Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Computational Modeling To Study Disease Development: Applications To Breast Cancer And An In Vitro Model Of Macular Degeneration, Qanita Bani Baker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

There have been several techniques developed in recent years to develop computer models of a variety of disease behaviors. Agent-based modeling is a discrete-based modeling approach used agents to represent individual cells that mechanically interact and secrete, consume or react to soluble products. It has become a powerful modeling approach, widely used by computational researchers. In this research, we utilized agent-based modeling to study and explore disease development, particularly in two applications, breast cancer and bioengineering experiments. We further proposed an error-minimization search approach and used it to estimate cellular parameters from multicellular in vitro data.

In this dissertation, in …

A Study Of The Dayside High-Latitude Ionospheric Electrodynamics During Extended Solar Minimum, Janelle V. Jenniges

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This research investigated how electric fields, currents, and charged particles in Earth's high-latitude ionosphere respond to changing input from the sun. The ionosphere surrounds the entire Earth, makes radio communication possible, and can significantly degrade satellite communications and geo-positioning (navigation) capabilities. Many satellites fly within the ionosphere where a solar storm can cause increased satellite drag or destroy onboard electronics. Therefore, understanding and correctly predicting the behavior of this environment is important, and the results from this research will be used to improve current ionospheric models.

A relationship between the level of magnetic activity on Earth due to changes in …

The Unusual Temporal And Spatial Slip History Of The Wassuk Range Normal Fault, Western Nevada (Usa): Implications For Seismic Hazard And Walker Lane Deformation, Benjamin E. Surpless, Glenn C. Kroeger

Geosciences Faculty Research

We document temporal and spatial variations in vertical displacement rate across 6 temporal orders of magnitude to better under stand how the 100-km-long, east-dipping Wassuk Range normal fault system has accommodated strain in the context of the Walker Lane, a tectonically active, NNWtrending zone of dextral and extensional deformation that affects significant portions of western Nevada and eastern California. We combine ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al cosmonuclide exposure ages with shallow seismic and gravity data from the buried hanging wall of the Wassuk fault to derive a post-113 ka (10⁵ yr time scale) vertical displacement rate of 0.82 ± …

Classification Of Five-Dimensional Lie Algebras With One-Dimensional Subalgebras Acting As Subalgebras Of The Lorentz Algebra, Jordan Rozum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Motivated by A. Z. Petrov's classification of four-dimensional Lorentzian metrics, we provide an algebraic classification of the isometry-isotropy pairs of four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian metrics admitting local slices with five-dimensional isometries contained in the Lorentz algebra. A purely Lie algebraic approach is applied with emphasis on the use of Lie theoretic invariants to distinguish invariant algebra-subalgebra pairs. This method yields an algorithm for identifying isometry-isotropy pairs subject to the aforementioned constraints.

Determining Discharge From The Fallasburg Dam And The Hydrology Of The Flat River Bypass Channel, Lowell, Michigan, Seth Kuiper

Masters Theses

The Fallasburg Dam on the Flat River is required to release 110 cfs to the Bypass Channel. Residents have often reported low flows in the river, especially during the summer. The hydrology of the Bypass Channel downstream from the dam was investigated to determine whether the required flow was being released. Discharge measured at multiple transects reveal a shifts from gaining to losing conditions during the year. Gaining conditions occur during the spring and after significant rain events; losing conditions occur in the summer during dry periods. Five discharge measurements in 2013 and three in 2014 reveal flows less than …

Monte Carlo Simulations On Xeon Phi: Offload And Native Mode, Bryar Shareef

Masters Theses

In high performance computing, Monte Carlo methods are widely used to solve problems in various areas of computational physics, finance, mathematics, electrical engineering and many other fields. We have designed Monte Carlo methods to compute Feynman loop integrals in high energy physics, and to solve problems in stochastic geometry with applications to computer graphics, such as the tetrahedron picking problem leading to 12 dimensional integrals.

The Intel Xeon Phi is a coprocessor based on a Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture to gain extreme performance. We have used two different modes, "offload" and "native", to implement the simulations. In offload mode, …

Development And Implementation Of Workshop Management System Application To Explore Combing Multiple Design Patterns, Esraa Aljahdali

Culminating Projects in Computer Science and Information Technology

As systems creation are becoming more complex, we face more problems that are related to system construction rather than those problems related to analysis. Design patterns represent a clear way of solving designing problems in the context of a particular computer application. Combining design patterns is one approach that is used to allow flexibility in building applications with multiple problems.

