Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Impact Of A Changing Climate On Fine Particulate Concentrations In Butte, Mt, Christopher Atherly

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

A model was developed to assess the potential change in PM_2.5 concentrations in Butte, Montana over the course of the 21^st century as the result of climate change and changes in emissions. The EPA AERMOD regulatory model was run using NARCCAP climate data for the years of 2040, 2050, 2060 and 2070, and the results were compared to the NAAQS to determine if there is the potential for future impacts to human health. This model predicted an average annual concentration of 15.84 µg/m³ in the year 2050, which would exceed the primary NAAQS of 12 µg/m^{3 …}

Temperature And Pressure Sensing In Three Flooded Underground Mine Workings In Butte, Montana, Usa, Tyler Hagan

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Temperature and pressure were measured in several flooded underground mine shafts in order to assess the potential for the development of additional mine-based geothermal heating in Butte, Montana, USA. Temperature was sensed using both optical fibers, functioning as a distributed sensor, and thermistors, functioning as point sensors; while pressure was sensed using a piezoresistive strain gauge. Upon observing good agreement between the continuous and discrete temperature sensors, we found no significant change in temperature with increasing depth within the water column. This suggests the thorough transfer of heat throughout the mine shaft via convection. Moreover, we found water temperature (T) …

Development And Application Of A Method For Unwrapping Single Images Of Cylindrical Objects, Aaron Zosel

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The goal of this project was to create a software tool to unwrap digital images of cylindrical rock cores and also to create a tool to measure the accuracy of the unwrapping transform.

Measurements of an object can be taken directly from an image if the object is planar and the image plane of the camera is perpendicular to the object. If these conditions are met then picture scale allows a user to relate measurements in the image to a real world coordinate system after correcting for radial distortion. But if the object in the image is not planar or …

On Nine Mile, Allen Morris

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The photographs of On Nine Mile were made to explore my developing relationship with the place I now inhabit. They compare the reality of a place against preconception and actual experience versus idealized expectations. I made this work to help understand a landscape to which I was transplanted and to which I had no connection. This exhibition is comprised of photographs taken at a section of untilled prairie called Nine Mile that most closely resembled my visual preconception of the Great Plains. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by the mountains, forests, and shoreline that typify the landscape …

Three Essays On Biofuels, Drought, Livestock, And The Environment, Sunil P. Dhoubhadel

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines the impact of the 2012 drought and the biofuels mandate on the U.S. grain and livestock markets. A stochastic equilibrium displacement model is used to analyze the impact on eight commodity markets viz. beef, pork, poultry, corn, distillers’ grain (DG), soybean, soymeal, and ethanol. Among the eight markets, corn and beef are found to be the most vulnerable to drought. The use of Renewable Identification Number (RIN) credits as an instrument to mitigate the impact of drought has limited effectiveness. A mandate waiver of about 23% is required to fully …

New Methods For Synthesis Of Organic Peroxides And Application Of Peroxide Electrophiles To Synthesis Of Functionalized Ethers, Shiva Kumar Kyasa

Department of Chemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

New Method for Synthesis of Alkyl Hydroperoxides: There are a number of methods reported for synthesis of alkyl hydroperoxides, but most of them suffer either from poor yields or the formation of unwanted side products. I will be discussing new methodology for efficient synthesis of pure samples of 1° and 2° alkyl hydroperoxides via alkylation of readily available cyclododecanone 1,1-dihydroperoxide followed by hydrolysis of the resulting bis peroxyacetals.

