Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Alkalinity And Mineral Concentration Estimation In Commercial Drinking Water, Holly Mills

Honor’s College Freeman Research Journal

Several aspects of water and water quality were reviewed and investigated in this study; the effects of dehydration on human health, the role of alkalinity in drinking water, and the actual levels of alkalinity and other minerals in commercial drinking water. Hydration plays a critical role in human physical performance as well as in the prevention of chronic diseases. This experiment was conducted to determine if the level of acidity ( or alkalinity) of commercial alkaline water are truly above the normal ph levels, and to identify the salts in each type of water. Based on researches, a more alkaline …

A Longitudinal Study Of Mammograms Utilizing The Automated Wavelet Transform Modulus Maxima Method, Brian C. Toner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is a disease which predominatly affects women. About 1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime. Early detection is key to increasing the survival rate of breast cancer patients since the longer the tumor goes undetected, the more deadly it can become. The modern approach for diagnosing breast cancer relies on a combination of self-breast exams and mammography to detect the formation of tumors. However, this approach only accounts for tumors which are either detectable by touch or are large enough to be observed during a screening mammogram. For some individuals, by the time …

Economic And Strategic Analysis Of America's Wastewater, Jorden Hansen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Whether it be tap water from a home or bottled water from a grocery store, clean water is generally accessible in the United States. Unfortunately, this convenience deters people from learning about the complex processes that make this luxury possible.

Awareness of the natural water cycle is widespread, as the simplest version is taught in grade school. It illustrates the flow of water as it changes state (liquid, to solid, to gas) in the environment. Not so commonly known is the urban water cycle which manifests residential daily use with the revolution of water. The urban water cycle is a …

Estimation Of Evapotranspiration And Other Water Budget Factors At Glacier Creek Preserve, Kian Paul Mcintosh

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

A water budget of a watershed consists of the inputs and outputs of water to and from it, including precipitation, change in water storage, surface water flow, and evapotranspiration. Water budget estimates are of high importance as a result of increasing demand due to population growth and other factors. Improving estimate accuracy and precision of evapotranspiration and runoff to streams allows scientists to better determine the true availability of water for human and conservation use. At Glacier Creek Preserve, 6.5% of the incoming precipitation left the preserve as discharge from the stream and 95.9% of the incoming precipitation was lost …

Smart Sensors With Dual Modes Of Signal Transduction For Monitoring Molecules Pertinent To Health And The Environment, Jared T. Wabeke

Dissertations

The dissertation focuses on the design and synthesis of smart materials for the detection of molecules pertinent to environmental protection and healthcare. The use of computational simulations is pivotal toward advancing molecular design for targeted applications. Research was conducted to investigate the use of simulations to develop novel sensors with dual modes of signal transduction. The molecular properties were determined using computational modelling, and then used to elucidate the binding mechanism of the corresponding sensor complexes. Several molecules were produced that respond to important organic analytes, such as glucose and fenthion, an organophosphorus pesticide. Glucose is an exceedingly important biological …

Smu Teaching Bank: Case Study Of A Multiyear Development Project Utilizing Student Resources, Alan Megargel, Terence P. C. Fan, Venky Shankararaman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A domain refers to a business sector such as banking, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing etc. For an IS student, it is imperative that the domain knowledge includes a comprehension and understanding of business processes, technology and data related to the chosen domain. For example, when learning the retail banking domain, an IS student must have an understanding of the transactions concerned with retail banking such as fund transfers and loan repayments. The student must also gain a strong foothold in transaction fulfilment processes, the various application services that are used, the data that is transferred, etc. Teaching domain knowledge is very …

Developing, Adopting, And Executing 100% Net-Renewable Electricity Resolutions At The Local Level, Emily E. Skill

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the absence of national leadership on climate policy, municipalities are adopting resolutions to reduce their carbon footprint and transition to clean energy. However, what leads to successful adoption of these resolutions and how to effectively implement climate goals at the community level needs further exploration. To investigate these questions, this thesis examines the resolutions adopted in Salt Lake City, Park City, and Moab, Utah to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2032. Data was collected through documents, such as city reports and newspapers, and interviews with government officials, city staff, and community members involved with the resolution process. A …