The Workshop Management System application is built to demonstrate the idea of combining multiple design patterns. To support the idea, we show how to build the application by following the structures and methods that are provided by design patterns. Essentially, …

Adviser: A Web-Based Algorithm Portfolio Deviser, Mustafa Misir, Stephanus Daniel Handoko, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The basic idea of algorithm portfolio [1] is to create a mixture of diverse algorithms that complement each other’s strength so as to solve a diverse set of problem instances. Algorithm portfolios have taken on a new and practical meaning today with the wide availability of multi-core processors: from an enterprise perspective, the interest is to make best use of parallel machines within the organization by running different algorithms simultaneously on different cores to solve a given problem instance. Parallel execution of a portfolio of algorithms as suggested by [2, 3] a number of years …

Application Of Phengite Barometry To Examine Pressure-Temperature-Time Paths In The World's Youngest Known Ultrahigh-Pressure Terrane, Robin Drucker

Theses - ALL

The D’Entrecasteaux Islands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) contain the youngest known ultrahigh- and high pressure ((U)HP) terrane in the world (Davies and Warren, 1992; Baldwin et al., 2008). Conventional peak pressure-temperature (P-T) estimates for the (U)HP terrane do not confirm (U)HP conditions, despite the presence of coesite in a sample from the terrane (Baldwin et al., 2008). The objective of this project was to apply phengite geobarometers to samples from the (U)HP terrane in PNG, providing new pressure estimates. Si-in-phengite (Massonne and Schreyer, 1987) and Ti-in-phengite (Auzanneau et al., 2010) barometry were applied to two samples from the PNG …

Random Walks On Random Lattices And Their Applications, Ryan Tyler White

Theses and Dissertations

This work studies a class of continuous-time, multidimensional random walk processes with mutually dependent random step sizes and their exits from hyperrectangles. Fluctuations of the process about the critical boundary are studied extensively by stochastic analysis and operational calculus. Further, information on the process can be ascertained only upon observations occurring according to a delayed renewal process, rather than in real time. Passage times are thus obscured and results are first derived pertaining to the pre-passage and post-passage observations. Two distinct strategies are developed to combat the crudeness of delayed observations in order to derive more refined information about the …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter, May 2015, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Inside this Issue:

--- Survey for Feed Mill Facilities
--- Invitation to Participate in Fee Advisory Group
--- Upcoming Events
--- Industry News

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Methodology Development In Green Chemistry: Oxoammonium Salt Oxidations And Fluoroform Incorporation, Rebecca J. Wiles

Honors Scholar Theses

Central to the advancement of small molecule synthesis is the ability to develop methodologies that reimagine well known chemistry in a new, environmentally friendly manner. In this thesis two central themes emerge: oxoammonium salt oxidations and trifluoromethyl incorporation using fluoroform gas. Several projects have been developed surrounding oxoammonium salt chemistry, which are featured by their mild conditions, ease of use, and the metal-free, recyclable nature of the oxidant. Trifluoromethylation using fluoroform gas finds its utility in the use of a potent greenhouse gas waste product as a benchtop reagent.

Efficient Coupling For Random Walk With Redistribution, Elizabeth Tripp

Honors Scholar Theses

What can be said on the convergence to stationarity of a finite state Markov chain that behaves 'locally' like a nearest-neighbor random walk on the set of integers? In this work, we looked to obtain sharp bounds for the rate of convergence to stationarity for a particular non-symmetric Markov chain. Our Markov chain is a variant of the simple symmetric random walk on the state space {0, ..., N} obtained by allowing transitions from 0 to J₀ and from N to J_N. We first looked at the case where J₀ and J_N are fixed, deterministic …

Framework For Open-Source Software Update Mechanism: Resistance To Stacking The Deck Attack, Khalid Alhamed

Theses and Dissertations

Currently many users trust open-source binaries downloaded from repositories such as sourceforge.net,github.com, and gitorious.org. As with any system connected to the Internet, such repositories can be subject to attacks tampering with the distributed binaries (inserting malicious code, changing behavior). Developers can change their vision and abandon features that are essential for certain users. Moreover, well-funded attackers can effectively take control of a project by orchestrating the transfer of the leadership of the developers to people whom they control. We propose a framework to reduce the level of trust that users are required to have into updates for open-source software that …

Facile Synthesis And Electrochemical Analysis Of Cobalt Sulfide Nanostructures For Supercapacitor Applications, Esam Alqurashi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The main objective of the thesis is to understand the effect of morphologies and electrolytes on the electrochemical properties of cobalt sulfides. The nanostructured cobalt sulfides were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. For this, cobalt nitrate Co(NO3)2.H2O, cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), thioacetamide (TTA), poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) and ethylene glycol were used. The effect of growth parameters such as solvent and presence of surfactants on the size and morphology of the cobalt sulfides were investigated. It was observed that these variations could provide cobalt sulfides with a range of sizes, shapes and morphologies. The nanostructured cobalt sulfides were structurally …

Impacts Of Ozone Dose And Empty Bed Contact Time On Total Organic Carbon Removal Through Ozone-Biological Activated Carbon Treatment, Ashley Selvy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the face of climate change, pollution, and population growth, water scarcity has become a global threat. Many populations have witnessed their drinking water sources dwindle to an unsustainable level. These severe conditions have sparked interest in potable reuse as an increasingly viable alternative to typical ‘pristine’ drinking water sources. Currently, the California Division of Drinking Water (DDW) provides the most stringent requirements for reuse water quality. The best way to meet these standards is through the use of full advanced treatment (FAT), which consists of reverse osmosis (RO) and an advanced oxidation process (AOP). Alternative treatment trains composed of …

Precision Measurement Of The P(E,E ' P)Pi(0) Reaction At Threshold, K. Chirapatpimol, (...), David S. Armstrong, Et Al.