Peroxide Electrophiles for Synthesis of Functionalized Ethers: Peroxides are underexplored functional groups as precursors for C-O bond formation and ether synthesis. The reactivity of dialkyl peroxides towards organometallics such as alkyl lithium …

Toward An Expanded Role For Collision-Induced Dissociation In Glycoproteomic Analysis, Venkata Kolli

Department of Chemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis begins with an overview of the state-of-the-art in tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analysis of glycopeptides. In this introduction, the primary focus is on utilization of different ion dissociation techniques for MS/MS to obtain structural information of N-glycopeptides. This includes a discussion of the importance of complementary MS/MS methods to attain complete structural characterization of N-glycopeptides. Emerging methods involving the use of a single ion dissociation technique for complete glycopeptide connectivity analysis were also presented. Next, the application of collision-induced dissociation (CID) to provide both amino acid sequence and monosaccharide connectivity for model N-glycopeptides was discussed in detail. Implementation …

Visual Analytics For Large Communication Trace Data, Jieting Wu

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Executions of modern parallel programs often yield complex communications among compute nodes of large-scale clusters of workstations or supercomputers. Analyzing communication patterns is becoming increasingly critical to performance optimiza- tion. As the scale and complexity of parallel applications drastically increases, visu- alization has become a feasible means to conduct analysis of massive communication patterns. However, most visualization tools fall short in showing comprehensive dy- namic communication graph and addressing the scalability issue. Our solution for analyzing dynamic communication patterns is based on an analytics framework cou- pled with a new visualization technique, named CommGram [29], that provides a flexible solution …

A Feasibility Study Of Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles To Survey Avian Abundance By Using Audio Recording, Janine M. Barr, Andrew M. Wilson

Student Publications

Roadside counts are commonly used to assess songbird abundance, but they result in oversampling habitat edges and underrepresenting core habitats, areas of steep terrain, and wetlands. Accessing off-road habitats can be logistical challenging and time-consuming, resulting in low survey efficiency. Aerial ecological surveys, using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) have already proven to be valuable in wildlife monitoring. Previous studies have used photography or videography to provide permanent documentation of wildlife surveys through low altitude aerial imagery. A significant advantage of UAVs over manned aircraft is their greater safety and lower costs. We propose that UAVs can also be …

Investigations Into Uncharacterized Radical S-Adenosylmethionine Enzymes, Melissa Quintanilla

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

Radical S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) enzymes are a superfamily of enzymes that require the cofactor SAM for catalysis. These enzymes have diverse functions across all 3 domains of life, and are known to play roles in many biological pathways, including vitamin biosynthesis, synthesis of complex metal clusters, posttranslational RNA modification,DNA repair, and development of antibiotic resistance, among others. Radical SAM enzymes are characterized by the CX₃CX₂C motif, which is conserved throughout most members of the family. A number of genes have been identified which contain the CX₃CX₂C motif and other amino acid sequences …

Polyurethane Research For Applications In The Field Of Dentistry: Limiting Side Reactions In Monomer Development And Synthesizing N-Capped Polymenthide, Ellen M. (Ellie) Black

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

Modern dentistry has found uses for polyurethanes in both dental arch models and removable dental appliances. In an attempt to make polyurethanes from renewable resources, both naturally derived menthone and dihydrocarvone were oxidized in order to form menthide and dihydrocarvide, respectively. The resulting ester, if copolymerized could be modified to form a polyuria; however, dihydrocarvide synthesis was complicated by epoxidation. Different reaction environments with varying salts showed no positive effect on limiting epoxide products. A homopolymerization of menthide resulted in a polymenthide chain that was reacted in the presence of N,N'-Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCC) in order to form an N-capped polymenthide chain. …

The Synthesis Of Dendrimer-Bound Catalysts And Their Use In Macmillan-Type Reactions, Autumn R. Flynn

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

Dendrimers—highly branched macromolecules—present an attractive option for use as a catalytic framework because of their large size and their availability for functionalization. In addition, the use of organocatalysts to form asymmetric products has become an increasingly studied field in the pharmaceutical industry and cancer research. Organocatalyst terminally functionalized dendrimers present the possibility of both catalytic utility and increased recovery in MacMillan-type asymmetric reactions. Terminal sites of generations 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 PAMAM dendrimers have been functionalized with the MacMillan group's (2S, 5S)-5-benzyl-2-tert-butyl-3-methylimidazolidin-4-one catalyst. These functionalized PAMAM dendrimers were characterized by NMR and MALDITOF MS analysis. The organocatalyst functionalized dendrimers show …

