Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Quantification Of Molecular Aggregation Equilibria Using Spectroscopic Measurements And Random Mixing Modeling, Blake M. Rankin

Open Access Dissertations

Molecular aggregation equilibria, such as the binding of ligands to a central solute molecule, are prevalent throughout biological processes and energy storage devices. However, both the sign and magnitude of hydrophobic and ionic interactions remains a subject of theoretical debate, and has yet to be experimentally determined. Here, Raman vibrational spectroscopy is combined with multivariate curve resolution (Raman-MCR) to experimentally quantify both the number of hydrophobic contacts between alcohol molecules in water and the affinity of ions for molecular hydrophobic interfaces. Furthermore, a generalized theoretical model is developed based on random statistics in which it is assumed that the concentration …

Dynamic Re-Optimization Techniques For Stream Processing Engines And Object Stores, Naresh Kumar Reddy Rapolu

Open Access Dissertations

Large scale data storage and processing systems are strongly motivated by the need to store and analyze massive datasets. The complexity of a large class of these systems is rooted in their distributed nature, extreme scale, need for real-time response, and streaming nature. The use of these systems on multi-tenant, cloud environments with potential resource interference necessitates fine-grained monitoring and control. In this dissertation, we present efficient, dynamic techniques for re-optimizing stream-processing systems and transactional object-storage systems.^ In the context of stream-processing systems, we present VAYU, a per-topology controller. VAYU uses novel methods and protocols for dynamic, network-aware tuple-routing in …

A P-Adic Spectral Triple, Sumedha Hemamalee Rathnayake

Open Access Dissertations

We construct a spectral triple for the C*-algebra of continuous functions on the space of p-adic integers. On the technical level we utilize a weighted rooted tree obtained from a coarse grained approximation of the space combined with the forward derivative D on the tree. Our spectral triple satisfies the properties of a compact spectral metric space and the metric on the space of p-adic integers induced by the spectral triple is equivalent to the usual p-adic metric. Furthermore, we show that the spectrum of the operator D*D is closely related to the roots of a certain …

Laboratory Studies On The Production Of Alpha-Pinene-Derived Organic Nitrates And Their Atmospheric Fate, Joel David Rindelaub

Open Access Dissertations

Currently, the formation yields of organic nitrates from the oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds, such as α-pinene, is highly uncertain, negatively impacting our knowledge on tropospheric ozone production and the fate of atmospheric NO_x. To lower this uncertainty, we quantified the organic nitrate yield from the OH radical oxidation of α-pinene under high NO_x conditions. The α-pinene- derived nitrates created in chamber experiments readily partitioned to the aerosol phase and underwent particle phase hydrolysis, indicating that these processes are likely a sink for atmospheric NO_x. The hydrolysis of organic nitrates was found to be …

Improving Capacity-Performance Tradeoffs In The Storage Tier, Eric P. Villasenor

Open Access Dissertations

Data-set sizes are growing. New techniques are emerging to organize and analyze these data-sets. There is a key access pattern emerging with these new techniques, large sequential file accesses. The trend toward bigger files exists to help amortize the cost of data accesses from the storage layer, as many workloads are recognized to be I/O bound. The storage layer is widely recognized as the slowest layer in the system. This work focuses on the tradeoff one can make with that storage capacity to improve system performance. ^ Capacity can be leveraged for improved availability or improved performance. This tradeoff is …

Spatial Analysis Of Passenger Vehicle Use And Ownership And Its Impact On The Sustainability Of Highway Infrastructure Funding, Matthew Volovski

Open Access Dissertations

Across the United States, the sustainability of highway funding is at risk due to increasing need and uncertainty in the factors that drive revenue. Past studies on highway funding sustainability have identified that the root cause of changing highway revenue are the shifts in social demographics and economic characteristics. Unfortunately, from the revenue perspective (the focus of this dissertation), the ability of previous research to account for these factors has been rather limited in two ways; first, the inability to accurately assess current regional vehicle use (a typical prerequisite for statistical modeling of highway revenues) due to difficulties associated with …

