Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

No Simple Formula: Navigating Tensions In Teaching Postsecondary Social Justice Mathematics, Alexa W. C. Lee-Hassan

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Instructors of Social Justice Mathematics (SJM) have shared important insights into the powerful potential of connecting classroom mathematics with authentic data about social justice topics, but they have also warned about the harm such teaching can cause when done poorly. In this article, I consider what is necessary to teach SJM at the postsecondary level. I share research that has supported me in learning to teach SJM and highlight challenges that are particular to doing this work in postsecondary contexts. I then describe my experiences navigating the central tensions of this work while honoring its complexity.

Critical Co-Investigators Of Math Trails: Reflections From A Student And Teacher, Benjamin Dickman, Julia Feinberg

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this article, a K-12 mathematics educator and a recent (2020) high school graduate discuss curricular work related to math trails, which are based around the idea of mathematizing potential discoveries along a physical walk. The intersection of math trails with the realities of schooling amid the COVID pandemic is described, along with ways in which math trail learning has ramified beyond classroom walls. This collaboration serves not only to draw attention to the under-researched topic of math trails, but also to exhibit how students and teachers can, in the language of Freire, work together as critical co-investigators.

Math And Democracy, Kimberly A. Roth, Erika L. Ward

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Math and Democracy is a math class containing topics such as voting theory, weighted voting, apportionment, and gerrymandering. It was first designed by Erika Ward for math master’s students, mostly educators, but then adapted separately by both Erika Ward and Kim Roth for a general audience of undergraduates. The course contains materials that can be explored in mathematics classes from those for non-majors through graduate students. As such, it serves students from all majors and allows for discussion of fairness, racial justice, and politics while exploring mathematics that non-major students might not otherwise encounter. This article serves as a guide …

Responsible Data Science For Genocide Prevention, Victor Piercey

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The term "genocide" emerged out of an effort to describe mass atrocities committed in the first half of the 20th century. Despite a convention of the United Nations outlawing genocide as a matter of international law, the problem persists. Some organizations (including the United Nations) are developing indicator frameworks and “early-warning” systems that leverage data science to produce risk assessments of countries where conflict is present. These tools raise questions about responsible data use, specifically regarding the data sources and social biases built into algorithms through their training data. This essay seeks to engage mathematicians in discussing these concerns.

#Disruptjmm: Online Social Justice Advocacy And Community Building In Mathematics, Rachel Roca, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Drew Lewis, Joseph Hibdon, Stefanie Marshall

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In 2019, \#DisruptJMM, a Twitter hashtag, began circulating after an Inclusion/Exclusion blog by Dr. Piper H pointing to the need to make commonplace conversations about human suffering in the Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM). While the \#DisruptJMM hashtag has been used since 2019, the vast majority of use was in the JMM 2020 meetings. Twitter hashtags are used by activists to push forward conversations, join communities around a single idea, and create change. In this article, we draw on frameworks from community building seen in other equity and inclusion advocacy hashtags such as \#GirlsLikeUs [7] to qualitatively code and analyze tweets …

On Definitions Of "Mathematician", Ron Buckmire, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Joseph Hibdon, Katherine M. Kinnaird, Drew Lewis, Jessica Libertini, Omayra Ortega, Rachel Roca, Andrés R. Vindas Meléndez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The definition of who is or what makes a “mathematician” is an important issue to be addressed in the mathematics community. Too often, a narrower definition of who is considered a mathematician (and what is considered mathematics) is used to exclude people from the discipline—both explicitly and implicitly. However, using a narrow definition of a mathematician allows us to highlight, examine, and challenge systemic barriers that exist in certain spaces of the community. This paper analyzes and illuminates tensions between narrow and broad definitions and how they can be used to promote both inclusion and exclusion simultaneously. In this article, …

Mathematics And Society: Towards Critical Mathematics Research And Education, Tian An Wong, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Rachel Roca, Nancy Rodriguez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Mathematics And Society, Mark Huber, Gizem Karaali

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Utilizing Phylogenetic And Geochemical Techniques To Examine Echinoderms Through Time, Maggie Ryan Limbeck

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding biotic changes through Earth’s history has been the goal of paleobiology since the inception of the field. Advances in science and technology have progressed allowing us to reassess old questions and new questions that could have not been addressed without these new methods. Echinoderms (sea stars, sea urchins, etc.) appear in the fossil record during the early Cambrian and are still abundant in marine ecosystems today. This persistence through time has made echinoderms model organisms to answer questions about Earth’s past and present. Despite this role as a model organism there are many questions that remain with respect to …

Metagenomic Investigation Of Microbial Dark Carbon Fixation, Viral Interactions, And Horizonal Gene Transfer Within A Convergent Margin Subsurface Ecosystem, Timothy Joseph Rogers

