Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Advanced Cotton Fibers Exhibit Efficient Photocatalytic Self-Cleaning And Antimicrobial Activity, Jared Jaksik, Phong Tran, Veronica Galvez, Isaac Martinez, Darian Ortiz, Andy Ly, Monica Mcentee, Erin M. Durke, Sayeeda Tj Aishee, Margaret Cua, Ahmed Touhami, H. Justin Moore, M. Jasim Uddin

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Functional cotton fibers have a wide range of applications in domestic, commercial, and military settings, and so enhancing the properties of these materials can yield substantial benefits. Herein, we report the creation of functional fibers that are self-cleaning, anti-microbial, and protective against UV radiation. A uniform, and high surface area films of TiO2 were deposited on cotton fibers and gold/silver nanoparticles were directly incorporated on the nanostructured TiO2 surface. The synthetic method is simple and the produced TiO2 film is homogenous and the nanoparticles were shown to be effectively distributed on the surface using a simple photocatalytic reduction method. …

Patterns And Drivers Of Recent Disturbances Across The Temperate Forest Biome, Andreas Sommerfeld, Cornelius Senf, Brian Buma, Anthony W. D'Amato, Tiphaine Despres, Ignacio Díaz-Hormazábal, Shawn Fraver, Lee E. Frelich, Alvaro G. Gutiérrez, Sarah J. Hart, Brian J. Harvey, Hong S. He, Tomáš Hlásny, Andrés Holz, Multiple Additional Authors

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Increasing evidence indicates that forest disturbances are changing in response to global change, yet local variability in disturbance remains high. We quantified this considerable variability and analyzed whether recent disturbance episodes around the globe were consistently driven by climate, and if human influence modulates patterns of forest disturbance. We combined remote sensing data on recent (2001–2014) disturbances with in-depth local information for 50 protected landscapes and their surroundings across the temperate biome. Disturbance patterns are highly variable, and shaped by variation in disturbance agents and traits of prevailing tree species. However, high disturbance activity is consistently linked to warmer and …

Event Engineering Studies For Heavy Flavor Production And Hadronization In High Multiplicity Hadron-Hadron And Hadron-Nucleus Collisions, Yan-Qing Ma, Prithwish Tribedy, Raju Venugopalan, Kazuhiro Watanabe

Physics Faculty Publications

Heavy flavor measurements in high multiplicity proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions at collider energies enable unique insights into their production and hadronization mechanism because experimental and theoretical uncertainties cancel in ratios of their cross sections relative to minimum bias events. We explore such event engineering using the color glass condensate (CGC) effective field theory to compute short-distance charmonium cross sections. The CGC is combined with heavy-quark fragmentation functions to compute D-meson cross sections; for the J/ψ, hadronization is described employing nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) and an improved color evaporation model. Excellent agreement is found between the CGC computations and the LHC heavy …

No2- And No3- Enhance Cold Atmospheric Plasma Induced Cancer Cell Death By Generation Of Onoo-, Dehui Xu, Qingjie Cui, Yujing Xu, Zhijie Liu, Zeyu Chen, Wenjie Xia, Hao Zhang, Dingxin Liu, Hailan Chen, Michael G. Kong

Bioelectrics Publications

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a rapidly developed technology that has been widely applied in biomedicine especially in cancer treatment. Due to the generation of various active species in plasma, CAP could induce various tumor cells death and showed a promising potential in cancer therapy. To enhance the biological effects of gas plasma, changing the discharging parameters is the most commonly used method, yet increasing discharging power will lead to a higher possibility of simultaneously damage surrounding tissues. In this study, by adding nontoxic concentration of additional nitrite and nitrate in the medium, we found that anti-tumor effect of CAP …

An Accurate Method For Solving Higher Order Differential Equations Based On The Implicit Hybrid Method, Ahlam Mohammed S Almokhmari

Mathematical Sciences Theses

In this thesis, we present numerical techniques to solve higher order differential equations based on the implicit Hybrid method. In these methods, we use the collocation and interpolating methods. Then, we derive the main schemes and their block methods. We investigate some theoretical results such as the order of the method, consistency, convergence, and region of absolute stability. Some numerical results and simulations are provided to show the efficiency of the proposed methods using Mathematica.

