Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Coach Otto: Creating A Program To Program Weightlifting, Haylee Rawdin

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper contains the software documentation for an app called Coach Otto. Coach Otto is an app that assists coaches in creating individualized Olympic Weightlifting programs for their athletes. The documentation for Coach Otto explores the product in the context of user-centered design. Through the use of a PR/FAQ, User Personas, User Journeys, and User Stories, the document explores who the users are, what challenges they face, and how Coach Otto aims to address those challenges.

Physical Properties Of Brackett Emitters In The Apogee Dr17 Catalog, Elliott Khilfeh, Hunter Campbell, Kevin R. Covey, Marina Kounkel, Richard Ballentyne

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In the process of accumulating mass (accretion), young stars channel ionized gas from the protoplanetary disk to the stellar surface along magnetic field lines. Upon impacting the photosphere, the gas cools down, recombining and emitting hydrogen spectral lines. Measuring these emission lines allows us to determine the temperature and density of the gas in those accretion streams. This then enables us to test whether those parameters depend on the accretion rate. We present measurements of equivalent widths and line ratios for Brackett (Br) 11 – 20 lines for 3366 observations of 940 pre-main sequence stars observed with APOGEE as of …

Exploring Methods Of Collecting Accessibility Feedback, Selah Bellscheidt

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Accessibility, the practice of making a website or application easily usable and understandable by people with disabilities, is essential to ensuring that all users are able to participate equally in using the Web. However, currently many websites have accessibility issues. This study interviews 11 software developers and designers to learn about the methods that they use to collect accessibility feedback during the development and maintenance of websites and mobile applications. The research revealed a lack of standardized accessibility education at the post-secondary level, as well as a myriad of methods used to obtain accessibility feedback from automatic accessibility checkers to …

Quadratic Neural Network Architecture As Evaluated Relative To Conventional Neural Network Architecture, Reid Taylor

Senior Theses

Current work in the field of deep learning and neural networks revolves around several variations of the same mathematical model for associative learning. These variations, while significant and exceptionally applicable in the real world, fail to push the limits of modern computational prowess. This research does just that: by leveraging high order tensors in place of 2nd order tensors, quadratic neural networks can be developed and can allow for substantially more complex machine learning models which allow for self-interactions of collected and analyzed data. This research shows the theorization and development of mathematical model necessary for such an idea to …

Esg Investing: From Fad To Force, Erin Cullen

Senior Theses

ESG Investing is the application of environmental, social, and governance factors to identify material investment risks and growth opportunities. Though traditionally viewed as non-financial factors, this paper asserts that ESG factors are indeed financially material. This work first surveys the current state of ESG Investing, its shortcomings, and its success despite these inherent issues. Section II adds a new perspective to ESG research by examining the applications of ESG scores in portfolio management. The study conducts t-tests to answer whether the typical holdings of an ESG mutual fund are more sustainable than those of traditional funds. The paper then focuses …

Simplified Ranking Model For The College Football Playoff Through Weighted Ranking, Edward Buckhouse

Senior Theses

This research project looks to create a better system to rank college football teams in playoff contention. It uses surveys of coaches to create a weighted guideline to evaluate wins and losses for each team. This constructs a value for adjusted wins that is based on coaches’ data but strays away from the inherent bias that any single coach would have when ranking teams. The resulting Top 25 were then compared to the College Football Playoff final regular season rankings to gauge the success of the new system. The Adjusted Wins system that was established properly picked 13 out of …

Interactive Sc Historical Map Application By Capistonsker, Joseph Cammarata, James Davis, Matt Duggan, Lauren Hodges, Ian Urton

Senior Theses

The Interactive SC Historical Map Application by CapiStonsker, hereby known as CapiStonsker, is an android application that creates a comprehensive user experience for individuals and groups to engage with their local Columbia history. Users of this application can discover local historical landmarks by scrolling through the interactive map on the home screen, searching for markers by name using the search bar, filtering by county, or scrolling through a list of markers sorted by proximity. If a marker catches a user's attention, he or she can tap it to learn more information, get directions, or save it for later by adding …

