Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Calculating Staircase Slope From A Single Image, Nicholas Joseph Clarke

Master's Theses

Realistic modeling of a 3D environment has grown in popularity due to the increasing realm of practical applications. Whether for practical navigation purposes, entertainment value, or architectural standardization, the ability to determine the dimensions of a room is becoming more and more important. One of the trickier, but critical, features within any multistory environment is the staircase. Staircases are difficult to model because of their uneven surface and various depth aspects. Coupling this need is a variety of ways to reach this goal. Unfortunately, many such methods rely upon specialized sensory equipment, multiple calibrated cameras, or other such impractical setups. …

Progenitors Related To Simple Groups, Elissa Marie Valencia

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis contains methods of finding new presentations of finite groups, particularly nonabelian simple groups. We have presented several progenitors such as 2^{*8}:Z_4 wr Z_2, 3^{*3}:_m L(2,7), 2^{*4}:[2:2^2], 2^{*11}:D_{11} and many more on which we've found the mathieu group M12 and 2*[M21:2^2] among their homomorphic images. We give the full monomial automorphism groups of Aut(3^{*2}), Aut(3^{*3}), and Aut(5^{*2}). Included is a proof showing that the full monomial automorphism group of Aut(m^{*n}) is isomorphic to U(m) wr S_n. In addition we have constructed the Cayley Diagrams of PGL(2,7), [3 x A_5]:2, 3:[A_6:2], and 2 x [(3 x L(2,11)):2] using the process …

Elliptic Curves, Trinity Mecklenburg

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The main focus of this paper is the study of elliptic curves, non-singular projective curves of genus 1. Under a geometric operation, the rational points E(Q) of an elliptic curve E form a group, which is a finitely-generated abelian group by Mordell’s theorem. Thus, this group can be expressed as the finite direct sum of copies of Z and finite cyclic groups. The number of finite copies of Z is called the rank of E(Q).

From John Tate and Joseph Silverman we have a formula to compute the rank of curves of the form …

Symmetric Presentations And Generation, Dustin J. Grindstaff

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to generate original symmetric presentations for finite non-abelian simple groups. We will discuss many permutation progenitors, including but not limited to 2^*14 : D₂₈, 2^∗9 : 3^•(3²), 3^∗9 : 3^•(3²), 2^∗21 : (7X3) : 2 as well as monomial progenitors, including 7^∗5 :_m A₅, 3^∗5 :_m S₅. We have included their homomorphic images which include the Mathieu group M₁₂, 2^•J_{2 …}

The Relationship Between Self-Determination And Client Outcomes Among The Homeless, Samuel M. Hanna

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper has attempted to determine if there is a significant relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. The study has been based upon the conceptual framework set forth in Self-Determination Theory. The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. Using a data collection instrument, based on empirically validated instrumentation, clients from several homeless service providers in the City of San Bernardino were assessed for the level of self-determination and autonomy support they experience within these agencies. Outcome measures included such things as whether the client was going …

Unique Prime Factorization Of Ideals In The Ring Of Algebraic Integers Of An Imaginary Quadratic Number Field, Nolberto Rezola

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The ring of integers is a very interesting ring, it has the amazing property that each of its elements may be expressed uniquely, up to order, as a product of prime elements. Unfortunately, not every ring possesses this property for its elements. The work of mathematicians like Kummer and Dedekind lead to the study of a special type of ring, which we now call a Dedekind domain, where even though unique prime factorization of elements may fail, the ideals of a Dedekind domain still enjoy the property of unique prime factorization into a product of prime ideals, up to order …

Potential For Use Of Effluent Wastewater Treated By Soil Aquifer Treatment In Banning, California, Arturo Castro Vela

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

With the ever increasing demand for potable water due to the continued increase in population coupled with the threat of California’s current drought, water will remain a limited resource that must be managed responsibly. In order to strategically plan and manage water use in the most beneficial manner, water providers must take into account all sources of water, including recycled water and their applications. Recycled water as a source for supplementing high quality potable water is a sustainable strategy that will prove to be an essential tactic in any water management plan.

