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Geometry And Electronic Structure Of Doped Clusters Via The Coalescence Kick Method, Boris Averkiev

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Developing chemical bonding models in clusters is one of the most challenging tasks of modern theoretical chemistry. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that clusters are relatively new objects in chemistry and have been extensively studied since the middle of the 20th century. The second reason is that clusters require high-level quantum-chemical calculations; while for many classical molecules their geometry and properties can be reasonably predicted by simpler methods.

The aim of this dissertation was to study doped clusters and explain their chemical bonding. The research was focused on three classes of compounds: aluminum clusters doped …

Covert Botnet Design And Defense Analysis, Brandon Lyle Shirley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Intrusion defense system (IDS) development has been largely reactionary in nature. This is especially troubling given that botnets are capable of compromising and controlling thousands of computers before security professionals develop a mitigation technique. As new exploits are created, new mitigation techniques are developed to detect infections and, where possible, remove them. This thesis breaks from this tradition of reacting to malware. Instead, it looks at possible malicious software models through analyzing existing defense systems for exploitable weaknesses.

First, this thesis presents a new specialized botnet that circumvents current network intrusion detection mechanisms. The proposed botnet coordinates external communication among …

Statistical Analysis Of Linear Analog Circuits Using Gaussian Message Passing In Factor Graphs, Miti Phadnis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis introduces a novel application of factor graphs to the domain of analog circuits. It proposes a technique of leveraging factor graphs for performing statistical yield analysis of analog circuits that is much faster than the standard Monte Carlo/Simulation Program With Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) simulation techniques. We have designed a tool chain to model an analog circuit and its corresponding factor graph and then use a Gaussian message passing approach along the edges of the graph for yield calculation. The tool is also capable of estimating unknown parameters of the circuit given known output statistics through backward message …

Reconciling Holocene Alluvial Records In Buckskin Wash, Southern Utah, Jonathan E. Harvey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Most approaches to interpreting alluvial records in drylands fall into one of two categories: (1) The "arroyo problem," wherein workers study cycles of streambed aggradation and degradation in broad, unconstricted alluvial valleys; and (2) paleoflood hydrology, where alluvial sequences in constricted bedrock canyons are interpreted as paleoflood deposits from streams with stable channel grade and geometry. Both approaches can be valid in their end-member settings, but there is confusion about how the two record types relate in a single drainage. We address this disconnect in Buckskin Wash, an ephemeral stream that consists of a broad alluvial reach draining into a …

Risk Assessment Of Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard For Grassland Birds At The Mcentire Air National Guard Station, Eastover, South Carolina, Marla Hamilton

All Theses

ABSTRACT
There are strict regulations surrounding vegetation management at military airfields for the purpose of reducing Bird Aircraft Strike Hazards (B.A.S.H.). At military installations vegetation heights are set between 17 to 38 cm to discourage the use of animal species such as flocking birds, soarers (e.g. raptors), large wading birds (e.g. herons), and waterfowl that create hazards to flying aircraft. Within designated clear zones, managers have typically promoted the growth of non - non-native grasses without much consideration for how these plantings might impact B.A.S.H. potential, bird occupancy, or avian conservation. Grasslands and grassland associated avifauna are among the 'highest …

An Animation Framework For Improving The Comprehension Of Tinyos Programs, Sravanthi Dandamudi

All Theses

To meet the increasing demand for monitoring of the physical world, there has been an increase in the development of wireless sensor network applications. The TinyOS platform has emerged as a de facto standard for developing these applications. The platform offers a number of advantages, with its support for concurrency, power-efficient operation, and resource-constrained hardware chief among them. However, the benefits come at a price. Even without the TinyOS platform, the inherent parallel and distributed nature of these applications makes it difficult for developers to reason about program behavior. Further, the TinyOS programming model adopts
asynchronous, split-phase execution semantics. Developers …

Roost Selection By Rafinesque's Big-Eared Bats, Corynorhinus Rafinesquii, In Congaree National Park - A Multiscale Approach, Jessica Lucas

