Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Learning-Based Ubiquitous Sensing For Solving Real-World Problems, Woosub Jung

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Recently, as the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has become smaller and cheaper, ubiquitous sensing ability within these devices has become increasingly accessible. Learning methods have also become more complex in the field of computer science ac- cordingly. However, there remains a gap between these learning approaches and many problems in other disciplinary fields. In this dissertation, I investigate four different learning-based studies via ubiquitous sensing for solving real-world problems, such as in IoT security, athletics, and healthcare. First, I designed an online intrusion detection system for IoT devices via power auditing. To realize the real-time system, I created a …

Climate Impacts On Spatiotemporal Habitat Usage Of Mid-Atlantic Fishes, Adena Jade Schonfeld

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Climate change has altered marine environments, most notably by increasing water temperatures and reducing dissolved oxygen concentrations. These persistent changes have impacted the phenology and spatiotemporal habitat usage of mobile species, often through distributional shifts poleward or to deeper water. Climate-driven distributional shifts have been documented for numerous species inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean along the US East Coast, a region disproportionately affected by climate change. Adjacent estuaries are experiencing similar alterations to their physical environments and biotic community composition. Many estuarine species are seasonal residents and changes to environmental conditions within an estuary can result in altered usage and residence …

Development Of 3d And 360 Gis-Based Models To Visualize Projected Sea Level Rise In Coastal Virginia, Candice M. Vinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Science communication is a skill that can be strengthened with practice. Like any skill, it helps to know what you need to practice in order to get better at it. When presenting information to an audience, the skill of science communication comes into play as early as the first draft of a presentation. As you think about how you will tell your story to the audience, you likely consider including text on slides, images, graphs, maps, or even videos. However, it is crucial to remember that accessibility barriers are something we must often consciously work to rid our presentations of, …

Achieving Real-Time Dnn Execution On Mobile Devices With Compiler Optimizations, Wei Niu

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Deep learning, particularly deep neural networks (DNNs), has led to significant advancements in various fields, such as autonomous driving, natural language processing, extended reality (XR), and view synthesis. Mobile and edge devices, with their efficient and specialized processors and suitability for real-time scenarios, have become the primary carriers for these emerging applications. The advancements in AutoML tools (e.g., Network Architecture Search) and training techniques have resulted in increasingly complex and deep DNN architectures with larger computational requirements. However, achieving real-time DNN execution (inference) on mobile devices is a challenging task due to the limited computing and storage resources available on …

Matfusion: A Generative Diffusion Model For Svbrdf Capture, Samuel Lee Sartor

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

We formulate SVBRDF estimation from photographs as a diffusion task. To model the distribution of spatially varying materials, we first train a novel unconditional SVBRDF diffusion backbone model on a large set of 312,165 synthetic spatially varying material exemplars. This SVBRDF diffusion backbone model, named MatFusion, can then serve as a basis for refining a conditional diffusion model to estimate the material properties from a photograph under controlled or uncontrolled lighting. Our backbone MatFusion model is trained using only a loss on the reflectance properties, and therefore refinement can be paired with more expensive rendering methods without the need for …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Two Sets Of Group 12 Complexes With Organic Ligands, Michelle Sturner

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The complexes of group 12 elements are subjects of incredible interest due to differences in their bioactivity. Zinc is an essential element of life and is required for many bodily processes including gene production, growth, and the immune response. Cadmium and mercury are both toxic elements to humans. Part of their activity is due to their ability to replace zinc metal centers. Synthesis of new group 12 complexes can provide insight regarding their bioactivity and how replacement of metal centers can affect the structure of enzymes. In this thesis, the preparation and characterization of two sets of group 12 complexes …

Subsurface Structure And Impacts Of Marine Heatwaves In The Chesapeake Bay, Nathan P. Shunk

