Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Conference Report: American Chemical Society Meeting, Teri M. Vogel

Sci-Tech News

No abstract provided.

Chemistry Division News

Sci-Tech News

The Chemistry Division is concerned with chemistry and chemical technology, and the economics, educational advances, and information handling of developments in the field of chemistry and related subjects.

Materials Research & Manufacturing Section News, Jack Bashian

Sci-Tech News

Members of the Materials Research and Manufacturing Section of the Chemistry Division share information concerning all phases of materials procurement, production, applications, and handling by means of educational activities, cooperative programs, publications, and Section-sponsored events at annual conferences.

Engineering Division News, Laurie Allen

Sci-Tech News

The objectives of the Engineering Division are to provide an association for those having an interest in library and information science as they apply to engineering and the physical sciences and to promote the use of materials and knowledge for the benefit of libraries and other educational organizations.

Aerospace Section News, Hema Ramachandran

Sci-Tech News

The Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division encourages communication and cooperation among information professionals concerned with aerospace, aeronautical and related technologies. In addition, it fosters dialog with entities such as NASA, the AIAA and other important sources of technical data and bibliographical services.

Science-Technology Division News

Sci-Tech News

The objectives of the Science-Technology Division shall be to draw together those members of the Special Libraries Association having an interest in the role of library and information science as applied to the recording, retrieval and dissemination of knowledge and information in all areas of science and technology, and to promote and improve the communication, dissemination and use of such knowledge for the benefit of libraries and their users.

Sci-Tech 2010 Conference Sessions - Sessions Led By Or Co-Sponsored By The Sci-Tech Division, Hilary Davis

Sci-Tech News

Mark your calendars to attend these terrific Division programs.

Twitter Course For Special Libraries

Sci-Tech News

Continuing education / professional development webinar about the popular micro-blogging social network, Twitter.

Division Officers And Boards

Sci-Tech News

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Chemistry Web, Bob Buchanan

Sci-Tech News

Resources for teaching and learning chemistry at the undergraduate level.

Full Issue: Vol. 64, Issue 2

Sci-Tech News

No abstract provided.

A Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of Landscape Change Within The Eastern Terai, India: Linking Grassland And Forest Loss To Change In River Course And Land Use, Tanushree Biswas

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Land degradation is one of the most important drivers of landscape change around the globe. This dissertation examines land use-land cover change within a mosaic landscape in Eastern Terai, India, and shows evidence of anthropogenic factors contributing to landscape change. Land use and land cover change were examined within the Alipurduar Subdivision, a representative of the Eastern Terai landscape and the Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area nested within Alipurduar through the use of multi-temporal satellite data over the past 28 years (1978 – 2006).

This study establishes the potential of remote sensing technology to identify the drivers of landscape …

A Publish-Subscribe System For Data Replication And Synchronization Among Integrated Person-Centric Information Systems, Xiangbin Qiu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Synchronization of data across an integrated system of heterogeneous databases is a difficult but important task, especially in the context of integrating health care information throughout a region, state, or nation. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a data replication and synchronization tool, called the Sync Engine, which allows users to define custom data-sharing patterns and transformations for an integrated system of heterogeneous person-centric databases. This thesis also discusses the relationship between the Sync Engine's contributions and several relevant issues in the area of data integration and replication. The Sync Engine's design and implementation was validated by …

Stormwater Monitoring And Resident Behavior In A Semi-Arid Region, Jennifer Abraham

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The combined effect of land-use alterations and introduced diffuse anthropogenic pollutants to the earth's surface in suburban/urban zones often sparks a decrease in stormwater quality in the area, and contributes to nonpoint source pollution in receiving waters. The ponds at the Utah Botanical Center (UBC) located in Kaysville, UT, regularly experience algal blooms, which in turn cause low dissolved oxygen levels in the waters, indicating high concentrations of inflowing pollutants. The goal of this thesis paper was to describe the findings from the water quality monitoring implemented at both the inlet and outlet of the UBC ponds in order to …

A Synthetic Biological Engineering Approach To Secretion- Based Recovery Of Polyhydroxyalkanoates And Other Cellular Products, Elisabeth Linton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The costs associated with cellular product recovery commonly account for as much as 80% of the total production expense. As a specific example, significant recovery costs limit commercial use of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which comprise a class of microbially-accumulated polyesters. PHAs are biodegradable compounds that are of interest as a sustainable alternative to petrochemically-derived plastics. Secretion-based recovery of PHAs was studied to decrease PHA production costs. Type I and II secretory pathways are commonly used for the translocation of recombinant proteins out of the cytoplasm of E. coli. Proteins were targeted for translocation using four signal peptides (HlyA, TorA, GeneIII, …

