Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Wildlife Of The Gold Coast Wetlands, Shelley Burgin, Daryl Mcphee

Daryl McPhee

Extract: Water in the landscape of the Gold Coast is dominated by marine and marine-influenced systems. The most obvious are the in-shore waters abutting the Gold Coast's world-famous beaches and estuaries. Little more than a glance at a map of the city also reveals the extensive canal estates built to take advantage of the marine waters, and indeed expand them. The waters of the rivers mix with the ocean's waters in the estuaries. These ecosystems are valuable nursery areas for marine wildlife, particularly, but not restricted to, fishes of commercial and recreational value.

Marine Environments Of The Gold Coast: Out With The Old, In With The New, Daryl Mcphee

Daryl McPhee

Extract: The marine environments of the Gold Coast comprise one of the most highly modified and heavily utilised waterways in Australia. Chapters 2 and 3 discussed changes in the historic land use patterns. Just what has this meant to the marine environments of the Gold Coast? In this chapter the contemporary marine h abitats of the Gold Coast are described, along with the fauna that those habitats support. We talk about how the current status of the habitats compares with various historical points in time, and the role of novel habitats. Given the impor tance of recreational fishing to both …

In Conclusion, Something To Chew On: Native Plant Foods Of The Gold Coast, Simon Grigalius, Daryl Mcphee

Daryl McPhee

Extract: Ask most people what Gold Coast food is and you may hear answers like the ubiquitous prawn cocktail with avocado, a burger with ' fresh' pineapple available at the local surf club, or fish and chips (eaten on the beach to give it the seaside connection), with the fish often imported from New Zealand or Vietnam. None of this is the true food of the Gold Coast.

A Brief History Of Discovery, Settlement And Development, Tor Hundloe, Craig Page

Tor Hundloe

Extract: If we can rely on anecdotal data, the answers to what is truly Australian will start with mention of the koala, go to kangaroos and then include the rest of Australia's peculiar (to foreigners) fauna. The only exception might be that if we asked a male from the Asian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) what he identified Australia with, he might answer 'Cricket'. Putting that aside, the Gold Coast is very likely to be in the mix of Australian icons. To capture the essence of the Gold Coast, we need to talk about its history in more …

The Impact On The Gold Coast's Terrestrial Environments, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: We tend to think of the Gold Coast as a water environment. As tourists know, it sits on the shore of the vast Pacific Ocean. That is why most come. They have seen the magnificent photographs. If not perched on flattened dunes looking east to the ocean, a significant part of the urban Gold Coast environment is located around natural and human-made water environments. Of these we will say little here, other than to note their extent. The focus of this chapter is the city's terrestrial environments, reporting on and ultimately, after describing the environments, discussing what proportion of …

The Gold Coast Before Cook Named Mount Warning, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: We could and should ask, where does the Gold Coast sit on a scale from 'good' to 'bad' in environmental terms? Sustainable or unsustainable? Is it progressing or regressing? It is far too early in the book to attempt to answer this. Maybe at the end of the book you will feel confident to make your own assessment. What we do in this chapter is to make obvious a small number of seemingly irreversible changes that have occurred since the first escaped convicts walked the Gold Coast beaches. We know that indigenous Australians have lived on the Gold Coast …

The Gold Coast: A Snapshot, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: We know the city's boundaries as they are today (they have changed dramatically over time) and that is all we need to answer the question: what is the size of the city? The city's boundaries today are shown in Plate 3. As noted previously, the Gold Coast was a lot smaller in a geographical sense a couple of generations ago. When it was known as the 'South Coast' (or simply 'the Coast'), its northern boundary was at Lands End, north of Labrador. Coolangatta to Lands End established the south- north limits. Beenleigh in Logan City was considered the half-way …

State Of The Environment, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: What have we done? What have we learned? In this chapter we turn our attention to the people of the Gold Coast and their environmental impacts, as experienced in the 21st century. The past is gone. The damage is done. Dramatic change in landforms and ecological relationships are inevitable in building cities. From this we can only learn and do things better in the future. This is why there will never be another Gold Coast like the one we describe in this book.

Reducing The Ecological Footprint: The Prospect For Green Energy, Sophie Telfar, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: In this chapter we ask the question: what scope is there for Gold Coast citizens, businesses and government agencies to play a proportionally appropriate role in replacing greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels (in the generation of electricity and for transport) by environmentally friendly energy sources? We could expect that a sunny coastal city caressed by waves, subject to diurnal tidal flows and noted for its sea breezes would have more than average potential to play a leading role in this cause. This we will explore after putting the question into perspective.