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Extreme temperature events known as Marine Heatwaves (MHW), akin to atmospheric heatwaves, have only recently received attention by the estuarine scientific community. Thus far, studies have focused solely on surface events due to scarcity of long-term subsurface data. This study investigates, for the first time, the subsurface temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO) anomalies associated with surface MHW events in a large, temperate, partially mixed estuary: the Chesapeake Bay (CB). Using over three decades (1986-2021) of in-situ data from several long-term monitoring programs in the CB (including sub daily moored measurements and monthly/bimonthly cruises along the main stem) and a global …

Achieving Equitable Offshore Wind Development: Lessons From European Stakeholders, Kacey Hirshfeld

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Biden Administration has set aggressive offshore wind energy goals, aiming to have 30 gigawatts of offshore energy in place by 2030. This amount of energy has the potential to power 10 million homes (White House, 2022), helping the administration to reach larger clean energy goals. In Virginia, Dominion Energy aims to have 2.6 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2026, enough to power up to 660,000 homes (Dominion Energy).

While the upcoming offshore wind energy development will create clean energy and green jobs, the ocean is no longer an open field for development and already supports a complex matrix …

Exploring Pah Partitioning In Oysters Using Immunological Techniques, Kristen Madison Prossner

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Anthropogenic activities such as oil spills are major sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) pollution in the environment. Bivalves such as C. virginica can accumulate high levels of PAHs in tissue due to a limited metabolic capacity for these compounds. Accordingly, bivalves have served as key biomonitoring species for contaminants and exposure to PAH through seafood consumption can also be an important risk to human health due to the toxic and carcinogenic potential of these compounds. For evaluating bivalve PAH levels, conventional analyses are limited due to extensive time and expense and unreliability. This work demonstrates the application of immunological …

Identifying Factors Controlling Dinophysis Spp. Feeding, Growth, And Toxin Production Through Field And Lab Studies, Vanessa R. Strohm

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) and their associated phycotoxins pose a threat to both human and shellfish health around the world. Dinophysis spp., a causative organism of diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) in humans, and its two toxin classes: dinophysistoxins (DTXs) and pectenotoxins (PTXs), have been documented throughout the year in the Chesapeake Bay. While DTX concentrations currently remain below regulatory limits in regional seafood products, further research is needed to understand environmental drivers, both biotic and abiotic, that may be impacting Dinophysis spp. feeding on prey, growth, and toxin production. To characterize populations of Dinophysis in situ, an Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) …

Spectroscopy And Dynamics Of Atmospherically And Combustion-Relevant Collision Complexes, John Patrick Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Potential energy surfaces describing bimolecular collisions sensitively depend on the chemical functionality and the relative orientation of colliding partners, thus defining the accessibly reactive and nonreactive pathways. Herein, we investigate the peculiar product outcomes arising from Jahn-Teller distortion of the nitric oxide and methane complex (NO-CH4). We have reported an in-depth spectroscopic and dynamics study of NO-CH4 by utilizing conformation-specific and action spectroscopy, as well as velocity map imaging, to understand the fundamental dissociative mechanisms at play. Ultimately, we have gained information about how the Jahn Teller effect possibly impacts the potential product energy transfer pathways. There is a translationally …

Constraining Of The Minerνa Medium Energy Neutrino Flux Using Neutrino-Electron Scattering, Luis Zazueta

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments rely on the flux from accelerator-based neutrino beams. As experimental neutrino physics moves to the next generation of experiments a precise characterization of the neutrino flux on a given experiment becomes crucial to the goals of the experiments: to precisely determine the neutrino oscillation parameters.This work takes advantage of neutrino-electron scattering processes for their precisely predicted cross section. The observed number of scattering events can be used as a benchmark to constrain the neutrino flux. A measurement was made of the energy spectrum of neutrino-electron elastic scattering (νe-→νe-), using data from the antineutrino-enhanced run period …

Comparison Of Permafrost Thaw-Related Changes To Hydrological Response And Land Cover In Subarctic Peatland-Dominated Landscapes, Mikhail Mack