Doctoral Dissertations

Convergent margins are geological regions where two or more tectonic plates collide, and the denser “subducting slab” is pushed beneath the less dense overriding plate. As the slab descends, it devolatilizes under higher temperatures and pressures, allowing dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and redox active volatile rich fluids to cycle between the upper crust and Earth’s mantle. These fluids migrate through cracks and fissures in the upper mantle and crust, fueling chemolithoautotrophy-based microbial ecosystems in the subsurface before they are expelled on the surface in the form of hydrothermal seeps and springs. Chemolithoautotrophic ecosystems, such as those in the Costa Rican …

Optimizing Collective Communication For Scalable Scientific Computing And Deep Learning, Jiali Li

Doctoral Dissertations

In the realm of distributed computing, collective operations involve coordinated communication and synchronization among multiple processing units, enabling efficient data exchange and collaboration. Scientific applications, such as simulations, computational fluid dynamics, and scalable deep learning, require complex computations that can be parallelized across multiple nodes in a distributed system. These applications often involve data-dependent communication patterns, where collective operations are critical for achieving high performance in data exchange. Optimizing collective operations for scientific applications and deep learning involves improving the algorithms, communication patterns, and data distribution strategies to minimize communication overhead and maximize computational efficiency.

Within the context of this …

Theoretical Studies Of Adsorption And Reactivity At The Gas-Solid Interface, Carson J. Mize

Doctoral Dissertations

Catalytic transformations of small molecules is of great interest for both laboratory and industrial practices. Two specific transformations are ethylene to ethylene oxide and combinations of azides and alkenes into aziridine molecules. Ethylene oxide is an epoxide used as a feed-stock for many bulk reactions and commercial products such as antifreeze and various sterilization techniques, while molecules with the aziridine functional group are used for many ring opening and closing techniques as well as in pharmaceuticals and other drug treatments. For production of ethylene oxide, the combination of oxygen adsorbed onto a silver crystal is the known catalysts for thus …

Chirality, Symmetry-Breaking, And Chemical Substitution In Multiferroics, Kiman Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Multiferroic materials attract significant attention due to their potential utility in a broad range of device applications. The inclusion of heavy metal centers in these materials enhances their magnetoelectric properties, yielding fascinating physical phenomena such as the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, nonreciprocal directional dichroism, enhancement of spin-phonon coupling, and spin-orbit-entangled ground states. This dissertation provides a comprehensive survey of magnetoelectric multiferroics containing heavy metal centers and explores spectroscopic techniques under extreme conditions. A microscopic examination of phase transitions, symmetry-breaking, and structure-property relationships enhances the fundamental understanding of coupling mechanisms.

In A2Mo3O8 (A = Fe, Zn, Ni, and Mn), we use optical spectroscopy …

Comprehensive Studies Of Magnetic Properties Of Metal-Organic Frameworks And Molecular Compounds, Pagnareach Tin

Doctoral Dissertations

Single-ion magnets (SIMs) are at the forefront of molecular electronic spin magnets with potential applications in magnetic memory storage devices. However, the magnetic properties of the SIMs are yet to be completely understood, especially the magnetic properties of large anisotropy systems. A part of this dissertation is to utilize optical and neutron spectroscopies such as far-IR magneto-spectroscopy (FIRMS) and inelastic neutron scattering (INS) to quantify the anisotropy and study the phonon properties of the SIMs as two-dimensional (2-D) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) or coordination polymer (CP), and a molecular magnet. In addition, ab initio calculations are used to understand the origin …

The Synthesis And Optimization Of Sulfide And Halide Solid Electrolytes For All Solid-State Batteries, Teerth Brahmbhatt

Doctoral Dissertations

Countries and organizations around the world have established ambitious targets to transition away from fossil fuel-based energy sources and devices. The transition is focused on cleaning up power generation by converting coal, natural gas, and oil-based power generation to renewables and nuclear energy. Decarbonizing other sectors of energy use, transportation for example, will require broader electrification. To drive this move away from fossil fuel powered transportation will require portable energy storage devices. Conventional lithium-ion batteries are a popular candidate to lead this shift. However, these batteries often rely on flammable liquid electrolytes and carbon anodes that suffer from low energy …

Enumerative Problems Of Doubly Stochastic Matrices And The Relation To Spectra, Julia A. Vandenlangenberg

Theses and Dissertations

This work concerns the spectra of doubly stochastic matrices whose entries are rational numbers with a bounded denominator. When the bound is fixed, we consider the enumeration of these matrices and also the enumeration of the orbits under the action of the symmetric group.