Cook-It!: A Web Application For Easy Meal Planning, Carol Juneau

Senior Theses

Cook-it! is a web application for meal planning based on the Django framework and deployed on the Heroku platform. This application has an intuitive interface to make it easy to use. The project has been developed over two semesters, roughly separated into a planning phase and an implementation phase. Cook-it! incorporates a robust feature set and an attractive design. Its core purpose is to make it easy for users to plan meals, interact with other users, and keep track of user information such as a grocery list.

Synthesis Of Carborane Pincer Complexes And Exploration Of The Reactivity Of Metal-Boron Bonds, Hindurangalage Don Asela Chathumal Jayaweera

Theses and Dissertations

Exploration of transition metal complexes with metal-boron bonds for the cooperative bond activation of small molecules in catalysis is one of the recent developments in novel synthetic strategies. The use of boron clusters as a modular platform for the formation of metal-boron bond has been successfully utilized by our and other groups. Carboranes are icosahedral boron-carbon molecular clusters that have gained attraction as multifunctional ligands due to their unique geometry, electronic properties, and versatility of functionalization methods. Their 3-D structure exerts a steric bulk around the exohedral substituent, either metal or non-metal center. Furthermore, due to the cluster geometry, five …

Automata-Theoretic Approaches To Planning In Robotics: Combinatorial Filter Minimization, Planning To Chronicle, Temporal Logic Planning With Soft Specifications, And Sensor Selection For Detecting Deviations From A Planned Itinerary, Hazhar Rahmani

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we present a collection of new planning algorithms that enable robots to achieve complex goals, beyond simple point-to-point path planning, using automata-theoretic methods, and we consider the filter minimization (FM) problem and a variant of it, filter partitioning minimization (FPM) problem, which aims to minimize combinatorial filters, used for filtering and automata-theoretic planning in systems with discrete sensor data. We introduce a new variant of bisimulation, compatibility, and using this notion we identify several classes of filters for which FM or FPM is solvable in polynomial time, and propose several integer linear programming (ILP) formulations …

Energy Literacy In Portugal: A System Map And Framework To Increase Energy Literacy Through The Renewable Energy Transition, Molly S. Fox

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Western society lives with a great dependence and an almost simultaneous ignorance of energy consumption (van den Broek, 2019). The systemic landscape of energy knowledge and dissemination is more critical than ever as Portugal races to meet decarbonization goals. This paper fills a knowledge gap by updating the current social landscape of energy literacy in Portugal through a comprehensive system map and framework to increase energy literacy levels through the renewable energy transition. By conducting a semi-systematic literature review, meta-narratives and themes were identified and used to create theoretical concepts, a framework, and a system map. This research found that …

Pack It Out Utah: Usu Water Quality Extension Leads Utah’S Statewide Trails And Waterways Cleanup, Lauren Houskeeper, Hope Braithwaite

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Utah’s public lands have experienced a surge in outdoor recreation which has led to an increase in garbage on trails, parks, neighborhoods, and eventually, in our waterways. In response, Utah State University Water Quality Extension initiated an annual statewide cleanup to raise awareness and facilitate the proper disposal of litter. During the cleanup events in 2020 and 2021, over 11,000 pounds of trash were removed from our public lands and waterways.

Soil Carbon Storage And Sequestration In Vermont Agriculture, Alissa C. White, Heather M. Darby, Donald Ross

UVM Extension Faculty Publications

In 2021, The State of Soil Health (SOSH) project measured indicators of soil health on 221 farm fields across the state of Vermont through a collaborative effort among many organizations. Soil carbon stocks to 30 cm depth were assessed on 191 of those fields. In this brief we share a summary of this new soil carbon stock data alongside data from a national assessment of soil carbon stocks performed by the NRCS from 2010 and highlight its relevance to current policy conversations within the state of Vermont.

