Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Why Are Some Plant Species Missing From Restorations? A Diagnostic Tool For Temperate Grassland Ecosystems, Marcello De Vitis, Kayri Havens, Rebecca S. Barak, Louise Egerton-Warburton, Adrienne R. Ernst, Matt Evans, Jeremie B. Fant, Alicia J. Foxx, Kyndall Hadley, Jim Jabcon, Joan O’Shaughnessey, Sai Ramakrishna, David Sollenberger, Sophie Taddeo, Rafael Urbina-Casanova, Chris Woolridge, Lan Xu, Jacob Zeldin, Andrea T. Kramer

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

The U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to accelerate actions to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, and re-establish ecosystem functioning and species diversity. The practice of ecological restoration has made great progress in recent decades, as has recognition of the importance of species diversity to maintaining the long-term stability and functioning of restored ecosystems. Restorations may also focus on specific species to fulfill needed functions, such as supporting dependent wildlife or mitigating extinction risk. Yet even in the most carefully planned and managed restoration, target species may fail to germinate, establish, or persist. To support the successful …

Cancer Incidence And Stage At Diagnosis Among People With Psychotic Disorders: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis., Jared C Wootten, Joshua C Wiener, Phillip S Blanchette, Kelly K. Anderson

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

Research regarding the incidence of cancer among people with psychotic disorders relative to the general population is equivocal, although the evidence suggests that they have more advanced stage cancer at diagnosis. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the incidence and stage at diagnosis of cancer among people with, relative to those without, psychotic disorders. We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases. Articles were included if they reported the incidence and/or stage at diagnosis of cancer in people with psychotic disorders. Random effects meta-analyses were used to determine risk of cancer and odds of advanced stage …

Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus Horridus): A Species Conservation Assessment For The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project, Melissa J. Panella, Dan Fogell, Colleen Rothe-Groleau

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission: Publications

The primary goal in the development of at-risk species conservation assessments is to compile biological and ecological information that may assist conservation practitioners in making decisions regarding the conservation of species of interest. The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project recognizes the timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) as a Tier 1 at-risk species. Provided here are general management recommendations regarding timber rattlesnakes. Conservation practitioners will need to use their professional judgment for management decisions based on objectives, location, and site-specific conditions. Based on the body of literature and available data, this species conservation assessment provides an overview of our current knowledge of timber …

Toi-1468: A System Of Two Transiting Planets, A Super-Earth And A Mini-Neptune, On Opposite Sides Of The Radius Valley, P. Chaturvedi, P. Bluhm, E. Nagel, A. P. Hatzes, G. Morello, M. Brady, J. Korth, K. Molaverdikhani, D. Kossakowski, J. A. Caballero, E. W. Guenther, E. Pallé, N. Espinoza, A. Seifahrt, N. Lodieu, C. Cifuentes, E. Furlan, P. J. Amado, T. Barclay, J. Bean, V. J. S. Béjar, G. Bergond, A. W. Boyle, D. Ciardi, K. A. Collins, K. I. Collins, E. Esparza-Borges, A. Fukui, C. L. Gnilka, R. Goeke, P. Guerra, T. Henning, E. Herrero, S. B. Howell, S. V. Jeffers, J. M. Jenkins, Eric L.N. Jensen, D. Kasper, T. Kodama, D. W. Latham, M. J. López-González, R. Luque, D. Montes, J. C. Morales, M. Mori, F. Murgas, N. Narita, G. Nowak, H. Parviainen, V. M. Passegger, A. Quirrenbach, S. Reffert, A. Reiners, I. Ribas, G. R. Ricker, E. Rodriguez, C. Rodríguez-López, M. Schlecker, R. P. Schwarz, A. Schweitzer, S. Seager, G. Stefánsson, C. Stockdale, L. Tal-Or, J. D. Twicken, S. Vanaverbeke, G. Wang, D. Watanabe, J. N. Winn, M. Zechmeister

