Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Atomlbs: An Atom Based Convolutional Neural Network For Druggable Ligand Binding Site Prediction, Md Ashraful Islam

Theses and Dissertations

Despite advances in drug research and development, there are few and ineffective treatments for a variety of diseases. Virtual screening can drastically reduce costs and accelerate the drug discovery process. Binding site identification is one of the initial and most important steps in structure-based virtual screening. Identifying and defining protein cavities that are likely to bind to a small compound is the objective of this task. In this research, we propose four different convolutional neural networks for predicting ligand-binding sites in proteins. A parallel optimized data pipeline is created to enable faster training of these neural network models on minimal …

Incorporating Native Plants In Insectary Strips To Promote Insect Diversity And Below-Ground Beneficial Microbes In South Texas, Lindsey N. Richards

Theses and Dissertations

Farm edges are generally the most undisturbed areas in a farm with diverse vegetation and can enhance agrobiodiversity and provide crucial food and shelter for wildlife, insects, and soil biota. Planting native wildflowers with the ability to reseed and withstand local climatic conditions for semi-permanent vegetation around farm edges or in between crops has potential to biologically control pests. To test this, we ran a two-year study and installed three different flowering insectary strips on a certified organic vegetable farm in South Texas during the winter season. The treatments were: 1) a commercially sourced 17-species native wildflower seed mix; 2) …

Weather Parameters Influencing The Incidence Of Citrus Canker Caused By Aw Strain In The Rio Grande Valley, Amit Sharma

Theses and Dissertations

Citrus canker caused by bacterium Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri (Xcc) seriously affects the citrus industry by making the fruit unmarketable due to unsightly lesions on the fruit. Canker caused by Aw strain of Xcc was reported in the citrus trees located in the residential areas of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Canker severity differs amongst cultivars/varieties, and it is influenced by prevailing environmental conditions. Multiple regression modeling of the disease incidence with the environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, windspeed, wind gust, and rainfall was performed to understand the environmental conditions that are favorable for spread of citrus …

Water Hardness Removal By Electrochemical Precipitation In A Continuous Flow Condition Using Conductive Concrete As Cathode, Tahsin Tareque

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the electrochemical precipitation (EP) process to reduce excess water hardness from the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) tap water using electrically conductive concrete as cathode in a continuous flow condition. LRGV tap water is extremely hard with hardness more than 350 mg/L as CaCO3. Humans can pleasantly consume water with hardness less than 150 mg/l as CaCO3 according to World Health Organization (WHO). Hard water is also known to cause mechanical problems to boilers and heat exchangers. In this process, electricity is passed through electrodes submerged in electrolyte, which causes an alkaline environment around the cathode …

Development Of In Situ Second-Order Nonlinear Optical Scatterings For Molecular Behaviors At Aerosol Surfaces, Yuqin Qian

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Aerosol particles are one of the most important components of the atmosphere. During the growth of aerosol particles, they directly or indirectly affect air quality, human health, and environmental chemistry. Therefore, understanding the chemical and physical properties of such particles is an important scientific, engineering, and medical issue. The growth of aerosol particles in the atmosphere is closely related to the chemical structure at its surface, as well as the heterogeneous reactions which take place at and below the particle’s surface. However, there is a lack of suitable surface-specific analytical techniques which directly measure the chemical structure of aerosol particle …

Normative Evaluations Of Resource Conditions: The Influence Of Visitor Characteristics And Implications For Recreation Management In Urban-Proximate Parks, Jordan E. Nesbitt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Urban-proximate parks and protected areas provide a unique recreation landscape to individuals living in and near urban centers. They have been shown to provide similar recreation experiences to traditionally studied parks and protected areas such as National Parks, National Forests and Wilderness areas. This study takes place in a set of four urban-proximate parks in Orange County, California, USA. These parks are designated as urban-proximate because they are located within 100 miles of an urban center with 1 million or more people. Using norm theory, a well vetted social science theory, this work sought to identify thresholds of acceptability for …

Human Appropriation Of Net Primary Production Through Crops, Grazing, And Forestry In The U.S. From 1997 To 2012, Suman Paudel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation conducts a county-level analysis of human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) harvested from crops, timber and grazing in the conterminous United States in the years 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012. This study consists of three manuscripts (Chapters 2, 3, and 4). The first study quantifies net primary production in US counties in 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012. The detailed HANPP study conducted concludes that HANPP is a valuable footprint tool for analyzing land use intensity and agricultural ecosystems. The second manuscript shows how HANPP is an improved or modernized ecological footprint and is a sustainable indicator as …

Bifurcations And Hysteresis In The Dynamics Of Small Populations Of Spherical Magnets, Peter T. Haugen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