Factors Affecting Reading Outcomes Across Time In Bureau Of Indian Education Reading First Schools, Heather J. Chapman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Regardless of age, background, or socioeconomic status, children must learn to read in order to be successful in school and in their future careers. Reading is an essential skill necessary to be successful in all other academic content areas. Despite the importance of this skill, American Indian children consistently score below the national average on tests of reading ability and reading comprehension. During recent years, many schools in the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) system requested funding through the Reading First initiative. Schools used the funding and support provided by the BIE Reading First grant to attempt system-wide change at …

A Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Aspen Decline In Southern Utah’S Cedar Mountain, Using Remote Sensing And Geographic Information Systems, David M. Evans

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Widespread mortality of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) has occurred over large expanses of the Western US during the 20^th century. While much of this decline was due to conifer encroachment into seral aspen, significant aspen losses also occurred in areas of persistent aspen and may have been exasperated by drought conditions. Aspen decline has been especially notable at Cedar Mountain, Utah, an area of mostly private land and extensive persistent aspen coverage. The objectives of this study were to create a time series of live and dead aspen cover on the Cedar Mountain landscape, using remotely sensed …

Analysis Of Ammonia And Volatile Organic Amine Emissions In A Confined Poultry Facility, Hanh Hong Thi Dinh

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The National Air Emission Monitoring Study (NAEMS) project was funded by the Agricultural Air Research Council (AARC) to evaluate agricultural emissions nationwide. Utah State University (USU) is conducting a parallel study on agricultural emissions at a Cache Valley poultry facility. As part of this parallel study, samples of animal feed, eggs and animal waste were collected weekly from three manure barns (designated: manure barn, barn 4 - manure belt and barn 5 - high rise) from May 2008 to November 2009.

These samples were analyzed to determine ammonia content, total Kjeldahl nitrogen content and ammonia emission. The yearly average calculated …

An Exploratory Study On Issues And Challenges Of Agile Software Development With Scrum, Juyun Joey Cho

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore critical issues and challenges that might arise in agile software development processes with Scrum. It also sought to provide management guidelines to help organizations avoid and overcome barriers in adopting the Scrum method as a future software development method. A qualitative research method design was used to capture the knowledge of practitioners and scrutinize the Scrum software development process in its natural settings. An in-depth case study was conducted in two organizations where the Scrum method was fully integrated in every aspect of two organizations' software development processes. One organization provides large-scale …

Expanding The Horizons Of Educational Pair Programming: A Methodological Review Of Pair Programming In Computer Science Education Research, Keith B. Rimington

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Educators and researchers continue to explore the benefits, real or imagined, of implementing pair programming as part of the computer science pedagogy. Current reviews of computer science educational research practices do not focus on educational pair programming. This thesis presents a review of the research methods used in recent educational pair programming research. The primary purpose of this review is to inform the ongoing dialogue about and to provide evidence-based recommendations for improving educational pair programming research.

Replicating the design of a previous computer science education methodological review, this study inspected a sample of 108 articles from a population of …

Conservation Biology Of The Diamondback Terrapin In North America, Amanda Hackney

All Theses

Reptiles are experiencing global declines and pond turtles (Emydidae) are particularly vulnerable. The diamondback terrapin uses multiple habitats to fulfill its life history requirements, in the estuarine environments of the Gulf Coast and Atlantic states (US). Interacting effects of coastal development, overharvesting, abandoned crabbing gear, road mortality, climate change, and nest predation are likely causing population declines throughout its distribution. Protection levels were assessed by referencing each state's Wildlife Action Plan for the species' Conservation Status Ranking Code. At least 7 federal laws directly or indirectly regulate take, wetland, and/or coastal activities (Lacey Act, CWA, FWCA, NAWCA, WPFPA, CBRA, NEPA). …

Comparison Of Rna Quality From Stressed And Unstressed Recombinant Escherichia Coli, Mary Alice Salazar

All Theses

High quality, intact RNA is required for DNA microarray studies, cloning, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (rt-PCR) analysis. There are several analytical methods used to assess the RNA quality. The RNA Integrity Number (RIN) from the Agilent Bioanalyzer is one quality control assay used to evaluate RNA. For recombinant Escherichia coli cultured under stressful conditions the RNA profiles obtained using the Agilent Bioanalyzer indicate RNA degradation; however, RNA obtained and purified in parallel from unstressed recombinant cultures indicate acceptable RNA values without significant degradation. We proposed that for stressed E. coli the RIN value is not necessarily indicative of …