Conformational Dynamics Of Metallo-Β-Lactamase Ccra During Catalysis Investigated By Using Deer Spectroscopy, Mahesh Aitha, Lindsay Moritz, Indra D. Sahu, Omar Sanyurah, Zahilyn Roche, Robert Mccarrick, Gary A. Lorigan, Brian Bennett, Michael W. Crowder

Physics Faculty Research and Publications

Previous crystallographic and mutagenesis studies have implicated the role of a position-conserved hairpin loop in the metallo-β-lactamases in substrate binding and catalysis. In an effort to probe the motion of that loop during catalysis, rapid-freeze-quench double electron–electron resonance (RFQ-DEER) spectroscopy was used to interrogate metallo-β-lactamase CcrA, which had a spin label at position 49 on the loop and spin labels (at positions 82, 126, or 233) 20–35 Å away from residue 49, during catalysis. At 10 ms after mixing, the DEER spectra show distance increases of 7, 10, and 13 Å between the spin label at position 49 and the …

Aerosol Optical Hygroscopicity Measurements During The 2010 Cares Campaign, Dean B. Atkinson, James Gregory Radney, Janel Lum, Katheryn R. Kolesar, Daniel J. Cziczo, Mikhail Pekour, Qi Zhang, Ari Setyan, Alla Zelenyuk, Christopher D. Cappa

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Measurements of the effect of water uptake on particulate light extinction or scattering made at two locations during the 2010 CARES study around Sacramento, CA are reported. The observed influence of water uptake, characterized through the dimensionless optical hygroscopicity parameter γ, is compared with calculations constrained by observed particle size distributions and size-dependent particle composition. A closure assessment has been carried out that allowed for determination of the average hygroscopic growth factors (GF) at 85% relative humidity and the dimensionless hygroscopicity parameter κ for oxygenated organic aerosol (OA) and for supermicron particles, yielding κ = 0.1–0.15 and 0.9–1.0, respectively. The …

Memory Dynamics In Attractor Networks, Guoqi Li, Kiruthika Ramanathan, Ning Ning, Luping Shi, Changyun Wen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As can be represented by neurons and their synaptic connections, attractor networks are widely believed to underlie biological memory systems and have been used extensively in recent years to model the storage and retrieval process of memory. In this paper, we propose a new energy function, which is nonnegative and attains zero values only at the desired memory patterns. An attractor network is designed based on the proposed energy function. It is shown that the desired memory patterns are stored as the stable equilibrium points of the attractor network. To retrieve a memory pattern, an initial stimulus input is presented …

Chalk And Cheese In Twitter: Discriminating Personal And Organization Accounts, Richard Jayadi Oentaryo, Jia-Wei Low, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social media have been popular not only for individuals to share contents, but also for organizations to engage users and spread information. Given the trait differences between personal and organization accounts, the ability to distinguish between the two account types is important for developing better search/recommendation engines, marketing strategies, and information dissemination platforms. However, such task is non-trivial and has not been well studied thus far. In this paper, we present a new generic framework for classifying personal and organization accounts, based upon which comprehensive and systematic investigation on a rich variety of content, social, and temporal features can be …

Queuevadis: Queuing Analytics Using Smartphones, Tadashi Okoshii, Lu Yu, Chetna Vig, Youngki Lee, Rajesh Krishna Balan, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present QueueVadis, a system that addresses the problem of estimating, in real-time, the properties of queues at commonplace urban locations, such as coffee shops, taxi stands and movie theaters. Abjuring the use of any queuing-specific infrastructure sensors, QueueVadis uses participatory mobile sensing to detect both (i) the individual-level queuing episodes for any arbitrarily-shaped queue (by a characteristic locomotive signature of short bursts of "shuffling forward" between periods of "standing") and (ii) the aggregate-level queue properties (such as expected wait or service times) via appropriate statistical aggregation of multi-person data. Moreover, for venues where multiple queues are too close …

Students’ Perspectives On Flipped Classroom Implementation In Higher Education, Joelle Elmaleh, Nachamma Sockalingam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper reports students' experiences with a Flipped Classroom pedagogy model in an undergraduate programming course and suggests ways to improve the Flipped Classroom implementation.