Temporal Json, Aayush Goyal

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a format for representing data. In this thesis we show how to capture the history of changes to a JSON document. Capturing the history is important in many applications, where not only the current version of a document is required, but all the previous versions. Conceptually the history can be thought of as a sequence of non-temporal JSON documents, one for each instant of time. Each document in the sequence is called a snapshot. Since changes to a document are few and infrequent, the sequence of snapshots largely duplicates a document across many time instants, …

Evaluation Of Stream Bank Restoration To Improve Water Quality In A Semi-Arid Stream, Johnathan Neenan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Human watershed activities such as converting land cover to agriculture and livestock grazing have negatively impacted stream water quality worldwide. One such case is Utah’s Upper Sevier River where a loss of woody bank vegetation (reduced shading) and accelerated bank erosion (increased fine sediment inputs) has led to increased stream temperature and water turbidity. As a result, the state of Utah sought to improve water quality conditions using streambank restoration. While commonly recommended and performed, the effectiveness of this sort of restoration has rarely been quantified. Here, I evaluated a restored reach of the Upper Sevier River near Hatch, UT …

A Model Explaining Medusahead Invasion And Novel Targeted Grazing Approaches Of Control, Casey N. Spackman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae (L.) Nevski) is currently one of the biggest threats to rangelands and livestock operations in the Western US. High silica concentrations in medusahead contribute to its invasiveness. I developed a model to explain how silica is involved in the invasion process, and attempted to manipulate silica to increase use of the grass by livestock. Experiments were conducted to determine: 1) whether rotational grazing on established forages of improved nutritional quality would provide supplemental nutrients to increase cattle use of medusahead; 2) evaluate intake of and preference for medusahead treated with a glyphosate herbicide at different rates …

Cost-Effective Synthesis, Bioactivity And Cellular Uptake Study Of Aminoglycosides With Antimicrobial And Connexin Hemichannel Inhibitory Activity, Yagya P. Subedi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Amphiphilic kanamycin is one of the promising class of compounds for the treatment of fungal infections in plants and animal. Factor that lead to the restricting of compounds for commercialization includes, the higher cost of production and poor stability of the compound. However, the new lead, identified from the synthesis and biological testing, can be synthesized on a large scale with a cost comparable to commercial antifungals. The newly reported lead is stable at the acidic and basic conditions. Additionally, this compound has an excellent activity towards Candida auris, a multidrug-resistant superbug.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death …

Detection Of A Low-Mass Stellar Companion To The Accelerating A2iv Star Hr 1645, Robert J. De Rosa, Eric L. Nielsen, Julien Rameau, Gaspard Duchêne, Alexandra Z. Greenbaum, Jason J. Wang, S. Mark Ammons, Vanessa P. Bailey, Travis Barman, Joanna Bulger, Jeffrey Chilcote, Tara Cotten, Rene Doyon, Thomas M. Esposito, Michael P. Fitzgerald, Katherine B. Follette, Benjamin L. Gerard, Stephen J. Goodsell, James R. Graham, Pascale Hibon, Justin Hom, Li Wei Hung, Patrick Ingraham, Paul Kalas, Quinn Konopacky, James E. Larkin, Bruce Macintosh, Jérôme Maire, Franck Marchis, Mark S. Marley, Christian Marois, Stanimir Metchev, Kimberly Ward-Duong, Et Al

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The ∼500 Myr A2IV star HR 1645 has one of the most significant low-amplitude accelerations of nearby early-type stars measured from a comparison of the Hipparcos and Gaia astrometric catalogs. This signal is consistent with either a stellar companion with a moderate mass ratio (q ∼ 0.5) on a short period (P < 1 yr), or a substellar companion at a separation wide enough to be resolved with ground-based high-contrast imaging instruments; long-period equal-mass ratio stellar companions that are also consistent with the measured acceleration are excluded with previous imaging observations. The small but significant amplitude of the acceleration made HR 1645 a promising candidate for targeted searches for brown dwarf and planetary-mass companions around nearby, young stars. In this paper we explore the origin of the astrometric acceleration by modeling the signal induced by a wide-orbit M8 companion discovered with the Gemini Planet Imager, as well as the effects of an inner short-period spectroscopic companion discovered a century ago but not since followed up. We present the first constraints on the orbit of the inner companion, and demonstrate that it is a plausible cause of the astrometric acceleration. This result demonstrates the importance of vetting of targets with measured astrometric acceleration for short-period stellar companions prior to conducting targeted direct imaging surveys for wide-orbit substellar companions.