Personalized Pain Study Platform Using Evidence-Based Continuous Learning Tool, Amit Kumar Saha

Master's Theses (2009 -)

With the increased accessibility to mobile technologies, research utilizing mobile technologies in medical and public health area has also increased. The efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services are also improved by introduction of mobile technologies. Effective pain treatment requires regular and continuous pain assessment of the patients. Mobile Health or mHealth has been an active interdisciplinary research area for more than a decade to research pain assessment through different software research tools. Different mHealth support systems are developed to assess pain level of patient using different techniques. Close attention to participant’s self- reported pain along with data mining based pain …

Sources Of Contaminated Flood Sediments In A Rural–Urban Catchment: Johnson Creek, Oregon, Heejun Chang, Deonie Allen, Jennifer L. Morse, Janardan Mainali

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study investigated the delivery of contaminated sediments to the channel network by urban drainage systems in Johnson Creek in Oregon, USA. Concentrations of five heavy metal concentrations measured in 136 samples collected from 37 stormwater outfalls and 99 bed sampling points were analysed. While concentrations of zinc, cadmium and lead increased with distance downstream in Johnson Creek, this was not the case for chromium and copper. Zinc, copper, and cadmium concentrations in outfalls were significantly higher than those in the stream bed, indicating that stormwater runoff is responsible for delivering contaminated sediments to Johnson Creek. Zinc concentrations in outfalls …

Livelihoods Of The People Of Mazumbai: A Collection Of Stories And Portraits, Tanga Region, Tanzania, Joseph Baldus

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite rapid urbanization in Tanzania, agriculture remains central to the nation, the economy, and the livelihoods of a large portion of the population. Smallholder farmers account for the vast majority of agricultural production, yet are an extremely vulnerable population due to poverty, single-sourced income, and climate-dependency for both subsistence and cash-crop agriculture (Rapsomanikis, 2015). This report explores these dynamic rural livelihoods through interviews and portrait photographs in a case study on Mazumbai, Tanga region, Tanzania. Semi-structured interviews explore the people’s modes of economic subsistence, domestic lives, education, challenges, and life stories. Excerpts from these interviews combined with portrait photographs create …

Certificate Revocation Table: Leveraging Locality Of Reference In Web Requests To Improve Tls Certificate Revocation, Luke Austin Dickinson

Theses and Dissertations

X.509 certificate revocation defends against man-in-the-middle attacks involving a compromised certificate. Certificate revocation strategies face scalability, effectiveness, and deployment challenges as HTTPS adoption rates have soared. We propose Certificate Revocation Table (CRT), a new revocation strategy that is competitive with or exceeds alternative state-of-the-art solutions in effectiveness, efficiency, certificate growth scalability, mass revocation event scalability, revocation timeliness, privacy, and deployment requirements. The CRT periodically checks the revocation status of X.509 certificates recently used by an organization, such as clients on a university's private network. By prechecking the revocation status of each certificate the client is likely to use, the client …

Development Of Bioactive Peptidomimetics, Fengyu She

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peptidomimetics are synthetic foldamers that expected more resistant to proteolytic degradation and enormous chemodiversity when compared with peptides. To date, the functional peptidomimetics such as β-peptides, peptoids, oligoureas, etc have been developed in many science fields. In order to explore the unnatural foldameric architectures, it’s necessary to discover the novel frameworks and molecular scaffolds. γ-AApeptides were reported to be a new class of peptidomimetics that showed its potential applications in drug discovery and chemical biology. However, a wide function and property of γ-AApeptides need to be further explored. To expand the potential application of γ-AApeptides in biochemistry, I have been …

Π-Π Stacking Vs. C–H/Π Interaction: Excimer Formation And Charge Resonance Stabilization In Van Der Waals Clusters Of 9,9′-Dimethylfluorene, Damian Kokkin, Maxim Vadimovich Ivanov, John Loman, Sheng Cai, Brandon Uhler, Neil Reilly, Rajendra Rathore, Scott A. Reid

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Studies of exciton and hole stabilization in multichromophoric systems underpin our understanding of electron transfer and transport in materials and biomolecules. The simplest model systems are dimeric, and recently we compared the gas-phase spectroscopy and dynamics of van der Waals dimers of fluorene, 9-methylfluorene (MF), and 9,9′-dimethylfluorene (F1) to assess how sterically controlled facial encumbrance modulates the dynamics of excimer formation and charge resonance stabilization (CRS). Dimers of fluorene and MF show only excimer emission upon electronic excitation, and significant CRS as evidenced in a reduced ionization potential for the dimer relative the monomer. By contrast, the dimer of F1 …

