Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Effect Of Warming And Simulated Rainfall On Soil Microbial Community Structure And Function, Torri A. Ivancic

Biology Theses

Soil respiration, from plant roots and soil microbes, accounts for 60 – 80 percent of total ecosystem respiration, with the microbial component contributing approximately 54 percent. Global climate trends resulting from CO₂ emissions include increased soil temperatures and changes in precipitation regimes resulting in less frequent, more intense rainfall events. Soil temperature and moisture availability drive soil respiration rates, but how they impact the microbial respiration is poorly qualified. I investigated how the soil microbial community responds to changes in temperature and moisture availability in a laboratory based experiment. Soils from a mixed hardwood forest under two thermal regimes …

Bayesian Minimum Description Length Techniques For Multiple Changepoint Detection, Hewa Anuradha Priyadarshani

All Dissertations

This dissertation develops a minimum description length (MDL) multiple changepoint detection procedure that allows for prior distributions. MDL methods, which are penalized likelihood techniques with penalties based on data description-length information principles, have been successfully applied to many recent multiple changepoint problems. This work shows ow to modify the MDL penalty to account for various prior knowledge. Our motivation lies in climatology. Here, a metadata record, which is a file listing times when a recording station physically moved, instrumentation was changed, etc., sometimes exists. While metadata records are notoriously incomplete, they permit the construct a prior distribution that helps detect …

Comparative Aquatic Toxicity Of A Commercial Naphthenic Acid And Processes For Mitigating Risks, Ciera Kinley

All Theses

Comparative toxicity data can inform predictions of relative risk, and can be used to implement strategies for altering exposures to mitigate risk. Naphthenic acids (NAs) are a complex group of carboxylic acids that naturally occur in petroleum sources and energy-derived process waters (e.g. refinery effluents and oil sands process affected waters). These compounds are relatively persistent in water and can be a source of toxicity to aquatic organisms. In the first experiment of this thesis, responses of sentinel aquatic organisms to 7-d exposures of commercial (Fluka) NAs were measured (in terms of acute toxicity) to discern relative sensitivities. In terms …

Towards A Greater Understanding Of Hydrothermally Grown Garnets And Sesquioxide Crystals For Laser Applications, Cheryl Moore

All Dissertations

ABSTRACT The hydrothermal method of crystal growth offers many benefits over traditional melt-based techniques such as lower temperature requirements relieving detrimental high temperature effects such as stress fracturing and a closed-environment, which limits impurities. The continued study of this type of growth including hydrothermal epitaxy is crucial in our world of constant miniaturization. Presented in this thesis is the hydrothermal growth of crystals of LuAG and Lu2O3 doped with a variety of dopants. Their room-temperature and cryogenic absorption spectra are also presented. Much like Nature uses heat, pressure, water and a nutrient-rich feedstock we have used this hydrothermal technique to …

An Open Virtual Multi-Services Networking Architecture For The Future Internet, May El Barachi, Nadjia Kara, Sleiman Rabah, Mathieu Forgues

All Works

© 2015, El Barachi et al.; licensee Springer. Network virtualization is considered as a promising way to overcome the limitations and fight the gradual ossification of the current Internet infrastructure. The network virtualization concept consists in the dynamic creation of several co-existing logical network instances (or virtual networks) over a shared physical network infrastructure. We have previously proposed a service-oriented hierarchical business model for virtual networking environments. This model promotes the idea of network as a service, by considering the functionalities offered by different types of network resources as services of different levels – services that can be dynamically discovered, …

Synthesis Of Medicinally Relevant Thiazolyl Aryl Ketones Under Mild Conditions, Danielle M. Gardner

Health, Human Performance and Recreation Undergraduate Honors Theses

Purpose: The growing amount of clinical resistance observed in current antifungal drugs and in anti-HIV pharmaceuticals is a concern in the medical community. The purpose of this study is to develop a mild synthetic process for biomedically relevant thiazolyl aryl ketones that can be used to develop antifungal and anti-HIV drugs. We hypothesized that the proposed synthetic technique would be more efficient, produce fewer unwanted byproducts, and be more tolerant of functional groups than existing methods.