If you heat up some kinds of metals and then cool them down next to a magnet, they will be a magnet when they cool, but if they cool down away from a magnet, they will just be a lump of metal. This is an example of hysteresis and it’s very important for lots of technology. Another example of hysteresis might be a water tower pump that turns on when the tower is nearly empty and keeps going until the tower is nearly full. Whether or not the pump is on when the tower is half full depends on what …

Pleistocene Deposits Of Lower Wahweap Creek And Its Tributaries, Southern Utah, Noah Slade

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The famous landscapes of the Colorado Plateau have been created over millions of years, primarily by erosive forces of wind and water. Interruptions in the long-term erosion of the landscape occur when streams gain more sediment than they can transport, which causes deposition along channels and floodplains. The resulting sequences of terrace deposits are used by geologists to study when and how river systems have evolved.

Mammoth bones were recently discovered in stream deposits along Wahweap Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River in southern Utah. Previous work indicates that the deposits pre-date the last ice age, making it one …

Investigations Of Prokaryotic Defense Systems, Hannah Domgaard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Bacteria are constantly threatened with infection by mobile genetic elements (MGE) such as bacteriophage and plasmids. Bacteriophage and plasmids require the bacteria's cellular infrastructure to replicate their genomes. Rampant replication can lead to cell death which is one reason why bacteria have developed a diverse array of immune systems to prevent or limit infection. This thesis studies three types of bacterial immune systems, type IV-A CRISPR-Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat –CRISPR associated), type V-A2 CRISPR-Cas systems, and Wadjet systems.

The type IV-A system lies adjacent to a dinG-like helicase gene. Research has shown that this system can target …

Pacific: Towards Proactive Conversational Question Answering Over Tabular And Textual Data In Finance, Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To facilitate conversational question answering (CQA) over hybrid contexts in finance, we present a new dataset, named PACIFIC. Compared with existing CQA datasets, PACIFIC exhibits three key features: (i) proactivity, (ii) numerical reasoning, and (iii) hybrid context of tables and text. A new task is defined accordingly to study Proactive Conversational Question Answering (PCQA), which combines clarification question generation and CQA. In addition, we propose a novel method, namely UniPCQA, to adapt a hybrid format of input and output content in PCQA into the Seq2Seq problem, including the reformulation of the numerical reasoning process as code generation. UniPCQA performs multi-task …

The Human Natural Resource Endowment Of Limestone For Cement Manufacturing, Vanya Marie North

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the total per-capita allocation of limestone globally. Termed the Human Natural Resource Endowment (HNRE), it is calculated by subtracting the cumulative annual production from the ultimately recoverable reserve (URR) of limestone and dividing the difference by global population. HNRE represents a unique way of visualizing resource depletion by asking how much of a given resource can be allocated to each person on earth, and how long that allocation can last given multiple population and usage scenarios. The average American, born in 2021, will use approximately 23,930 kgs of cement in their lifetime, with similar demands globally. Demand …

Assessment Of Novel Protein Ingredient Arthrospira Platensis (Microalgae) And Soybean Genotype Amino Acid And Oil Selection Improvements On Broiler Performance, Savannah Wells Crafton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two experiments were conducted to assess the efficiency of including novel protein ingredient Arthrospira platensis or improved soybean meal in a broiler diet. The first experiment aimed to determine the feeding value of soybean meal produced from varieties of soybeans bred for increased amino acid content (SBAA) improved oil content (SBO) compared to a conventional soybean variety in an ANOVA design fed to Cobb 500 female broilers for 28-42d of age. The SBAA and SBO soybeans contained overall higher amino acid content and lower oligosaccharide content compared to the conventional soybean variety in addition to improved oil quality. The second …

Cell Division Dynamics Of Escherichia Coli In Extreme Environments, Steven P. Murray

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Life is remarkable in how resilient it can be. Many organism, classified as ex- tremophiles, can not only survive in extreme environments, but they can thrive in them. In the search for extraterrestrial life, the best candidates to harbor life exist with some kind of extreme condition. Europa, for example, is a favorite for the possibility of accommodating life as we know it within our solar system. Thought there is believed to be a liquid ocean under its icy surface, this habitat would be under immense pressures and high salinity. To best know where to look for extraterrestrial life, it …

Divide-And-Conquer Distributed Learning: Privacy-Preserving Offloading Of Neural Network Computations, Lewis C.L. Brown

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning has become a highly utilized technology to perform decision making on high dimensional data. As dataset sizes have become increasingly large so too have the neural networks to learn the complex patterns hidden within. This expansion has continued to the degree that it may be infeasible to train a model from a singular device due to computational or memory limitations of underlying hardware. Purpose built computing clusters for training large models are commonplace while access to networks of heterogeneous devices is still typically more accessible. In addition, with the rise of 5G networks, computation at the edge becoming …

