Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Iowa Academy Of Science: The New Bulletin, V03n3, Autumn 2007, Iowa Academy Of Science

New Bulletin

Inside This Issue:

--Message from the Executive Director

--Iowa Science Teachers Section Fall Conference

--Myrle Burk Scholarship Winners

--Project WET Update

--Academy Awards

--Opportunities for Learning

--ISTS Fall Conference Workshops

--Increasing Academy Membership and Recognition Across the State

--Financial Statement

Automated Refactoring Of Legacy Java Software To Enumerated Types, Raffi T. Khatchadourian, Jason Sawin, Atanas Rountev

Publications and Research

Modern Java languages introduce several new features that offer significant improvements over older Java technology. In this article we consider the new enum construct, which provides language support for enumerated types. Prior to recent Java languages, programmers needed to employ various patterns (e.g., the weak enum pattern) to compensate for the absence of enumerated types in Java. Unfortunately, these compensation patterns lack several highly-desirable properties of the enum construct, most notably, type safety. We present a novel fully-automated approach for transforming legacy Java code to use the new enumeration construct. This semantics-preserving approach increases type safety, produces code that is …

Reclamation, Managing Water In The West, Annual Report Of Operations For Flaming Gorge Dam, Water Year 2007, U.S. Department Of The Interior, Bureau Of Reclamation

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

Pursuant to the February 2006 Record of Decision for the Operation of Flaming Gorge Dam (ROD) and as described in the Operation of Flaming Gorge Dam Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), this report details the operations of Flaming Gorge Dam during water year 2007. This is the second year of operations of Flaming Gorge Dam under the ROD and this report is the second annual report produced under authority of the ROD.

Reclamation: Managing Water In The West, A.V. Watkins Dam Safety Of Dams Modification Draft Environmental Assessment Pro-Ea-07-002, W. Russ Findlay, U.S. Department Of The Interior Bureau Of Reclamation

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

This document is an environmental assessment (EA) of the proposal to modify A.V. Watkins Dam under the Safety of Dams (SOD) Act of 1978 (Public Law 95-578, as amended). The proposed SOD modifications would correct safety deficiencies of the dam without affecting the purpose or benefits of the dam. Specifically, the embankment and foundation of the dam need to be repaired. The repairs are needed to restore the reservoir to full function and to incorporate state-of-the-art defensive measures of controlling seepage within the foundation and embankment. On November 13, 2006, emergency remedial actions were taken at A.V. Watkins Dam when …

Does Interference Competition With Wolves Limit The Distribution And Abundance Of Coyotes?, Kim Murray Berger, Eric M. Gese

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

1. Interference competition with wolves Canis lupus is hypothesized to limit the distribution and abundance of coyotes Canis latrans, and the extirpation of wolves is often invoked to explain the expansion in coyote range throughout much of North America.

2. We used spatial, seasonal and temporal heterogeneity in wolf distribution and abundance to test the hypothesis that interference competition with wolves limits the distribution and abundance of coyotes. From August 2001 to August 2004, we gathered data on cause-specific mortality and survival rates of coyotes captured at wolf-free and wolf-abundant sites in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP), Wyoming, USA, …

Comparison Of Immune And Adverse Effects Induced By Adjuvac And Freund's Complete Adjuvant In New Zealand White Rabbits (Oryctolagus Cuniculus), Jenny G. Powers, Paul B. Nash, Jack C. Rhyan, Christi A. Yoder, Lowell A. Miller

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Though Freund's complete adjuvant effectively increases immune response to vaccines in various species, its potentially severe inflammatory effects have led many animal researchers to seek alternative immunological adjuvants. In a study of New Zealand white rabbits, the authors compared the immune and adverse effects of Freund's complete adjuvant with the effects of two formulations of AdjuVac, an immunological adjuvant previously developed by their group. ALL three adjuvants improved humoral immune response but also caused inflammation. Inflammatory reactions caused by AdjuVac, however, tended to be Less severe than those caused by Freund's complete adjuvant.

An Extraordinary Patch Of Feral Hog Damage In Florida Before And After Initiating Hog Removal, Richard M. Engeman, John Woolard, Henry T. Smith, Jean Bourassa, Bernice U. Constantin, Daniel Griffin

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Feral hogs (Sus scrofa) are a particularly destructive exotic species in the United States (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1999), including Florida, which, along with Hawaii, is one of 2 states cited as having the most severe invasive species problems (U.S. Congress 1993) in the country. First introduced to North America by the European colonists (Conover 2007) hogs were one of the first invasive exotic species to take hold in Florida. They can transmit disease to livestock (Hartin et al. 2007) and humans (Conover and Vail 2007). They impose a variety of negative environmental impacts, including habitat degradation and …

Some Open Questions On Modulo Classes, Frank J. Palladino

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Using Parsimony To Guide Maximum Likelihood Searches, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Timothy O'Connor, Quinn O. Snell, Kenneth Sundberg

Faculty Publications

The performance of maximum likelihood searches can be boosted by using the most parsimonious tree as a starting point for the search. The time spent in performing the parsimony search to find this starting tree is insignificant compared to the time spent in the maximum likelihood search, leading to an overall gain in search time. These parsimony boosted maximum likelihood searches lead to topologies with scores statisitically similar to the unboosted searches, but in less time.