Iomt Malware Detection Approaches: Analysis And Research Challenges, Mohammad Wazid, Ashok Kumar Das, Joel J.P.C. Rodrigues, Sachin Shetty, Youngho Park

VMASC Publications

The advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has changed the entire paradigm of computing. Because of such advancement, we have new types of computing and communication environments, for example, Internet of Things (IoT) that is a collection of smart IoT devices. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a specific type of IoT communication environment which deals with communication through the smart healthcare (medical) devices. Though IoT communication environment facilitates and supports our day-to-day activities, but at the same time it has also certain drawbacks as it suffers from several security and privacy issues, such as replay, man-in-the-middle, impersonation, …

Gnome Waste Warriors: Waste Reduction Through Sustainability, Hayley E.R. Frost Rubino

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The focus of this Capstone Project was on how waste and waste reduction could positively impact a community. Waste reduction is an important issue because the negative impacts of waste affect the whole planet. By educating Monterey Gnome School (MGS) about waste, changes in daily habits are intended to result in lasting change. An evidence-based argument is offered that waste is a global issue that negatively impacts the earth's landmasses, oceans, and human health. Both MGS staff and students were interviewed and surveyed, as their perspectives provide unique aspects of thinking about waste issues. The themes that emerged from an …

Preparation Of Folic Acid-Carbon Dots-Doxorubicin Nanoparticles As Targeting Tumor Theranostics, Samson Dada

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carbon dots (CDs) have attracted much attention as an excellent gene/drug delivery and biological imaging agent for early cancer theranostics. In this study, we prepared two series of nanoparticles (NPs), which are composed of (CDs) with a targeting agent, folic acid (FA), and a chemotherapeutic agent Doxorubicin (Dox). All the NPs and their intermediates were characterized using ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), fluorescence spectroscopy, and Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The drug loading capacity (DLC) and drug loading efficiency (DLE) of two series of FA-CDs-Dox were assessed using UV-vis absorption spectroscopy at the wavelength of 485 nm. Both showed good DLE and DLC …

Effects Of The Dihydrouracil Lesion On Dna Using 1h/31p 1d And 2d Solution Nmr, Benjamin M. Boyd

MSU Graduate Theses

The effects of the dihydrouracil lesion in DNA were studied using two dimensional NMR spectroscopy. The sequence used was based off of the Drew-Dickerson Dodecamer, with the cytosine in the three position replaced by a dihydrouracil. All of the nonexchangeable proton chemical shifts, with the exception of the H2, H5’, and H5’’, of the lesioned DNA were identified using NOESY spectra and then compared to the chemical shift values of the Drew Dickerson Dodecamer. The largest differences in chemical shifts were observed in the nucleotides neighboring the lesion, both within the strand and on the opposite strand. The imino exchangeable …

Monongahela River, Wv Channel Catfish Population Assessment, Kristen Lee Chestnut-Faull

MSU Graduate Theses

Channel Catfish Ictalurus punctatus populations have been evaluated using many sampling gears in rivers. However, a consensus has not been reached on which gear or gears produce the most reliable population demographics. Specifically, this study compares population demographics of Channel Catfish throughout the Monongahela River, WV using multiple gear types. Fish were sampled seasonally during 2018 using baited hoop nets, low- frequency electrofishing, and trotlines. Firstly, too few fish were collected using electrofishing and were excluded from all analyses. In terms of relative abundance, fish sampled with hoop nets had higher catch rates (mean SCPUE = 5.8, SE = 0.4) …

Grounding Size Predictions For Answer Set Programs, Nicholas Hippen

Student Work

Answer set programming is a declarative programming paradigm geared towards solving difficult combinatorial search problems. Logic programs under answer set semantics can typically be written in many different ways while still encoding the same problem. These different versions of the program may result in diverse performances. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to identify which version of the program performs the best, requiring expert knowledge on both answer set processing and the problem domain. More so, the best version to use may even vary depending on the problem instance. One measure that has been shown to correlate with performance is …