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

We report the discovery and characterization of two small transiting planets orbiting the bright M3.0V star TOI-1468 (LSPM J0106+1913), whose transit signals were detected in the photometric time series in three sectors of the TESS mission. We confirm the planetary nature of both of them using precise radial velocity measurements from the CARMENES and MAROON-X spectrographs, and supplement them with ground-based transit photometry. A joint analysis of all these data reveals that the shorter-period planet, TOI-1468 b (P_b = 1.88 d), has a planetary mass of M_b = 3.21 ± 0.24 M_⊕ and a radius of …

Shell Theory: A Statistical Model Of Reality, Wen-Yan Lin, Siying Liu, Changhao Ren, Ngai-Man Cheung, Hongdong Li, Yasuyuki Matsushita

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Machine learning's grand ambition is the mathematical modeling of reality. The recent years have seen major advances using deep-learned techniques that model reality implicitly; however, corresponding advances in explicit mathematical models have been noticeably lacking. We believe this dichotomy is rooted in the limitations of the current statistical tools, which struggle to make sense of the high dimensional generative processes that natural data seems to originate from. This paper proposes a new, distance based statistical technique which allows us to develop elegant mathematical models of such generative processes. Our model suggests that each semantic concept has an associated distinctive-shell which …

Hummingbird Diversity, Abundance, And Feeding Interactions Across Three Floral Communities On Mount Totumas, Chiriquí, Panamá, Zachary Ginn

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

(Trochilidae) are a large Neotropical bird family of nectar-feeders that have evolved as pollinators of many Neotropical plants. Interactions between hummingbirds and plants form mutualistic networks that may change in structure over environmental and anthropogenic gradients. While the unique dynamics of hummingbird diversity and floral interactions have been studied throughout the Neotropics, differing drivers between locations emphasizes the need for further local research. This deficit is especially crucial in biodiverse and understudied locations like the Western Highlands of Panamá. In this study, I investigated how hummingbird diversity, abundance, and floral interactions differed between Cloud Forest, Garden, and Oak Forest on …

How Elevation Affects Epiphyte Distribution: An Analysis In Epiphyte Distribution Changes At Different Elevations And Tree Strata In Santa Lucia Cloud Forest Reserve, Ecuador, Nicole L. Melnick

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Cloud forests are unique ecosystems due to their tropical nature, high elevations, and extremely high presence of epiphytes that serve many important roles for the ecosystem’s biotic and abiotic components. As epiphytes can make up anywhere from one-quarter (Foster 2001) to a half (Gómez González et al. 2017) of all local plant species in cloud forests, it is essential to understand how their habitat distributions change with elevation and whether climate change will have a significant effect on that. This study used observational survey methods to record the amount of monocots (separately counted bromeliads and orchids), dicots, ferns, and percent …

The Future Of Architecture: Measuring The Sustainability Of Paradigm Shifting Architectural Interventions, Jake M. Cohen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Sustainable development in the built environment seems paradoxical given that the architecture, construction, and buildings sector is one of most polluting, wasteful, and inefficient industries. Despite this notion, the role of the architect is evolving and their influence on design is expanding beyond ideas for physical structures and into designing interactions between the built environment and components such as policy, material usage, sustainability, and urban regeneration. Architects that are able to implement paradigm shifting design ideas that improve the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability can be catalytic for systemic change and act as a vehicle to move away …

How Spirituality Intensifies Sustainability: A Case Study Of Ananda Valley In Northern Portugal, Mia Handler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The religious affiliations of citizens in the West are currently shifting away from the fundamentalist, traditional structures of the past towards more alternative spiritualities. Furthermore, as a result of the climate crisis, ecovillages are becoming increasingly popular. Ecovillages are intentional, “sustainable” communities that seek to reduce consumption, live in harmony with nature, and create strong social bonds. They are characterized by varying levels of spiritual involvement (Greenberg, 2014, p. 274). As such, the objective of this paper is to study the relationship between spirituality and environmentally-friendly practices and attitudes, using the ecovillage Ananda Valley – an Ananda Marga Master Unit …