Interfacing Iconicity - Addressing Software Divarication Through Diagrammatic Design Principles, George Akhvlediani

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines conflicts accompanying the proliferation of computer technology and, more specifically, constellations of dependency in the always expanding volume of software, platforms, and the firms/individuals using them. We identify a pervasive phenomenon of “divarication” in the growing variety of progressively specialized systems and system roles. As software systems enter new thresholds of sophistication, they effectively aggregate many distinct components and protocols. Consequently, we are confronted with a diverse ecology of stratified and thereby incompatible software systems. Software inherits the limitations and potential flaws of its constituent parts, but unlike physical machinery, it isn’t readily disassembled in instances of …

Ecosystem Services And U.S. Stormwater Planning: An Approach For Improving Urban Stormwater Decisions, Todd K. Bendor, Vivek Shandas, Brian Miles, Kenneth Belt, Lydia Olander

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Green stormwater infrastructure (GI) is gaining traction as a viable complement to traditional “gray” infrastructure in cities across the United States. As cities struggle with decisions to replace deteriorating stormwater infrastructure in the face of looming issues such as population growth and climate change, GI may offer a costeffective, efficient, and sustainable approach. However, decision makers confront challenges when integrating GI within city plans, including uncertainties around GI capacity and maintenance, resistance to collaboration across city governance, increasingly inflexible financing, accounting practices that do not incorporate the multiple values of GI, and difficulties in incorporating ecological infrastructure into stormwater management. …

Deep Understanding Of Cooking Procedure For Cross-Modal Recipe Retrieval, Jingjing Chen, Chong-Wah Ngo, Fu-Li Feng, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Finding a right recipe that describes the cooking procedure for a dish from just one picture is inherently a difficult problem. Food preparation undergoes a complex process involving raw ingredients, utensils, cutting and cooking operations. This process gives clues to the multimedia presentation of a dish (e.g., taste, colour, shape). However, the description of the process is implicit, implying only the cause of dish presentation rather than the visual effect that can be vividly observed on a picture. Therefore, different from other cross-modal retrieval problems in the literature, recipe search requires the understanding of textually described procedure to predict its …

Predicting Visual Context For Unsupervised Event Segmentation In Continuous Photo-Streams, Ana García Del Molino, Joo-Hwee Lim, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Segmenting video content into events provides semantic structures for indexing, retrieval, and summarization. Since motion cues are not available in continuous photo-streams, and annotations in lifelogging are scarce and costly, the frames are usually clustered into events by comparing the visual features between them in an unsupervised way. However, such methodologies are ineffective to deal with heterogeneous events, e.g. taking a walk, and temporary changes in the sight direction, e.g. at a meeting. To address these limitations, we propose Contextual Event Segmentation (CES), a novel segmentation paradigm that uses an LSTM-based generative network to model the photo-stream sequences, predict their …

Electro- And Photocatalytic Carbon Dioxide Reduction With Mononuclear And Dinuclear Rhenium Polypyridyl Complexes, Eva Amatya

Honors Theses

The main challenge of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) to value-added products lies in designing more efficient catalysts that are long-lived, selective, and operate near the thermodynamic potential for the reaction. In this work, mononuclear and dinuclear Re complexes containing diamine ligands linked to a pendant anthracene moiety have been synthesized and studied for both electrocatalytic and photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Electrocatalytically, the performances of both catalysts were studied in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) and acetonitrile (MeCN) solutions to determine their turnover frequencies (TOFs) for CO2 reduction. Catalyst performance was compared to previously reported rhenium systems, and both systems studied here were shown to …

Using Magic In Computing Education And Outreach, Ronald I. Greenberg, Dale F. Reed

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This special session explores the use of magic tricks based on computer science ideas; magic tricks help grab students' attention and can motivate them to invest more deeply in underlying CS concepts. Error detection ideas long used by computer scientists provide a particularly rich basis for working such "magic'', with a CS Unplugged parity check activity being a notable example. Prior work has shown that one can perform much more sophisticated tricks than the relatively well-known CS Unplugged activity, and these tricks can motivate analyses across a wide variety of computer science concepts and are relevant to learning objectives across …