In the case where the bound is two, we investigate the symmetric case. Such matrices are in fact doubly stochastic, and have a nice characterization when we are in the special case where the diagonal is zero. As a central tool to this investigation, we utilize Birkhoff's theorem that asserts that the doubly stochastic matrices are …

Why Reach Codes: Local Players Driving Statewide Building Standards, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry, Gabriela Yamhure

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

Reach codes are local energy ordinances that employ various technologies, strategies, and integrated systems that go above California Building Standards Code (CA Building Code, Title 24) standards and support greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts. A reach code is a mandated energy performance requirement for the built environment, typically incorporated as part of a city’s climate action plan, local hazard mitigation plan, or climate adaptation plan. Not only do reach codes help local jurisdictions remain in compliance with state mandates, they enable local climate leadership by signaling support for the future direction of state Building Code standards. This blog provides a …

The Impacts Of Transfer Learning For Ungulate Recognition At Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, Michael Gurule

Geography ETDs

As camera traps have grown in popularity, their utilization has expanded to numerous fields, including wildlife research, conservation, and ecological studies. The information gathered using this equipment gives researchers a precise and comprehensive understanding about the activities of animals in their natural environments. For this type of data to be useful, camera trap images must be labeled so that the species in the images can be classified and counted. This has typically been done by teams of researchers and volunteers, and it can be said that the process is at best time-consuming. With recent developments in deep learning, the process …

Probabilistic Modeling Of Social Media Networks, Distinguishing Phylogenetic Networks From Trees, And Fairness In Service Queues, Md Rashidul Hasan

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

In this dissertation, three primary issues are explored. The first subject exposes who-saw-from-whom pathways in post-specific dissemination networks in social media platforms. We describe a network-based approach for temporal, textual, and post-diffusion network inference. The conditional point process method discovers the most probable diffusion network. The tool is capable of meaningful analysis of hundreds of post shares. Inferred diffusion networks demonstrate disparities in information distribution between user groups (confirmed versus unverified, conservative versus liberal) and local communities (political, entrepreneurial, etc.). A promising approach for quantifying post-impact, we observe discrepancies in inferred networks that indicate the disproportionate amount of automated bots. …

Deicing Facility Mapping Final Report Appendix C, Stephanie E. Hurley, Dana Allen

Lake Champlain Sea Grant Institute

This Appendix is part of the August 2023 Report “Potential drinking water impacts from road salt storage facilities in Vermont’s Lake Champlain Basin” by the University of Vermont and FluidState Consulting. Maps of the location(s) of deicing materials storage facilities in Vermont municipalities within the Lake Champlain Basin are shown in alphabetical order. Drinking water wells in proximity to the facilities are labeled; in some municipalities there are no wells within the distances selected for mapping for the purpose of this project. Locations have not been field-verified and proximity of water sources to deicing material storage facility is not an …

Heat Pump Integrated Thermal Storage For Building Demand Response And Decarbonization, Sara Sultan

Doctoral Dissertations

This work presents a novel thermal energy storage (TES) integrated with existing residential heat pump (HP). The research focuses on controls and configuration for energy, demand, cost and carbon emissions savings for residential buildings’ energy consumption. This work will be significant in developing a framework especially for reduced energy demand and carbon emissions associated with space heating and cooling in residential buildings. Since buildings account for about 40% primary energy consumption in U.S. and half of that is associated with HP.

An existing air source HP in integrated with a phase change material (PCM) based TES via active configuration where …

Hashed Coordinate Sparse Tensor Storage With Matlab, Jama Meili Charles

Doctoral Dissertations

Tensors, or n-way arrays, are incredibly useful for storing indexable data in an arbitrary number of dimensions. Interest in tensor analysis using tensor decomposition has expanded to a variety of fields, including data mining, signal processing, computer vision, and machine learning. Tensors modelling interesting data may also be sparse, where the majority of its values are zero. These tensors can be extremely large and contain millions of entries that cannot be stored explicitly. To address this problem, various formats have arisen in the past decade to compress and compact such massive data. However, most of these existing structures are …

Applications Of Artificial Intelligence To Improve Coastal Ocean Modeling, Dongliang Shen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerical Modeling (NM) is widely used to simulate and predict hydrodynamic processes and marine particle movements in coastal oceans, particularly during extreme weather events and emergencies. NM offers the capability to realistically simulate multiple state variables and fill gaps caused by scarce observations. However, inherent uncertainties exist in all NMs, primarily arising from the following three factors: 1) insufficient observations leading to uncertain model initial and boundary conditions, 2) inevitable truncation errors due to coarse model resolution, and 3) imperfect physics parameterization schemes for sub-grid processes, especially those related to waves. The consequences of these uncertainties are that 1) even …