Reduction Of Rocket-Borne Atmospheric Density Measurements Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Travis Gaulden

All Theses

The HEX II atmospheric rocket experiment, conducted near 9:30 U.T. February 14, 2007 from the Poker Flat Rocket Range in Alaska was designed to lead to a better understanding of density and velocity gradients in the lower thermosphere. In a supporting role to this mission, cold cathode ionization gauges recorded composite density along three rocket payload trajectory paths from 90 km to 200 km. Rocket-borne instruments experience near sonic to hypersonic velocities and encounter a range of viscous, slipflow, and collisionless flow conditions at these heights. These variable conditions necessitate the use of tailored analytic expressions appropriate to the flow …

Building Scientific Clouds: The Distributed, Peer-To-Peer Approach, Linton Vadakedathu

All Theses

The Scientific community is constantly growing in size. The increase in personnel number and projects have resulted in the requirement of large amounts of storage, CPU power and other computing resources. It has also become necessary to acquire these resources in an affordable
manner that is sensitive to work loads. In this thesis, the author presents a novel approach that provides the communication platform that will support such large scale scientific projects. These resources could be difficult to acquire due to NATs, firewalls and other site-based restrictions and policies. Methods used to overcome these hurdles have been discussed in detail …

Dynamics Groups Of Asynchronous Cellular Automata, Michael Macauley, Jon Mccammond, Henning S. Mortveit

Publications

We say that a finite asynchronous cellular automaton (or more generally, any sequential dynamical system) is π-independent if its set of periodic points are independent of the order that the local functions are applied. In this case, the local functions permute the periodic points, and these permutations generate the dynamics group. We have previously shown that exactly 104 of the possible 2²³ = 256 cellular automaton rules are π-independent. In the article, we classify the periodic states of these systems and describe their dynamics groups, which are quotients of Coxeter groups. The dynamics groups provide information …

Community Funding Models For Computational Resources, Amy Apon, Jeff Pummill, Dana Brunson

Publications

As scientific research has extended far beyond the practicality and abilities of laboratory experiments, computational simulations have become the mainstay of enabling and furthering the research in a way never previously thought possible. It is becoming commonplace to model and simulate both the very large, such as black hole collisions in astrophysics, and the very small, such as subatomic particle behavior and interaction in high energy physics. In addition to the previous examples detailing extremes, practically every area of research currently utilizes and benefits from computational resources to simulate their work; financial modeling, weather forecasting, geological phenomena, geo-spatial data analysis, …

The Steiner Linear Ordering Problem: Application To Resource-Constrained Scheduling Problems, Mariah Magagnotti

All Theses

When examined through polyhedral study, the resource-constrained scheduling problems have always dealt with processes which have the same priority. With the Steiner Linear Ordering problem, we can address systems where the elements involved have different levels of priority, either high or low. This allows us greater flexibility in modeling different resource-constrained scheduling problems. In this paper, we address both the linear ordering problem and its application to scheduling problems, and provide a polyhedral study of the associated polytopes.

Compressive Sensing, Yue Mao

All Theses

Compressive sensing is a novel paradigm for acquiring signals and has a wide range of applications. The basic assumption is that one can recover a sparse or compressible signal from far fewer measurements than traditional methods. The difficulty lies in the construction of efficient recovery algorithms. In this thesis, we review two main approaches for solving the sparse recovery problem in compressive sensing: l1-minimization methods and greedy methods. Our contribution is that we look at compressive sensing from a different point of view by connecting it with sparse interpolation. We introduce a new algorithm for compressive sensing called generalized eigenvalues …

An Analysis Of The Quasi Biennial Oscillation, Ozone And Thermal Damping, Kevin Jauregui

Physics

No abstract provided.

Newly-Developed Nanostructured Microcantilever Arrays For Gas-Phase And Liquid-Phase Sensing, Zhou Long

Doctoral Dissertations

The microcantilever (MC) has become a common transducer for chemical and biological sensing in gas phase and liquid phase during recent years. MC sensors provide superior mass sensitivity by converting weak chemical and biological stimuli into high mechanical response. Moreover, other advantages such as small size, low cost and array format have made MCs more attractive than other comparable sensors.

Selectivity in MC sensors can be enhanced by creating a differentially functionalized MC array (MCA) with responsive phases (RPs). A well-designed array should incorporate RPs exhibiting a variety of possible interactions with the analytes, and a specific analyte should induce …