Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Activity Pattern Of School/University Tenants And Their Family Members In Metro Manila – Philippines, Simonas Kecorius, Everlyn Gale Tamayo, Maria Cecilia Galvez, Leizel Madueño, Grace Betito, Mylene Gonzaga-Cayetano, Edgar Vallar, Alfred Wiedensohler

Physics Faculty Publications

Existing studies that focus on personal exposure to or the deposition dose of particulate pollution in developing regions are limited. Hence, in this study, as a first step, we present results on how people spend their daily time in Metro Manila, Philippines. This information is critical to assessing personal exposure to and the deposition dose of particulate pollutants. We found that people spend less time at home on workdays than weekends (52% versus 70%), the fraction of time spent at work/school increases with age until retirement, adult males spend less time at home than females (18% versus 28%), and people …

Instrumentation For Cryogenic Dynamic Nuclear Polarization And Electron Decoupling In Rotating Solids, Faith Joellen Scott

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) increases the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) using the higher polarization of electron radical spins compared to nuclear spins. The addition of electron radicals for DNP to the sample can cause hyperfine broadening, which decreases the resolution of the NMR resonances due to hyperfine interactions between electron and nuclear spins. Electron decoupling has been shown to attenuate the effects of hyperfine coupling in rotating solids. Magic angle spinning (MAS) DNP with electron decoupling requires a high electron Rabi frequency provided by a high-power microwave source such as a frequency-agile gyrotron. This dissertation describes the development …

In Vivo Vascular Imaging With Photoacoustic Microscopy, Hsun-Chia Hsu

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Photoacoustic (PA) tomography (PAT) has received extensive attention in the last decade for its capability to provide label-free structural and functional imaging in biological tissue with highly scalable spatial resolution and penetration depth. Compared to modern optical modalities, PAT offers speckle-free images and is more sensitive to optical absorption contrast (with 100% relative sensitivity). By implementing different regimes of optical wavelength, PAT can be used to image diverse light-absorbing biomolecules. For example, hemoglobin is of particular interest in the visible wavelength regime owing to its dominant absorption, and lipids and water are more commonly studied in the near-infrared regime.

In …

Fundamental Controls On The Reactivity Of Aluminum Oxide And Hydroxide Surfaces: Contributions Of Surface Site Coordination States And Interfacial Water Structure, Tingying Xu

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chemical reactions at mineral-water interfaces are of great importance in many geological and environmental processes. Essential to many of these is adsorption because it directly controls contaminant fate and nutrient availability, promotes the nucleation and growth of minerals, initiates surface redox reactions, and plays a crucial role in carbon cycling and sequestration. These reactions occur at mineral surface sites having multiple possible coordination states that interact with both adsorbates and water. While general ion adsorption mechanisms and surface charging behaviors are well established, the roles of individual surface functional group types and water in affecting the structure and reactivity of …

On The Short-Term Variability Of Turbulence And Temperature In The Winter Mesosphere, Gerald A. Lehmacher, Miguel F. Larsen, Richard L. Collins, Aroh Barjatya, Boris Strelnikov

Publications

Four mesosphere–lower thermosphere temperature and turbulence profiles were obtained in situ within ∼30 min and over an area of about 100 by 100 km during a sounding rocket experiment conducted on 26 January 2015 at Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. In this paper we examine the spatial and temporal variability of mesospheric turbulence in relationship to the static stability of the background atmosphere. Using active payload attitude control, neutral density fluctuations, a tracer for turbulence, were observed with very little interference from the payload spin motion, and with high precision (%) at sub-meter resolution. The large-scale vertical temperature structure …

Assessing The Impacts Of Ghana’S Oil And Gas Industry On Ecosystem Services And Smallholder Livelihoods, Michael Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ghana discovered oil and gas within its shores in commercial quantities in the year, 2007. This discovery was hailed as a potential turn around for the country’s economic destiny. While this optimism may have been well-founded, there has been a relative lack of appreciation of the potential adverse implications of the industry on traditional smallholder livelihoods, and the critical ecosystems that form their basis. In many countries, discovery of natural resources results in negative environmental and social outcomes, due to the loss of local livelihoods and environmental degradation. Deterioration of local livelihoods occurs through several biophysical pathways, both simple and …

