Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Northeast Safe And Thriving For All, Linda Shi, Vanessa Levesque

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Final Report to NOAA Climate Program Office Climate Adaptation Partnerships Planning Grant

Seabed Reflection Coefficient Variability In The Mono Lake Using Seismic Reflection Sparker Data, Francis Nnamdi Okeifufe

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Acoustic reflections from a lakebed provide valuable information about the dynamic boundary between water and the lakebed, where sediments and biota in the water column eventually settle. In this study, we present a comprehensive analysis of reflected sound wave amplitudes to gain insights into the physical properties of a water-sediment boundary. We decided to carry out this analysis within the unique ecosystem of the Mono Lake basin due to the fact that the Mono Lake, a meromictic and hypersaline waterbody is situated within one of the most active yet understudied volcanic regions in the United States. The fact that the …

City Of Santa Fe's Offset Program: A Comprehensive Demand Analysis And Program Review, Francesca Shirley

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

In principle, Development Water Offset programs (offset programs) are designed to allow for urban growth without increasing water demand. Offset programs necessitate a reduction in existing water demand, typically achieved through plumbing retrofits, equal to the expected new demand, resulting in a net zero increase in water use. The City of Santa Fe (Santa Fe) has administered an offset program since 2002. The program banks water saved from its retrofit rebate programs. The banked water savings, known as Conservation Credits, can then be purchased by developers, and dedicated to new development projects. Under the water bank model, new demand has …

General Brochure, University Of North Dakota. Energy And Environmental Research Center

EERC Brochures and Fact Sheets

Information about the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC). Includes information on the EERC’s expertise, research priorities, facilities, and employment statistics.

Challenges Of Embedding Sustainability In Organizational Culture, Jyro B. Triviño

Leadership and Strategy Faculty Publications

Advocating for robust, aggressive, and advanced sustainability is a direction that is ideal yet challenging. It means not only decreasing additional harm to the environment but, at the same time, objectively using renewable energy flow. Embedding sustainability as part of organizational culture appears to be a daunting task. Not all enterprise managers comprehensively understand the phenomenon, which entails proper awareness of its benefits and consequences. This qualitative study focuses on Philippine business enterprises' ability to embed a regenerative sustainable culture. It includes salient insights from five Philippine medium-sized enterprise owners who were also acting as managers. It shows that the …

Rapid: Region-Based Pointer Disambiguation, Khushboo Chitre, Piyus Kedia, Rahul Purandare

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Interprocedural alias analyses often sacrifice precision for scalability. Thus, modern compilers such as GCC and LLVM implement more scalable but less precise intraprocedural alias analyses. This compromise makes the compilers miss out on potential optimization opportunities, affecting the performance of the application. Modern compilers implement loop-versioning with dynamic checks for pointer disambiguation to enable the missed optimizations. Polyhedral access range analysis and symbolic range analysis enable O(1) range checks for non-overlapping of memory accesses inside loops. However, these approaches work only for the loops in which the loop bounds are loop invariants. To address this limitation, researchers proposed a …

Geophysical Survey In Central North Dakota, University Of North Dakota. Energy And Environmental Research Center

EERC Brochures and Fact Sheets

Fact sheet about a 2023–2024 Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) geophysical survey in central North Dakota to evaluate the feasibility of developing safe and permanent CO₂ storage in the project area. Describes the purpose of the survey and potential impact on local landowners.

Object Recognition With Deep Neural Networks In Low-End Systems, Lillian Davis

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Object recognition is an important area in computer vision. Object recognition has been advanced significantly by deep learning that unifies feature extraction and classification. In general, deep neural networks, such as Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs), are trained in high-performance systems. Aiming to extend the reach of deep learning to personal computing, I propose a study of deep learning-based object recognition in low-end systems, such as laptops. This research includes how differing layer configurations and hyperparameter values used in CNNs can either create or resolve the issue of overfitting and affect final accuracy levels of object recognition systems. The main contribution …

Enhancing Autism Education: Exploring Interactive Videos And Ai Integration For Effective Teaching, Fatima Ahmed Alraeesi