Methods: Prior to each of the ketone reactions, the necessary salt was synthesized by mixing thiazole and 9-bromofluorene neat in a reaction tube heated …

Economic Impact To Shipping Industry : Economic Impact To Shipping Industry Considering Maritime Spatial Planning And Green Routes In Pilot Case Studies, Pantelis G. Anaxagorou, A Pappas, I Giraud, D Stratigis, E Papadopoulos, Lilitha Pongolini, Fabio Ballini, Piotr Treichel, Xavier Martínez De Osés, Sergio Velásquez Correa, M ·La Castells, I Ortigosa

MONALISA 2.0

In this project, three case studies are considered in order to examine the economic impact of the implementation of MSP when considering environmental impact of the shipping industry. Specific characteristics and limitations of areas in the Greek Sea, the Balearic Sea and the Baltic Sea are evaluated with respect to their economic effects on the maritime transport domain.

The purpose of the above is to evaluate the economic impacts and risk implications of different scenarios and particularly:

• The economic impact of vessel traffic rerouting and/or reducing the speed in order to reduce the probability of vessel strikes or other negative …

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Integrating Dynamic Route Planning : Feasibility Of Integrating Dynamic Route Planning In Maritime Spatial Planning, Riccardo Bozzo, Lilitha Pongolini, Fabio Ballini, Xavier Martínez De Osés, Sergio Velásquez Correa

MONALISA 2.0

MONALISA 2.0 report on the feasibility of integrating dynamic route planning in Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP.

Large-Eddy Simulation Of The Transient And Near-Equilibrium Behavior Of Precipitating Shallow Convection, Axel Seifert, Thijs Heus, Robert Pincus, Bjorn Stevens

Physics Faculty Publications

Large-eddy simulation is used to study the sensitivity of trade wind cumulus clouds to perturbations in cloud droplet number concentrations. We find that the trade wind cumulus system approaches a radiative-convective equilibrium state, modified by net warming and drying from imposed large-scale advective forcing. The system requires several days to reach equilibrium when cooling rates are specified but much less time, and with less sensitivity to cloud droplet number density, when radiation depends realistically on the vertical distribution of water vapor. The transient behavior and the properties of the near-equilibrium cloud field depend on the microphysical state and therefore on …

The Geotraces Intermediate Data Product 2014, The Geotraces Group, Tim M. Conway

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2014 (IDP2014) is the first publicly available data product of the international GEOTRACES programme, and contains data measured and quality controlled before the end of 2013. It consists of two parts: (1) a compilation of digital data for more than 200 trace elements and isotopes (TEIs) as well as classical hydrographic parameters, and (2) the eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas providing a strongly inter-linked on-line atlas including more than 300 section plots and 90 animated 3D scenes. The IDP2014 covers the Atlantic, Arctic, and Indian oceans, exhibiting highest data density in the Atlantic. The TEI data in …

Hybrid Aryl-Ether-Ketone And Hyperbranched Epoxy Networks, John Misasi

Dissertations

In this dissertation, relationships between chemical structures, cure kinetics and network architectures are correlated to bulk mechanical properties for novel, hybrid epoxy-amine networks. The work is split into two primary sections: the first is the synthesis and characterization of multifunctional glassy networks based on aryl-ether-ketone diamine curatives, while the second is based on the synthesis and characterization of hyperbranched epoxy polymers and their resulting networks.

Three aryl-ether-ketone (AEK) diamines of increasing molecular weights were synthesized and used to cure 4,4’-tetraglycidylether of diaminodiphenylmethane (TGDDM); the resulting networks were compared to 4,4’-diaminodiphenyl sulfone cured TGDDM. Architectural differences were created by varying cure …

Olfactory Enrichment In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus), Mystera M. Samuelson

Dissertations

In the wild, California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) are exposed to a wide array of sensory information at all times. However, it is impossible for captive environments to provide this level of complexity. Therefore unique procedures and practices are necessary for the maintenance of physiological and psychological health in captive animals (Wells, 2009). This project aims to explore the behavioral effect of scent added to the environment, with the goal of improving the welfare of captive sea lions by introducing two scent types: 1.) Natural scents, found in their native environment, and 2.) Non-natural scents, not found in …