Key Ideas

• The protection of existing soil carbon stocks and support for increased …

Cosmogenic Ages Indicate No Mis 2 Refugia In The Alexander Archipelago, Alaska, Caleb K. Walcott, Jason P. Briner, James F. Baichtal, Alia J. Lesnek, Joseph M. Licciardi

Publications and Research

The late-Pleistocene history of the coastal Cordilleran Ice Sheet remains relatively unstudied compared to chronologies of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Yet accurate reconstructions of Cordilleran Ice Sheet extent and the timing of ice retreat along the Pacific Coast are essential for paleoclimate modeling, assessing meltwater contribution to the North Pacific, and determining the availability of ice-free land along the coastal Cordilleran Ice Sheet margin for human migration from Beringia into the rest of the Americas. To improve the chronology of Cordilleran Ice Sheet history in the Alexander Archipelago, Alaska, we applied 10Be and 36Cl dating to boulders and glacially sculpted …

Untangling The Solar Wind And Magnetospheric Drivers Of The Radiation Belt Electrons, Simon Wing, Jay R. Johnson, Drew L. Turner, Aleksandr Y. Ukhorskiy, Alexander J. Boyd

Faculty Publications

Plain Language Summary

Many solar wind parameters correlate with one another, which complicates the causal-effect studies of solar wind driving of the magnetosphere. We use conditional mutual information, which is part of information theory, to untangle and isolate the effect of individual solar wind and magnetospheric drivers of the radiation belt electrons. For example, the solar wind density negatively correlates with electron phase space density (PSD) (average energy ∼1.6 MeV) with the response time lag of 15 hr. This has been attributed to the electron loss process such as magnetopause shadowing. The time lag suggests the time scale for this …

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

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Inside this Issue:

--- MSEI Deadline Approaching Quickly
--- Iowa Strategic Goals Program Webinars
--- International Compost Awareness Week
--- ISOSWO Scholarship Opportunities
--- Farewell to Grant Helle, Environmental Specialist
--- Welcome, Mark Harrington
--- Congratulations UNI Graduates
--- Industry News

A Uniform Chevalley Theorem For Direct Summands Of Polynomial Rings In Mixed Characteristic, Alessandro De Stefani, Eloisa Grifo, Jack Jeffries

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

We prove an explicit uniform Chevalley theorem for direct summands of graded polynomial rings in mixed characteristic. Our strategy relies on the introduction of a new type of differential powers that does not require the existence of a p-derivation on the direct summand.

The Pandemic From Above: Estimating Covid-19 Cases Using Deep Learning And Satellite Imagery, John Hennin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Monitoring the spread of an outbreak of disease (such as COVID-19) is an important component of any coordinated pandemic response. Across the globe, our ability to conduct such monitoring - especially at early stages of the COVID- 19 pandemic - was highly limited due to a lack of public reporting mechanisms. Today, the process of case data collection remains expensive and, in some regions, is subject to political considerations. Researchers have turned to some techniques leveraging Google Trends and Twitter data to overcome limitations in public data sources. Here, we provide another approach which leverages satellite information to provide estimates …

Passing Time And Syncing Secrets: Demonstrating Covert Channel Vulnerabilities In Precision Time Protocol (Ptp), Aron J. Smith-Donovan

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

Covert channels use steganographic approaches to transfer secret digital communications; when applied to network protocols, these strategies can facilitate undetectable data exfiltration and insertion attacks. Because covert channel techniques are protocol- and implementation-specific, individual case studies are necessary to assess for vulnerabilities under different conditions. While several investigations have been published evaluating covert channel potential in infrastructure- and manufacturing-based contexts, no existing research explores Precision Time Protocol (PTP), a time synchronization protocol commonly used in industrial control systems. This study aims to fill this gap by demonstrating the feasibility of a covert channel-based attack on a PTP-enabled network.