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The hydrological implications of discontinuous permafrost thaw in peatland-dominated basins are not well understood. While there is evidence suggesting that permafrost-thaw-driven land cover change increases annual runoff and the runoff ratio in the Taiga Plains of northwestern Canada, few studies have evaluated the impact on small to medium-sized basins (< 10⁵ km²) outside this ecoregion. Here, we assess runoff, runoff ratio, and precipitation trends for 34 peatland-dominated basins, of which 28 are in the discontinuous and sporadic permafrost zones and 6 in adjacent permafrost-free environments. We calculated annual and monthly trends between 1970 and 2016 using the Mann-Kendall …

Asynchronous Student Engagement In Analysis Of Climate Data Achieves Learning Objectives Related To Climate Change Understanding, Statistical Competence, And Climate Anxiety, Thomas Meixner, B. Ciancarelli, E. P. Farrell, D. Silva Garcia, T. Josek, M. M. Kelly, Paul Antone Meister, D. Soule, Rebekka Darner

Faculty Publications – Biological Sciences

Learning in asynchronous online environments has gained importance over the last several decades, and educational environment shifts from the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have increased this need. Science educators and students need information about which approaches work in the asynchronous environment where informal feedback tends to be reduced, compared to other teaching modalities. In this study, we asynchronously implemented a learning module across 5 institutions that guided students (N = 199) from prescriptive data analysis through guided inquiry and eventually to open inquiry. The module focuses on the science behind climate change. Students work with the same authentic data sets …

Negotiating Infrastructural Citizenship Beyond The State: Philanthropy, Non-Profit Organizations, And The Flint Water Crisis, Melissa Heil

Faculty Publications-- Geography, Geology, and the Environment

The urban infrastructure literature has explored how infrastructure is tied to the politics of citizenship: states’ use of infrastructure to include/exclude populations and marginalized populations’ use of infrastructure to claim fuller citizenship. Often, this literature focuses on the relationship between governments and city dwellers, neglecting the role of other actors, like NGOs and philanthropic organizations, that influence infrastructural citizenship. A hallmark of neoliberalism in the Global North has been the transfer of responsibilities from the state to the non-profit sector, increasing these organizations’ power to shape urban citizenship. This paper examines how non-profit organizations participate in the politics of infrastructural …

A Clock Model For Planetary Conjunctions, Sunil Chebolu

Faculty Publications – Mathematics

[In lieu of an abstract, an excerpt from the introduction is presented]:

On 21 December 2020 the night sky offered a beautiful astronomical treat for stargazers worldwide. An exceptionally rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn brought them to 0.1 degrees of angular separation – a fifth of the full moon's diameter. It marked their closest approach since 1623 and the closest visible conjunction since 1226 (almost 800 years ago!). Astronomy enthusiasts crossed their fingers for clear skies and waited eagerly for this event. The internet and social media were inundated with pictures and news reports, celebrating the great conjunction of …

Emerging Red Sore Disease Of American Eel (Anguilla Rostrata) In Chesapeake Bay: Etiology, Epidemiology, And Impacts In Aquaculture And The Wild, Amanpreet Kaur Kohli

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Emerging infectious diseases in aquatic systems, both in aquaculture and in the wild, are a global concern. Many have proposed an uptick in marine diseases as a result of environmental changes including a warming climate, habitat modifications, trade and transfer of wildlife and aquaculture products, pollution, overharvesting of resources, and other anthropogenic impacts. These perturbations can disturb the delicate host-pathogen relationships and result in new diseases or exacerbate the existing diseases in a population. Diseases can lead to several direct and indirect effects in the ecosystem such as population declines and extinctions, and thereby a change in population dynamics, as …

From The Hubbard Model To Coulomb Interactions: Quantum Monte Carlo Computations In Strongly Correlated Systems, Zhi-Yu Xiao

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The study of interacting quantum many-body systems poses one of the main challenges in areas including condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, cold atoms physics, quantum chemistry, and materials science. Currently, no general approach is capable of handling the full complexity of interacting quantum systems, providing systematically accurate results across different ranges of many-body models and materials. The continued development of more general and more accurate numerical methodologies is instrumental in meeting the challenges of understanding and predicting the properties of interacting quantum systems. Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods represent an important class of many-body techniques extensively employed in studying correlated …