Theses

This research focuses on enhancing autism education by integrating interactive videos and AI solutions to improve teacher training. As the number of autistic students rises, it becomes crucial for special education teachers to employ effective teaching strategies tailored to individual needs. The most effective teaching methods for autistic students involve understanding the condition and incorporating customized instruction strategies, such as adapting assignments to suit the student's needs, assisting those with difficulty speaking, and employing visual aids for better organization. The proposed solution involves utilizing interactive video technology to train teachers, bridging the gap between research and practical implementation of educational …

Deep Learning For Studying Materials Stability And Solving Thermodynamically Consistent Pdes With Dynamic Boundary Conditions In Arbitrary Domains, Chunyan Li

Theses and Dissertations

Deep learning has achieved remarkable success in various fields, including image processing, natural language processing, and signal processing, ushering in a transformative era in research and real-life applications. This rise underscores the transformative capabilities of deep learning, with its innovative approach to function approximation. Traditionally, approximation theory relied on additive constructions, but deep neural networks have introduced a compositional approach, reshaping the landscape of function approximation. This thesis explores the efficacy of this compositional construction within the realm of material science and the solution of thermodynamically consistent partial differential equations with thermodynamically consistent dynamic boundary conditions in arbitrary domains. As …

Understanding The Role Of The Jet Streams And Gulf Stream Eddies On The Northwest Atlantic Marine Heatwaves, Lydia Rose Duncan Sims

Theses and Dissertations

The Northwest (NW) Atlantic is one of the fastest warming regions in the global ocean and in the recent decade has experienced several extreme temperature events. These extreme anomalous temperature events are known as Marine Heatwaves (MHWs), which are forced by a variety of physical processes that affect the heat source and sink of the water column. These MHWs have been increasing globally in duration and frequency due to anthropogenic warming, and have increased ecological damage seen in mass mortality events of economically viable species. Within the NW Atlantic, several key processes encourage the formation of MHWs, such as the …

Crystal Structure And Hirshfeld Surface Analysis Of Cyclo-Tetrabromido-1k2br,3k2br-Tetrakis(Pi2-2-{[(Pyridin-2-Yl)Methyl]Amino}Ethane-1-Thiolato-Krystal Structure And Hirshfeld Surface Analysis Ofcyclo-Tetrabromido-1j2br,3j2br-Tetrakis(L2-2-{[(Pyridin-2-Yl)Methyl]Amino}Ethane-1-Thiolato-K3n,S:S)Tetramercury(Ii), I. D. Thomas, K. R. Kocher, J. A. Viehweg, Robert Pike, Deborah Bebout

Arts & Sciences Articles

The macrometallacyclic title compound, [Hg4Br4(C8H11N2S)4] or [((HgL2)(HgBr2))2] (1) where HL = 2-{[(pyridin-2-yl)meth­yl]amino}­ethane-1-thiol, was prepared and structurally characterized. The Hg2+ complex crystallizes in the P21/c space group. The centrosymmetric Hg4S4 metallacycle is constructed from metal ions with alternating distorted tetra­hedral Br2S2 and distorted seesaw N2S2 primary coordination environments with pendant pyridyl groups. The backfolded extended chair metallacycle conformation suggests inter­actions between each of the bis-chelated mercury atoms and Br atoms lying above and below the central Hg2S4 plane. Supra­molecular inter­actions in 1 include a fourfold aryl embrace and potential hydrogen bonds with bromine as the acceptor. Hirshfeld surface analysis indicates that …

Software Testing And Code Refactoring: A Survey With Practitioners, Danilo Leandro Lima, Ronnie Souza Santos, Guilherme Pires Garcia, Sildemir S. Silva, Cesar Franca, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Nowadays, software testing professionals are commonly required to develop coding skills to work on test automation. One essential skill required from those who code is the ability to implement code refactoring, a valued quality aspect of software development; however, software developers usually encounter obstacles in successfully applying this practice. In this scenario, the present study aims to explore how software testing professionals (e.g., software testers, test engineers, test analysts, and software QAs) deal with code refactoring to understand the benefits and limitations of this practice in the context of software testing. We followed the guidelines to conduct surveys in software …