Minimizing The Deployment Cost Of Uavs For Delay-Sensitive Data Collection In Iot Networks, Wenzheng Xu, Tao Xiao, Junqi Zhang, Weifa Liang, Zichuan Xu, Xuxun Liu, Xiaohua Jia, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we study the deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to collect data from IoT devices, by finding a data collection tour for each UAV. To ensure the 'freshness' of the collected data, the total time spent in the tour of each UAV that consists of the UAV flying time and data collection time must be no greater than a given delay B, e.g., 20 minutes. In this paper, we consider a problem of deploying the minimum number of UAVs and finding their data collection tours, subject to the constraint that the total time spent in each tour …

Improving I/O Performance For Exascale Applications Through Online Data Layout Reorganization, Lipeng Wan, Axel Huebl, Junmin Gu, Franz Poeschel, Ana Gainaru, Ruonan Wang, Jieyang Chen, Xin Liang, Dmitry Ganyushin, Todd Munson, Ian Foster, Jean Luc Vay, Norbert Podhorszki, Kesheng Wu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The applications being developed within the U.S. Exascale Computing Project (ECP) to run on imminent Exascale computers will generate scientific results with unprecedented fidelity and record turn-around time. Many of these codes are based on particle-mesh methods and use advanced algorithms, especially dynamic load-balancing and mesh-refinement, to achieve high performance on Exascale machines. Yet, as such algorithms improve parallel application efficiency, they raise new challenges for I/O logic due to their irregular and dynamic data distributions. Thus, while the enormous data rates of Exascale simulations already challenge existing file system write strategies, the need for efficient read and processing of …

A Parallel Algorithm Template For Updating Single-Source Shortest Paths In Large-Scale Dynamic Networks, Arindam Khanda, Sriram Srinivasan, Sanjukta Bhowmick, Boyana Norris, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Single Source Shortest Path (SSSP) problem is a classic graph theory problem that arises frequently in various practical scenarios; hence, many parallel algorithms have been developed to solve it. However, these algorithms operate on static graphs, whereas many real-world problems are best modeled as dynamic networks, where the structure of the network changes with time. This gap between the dynamic graph modeling and the assumed static graph model in the conventional SSSP algorithms motivates this work. We present a novel parallel algorithmic framework for updating the SSSP in large-scale dynamic networks and implement it on the shared-memory and GPU …

Quantification Of Silver Nanoparticle Interactions With Yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Studied Using Single-Cell Icp-Ms, Lindsey Rasmussen, Honglan Shi, Wenyan Liu, Katie Shannon

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been used in many fields due to their anticancer, antimicrobial, and antiviral potential. Single-cell ICP-MS (SC-ICP-MS) is an emerging technology that allows for the rapid characterization and quantification of a metal analyte across a cell population in a single analysis. In this study, a new rapid and sensitive SC-ICP-MS method was developed to quantitatively study the interactions of AgNPs with yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The method can quantify the cell concentration, silver concentration per cell, and profile the nanoparticle distribution in a yeast cell population. AgNP dosing time, concentration, and AgNP size were quantitatively evaluated for their …

Safe Water For All: A Multi-Modal Approach To North Alabama's Water Resources, Elijah Walker

Theses

Environmental degradation is a destructive force produced by the human disturbance of pollution. It is a phenomenon that gradually evolves landscapes over time resulting in irreversible outcomes. Environmental degradation physically affects spaces’ resources, objects, and inhabiting humans. This study observes the impacts of pollution beyond physical boundaries and how it affects human identity/sense of place through the utilization of geographic information systems. Specifically, it examines cultural identity developed through human experiences and connections to landscapes containing water resources. Following, pollution contaminates water resources disrupting experiences and connections thus causing the cultural identity to disappear. The case study applied to this …

Improving Asteroid Remote Sensing By Examining Past Martian Methods, James Dean King