Understanding The Test Automation Culture Of App Developers, Pavneet Singh Kochhar, Ferdian. Thung, Nachiappan Nagappan, Thomas Zimmermann, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smartphone applications (apps) have gained popularity recently. Millions of smartphone applications (apps) are available on different app stores which gives users plethora of options to choose from, however, it also raises concern if these apps are adequately tested before they are released for public use. In this study, we want to understand the test automation culture prevalent among app developers. Specifically, we want to examine the current state of testing of apps, the tools that are commonly used by app developers, and the problems faced by them. To get an insight on the test automation culture, we conduct two different …

An Empirical Assessment Of Bellon's Clone Benchmark, Alan Charpentier, Jean-Rémy Falleri, David Lo, Laurent Reveillere

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: Clone benchmarks are essential to the assessment and improvement of clone detection tools and algorithms. Among existing benchmarks, Bellon's benchmark is widely used by the research community. However, a serious threat to the validity of this benchmark is that reference clones it contains have been manually validated by Bellon alone. Other persons may disagree with Bellon's judgment. Objective: In this paper, we perform an empirical assessment of Bellon's benchmark. Method: We seek the opinion of eighteen participants on a subset of Bellon's benchmark to determine if researchers should trust the reference clones it contains. Results: Our experiment shows that …

High-Throughput Reliable Multicast In Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh Networks, Xin Zhao, Jun Guo, Chun Tung Chou, Archan Misra, Sanjay K. Jha

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a cross-layer approach for enabling high-throughput reliable multicast in multi-hop wireless mesh networks. The building block of our approach is a multicast routing metric, called the expected multicast transmission count (EMTX). EMTX is designed to capture the combined effects of MAC-layer retransmission-based reliability, wireless broadcast advantage, and link quality awareness. The EMTX of single-hop transmission of a multicast packet from a sender is the expected number of multicast transmissions (including retransmissions) required for its next-hop recipients to receive the packet successfully. We formulate the EMTX-based multicast problem with the objective of minimizing the sum of EMTX over …

Sensorem – An Efficient Mobile Platform For Wireless Sensor Network Visualization, Jin Ming Koh, Marcus Sak, Hwee Xian Tan, Huiguang Liang, Fachmin Folianto, Tony Quek

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Multi-Roles Affiliation Model For General User Profiling, Lizi Liao, Heyan Huang, Yashen Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online social networks release user attributes, which is important for many applications. Due to the sparsity of such user attributes online, many works focus on profiling user attributes automatically. However, in order to profile a specific user attribute, an unique model is built and such model usually does not fit other profiling tasks. In our work, we design a novel, flexible general user profiling model which naturally models users’ friendships with user attributes. Experiments show that our method simultaneously profile multiple attributes with better performance.

Effect Of Machine Translation In Interlingual Conversation: Lessons From A Formative Study, Kotaro Hara, Shamsi T. Iqbal

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Language barrier is the primary challenge for effectivecross-lingual conversations. Spoken language translation(SLT) is perceived as a cost-effective alternative to lessaffordable human interpreters, but little research has beendone on how people interact with such technology. Using aprototype translator application, we performed a formativeevaluation to elicit how people interact with the technologyand adapt their conversation style. We conducted two setsof studies with a total of 23 pairs (46 participants).Participants worked on storytelling tasks to simulate naturalconversations with 3 different interface settings. Ourfindings show that collocutors naturally adapt their style ofspeech production and comprehension to compensate forinadequacies in SLT. We conclude the paper …

Exploring Cyberbullying And Other Toxic Behavior In Team Competition Online Games, Haewoon Kwak, Jeremy Blackburn, Seungyeop. Han

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work we explore cyberbullying and other toxic behavior in team competition online games. Using a dataset of over 10 million player reports on 1.46 million toxic players along with corresponding crowdsourced decisions, we test several hypotheses drawn from theories explaining toxic behavior. Besides providing large-scale, empirical based understanding of toxic behavior, our work can be used as a basis for building systems to detect, prevent, and counter-act toxic behavior.