Affine Image Registration Of Arterial Spin Labeling Mri Using Deep Learning Networks, Zongpai Zhang, Huiyuan Yang, Yanchen Guo, Nicolas R. Bolo, Matcheri Keshavan, Eve Derosa, Adam K. Anderson, David C. Alsop, Lijun Yin, Weiying Dai

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) have demonstrated good accuracy and speed in spatially registering high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) images. However, some functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) images, e.g., those acquired from arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion fMRI, are of intrinsically low SNR and therefore the quality of registering ASL images using CNN is not clear. In this work, we aimed to explore the feasibility of a CNN-based affine registration network (ARN) for registration of low-SNR three-dimensional ASL perfusion image time series and compare its performance with that from the state-of-the-art statistical parametric mapping (SPM) algorithm. The …

Studying The South Lake Whatcom Fire, Lillian Buck

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study investigates the ecological consequences of the South Lake Whatcom Fire, which occurred in August 2023, focusing on soil health and water quality. Lake Whatcom, historically shaped by indigenous settlements and 19th-century logging and mining activities, is a critical water source for Bellingham residents. The fire, sparked by lightning, was managed with hand-dug lines, and contained by September 2023. Soil analysis revealed a significant reduction in the organic matter/duff layer depth in burned areas compared to unburned sections, highlighting potential challenges for soil recovery and ecosystem health. Erosion concerns were raised, emphasizing the need for post-fire management strategies. This …

Time As A Line: Helping Children Make Abstract Ideas Concrete, Rachel Mae Stenner

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This is a math education project that included research, a lesson plan, and actual in the classroom work with students. Under the advisement of Dr. Rebecca Borowski, I looked into how time, an abstract idea, is taught to young children who are just starting to learn what measurement is, and examined how teachers can better teach time as a more concrete topic. This focused on the idea of turning the abstract time concepts that are thrown at children into the more abstract ideas of both circular and then linear number lines, using physical materials to help guide the process.

Consumers’ Reaction To Corporate Esg Performance: Evidence From Store Visits, Frank Weikai Li, Frank Weikai Li, Roni Michaely

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using micro-level data on consumer shopping behavior, this paper investigates end-consumers’ attitudes toward firms’ ESG behavior, and as importantly, the ability of consumers to affect firms’ policy concerning sustainability issues. We find that consumers care about firms’ approach toward ESG, and consumers’ behavior can impact firms’ attitudes. Using ESG incidents as a proxy, we find that the reduction in store visits is more pronounced for ESG-conscious consumers, such as those living in democratic counties, and counties with a higher fraction of educated and younger residents. Online shopping interest data yields similar results. Using abnormally hot temperature as a shock to …

Shared Roots: A Geochemical Investigation Of Basaltic Andesites To Understand Magmatic Cogenesis At The Middle Sister And South Sister Volcanoes, Central Oregon, Sean Francis Halstead

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The Middle Sister and South Sister volcanoes, near Bend, Oregon, are overlapping, active Cascade Arc stratovolcanoes which share a complex, contemporaneous eruptive history. This history is characterized by an extreme compositional diversity of lavas erupted in alternating phases of high activity from one neighboring volcano to the other, with both vents producing material ranging from basaltic andesite to rhyolite. This system is understood to be predominantly fed by basaltic andesites fractionated from partial mantle melts within the lower crust, but magma compositions are additionally impacted by mixing, assimilation, and crustal contamination while in transit to the surface. Thus, the subterranean …

An Analysis Of Clinopyroxene Reaction Rims As Assimilation Chronometers At Cinder Cone Volcano, Lassen National Volcanic Park, California, Annabelle Carozza

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Cinder Cone is a monogenetic cinder cone volcano located in Lassen National Volcanic Park, California. It erupted in 1666 CE and had three eruptive phases, each producing tephra and lava flows that ranged in style from Hawaiian (low explosivity) to Strombolian (moderate to high explosivity). This eruptive style variability at Cinder Cone was not caused by viscosity or volatile differences, and ascent rate has been proposed as a causal factor in the observed explosivity difference between phases. Ubiquitous quartz crystals are entrained within tephra and lava and were likely sourced from the assimilation of a granitic basement rock underlying the …

The Relationship Between Personality And Achievement-Related Factors, Olivia Yake, Sophie Grant, Kate Downey, Emma Bosman