Assessment Of High-Fidelity Collision Models In The Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Method, Andrew Brian Weaver

Open Access Dissertations

Advances in computer technology over the decades has allowed for more complex physics to be modeled in the DSMC method. Beginning with the first paper on DSMC in 1963, 30,000 collision events per hour were simulated using a simple hard sphere model. Today, more than 10 billion collision events can be simulated per hour for the same problem. Many new and more physically realistic collision models such as the Lennard-Jones potential and the forced harmonic oscillator model have been introduced into DSMC. However, the fact that computer resources are more readily available and higher-fidelity models have been developed does not …

Growth Of Low Disorder Gaas/Algaas Heterostructures By Molecular Beam Epitaxy For The Study Of Correlated Electron Phases In Two Dimensions, John D. Watson

Open Access Dissertations

The unparalleled quality of GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy has enabled a wide range of experiments probing interaction effects in two-dimensional electron and hole gases. This dissertation presents work aimed at further understanding the key material-related issues currently limiting the quality of these 2D systems, particularly in relation to the fractional quantum Hall effect in the 2^nd Landau level and spin-based implementations of quantum computation.^ The manuscript begins with a theoretical introduction to the quantum Hall effect which outlines the experimental conditions necessary to study the physics of interest and motivates the use of the semiconductor growth …

Homogeneous And Heterogeneous Rhenium Catalysts For Sustainable Transformations Of Polyols, Alcohols, And Amines, Jing Yi

Open Access Dissertations

Biomass-derived molecules, such as sugar polyols and lignin, are promising feedstock for making small and useful organics (SUO) and high value-added organics (HVO). However, the high oxygen to carbon ratio (C:O ≈ 1) prohibits the direct use of biomass-derived molecules as energy carriers and chemicals. Deoxygenation of polyols has become an important challenge in the utilization of biomass resources. Oxorhenium complexes show excellent oxophilicity to transfer oxygen and deoxygenate alcohols. Oxorhenium(VII) complexes can efficiently catalyze the transformation of glycerol to allyl alcohol, acrolein, and propanal. The volatile SUO products were easily separated from the nonvolatile residues via simple distillation. Based …

Evaluating Breast Cancer Stem Cell Response To Antiangiogenic Therapy, Connor J. Holloway

Open Access Theses

Angiogenic inhibitors function by blocking tumor cell signals used to recruit host tissue vasculature to the tumor site, thereby depriving the cancer of the nutriment needed for further expansion. The development and implementation of angiogenic inhibitors in conjunction with standard chemotherapy agents has increased progression-free survival but not overall patient survival. It is hypothesized that chronic exposure to large doses of AAT drugs worsens hypoxic conditions within the tumor mass, selectively stimulating aggressive cancer stem cell populations to grow and proliferate. ^ In this study, the expression of the CSC biomarkers ALDH1, DLL1, and EpCAM were evaluated in breast cancer …

Non-Covalent Affinity Materials For Protein Structure Determination Via Single Particle Reconstruction Analysis Cryo-Electron Microscopy, Minji Ha

Open Access Theses

Single particle analysis (SPA) by cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) is one of the powerful tools for determining biological macromolecule structure, particularly when combined with computational methods or X-ray crystallography. However, the SPA is challenged by sample processing efficiency. In this work, polyrotaxane (PRTx) was designed and synthesized such that laterally and rotationally mobile lysine nitrolicacetic acid (Lys-NTA) modified α-cyclodextrins (α-CD) were threaded onto a polyethylene glycol (PEG) core. Polyrotaxanes threaded with amine modified α-CD were also designed and synthesized for stoichiometric control of His-tagged protein capture by PRTx. For higher efficiency of single particle analysis along a single strand of …

Securing Communication Within The Harms Model For Use With Firefighting Robots, Maxwell D. Dewees