Efficient Parallelization Of Irregular Applications On Gpu Architectures, Qihan Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

With the enlarging computation capacity of general Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), leveraging GPUs to accelerate parallel applications has become a critical topic in academia and industry. However, a wide range of irregular applications with a computation-/memory-intensive nature cannot easily achieve high GPU utilization. The challenges mainly involve the following aspects: first, data dependence leads to a coarse-grained kernel; second, heavy GPU memory usage may cause frequent memory evictions and extra overhead of I/O; third, specific computation patterns produce memory redundancies; last, workload balance and data reusability conjunctly benefit the overall performance, but there may exist a dynamic trade-off between them. …

Environmental Education In The Classroom: Selected Early-Career Teachers' Experiences Navigating Pre-Service And In-Service Activity Systems, Sarah Mcguire Nuss

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Recent publications argue that to prepare teachers of all grade levels to be confident and competent in incorporating environmental education into their classrooms, pre-service teacher training is effective (e.g., J. T. McDonald & Dominguez, 2010). But the systems in which teachers learn and work are complex, making professional learning about, and implementation of, environmental education both disparate and limited (Franzen, 2017). This study sought to understand the nature of participants’ experiences within and between teacher preparation and in-service learning systems as they relate to environmental education. Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) provided a framework to allow for deeper understanding of …

Dataset: A Numerical Simulation Of The Ocean, Sea Ice And Ice Shelves In The Amundsen Sea (Antarctica) Over The Period 2006-2022 And Its Associated Code And Input Files, Pierre St-Laurent

Data

A three-dimensional numerical model of the Amundsen Sea (Antarctica) was used to simulate the period Jan.2006-Mar.2022 under consistent atmospheric/oceanic forcings, bathymetry/ice shelf topography, and model equations/parameters. The model is an implementation of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS, https://www.myroms.org/) with extensions for sea ice (Budgell 2005) and ice shelves (Dinniman et al. 2011). It simulates the ocean hydrography and circulation, sea ice thermodynamics and dynamics, and the basal melt of the ice shelves, with a uniform horizontal mesh of 1.5km and 20 topography-following vertical levels. Forcings include the ERA5 reanalysis (3-hourly), 10 tidal constituents from CATS 2008, and ocean/sea ice …

Dataset: Baywide Distribution Of Benthic Ecological Functions In The Past Decades In The Chesapeake Bay, Philip Ignatoff, Xun Cai, Kara Gadeken

Data

We undertook the collection and analysis of long-term benthos data from the Chesapeake Bay Benthic Monitoring Plan. Multiple ecological function traits related to feeding and disturbance were assigned to each observed benthic species based on a thorough literature review. The spatial distributions of the ecological function groups will be utilized in a 3D hydrodynamic biogeochemistry model simulation. This approach aids in estimating the contributions of benthos to estuarine hypoxia and nutrient dynamics. Furthermore, it fosters a connection between ecologists and modelers, promoting collaborative efforts in understanding and modeling the ecosystem.

Warehouses In The Inland Empire: Displacing Land And Life, Katherine Gelsey

Pomona Senior Theses

The Inland Empire in Southern California embodies unique spatial and social configurations as a consequence of how settler colonialism has manifested locally in the region since the Spanish Mission Period. This work uses GIS software to estimate patterns of land conversion for residential, agricultural, and warehouse land from 2012 to 2022. Preliminary analysis suggests that thousands of people have been displaced by warehouse expansion over the ten-year period. In the twenty-first century, the Southern California logistics industry continues processes of land dispossession and racialized labor exploitation through displacing agricultural and residential land, exposing disproportionately low-income Black and Latine communities living …

Timber Island: A Screenplay, Lucas Cunningham

Pomona Senior Theses

A screenplay about the legacy of land use in the Pacific Northwest:

A family from old timber money looking to sell their expansive Pacific Northwest island estate. Two Parks Service surveyors, a Native American scientist, and a developer competing for the bid. A forest with its own agenda.