Arts & Sciences Articles

New results are reported from a measurement of pi(0) electroproduction near threshold using the p(e , e'p)pi(0) reaction. The experiment was designed to determine precisely the energy dependence of s- and p-wave electromagnetic multipoles as a stringent test of the predictions of chiral perturbation theory (ChPT). The data were taken with an electron beam energy of 1192 MeV using a two-spectrometer setup in Hall A at Jefferson Lab. For the first time, complete coverage of the. phi*(pi) and. theta*(pi) angles in the p pi(0) center of mass was obtained for invariant energies above threshold from 0.5 up to 15 MeV. …

Establishing A Permanent Feeding Site: Reniform Nematode Manipulation Of Soybean Genes, Nathan Wayne Redding

All Theses

Reniform nematode, Rotelynchulus reniformis, is a semi-endoparasite capable of infecting more that 300 host plant species in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions. Female nematodes penetrate host roots and introduce effectors that lead to the formation of multinucleate feeding sites called syncytia. The objective of our study was to identify plant genes involved in the process of syncitium formation. We used a split-root system in which half of a plant’s roots were inoculated with R. reniformis while the rest of the root system remained uninfected. Illumina RNA-seq was used to quantify gene expression patterns in replicate samples of infected and …

The Effect Of Noise On The Response Of A Vertical Cantilever Beam Energy Harvester, Michael I. Friswell, Onur Bilgen, S. Faruque Ali, Grzegorz Litak, Sondipon Adhikari

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

An energy harvesting concept has been proposed comprising a piezoelectric patch on a vertical cantilever beam with a tip mass. The cantilever beam is excited in the transverse direction at its base. This device is highly nonlinear with two potential wells for large tip masses, when the beam is buckled. For the pre-buckled case considered here, the stiffness is low and hence the displacement response is large, leading to multiple solutions to harmonic excitation that are exploited in the harvesting device. To maximise the energy harvested in systems with multiple solutions the higher amplitude response should be preferred. This paper …

Magnetic Spin Moment Reduction In Photoexcited Ferromagnets Through Exchange Interaction Quenching: Beyond The Rigid Band Approximation, Thomas George, G.P. Zhang, M. Si, Y. Bai

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Works

The exchange interaction among electrons is one of the most fundamental quantum mechanical interactions in nature and underlies any magnetic phenomena from ferromagnetic ordering to magnetic storage. The current technology is built upon a thermal or magnetic field, but a frontier is emerging to directly control magnetism using ultrashort laser pulses. However, little is known about the fate of the exchange interaction. Here we report unambiguously that photoexcitation is capable of quenching the exchange interaction in all three 3d ferromagnetic metals. The entire process starts with a small number of photoexcited electrons which build up a new and self-destructive potential …

Micro-Policies: Formally Verified, Tag-Based Security Monitors, Arthur Azevedo De Amorim, Maxime Denes, Nick Giannarakis, Cătălin Hriţcu, Benjamin C. Pierce, Antal Spector-Zabusky, Andrew Tolmach

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent advances in hardware design have demonstrated mechanisms allowing a wide range of low-level security policies (or micro-policies) to be expressed using rules on metadata tags. We propose a methodology for defining and reasoning about such tag-based reference monitors in terms of a high-level “symbolic machine,” and we use this methodology to define and formally verify micro-policies for dynamic sealing, compartmentalization, control-flow integrity, and memory safety; in addition, we show how to use the tagging mechanism to protect its own integrity. For each micro-policy, we prove by refinement that the symbolic machine instantiated with the policy’s rules embodies a high-level …

A Nested Recursive Logit Model For Route Choice Analysis, Tien Mai, Mogens Fosgerau, Emma Frejinger

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a route choice model that relaxes the independence from irrelevant alternatives property of the logit model by allowing scale parameters to be link specific. Similar to the recursive logit (RL) model proposed by Fosgerau et al. (2013), the choice of path is modeled as a sequence of link choices and the model does not require any sampling of choice sets. Furthermore, the model can be consistently estimated and efficiently used for prediction.A key challenge lies in the computation of the value functions, i.e. the expected maximum utility from any position in the network to a destination. The value …

Tasknav: Task-Based Navigation Of Software Documentation, Christoph Treude, Mathieu Sicard, Marc Klocke, Martin P. Robillard

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To help developers navigate documentation, we introduce Task Nav, a tool that automatically discovers and indexes task descriptions in software documentation. With Task Nav, we conceptualize tasks as specific programming actions that have been described in the documentation. Task Nav presents these extracted task descriptions along with concepts, code elements, and section headers in an auto-complete search interface. Our preliminary evaluation indicates that search results identified through extracted task descriptions are more helpful to developers than those found through other means, and that they help bridge the gap between documentation structure and the information needs of software developers. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opnGYmMGnqY.

