Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Renewable Energy Projects In Southwestern Deserts – Update On Our Involvement, Scott R. Abella

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications

Like many in the conservation field, we have a good understanding of the urgent need for alternative energy sources, but also of the negative environmental tradeoffs of placing renewable energy developments on vast tracts of public lands in southwestern deserts as currently envisioned. We also understand political and economic reasons, good or bad, for not doing some obvious things that make sense for renewable energy like placing solar arrays on building tops in cities, within multi-use contexts such as crops, and on already impacted land when alternative energy projects (right or wrong) are to be placed on public land.

A Planetary-Scale Land-Sea Breeze Circulation In East Asia And The Western North Pacific, W. R. Huang, J. C-L Chan, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

The diurnal wind variation over the East Asian continent is commonly considered to be a combination of a land-sea breeze near the coast and a mountain–valley breeze along the slopes of the Tibetan Plateau. The local land–sea breeze along the coastline typically spansHowever, a detailed examination of the global reanalysis data suggests that this local land–sea breeze circulation apparently couples with the global-scale diurnal atmospheric pressure tide to produce a planetary-scale land–sea breeze with a spatial scale of ∼1000 km over the western North Pacific. Computations of the momentum budget and equivalent potential temperatures indicate that the atmospheric diurnal tidal …

Synthesis Of Pbs/Tio2 Colloidal Heterostructures For Photovoltaic Applications, Krishna P. Acharya, Nishshanka N. Hewa-Kasakarage, Taiwo R. Alabi, Ian Nemitz, Elena Khon, Bruno Ullrich, Pavel Anzenbacher Jr., Mikhail Zamkov

Chemistry Faculty Publications

We report on heteroepitaxial growth of nearly monodisperse PbS nanocrystals onto the surface of TiO2 nanoparticles via colloidal hot-injection routes. Fabricated PbS/TiO2 nanocomposites can be dispersed in nonpolar solvents, which enables an easy solution processing of these materials into mesoporous films for use as light-absorbing layers in nanocrystal-sensitized solar cells. High-temperature deposition of the sensitizer material allows controlling both the size and the number of PbS domains grown onto TiO2 nanoparticles, whereby providing synthetic means for tuning the absorbance spectrum of PbS/TiO2 nanocomposites and simultaneously enhancing their photocatalytic response in the visible and near-infrared. Compared with conventional ionic bath deposition …

Mechanism Of N(5)-Ethyl-Flavinium Cation Formation Upon Electrochemical Oxidation Of N(5)-Ethyl-4a-Hydroxyflavin Pseudobase, Vincent Sichula, Ying Hu, Ekaterina Mirzakulova, Samuel F. Manzer, Shubham Vyas, Christopher M. Hadad, Ksenija D. Glusac

Chemistry Faculty Publications

We investigated the oxidation behavior of 5-ethyl-4a-hydroxy-3-methy1-4a,5-dihydrolumitlavin (pseudobase Et-FlH) in acetonitrile with the aim of determining if the two-electron oxidized Et-FlOH(2+) undergoes a release of hydroxyl cation and the production of 5-ethyl-3methyllumiflavinium cation (Et-Fl(+)). The focus of this work is to investigate the possibility of using Et-FlOH as a catalyst for water oxidation. The cyclic voltammetry demonstrates that Et-FlOH exhibits two one-electron oxidation potentials at +0.95 and +1.4 V versus normal hydrogen electrode (NHE), with the second oxidation potential being irreversible. The production of Et-FY' is observed in the cyclic voltammetry of Et-FlOH and has been previously assigned to the …

Integrated Shoreline Management Decision Tree For Untreated Shorelines, Center For Coastal Resources Management, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Reports

Rivers & Coast is a periodic publication of the Center for Coastal Resources Management, Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The goal of Rivers & Coast is to keep readers well informed of current scientific understanding behind key environmental issues related to watershed rivers and coastal ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay.