Open Access Theses

Humans and robots must work together in increasingly complex networks to achieve a common goal. In this research, firefighting robots are a part of a larger, decentralized system of humans, agents, robots, machines, and sensors (HARMS). Although communication in a HARMS model has been utilized in previous research, this new study looks at the security considerations of the communications layer of the HARMS model. A network attack known as a man-in-the-middle attack is successfully demonstrated in this paper. Then, a secure communications protocol is proposed to help provide confidentiality and authentication of HARMS actors. This research is applied to any …

Improving Product Design Phase For Engineer To Order (Eto) Product With Knowledge Base Engineering (Kbe), Hanhdung Thi Dinh

Open Access Theses

In industry currently Computer Aided Design (CAD) is an important tool for the modification, analysis, or optimization of the 3D virtual environment that replicates the physical product. CAD software is an efficient and reliable tool. However, as globalization increases customer demands, this process needs to be faster and more efficient to accommodate changing product design situations, especially for Engineer-to- Order (ETO) products. ^ The traditional method of product design process is to operate CAD software without argumentation. Design engineers create CAD prototypes and drawings based on available knowledge and information which comes from engineering experts, company standards, industrial practices as …

Framework For Functional Tree Simulation Applied To 'Golden Delicious' Apple Trees, Marek Fiser

Open Access Theses

This research aims to develop a framework to model realistic and functional trees. Our modular framework is easily controllable and extensible by the user. The framework provides powerful features such as per-leaf light simulation and a source-sink based resources transport model. Our novel 3D reconstruction algorithm generates realistic tree models with a good 3D polygon topology. ^ The second part of this research is a functional model of a Golden Delicious apple tree. We use our simulation framework and data collected in Purdue Meigs farm over the year 2014 to create a realistic data-driven model. The model reacts on temperature …

Digital Forensics And Community Supervision: Making A Case For Field Based Digital Forensics Training, Christopher Michael Flory

Open Access Theses

In this paper I will review the literature concerning investigator digital forensics models and how they apply to field investigators. A brief history of community supervision and how offenders are supervised will be established. I will also cover the difference between community supervision standards and police standards concerning searches, evidence, standards of proof, and the difference between parole boards and courts. Currently, the burden for digital forensics for community supervision officers is placed on local or state law enforcement offices, with personnel trained in forensics, but may not place a high priority on outside cases. Forensic field training for community …

Simulating Depth Of Field Using Per-Pixel Linked List Buffer, Yang Liu

Open Access Theses

In this thesis, I present a method for simulating three characteristics of depth of field image: partial occlusion, bokeh and blur. Retrieving color from occluded surfaces is achieved by constructing a per-pixel linked list buffer, which only requires two render passes. Additionally, per-pixel linked list buffer eliminates the memory overhead of empty pixels in depth layers. Bokeh and blur effect are accomplished by image-space point splatting (Lee 2008). I demonstrate how point splatting can be used to account for the effect of aperture shape and intensity distribution on bokeh. Spherical aberration and chromatic aberration can be approximated using a custom …

Studying The Effect Of Parallelization On The Performance Of Andromeda Search Engine: A Search Engine For Peptides, Jigna Shah

Open Access Theses

Human body is made of proteins. The analysis of structure and functions of these proteins reveal important information about human body. An important technique used for protein evaluation is Mass Spectrometry. The protein data generated using mass spectrometer is analyzed for the detection of patterns in proteins. A wide variety of operations are performed on the data obtained from a mass spectrometer namely visualization, spectral deconvolution, peak alignment, normalization, pattern recognition and significance testing. There are a number of software that analyze the huge volume of data generated from a mass spectrometer. An example of such a software is MaxQuant …

Climate Change Impact Assessments Using The Water Erosion Prediction Project Model, Joseph Trotochaud

Open Access Theses

This study was conducted to develop a simplified method of obtaining future climate data inputs for natural resource models and apply that method to three locations within the continental United States to assess the effect of climate change on soil erosion, runoff, and fire risk. A method was developed for quickly obtaining future climate data over a wide range of scenarios, General Circulation Models (GCMs), and timescales from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) model families using the MarkSim^® DSSAT Weather Generator and a Microsoft Excel VBA Macro, the …