The purpose of this project is to emphasize …

Algebra 1 Students’ Ability To Relate The Definition Of A Function To Its Representations, Sarah A. Thomson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

One hundred high school Algebra students from a southern California school participated in this study to provide information on students’ ability to relate the definition of function to its representations. The goals of the study were (1) to explore the extent to which students are able to distinguish between representations of functions/non-functions; (2) to compare students’ ability to distinguish between familiar/unfamiliar representations of functions/non-functions; (3) to explore the extent to which students are able to apply the definition of function to verify function representations; and (4) to explore the extent to which students are able to provide an adequate definition …

Symmetric Presentations Of Non-Abelian Simple Groups, Leonard B. Lamp

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to show constructions of some of the sporadic groups such as the Mathieu group, M₁₂, J₁, Projective Special Linear groups, PSL(2,8), and PSL(2,11), Unitary group U(3,3) and many other non-abelian simple groups. Our purpose is to find all simple non-abelian groups as homomorphic images of permutation or monomial progenitors, as well grasping a deep understanding of group theory and extension theory to determine groups up to isomorphisms. The progenitor, developed by Robert T. Curtis, is a semi-direct product of the following form: P≅2*ⁿ: N = {πw | π …

California State University San Bernardino Win Gps, Francisco A. Ron

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The objective of this masters project is to develop a working application for Android devices. This is an application intended to be used by CSUSB. It has its own database, which has information about most of the facilities on campus. There are many GPS applications on the market, however I chose to design and implement WiN GPS, short for Walking GPS, because it will allow the possibility of a personalized GPS for the school and for users should they choose to use it.

In order to develop Win GPS it was necessary to research the available tools and to become …

Iarc Monographs: 40 Years Of Evaluating Carcinogenic Hazards To Humans, Neil E. Pearce, Aaron Blair, Paolo Vineis, Wolfgang Ahrens, Aage Andersom, Josep M. Anto, Bruce K. Armstrong, Andrea A. Baccarelli, Frederick A. Beland, Amy Berrington, Pier Alberto Bertazzi, Linda S. Birnbaum, Ross C. Brownson, John R. Bucher, Kenneth P. Cantor, Elisabeth Cardis, John W. Cherrie, David C. Christiani, Pierluigi Cocco, David Coggon, Pietro Comba, Paul A. Demers, John M. Dement, Jeroen Douwes, Ellen A. Eisen, Lawrence S. Engel, Richard A. Fenske, Lora E. Fleming, Tony Fletcher, Elizabeth Fontham, Francesco Forastiere, Rainer Frentzel-Beyme, Lin Fritschi, Michel Gerin, Marcel Goldberg, Philippe Grandjean, Tom K. Grimsrud, Per Gustavsson, Andy Haines, Patricia Hartge, Johnni Hansen, Michael Hauptmann, Dick Heederik, Kari Hemminki, Denis Hemon, Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Jane A. Hoppin, James Huff, Bengt Jarvholm, Daehee Kang, Margaret R. Karagas

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: Recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Programme for the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans has been criticized for several of its evaluations, and also for the approach used to perform these evaluations. Some critics have claimed that failures of IARC Working Groups to recognize study weaknesses and biases of Working Group members have led to inappropriate classification of a number of agents as carcinogenic to humans.

Objectives: The authors of this Commentary are scientists from various disciplines relevant to the identification and hazard evaluation of human carcinogens. We examined criticisms of the IARC classification process …

Spatial Heterogeneity, Host Movement And Mosquito-Borne Disease Transmission, Miguel A. Acevedo, Olivia Prosper, Kenneth Lopiano, Nick Ruktanonchai, T. Trevor Caughlin, Maia Martcheva, Craig W. Osenberg, David L. Smith