Synthesis And Study Of Hydroxytyrosol Derivatives, Ebenezer Ametsetor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hydroxytyrosol is one of the most powerful known antioxidants. It is a naturally occurring polyphenol, most commonly produced in olive trees, (Olea europaea). The remarkable antioxidant and pharmacological properties of hydroxytyrosol has made it an outstanding compound in the polyphenol family and of great interest to many researchers. Hydroxytyrosol can scavenge free radicals produced during cellular oxidative stress and helps to protect the integrity of cells in living systems. Despite its numerous biological and pharmacological uses, it is found in very low concentration in olive oil, this limits its availability for biomedical applications. This work reports a novel and effective …

Exploring The State-Of-Receptivity For Mhealth Interventions, Florian Künzler, Varun Mishra, Jan-Niklas Kramer, David Kotz, Elgar Fleisch, Tobias Kowatsch

Dartmouth Scholarship

Recent advancements in sensing techniques for mHealth applications have led to successful development and deployments of several mHealth intervention designs, including Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAI). JITAIs show great potential because they aim to provide the right type and amount of support, at the right time. Timing the delivery of a JITAI such as the user is receptive and available to engage with the intervention is crucial for a JITAI to succeed. Although previous research has extensively explored the role of context in users’ responsiveness towards generic phone notiications, it has not been thoroughly explored for actual mHealth interventions. In this …

Laboratory-Scale Petrophysical Evaluation Of Lithofacies Effect On Reservoir & Source Quality And Core-Calibrated Well Log Analysis In Pennsylvanian-Permian Wolfcamp-Spraberry Intervals, Midland Basin, Texas, Usa, Samuel John Becker

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses

The “Wolfberry” play, which is made up of the Spraberry and Wolfcamp formations, is an important resource for the exploitation of hydrocarbons with a need for additional petrophysical understanding. Although the Wolfcamp is categorized as a shale, it is a complex and heterogeneous formation composed of multiple facies. The unique lithological composition of each facies controls formation properties, which further drive reservoir/source quality. With the integrated laboratory- and field-scale analyses, this study uses mostly laboratory petrophysical evaluation to gain insight on the relationship between facies and reservoir/source quality in the Lower Spraberry and Wolfcamp intervals throughout the Midland Basin. To …

Nanopetrophysical Characterization Of The Wolfcamp A Shale Formation In The Permian Basin Of Southeastern New Mexico, U.S.A., Ryan Z. Jones

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses

The Permian Basin has been producing oil and gas for over a century, but the production has increased rapidly in recent years due to new completion methods such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. The Wolfcamp Shale is a large producer of oil and gas that is found within both the Delaware and Midland sub-basins of the Permian. This study focuses on the Wolfcamp A section in the Delaware Basin which lies within southeastern New Mexico and west Texas. The most recent study performed to estimate continuous (unconventional) oil within the Delaware Basin was conducted in November 2018 by the …

Nano-Petrophysical Study Of The Dean, Wolfcamp, And Canyon Formations Of The Midland Basin, Texas, Usa., Benton M. Mowrey

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses

The prolific levels of oil and gas production from the shale revolution have been plagued by steep initial production decline and inefficiencies in recovering the total hydrocarbons in place. Even the widespread practice of using multi-well sites with closely spaced wellbores has failed to yield a moderate fraction of the potential resources. It is hypothesized that the constraints of shale production arise from its nano-pore structure. Slow, diffuse hydrocarbon transport from the shale matrix to the stimulated fracture network is a likely production bottleneck. Understanding transport phenomena from this tight, porous matrix to the fracture via nanometer-scale pathways is essential …

Learning Robot Manipulation Tasks Via Observation, Michail Theofanidis

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

The coexistence of humans and robots has been the aspiration of many scientific endeavors in the past century. Most anthropomorphic or industrial robots are highly articulated and complex machines, which are designed to carry out tasks that often involve the manipulation of physical objects. Traditionally, robots learn how to perform such tasks with the aid of a human programmer or operator. In this regard, the human acts as a teacher who provides a demonstration of a task. From the data of the demonstration, the robot must learn a state-action mapping that accomplishes the task. This state-action mapping is often addressed …

Using Property-Based Testing, Weighted Grammar-Based Generators, And A Consensus Oracle To Test Browser Rendering Engines And To Reproduce Minimized Versions Of Existing Test Cases, Joel David Martin

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Verifying that a web browser rendering engine correctly renders all valid web pages is challenging due to the size of the input space (valid web pages), the difficulty of determining correct rendering for any given web page (the test oracle problem), and the degree to which normal variation in browser rendering behavior can obscure other differences (fonts, bor- ders, input controls, etc). These challenges lead to manual human involvement during the testing process. We propose a new Property-Based Testing (PBT) approach that addresses these challenges in order to enable automated web browser render testing. Our approach is composed of the …