Alg Calculus Ii (Lecture Slides), Lake Ritter, Shangrong Deng

Mathematics Ancillary Materials

Authors' Description:

Upon completing this course students should be able to:

1. Find derivatives and integrals of transcendental functions.
2. Apply techniques to evaluate integrals.
3. Use tests to determine series convergence.
4. Determine Taylor series for common functions.
5. Describe curves in parametric form and polar coordinates.

Important Note:

All are welcome to use and modify these slides for nonprofit educational activities. They are intended to be used with smart board/smart podium or touch screen technology and cannot serve as a primary text. They were produced with LaTeX and converted to .ppt.

The original Beamer slides are superior quality but require several additional figure …

On Products Of Generalized Geometries, Ralph R. Gomez, Janet Talvacchia

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Works

In this paper we address what generalized geometric structures are possible on products of spaces that each admit generalized geometries. In particular we consider, first, the product of two odd dimensional spaces that each admit a generalized almost contact structure, and then subsequently, the product of an odd dimensional space that admits a generalized almost contact structure and an even dimensional space that admits a generalized almost complex structure. We also draw attention to the relationship of the Courant bracket to the classical notion of normality for almost contact structures.

The Path To The Land Conservancy Of Adams County, Mary Margaret Stewart

English Faculty Publications

As part of this year's observation of Land Conservancy Month, board member and retired Gettysburg College English Department chair Mary Margaret Stewart has prepared an annotated bibliography of readings on land preservation, land conservation, and land trusts. Beginning with Henry David Thoreau and John Muir and extending through the works of Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard and on to a survey of books discussing the philosophy behind the land trust movement, Mary Margaret's bibliography is an outstanding resource for those who want to learn more about protecting our wild and undeveloped spaces.

Drougthscape- Spring 2015, Kelly Smith

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

CONTENTS

Director’s column.........................1

South Plains ranch workshops ........... 3

First quarter drought summary .............. 4

First quarter impacts summary .............. 6

Gary’s favorite pond, D1-4...........8

NDMC’s Haigh leads U2U pubs ..............10

SW MT watersheds convene.................12

Wind River monitors drought..................13

Morocco’s new drought index................14

NE Brazil drought monitoring.....16

EU’s drought initiative................16

U.S. Drought Monitor Forum ..... 16

How CO tourism coped in 2012........... 17

Electric Charge, Force, And Field Problems (Practice Questions), Arun Saha

Physics and Astronomy Ancillary Materials

This 33-question set was created for PHYS 1112 test practice under a Round One ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

Volume Component Analysis For Classification Of Lidar Data, Nina M. Varney, Vijayan K. Asari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

One of the most difficult challenges of working with LiDAR data is the large amount of data points that are produced. Analysing these large data sets is an extremely time consuming process. For this reason, automatic perception of LiDAR scenes is a growing area of research. Currently, most LiDAR feature extraction relies on geometrical features specific to the point cloud of interest. These geometrical features are scene-specific, and often rely on the scale and orientation of the object for classification. This paper proposes a robust method for reduced dimensionality feature extraction of 3D objects using a volume component analysis (VCA) …

Intensity And Resolution Enhancement Of Local Regions For Object Detection And Tracking In Wide Area Surveillance, Evan Krieger, Vijayan K. Asari, Saibabu Arigela, Theus H. Aspiras

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Object tracking in wide area motion imagery is a complex problem that consists of object detection and target tracking over time. This challenge can be solved by human analysts who naturally have the ability to keep track of an object in a scene. A computer vision solution for object tracking has the potential to be a much faster and efficient solution. However, a computer vision solution faces certain challenges that do not affect a human analyst. To overcome these challenges, a tracking process is proposed that is inspired by the known advantages of a human analyst.