The Evolution Of Environmental Management As A Profession In Australia And New Zealand, E. Anderson, W. Haylock, Tor Hundloe, S. Molesworth, M. Morris, J. Roper-Lindsay, P. Skelton, J. Womersley

Tor Hundloe

Environmental management is a relatively new profession, having evolved since the rapid worldwide rise in environmental consciousness in the 1960s. This article, by past presidents of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, the inaugural editor of the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, and collaborators, reflects on the establishment and development of environmental management as a profession, and the parallel development of the Institute as the focus for the profession. It concludes by considering future directions for the profession and Institute.

Lahar Infrasound Associated With Volcán Villarrica's 3 March 2015 Eruption, Jeffrey B. Johnson, Jose L. Palma

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The paroxysmal 2015 eruption of Volcán Villarrica (Chile) produced a 2.5 h long lahar, which descended more than 20 km within the Rio Correntoso/Turbio drainage and destroyed two small bridges. A three-element infrasound array 10 km from the summit, and 4 km from the lahar’s closest approach, was used to study the flow’s progression. Array processing using cross-correlation lag times and semblance places constraints on the lahar’s dynamics, including detection of an initial flow pulse that traveled from 2 to 12 km at an average speed of 38m/s. Subsequently, the lahar signal evolved to a relatively stationary infrasonic tremor located …

Evaluation Of Regional Climate Models With Remotely Sensed Evapotranspiration Data, Doruk Ozturk

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Water is one of the most precious resources on Earth. Managing water resources is a complex discipline that requires accurate data, which in turn means that the management of water resources is limited by the availability and quality of these datasets. Evapotranspiration (ET) is one of these key datasets, but is also one that is lacking in large-scale spatial distribution with traditional methods such as weighing lysimeters or Bowen ratio. This is a quantity that needs to be evaluated in regional and global climate models since it is a substantial component of the land surface-atmosphere interaction. In order to overcome …

Sr2Ir1−XRhXO4(X<0.5): An Inhomogeneous JEff=1/2 Hubbard System, Shalinee Chikara, Daniel Haskel, Jae-Hoon Sim, Heung-Sik Kim, Cheng-Chien Chen, G. Fabbris, L. S. I. Veiga, N. M. Souza-Neto, Jsaminka Terzic, Kamal H. Butrouna, Gang Cao, Myung Joon Han, Michael Van Veenendaal

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

In a combined experimental and theoretical study, we investigate the properties of Sr₂Ir_1−xRh_xO₄. From the branching ratios of the L-edge isotropic x-ray absorption spectra, we determine that the spin-orbit coupling is remarkably independent of x for both iridium and rhodium sites. DFT+U calculations show that the doping is close to isoelectronic and introduces impurity bands of predominantly rhodium character close to the lower Hubbard band. Overlap of these two bands leads to metallic behavior. Since the low-energy states for xj_eff=1/2 character, we suggest that the electronic …

Set It And Forget It: Approximating The Set Once Strip Cover Problem, Amotz Bar-Noy, Benjamin Baumer, Dror Rawitz

Mathematics Sciences: Faculty Publications

We consider the Set Once Strip Cover problem, in which n wireless sensors are deployed over a one-dimensional region. Each sensor has a fixed battery that drains in inverse proportion to a radius that can be set just once, but activated at any time. The problem is to find an assignment of radii and activation times that maximizes the length of time during which the entire region is covered. We show that this problem is NP-hard and that RoundRobin, the algorithm in which the sensors take turns covering the entire region, has a tight approximation guarantee of 3. Moreover, we …

Structural And Functional Analysis Of The Reaction Center Complexes From The Photosynthetic Green Sulfur Bacteria, Guannan He

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The reaction center (RC) complex of the green sulfur bacterium Chlorobaculum tepidum is composed of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) antenna protein and the reaction center core (RCC) complex. The RCC complex has four subunits: PscA, PscB, PscC, and PscD. The structure of the intact and functional FMO-RCC complex was studied by chemically cross-linking the purified sample followed by biochemical and spectroscopic analysis. The interaction sites of the cross-linked complex were also studied using LC-MS/MS. A structural model is proposed based on those results. In addition, the RCC complexes were purified, both the PscA-PscC complex from the Chlorobaculum tepidum and the PscA-PscB …

Solid-State Nmr Studies Of Carbon Capture And Carbon Mineralization Reactions, Jeremy Moore

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents research on the chemistry of carbon dioxide capture and mineralization which has been accomplished with a variety of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy techniques. Materials used for carbon capture interact with CO2 through different adsorption mechanisms, physisorption and chemisorption. The physisorption systems studied have shown that adsorbed CO2 undergoes a hopping mechanism within the material. The studies of chemisorption systems indicate a mixture of adsorption products forms during the adsorption interaction. Carbon mineralization reactions have been studied to better understand the reactions that can occur at underground carbon sequestrations sites that are used for storing CO2. …