Dartmouth Scholarship

Mosquito-borne diseases are a global health priority disproportionately affecting low-income populations in tropical and sub-tropical countries. These pathogens live in mosquitoes and hosts that interact in spatially heterogeneous environments where hosts move between regions of varying transmission intensity. Although there is increasing interest in the implications of spatial processes for mosquito-borne disease dynamics, most of our understanding derives from models that assume spatially homogeneous transmission. Spatial variation in contact rates can influence transmission and the risk of epidemics, yet the interaction between spatial heterogeneity and movement of hosts remains relatively unexplored. Here we explore, analytically and through numerical simulations, how …

Free Split Bands, Francis Pastijn, Justin Albert

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

We solve the word problem for the free objects in the variety consisting of bands with a semilattice transversal. It follows that every free band can be embedded into a band with a semilattice transversal.

Technology Investment Decision-Making Under Uncertainty, Robert J. Kauffman, Jun Liu, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Innovations involving information technology (IT) provide potentially valuable investment opportunities for industry and government organizations. Significant uncertainties are associated with decision-making for IT investment though, a problem that senior executives have been concerned about for a long time. The uncertainties include consumer, market and regulatory responses, IT-driven changes in operational and transactional performance, technology standards and competition, and future market conditions. All these things have an impact on organizations’ willingness to adopt. As a result, traditional capital budgeting, investment experience, and intuition have not been very effective in IT investment decision-making. We propose a new option-based stochastic valuation modeling approach …

Showrooming Vs. Competing: How Does Brand Selection Matter?, Qian Tang, Mei Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this study, we empirically examine the effect of local shoe store openings on the sales of a competing, major online shoe retailer. Both showrooming and competing effects can play a role: Under the showrooming effect, the local store opening can lead to more online sales for the online retailer, whereas the competing effect created by the local store opening can substitute away the demand for the online retailer. We examine when one effect dominates the other by classifying local stores into single- and mixed-brand stores. We find that the showrooming effect is dominant for a single-brand store opening, and …

Retail Precinct Management: A Case Of Commercial Decentralization In Singapore, Robert De Souza, Hoong Chuin Lau, Mark Goh, Lindawati, Wee-Siong Ng, Puay-Siew Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The synchronized last mile logistics concept seeks to address, through coordinated collaboration, several challenges that hinder reliability, cost efficiency, effective resource planning, scheduling and utilization; and increasingly, sustainability objectives. Subsequently, the meeting of service level and contractual commitments are competitively impacted with any loss of efficiency. These challenges, against a backdrop of Singapore, can essentially be addressed in selected industry sectors through a better understanding of logistics structures; innovative supply chain designs and coordination of services, operations and processes coupled with concerted policies and supply chain strategies.

Assessing The Opportunities And Challenges With Big Data In The Mobile Payments Ecosystem, Jun Liu, Robert John Kauffman, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information and communication technology (ICT) is an important driver of mobile payments in the financial services industry. Mobile payments (m-payments) technologies enable new channels for consumer payments for goods and services purchases, and other forms of economic exchange. The m-payments ecosystem involves multiple distinct stakeholders, and a high level of consumer data-sharing. In this paper, we will assess the current m-payments ecosystem, and discuss the challenges and opportunities with big data captured from mpayments transactions. We will also propose new directions to encourage research that will shed the light on how stakeholders can facilitate the successful adoption and realize the …

Probabilistic Inference Techniques For Scalable Multiagent Decision Making, Akshat Kumar, Shlomo Zilberstein, Marc Toussaint

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Decentralized POMDPs provide an expressive framework for multiagent sequential decision making. However, the complexity of these models---NEXP-Complete even for two agents---has limited their scalability. We present a promising new class of approximation algorithms by developing novel connections between multiagent planning and machine learning. We show how the multiagent planning problem can be reformulated as inference in a mixture of dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs). This planning-as-inference approach paves the way for the application of efficient inference techniques in DBNs to multiagent decision making. To further improve scalability, we identify certain conditions that are sufficient to extend the approach to multiagent systems …

Extracting Development Tasks To Navigate Software Documentation, Christoph Treude, Martin P. Robillard, Barthélémy Dagenais