Hybrid Computational Toxicology Models For Regulatory Risk Assessment, Prachi Pradeep

Dissertations (1934 -)

Computational toxicology is the development of quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models that relate a quantitative measure of chemical structure to a biological effect. In silico QSAR tools are widely accepted as a faster alternative to time-consuming clinical and animal testing methods for regulatory risk assessment of xenobiotics used in consumer products. However, different QSAR tools often make contrasting predictions for a new xenobiotic and may also vary in their predictive ability for different class of xenobiotics. This makes their use challenging, especially in regulatory applications, where transparency and interpretation of predictions play a crucial role in the development of …

Synthetic And Mechanistic Studies Of Ruthenium Catalyzed C-C, C-N And C-O Bond Activation Reactions, Nishantha Kumara Kalutharage

Dissertations (1934 -)

Transition metal catalyzed selective C-C, C-N and C-O bond activation reactions are fundamentally important in organometallic chemistry and organic synthesis. Catalytic C-C, C-N and C-O activation are highly valuable for reforming processes of crude oils. Significant research has been devoted to transition metal mediated C-C, C-N and C-O bond cleavage reactions to form new compounds as these processes are expected to provide novel ways to transformation of inexpensive hydrocarbons into more commercially valuable products such as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and polymers. A few examples of transition metal catalyzed cross coupling reactions involving C-N bond cleavage have been reported. A well-defined Ru …

Spectral Characterization Of Cytochromes Cyp11a1 (Aka P450scc) Active Site And Catalytic Intermediates, Qianhong Zhu

Dissertations (1934 -)

The Cytochromes P450 are monooxygenases which use dioxygen and endogenous reducing equivalents to generate highly reactive intermediates capable of performing several types of oxidative transformations, most commonly, hydroxylations via the so-called Compound I species. There are two main kinds of mammalian P450s: those functioning in drug metabolism and those that facilitate steroid biosynthesis. Steroidogenic P450s participating in the biosynthesis of steroid hormones are involved in a number of different pathways. CYP11A1, one of the steroidogenic P450s also known as P450scc, is the enzyme that converts cholesterol to pregnenolone through side chain cleavage between carbon 20 and 22. The overall process …

Computational Approaches For Monitoring Of Health Parameters And Their Evaluation For Application In Clinical Setting., Mohammad Adibuzzaman

Dissertations (1934 -)

The algorithms and mathematical methods developed in this work focus on using computational approaches for low cost solution of health care problems for better patient outcome. Furthermore, evaluation of those approaches for clinical application considering the risk and benefit in a clinical setting is studied. Those risks and benefits are discussed in terms of sensitivity, specificity and area under the receiver operating characteristics curve. With a rising cost of health care and increasing number of aging population, there is a need for innovative and low cost solutions for health care problems. In this work, algorithms, mathematical techniques for the solutions …

Rapid Analysis Of Secondary Manganese Oxides Using Portable Xrf: Applications To Environmental Geochemistry And Mineral Exploration, Dustin Jensen

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Secondary manganese oxides (MnOx) are common weathering products of polymetallic vein deposits, and are also locally abundant in streams draining abandoned mine lands. MnOx are scavengers of trace metals, and the trace metal composition of MnOx could potentially be used as a vector to locate mineral anomalies or point sources of pollution in mining-impacted streams. This study is examining the chemistry of MnOx in weathered rock samples and partially flooded underground mine tunnels in the Butte Cu-Ag-Pb-Zn deposit, as well as MnOx crusts on boulders in small streams draining the nearby Basin-Boulder Superfund Site, Montana. Data obtained using a portable …