Manipulating Electron Transfer Reactions From Micro- To Preparative Scale, Matthew Duane Graaf

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The utilization of electron transfer reactions has allowed the transformation of a variety of substrates from polymer surfaces to highly functionalized organic molecules. The intricacies of these electron transfer reactions have been utilized to develop a new platform for building and studying addressable molecular libraries as they interact with biological targets. As a low cost, reusable alternative to other methods of these studying binding interactions, microelectrode arrays are beginning to gain traction with the scientific community as we continually push the limits of their potential. Additionally, the electron transfer techniques used to build the molecular libraries can be expanded to …

A Molecular Dynamics Study Of The Structure-Dynamics Relationships Of Supercooled Liquids And Glasses, Ryan Joseph Soklaski

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Central to the field of condensed matter physics is a decades old outstanding problem in the study of glasses – namely explaining the extreme slowing of dynamics in a liquid as it is supercooled towards the so-called glass transition. Efforts to universally describe the stretched relaxation processes and heterogeneous dynamics that characteristically develop in supercooled liquids remain divided in both their approaches and successes. Towards this end, a consensus on the role that atomic and molecular structures play in the liquid is even more tenuous. However, mounting material science research efforts have culminated to reveal that the vast diversity of …

Topics In Lattice Gauge Theory And Theoretical Physics, Javad Komijani

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains two completely independent parts.

In Part 1,

I investigate effective field theories and their applications in lattice gauge theory.

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as a part of the standard model (SM) describes the physics of quarks and gluons.

There are several numerical and analytical methods to tackle the QCD problems.

Lattice QCD is the dominant numerical method.

Effective field theories,

on the other hand, provide analytic methods to describe the low-energy dynamics of QCD.

To use the effective theories in lattice QCD,

I develop chiral perturbation theory for heavy-light mesons with staggered

quarks---an implementation of fermions on lattice. …

Enhanced Magnetism In Dy And Tb At Extreme Pressure, Jinhyuk Lim

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

At ambient pressure all lanthanide metals order magnetically at temperatures at or below ambient. The magnetic ordering is known to result from the indirect exchange interaction between localized 4f magnetic moments mediated by the surrounding conduction electrons, the so-called Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction. With the RKKY interaction the magnetic ordering temperature To is expected to be proportional to the de Gennes factor which is a function of the Landé g factor gJ and the total angular momentum J. For example, Gd has the highest value of To, 292 K, at ambient pressure as it has the largest de Gennes factor of …

Structure And Function Of Cytochrome Containing Electron Transport Chain Proteins From Anoxygenic Photosynthetic Bacteria, Erica Lois-Wunderlich Majumder

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the structure and function of photosynthetic proteins that contain c-type heme cofactors that function in the electron transport chains of anaerobic phototrophic bacteria. The diversity and range of these cytochromes proteins was explored. Then, individual proteins were studied in detail. The diheme cytochrome c from Heliobacteria modesticaldum was studied using hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry and homology modeling. A structural model of the protein and a mechanism for the cytochrome bc complex was proposed. Next, the monoheme cytochrome c subunit from the Alternative Complex III from the Filamentous Anoxygenic Phototrophs was studied using biochemistry and found to …

Thermophysical Properties And Structural Evolution Of Supercooled Metallic Liquids, Matthew Blodgett

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Metallic glasses (and glasses in general) offer unique material properties compared to their crystalline counterparts. Yet the physics of the glass transition remain poorly understood. By examining the evolution of properties in the liquid as it is cooled toward the glass transition we hope to discern how they relate to glass formation.

Of particular interest is the concept of kinetic fragility, first defined in terms of the viscosity behavior near the glass transition, and what it means for a high temperature liquid to be “fragile” or “strong.” This dissertation presents several studies of metallic liquids using the electrostatic levitation technique. …

Modling Of Upper Ocean Heat Budget Variations In Response To The Passage Of Super Typhoon Sinlaku (2008) In The Western North Pacific, Zhe-Wen Zheng, Nan-Jung Kuo, Quanan Zheng, Ganesh Gopalakrishnan