Augmenting And Structuring User Queries To Support Efficient Free-Form Code Search, Raphael Sirres, Tegawendé F. Bissyande, Dongsun Kim, David Lo, Jacques Klein, Kisub Kim, Yves Le Traon

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Source code terms such as method names and variable types are often different from conceptual words mentioned in a search query. This vocabulary mismatch problem can make code search inefficient. In this paper, we present COde voCABUlary (CoCaBu), an approach to resolving the vocabulary mismatch problem when dealing with free-form code search queries. Our approach leverages common developer questions and the associated expert answers to augment user queries with the relevant, but missing, structural code entities in order to improve the performance of matching relevant code examples within large code repositories. To instantiate this approach, we build GitSearch, a code …

Teaching Adult Learners On Software Architecture Design Skills, Eng Lieh Ouh, Yunghans Irawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software architectures present high-level views ofsystems, enabling developers to abstract away the unnecessarydetails and focus on the overall big picture. Designing a softwarearchitecture is an essential skill in software engineering and adultlearners are seeking this skill to further progress in their career.With the technology revolution and advancements in this rapidlychanging world, the proportion of adult learners attendingcourses for continuing education are increasing. Their learningobjectives are no longer to obtain good grades but the practicalskills to enable them to perform better in their work and advancein their career. Teaching software architecture to upskill theseadult learners requires contending with the problem of …

The Influence Of Habitat Preference On Longitudinal Population Composition And Distribution Of Groupers (Serranidae) In Chumbe Island Coral Park, Zanzibar Tanzania, Caroline Daley

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

A survey of six common grouper (Serranidae) species was conducted on both the western protected and eastern unprotected reefs around Chumbe Island. Species, estimated maturity, and fundamental niche and general habitat preference was extrapolated based on observed realized niche and qualified according to substrate, depth, slope position, and general reef region. Abundance, biomass density, and biodiversity of Serranid populations were compared among locations on the reef with habitat preference in mind in order to best assess how habitat influences population composition, distribution, and health. The results of this study provide depth to previous research on the protected reef and indicate …

The Viability Of Community Composting At The Melbourne Food Hub, Bailey Mcneill

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My research assessed the viability of a community compost site at the Melbourne Food Hub modeled after other successful compost hubs and based on local demand. I surveyed 72 people at the Alphington Farmer’s Market, located at the Food Hub site, and 31 people answered the survey online for a total of 103 responses. In addition, I interviewed ten people working with existing community compost hubs around Melbourne to find out what compost systems they use, how community members engage with the site, what their biggest problems have been, and their motivations for composting.

My survey found that the majority …

Ums Data Governance Annual Report 2018, University Of Maine System Data Advisory Committee

General University of Maine Publications

The newly formed University of Maine System Data Governance program was launched to improve the System's capacity to collect information and deploy resources in service to the students and in response to Maine's dire demographic and workforce challenges.

The UMS campuses and administrative units make up a complex system that requires a strategic approach to data collection and analysis. From understanding the intricacies of distance education and online programs, to aligning human resource and financial department codes, unified data governance is essential to ensuring the integrity and reliability of the University of Maine System's data.

Interface Model Of Pem Fuel Cell Membrane Steady-Dtate Behavior, Russell L. Edwards, Ayodeji Demuren

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Modeling works which simulate the proton-exchange membrane fuel cell with the computational fluid dynamics approach involve the simultaneous solution of multiple, interconnected physics equations for fluid flows, heat transport, electrochemical reactions, and both protonic and electronic conduction. Modeling efforts vary by how they treat the physics within and adjacent to the membrane-electrode assembly (MEA). Certain approaches treat the MEA not as part of the computational domain, but rather an interface connecting the anode and cathode computational domains. These approaches may lack the ability to consistently model catalyst layer losses and MEA ohmic resistance. This work presents an upgraded interface formulation …

Scoped: Evaluating A Composite Visualisation Of The Scope Chain Hierarchy Within Source Code, Ivan Bacher, Brian Mac Namee, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

This paper presents two studies that evaluate the effectiveness of a software visualisation tool which uses a com- posite visualisation to encode the scope chain and information related to the scope chain within source code. The first study evaluates the effectiveness of adding the composite visualisation to a source code editor to help programmers understand scope relationships within source code. The second study evaluates the effectiveness of each individual component within the composite visualisation. The composite visualisation is composed of a packed circle tree diagram (overview component) and a list view (detail view component). The packed circle tree functions as …