Macrobenthic Communities In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Hypoxic Zone: Testing The Pearson-Rosenberg Model, Shivakumar Shivarudrappa

Dissertations

The Pearson and Rosenberg (P-R) conceptual model of macrobenthic succession was used to assess the impact of hypoxia (dissolved oxygen [DO] ≤ 2 mg/L) on the macrobenthic community on the continental shelf of northern Gulf of Mexico for the first time. The model uses a stress-response relationship between environmental parameters and the macrobenthic community to determine the ecological condition of the benthic habitat. The ecological significance of dissolved oxygen in a benthic habitat is well understood. In addition, the annual recurrence of bottom-water hypoxia on the Louisiana/Texas shelf during summer months is well documented.

The P-R model illustrates the decreasing …

Asymmetric Synthesis Of Cα-Methyl-Γ- And Δ-Amino Acids From A Common Synthon And Evaluation Of Thionyl Chloride Assisted Peptide Esterifications, Emily Rose Vogel

Dissertations

C^α-methyl-γ- and δ-unnatural amino acids (UAAs) are important class of biomolecules used extensively as structural scaffolds, peptidomimetics, and in the development of pharmaceuticals. Due to steric congestion surrounding the quaternary center, asymmetric preparation of α,α-disubstituted UAAs are synthetically challenging. Herein, two methods for the synthesis of chiral synthons to prepare C^α-methyl-γ- and -δ-UAAs are reported. A crucial step in both strategies includes an enzymatic hydrolysis of prochiral malonic esters with pig liver esterase (PLE). The first method utilizes the Meyer Schuster rearrangement to prepare α,β-unsaturated diesters synthons, but the preparation of the precursor propargyl alcohol decomposes …

Fire And Flood Expand The Floodplain Shifting Habitat Mosaic Concept, W. J. Kleindl, Mark C. Rains, L. A. Marshall, F. R. Hauer

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The floodplain shifting habitat mosaic concept suggests that habitat patch dynamics are influenced by hydrologic disturbances driven by flood pulses of sufficient power to initiate incipient motion of the substratum and maintain cut-and-fill alluviation of the channel and banks. However, floodplain habitat mosaics are subject to other important landscape-scale disturbance regimes. In the Rocky Mountains of the USA and Canada, fire also affects floodplain habitat patch composition. The floodplain exists at the intersection of disturbance regimes that shape the riverscape and those that shape the landscape. We extended the shifting habitat mosaic concept by examining the effects of multiple disturbance …

Neural Networks For Autonomous Control Of Unmanned Helicopters, Padraig M. Moriarty

Theses

Landing a helicopter on a ship in high seas can be a dangerous endeavour. This thesis proposes to examine the possible uses of Artificial Neural Networks (A.N.N.) in the aiding and/or the landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U.A.V.). It proposes that this procedure can be segregated into three distinct phases. The data for the A.N.N. training and testing sets is generated through simulation in the Unity cross-platform game engine. Phase 1 is intended to convert video images from an on-board camera to a set of numeric outputs suitable for use in Phase 2. Phase 2 estimates the current relative …

Social Learning Systems: The Design Of Evolutionary, Highly Scalable, Socially Curated Knowledge Systems, Nolan Hemmatazad

Student Work

In recent times, great strides have been made towards the advancement of automated reasoning and knowledge management applications, along with their associated methodologies. The introduction of the World Wide Web peaked academicians’ interest in harnessing the power of linked, online documents for the purpose of developing machine learning corpora, providing dynamical knowledge bases for question answering systems, fueling automated entity extraction applications, and performing graph analytic evaluations, such as uncovering the inherent structural semantics of linked pages. Even more recently, substantial attention in the wider computer science and information systems disciplines has been focused on the evolving study of social …

Interpreting Unique Colloidal Response Of Tio2 Nanomaterials To Controlled Sonication For Understanding Their Assembly Configuration, Siyang Wu