Science University Research Symposium (SURS)

Previous research has demonstrated that an individual’s self-concept has an impact on their academic achievement (Steinmayr et al., 2019). Aspects of a person’s self-concept include their personality and feelings of imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and academic self-efficacy. Personality, specifically neuroticism and openness, has been used to predict individual’s academic motivations (Komarraju et al., 2009), as well as their academic achievement (Wang et al., 2023) and prevalence of imposter syndrome (Bernard et al., 2002). However, research has not elaborated on how specific aspects of personality influence one’s self-concept as expressed through imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and academic self-efficacy during …

Bat Occurrence And Diversity In Urban, Suburban, And Rural Locations Around Nashville, Tennessee, Penny Keith, Cassie Tull, Darlene Panvini

Science University Research Symposium (SURS)

As urbanization increases, awareness of the effects of urbanization is crucial for the preservation of wildlife. Many species have adapted to urban areas while others are less successful in locations with a large extent of human impacts, such as noise and light pollution. Bats can be bioindicators for the impact of urbanization on wildlife. During this study, bat echolocation was recorded using an Echo Meter Touch 2 starting around sunset for an hour, once a week, during late September and October 2023. Bat species were confirmed using Kaleidoscope Pro Analysis Software. Environmental variables that could affect the presence of bats …

Assigning Topics To Documents By Successive Projections, Olga Klopp, Maxim Panov, Suzanne Sigalla, Alexandre B. Tsybakov

Machine Learning Faculty Publications

Topic models provide a useful tool to organize and understand the structure of large corpora of text documents, in particular, to discover hidden thematic structure. Clustering documents from big unstructured corpora into topics is an important task in various fields, such as image analysis, e-commerce, social networks and population genetics. Since the number of topics is typically substantially smaller than the size of the corpus and of the dictionary, the methods of topic modeling can lead to a dramatic dimension reduction. We study the problem of estimating the topic-document matrix, which gives the topics distribution for each document in a …

Oscars Vs. Ozone: The Motion Picture Industry’S Impact On Climate Change And What They Are Doing About It, Alexis J. Simpson

Senior Theses

This thesis focuses on demonstrating that the motion picture industry, which includes film and television production (and thus will also be called ‘the film and television industry’), has notably contributed to the global effects of climate change. Such contributions can stem from the industry’s emissions and waste, with examples including travel for cast and crew, energy use for production equipment (some of which run on diesel), and disposable physical sets and costumes. The intention here is to give an accurate picture of current production practices and share examples of progress in the industry that are combating the negative impacts of …

Depolymerizing Self-Immolative Polymeric Lanthanide Chelates For Vascular Imaging., Eric Grolman, Quinton E A Sirianni, Joy Dunmore-Buyze, Charmainne Cruje, Maria Drangova, Elizabeth R Gillies

Chemistry Publications

Medical imaging is widely used clinically and in research to understand disease progression and monitor responses to therapies. Vascular imaging enables the study of vascular disease and therapy, but exogenous contrast agents are generally needed to distinguish the vasculature from surrounding soft tissues. Lanthanide-based agents are commonly employed in MRI, but are also of growing interest for micro-CT, as the position of their k-edges allows them to provide enhanced contrast and also to be employed in dual-energy micro-CT, a technique that can distinguish contrast-enhanced blood vessels from tissues such as bone. Small molecule Gd3+ chelates are available, but are excreted …

Roadway Characteristics And Car Accident Trends In Gettysburg, Pa, Max Smith, Jake H. Kennell, Russell H. Canova

Student Publications

This study addresses the rising motor vehicle accident and fatality rates in the United States (Moore, 2023). Focusing on the conditions in the Gettysburg Borough in an attempt to answer the following research questions: Are age of driver, weather conditions of car accidents, and traffic volume contributing to accidents in the Gettysburg Borough? What are the roadway characteristics of accident hot spot areas within the Gettysburg Borough? Utilizing Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) crash data from 2018 to 2022 and PennDot Average Annual Daily Traffic data, this study employs a comprehensive approach. Combining GIS analysis and statistical analysis to determine …