First, the focus of …

The Top Quark Forward-Backward Asymmetry At Approximate N3lo, Nikolaos Kidonakis

Faculty Articles

I calculate the top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron in both the laboratory frame and the tt¯ rest frame. I show that soft-gluon corrections are the dominant contribution to the asymmetry and closely approximate exact results through next-tonext-to-leading order (NNLO). I present a calculation of the asymmetry including approximate next-to-next-to-next-to-leading-order (N3LO) soft-gluon contributions from next-tonext-to-leading-logarithm (NNLL) resummation as well as electroweak corrections. Thus approximate N3LO (aN3LO) results are obtained, which significantly enhance and improve previous NNLO results. The theoretical aN3LO result for the top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron in the laboratory frame is (6.8±0.3)%, and in the …

Gas Phase Measurements Of Mono-Fluoro-Benzoic Acids And The Dimer Of 3-Fluoro-Benzoic Acid, Adam M. Daly, Spencer J. Carey, Aaron M. Pejlovas, Kexin Li, Lu Kang, Stephen G. Kukolich

Faculty Articles

The microwave spectrum of the mono-fluoro-benzoic acids, 2-fluoro-, 3-fluoro-, and 4-fluoro-benzoic acid have been measured in the frequency range of 4-14 GHz using a pulsed beam Fourier transform microwave spectrometer. Measured rotational transition lines were assigned and fit using a rigid rotor Hamiltonian. Assignments were made for 3 conformers of 2-fluorobenzoic acid, 2 conformers of 3-fluorobenzoic acid, and 1 conformer of 4-fluorobenzoic acid. Additionally, the gas phase homodimer of 3-fluorobenzoic acid was detected, and the spectra showed evidence of proton tunneling. Experimental rotational constants are A(0+) = 1151.8(5), B(0+) = 100.3(5), C(0+) = 87.64(3) MHz and A(0−) = 1152.2(5), B(0−) …

The World Before Calculus: Historical Approaches To The Tangent Line Problem, Lindsay Skinner

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Pierre de Fermat and René Descartes were two brilliant 17th century mathematicians who have had lasting impacts on modern mathematics. Descartes laid the groundwork for the Cartesian coordinate system that is frequently employed in modern mathematics and Fermat’s last theorem vexed the mathematics community until Wiles’ proof was published in 1995. Amidst their many ground-breaking accomplishments these two men produced solutions for another mathematical problem - developing a general method to find the tangent line to a curve.

In spite of their apparent genius, neither man’s method had the lasting impact of their other works. Descartes’ and Fermat’s methods were …

Study Of The Protonation States Of The Curcumin Molecule And Their Visible Absorption Spectra In Aqueous Solution Using M06, Smd, And Tddft And Compared To Experiment, Joseph D. Alia, Peter Braegelmann, Timothy Roettgen, Hannah Goemann

Chemistry Publications

Curcumin, the primary natural dye from the spice turmeric, has been of recent interest due to its possible health benefits as an antioxidant and possible anti cancer and anti Alzheimer's properties. Limited solubility and instability in water are of primary importance when considering curcumin's possible uses as a pharmaceutical. DFT computations were carried out using B3LYP and MO6 density functionals and the SMD solvent model for water. TDDFT computations were carried out on geometries optimized in water as described by the SMD solvent model. It is found that M06 with the 3-21G* basis set and SMD solvent model gives accurate …

Biogeochemical Cycling In A Headwater Stream And Riparian Zone, A. Capri Gillam

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Several teams of researchers at multiple universities are currently measuring annual and seasonal fluxes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases (nitrous oxide and methane) in riparian wetlands and upland forests in the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF), a subalpine watershed in the Little Belt Mountains, Montana. In the current thesis, the author characterized the geochemistry and stable carbon isotope composition of shallow groundwater, soil water, and stream water in upper Stringer Creek, near sites that are being investigated for gas chemistry and microbial studies. It was hypothesized that if methanogenesis were a dominant process in the riparian wetlands of …