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

In 2008, Super Typhoon Sinlaku (2008) passed over a preexisting cyclonic eddy (PCE) in the western North Pacific, causing an extreme cooling response at 22.5°N, 125°E. This case provides a rare opportunity to explore the physical mechanisms that trigger an extreme cooling response to a typhoon underlying the influence of PCEs. In this study, cooling response to Sinlaku was observed by TMI/AMSR-E microwave SSTs and simulated using the Regional Ocean Modeling System. To elucidate the impact of a PCE, in addition to standard run (EXPstd), another experiment that eliminates the influence of a PCE (EXPnonPCE) was designed and executed. By …

An Overview Of The Triceratops, Sarah Kanavy

The Compass

A long, long time ago, magnificent creatures roamed the Earth. Although these creatures may have varied greatly in size, shape, color, or dietary needs, the one thing that these creatures all had in common was a specific clade: Dinosauria. A part of this clade was one dinosaur in particular, Triceratops horridus, which is Greek for “three-horn face”. They received this name because of the three horns protruding from their face: two long ones above their eyes and a shorter one from their nose. Fossil evidence shows that Triceratops horridus lived during the Late Cretaceous period and was one of the …

Estimated Mouse Population At The Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust Vs. Reported Incidence Of Lyme Disease In Pennsylvania, Erika Clark

The Compass

The purpose of this research paper is to determine if the mouse population at the PennyPack Trust is correlated with occurrence of Lyme disease state wide.

Mark-recapture studies of white footed mice, Peromyscus Leucopus, were held at the PennyPack Ecological Restoration Trust in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in order to estimate the population sizes over six years. The common method of ear tagging has been shown not to interfere with the daily activities of mice, or increase their chances of mortality.

White-footed mice are primary hosts of the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis, which is the vector of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that …

Note Taking Effectiveness In The Modern Classroom, K.M. Beck

The Compass

The technological revolution has forever changed the way that people in many different environments work and learn. The modern classroom is no exception; it is rapidly changing due to the influx of technology such as laptops, tablets, smart boards, etc. This study will examine the effect that such technology has had on the modern day learning environment. Specifically, what effect does typing lecture notes on a laptop instead of writing them by hand have on test scores? Previous literature on this topic varies greatly, and covers a number of different facets of note-taking behavior. Early work in memory identifies three …

Topographic Signatures Of Geodynamics, Samuel G. Roy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The surface of the Earth retains an imperfect memory of the diverse geodynamic, climatic, and surface transport processes that cooperatively drive the evolution of Earth. In this thesis I explore the potential of using topographic analysis and landscape evolution models to unlock past and/or present evidence for geodynamic activity. I explore the potential isolated effects of geodynamics on landscape evolution, particularly focusing on two byproducts of tectonic strain: rock displacement and damage. Field evidence supports a strong correlation between rock damage and erodibility, and a numerical sensitivity analysis supports the hypothesis that an order of magnitude weakening in rock, well …

Improving Production Of Carbon Nanotube Composites, Dan Broadbent

Faculty Publications

Carbon nanotube (CNT) composites offer great promise for making lighter, thinner and stronger structures. Producing CNT composites, however, can be tricky. The focus of this work is to improve production yields of CNT composites by doing research and development in two areas:

• Research the relationship between ethylene gas concentrations used during CNT growth and yields of usable composite films produced.
• Develop furnace for growing larger CNT samples, which will enable larger sizes and quantities of research product.

Combinatorial Polynomial Identity Theory, Mayada Khalil Shahada

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation consists of two parts. Part I examines certain Burnside-type conditions on the multiplicative semigroup of an (associative unital) algebra $A$.

A semigroup $S$ is called $n$-collapsing if, for every $a_1,\ldots, a_n \in S$, there exist functions $f\neq g$ on the set $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ such that \begin{center} $s_{f(1)}\cdots s_{f(n)} = s_{g(1)}\cdots s_{g(n)}$. \end{center} If $f$ and $g$ can be chosen independently of the choice of $s_1,\ldots,s_n$, then $S$ satisfies a semigroup identity. A semigroup $S$ is called $n$-rewritable if $f$ and $g$ can be taken to be permutations. Semple and Shalev extended Zelmanov's Fields Medal writing solution of the Restricted …

Software Metrics And Dashboard, Shilpika Shilpika, George K. Thiruvathukal, Saulo Aguiar, Konstantin Läufer, Nicholas J. Hayward

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Software metrics are a critical tool which provide continuous insight to products and processes and help build reliable software in mission critical environments. Using software metrics we can perform calculations that help assess the effectiveness of the underlying software or process. The two types of metrics relevant to our work is complexity metrics and in-process metrics. Complexity metrics tend to focus on intrinsic code properties like code complexity. In-process metrics focus on a higher-level view of software quality, measuring information that can provide insight into the underlying software development process.

Our aim is to develop and evaluate a metrics dashboard …