Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

2013 Sustainability Report [Western Kentucky University], Wku Office Of Sustainability, Christian Ryan-Downing

Sustainability Publications and Resources

No abstract provided.

Big Red, Small Planet, Christian Ryan-Downing , Editor, Leslie North , Editor

Sustainability Publications and Resources

At WKU, “The Spirit Makes the Master”. Our commitment to continuous improvement is clearly reflected in our sustainability efforts. WKU’s commitment to sustainability, whether demonstrated in campus operations or in educational programs, helps to ensure that our graduates are prepared to address the complicated environmental, social and economic issues we face today. They will be able to think critically, solve problems creatively and be engaged citizens. If that’s all we accomplish then we will have achieved great success. But our sustainability commitment pays dividends, as it also leads us to reduce our environmental footprint, practice social responsibility, and conserve natural …

Extension Properties Of Pluricomplex Green Functions, Sidika Zeynep Ozal

Mathematics - Dissertations

In 1985, Klimek introduced an extremal plurisubharmonic function on bounded domains in Cn that generalizes the Green's function of one variable. This function is called the pluricomplex Green function of Ω with logarithmic pole at a and is denoted by g_Ω(.,a). The aim of this thesis was to investigate the extension properties of g_Ω(.,a). Let Ω0 be a bounded domain of Cn and E be a compact subset of Ω0 such that Ω : = Ω0 E is connected. In general, g_Ω(.,a) cannot be extended as a pluricomplex Green function to any subdomain of …

The Archimedean - January 2013, Department Of Mathematics, Syracuse University

Newsletters from the Department of Mathematics - The Archimedean

No abstract provided.

Insights Into Forest Soil Carbon Dynamics From Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Mapa De Amenazas En Las Cuencas De Las Fronteras Amazónicas Entre Ucayali Y Madre De Dios (Perú), Pando (Bolivia) Y Acre (Brasil), Gtaso, David S. Salisbury

Geography and the Environment Maps

Mapa de Amenazas en las Cuencas de las Fronteras Amazónicas entre Ucayali y Madre de Dios (Perú), Pando (Bolivia) y Acre (Brasil)

Map of Threatened Borders of the Amazon Basin between Ucayali and Madre de Dios (Peru), Pando (Bolivia) and Acre (Brazil)

Sustainable What? An Overview And Assessment Of "Sustainable Development", Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Occasionally an academic term becomes a meme in broader media and popular discourse. Among such terms are "stagflation", "globalization", and the concept that this chapter and volume addresses: "sustainable development". Like many other such terms, this concept implies an important subject and broad outlines of research programs and policy initiatives. Yet while provoking consideration of important and often uneasy issues, such a term can also mystify or deflects attention from other related issues. Given the clear evidence of global warming trends and the costs of environmental degradation, the eventuality of peak oil and increasing demand for increasingly scarce fossil fuels …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 54 Number 4, Spring/Summer 2013, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

12 - KEEP THE DOOR OPEN By Jeff Zorn. For teaching and advising and a ministry that's blessed this place for 48 years-a colleague pays tribute to Charles Phipps, S.J.

16 - IN THIS TOGETHER By Mitch FINLEY '73. For folks retired but not at rest, Companions in Ignatian Service and Spirituality offers a way to do and be more.

18 - WALK ACROSS CALIFORNIA By Jesse Hamlin-with images by Robert Boscacci '14, Frederic Larson, and Edward Rooks. An epic journey in which one foot is put in front of the other to discover, up close and personal, who and …

On The Matrix Equation Xa + Ax_T = 0, Ii, Alice Zhuo-Yu Chan '14, Luis Alberto Garcia '14, Stephan Ramon Garcia, Amy L. Shoemaker '14

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The matrix equation $XA + AX^T = 0$ was recently introduced by De Ter\'an and Dopico to study the dimension of congruence orbits. They reduced the study of this equation to a number of special cases, several of which have not been explicitly solved. In this note we obtain an explicit, closed-form solution in the difficult Type 0-I interaction case.