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Knowledge management plays a central role in many software development organizations. While much of the important technical knowledge can be captured in documentation, there often exists a gap between the information needs of software developers and the documentation structure. To help developers navigate documentation, we developed a technique for automatically extracting tasks from software documentation by conceptualizing tasks as specific programming actions that have been described in the documentation. More than 70 percent of the tasks we extracted from the documentation of two projects were judged meaningful by at least one of two developers. We present TaskNavigator, a user interface …

Analysis Of Synthetic Cannabinoids By Direct Analysis In Real Time Quadrupole Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry And Gas Chromatography Quadrupole Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry, Tyler S. Torbet

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of direct analysis in real time quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry and gas chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry in the analysis of 162 different synthetic cannabinoids. Direct analysis in real time quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry is shown to be a rapid and accurate analytical method for synthetic cannabinoids. Spectra can be generated with less than 1.5 ng of the drug in under a minute and be successfully searched against previously generated ESI-QTOF libraries in most cases (118/130 drugs tested) as well as can also be applied to the identification of synthetic …

Satellite Measurements Of Mesospheric Gravity Wave Temperature Variance Over The Andes, Jonathan R. Pugmire, Michael J. Taylore, Yucheng Zhao

Jonathan Pugmire

Focusing on over 10 years of data from the SABER instrument aboard the TIMED satellite temperature variances are determined to quantify the signatures of short-period gravity waves propagating up into the mesosphere, and lower thermosphere (MLT) region. Temperature profile measurements were measured by SABER within a limited geographical area, centered on the Andes Lidar Observatory at Cerro Pachon, Chile (30.3° S, 70.7° S) where Utah State University has operated an OH Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (MTM) for the past 5 years. Using an established procedure the large-scale tidal waves, with wavenumbers 0-6, were removed from each profile revealing the gravity wave …

Wavelet-Domain Regression And Predictive Inference In Psychiatric Neuroimaging, Philip T. Reiss, Lan Huo, Yihong Zhao, Clare Kelly, R. Todd Ogden

Philip T. Reiss

An increasingly important goal of psychiatry is the use of brain imaging data to develop predictive models. Here we present two contributions to statistical methodology for this purpose. First, we propose and compare a set of wavelet-domain procedures for fitting generalized linear models with scalar responses and image predictors: sparse variants of principal component regression and of partial least squares, and the elastic net. Second, we consider assessing the contribution of image predictors over and above available scalar predictors, in particular via permutation tests and an extension of the idea of confounding to the case of functional or image predictors. …

Structure-Guided Design Of A High Affinity Inhibitor To Human Ctbp, Brendan Hilbert, Benjamin Morris, Keith Ellis, Janet Paulsen, Celia Schiffer, Steven Grossman, William Royer

Celia A. Schiffer

Oncogenic transcriptional coregulators C-terminal Binding Protein (CtBP) 1 and 2 possess regulatory d-isomer specific 2-hydroxyacid dehydrogenase (D2-HDH) domains that provide an attractive target for small molecule intervention. Findings that the CtBP substrate 4-methylthio 2-oxobutyric acid (MTOB) can interfere with CtBP oncogenic activity in cell culture and in mice confirm that such inhibitors could have therapeutic benefit. Recent crystal structures of CtBP 1 and 2 revealed that MTOB binds in an active site containing a dominant tryptophan and a hydrophilic cavity, neither of which are present in other D2-HDH family members. Here, we demonstrate the effectiveness of exploiting these active site …

Electronic Structures Of Lanthanum, Samarium, And Gadolinium Sulfides, Lu Wang, Chris M. Marin, Wai-Ning Mei, Chin Li Cheung

Physics Faculty Publications

In this study, we report our efforts to elucidate the electronic structures of two lattice structures of lanthanide sulfides (LnS and Ln3S4) and for three lanthanides (Ln = La, Sm and Gd) using density functional theory calculations performed with the CASTEP code. A DFT+U method was used for the corrections of on-site Coulomb interactions with U = 6 eV. The calculated electronic structures show that both lanthanum and gadolinium sulfides have metallic properties, consistent with the available experimental results. However, the calculated electronic structure of Sm3S4 is considerably different from those of the La3S4 and Gd3S4 and is predicted to …