All Theses

Little is known about natural roost selection of Rafinesque's big-eared bats, Corynorhinus rafinesquii , throughout their range. The objectives of this study were to determine roost use and selection of big-eared bats in the Upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina at multiple spatial scales and test whether roost use and selection differed between maternity colonies and solitary individuals. The study was conducted May-August 2006 and 2007 in Congaree National Park which contains extensive areas of old-growth bottomland forest. Roost trees were located via tree searches and radio-telemetry and I used univariate tests and multiple logistic regression to compare tree, stand, …

Observations Of Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Emission From Supernova Remnants With Veritas, Mark Theiling

All Dissertations

The nature and source of cosmic rays has been at the core of particle astrophysics since their discovery almost a century ago. The cosmic ray spectrum is best described by a broken power law, and can be better understood as three distinct parts. Theory holds that cosmic rays up to ∼1015 eV – those below the “knee” or steepening in the spectrum – are produced in the shocks of supernova remnants. Direct detection of cosmic rays produced in supernova remnant shocks is impossible, however, as cosmic rays below ∼1018 eV are deflected by the Galactic magnetic field and cannot be …

Visuohaptic Simulation Of A Borescope For Aircraft Engine Inspection, Deepak Vembar

All Dissertations

Consisting of a long, fiber optic probe containing a small CCD camera controlled by hand-held articulation interface, a video borescope is used for remote visual inspection of hard to reach components in an aircraft. The knowledge and psychomotor skills, specifically the hand-eye coordination, required for effective inspection are hard to acquire through limited exposure to the borescope in aviation maintenance schools. Inexperienced aircraft maintenance technicians gain proficiency through repeated hands-on learning in the workplace along a steep learning curve while transitioning from the classroom to the workforce.
Using an iterative process combined with focused user evaluations, this dissertation details the …

Characterization Of Escherichia Coli Related To Construction Site Sediment Basins, Calvin Sawyer

All Dissertations

Large construction sites can have significant temporary and permanent impacts on the physical landscape. Excess sediment is frequently deposited into nearby surface waters, altering benthic habitat, reducing water clarity and transporting other pollutants such as enteric bacteria. To capture eroded soil and attenuate storm discharge peaks, many permitted construction projects larger than 10 acres in South Carolina require the installation of a sediment basin. Sediment-laden runoff is routed to a newly excavated impoundment, where larger particles settle out of suspension. Thus an entirely new hydrologic feature designed to concentrate eroded sediment and water is introduced into the landscape.
Eight construction …

Nonlinear Evolution Of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations From Improved Perturbation Theory In Real And Redshift Spaces, Atsushi Taruya, Takahiro Nishimichi, Shun Saito, Takashi Hiramatsu

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We study the nonlinear evolution of baryon acoustic oscillations in the matter power spectrum and correlation function from the improved perturbation theory (PT). Based on the framework of renormalized PT, which provides a nonperturbative way to treat the gravitational clustering of large-scale structure, we apply the closure approximation that truncates the infinite series of loop contributions at one-loop order, and obtain a closed set of integral equations for power spectrum and nonlinear propagator. The resultant integral expressions are basically equivalent to those previously derived in the form of evolution equations, and they keep important nonperturbative properties which can dramatically improve …

Multi-Leptons With High Transverse Momentum At Hera, F. D. Aaron, H. Abramowicz, I. Abt, L. Adamczyk, M. Adamus, M. Aldaya Martin, C. Alexa, K. Alimujiang, V. Andreev, S. Antonelli, P. Antonioli, A. Antonov, B. Antunovic, M. Arneodo, A. Asmone, V. Aushev, O. Bachynska, S. Backovic, A. Baghdasaryan, A. Bamberger, A. N. Barakbaev, G. Barbagli, G. Bari, F. Barreiro, E. Barrelet, W. Bartel, D. Bartsch, M. Basile, K. Begzsuren, O. Behnke, J. Behr, Margarita C. K. Mattingly