Patterns Of Life: Integrating Mathematics With Science, Culture, And Art, Dian Calkins, James B. Cunningham, Foad Satterfield, Mietek Kolipinski, Sibdas Ghosh

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

We offered undergraduate students an interdisciplinary course Patterns of Life that develops mathematical reasoning strategies to solve complex problems. In its most essential form, mathematics is the study of patterns; and mathematical (patterned) reasoning is the ability to think with a plan and a purpose. Students personally experience and use patterns of reasoning in diverse disciplines, and then work in groups to form a valid strategy for solving a selected problem. Patterns of Life is designed as guided, on-site, active-learning experiences, in cooperation with local scientific, cultural and fine arts communities. Course goals for students include: (1) to increase mathematical …

Bactericidal Effects Of Cold Plasma Technology On Geobacillus Stearothermophilus And Bacillus Cereus Microorganisms, Angela D. Morris, Gayle B. Mccombs, Susan L. Tolle, Mounir Laroussi, Wayne L. Hynes

Dental Hygiene Faculty Publications

Cold plasma is a state of matter that contains a large number of particles that are electrically charged. Plasmas generate chemically reactive species and ultraviolet radiation making them useful in decontamination applications (Kong & Laroussi, 2003). Research regarding the inactivation of gram-positive bacteria by cold plasma has been studied by Laroussi et al (2003); however, there is limited research regarding the germicidal effectiveness of cold plasma on Geobacillus stearothermophilus and Bacillus cereus microorganisms. The purpose of this study was to determine if cold plasma technology inactivates Geobacillus stearothermophilus and Bacillus cereus vegetative cells and spores. This study consisted of 981 …

Triple-Differential Cross Sections For Target Ionization With Simultaneous Projectile Detachment In 200-Kev H⁻ + He Collisions, T. Ferger, Michael Schulz, Daniel Fischer, B. Najjari, R. Moshammer, J. D. Ullrich

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We have performed a kinematically complete experiment for target ionization with simultaneous projectile detachment (TIPD) in 200-keV H⁻ + He collisions. From the data we extracted triple-differential cross sections (TDCSs) for each electron separately. These TDCSs closely resemble corresponding data for single ionization by charged-particle impact. Surprisingly, the contributions from higher-order processes to TIPD, proceeding through two independent interactions of each electron with the core of the respective other collision partner, are found to be somewhat larger than the first-order process proceeding through the electron-electron interaction.

The Cafe Formula, David W. Hafemeister

Physics

No abstract provided.

กิจกรรมสถาบันฯ

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

ข่าวสิ่งแวดล้อม

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

พระบิดาแห่งการพัฒนาพลังงานไทย, บัณฑิต เอื้ออาภรณ์

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

การบำบัดน้ำทิ้งอาการเพาะเลี้ยงกุ้งทะเลด้วยธรรมชาติทางชีวภาพ, จำลอง อรุณเลิศอารีย์

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

พระบิดาแห่งการอนุรักษ์ทรัพยากรธรรมชาติและสิ่งแวดล้อม, กองบรรณาธิการ

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

การบริหารจัดการน้ำตามแนวทางพระราชดำริ, วัชรินทร์ เจตนานนท์

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

พื้นที่พรุ : การอนุรักษ์และพัฒนา, บุญณรงค์ ธานีรัตน์

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

แนะนำโครงการสถาบันวิจัยสภาวะแวดล้อม : การบริหารจัดการและพัฒนาพื้นที่การเกษตรเป็นพื้นที่รับน้ำนองเพื่อบรรเทา อุทกภัยขนาดกลางถึงขนาดใหญ่ของลุ่มน้ำเจ้าพระยา ตามแนวพระราชดำริ "แก้มลิงพื้นที่บางบาล (1)"

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

สิ่งแวดล้อมน่ารู้คู่โลกสวย

Thai Environment

No abstract provided.

Fixed Points Of Abelian Actions On S2, John Franks, Michael Handel, Kamlesh Parwani

Kamlesh Parwani

We prove that if $F$ is a finitely generated abelian group of orientation preserving $C^1$ diffeomorphisms of $R^2$ which leaves invariant a compact set then there is a common fixed point for all elements of $F.$ We also show that if $F$ is any abelian subgroup of orientation preserving $C^1$ diffeomorphisms of $S^2$ then there is a common fixed point for all elements of a subgroup of $F$ with index at most two.