Simulation Of Black Hole Inner Accretion Disk-Corona And Optimization Of The Hard X-Ray Polarimeter, X-Calibur, Banafsheh Beheshtipour

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mass accreting stellar mass and supermassive black holes are strong sources of X-rays. The X- ray observations enable studies of the process of black hole accretion and give us information about the spacetime background. In the framework of my thesis work, I have continued the development of a general-relativistic ray-tracing code enabling the simulation of the Comptonization of photons in the hot accretion disk corona. I use the code to investigate the impact of various approximation schemes for modeling the Comptonization finding that a fully relativistic treatment is needed for accurate predictions in the soft and hard X- ray regimes …

Index Theory For Invariant Elliptic Operators On Manifolds With Proper Cocompact Group Actions, Gong Cheng

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we study G-invariant elliptic operators, and in particular Dirac operators, on the space of invariant sections of a Hermitian bundle over a (non-compact) manifold with a proper and cocompact Lie group action. We provide a canonical way to define the Hilbert space of invariant sections for proper and cocompact actions and prove that the G-invariant Dirac operators, and more generally, elliptic operators, are Fredholm for the Hilbert space we constructed. Using the framework developed in this thesis, we give a new proof of a generalized Lichnerowicz Vanishing Theorem for proper cocompact group actions as an application.

Building On Nature: Spectroscopic Studies Of Photosynthesis-Inspired Pigments, Fused Light Harvesting Proteins, And Bacterial Reaction Center Mutants, Kaitlyn Faries

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Photosynthesis is the dominant form of solar energy conversion on the planet, making it critical to understand the fundamentals of the process in order to effectively mimic and improve upon it for human energy needs. The initial stages of photosynthesis include light harvesting and chemical conversion of that harvested energy via electron transport, with both of these stages relying on pigments (or chromophores) such as chlorophyll and specific protein architectures for the processes. In this work, the fundamental underpinnings of photosynthetic light harvesting and electron transport are explored via spectroscopy of various photosynthetic systems with altered natural pigments and proteins. …

Topics In Pt-Symmetric Quantum Mechanics And Classical Systems, Nima Hassanpour

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Space-time reflection symmetry, or PT symmetry, first proposed in quantum mechanics by Bender and Boettcher in 1998 [2], has become an active research area in fundamental physics. This dissertation contains several research problems which are more or less related to this field of study. After an introduction on complementary topics for the main projects in Chap.1, we discuss about an idea which is originated from the remarkable paper by Chandrasekar et al in Chap.2. They showed that the (second-order constant-coefficient) classical equation of motion for a damped harmonic oscillator can be derived from a Hamiltonian having one degree of freedom. …

Spin Alignment Generated In Inelastic Nuclear Reactions, Daniel Hoff

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The spin alignment of inelastically excited 7Li projectiles, when the target remains in its ground state, was determined through angular-correlation measurements between the breakup fragments of 7Li_ (_ + t). It was found that 7Li_ is largely aligned along the beam axis (longitudinal) in this type of inelastic reaction, regardless of the target. This longitudinal alignment is well described by DWBA calculations, which can be explained by an angular-momentum-excitation-energy mismatch condition. These calculations also explain the longitudinal spin alignment of excited nuclei in several other systems, showing the phenomenon is more general. The experiment involving 7Li was performed at the …

An Nmr Study Of Co2 Dynamics And Structural Characterization Of Porous Materials, Robert M. Marti

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has proven to be a versatile and powerful analytical tool to study many areas of interest to the scientific community, such as molecular dynamics and structural characterization. In this dissertation, NMR was used as a probe for CO2 dynamics in metal-organic frameworks. Variable temperature (VT) NMR was used to determine molecular dynamics of CO2, going as low as 8 K. In the fast motion regime, where the CO2 hopping rate is fast compared to the NMR experiment time, 13CO2 inside of Mg-MOF-74 still exhibits a chemical shift anisotropy (CSA) powder pattern. However, there is a certain …

Polarizable Force Field Development, And Applications To Conformational Sampling And Free Energy Calculation, Zhi Wang