Gate-Controlled Quantum Dots In Two-Dimensional Tungsten Diselenide And One-Dimensional Tellurium Nanowires, Shiva Davari Dolatabadi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work focuses on the investigation of gate-defined quantum dots in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide tungsten diselenide (WSe2) as a means to unravel mesoscopic physical phenomena such as valley-contrasting physics in WSe2 flakes and its potential application as qubit, as well as realizing gate-controlled quantum dots based on elementaltellurium nanostructures which may unlock the topological nature of the host material carriers such as Weyl states in tellurium nanowires.The fabrication and characterization of gate-defined hole quantum dots in monolayer and bilayer WSe2 are reported. The gate electrodes in the device design are located above and below the WSe2 nanoflakes to accumulate …

A Method For Exploring The Habitability Of Earth-Like Exoplanets: Applications To Tess Objects Of Interest 203 B, 256 B, And 700 D, Paul Bonney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has and is continuing to discover a multitude of potentially habitable planet candidates. As more planets are detected and confirmed, it becomes increasingly important to strategically search for signs of habitability with which to differentiate and prioritize them for further observation, in particular with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). To facilitate this, I have created a method for prioritizing TESS planet candidates based on parameters derived from their light curves and have applied the method to the TESS Candidate Target List (CTL). This data set uses preliminary fits to transit modeling which can …

Nitrogen Use Efficiency Of Pretassel Nitrogen Applications In Corn, Robyn Brittlee Mulloy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Corn (Zea mays L.) production continues to be a critical component of row-crop production systems within Arkansas and is seeing a resurgence in recent years. Nitrogen (N) is critical for corn growth and is often one of the single largest input costs associated with corn production. Research objectives for this study were to determine the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of late season N applications as influenced by sidedress N rate and timing of pretassel application and to quantify the nutrient uptake and partitioning in modern era corn hybrids within a furrow-irrigated production system. Research was conducted at the Milo J. …

Design And Comparison Of Asynchronous Fft Implementations, Julie Bigot

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is a widely used digital signal processing technology in a large variety of applications. For battery-powered embedded systems incorporating FFT, its physical implementation is constrained by strict power consumption, especially during idle periods. Compared to the prevailing clocked synchronous counterpart, quasi-delay insensitive asynchronous circuits offer a series of advantages including flexible timing requirement and lower leakage power, making them ideal choices for these systems. In this thesis work, various FFT configurations were implemented in the low-power Multi-Threshold NULL Convention Logic (MTNCL) paradigm. Analysis illustrates the area and power consumption trends along the changing of the number …

The Evolution Of X-Ray Binaries And Their Accretion States, Lacey A. West

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

X-ray binary systems (XRBs) consist of a compact object component (e.g., black hole or neutron star) that accretes matter from a companion star. Although the extent to which XRBs contributed to the early heating of the intergalactic medium is still under investigation, it is estimated that XRBs dominated the X-ray radiation field before the reionization epoch. The study of XRB emission is therefore crucial to our understanding of the very early universe. Furthermore, studying the abundance and radial distribution of each XRB type within a galaxy can be revealing of the host galaxy’s local properties, structure, and evolution. XRB spectra …

Data-Driven Deep Learning-Based Analysis On Thz Imaging, Haoyan Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer affects about 12.5% of women population in the United States. Surgical operations are often needed post diagnosis. Breast conserving surgery can help remove malignant tumors while maximizing the remaining healthy tissues. Due to lacking effective real-time tumor analysis tools and a unified operation standard, re-excision rate could be higher than 30% among breast conserving surgery patients. This results in significant physical, physiological, and financial burdens to those patients. This work designs deep learning-based segmentation algorithms that detect tissue type in excised tissues using pulsed THz technology. This work evaluates the algorithms for tissue type classification task among freshly …

Seasonal Patterns In Activity And Occupancy Dynamics Of The Imperiled Spotted Turtle (Clemmys Guttata), Ellery Vaughn Lassiter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wetland ecosystems are often spatially patchy across a landscape and exhibit seasonal patterns in water levels, resulting in the need for aquatic wildlife to use several different wetland patches across a season. The ecology of semi-aquatic freshwater turtles is especially complex because individuals often move among a variety of habitats to meet life history needs and these habitat requirements often differ across a season. Understanding the temporal and spatial scale in which turtles move and distribute across the landscape is vital for effective management, especially in the face of continued habitat fragmentation and climate change. Thus, we sought to understand …

Hierarchical Structure And Material Integration For Electrocatalytic Co2 Reduction, Hamed Mehrabi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

CO2 released by the combustion of fossil fuels is driving significant changes to the earth’sclimate. The natural cycle for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, namely photosynthesis, cannot keep up with the rate at which it is being added. Developing engineering approaches to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is becoming essential to reduce these effects. Removal leads to further issues of carbon sequestration and favorable CO2 reuse strategies, including the electrochemical transformation of recovered CO2 to useful products such as fuels and materials. Copper is an important electrocatalyst for the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) because of its unique capability for producing …