Faculty Publications

Events with at least two high transverse momentum leptons (electrons or muons) are studied using the H1 and ZEUS detectors at HERA with an integrated luminosity of 0.94 fb-1. The observed numbers of events are in general agreement with the Standard Model predictions. Seven di- and tri-lepton events are observed in e+p collision data with a scalar sum of the lepton transverse momenta above 100GeV while 1.94 ± 0.17 events are expected. Such events are not observed in e-p collisions for which 1.19 ± 0.12 are predicted. Total visible and differential di-electron and di-muon photoproduction cross sections are extracted in …

Leading Proton Production In Deep Inelastic Scattering At Hera, S. Chekanov, M. Derrick, S. Magill, B. Musgrave, D. Nicholass, J. Repond, R. Yoshida, Margarita Mattingly, P. Antonioli, G. Bari, L. Bellagamba, D. Boscherini, A. Bruni, G. Bruni, G. Cara Romeo, F. Cindolo, M. Corradi, P. Giusti, G. Iacobucci, A. Margotti, T. Massam, R. Nania, A. Polini, S. Antonelli, M. Basile, M. Bindi, L. Cifarelli, A. Contin, F. Palmonari, S. De Pasquale, G. Sartorelli

Faculty Publications

The semi-inclusive reaction e+p→e+Xp was studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA with an integrated luminosity of 12.8 pb -1. The final-state proton, which was detected with the ZEUS leading proton spectrometer, carried a large fraction of the incoming proton energy, xL > 0.32, and its transverse momentum squared satisfied p 2T < 0.5GeV2; the exchanged photon virtuality, Q2, was greater than 3GeV2 and the range of the masses of the photon-proton system was 45 < W < 225GeV. The leading proton production cross section and rates are presented as a function of xL, p2 T , Q2 and the Bjorken scaling variable, x. © SISSA 2009.

Transcript Analysis Of The Cso Operon And Characterization Of Two Sets Of Conserved Bacterial Microcompartment Genes In The Model Organism Halothiobacillus Neapolitanus, Fei Cai

Dissertations

This study was designed to achieve better understanding of (1) how carboxysome genes are regulated and expressed to yield with precise relative ratios and (2) the in vivo roles of two sets of conserved bacterial microcompartment genes, namely the three csoSl and two csoS4 genes of H. neapolitanus, in the biogenesis and function of the carboxysome. For the first goal, a detailed transcriptional profile of carboxysomal genes in H. neapolitanus was established using absolute quantification real-time RT-PCR and transcript ends analysis. This transcriptional profile revealed that a single promoter, denoted cso promoter, was located upstream from the clustered carboxysomal genes. …

General Theory Of Oscillon Dynamics, Marcelo Gleiser, David Sicilia

Dartmouth Scholarship

We present a comprehensive, nonperturbative analytical method to investigate the dynamics of time-dependent oscillating scalar field configurations. The method is applied to oscillons in a φ⁴ Klein-Gordon model in two and three spatial dimensions, yielding high accuracy results in the characterization of all aspects of the complex oscillon dynamics. In particular, we show how oscillons can be interpreted as long-lived perturbations about an attractor in field configuration space. By investigating their radiation rate as they approach the attractor, we obtain an accurate estimate of their lifetimes in d = 3 and explain why they seem to be perturbatively stable …

U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Liability Survey: Inaccurate, Unfair, And Bad For Business, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce uses its Survey of State Liability to criticize judiciaries and seek legal change but no detailed evaluation of the survey’s quality exists. This article presents evidence that the survey is substantively inaccurate and methodologically flawed. It incorrectly characterizes state law; respondents provide less than 10 percent correct answers for objectively verifiable responses. It is internally inconsistent; a state threatened with judicial hellhole status ranked first in the survey while venues not on the list ranked lower. The absence of correlation between survey rankings and observable activity suggests that other factors drive the rankings. Two factors …