Theses

Deep Space Remote Sensing is an ever-evolving field. The very first missions into deep space were explorations that utilized trial and error, as humanity faced a new frontier of unknowns. Over these 70 years of deep space exploration, much attention has been given to our three nearest celestial neighbors: the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Mars, in particular, has been the target of much observation and study due to it being a target for future colonization. Meanwhile, the areas beyond Mars have had comparatively less focus. Asteroids and objects beyond Mars offer many new horizons for humanity to study. By using …

Unraveling Molecular Mechanisms Of Antibiotic Resistance Through Multiscale Simulations And Explainable Machine Learning, Zilin Song

Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

Pathogen resistance to β-lactam antibiotics compromises effective treatments of superbug infections. One major source of β-lactam resistance is the bacterial production of β-lactamases, which could effectively hydrolyze β-lactam drugs. In this thesis, the hydrolysis of various β-lactam antibiotics by class A serine-based β-lactamases (ASβLs) were investigated using hybrid Quantum Mechanical / Molecular Mechanical (QM/MM) minimum energy pathway (MEP) calculations and explainable machine learning (ML) approaches. The TEM-1/benzylpenicillin acylation reaction with QM/MM chain-of-states reaction pathways was firstly revisited. I proposed two decomposition methods for energy contribution analysis based on perturbing ML regression models. Both methods were shown to be model implementation …

The Mineralogy And Geochemistry Of Illinois Basin Paleosols: Recognizing Detrital, Pedogenic, And Diagenetic Minerals, Julia A. Mcintosh

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

The geochemical compositions of minerals in paleosols are assumed to be homogenous and attained through chemical weathering processes during episodes of pedogenesis in the geologic past. As such, the geochemical composition of minerals from paleosols may be used to reconstruct ancient climates and environments. One problem with this assumption is that paleosols were initially clastic sedimentary rocks or substrate prior to pedogenesis, thus it is likely that some portion of the paleosol is still composed of detrital minerals. Secondly, conditions may change in a sedimentary basin as the basin is buried and later uplifted, potentially triggering new mineralization or transformation …

A Mixed Methods Case Study: Effects Of Instructors’ Beliefs On Incorporation Of Sustainability Curriculum At A Midwestern University, Anna Oetting

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

The degree to which sustainability is taught is often varied and inconsistent across colleges, departments, and higher education institutions. However, educating students and future generations regarding the different pillars of sustainability, including economic, social, and environmental topics, is increasing in importance and urgency. A mixed methods case study utilized surveys and interviews to investigate why instructors incorporate sustainability, what impacts course incorporation of sustainability, and barriers that instructors face. This study found that instructors’ beliefs regarding the importance of sustainability relate to the extent to which sustainability is incorporated into their curriculum. Topics of sustainability incorporated into a class are …

Management Of Data Brokers In Support Of Smart Community Applications, Shadha Tabatabai

Dissertations

The widespread use of smart devices has led to the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. Big data generated by billions of devices must be analyzed to make better decisions. However, this introduces security, communication, and processing problems. To solve these problems, we develop algorithms to enhance the work of brokers. We focus our efforts on three problems.

In the first problem, brokers are used in the cloud along with Software Defined Network (SDN) switches. We formulate minimizing brokers’ load difference within a reconfiguration budget with the constraint of indivisible topics as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem. We show that …

Finite Subdivision Rules For Matings Of Quadratic Thurston Maps With Few Postcritical Points, Jeremiah Zonio

Undergraduate Theses

A finite subdivision rule is set of instructions for repeatedly subdividing a partitioning of a given space. This turns out to be incredibly useful when attempting to describe a process known as polynomial mating. Polynomial mating is a way of gluing together two spaces which two polynomials may act upon such that the glued borders of each space respects the dynamics described by each polynomial. For matings of Misiurewicz polynomials, the spaces we are gluing together are 1-dimensional and are thus all border. This poses a conceptual difficulty which this paper attempts to resolve by using finite subdivison rules to …