Direct Functionalization Of Inert C-H And C=C Bonds Using Copper And Zinc Catalysts Supported By Fluorinated Ligands, And The Chemistry Of Fe(Co)5 And Its Analogs With Coinage Metal Ions, Tharun Teja Ponduru

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

Transition-metal catalyzed direct functionalization of inert C-H and C=C bonds through nitrene- and oxo-transfer reactions are powerful and attractive synthetic strategies for constructing C-N and C-O bonds (e.g. found in amines, aziridines, alcohols, and carbonyl compounds) directly from hydrocarbon feedstocks, and have significant synthetic potential in chemical processes leading to natural products, pharmaceuticals and biologically active molecules. Chapters 2 and 3 of this work mainly focus on nitrene- and oxo-insertion chemistry catalyzed by transition metal complexes. We employed different types of fluorinated ligands to support copper and zinc metal centers. Therefore, complexes [HB(3,5-(CF3)2Pz)3]Cu(NCMe), [H2B(3,5-(CF3)2Pz)2]Cu(NCMe), [H2B(3,5-(CF3)2-4-(NO2)Pz)2]Cu(NCMe), [{(3,5-(CF3)2Pz)ZnEt}2(μ-THF)], [{(3-(CF3),5-(t-Bu)Pz)ZnEt}2(μ-THF)], [{(3,5-(i-Pr)2Pz)ZnEt}2(μ-THF)], [N{(CF3)C(C6F5)N}2]CuNCCH3, and …

Development, Evaluation, And Application Of Chromatographic Resolution Enhancement Strategies, Garrett Hellinghausen

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

With the emergence of advanced separation technologies, like high-efficiency stationary phases bonded with superficially porous particles, or sub-2 μm fully porous particles, faster and more effective methodologies are possible for liquid chromatographic analyses. Such advanced approaches can be easily applied to achiral separations but require more extensive optimization for chiral separations. Chiral molecules are subjected to extensive characterization of their enantiomeric pharmacological properties due to requirements of the Food and Drug Administration. Herein, fundamental chiral method development strategies are thoroughly discussed for hundreds of small molecules using conventional and newly synthesized chiral selectors bonded to high-efficiency supports. In these strategies …

Systematic Approach To On-Line Supercritical Fluid Extraction – Supercritical Fluid Chromatography – Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method Development, Alison Paige Wicker

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

Coupling supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) on-line with supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) – tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) provides a platform for extraction, separation, and detection in a single analysis. Utilization of this technique simplifies sample preparation while limiting sample loss and/or contamination and significantly decreases total analysis time. SFE-SFC-MS/MS requires consideration of many extraction and chromatographic variables to not only provide the most efficient extraction, but to analytically transfer the extracted analytes to the column for separation. There is a fundamental lack of understanding of how the variables in SFE affect those in SFC. In the first study, on-line SFE-SFC-MS/MS was …

High Confidence Identification Of Cross-Linked Peptides By Mass Spectrometry Cleavable Cross-Linking Technologies, Jayanta Kishor Chakrabarty

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

Mass spectrometry (MS)-based chemical cross-linking technique is a potential tool for understanding the protein structure and protein-protein interactions. However, low abundances of cross-linked products and the data complexity are the major challenges in this field. New strategies are required to pinpoint cross-linked peptides with high confidence. Our lab designed and synthesized a novel cross-linker with two differential MS-cleavable bonds, namely DUCCT. DUCCT-cross-linked peptide generates different diagnostic fragment ions in Collision Induced Dissociation (CID) and Electron Transfer Dissociation (ETD) (tandem mass spectrometric technique) which helps in the unambiguous identification of cross-linked peptide. We demonstrate the efficiency of DUCCT technology with model …

Generalized Parton Distributions And Pseudodistributions, Anatoly V. Radyushkin

Physics Faculty Publications

We derive one-loop matching relations for the Ioffe-time distributions (ITDs) related to the pion distribution amplitude (DA) and generalized parton distributions (GPDs). They are obtained from a universal expression for the one-loop correction in an operator form, and will be used in the ongoing lattice calculations of the pion DA and GPDs within the parton pseudodistributions approach.