Las Interacciones Entre La Migración Y El Sistema Alimentario Globalizado En Oaxaca, México, Abby Dryden

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

En este artículo tiene como guía tres preguntas: 1. ¿Cómo interactúa el sistema alimentario globalizado con la migración interna en Oaxaca y entre Oaxaca y los Estados Unidos? 2. ¿Qué impacto el proceso de globalización tiene para el sistema alimentario y para las comunidades en Oaxaca? 3. ¿Cómo los temas de seguridad de comida y soberanía de alimentos están impactando Oaxaca? Esta investigación tiene lugar en Oaxaca, México porque estuve viviendo allí por tres meses y es un buen lugar para esta investigación en el contexto de la diversidad allí. Si bien es cierto que existe mucha información sobre el …

Triple-Differential Cross Sections In Three-Dimensional Kinematics For Electron-Impact-Ionization Dynamics Of Tetrahydrofuran At 250-Ev Projectile Energy, Xiaorui Xue, Deepthy Maria Mootheril, Esam Ali, Maomao Gong, Shaokui Jia, Jiaqi Zhou, Enliang Wang, Jian Xing Li, Xiangjun Chen, Don H. Madison, Alexander Dorn, Xueguang Ren

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report a combined experimental and theoretical study of the ionization dynamics of tetrahydrofuran induced by 250 eV electron impact in which the highest occupied molecular orbital is ionized leading to the stable parent ion. Experimentally a reaction microscope was used, covering nearly the entire 4π solid angle for the ejected slow electron. We present the triple-differential cross sections for the projectile scattering angles of θ1 = -10∘ as a function of the emission angle of the ejected electrons with energies of E2=10, 15, and 20 eV, i.e., for asymmetric energy sharing between the scattered and ejected electrons. The measured …

Dynamical Excitation Processes And Correlations Of Three-Body Two-Dimensional Mixtures, G. Bougas, Simeon I. Mistakidis, P. Giannakeas, P. Schmelcher

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Scheme Is Proposed To Dynamically Excite Distinct Eigenstate Superpositions In Three-Body Bose-Fermi Mixtures Confined In A Two-Dimensional Harmonic Trap. The System Is Initialized In A Noninteracting State With A Variable Spatial Extent, And The Scattering Lengths Are Subsequently Quenched Spanning The Regime From Weak To Strong Interactions. For Spatial Widths Smaller Than The Three-Body Harmonic Oscillator Length, A Superposition Of Trimers And Atom-Dimers Is Dynamically Attained, Otherwise Trap States Are Predominantly Populated, As Inferred From The Frequency Spectrum Of The Fidelity. Accordingly, The Tan Contacts Evince The Buildup Of Short-Range Two- And Three-Body Correlations In The Course Of The …

Approximation By Basis Pursuit: Background And Application To The Construction Of Efficient Spline Approximations, Babita Timalsina

Graduate Student Scholarship

Basis Pursuit was developed primarily as a tool in the field of signal processing, beginning in the mid 1990’s. The idea is to model the behavior of discrete signals using a wide range of functional behaviors and scales and to obtain an accurate and efficient representation of the signal using a minimal number of functions from a large “dictionary” of possible behaviors. The key observation is by formulating the representation as an ℓ1 optimization, the problem can be posed as a linear program so that the optimal solution uses no more than the number of constraints - it must be …

Binding Of Alpha-Crystallin To Cortical And Nuclear Lens Lipid Membranes Derived From A Single Lens, Raju Timsina, Samantha Wellisch, Dieter Haemmerle, Laxman Mainali