Solving Multi-Vehicle Profitable Tour Problem Via Knowledge Adoption In Evolutionary Bi-Level Programming, Stephanus Daniel Handoko, Abhishek Gupta, Chen Kim Heng, Hoong Chuin Lau, Yew Soon Ong, Puay Siew Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Profitable tour problem (PTP) belongs to the class of vehicle routing problem (VRP) with profits seeking to maximize the difference between the total collected profit and the total cost incurred. Traditionally, PTP involves single vehicle. In this paper, we consider PTP with multiple vehicles. Unlike the classical VRP that seeks to serve all customers, PTP involves the strategic-level customer selection so as to maximize the total collected profit and the operational-level route optimization to minimize the total cost incurred. Therefore, PTP is essentially the knapsack problem at the strategic level with VRP at the operational level. That means the evolutionary …

Elblocker: Predicting Blocking Bugs With Ensemble Imbalance Learning, Xin Xia, David Lo, Emad Shihab, Xinyu Wang, Xiaohu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: Blocking bugs are bugs that prevent other bugs from being fixed. Previous studies show that blocking bugs take approximately two to three times longer to be fixed compared to non-blocking bugs. Objective: Thus, automatically predicting blocking bugs early on so that developers are aware of them, can help reduce the impact of or avoid blocking bugs. However, a major challenge when predicting blocking bugs is that only a small proportion of bugs are blocking bugs, i.e., there is an unequal distribution between blocking and non-blocking bugs. For example, in Eclipse and OpenOffice, only 2.8% and 3.0% bugs are blocking …

The Implications Of Self-Driving Cars On Insurance, Amanda Lobello

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, are being researched and tested by automakers, technology industry leaders, and other institutions. Lawmakers and politicians are discussing the legislation that will affect the fate of such technology. Primary benefits include safety, mobility, free time, less traffic, and green effects. However, there are also obstacles to the implementation of self-driving vehicles including consumer acceptance, legal liability, and cost. With the potential shift in responsibility from driver to automaker, rating factors for insurance may change, weighing more heavily on the model of the car as a factor. The fate of auto insurance is in …

Self-Organizing Neural Networks Integrating Domain Knowledge And Reinforcement Learning, Teck-Hou Teng, Ah-Hwee Tan, Jacek M. Zurada

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of domain knowledge in learning systems is expected to improve learning efficiency and reduce model complexity. However, due to the incompatibility with knowledge structure of the learning systems and real-time exploratory nature of reinforcement learning (RL), domain knowledge cannot be inserted directly. In this paper, we show how self-organizing neural networks designed for online and incremental adaptation can integrate domain knowledge and RL. Specifically, symbol-based domain knowledge is translated into numeric patterns before inserting into the self-organizing neural networks. To ensure effective use of domain knowledge, we present an analysis of how the inserted knowledge is used by …

Report On The Fg 2015 Video Person Recognition Evaluation, J.R. Beveridge, H. Zhang, B.A. Draper, P.J. Flynn, Z. Feng, P. Huber, J. Kittler, Zhiwu Huang, Li S., Li Y., M. Kan, R. Wang, S. Shan, X. Chen, Li H., G. Hua, V. Struc, J. Krizaj, C. Ding, D. Tao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This report presents results from the Video Person Recognition Evaluation held in conjunction with the 11th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition. Two experiments required algorithms to recognize people in videos from the Point-and-Shoot Face Recognition Challenge Problem (PaSC). The first consisted of videos from a tripod mounted high quality video camera. The second contained videos acquired from 5 different handheld video cameras. There were 1401 videos in each experiment of 265 subjects. The subjects, the scenes, and the actions carried out by the people are the same in both experiments. Five groups from around the world …

Student Understanding Of Function And Success In Calculus, Daniel I. Drlik

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between student success in calculus and student understanding of function. Student understanding of function was measured using two questionnaires, one of which is a modification of an existing measure based on APOS theory. The other I developed with items from the concept image literature. The participants of this study were 116 high school students who were enrolled in a first-year calculus course. The results of the questionnaires were aligned to course exam scores to determine connections between function understanding and rate of success in calculus.

A major …