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses

It is important to determine the assembly configuration of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) particularly between aggregate or agglomerate because the assembly configuration greatly influences their fate and transport behavior in the aquatic environment. Aggregated particles are more subject to segregation upon changes of environmental conditions (vice versa) than agglomerated particles. As a strategic tool for investigating the time-resolved reversible segregating and assembling behavior of ENMs and thus estimating their assembly configuration, controlled sonication process was proposed. It was hypothesized the unique colloidal response of ENMs to sonication, with respect to changes in size, might be their intrinsic property associated with assembly …

Regional Stratigraphy Of The Marble Falls Formation And Underlying Late Mississippian To Early Pennsylvanian Deposits, Fort Worth Basin, North-Central Texas, Usa, Beau Daniel Berend

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses

The Early Pennsylvanian Marble Falls Formation in the Fort Worth Basin (FWB) of North-Central Texas was deposited in a broad carbonate ramp system during the initial stages of Ouachita orogenesis. It extends across an area of more than 15,000 square miles and comprises an assortment of facies that vary considerably across the region due to high-frequency sea-level fluctuations. The Marble Falls has been studied extensively in outcrop around the periphery of the Llano Uplift where it was informally divided into lower and upper members separated by a regional unconformity representing the Morrowan-Atokan boundary. A sequence of the Marble Falls Formation …

Structure-Activity Relationships Of Ruthenium(Ii) Polypyridyl Complexes With Redox-Active Intercalating Ligands: Correlation Between Redox Activity, Dna Cleavage Capability And Cytotoxicity, Eugenia Soyo Narh

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses

The investigation and development of transition metal complexes as cancer chemotherapeutics has gained a lot of interest in the past few decades and has become a promising area of research. Metal complexes of platinum and ruthenium in particular that have demonstrated success as anticancer drugs or are under exploration currently for clinical use are highlighted in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 describes studies undertaken to understand the neurotoxicity of ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes (RPCs), including toxicity in mice and inhibition of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), as previous work by Dwyer demonstrated that RPCs could be acutely toxic in mice, presumably due to …

Evaluation Of Activated Carbon As A Commercial Drug Disposal Product Using Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Veronica B. Waybright

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses

At present, pharmaceuticals, synthetic organic compounds, and endocrine disrupting compounds are ubiquitous in our environment. These have been introduced by consumers and manufacturers directly and indirectly for decades. There is plenty of published literature addressing the presence of these compounds, the development of newer and more sensitive techniques to detect them at low concentrations, as well as studies showing their effects in the environment and in human health. However, these studies are based on the measurement and detection of these compounds after the fact; and even though some have addressed the need to decrease these pollutants in the environment, procedures …

Bimetallic-Waveguide Coupled Sensors For Tunable Plasmonic Devices, Kunal K. Tiwari

Physics Dissertations

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been a widely used optical technique for the real time and label free sensing applications in biomedicine, homeland security, food safety, environmental monitoring, etc. Surface plasmons (SPs) being extremely sensitive to the surrounding media, their characteristics can be modulated by tuning their dielectric environment. The unique property of the nematic liquid crystalline materials that their dielectric constant can be tuned by externally applied electric fields formed the basis for development of tunable plasmonic sensor for monitoring changes at metal/dielectric interfaces. Even though sensors with high sensitivity are available, it remains highly desirable to enhance sensor …

Studies Of Influence Of Energy Distribution On The Upper Atmosphere, Cheng Sheng

Physics Theses

The energy inputs into the upper atmosphere including both solar irradiation and geomagnetic energy can significantly change the upper atmosphere such as the neutral and plasma densities, velocities and temperatures. Therefore, the precise specification of the energy inputs is critical to estimate the ionosphere/thermosphere variation during both quiet and storm times. In order to improve the understanding of the energy distribution and its influence at high latitudes, specifically, we have conducted the following studies. (1) Estimation of the altitudinal distribution of Joule heating from COSMIC observations. Joule heating is the most significant way to dissipate geomagnetic energy at high latitudes. …

Numerical Analysis Of Groundwater Flow And Potential In Parts Of A Crystalline Aquifer System In Northern Ghana, Sandow Mark Yidana, Clement Alo, M. O. Addai, O. F. Fynn, S. K. Essel