Self-Organizing Neural Networks For Behavior Modeling In Games, Shu Feng, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes self-organizing neural networks for modeling behavior of non-player characters (NPC) in first person shooting games. Specifically, two classes of self-organizing neural models, namely Self-Generating Neural Networks (SGNN) and Fusion Architecture for Learning and Cognition (FALCON) are used to learn non-player characters' behavior rules according to recorded patterns. Behavior learning abilities of these two models are investigated by learning specific sample Bots in the Unreal Tournament game in a supervised manner. Our empirical experiments demonstrate that both SGNN and FALCON are able to recognize important behavior patterns and learn the necessary knowledge to operate in the Unreal environment. …

Towards Probabilistic Memetic Algorithm: An Initial Study On Capacitated Arc Routing Problem, Liang Feng, Yew-Soon Ong, Quang Huy Nguyen, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Capacitated arc routing problem (CARP) has attracted much attention due to its generality to many real world problems. Memetic algorithm (MA), among other metaheuristic search methods, has been shown to achieve competitive performances in solving CARP ranging from small to medium size. In this paper we propose a formal probabilistic memetic algorithm for CARP that is equipped with an adaptation mechanism to control the degree of global exploration against local exploitation while the search progresses. Experimental study on benchmark instances of CARP showed that the proposed probabilistic scheme led to improved search performances when introduced into a recently proposed state-of-the-art …

Design And Implementation Of A Middleware For Easy Development And Provision Of Stream-Based Services, Seungwoo Kang, Youngki Lee, Sunghwan Ihm, Souneil Park, Su-Myeon Kim, Junehwa Song

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes MISSA, a novel middleware to facilitate the development and provision of stream-based services in emerging pervasive environments. The stream-based services utilize voluminous and continuously updated data streams as their input. The characteristics of data streams bring new requirements on the development and provision of the services. To satisfy the requirements, a unique service model and a runtime system are designed in MISSA. The key concept of our service model is to separate service logic from handling data streams. This significantly mitigates the burden on service developers by allowing them to only concentrate on the service logic. Job …

A Self-Organizing Approach To Episodic Memory Modeling, Wenwen Wang, Budhitama Subagdja, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a neural model that learns episodic traces in response to a continual stream of sensory input and feedback received from the environment. The proposed model, based on fusion Adaptive Resonance Theory (fusion ART) network, extracts key events and encodes spatiotemporal relations between events by creating cognitive nodes dynamically. The model further incorporates a novel memory search procedure, which performs parallel search of stored episodic traces continuously. Comparing with prior systems, the proposed episodic memory model presents a robust approach to encoding key events and episodes and recalling them using partial and erroneous cues. We present experimental studies, …

Extracting Common Emotions From Blogs Based On Fine-Grained Sentiment Clustering, Shi Feng, Daling Wang, Ge Yu, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, blogs have emerged as the major platform for people to express their feelings and sentiments in the age of Web 2.0. The common emotions, which reflect people’s collective and overall sentiments, are becoming the major concern for governments, business companies and individual users. Different from previous literatures on sentiment classification and summarization, the major issue of common emotion extraction is to find out people’s collective sentiments and their corresponding distributions on the Web. Most existing blog clustering methods take into account keywords, stories or timelines but neglect the embedded sentiments, which are considered very important features of blogs. In …

Learning To Rank Only Using Training Data From Related Domain, Wei Gao, Peng Cai, Kam-Fai Wong, Aoying Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Like traditional supervised and semi-supervised algorithms, learning to rank for information retrieval requires document annotations provided by domain experts. It is costly to annotate training data for different search domains and tasks. We propose to exploit training data annotated for a related domain to learn to rank retrieved documents in the target domain, in which no labeled data is available. We present a simple yet effective approach based on instance-weighting scheme. Our method first estimates the importance of each related-domain document relative to the target domain. Then heuristics are studied to transform the importance of individual documents to the pairwise …

Perception Of Ecological Risk To Water Environments And How It Affects Water Consumption And Water Resource Management In Southern Nevada, Tanju Kiriscioglu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Climate is harsh in southern Nevada where there is (and has been) a drought alert in effect for over a decade now (Kerr, 2007; Southern Nevada Water Authority, 2009). Las Vegas Valley is a major center of population in the region (1.9 million people), receiving only 4.5 inches of average annual precipitation yet in need of securing more water resources in the near future (SNWA, 2009). Water resource management in southern Nevada is a challenge, especially when 90% of the area’s water needs are met by a single source, the Colorado River, the flow rates of which have been in …