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The parameters of monovalent ions for the AMOEBA force field were revised. High level quantum mechanics results, relative solvation free energies of monovalent ions, lattice energies and lattice constants of salt crystals were used to calibrate the parameters. The revised parameters were validated against the quantum optimized structures and energies of ion-water dimers and ion-water clusters, and against thermodynamic properties of salt solutions at different concentrations measured in experiments, e.g. mean ionic activity coefficients, self-diffusion coefficients of water. In the simulations the sodium ion is found to qualitatively differ from larger cations in aqueous solution. Direct ionic interactions are predominant …

Kinetic Effects In 2d And 3d Quantum Dots: Comparison Between High And Low Electron Correlation Regimes, Marlina Slamet, Viraht Sahni

Publications and Research

Kinetic related ground state properties of a two-electron 2D quantum dot in a magnetic field and a 3D quantum dot (Hooke's atom) are compared in the Wigner high (HEC) and low (LEC) electron correlation regimes. The HEC regime corresponds to low densities sufficient for the creation of a Wigner molecule. The LEC regime densities are similar to those of natural atoms and molecules. The results are determined employing exact closed-form analytical solutions of the Schrödinger-Pauli and Schrödinger equations, respectively. The properties studied are the local and nonlocal quantal sources of the density and the single particle density matrix; the kinetic …

Concurrency Platforms For Real-Time And Cyber-Physical Systems, David Ferry

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Parallel processing is an important way to satisfy the increasingly demanding computational needs of modern real-time and cyber-physical systems, but existing parallel computing technologies primarily emphasize high-throughput and average-case performance metrics, which are largely unsuitable for direct application to real-time, safety-critical contexts. This work contrasts two concurrency platforms designed to achieve predictable worst case parallel performance for soft real-time workloads with millisecond periods and higher. One of these is then the basis for the CyberMech platform, which enables parallel real-time computing for a novel yet representative application called Real-Time Hybrid Simulation (RTHS). RTHS combines demanding parallel real-time computation with real-time …

The Example Guru: Suggesting Examples To Novice Programmers In An Artifact-Based Context, Michelle Ichinco

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Programmers in artifact-based contexts could likely benefit from skills that they do not realize exist. We define artifact-based contexts as contexts where programmers have a goal project, like an application or game, which they must figure out how to accomplish and can change along the way. Artifact-based contexts do not have quantifiable goal states, like the solution to a puzzle or the resolution of a bug in task-based contexts. Currently, programmers in artifact-based contexts have to seek out information, but may be unaware of useful information or choose not to seek out new skills. This is especially problematic for young …

Self-Powered Time-Keeping And Time-Of-Occurrence Sensing, Liang Zhou

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Self-powered and passive Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices (e.g. RFID tags, financial assets, wireless sensors and surface-mount devices) have been widely deployed in our everyday and industrial applications. While diverse functionalities have been implemented in passive systems, the lack of a reference clock limits the design space of such devices used for applications such as time-stamping sensing, recording and dynamic authentication. Self-powered time-keeping in passive systems has been challenging because they do not have access to continuous power sources. While energy transducers can harvest power from ambient environment, the intermittent power cannot support continuous operation for reference clocks. The thesis of this …

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The Development Of Metal Complexes As Components Of Fluorescent And Nuclear Imaging Probes, William Turnbull

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The advent of molecular imaging as a discipline has drastically improved our ability to understand the biochemical and cellular events that drive life, death and disease. This thesis will document the discovery of new metal chelators for Re/^99mTc, new methods of incorporating these metals into peptide structures, as well as new fluorescent compounds. These novel methods and compounds may be used in the development of molecular imaging probes for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and optical imaging techniques, with applications for differentiating cancerous tissue from benign and healthy.

Chapter 2 discusses the development of a dual modality …

Shrinking Suburbs In A Time Of Crisis, Justin B. Hollander, Colin Polsky, Dan Zinder, Daniel M. Runfola

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs provides one of the most comprehensive examinations available to date of the suburbs around the world. International in scope and interdisciplinary in nature, this volume will serve as the definitive reference for scholars and students of the suburbs.