Uncle Sam’S Badge: Identity And Representation In The Usda Forest Service, 1905–2013, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Howard Abbey could recall the exact moment when he learned that he had passed the forest ranger’s examination for the newly established USDA Forest Service (USFS). In the early morning of Aug. 1, 1905, while he was managing a team of horses pulling a mowing machine on the McIntosh Ranch in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, Allen Ray Powers, a Forest Assistant on the Plumas Forest Reserve, rode up and “informed me that I was wanted at the Forest Supervisor’s office in Quincy.” Abbey handed over the reins to his boss and walked the 2 miles to town where he …

Renewable Energy And Human Rights Violations: Illustrative Cases From Indigenous Territories In Panama, Mary Finley-Brook, Curtis Thomas

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

Local implementation of international climate policies is frequently obscure. The objective of our research is to unpack the "black box" of carbon offsetting as it is being conducted in Latin American indigenous territories. Our two case studies of renewable energy projects under construction in Naso and Ngobe villages in western Panama show that carbon offsets in oppressive societies have the potential to cause social harm. Our cases illustrate processes of green authoritarianism, spatial control, and social restructuring. The private developers constructing the Chan 75 and Bonyic dams did not follow international standards for free, prior, and informed consent, and state …

Excitation Optimization Of A Standard Lrc Circuit With Impulsive Forces Selected Via Simulated Annealing, Ryan M. Spies

Departmental Honors Projects

For an unknown oscillator, it is sometimes useful to know what the potential energy function associated with it is. An argument for using a method of determining the optimal sequence of impulsive forces in order to find the potential energy function is made using principles of energy. Global optimization via simulated annealing is discussed, and various parameters that can be adjusted across experiments are established. A method for determining the optimal sequence of impulsive forces for the excitation of a standard LRC circuit is established using the methodology of simulated annealing.

Measurement Of The Semileptonic Cp Violating Asymmetry A Sl S In B S Decays And The D S + -- D S - Production Asymmetry In 7 Tev Pp Collisions, Zhou Xing

Physics - Dissertations

The large hadron collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is located in a tunnel with a circumference of 27 kilometers (17 miles) whose synchrotron is designed to mainly collide opposing particle beams of protons with energy up to 7 TeV in 2011 and 8 TeV in 2012. LHC is designed to address some of the fundamental open questions in physics regarding the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary particles. Among the four major experiments at LHC: A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS), …

Light Trapping For Silicon Solar Cells: Theory And Experiment, Hui Zhao

Physics - Dissertations

Crystalline silicon solar cells have been the mainstream technology for photovoltaic energy conversion since their invention in 1954. Since silicon is an indirect band gap material, its absorption coefficient is low for much of the solar spectrum, and the highest conversion efficiencies are achieved only in cells that are thicker than about 0.1 mm. Light trapping by total internal reflection is important to increase the optical absorption in silicon layers, and becomes increasingly important as the layers are thinned. Light trapping is typically characterized by the enhancement of the absorptance of a solar cell beyond the value for a single …

Studies Towards Identifying The Active Site Structure Of Human Ghrelin O-Acyltransferase (Hgoat), Rosemary Loftus

Chemistry - Theses

Ghrelin is a peptide hormone involved in appetite stimulation, regulation of insulin signaling, and other physiological processes. Ghrelin requires acylation of the hydroxyl group of a specific serine residue with an octanoyl group to bind its receptor and activate signaling. This modification is catalyzed by ghrelin O-acyltransferase (GOAT). Ghrelin is the only known substrate of GOAT, making GOAT inhibition a promising avenue for treatment of obesity and type II diabetes. Understanding the interactions between ghrelin and GOAT responsible for binding and catalysis will aid in developing specific GOAT inhibitors. To identify the nature and location of the ghrelin binding site …

Developing The Art Of Seeing The Easy When Solving Problems, Alfinio Flores, Jaclyn Braker

The Mathematics Enthusiast

For Leonardo da Vinci “saper vedere”, that is, knowing how to see, or having the art to see, was the key to unlocking the secrets of the visible world. Saper vedere included a precise sensory intuitive faculty as well as artistic imagination (Heydenreich, 1954) which were at the root of Leonardo’s inventiveness and creativity. According to Leonardo, to understand, you only have to see things properly (Bramly 1994, p. 264). Knowing how to see is also important in mathematics. The Italian mathematician Bruno de Finetti (1967) stresses this importance in his book on “Saper vedere” in mathematics. He highlights several …

Generalized Least-Squares Regressions I: Efficient Derivations, Nataniel Greene

Publications and Research

Ordinary least-squares regression suffers from a fundamental lack of symmetry: the regression line of y given x and the regression line of x given y are not inverses of each other. Alternative symmetric regression methods have been developed to address this concern, notably: orthogonal regression and geometric mean regression. This paper presents in detail a variety of least squares regression methods which may not have been known or fully explicated. The derivation of each method is made efficient through the use of Ehrenberg's formula for the ordinary least-squares error and through the extraction of a weight function g(b) which characterizes …