Data Mining As Applied To The Socialsciences, Walter Morris

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Is New Hampshire's Climate Warming?, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Barry D. Keim, Cameron P. Wake

Carsey School of Public Policy

This Carsey brief looks at temperature anomalies across New Hampshire and shows that not only is the state warmer than it has been in the past, but it is also warming faster than much of the planet. Sociologist Lawrence Hamilton, research associate professor Cameron Wake, and former NH state climatologist Barry Keim analyzed over 100 years of temperatures across the state to produce this data for the Carsey Institute in August 2010.

Tips To Taper Energy Costs In The Kitchen, Lou Mueller

All Current Publications

This publications gives suggestions on how to save on energy costs in the kitchen.

Supporting Wilderness Search And Rescue With Integrated Intelligence: Autonomy And Information At The Right Time And The Right Place, Michael A. Goodrich, Lanny Lin, Bryan S. Morse, Michael Roscheck

Faculty Publications

Current practice in Wilderness Search and Rescue (WiSAR) is analogous to an intelligent system designed to gather and analyze information to find missing persons in remote areas. The system consists of multiple parts — various tools for information management (maps, GPS, etc) distributed across personnel with different skills and responsibilities. Introducing a camera-equipped mini-UAV into this task requires autonomy and information technology that itself is an integrated intelligent system to be used by a sub-team that must be integrated into the overall intelligent system. In this paper, we identify key elements of the integration challenges along two dimensions: (a) attributes …

Simulating Windows-Based Cyber Attacks Using Live Virtual Machine Introspection, Dustyn A. Dodge, Barry E. Mullins, Gilbert L. Peterson, James S. Okolica

Faculty Publications

Static memory analysis has been proven a valuable technique for digital forensics. However, the memory capture technique halts the system causing the loss of important dynamic system data. As a result, live analysis techniques have emerged to complement static analysis. In this paper, a compiled memory analysis tool for virtualization (CMAT-V) is presented as a virtual machine introspection (VMI) utility to conduct live analysis during simulated cyber attacks. CMAT-V leverages static memory dump analysis techniques to provide live system state awareness. CMAT-V parses an arbitrary memory dump from a simulated guest operating system (OS) to extract user information, network usage, …

Novel Π-Conjugated Materials Plus Their Characterizations And Applications, Xiuxian He

All Dissertations

The theme of this dissertation will focus on the syntheses and characterization of bipyridine (bipy) containing π-conjugated polymers (CPs). Specifically, poly(p-phenylene ethynylene), polyfluorene and poly(p-phenylene vinylene) derivatives have been prepared via Sonogashira coupling, Suzuki coupling and Heck coupling, respectively. Derivatives of poly(p-phenylene ethynylene), polyfluorene and poly(p-phenylene vinylene) are known to have applications in optical and electronic devices. Through this study, polymers condensed with bulky bipy-containing TAB as one of the copolymer units have shown increased solubility and diminished intrachain/interchain aggregation in solution and in film due to the effectiveness of TAB in controlling the relative orientations of individual polymer chains. …

Boundary Type Quadrature Formulas Over Axially Symmetric Regions, Tian-Xiao He

Tian-Xiao He

A boundary type quadrature formula (BTQF) is an approximate integration formula with all its of evaluation points lying on the Boundary of the integration domain. This type formulas are particularly useful for the cases when the values of the integrand functions and their derivatives inside the domain are not given or are not easily determined. In this paper, we will establish the BTQFs over sonic axially symmetric regions. We will discuss time following three questions in the construction of BTQFs: (i) What is the highest possible degree of algebraic precision of the BTQF if it exists? (ii) What is the …

Green Separations Using Ionic Liquids, Samuel Morton

Samuel A Morton

No abstract provided.