Against a backdrop of cedar trees and saltwater, tensions boil, ideologies clash, and buried secrets bubble to the surface.

Who will walk away with the deed to Timber Island? And what will it cost?

Using Spectroscopy Of Diatomic Molecules To Search For Physics Beyond The Standard Model, Sean Jackson

Pomona Senior Theses

This main focus of this thesis is the use of molecular spectroscopy in the search for New Physics. Diatomic molecules offer interesting experimental opportunities in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model, including CP-violations due to the electric dipole mo- ment of the electron and other parity non-conservation effects. The work presented here concentrates mainly on the PbF molecule. Due to its large internal electric field, low sen- sitivity to external magnetic fields, and the presence of low-lying states of opposite parity in the 207PbF isotopolgue, PbF remains a compelling candidate for parity non-conservation studies. A robust global fit …

Olson (W. Kent) Conservation Papers, 1931-2011, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

After college at Yale, W. Kent Olson's first charitable work began in 1971 at age 25 when he became the youngest person ever to direct the Appalachian Mountain Club's (AMC) combined Hut System, Pinkham Notch Camp, Saco River campgrounds. He was publisher and editor-in-chief of many AMC books, maps, magazines (including Appalachia), and published many of his own books and articles. Ken retired in 2006 from a three-decade conservation career that included 20 years as chief executive of three nonprofit corporations: The Nature Conservancy of Connecticut, American Rivers (formerly Amerian Rivers Conservation Council), and Friends of Acadia.

This collection …

Senator George J. Mitchell Center For Sustainability Solutions (University Of Maine) Publications, 1966-2007, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

The majority of the publications in this record group were created by the University of Maine's Land and Water Resource Center, which is now known as the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

The Land and Water Resource Center was established by the Water Resources Research Act of 1964 and was primarily funded by federal funds. The Center served the goals of stimulation and coordination of research, training and educational activities in the water resources disciplines, including soil suitability and land use. In 2000, the Center was renamed the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed …

Optimising A Defence-Aware Threat Modelling Diagram Incorporating A Defence-In-Depth Approach For The Internet-Of-Things, Menaka L. Godakanda

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Modern technology has proliferated into just about every aspect of life while improving the quality of life. For instance, IoT technology has significantly improved over traditional systems, providing easy life, time-saving, financial saving, and security aspects. However, security weaknesses associated with IoT technology can pose a significant threat to the human factor. For instance, smart doorbells can make household life easier, save time, save money, and provide surveillance security. Nevertheless, the security weaknesses in smart doorbells could be exposed to a criminal and pose a danger to the life and money of the household. In addition, IoT technology is constantly …

Investigation And Development Of Titanium Nitride Solid-State Potentiometric Ph Sensor, Shimrith Paul Shylendra

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The measurement of pH value is crucial parameter in various fields like, drinking water monitoring, food preparation, biomedical and environmental applications. The most common device for pH sensing is the conventional pH glass electrode. While glass electrodes have several advantages, such as Nernstian sensitivity, superior ion selectivity, excellent stability, and extensive operating range, they have several key disadvantages. pH glass electrodes need to be stored in buffer solutions, they are fragile and have limited size and shape, making them impractical for some applications, such as being potentially used as miniature pH sensors for capsule endoscopy and ambulatory esophageal pH monitoring. …

Comparison Of Methods For Metabolite Extraction From Rat Polycystic Kidney Tissue For Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry-Based Metabolomics, Matthew Oosthuizen

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study included a series of experiments focussed on comparing extraction protocols for metabolomics-based analysis of Lewis rat polycystic kidney (LPK) tissue samples and healthy Lewis rat tissue samples. Firstly, the optimal sample loading (mass of tissue) was investigated. Based on previous studies, the appropriate mass to test was approximately 5 mg. Three different volumes of tissue extract equivalent to 1, 2.5 and 5mg of pooled healthy kidney tissue and pooled polycystic kidney tissue were trialled to see how they differed in terms of the number of reproducible, uniquely identified peaks captured after metabolite extraction, derivatisation and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry …