Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Generation Of 2-Adamantylidenecarbene From A Phenanthrene-Based Precursor, Christine E. Wamsley

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the generation of 2-adamantylidenecarbene from a phenanthrene-based precursor. A three-step synthetic procedure was used to generate the 2-adamantylidenecarbene precursor, which subsequently underwent photolysis to produce 2-adamantylidenecarbene. This product was trapped with cyclohexene. No evidence of a ring expansion to 4-homoadamantyne was observed. It was also noted that the target precursor underwent rearrangement during photolysis, leading to the formation of an isomer containing a seven-membered ring. This isomer did not photolyze. Additionally, computational studies were performed using Gaussian 09. Geometries were initially optimized and then, the single point energies of the singlet and triplet carbene states were calculated. …

Cost Effectiveness Of Renewable Energy Policy On Military Installations, Zachary L. Esakof

Honors Theses

In 2007, the United States government issued the National Defense Authorization Act, and Section 2852 mandates that the Department of Defense (DoD) meets 25% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2025. This paper investigates the production decisions that the DoD faces when increasing its share of renewable energy to meet this objective. A linear programming model is created to solve for the cost-effective renewable energy portfolio mix for each military base to meet its production target of renewable energy. The renewable sources utilized in each base’s energy portfolio include solar, wind, geothermal, and renewably-sourced energy from the grid, …

Assessing The Carbon Impacts Of Colby College’S Biomass Plant, Alice Hotopp

Honors Theses

Biomass energy plants are considered to be carbon neutral systems under some definitions. However, this concept of carbon neutrality needs to be rethought in order to understand the true carbon impact of biomass plants upon global climate change. A biomass plant’s wood source, the extent to which the biomass plant emits carbon dioxide, and the timescale over which the biomass plant emits carbon should all be taken into account. In this study, I consider the Colby College biomass plant’s role in carbon cycling. Colby’s Physical Plant Department provided me with information on how much carbon (tons of woodchips) is used …

Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash

Honors Theses

The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all …

Quantization Of Analysis, Kelvin K. Lui

Honors Theses

In quantum mechanics the replacement of complex vectors with operators is essential to “quantizing” space. Nonetheless, in many physics textbooks there is no justification for this action. Therefore in this thesis I will attempt to understand the mathematical formalism that allows for such a “replacement” to be rigorous. I will approach this topic by first defining a vector spaces and its dual space, a Hilbert space and a conjugate Hilbert space, and an operator space. Next, I will look at the algebraic tensor product of two vector spaces, two Hilbert spaces, and finally two operator spaces. Ultimately we will look …

Cover Crops And Ecosystem Services: Insights From Studies In Temperate Soils, Humberto Blanco-Canqui, Tim M. Shaver, John L. Lindquist, Charles A. Shapiro, Roger Wesley Elmore, Charles A. Francis, Gary W. Hergert

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Cover crops (CCs) can provide multiple soil, agricultural production, and environmental benefits. However, a better understanding of such potential ecosystem services is needed. We summarized the current state of knowledge of CC effects on soil C stocks, soil erosion, physical properties, soil water, nutrients, microbial properties, weed control, crop yields, expanded uses, and economics and highlighted research needs. Our review indicates that CCs are multifunctional. Cover crops increase soil organic C stocks (0.1–1 Mg ha^–1 yr^–1) with the magnitude depending on biomass amount, years in CCs, and initial soil C level. Runoff loss can decrease by up …

Mathematics Education In A Multilingual And Multicultural Environment, Anjum Halai, Richard Barwell

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

I Don't Play Chess: A Study Of Chess Piece Generating Polynomials, Stephen R. Skoch

Senior Independent Study Theses

This independent study examines counting problems of non-attacking rook, and non-attacking bishop placements. We examine boards for rook and bishop placement with restricted positions and varied dimensions. In this investigation, we discuss the general formula of a generating function for unrestricted, square bishop boards that relies on the Stirling numbers of the second kind. We discuss the maximum number of bishops we can place on a rectangular board, as well as a brief investigation of non-attacking rook placements on three-dimensional boards, drawing a connection to latin squares.

Subsurface Geological Analyses Of The Berea Petroleum System In Eastern Kentucky, Julie Floyd

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

The Berea Sandstone is a Late Devonian, tight oil and gas reservoir that intertongues with the Bedford Shale in eastern Kentucky. In order to evaluate the Bedford-Berea interval in the subsurface, 555 well logs from the Kentucky Geological Survey’s oil and gas database were used to construct structure maps, isopach maps, and cross sections of the interval and its possible hydrocarbon source rocks. Gamma-ray logs were compared to known cores in order to separate Bedford from Berea lithologies. Maps and cross sections were compared to known basement structures to evaluate possible structural influences on the interval.

The Bedford-Berea interval is …

Fluvial Responses To Growth Faulting In The West Pearl River, Louisiana, Stephen A. Prosser

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) in southeastern Louisiana is an actively deforming deltaic complex displaying surface and near-surface evidence of growth faulting. Active growth faults in these environments are rarely identified at the surface, in part because the downthrown blocks often experience increased rates of sediment deposition leading to an obscured and low-relief, or entirely absent, surface expression. Faulting can be expressed in fluvial systems as changes in channel gradient, which often result in coincident changes in channel sinuosity, migration rates, planform deflections, and/or ponding features within the deformed zone. The study area is focused on a meander bend of …

Z-Spectral Modeling For Magnetization Transfer Ratio Asymmetry Calculations In Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer Mri At 3 Tesla, Ryan Nicholas Schurr

LSU Master's Theses

Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) and magnetization transfer (MT) are types of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments in which contrast is based on the transfer of magnetization from selectively saturated solute or macromolecular protons to bulk water protons. These processes offer insight into the chemical composition of tissue and are quantified by the asymmetry of the magnetization transfer ratio (MTRasym). This study was to develop a Z-spectral curve fitting procedure based on the underlying physics of CEST-MRI from which MTRasym values can be calculated and applied to distinguish healthy tissue from cancer. Z-spectra were collected from CEST-MR images of a …

Long-Term Effects Of Land Cover Change On Fish Assemblage Structure In The Piedmont And Coastal Plain Regions Of Virginia, Samuel F. Stickley

Theses and Dissertations

Changes in land cover and fish assemblage structure were assessed across two spatial and temporal scales in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the Chesapeake Bay watershed in Virginia. A long-term, local study (1953 to 2014) on the Tuckahoe Creek watershed used digitized aerial photography and satellite images (Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS) to quantify land cover change for five nested catchments in 1953, 1990, and 2014. Instream fish collections from 1958, 1990, and 2014 were utilized to assess a variety of fish assemblage metrics for each of the five catchments, and analyses were performed to assess …

Graph-Based Regularization In Machine Learning: Discovering Driver Modules In Biological Networks, Xi Gao

Theses and Dissertations

Curiosity of human nature drives us to explore the origins of what makes each of us different. From ancient legends and mythology, Mendel's law, Punnett square to modern genetic research, we carry on this old but eternal question. Thanks to technological revolution, today's scientists try to answer this question using easily measurable gene expression and other profiling data. However, the exploration can easily get lost in the data of growing volume, dimension, noise and complexity. This dissertation is aimed at developing new machine learning methods that take data from different classes as input, augment them with knowledge of feature relationships, …

Quartz Crystal Microbalance Studies On Friction Modifiers For Lubricant Applications, Carey Lehner

Theses and Dissertations

Lubricants are used in numerous applications to control friction and protect moving parts from fatigue. These fluids consist of a variety of surface active chemistries competing for the surface to provide performance. In order to develop fluids that meet the ever-increasing requirements (from legislation and manufacturers), techniques that can provide insight into surface adsorption, in real time, and relate it back to performance are critical.

The objective of this work is to determine if Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (QCM-D) is an effective technique to investigate surfactant adsorption in regimes that are common to the transportation lubricant industry. QCM-D is …

Light Controlled Drug Activation And Release, Jonathon Sheldon

Theses and Dissertations

Cancer constitutes a terrible burden on modern society. In the United States there are an estimated 1,658,370 new cancer diagnoses resulting in 589,430 deaths in 2015 alone.^[1] An estimated 41,170 of these cases will be diagnosed right here in Virginia. With new cancer patients comes the expanding demand for new treatments. As we all know, many modern chemotherapeutics cause adverse reactions to patients. This is because the toxic nature of these therapies often affects normal tissue alongside the tumors that are infesting the body. Therefore, researching novel ways to make chemotherapeutics selective for cancer, while leaving healthy tissue unscathed, …

Law And The Art Of Modeling: Are Models Facts?, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In 2013, the Supreme Court made the offhand comment that empirical models and their estimations or predictions are not 'findings of fact" deserving of deference on appeal. The four Justices writing in dissent disagreed, insisting that an assessment of how a model works and its ability to measure what it claims to measure are precisely the kinds of factual findings that the Court, absent clear error cannot disturb. Neither side elaborated on the controversy or defended its position doctrinally or normatively. That the highest Court could split 5-4 on such a crucial issue without even mentioning the stakes or the …

Chemoselective Formation Of Unsymmetrically Substituted Ethers From Catalytic Reductive Coupling Of Aldehydes And Ketones With Alcohols In Aqueous Solution, Nishantha Kumara Kalutharage, Chae S. Yi

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

A well-defined cationic Ru–H complex catalyzes reductive etherification of aldehydes and ketones with alcohols. The catalytic method employs environmentally benign water as the solvent and cheaply available molecular hydrogen as the reducing agent to afford unsymmetrical ethers in a highly chemoselective manner.

A Cu4S Model For The Nitrous Oxide Reductase Active Sites Supported Only By Nitrogen Ligands, Brittany J. Johnson, William E. Antholine, Sergey V. Lindeman, Neal P. Mankad

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

To model the (His)₇Cu₄S_n (n = 1 or 2) active sites of nitrous oxide reductase, the first Cu₄(μ₄-S) cluster supported only by nitrogen donors has been prepared using amidinate supporting ligands. Structural, magnetic, spectroscopic, and computational characterization is reported. Electrochemical data indicates that the 2-hole model complex can be reduced reversibly to the 1-hole state and irreversibly to the fully reduced state.

Λcdm Cosmology + Chaotic Inflation, Peter A. Farago

Theses and Dissertations

ΛCDM cosmology is described in terms of general relativity and the Robertson-Walker metric. The evolution of the observable universe, currently dominated by dark energy (Λ) and cold dark matter (CDM), is presented in terms of its thermal history. CDM is extended to include an inflation epoch that accelerates the early expansion rate to near exponential levels. It is shown that inflation solves several problems in CDM and produces perturbations in the metric that lead to the observed anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background and the formation of large scale cosmological structures. Various theories of inflation are explored. Predictions of inflation …

Gas-Phase Reactions And Mechanistic Details Of Gold, Silver, And Iridium Complexes, Christopher Swift

Theses and Dissertations

The ever increasing demand for more efficient and environmentally benign routes for synthesizing target compounds, has led to the use of organometallic catalysts. This demand has created the need to understand the mechanistic details that are at work in these organometallic catalytic cycles. Along with this, there is a demand for new organometallic catalysts that are tailored for specific transformations. This presents a myriad of challenges for organometallic chemists. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to gain an understanding of the reaction mechanisms at work when the intermediates are too short lived to be observed in the condensed phase. It is …

Femtosecond Laser Beam Propagation Through Corneal Tissue: Evaluation Of Therapeutic Laser-Stimulated Second And Third-Harmonic Generation, William R. Calhoun Iii

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most recent advancements in laser technology is the development of ultrashort pulsed femtosecond lasers (FSLs). FSLs are improving many fields due to their unique extreme precision, low energy and ablation characteristics. In the area of laser medicine, ophthalmic surgeries have seen very promising developments. Some of the most commonly performed surgical operations in the world, including laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis (LASIK), lens replacement (cataract surgery), and keratoplasty (cornea transplant), now employ FSLs for their unique abilities that lead to improved clinical outcome and patient satisfaction.