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Several studies reported that α-crystallin concentrations in the eye lens cytoplasm decrease with a corresponding increase in membrane-bound α-crystallin with age and cataracts. The influence of the lipid and cholesterol composition difference between cortical membrane (CM) and nuclear membrane (NM) on α-crystallin binding to membranes is still unclear. This study uses the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spin-labeling method to investigate the α-crystallin binding to bovine CM and NM derived from the total lipids extracted from a single lens. Compared to CMs, NMs have a higher percentage of membrane surface occupied by α-crystallin and binding affinity, correlating with less mobility and …

Sustainable Fashion Design Exploration: Transformation To Zero-Waste, Colleen Moretz

Sustainable Fashion Design Exploration

Sustainability has been at the center of my scholarship across the apparel and textile disciplines. Focusing my creative design scholarship on sustainability generates awareness of sustainable issues within the apparel industry to hopefully encourage change in fashion practices. This concentration on sustainability has been an evolution of investigating sustainable design processes through the exploration of transformation, aesthetics, zero waste, and up-cycling.

Learning To Automate Follow-Up Question Generation Using Process Knowledge For Depression Triage On Reddit Posts, Shrey Gupta, Anmol Agarwal, Manas Gaur, Kaushik Roy, Vignesh Narayanan, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Amit Sheth

Publications

Conversational Agents (CAs) powered with deep language models (DLMs) have shown tremendous promise in the domain of mental health. Prominently, the CAs have been used to provide informational or therapeutic services (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy) to patients. However, the utility of CAs to assist in mental health triaging has not been explored in the existing work as it requires a controlled generation of follow-up questions (FQs), which are often initiated and guided by the mental health professionals (MHPs) in clinical settings. In the context of `depression', our experiments show that DLMs coupled with process knowledge in a mental health questionnaire …

Cnn-Based Dendrite Core Detection From Microscopic Images Of Directionally Solidified Ni-Base Alloys, Xiaoguang Li

Theses and Dissertations

Dendrite core is the center point of the dendrite. The information of dendrite core is very helpful for material scientists to analyze the properties of materials. Therefore, detecting the dendrite core is a very important task in the material science field. Meanwhile, because of some special properties of the dendrites, this task is also very challenging. Different from the typical detection problems in the computer vision field, detecting the dendrite core aims to detect a single point location instead of the bounding-box. As a result, the existing regressing bounding-box based detection methods can not work well on this task because …

The Infosys Times, Vol. 8, No. 1, St. Cloud State University

The Infosys TIMES

• Executive Leadership Forum
• InfoSys Diaries
• Alum Statement
• Christofer Sears presents to IS Dept
• Advocating Cybersecurity Awareness
• Cybersecurity Awareness Week
• Federated Insurance & EPAM
• Faculty Spotlight/Career Highlights
• Welcome back Dr. Susantha Herath
• Amy Ness, EPAM

Lemurs Optimizer: A New Metaheuristic Algorithm For Global Optimization, Ammar Kamal Abasi, Sharif Naser Makhadmeh, Mohammed Azmi Al-Betar, Osama Ahmad Alomari, Mohammed A. Awadallah, Zaid Abdi Alkareem Alyasseri, Iyad Abu Doush, Ashraf Elnagar, Eman H. Alkhammash, Myriam Hadjouni

Machine Learning Faculty Publications

The Lemur Optimizer (LO) is a novel nature-inspired algorithm we propose in this paper. This algorithm’s primary inspirations are based on two pillars of lemur behavior: leap up and dance hub. These two principles are mathematically modeled in the optimization context to handle local search, exploitation, and exploration search concepts. The LO is first benchmarked on twenty-three standard optimization functions. Additionally, the LO is used to solve three real-world problems to evaluate its performance and effectiveness. In this direction, LO is compared to six well-known algorithms: Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), Bat Algorithm …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter, October 2022, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

In this Issue:

--- UNI Climate Survey
--- Women of Afghanistan
--- Iowa DNR and IAEAP Release new Air Quality Self-Audit Guide to help Small Businesses
--- Academic Coaching at CIEP
--- IWRC & IAEE Presents: The Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on the Energy Industry Webinar
--- Iowa Waste Reduction Center targets Community Gardens and Farmers Markets for food waste reduction training and assistance
--- Come visit us at i-BEST 2022!
--- Air Quality Permits Under Review
--- Free Energy Assessments
--- Industry News

Exploring The Impact Of Gender Bias Mitigation Approaches On A Downstream Classification Task, Nasim Sobhani, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference Papers

Natural language models and systems have been shown to reflect gender bias existing in training data. This bias can impact on the downstream task that machine learning models, built on this training data, are to accomplish. A variety of techniques have been proposed to mitigate gender bias in training data. In this paper we compare different gender bias mitigation approaches on a classification task. We consider mitigation techniques that manipulate the training data itself, including data scrubbing, gender swapping and counterfactual data augmentation approaches. We also look at using de-biased word embeddings in the representation of the training data. We …

Magnetic Methods To Characterize The Emplacement Of The Nodule Point Intrusion (Marrowstone Island, Wa), Charlie Nuncio

Geology Graduate and Undergraduate Student Scholarship

The mafic intrusion of Nodule Point, Marrowstone Island, WA has sparse scientific literature to substantiate the local geologic history around its emplacement conditions. To fill this gap, rock magnetism and paleomagnetic methods have been applied to the intrusion and the sandstone of Scow Bay host rock. Samples taken from both lithologies were subject to thermal and alternating field demagnetization to assess paleomagnetic components. The Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) of samples was measured, and the maximum axis of susceptibility, K1, was used as an analog to hypothesize emplacement conditions. The host rock: the sandstone of Scow Bay, returned magnetization characteristics …

Bounds On Cohomological Support Varieties, Benjamin Briggs, Eloisa Grifo, Josh Pollitz

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

Over a local ring R, the theory of cohomological support varieties attaches to any bounded complex M of finitely generated R-modules an algebraic variety VR(M) that encodes homological properties of M. We give lower bounds for the dimension of VR(M) in terms of classical invariants of R. In particular, when R is Cohen-Macaulay and not complete intersection we find that there are always varieties that cannot be realized as the cohomological support of any complex. When M has finite projective dimension, we also give an upper bound for dimVR(M) in terms of the dimension of the radical of the homotopy …

An Energy Efficient Smart Metering System Using Edge Computing In Lora Network, Preti Kumari, Rahul Mishra, Hari Prabhat Gupta, Tanima Dutta, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

An important research issue in smart metering is to correctly transfer the smart meter readings from consumers to the operator within the given time period by consuming minimum energy. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient smart metering system using Edge computing in Long Range (LoRa). We assume that all appliances in a house are connected to a smart meter that is affixed with Edge device and LoRa node for processing and transferring the processed smart meter readings, respectively. The energy consumption of the appliances can be represented as an energy multivariate time series. The system first proposes a …

Efficient Data Collection In Iot Networks Using Trajectory Encoded With Geometric Shapes, Xiaofei Cao, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The mobile edge computing (MEC) paradigm changes the role of edge devices from data producers and requesters to data consumers and processors. MEC mitigates the bandwidth limitation between the edge server and the remote cloud by directly processing the large amount of data locally generated by the network of the internet of things (IoT) at the edge. An efficient data-gathering scheme is crucial for providing quality of service (QoS) within MEC. To reduce redundant data transmission, this paper proposes a data collection scheme that only gathers the necessary data from IoT devices (like wireless sensors) along a trajectory. Instead of …

Aircraft Engine Particulate Matter Emissions From Sustainable Aviation Fuels: Results From Ground-Based Measurements During The Nasa/Dlr Campaign Eclif2/Nd-Max, Tobias Schripp, Bruce E. Anderson, Uwe Bauder, Bastian Rauch, Joel C. Corbin, Greg J. Smallwood, Prem Lobo, Ewan C. Crosbie, Michael A. Shook, Richard C. Miake-Lye, Zhenhong Yu, Andrew Freedman, Philip D. Whitefield, Claire E. Robinson