Structure Estimation Of Adversarial Distributions For Enhancing Model Robustness: A Clustering-Based Approach, Bader Rasheed, Adil Khan, Asad Masood Khattak

All Works

In this paper, we propose an advanced method for adversarial training that focuses on leveraging the underlying structure of adversarial perturbation distributions. Unlike conventional adversarial training techniques that consider adversarial examples in isolation, our approach employs clustering algorithms in conjunction with dimensionality reduction techniques to group adversarial perturbations, effectively constructing a more intricate and structured feature space for model training. Our method incorporates density and boundary-aware clustering mechanisms to capture the inherent spatial relationships among adversarial examples. Furthermore, we introduce a strategy for utilizing adversarial perturbations to enhance the delineation between clusters, leading to the formation of more robust and …

H5n1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Clade 2.3.4.4b In Wild And Domestic Birds: Introductions Into The United States And Reassortments, December 2021–April 2022, Sungsu Youk, Mia Kim Torchetti, Kristina Lantz, Julianna B. Lenoch, Mary Lea Killian, Christina Leyson, Sarah N. Bevins, Krista Dilione, Hon S. Ip, David E. Stallknecht, Rebecca L. Poulson, David L. Suarez, David E. Swayne, Mary J. Pantin-Jackwood

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) of the A/goose/Guangdong/1/1996 lineage H5 clade 2.3.4.4b continue to have a devastating effect on domestic and wild birds. Full genome sequence analyses using 1369 H5N1 HPAIVs detected in the United States (U.S.) in wild birds, commercial poultry, and backyard flocks from December 2021 to April 2022, showed three phylogenetically distinct H5N1 virus introductions in the U.S. by wild birds. Unreassorted Eurasian genotypes A1 and A2 entered the Northeast Atlantic states, whereas a genetically distinct A3 genotype was detected in Alaska. The A1 genotype spread westward via wild bird migration and reassorted with North American …

Limited Accumulation And Persistence Of An Influenza A Virus In Tadpole Snails (Physa Spp.), Paul T. Oesterle, J. Jeffrey Root, Darcy S.O. Mora, Heather Schneider, Alan B. Franklin, Kathryn P. Huyvaert

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Waterfowl infected with avian influenza A viruses (IAVs) shed infectious virus into aquatic environments, providing a mechanism for transmission among waterfowl, while also exposing the entire aquatic ecosystem to the virus. Aquatic invertebrates such as freshwater snails are likely exposed to IAVs in the water column and sediment. Freshwater snails comprise a significant portion of some waterfowl species’ diets, so this trophic interaction may serve as a novel route of IAV transmission. In these experiments, tadpole snails (Physa spp.) were exposed to a low-pathogenicity IAV (H3N8) to determine whether snails can accumulate the virus and, if so, how long virus …

Assessing Controls On Ice Dynamics At Crane Glacier, Antarctic Peninsula, Using A Numerical Ice Flow Model, Rainey Aberle, Ellyn M. Enderlin, Hans-Peter Marshall, Michal Kopera, Tate G. Meehan

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Antarctic Peninsula's widespread glacier retreat and ice shelf collapse have been attributed to atmospheric and oceanic warming. Following the initial post-collapse period of retreat, several former tributary glaciers of the Larsen A and B ice shelves have been slowly re-advancing for more than a decade. Here, we use a flowline model of Crane Glacier to gauge the sensitivity of former tributary glaciers to future climate change following this period of long-term dynamic adjustment. The glacier's long-term geometry and speed changes are similar to those of other former Larsen A and B tributaries, suggesting that Crane Glacier is a reasonable …

Bayesian Statistical Modeling Of Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics Data, Xi Jiang

Statistical Science Theses and Dissertations

Spatially resolved transcriptomics (SRT) quantifies expression levels at different spatial locations, providing a new and powerful tool to investigate novel biological insights. As experimental technologies enhance both in capacity and efficiency, there arises a growing demand for the development of analytical methodologies.

One question in SRT data analysis is to identify genes whose expressions exhibit spatially correlated patterns, called spatially variable (SV) genes. Most current methods to identify SV genes are built upon the geostatistical model with Gaussian process, which could limit the models' ability to identify complex spatial patterns. In order to overcome this challenge and capture more types …