, Ajay Ray

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

We investigate an experimentally verified model for the production of ethanol through continuous fermentation. Previous studies investigated this model using direct integration. Such integration is time consuming as parameter regions of interest can only be determined through laborious and repetitive calculations. Using techniques from nonlinear dynamical systems theory, in particular a combination of steady state analysis and path following methods, practical insights into operating strategies are found. We use the performance of the reaction scheme in one tank as a benchmark for comparing the performances of multiple tanks.

Development Of A Cross-Faculty Model For The Enhancement Of Academic Standards In Assessment Of Work-Integrated Learning Programs, Linda Corrin, Martin Smith

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

The competetiveness of the graduate employment market has prompted universities to develop ways to enhance student employability. This has led to an increase in the adoption of work-integrated (WiL) programs across the university sector. As these programs become a more common element in university degrees, it is necessary for the academic standards of its related assessment to be examined.

At the University of Wollongong (UOW) a number of academic programs incorporate a WiL component, but the methods of presentation and assessment vary considerably. From more traditional internship programs to innovative new problem-based learning models, the breadth and variety of WiL …

Cryptanalysis Of Modification To Self-Certified Group-Oriented Cryptosystem Without A Combiner, Willy Susilo, Hiroaki Kikuchi

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

In a (t, n) group-oriented cryptosystem collaboration of at least t participants is required to perform a designated cryptographic operation. This type of cryptographic operation is very important to support an ad-hoc type network, such as the one that is built using Bluetooth or ad-hoc wireless LAN, since the existence of a combiner is not required to decrypt an encrypted message. In the earlier paper, it was shown that a group-oriented encryption scheme, as proposed by Saeednia and Ghodosi, can be subjected to a conspiracy attack in which two participants collude to decrypt an encrypted message. Recently, it was shown …

An Integration Life Cycle For Semantic Web Services Composition, Muhammad Ahtisham Aslam, Jun Shen, Soren Auer, Michael Herrmann

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Business applications are more and more often developed on the basis of Web services. The aim is to provide platform independence and loose coupling between business applications to facilitate distributed and grid computing scenarios. However, most efforts to deploy and publish Web services are manual. Manual discovery, invocation and composition of Web services in a distributed computing environment significantly hamper the automatic process of enterprise application integration. Semantic enhancements in Web services aim at making the process of Web services discovery, invocation and composition dynamic by exposing the machine understandable description of Web service capabilities and Web service requests. In …

An Agent-Based Framework For Service Level Agreement Management, Qiang He, Jun Yan, Ryszard Kowalczyk, Hai Jin, Yun Yang

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

In the Web services environment, service level agreements (SLA) refer to mutually agreed understandings and expectations of service provision between service consumers and providers. Although management of SLA is critical to wide adoption of Web services technologies in the real world, support for it is very limited nowadays. There lacks adequate frameworks and technologies supporting various SLA operations. This paper presents an agent-based framework which utilises the agents' ability of negotiation, interaction, and cooperation to facilitate autonomous and flexible SLA management. Based on this framework, mechanisms for autonomous SLA formation, recovery, and profiling are proposed and discussed.

Asymptotic Quasi-Likelihood Based On Kernel Smoothing For Nonlinear And Non-Gaussian State-Space Models, Raed Alzghool, Yan-Xia Lin

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

This paper considers parameter estimation for nonlinear and non-Gaussian state-space models with correlation. We propose an asymptotic quasi-likelihood (AQL) approach which utilises a nonparametric kernel estimator of the conditional variance covariances matrix Σ_t to replace the true Σ_t in the standard quasi-likelihood. The kernel estimation avoids the risk of potential miss-specification of Σ_t and thus make the parameter estimator more robust. This has been further verified by empirical studies carried out in this paper.

On The Meaning Of Computer Models Of Robot-Environment Interaction, Ulrich Nehmzow, Phillip J. Mckerrow, Steve Billings

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

The “meaning” of a computer model — a computer simulation — of some physical system is an ill-defined concept, and clearly it would strengthen any hypotheses based on such models if some formal model verification was possible. In this paper we present experiments on computer modelling of mobile robot operation, in which the interaction of a Scitos G5 mobile robot with a carefully chosen environment is modelled. The experimental setup chosen was such that we could determine from theoretical considerations what the model should be. The comparison between the actually obtained computer model and the theoretically correct solution demonstrates that …

Online Versus Traditional Grocery Shopping Stressors, Mark B. Freeman

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Research has shown that grocery shopping is the most stressful form of shopping and it is an activity that most individuals perform on a regular basis. Grocery shopping via the Internet has the potential to reduce a number stressors associated with grocery shopping. This research confirms that shopping over the Internet reduces these stressors but creates a new list of potential stressors for customers. This study concludes with solutions an online store can implement to reduce potential stressors for customers.