This volume brings together the leading scholars of the suburbs researching in different parts of the world to better understand how and why suburbs and their communities grow, decline, and regenerate. The volume sets out four goals: 1) to provide a synthesis and critical appraisal of the historical and current state of understanding about the development …

Revelation Of Early Detection Of Coseismic Ionospheric Perturbations In Gps-Tec From Realistic Modelling Approach: Case Study, Dhanya Thomas, Mala S. Bagiya, Poikayil Sukumaran Sunil, Lucie Rolland, Anakuzhikkal Sudarsanan Sunil, T. Dylan Mikesell, Srinivas Nayak, Subrahmanyam Mangalampalli, Durbha Sai Ramesh

CGISS Publications and Presentations

GPS-derived Total Electron Content (TEC) is an integrated quantity; hence it is difficult to relate the detection of ionospheric perturbations in TEC to a precise altitude. As TEC is weighted by the maximum ionospheric density, the corresponding altitude (hmF2) is, generally, assumed as the perturbation detection altitude. To investigate the validity of this assumption in detail, we conduct an accurate analysis of the GPS-TEC measured early ionospheric signatures related to the vertical surface displacement of the Mw 7.4 Sanriku-Oki earthquake (Sanriku-Oki Tohoku foreshock). Using 3D acoustic ray tracing model to describe the evolution of the propagating seismo-acoustic wave in space …

Molecular Determinants Of Substrate Specificity In Human Insulin-Degrading Enzyme, Lazaros Stefanidis, Nicholas D. Fusco, Samantha E. Cooper, Jilian E. Smith-Carpenter, Benjamin J. Alper

Chemistry & Physics Faculty Publications

Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) is a 110 kDa chambered zinc metalloendopeptidase that degrades insulin, amyloid beta, and other intermediate-sized aggregation prone peptides that adopt β-structures. Structural studies of IDE in complex with multiple physiological substrates have suggested a role for hydrophobic and aromatic residues of the IDE active site in substrate binding and catalysis. Here, we examine functional requirements for conserved hydrophobic and aromatic IDE active site residues that are positioned within 4.5 Angstroms of IDE bound insulin B chain and amyloid beta peptides in the reported crystal structures for the respective enzyme-substrate complexes. Charge, size, hydrophobicity, aromaticity, and other functional …

Regium Bonds Between Mn Clusters (M=Cu,Ag,Au And N=2-6) And Nucleophiles Nh3 And Hcn, Wiktor Zierkiewicz, Mariusz Michalczyk, Steve Scheiner

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The most stable geometries of the coinagemetal (or regium) atom (Cu, Ag, Au) clusters Mn for n up to 6 are all planar, and adopt the lowest possible spin multiplicity. Clusters with even numbers of M atoms are thus singlets, while those with odd n are open-shell doublets. Examination of the molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) of each cluster provides strong indications of the most likely site of attack by an approaching nucleophile, generally one of two positions. A nucleophile (NH3 or HCN) most favorably approaches one particular M atom of each cluster, rather than a bond midpoint or face. In …

Ttv-Determined Masses For Warm Jupiters And Their Close Planetary Companions, Dong-Hong Wu, Songhu Wang, Ji-Lin Zhou, Jason H. Steffen, Gregory Laughlin

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

Although the formation and the properties of hot Jupiters (with orbital periods P < 10 days) have attracted a great deal of attention, the origins of warm Jupiters (10 < P < 100 days) are less well studied. Using a transit timing analysis, we present the orbital parameters of five planetary systems containing warm Jupiters, Kepler 30, Kepler 117, Kepler 302, Kepler 487, and Kepler 418. Three of them, Kepler-30 c(M p = 549.4 ± 5.6 M ⊕), Kepler-117 c(M p = 702 ± 63 M ⊕), and Kepler 302 c(M p = 933 ± 527 M ⊕), are confirmed to be real warm Jupiters based on their mass. Insights drawn from the radius–temperature relationship lead to the inference that hot Jupiters and warm Jupiters can be roughly separated by T eff,c = 1123.7 ± 3.3 K. Also, T eff,c provides a good separation for Jupiters with companion fraction consistent with zero (T eff > T eff,c) and those with companion fraction significantly different from zero (T eff < T eff,c).