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The groundwater flow system in a crystalline aquifer system in parts of Northern Ghana was simulated and calibrated under steady-state conditions. The objective was to estimate the regional distribution of a key aquifer hydraulic parameter (the hydraulic conductivity) and recharge and also to predict possible effects of different abstraction and groundwater recharge scenarios on the sustainability of groundwater resources in the area. The study finds that the hydraulic conductivity field is quite homogeneous and has values ranging between 1.70 and 2.24 m/day. There is an apparent dominance of regional groundwater flow systems compared to local flow systems. This is probably …

Dissolution Of Nontronite In Low Water Activity Brines And Implications For The Aqueous History Of Mars, Michael Henry Steiner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Water is essential to life on Earth and is likely to play a role in determining the habitability of other planets. Pure liquid water is not stable on the surface of Mars but brines can temporarily remain liquid, and increasing evidence suggests the presence of recent liquid water, including brines, on Mars. Brines can host life at temperatures as low as -30 ºC and some organisms can live at activities of water as low as 0.61. Therefore, if brines have been present on Mars, they may act as habitable environments.

The Fe-rich smectite nontronite, (CaO0.5,Na)0.3 Fe3+2(Si,Al)4O10(OH)2·nH2O, has been detected on …

Architectural Form, Orientation, And Energy For Residential Design In The Southern Nevada Region., Ludwing Vaca

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With the population increase, the high demand of energy from the residential sector, as well as the harsh weather conditions of the Las Vegas region, there needs to be careful consideration in the design of new homes. Energy efficiency in a single family residential building can be augmented early in the design process by careful consideration of the building form and orientation. A systematic investigation and analysis was taken to study the effects of five building forms and different orientations along the cardinal points using the software BEopt version 2.4.0.1. To connect the study to real world circumstances, a residential …

Composite Minimization: Proximity Algorithms And Their Applications, Feishe Chen

Dissertations - ALL

ABSTRACT

Image and signal processing problems of practical importance, such as incomplete

data recovery and compressed sensing, are often modeled as nonsmooth optimization

problems whose objective functions are the sum of two terms, each of which is the

composition of a prox-friendly function with a matrix. Therefore, there is a practical

need to solve such optimization problems. Besides the nondifferentiability of the

objective functions of the associated optimization problems and the larger dimension

of the underlying images and signals, the sum of the objective functions is not,

in general, prox-friendly, which makes solving the problems challenging. Many algorithms have been …

Coordination Chemistry In Biology And Medicine, Christopher Chu

Dissertations - ALL

PART I. Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Metal-Citrate Complexes and the Investigation of Metal-Citrate Transporters in Gram-Positive Bacteria

Abstract.

Syntheses of new barium, cadmium, calcium, cobalt, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, nickel, and strontium citrate complexes have been attempted using different methods such as room temperature slow evaporation and hydrothermal reactions to create new metal-citrate complexes. Crystallizations were conducted under conditions varying metal and ligand concentrations, solution pH, temperature, solvents, and the presence of coligands. All structures of crystals obtained were characterized by X-ray crystallography. A novel lead-citrate complex was synthesized with a formula of (Na)[Pb5(C6H5O7)3(C6H6O7)(H2O)] 8H2O. The structure is two-dimensional …

Understanding Disordered Systems Through Numerical Simulation And Algorithm Development, Sean M. Sweeney

Dissertations - ALL

Disordered systems arise in many physical contexts. Not all matter is uni-

form, and impurities or heterogeneities can be modeled by fixed random disor-

der. Numerous complex networks also possess fixed disorder, leading to appli-

cations in transportation systems [1], telecommunications [2], social networks

[3, 4], and epidemic modeling [5], to name a few.

Due to their random nature and power law critical behavior, disordered

systems are difficult to study analytically. Numerical simulation can help

overcome this hurdle by allowing for the rapid computation of system states.

In order to get precise statistics and extrapolate to the thermodynamic limit,

large …

Applications Of Incomplete Gamma Functions To The Incomplete Normal Distribution, Eric S. Watson

Physics & Astronomy Faculty publications

This paper gives a derivation of a relationship that can be used to estimate the area under a Normal Distribution through the use of Incomplete Gamma Functions.