Nitrogen Management In Rice Under Suboptimal Soil Conditions, Payton Suzanne Rhea

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In Mid-South rice (Oryza sativa, L.) production, nitrogen (N) fertilizer management for pureline varieties is most often recommended as a single preflood (SPF) or two-way split (2WS) application in a direct-seeded, delayed-flood system. Most of the N fertilizer is typically applied at the four- to six-leaf stage onto dry soil, and the second application, if necessary, into the floodwater during early reproductive growth stages (referred to as midseason). Environmental factors frequently prohibit growers from applying early N fertilizer under optimal dry soil conditions. A study was conducted to determine the best N fertilization management practices to utilize in rice when …

Mle And Eap Methods For Estimating Ability Scores For Data Of Varying Sample Size And Item Length, Sahar Taji

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this research, the performance of two popular estimators, Maximum Likelihood Estimator(MLE) and Bayesian Expected a Posteriori (EAP) is studied and compared in estimating the latent ability score in an Item Response Theory (IRT) model. The 2-Parameter Logistic (2PL) IRT model which is characterized by difficulty and discrimination item parameters is used to estimate the latent ability scores. Several datasets are generated for variety of sample size and item length values. The Monte-Carlo simulation is used to analyze the performance of the estimators. Results show that MLE produces reliable results with low root mean square error (RMSE) across all datasets. …

Sustainability And Health Impacts Of Pulse Crops In The United States Using Life Cycle Assessment, Prathamesh A. Bandekar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Environmental sustainability and human health impact of pulses produced and consumed in the United States was assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA). The study included three objectives 1) to estimate environmental impact of current production and consumption practices in the United States using attributional LCA; 2) to estimate environmental and human health impact of iso-caloric diets containing varying amounts of pulses using Hybrid-LCA and Combined Nutritional and Environmental-LCA (CONE-LCA); and 3) to estimate environmental impact of increased demand for pulses using consequential LCA. Scope of the study varied for each objective with system boundary encompassing cradle-to-grave activities for objective 1 …

First-Principles Study Of Doping Effects On Ferroelectricity And On Rashba Spin Splitting, Zegnet Yimer Muhammed

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we have thoroughly studied the effect of chemical and charge dopingon ferroelectrics (PbTiO3 and BaTiO3) and Rashba type semiconductor (BiTeI). In the first project, We investigate the polar instability and soft modes in electron-doped PbTiO3 using linear-response density functional calculations. Because, metallicity and ferroelectric-like polar distortion are mutually non-compatible, and their coexistence in the same system is an intriguing subject of fundamental interest in the field of structure phase transition. However, it is unclear what mechanism may extend the limit of metallicity that allows polar distortion. We find that ferroelectric instability can remarkably sustain up to an …

Orbital Mapping Of Seasonal And Yearly Changes In Co2 And Water Ice On The Southern Polar Cap Of Mars, Victoria Michell Ann Karnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research exhibits a new foundation for the rates of change in CO2 and water ice on the southern polar cap of Mars, where the annual precipitation cycles are known to fluctuate seasonally between the north and south pole, based on observations from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM). The conventional belief is that both CO2 ice and water ice on the southern polar cap condenses and evaporates over the course of a Martian year (MY), condensing during the Martian spring and summer and evaporating during the Martian fall and winter. With this theory in mind, CO2 and water ice …

Electrical Modeling For Dynamic Performance Prediction And Optimization Of Mcpms Layout, Quang Minh Le

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the fast development of Multichip Power Modules (MCPM) packaging and Wide Bandgap (WBG) technology has enabled higher voltage and current ratings, better thermal performance, lower parasitic parameters, and higher mechanical reliability. However, the design of the MCPM layout is a multidisciplinary problem leading to many time-consuming analyses and tedious design processes. Because of these challenges, the design automation tool for MCPM layout has become an emerging research area and gained much attention from the power electronics community. The two critical objectives of a design automation tool for MCPM layout are fast and accurate models for design insights …

A Study On Interactions Between Metal-Organic Frameworks And Biological Materials, Josh Phipps

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Metal-organic frameworks or MOFs are an extremely useful tool in many areas of applications. Their popularity in recent years has arisen from their high efficiency in catalytic chemical reactions. This is made possible due to their porous interior and the ability of the MOFs components to be functionalized. These same traits make MOFs excellent for use in protein encapsulation or immobilization and have the potential to become excellent drug carriers. Their development in this utilization has been limited dramatically compared to MOFs chemical applications. This is due in part to the nature of biological processes taking longer to study, but …