Laser-Induced Ultrafast Transport And Demagnetization At The Earliest Time: First-Principles And Real-Time Investigation, Thomas George, G.P. Zhang, Y. Bai, T. Jenkins

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Works

It is generally believed that there are at least two ways to use an ultrafast laser pulse to demagnetize a magnetic sample. One is to directly photo-demagnetize the system through spin-orbit coupling (SOC), and the other is to utilize ultrafast hot electron transport without SOC. The challenge is that these two processes are entangled on the same time scale. While the experimental results have been inconclusive, theoretical investigations are even scarcer, beyond those earlier studies based on spin superdiffusion. For instance, we do not even know how fast electrons move under laser excitation and how far they move. Here we …

G-Bikes: Gettysburg Bike Share, Matthew G. Palacio, Jeffrey J. Walters

Student Publications

The focus of this paper was to asses Gettysburg as possible location to implement a bike share program and ultimately to propose a framework for a successful program. We evaluated bike share programs across North America and created a list of criteria of successful programs. The second part of our data collection included a Google Forms survey which targeted three demographics, students, locals and tourists. We targeted our focus groups by posting on Facebook pages frequented by each demographic, as well as administering the survey in person with smart phones in Lincoln Square in Gettysburg. Our survey generated 134 responses, …

The Growing Sustainable Seaweed Industry: A Comparison Of Australian State Governance Directing Current And Future Seaweed Cultivation, Meagan E. Currie

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Seaweed is a critical part of natural marine ecosystems. In addition to supporting the marine environment, seaweeds are a significant global resource with nutritional, industrial and pharmaceutical applications. Seaweed also has the capacity to remediate excess nutrients in the water caused by agricultural or aquacultural waste of other organisms. Seaweed has demonstrated large potential as a remediation tool in land based polyculture and offshore Integrated Multi Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) systems.

Seaweed is already worth over US$7 billion as a global industry, but as of 2013 over 93% of global seaweed is produced in Asia (Lorbeer, 2013, p. 718). Australia imports …

Searching For A Brighter Tomorrow: An Internship Working Toward The Alleviation Of Energy Poverty Through Solar Power And Search-Engine Crowdfunding, Meaghan Mcelroy

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Auroville Consulting is an environmental consulting firm, founded in 2010, that works to create an environmentally-friendly and socially responsible world. One of Auroville Consulting’s projects, the Solar Village Initiative, works to address the effects of energy poverty by installing on-grid solar panels and solar generation systems in rural villages throughout rural Tamil Nadu., with the Solar Village Search Engine as a crowdfunding tool for the project. By performing dayto- day tasks pertaining to communications, journalism, social media, and promotions for the Solar Village Search Engine at Auroville Consulting; participating in in-office discussion; and living and working in Auroville, I was …

Oyster Bag Sill Construction And Monitoring At Two Sites In Chesapeake Bay, Donna A. Milligan, C. Scott Hardaway Jr., Christine A. Wilcox, Walter I. Priest

Reports

The use of oyster shell bags as a means of shore protection along fetchlimited shorelines in Chesapeake Bay is growing. This method is an innovative use of a byproduct of the seafood industry and can provide habitat creation, water quality improvement, and shore protection. The landowner can install the bags themselves, and with the new living shoreline general permit in Virginia, these projects are easier than ever to afford and install. However, oyster shells are a limited resource that are needed for largescale oyster reef restoration with the Chesapeake Bay watershed, so determining the effectiveness of this shore protection strategy …

Hawkeye: Towards A Desired Directed Grey-Box Fuzzer, Hongxu Chen, Yinxing Xue, Yuekang Li, Bihuan Chen, Xiaofei Xie, Xiuheng Wu, Yang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Grey-box fuzzing is a practically effective approach to test real-world programs. However, most existing grey-box fuzzers lack directedness, i.e. the capability of executing towards user-specified target sites in the program. To emphasize existing challenges in directed fuzzing, we propose Hawkeye to feature four desired properties of directed grey-box fuzzers. Owing to a novel static analysis on the program under test and the target sites, Hawkeye precisely collects the information such as the call graph, function and basic block level distances to the targets. During fuzzing, Hawkeye evaluates exercised seeds based on both static information and the execution traces to generate …