Complementary Spectroscopic Assays For Investigating Protein−Ligand Binding Activity: A Project For The Advanced Chemistry Laboratory, David Mascotti, Mark Waner

David P. Mascotti

A protein−ligand binding, guided-inquiry laboratory project with potential application across the advanced undergraduate curriculum is described. At the heart of the project are fluorescence and spectrophotometric assays utilizing biotin-4-fluorescein and streptavidin. The use of the same stock solutions for an assay that may be examined by two distinct spectroscopic techniques offers an opportunity to discuss not only protein−ligand binding but also to compare instrumental techniques and to discuss the underlying physical principles that are the origins of the assays. In addition to critically evaluating analytical techniques, students are pushed to develop quantitative pipetting, estimation, and experimental-design skills to collect and …

Co-Taverna: A Tool Supporting Collaborative Scientific Workflows”, Proceedings Of The 7th Ieee International Conference On Services Computing (Scc), Jia Zhang

Jia Zhang

No abstract provided.

Deep 1.1 Mm-Wavelength Imaging Of The Goods-S Field By Aztec/Aste – I. Source Catalogue And Number Counts, Thushara Perera, K. Scott, M. Yun, G. Wilson, J. Austermann, E. Aguilar, I. Aretxaga, H. Ezawa, D. Ferrusca, B. Hatsukade, D. Hughes, D. Iono, M. Giavalisco, R. Kawabe, K. Khono, P. Mauskopf, T. Oshima, J. Rand, Y. Tamura, T. Tosaki, M. Velazquez, C. Williams, M. Zeballos

Thushara A. Perera

No abstract provided.

Confucius: A Scientific Collaboration System Using Collaborative Scientific Workflows, Jia Zhang, Daniel Kuc, Shiyong Lu

Jia Zhang

No abstract provided.

Is The Curvature Of The Flagellum Involved In The Apparent Cooperativity Of The Dynein Arms Along The "9+2" Axoneme?, Christian Cibert, Andrei Ludu

Andrei Ludu

Algebraic Characteristics And Satisfiability Threshold Of Random Boolean Equations, Binghui Guo Dr, Wei Wei Dr, Yifan Sun Dr, Zhiming Zheng Dr

Yifan Sun

No abstract provided.

Generalized Crowding For Genetic Algorithms, Ole J. Mengshoel, Severino F. Galan

Ole J Mengshoel

Nevada Interagency Volunteer Program: Helping Hands Across Public Lands – Phase Ii: Annual Progress Report, Period Covering July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010, Margaret N. Rees

Get Outdoors Nevada

• From July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 the Volgistics database has increased the number of records from 6,226 to a total of 6,536 records at the end of this period.
• Website activity this year averaged 109,216 hits per month, with an average of 10,443 pages viewed per month.
• The team attended 14 community outreach events resulting in 2,588 direct contacts and 300 new mailing list records.
• The Interagency Volunteer Program (IVP) completed a total of 67 volunteer events contributing a total of 15,195 volunteer hours.
• A total of 131 volunteers completed orientations and trainings with the IVP.
• A total …

Nevada Interagency Volunteer Program: Helping Hands Across Public Lands – Phase Ii: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Covering April 1, 2010 – June 30, 2010, Margaret N. Rees

Get Outdoors Nevada

• The number of records in the volunteer database increased by 6% over the last quarter. The database now contains 7,250 records.
• A new tracking method was implemented to provide a more comprehensive analysis of website activity. Results show an average of 1397 visits per month, and with an average of 3,400 pages viewed per month.
• Spring volunteer training has been completed.
• Initial planning for Fall events has begun.
• Preparations and initial planning for the 2,010 volunteer recognition banquet began.
• The Interagency Volunteer Standard Operations Manual has been updated and revised.
• Get Outdoors Nevada supported 17 volunteer events in a variety …

Improving Statistical Analysis Of Prospective Clinical Trials In Stem Cell Transplantation. An Inventory Of New Approaches In Survival Analysis, Aurelien Latouche

COBRA Preprint Series

The CLINT project is an European Union funded project, run as a specific support action, under the sixth framework programme. It is a 2 year project aimed at supporting the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) to develop its infrastructure for the conduct of trans-European clinical trials in accordance with the EU Clinical Trials Directive, and to facilitate International prospective clinical trials in stem cell transplantation. The initial task is to create an inventory of the existing biostatistical literature on new approaches to survival analyses that are not currently widely utilised. The estimation of survival endpoints is introduced, …