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

The use of alternative jet fuels by commercial aviation has increased substantially in recent years. Beside the reduction of carbon dioxide emission, the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) may have a positive impact on the reduction of particulate emissions. This study summarizes the results from a ground-based measurement activity conducted in January 2018 as part of the ECLIF2/ND-MAX campaign in Ramstein, Germany. Two fossil reference kerosenes and three different blends with the renewable fuel component HEFA-SPK (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene) were burned in an A320 with V2527-A5 engines to investigate the effect of fuel naphthalene/aromatic …

The Road Not Taken: Exploring Alias Analysis Based Optimizations Missed By The Compiler, Khushboo Chitre, Piyus Kedia, Rahul Purandare

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Context-sensitive inter-procedural alias analyses are more precise than intra-procedural alias analyses. However, context-sensitive inter-procedural alias analyses are not scalable. As a consequence, most of the production compilers sacrifice precision for scalability and implement intra-procedural alias analysis. The alias analysis is used by many compiler optimizations, including loop transformations. Due to the imprecision of alias analysis, the program’s performance may suffer, especially in the presence of loops.

Previous work proposed a general approach based on code-versioning with dynamic checks to disambiguate pointers at runtime. However, the overhead of dynamic checks in this approach is 𝑂(𝑙𝑜𝑔 𝑛), which is substantially high to …

Understanding The Vulnerability Of Staten Island's Eastern Coastline From A Beach Morphology Perspective, Jane L. Alexander, Amaury Acevedo, Jacklyn Reiszel

Publications and Research

Staten Island’s beaches were shown to be vulnerable to storm surge during Hurricane Sandy, with severe inundation into neighborhoods along the eastern shoreline; the area chosen for this study, and the area in which the Army Corps of Engineers plan to start constructing a seawall. A preliminary survey in summer 2018 suggested that this shoreline is reflective - i.e., one that changes little over the course of a year, but which is vulnerable to erosion during major storm events. The current work is designed to test the hypothesis that this is a reflective shoreline by completing regular field surveys over …

Permafrost And Climate Change: Carbon Cycle Feedbacks From The Warming Arctic, Edward A. G. Schuur, Benjamin W. Abbott, Roisin Commane, Jessica G. Ernakovich, Eugenie Euskirchen, Gustaf Hugelius, Guido Grosse, Miriam Jones, Charlie Koven, Victor Leshyk, David Lawrence, Michael M. Loranty, Marguerite Mauritz, David Olefeldt, Susan Natali, Heidi Rodenhizer, Verity Salmon, Christina Schadel, Jens Strauss, Claire C. Treat, Merritt Turetsky

Faculty Publications

Rapid Arctic environmental change affects the entire Earth system as thawing permafrost ecosystems release greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Understanding how much permafrost carbon will be released, over what time frame, and what the relative emissions of carbon dioxide and methane will be is key for understanding the impact on global climate. In addition, the response of vegetation in a warming climate has the potential to offset at least some of the accelerating feedback to the climate from permafrost carbon. Temperature, organic carbon, and ground ice are key regulators for determining the impact of permafrost ecosystems on the global carbon …

Landscape Change, Scale, And Human Response To Change In The Great Plains, Kate Bird

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Great Plains landscapes are undergoing changes at multiple spatial and temporal scales due to processes ranging from woody encroachment to climate change. These changes may fundamentally alter the agroecosystems of the Great Plains such that the provisioning of ecosystem services including biodiversity and livestock production is affected. Improving our understanding of the effects of landscape change at multiple scales and how humans perceive and respond to these changes is important for facilitating research and management that enhances the resilience of these agroecosystems. As such, I first applied discontinuity theory and graph theory to evaluate the functional connectivity of the Central …