Making Sense Of Human Ecology Mapping: An Overview Of Approaches To Integrating Socio-Spatial Data Into Environmental Planning, Rebecca J. Mclain, Melissa R. Poe, Kelly Biedenweg, Lee Cerveny, Diane Besser, Dale Blahna

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

Ecosystem-based planning and management have stimulated the need to gather sociocultural values and human uses of land in formats accessible to diverse planners and researchers. Human Ecology Mapping (HEM) approaches offer promising spatial data gathering and analytical tools, while also addressing important questions about human-landscape connections. This article reviews and compares the characteristics of three HEM approaches that are increasingly used in natural resource management contexts, each focused on a particular aspect of human-environmental interactions. These aspects include tenure and resource use (TRU), local ecological knowledge (LEK), and sense of place (SOP). We discuss their origins, provide examples of their …

Logical Linked Data Compression, Amit Krishna Joshi, Pascal Hitzler, Guozhu Dong

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Linked data has experienced accelerated growth in recent years. With the continuing proliferation of structured data, demand for RDF compression is becoming increasingly important. In this study, we introduce a novel lossless compression technique for RDF datasets, called Rule Based Compression (RB Compression) that compresses datasets by generating a set of new logical rules from the dataset and removing triples that can be inferred from these rules. Unlike other compression techniques, our approach not only takes advantage of syntactic verbosity and data redundancy but also utilizes semantic associations present in the RDF graph. Depending on the nature of the dataset, …

A Resolution Procedure For Description Logics With Nominal Schemas, Cong Wang, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a polynomial resolution-based decision procedure for the recently introduced description logic ELHOV_n(⊓), which features nominal schemas as new language construct. Our algorithm is based on ordered resolution and positive superposition, together with a lifting lemma. In contrast to previous work on resolution for description logics, we have to overcome the fact that ELHOV_n(⊓) does not allow for a normalization resulting in clauses of globally limited size.

Blackops: Increasing Confidence In Variant Detection Through Mappability Filtering, Christopher R. Cabanski, Matthew D. Wilkerson, Matthew Soloway, Joel S. Parker, Jinze Liu, Jan F. Prins, J. S. Marron, Charles M. Perou, D. Neil Hayes

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Identifying variants using high-throughput sequencing data is currently a challenge because true biological variants can be indistinguishable from technical artifacts. One source of technical artifact results from incorrectly aligning experimentally observed sequences to their true genomic origin (‘mismapping’) and inferring differences in mismapped sequences to be true variants. We developed BlackOPs, an open-source tool that simulates experimental RNA-seq and DNA whole exome sequences derived from the reference genome, aligns these sequences by custom parameters, detects variants and outputs a blacklist of positions and alleles caused by mismapping. Blacklists contain thousands of artifact variants that are indistinguishable from true variants and, …

Diffsplice: The Genome-Wide Detection Of Differential Splicing Events With Rna-Seq, Yin Hu, Yan Huang, Ying Du, Christian F. Orellana, Darshan Singh, Amy R. Johnson, Anaïs Monroy, Pei-Fen Kuan, Scott M. Hammond, Liza M. Hammond, Scott H. Randell, Derek Y. Chiang, D. Neil Hayes, Corbin Jones, Yufeng Liu, Jan F. Prins, Jinze Liu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The RNA transcriptome varies in response to cellular differentiation as well as environmental factors, and can be characterized by the diversity and abundance of transcript isoforms. Differential transcription analysis, the detection of differences between the transcriptomes of different cells, may improve understanding of cell differentiation and development and enable the identification of biomarkers that classify disease types. The availability of high-throughput short-read RNA sequencing technologies provides in-depth sampling of the transcriptome, making it possible to accurately detect the differences between transcriptomes. In this article, we present a new method for the detection and visualization of differential transcription. Our approach does …

Preparation Of Phosphonoterephthalic Acids Via Palladium-Catalyzed Coupling Of Aromatic Iodoesters, Nathaniel Ivan, Vladimir Benin, Alexander Morgan

Chemistry Faculty Publications

The current article reports in detail the preparation of two phosphonoterephthalic acids: 2-phosphonoterephthalic acid (1) and 2,5-diphosphonoterephthalic acid (2). Efficient, scalable syntheses have been developed for both compounds based on Pd-catalyzed coupling reactions of iodinated terephthalate esters. Phosphonoterephthalic acids are potentially useful as flame-retardant additives or as monomers for the construction of acid-pendant polymer chains.