Communication In The Science-Policy Interface: Evidence From A Boundary Organization In Nebraska, Usa, Sechindra Vallury, Brian C. Chaffin, Samantha L. Hamlin, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Boundary organizations have a crucial function in environmental governance by facilitating the processes through which scientists and decision-makers generate, exchange, evaluate, and utilize knowledge to identify societal problems, propose potential solutions, and make decisions on appropriate courses of action. This support for evidence-informed decision making is essential in addressing environmental challenges effectively. Despite the growing popularity of boundary organizations, there remains a significant challenge in designing information dissemination platforms to bridge the communication divide between scientific experts and non-experts. To address this gap, we used natural language processing tools to analyze the communication strategies of a specific boundary organization — …

Early Career Aquatic Scientists Forge New Connections At Eco-Das Xv, Olivia J. Graham, Alia Al-Haj, Eleanor C. Arrington, Emily R. Arsenault, Carolina C. Barbosa, Kadir Bice, Evie Brahmstedt, S. River D. Bryant, Xun Cai, Stacy Calhoun-Grosch, Joshua Culpepper, Katherine Dale, Derek J. Detweiler, Katlin D. Doughty, Kyle A. Emery, Kara Gadeken, Laura Griffiths, Atefeh Hosseini, Catriona Jones, Hadis Miraly, Alexander W. Mott, Karla Münzner, Igor Ogashawara, Carly R. Olson, Joseph S. Rabaey, Walter A. Rich, Phoenix A. Rogers, Meredith Evans Seeley, Lorena Selak, Qipei Shangguan, Kelsey J. Solomon, Xinyu Sun, Spencer J. Tassone, Audrey Thellman, John Tracey, Jilian Xiong, Tianfei Xue

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A sense of kuleana (personal responsibility) in caring for the land and sea. An appreciation for laulima (many hands cooperating). An understanding of aloha ’āina (love of the land). The University of Hawai’i at Manoa hosted the 2023 Ecological Dissertations in Aquatic Sciences (Eco-DAS) program, which fostered each of these intentions by bringing together a team of early career aquatic ecologists for a week of networking and collaborative, interdisciplinary project development (Fig. 1).

The Importance Of Contrast Sensitivity, Color Vision, And Electrophysiological Testing In Clinical And Occupational Settings, Frances Silva

Theses & Dissertations

Visual acuity (VA) is universally accepted as the gold standard metric for ocular vision and function. Contrast sensitivity (CS), color vision, and electrophysiological testing for clinical and occupational settings are warranted despite being deemed ancillary and minimally utilized by clinicians. These assessments provide essential information to subjectively and objectively quantify and obtain optimal functional vision. They are useful for baseline data and monitoring hereditary and progressive ocular conditions and cognitive function. The studies in this dissertation highlight the value of contrast sensitivity, color vision, and cone specific electrophysiological testing, as well as the novel metrics obtained with potential practical clinical …

Why Unit Two-Variable-Per-Inequality (Utvpi) Constraints Are So Efficient To Handle: Intuitive Explanation, Saeid Tizpaz-Niari, Martine Ceberio, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In general, integer linear programming is NP-hard. However, there exists a class of integer linear programming problems for which an efficient algorithm is possible: the class of so-called unit two-variable-per-inequality (UTVPI) constraints. In this paper, we provide an intuitive explanation for why an efficient algorithm turned out to be possible for this class. Namely, the smaller the class, the more probable it is that a feasible algorithm is possible for this class, and the UTVPI class is indeed the smallest -- in some reasonable sense described in this paper.

Why Attitudes Are Usually Mutual: A Possible Mathematical Explanation, Julio C. Urenda, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this paper, we provide a possible mathematical explanation of why people's attitude to each other is usually mutual: we usually have good attitude who those who have good feelings towards us, and we usually have negative attitudes towards those who have negative feelings towards, Several mathematical explanations of this mutuality have been proposed, but they are based on specific approximate mathematical models of human (and animal) interaction. It is desirable to have a solid mathematical explanation that would not depend on such approximate models. In this paper, we show that a recent mathematical result about relation algebras can lead …

Algebraic Product Is The Only "And-Like"-Operation For Which Normalized Intersection Is Associative: A Proof, Thierry Denœx, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For normalized fuzzy sets, intersection is, in general, not normalized. So, if we want to limit ourselves to normalized fuzzy sets, we need to normalize the intersection. It is known that for algebraic product, the normalized intersection is associative, and that for many other "and"-operations (t-norms), normalized intersection is not associative. In this paper, we prove that algebraic product is the only "and"-operation (even the only "and-like" operation) for which normalized intersection is associative.