Third Generation Gamma Camera Spect System, Narayan Bhusal

LSU Master's Theses

Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) is a non-invasive imaging modality, frequently used in myocardial perfusion imaging. The biggest challenges facing the majority of clinical SPECT systems are low sensitivity, poor resolution, and the relatively high radiation dose to the patient. New generation systems (GE Discovery, DSPECT) dedicated to cardiac imaging improve sensitivity by a factor of 5-8. The purpose of this work is to investigate a new gamma camera design with 21 hemi-ellipsoid detectors each with a pinhole collimator for Cardiac SPECT for further improvement in sensitivity, resolution, imaging time, and radiation dose.

To evaluate the resolution of our …

Suas: Cybersecurity Threats, Vulnerabilities, And Exploits, Philip Craiger, Gary Kessler, William Rose

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

The FAA predicts that purchases of hobbyist small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) will grow from 1.9 million in 2016 to 4.3 million by 2020, and commercial sUAS to increase from 600,000 in 2016 to 2.7 million by 2020. sUAS, often referred to as 'drones,' are comprised of aeronautical hardware, a CPU, RAM, onboard storage, radio frequency communications, sensors, a camera, and a controller used by the pilot-in-command (PIC). Some have argued that a sUAS is essentially a flying computer. As such, sUAS are sometimes susceptible to many of the types of attacks that are often used on PC-based computers attached …

A Deficit Of Dark Matter From Jeans Modeling Of The Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Ngc 1052-Df2, Asher Wasserman, Aaron Romanowsky, Jean Brodie, Pieter Van Dokkum, Charlie Conroy, Roberto Abraham, Yotam Cohen, Shany Danieli

Faculty Publications

The discovery of the ultra-diffuse galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 and its peculiar population of star clusters has raised new questions about the connections between galaxies and dark matter (DM) halos at the extremes of galaxy formation. In light of debates over the measured velocity dispersion of its star clusters and the associated mass estimate, we constrain mass models of DF2 using its observed kinematics with a range of priors on the halo mass. Models in which the galaxy obeys a standard stellar-halo mass relation are in tension with the data and also require a large central density core. Better fits are …

Genomic Analysis Of Acropora Cervicornis Mucus And Sediments In The Florida Keys Tavernier Nursery, Rachel Zimmerman

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

White Band disease has devastated the staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis in recent decades, and it continues to impinge upon restoration efforts. The etiological agent(s) remain unknown as Koch’s postulates have yet to be satisfied, but disease may originate when opportunistic pathogens in the surface mucus layer exploit a stressed host. Using 16s rRNA sequencing, differences in the taxonomic diversity and relative abundances of bacteria within the mucus of A. cervicornis were documented between colonies of the same genotype, genotypes (n=8) categorized as having either high or low WBD susceptibility, and during a transplantation event. A. cervicornis colonies suspended from midwater …

Using Local Fishery Monitoring To Understand Small-Scale Coastal Fisheries In Tanzania, Matthew Robertson

LSU Master's Theses

Nearshore marine fisheries provide the main source of protein for nearly 9 million people in the coastal villages of Tanzania, yet for decades the fisheries have shown signs of overexploitation. These fisheries are small-scale and co-managed by local coastal communities in groups known as Beach Management Units (BMUs). BMUs monitor individual fishing trip data (e.g. gear, vessel, taxa); however, these data have only been analyzed in nationally aggregated statistics and to our knowledge, are not presently used in management decision making. The present thesis aimed to identify the forms of data and information that local fishery monitoring can record about …

The Transmuted Geometric-Quadratic Hazard Rate Distribution: Development, Properties, Characterizations And Applications, Fiaz Ahmad Bhatti, Gholamhossein Hamedani, Mustafa Ç. Korkmaz, Munir Ahmad

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

We propose a five parameter transmuted geometric quadratic hazard rate (TG-QHR) distribution derived from mixture of quadratic hazard rate (QHR), geometric and transmuted distributions via the application of transmuted geometric-G (TG-G) family of Afify et al.(Pak J Statist 32(2), 139-160, 2016). Some of its structural properties are studied. Moments, incomplete moments, inequality measures, residual life functions and some other properties are theoretically taken up. The TG-QHR distribution is characterized via different techniques. Estimates of the parameters for TG-QHR distribution are obtained using maximum likelihood method. The simulation studies are performed on the basis of graphical results to illustrate the performance …