Reaction Between Polyol-Esters And Phosphate Esters In The Presence Of Metal Carbides, David W. Johnson, Carolyn Iacullo, John E. Hils

Chemistry Faculty Publications

The reaction of metal carbides with polyol esters found in aerospace lubricants and phosphate esters commonly used as additives was investigated. Carbides were of particular interest since modern materials under consideration at high temperature bearings have surfaces that are primarily metal carbides. Vanadium and chromium carbide were found to react with the ester and phosphate ester by a transesterification reaction, producing an alkyl phosphate which is less stable than the aromatic phosphate esters. In the process, the metal carbide is converted to the metal phosphate and metal polyphosphate, evidenced by the infrared and Raman spectra of the solid residue and …

Concavity Of Solutions Of A 2n-Th Order Problem With Symmetry, Abdulmalik Altwaty, Paul W. Eloe

Mathematics Faculty Publications

In this article we apply an extension of a Leggett-Williams type fixed point theorem to a two-point boundary value problem for a 2n-th order ordinary differential equation. The fixed point theorem employs concave and convex functionals defined on a cone in a Banach space. Inequalities that extend the notion of concavity to 2n-th order differential inequalities are derived and employed to provide the necessary estimates. Symmetry is employed in the construction of the appropriate Banach space.

An Example Employing Convexity In Functional Fixed Point Arguments, Richard I. Avery, Paul W. Eloe, Johnny Henderson

Mathematics Faculty Publications

This paper illustrates a convexity technique to be employed with functional fixed point theorems in proving the existence of solutions to boundary value problems.

Post Use Analysis Of Firefighter Turnout Gear- Phase Iii, Meredith Laine Cinnamon

Theses and Dissertations--Retailing and Tourism Management

The purpose of this research was to perform a post-use evaluation of retired firefighter turnout gear. Garments were categorized as 10-12 years old, 13-17 years old and 18-21 years old. Inspection and test procedures required by National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1851 and NFPA 1971 were followed to determine if the current recommended 10 year wear life (retirement age) is appropriate. Testing included a visual inspection (closure system functionality, light evaluation, leakage evaluation and flashlight test) and performance properties (Thermal Protective Performance (TPP), flammability, breaking strength, tear strength, seam strength and water penetration) completed on 108 garments. Ten-year retirement, care, …

The Effects Of Variable Viscosity On The Peristaltic Flow Of Non-Newtonian Fluid Through A Porous Medium In An Inclined Channel With Slip Boundary Conditions, Ambreen Afsar Khan, R. Ellahi, Muhammad Usman

Mathematics Faculty Publications

The present paper investigates the peristaltic motion of an incompressible non-Newtonian fluid with variable viscosity through a porous medium in an inclined symmetric channel under the effect of the slip condition. A long wavelength approximation is used in mathematical modeling. The system of the governing nonlinear partial differential equation has been solved by using the regular perturbation method and the analytical solutions for velocity and pressure rise have been obtained in the form of stream function. In the obtained solution expressions, the long wavelength and low Reynolds number assumptions are utilized. The salient features of pumping and trapping phenomena are …

When Cp(X) Is Domain Representable, William Fleissner, Lynne Yengulalp

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Let M be a metrizable group. Let G be a dense subgroup of M^X . If G is domain representable, then G = MX . The following corollaries answer open questions. If X is completely regular and C_p(X) is domain representable, then X is discrete. If X is zero-dimensional, T₂ , and C_p(X;D) is subcompact, then X is discrete.

Rose: Roadmaps Towards Sustainable Energy Futures And Climate Protection: A Synthesis Of Results From The Rose Project, Elmar Kriegler, Ioanna Mouratiadou, Gunnar Luderer, Nico Bauer, Katherine Calvin, Enrica Decian, Robert J. Brecha, Wenying Chen, Aleh Cherp, Jae Edmonds, Kejun Jiang, Shonali Pachauri, Fabio Sferra, Massimo Tavoni, Ottmar Edenhofer

Physics Faculty Publications

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Exploring energy demand and supply uncertainty: An exploration of uncertainty on drivers of energy demand and supply is indispensable for better understanding the prospects of long-tern climate stabilization. The RoSE study is the first of its kind to systematically explore the impact of economic growth, population and fossil fuel scarcity, in scenarios with and without climate policy, using a model ensemble. A feature of RoSE is the participation of five established integrated assessment modelling teams from three important regions in international climate policy negotiations: the EU, the USA and China.

Economic growth: Neither slow nor rapid economic growth …