Continuous Monitoring Of Enterprise Risks: A Delphi Feasibility Study, Robert Baksa

Dissertations

A constantly evolving regulatory environment, increasing market pressure to improve operations, and rapidly changing business conditions are creating the need for ongoing assurance that organizational risks are continually and adequately mitigated. Enterprises are perpetually exposed to fraud, poor decision making and/or other inefficiencies that can lead to significant financial loss and/or increased levels of operating risk. Increasingly, Information Systems are being harnessed to reinvent the risk management process. One promising technology is Continuous Auditing, which seeks to transform the audit process from periodic reviews of a few transactions to a continuous review of all transactions. However, the highly integrated, rapidly …

Methods For Two-Sample Comparisons From Censored Time-To-Event Data, Nubyra Ahmed

Dissertations

In the analysis of censored survival data, it is frequently of interest to determine the efficacy of a treatment or new method over a control or existing method. For this purpose, one may report estimates of the two survival functions or, more specifically, their difference, accompanied by simultaneous confidence bands (SCBs). Alternatively, or in addition, one may conduct hypothesis testing for the difference of the two survival functions.

The first project exploits two bootstrap methods to develop new Wald-type SCBs for the difference of survival functions. The censored data bootstrap is employed to obtain nonparametric SCBs for the difference of …

Data Mining In Computational Proteomics And Genomics, Yang Song

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses data mining in bioinformatics by investigating two important problems, namely peak detection and structure matching. Peak detection is useful for biological pattern discovery while structure matching finds many applications in clustering and classification.

The first part of this dissertation focuses on elastic peak detection in 2D liquid chromatographic mass spectrometry (LC-MS) data used in proteomics research. These data can be modeled as a time series, in which the X-axis represents time points and the Y-axis represents intensity values. A peak occurs in a set of 2D LC-MS data when the sum of the intensity values in a …

Multiple Testing Procedures For Complex Structured Hypotheses And Directional Decisions, Anjana Grandhi

Dissertations

Several multiple testing procedures are developed based on the inherent structure of the tested hypotheses and specific needs of data analysis. Incorporating the inherent structure of the hypotheses results in development of more powerful and situation-specific multiple testing procedures than existing ones. The focus of this dissertation is on developing multiple testing procedures that utilize the information on this structure of the hypotheses and aims at answering research questions while controlling appropriate error rates.

In the first part of the thesis, a mixed directional false discovery rate (mdFDR) controlling procedure is developed in the context of uterine fibroid gene expression …

Designing Novel Abstraction Networks For Ontology Summarization And Quality Assurance, Christopher Ochs

Dissertations

Biomedical ontologies are complex knowledge representation systems. Biomedical ontologies support interdisciplinary research, interoperability of medical systems, and Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) encoding. Ontologies represent knowledge using concepts (entities) linked by relationships. Ontologies may contain hundreds of thousands of concepts and millions of relationships. For users, the size and complexity of ontologies make it difficult to comprehend “the big picture” of an ontology's content. For ontology editors, size and complexity make it difficult to uncover errors and inconsistencies. Errors in an ontology will ultimately affect applications that utilize the ontology.

In prior studies abstraction networks (AbNs) were developed to provide a …

Information Filtering By Multiple Examples, Mingzhu Zhu

Dissertations

A key to successfully satisfy an information need lies in how users express it using keywords as queries. However, for many users, expressing their information needs using keywords is difficult, especially when the information need is complex. Search By Multiple Examples (SBME), a promising method for overcoming this problem, allows users to specify their information needs as a set of relevant documents rather than as a set of keywords.

Most of the studies on SBME adopt the Positive Unlabeled learning (PU learning) techniques by treating the user's provided examples (denoted as query examples) as positive set and the entire data …