The application of FSLs in medical therapeutics is a recent development, and although …

Characteristics Of Feedback That Influence Student Confidence And Performance During Mathematical Modeling, Hyunyi Jung, Heidi A. Diefes-Dux, Aladar K. Horvath, Kelsey Joy Rodgers, Monica E. Cardella

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

This study focuses on characteristics of written feedback that influence students’ performance and confidence in addressing the mathematical complexity embedded in a Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA). MEAs are authentic mathematical modeling problems that facilitate students’ iterative development of solutions in a realistic context. We analyzed 132 first-year engineering students’ confidence levels and mathematical model scores on aMEA(pre and post feedback), along with teaching assistant feedback given to the students. The findings show several examples of affective and cognitive feedback that students reported that they used to revise their models. Students’ performance and confidence in developing mathematical models can be increased when …

The Transmuted Exponentiated Generalized-G Family Of Distributions, Haitham M. Yousof, Ahmed Z. Afify, Morad Alizadeh, Nadeem Shafique Butt, Gholamhossein Hamedani

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

We introduce a new class of continuous distributions called the transmuted exponentiated generalized-G family which extends the exponentiated generalized-G class introduced by Cordeiro et al. (2013). We provide some special models for the new family. Some of its mathematical properties including explicit expressions for the ordinary and incomplete moments, generating function, Rényi and Shannon entropies, order statistics and probability weighted moments are derived. The estimation of the model parameters is performed by maximum likelihood. The flexibility of the proposed family is illustrated by means of an applications to real dataset.

Characterizations Of Transmuted Complementary Weibull Geometric Distribution, Gholamhossein Hamedani

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

We present certain characterizations of a recently introduced distribution (Afify et al., 2014), called Transmuted Complementary Weibull Geometric distribution based on: hazard function ; a simple relation between two truncated moments. We like to mention that the characterization which is expressed in terms of the ratio of truncated moments is stable in the sense of weak convergence. It does not require a closed form for the cumulative distribution function and serves as a bridge between a first order differential equation and probability.

Ua94/6/17 Student / Alumni Personal Papers Wku Annie Reis, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Annie Reis during her years as a student at Western Kentucky State Normal School.

Ua1c11/74 Charles Patterson Photo Collection, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Photographs removed from Charles Patterson's scrapbook.

Design Of Cox-1 Inhibitors Utilizing Class I Isosteres, Class Ii Isosteres, And Nonclassical Bioisosteres For Substituent Substitution On Proved Parent Structures, Ronald Bartzatt

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Aims: To identify isosteres and bioisosteres suitable for substitution on the molecular scaffold of meclofenamic acid and tolfenamic acid. The compounds will be studied to determine drug-likeness and other properties.
Study Design: Isosteres and bioisosteres were selected and emplaced on the scaffold of meclofenamic acid and tolfenamic acid to ascertain drug-likeness outcome. Drug candidates were selected based on favorable drug-likeness.
Place and Duration of Study: Chemistry Department, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha Nebraska from March 2015 to May 2015.
Methodology: Two non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, meclofenamic acid and tolfenamic acid, are selected based on versatile isosteres and bioisosteres substitution. Placement …

Measuring The Alkylation Kinetics And Drug Likeness Of Four Candidate Antineoplastic Compounds, Ronald Bartzatt

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Aims: To synthesize small molecule alkylating compounds and analyze the kinetics of the alkylation in aqueous solution. Determine molecular properties and the drug likeness of these four compounds as potential antineoplastic agents and apply statistical analysis to identify interrelationships of properties.

Study Design: Four compounds were synthesized, characterized, and studied for alkylation capability. The alkylation kinetics were elucidated, as well as drug likeness properties. The interrelationships of properties were examined by statistical methodology.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Chemistry, Durham Science Center, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha NE, from May 2015 to June 2015.

Methodology: Four compounds …

In Game Engine Documentation, Zachary A. Pierce

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The In Game Engine is a game that simulates the functionality of a game engine through simple tasks such as entity creation, interaction, management, and behavior through a user interface. The project was created in the Unreal Engine and utilizes the Blueprints Visual Scripting system to handle these tasks for developers.

Theoretical Foundation Of Cyclostationary Eof Analysis For Geophysical And Climatic Variables: Concepts And Examples, Kwang-Yul Kim, Benjamin Hamlington, Hanna Na

CCPO Publications

Natural variability is an essential component of observations of all geophysical and climate variables. In principal component analysis (PCA), also called empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis, a set of orthogonal eigenfunctions is found from a spatial covariance function. These empirical basis functions often lend useful insights into physical processes in the data and serve as a useful tool for developing statistical methods. The underlying assumption in PCA is the stationarity of the data analyzed; that is, the covariance function does not depend on the origin of time. The stationarity assumption is often not justifiable for geophysical and climate variables even …