Benzimidazolium Surfactants For Modification Of Clays For Use With Styrenic Polymers, Marius C. Costache, Matthew Heidecker, Evangelos Manias, Rakesh K. Gupta, Charles A. Wilkie

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Nanocomposites of polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (ABS) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS) were prepared with two new homologous benzimidazolium surfactants used as organic modifications for the clays. The morphology of the polymer/clay hybrids was evaluated by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), showing good overall dispersion of the clay. The thermal stability of the polymer/clay nanocomposites was enhanced, as evaluated by thermogravimetric analysis. From cone calorimetric measurements, the peak heat release rate of the nanocomposites was decreased by about the same amount as seen for other organically-modified, commercially available clays.

Revealing Nano-Confinement In Degradation And Relaxation Studies Of Two Structurally Different Polystyrene-Clay Systems, Kai Chen, Charles A. Wilkie, Sergey Vyazovkin

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Degradation and relaxation studies have been performed on two polystyrene (PS)−montmorillonite clay nanocomposites, one of which has an intercalated PS−clay structure and the other an exfoliated PS−clay brush structure. Compared to virgin PS, both nanostructured materials have demonstrated the following similarities: (a) a high yield of α-methylstyrene in the degradation products as measured by infrared spectroscopy; (b) larger values of the activation energy of the thermal degradation as determined by isoconversional kinetic analysis of thermogravimetric data; and (c) larger values of the activation energy for the glass transition as found from the frequency dependence of the glass transition temperature measured …

Follow The Leader? Price Change Timing In Internet-Based Selling, R. J. Kauffman, Charles A. Wood

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Internet technologies should lessen information asymmetry, prompting competitive price reactions, but this does not seem to be happening in Internet-based selling. We study empirical regularities of price change timing for music CD vendors and booksellers to assess several theoretical explanations. Our sample includes 123, 680 daily prices for 169 products and 53 firms. Bertrand competition is insufficient to explain our observation that sellers do not shift prices this way. Tacitly collusive responses to competitors' price changes are observed rather than price changes solely in response to demand or cost shifts as would be expected with Bertrand competition. We find evidence …

Gapprox: Mining Frequent Approximate Patterns From A Massive Network, Chen Chen, Xifeng Yan, Feida Zhu, Jiawei Han

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, there arise a large number of graphs with massive sizes and complex structures in many new applications, such as biological networks, social networks, and the Web, demanding powerful data mining methods. Due to inherent noise or data diversity, it is crucial to address the issue of approximation, if one wants to mine patterns that are potentially interesting with tolerable variations. In this paper, we investigate the problem of mining frequent approximate patterns from a massive network and propose a method called gApprox. gApprox not only finds approximate network patterns, which is the key for many knowledge discovery applications on …

Mining Modal Scenarios From Execution Traces, David Lo, Shahar Maoz, Siau-Cheng Khoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Specification mining is a dynamic analysis process aimed at automatically inferring suggested specifications of a program from its execution traces. We describe a method, a framework, and a tool, for mining inter-object scenario-based specifications in the form of a UML2-compliant variant of Damm and Harel's Live Sequence Charts (LSC), which extends the classical partial order semantics of sequence diagrams with temporal liveness and symbolic class level lifelines, in order to generate compact and expressive specifications. Moreover, we use previous research work and tools developed for LSC to visualize, analyze, manipulate, test, and thus evaluate the scenario-based specifications we mine. Our …

Ecological Interfaces For Improving Mobile Robot Teleoperation, Michael A. Goodrich, Curtis W. Nielsen, Robert W. Ricks

Faculty Publications

Navigation is an essential element of many remote robot operations including search and rescue, reconnaissance, and space exploration. Previous reports on using remote mobile robots suggest that navigation is difficult due to poor situation awareness. It has been recommended by experts in human–robot interaction that interfaces between humans and robots provide more spatial information and better situational context in order to improve an operator’s situation awareness. This paper presents an ecological interface paradigm that combines video, map, and robotpose information into a 3-D mixed-reality display. The ecological paradigm is validated in planar worlds by comparing it against the standard interface …

Psoda: Better Tasting And Less Filling Than Paup, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Mark Ebbert, Quinn O. Snell

Faculty Publications

PSODA is an open-source phylogenetic search application that implements traditional parsimony and likelihood search techniques as well as advanced search algorithms. PSODA is compatible with PAUP and the search algorithms are competitive with those in PAUP. PSODA also adds a basic scripting language to the PAUP block, making it possible to easily create advanced meta-searches. Additionally, PSODA provides a user-friendly GUI with real-time graphing visualizations and phylogeny viewer, and a multiple sequence alignment algorithm PSODA is freely available from the PSODA web site: http://csl.cs.byu.edu/psoda.