Adaptive Type-2 Fuzzy Maintenance Advisor For Offshore Power Systems, Zhaoxia Wang, C. S. Chang, Fan Yang, W. W. Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Proper maintenance strategies are very desirable for minimizing the operational and maintenance costs of power systems without sacrificing reliability. Condition-based maintenance has largely replaced time-based maintenance because of the former's potential economic benefits. As offshore substations are often remotely located, they experience more adverse environments, higher failures, and therefore need more powerful analytical tools than their onshore counterpart. As reliability information collected during operation of an offshore substation can rarely avoid uncertainties, it is essential to obtain consistent estimates of reliability measures under changing environmental and operating conditions. Some attempts with type-1 fuzzy logic were made with limited success in …

Learning Bregman Distance Functions And Its Application For Semi-Supervised Clustering, Lei Wu, Rong Jin, Steven C. H. Hoi, Jianke Zhu, Nenghai Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Learning distance functions with side information plays a key role in many machine learning and data mining applications. Conventional approaches often assume a Mahalanobis distance function. These approaches are limited in two aspects: (i) they are computationally expensive (even infeasible) for high dimensional data because the size of the metric is in the square of dimensionality; (ii) they assume a fixed metric for the entire input space and therefore are unable to handle heterogeneous data. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme that learns nonlinear Bregman distance functions from side information using a nonparametric approach that is similar to …

Cyber Attacks: Does Physical Boundary Matter?, Qiu-Hong Wang, Seung-Hyun Kim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information security issues are characterized with interdependence. Particularly, cyber criminals can easily cross national boundaries and exploit jurisdictional limitations between countries. Thus, whether cyber attacks are spatially autocorrelated is a strategic issue for government authorities and a tactic issue for insurance companies. Through an empirical study of cyber attacks across 62 countries during the period 2003-2007, we find little evidence on the spatial autocorrelation of cyber attacks at any week. However, after considering economic opportunity, IT infrastructure, international collaboration in enforcement and conventional crimes, we find strong evidence that cyber attacks were indeed spatially autocorrelated as they moved over time. …

Landscape Patterns And Patch Dynamics In Hamilton County Over A Forty Year Period: Applicability To The Conservation Of The Eastern Box Turtle, Marie Colson

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Exurban development is the fastest growing form of land use in the southeastern US and the primary driver of habitat and biodiversity loss. Species with long generation times such as the eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) can persist in an urbanizing environment but have higher mortality than in forested habitat and show a response lag which delays detection of population decline. I quantify land use and land cover change over a forty year period by photo interpreting historic imagery that is orthorectified using a direct linear transformation model. A GIS database is created for three study sites and landscape …

An Isomorphism Theorem For Graphs, Laura Culp

Theses and Dissertations

In the 1970’s, L. Lovász proved that two graphs G and H are isomorphic if and only if for every graph X , the number of homomorphisms from X → G equals the number of homomorphisms from X → H . He used this result to deduce cancellation properties of the direct product of graphs. We develop a result analogous to Lovász’s theorem, but in the class of graphs without loops and with weak homomorphisms. We apply it prove a general cancellation property for the strong product of graphs.

Manganese Oxide Mineral Phases Produced At Room Temperature Under Acidic Conditions Investigated With Xrd, Tem, Sem, Eds, And Bet, Nancy R. Birkner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis concerns characterization of synthetic manganese oxides belonging to mineral phases known as Birnessite and Cryptomelane. Presented here are the results of an experiment designed to examine the influence of sodium, potassium, chloride, and sulfate ions on the reduction of potassium permanganate under acidic conditions at room temperature to produce Birnessite and Cryptomelane. The experiments used KMnO4 as the source of Mn and the resulting Birnessite and Cryptomelane precipitates were washed with 18 Mn/cm NANOpure water at the end of syntheses. Several state-of-the-art solid state techniques were used to characterize the Mn-based oxide mineral phases. Based on the literature …