Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

“Abolition As Presence”: An East Bay Ca Case Study Of Black Food Geographies, Ayize James

Environmental Studies Honors Projects

Using abolitionist methodologies, the author argues that food activism contests “food deserts” by making food present in sources alternative to supermarkets. The project can be broken into two central inquiries: (1) How do race and class formations in the East Bay generate landscapes of food inaccess that are labeled “food deserts”? and (2) How does food activism in the East Bay generate lasting alternatives to supermarkets?, which is explored through three case studies of food justice organizing in the East Bay.

Geomorphic Gradients In Shallow Seagrass Carbon Stocks, Jahson Berhane Alemu, Siti Maryam Yaakub, Erik S. Yando, Rachel Yu San Lau, Cheng Chang Lim, Jun Yu Puah, Daniel A. Friess

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Seagrass meadows are important sinks of organic carbon (C_org), in particular the near-surface C_org pool (≤ 15 cm) compared to deeper sediments. Near-surface carbon is highly susceptible to disturbance and loss to the atmosphere, however, inadequate accounting for variability in this pool of carbon limits their uptake into carbon accounting frameworks. We therefore investigated the spatial variability in seagrass near-surface C_org and biomass C_org across different geomorphic (estuary, lagoonal and reef-associated) and community typologies (pioneer and persistent). Near-surface C_org stock in vegetated areas (25.78 Mg C_org ha⁻¹ ± 26.64) was twice that …

Reconstructing Regional Paleoenvironments And Geomorphic History Of High Plains Playa-Lunette Systems, Alyssa E. Sims

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Playas are ephemeral upland-embedded wetlands found in semiarid and arid regions worldwide. Lunettes are isolated dunes that form along the downwind margin of playas. The paleoclimatic and geomorphic history of High Plains playa-lunette systems (PLSs) are poorly understood. To address this, we characterize the stratigraphy of four PLSs in southwest Kansas, USA. Methods include: 1) collect soil-sediment cores from playa centers and windward slopes of lunettes; 2) describe cores using USDA techniques; 3) estimate age of stratigraphic units using radiocarbon (14C); and 4) reconstruct paleoenvironmental conditions using stable carbon isotopes (13C) and particle size analysis. Playa stratigraphy is relatively simple …

Modelling And Design Of Holographic Optical Elements For Beam-Coupling Applications For A Range Of Incident Beam Angles, Dipanjan Chakraborty, Rosen Georgiev, Sinéad Aspell, Vincent Toal, Izabela Naydenova, Dervil Cody, Suzanne Martin

Articles

Theoretical modelling has been used to calculate the holographic recording beam angles required in air (at any recording wavelength) to produce a Volume Holographic Optical Element (VHOE) for any defined input and output beam angles. The approach is used to facilitate the design and fabrication of diffractive coupling elements through a holographic process that avoids the use of coupling prisms during recording and will help in the design of recording arrangements that better suit the mass production of low-cost elements, especially those designed for non-normal incidence. In this study, the recording angles needed for a range of recording wavelengths were …

Biomolecular Corona Stability In Association With Plasma Cholesterol Level, Duong N. Trinh, Meda Radlinskaite, Jack Cheeseman, Gunther Kuhnle, Helen M.I. Osborn, Paula Meleady, Daniel I.R. Spencer, Marco P. Monopoli

Articles

Biomolecular corona is spontaneously formed on the surface of nanoparticles (NPs) when they are in contact with biological fluids. It plays an important role in the colloidal stability of NPs, which is of importance for most of their medical applications and toxicity assessment. While typical studies use either blood plasma or serum from a pooled biobank, it is unclear whether differences in the media, such as cholesterol level or protein concentration, might affect the NP colloidal stability and corona composition. In this study, the silica corona was prepared at particularly low plasma concentrations (3%, v/v–1.98 mg/mL) to identify the critical …

Regulating For Energy Justice, Alexandra B. Klass, Gabriel Chan

Articles

In this Article, we explore and critique the foundational norms that shape federal and state energy regulation and suggest pathways for reform that can incorporate principles of “energy justice.” These energy justice principles—developed in academic scholarship and social movements—include the equitable distribution of costs and benefits of the energy system, equitable participation and representation in energy decision making, and restorative justice for structurally marginalized groups.

While new legislation, particularly at the state level, is critical to the effort to advance energy justice, our focus here is on regulators’ ability to implement reforms now using their existing authority to advance the …

Quark And Gluon Entanglement In The Proton On The Light Cone At Intermediate X, Adrian Dumitru, Eric Kolbusz

Publications and Research

In QCD with $N_c$ colors the antisymmetric valence quark color space singlet state $\sim \epsilon_{i_1\cdots i_{N_c}} |i_1,\cdots, i_{N_c}\rangle$ of the proton corresponds to the reduced density matrix $\rho_{ij}=(1/N_c) \delta_{ij}$ for a single color degree of freedom. Its degenerate spectrum of eigenvalues, $\lambda_i=1/N_c$, the purity $\tr \rho^2 = 1/N_c$, and the von Neumann entropy $S_\mathrm{vN}=\log(N_c)$ all indicate maximal entanglement of color. On the other hand, for $N_c\to\infty$ the spatial wave function of the proton factorizes into valence quark wave functions determined by a mean field [E. Witten, Nucl. Phys. B160, 57 (1979)] where there is no entanglement of spatial degrees of …

Scale-Up Of Flow-Electrode Capacitive Deionization Method For Hard Water Softening, Noah Henry

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study’s purpose is to further document a capacitive deionization design that could be capable of purifying H₂O at a household scale where clean water is otherwise unobtainable in applicable regions of the world. The hypothesis behind this study was continuously larger scaled electrochemical cell-units would increase their water softening capabilities in sustainable fashion. The trend at which performance will scale is currently unknown. The units studied were constructed using graphite plates, anion exchange membranes, cation exchange membranes, and Teflon channels. Three streams, two being CaCl₂ solutions in DI H₂O (one being concentrated with CaCl …

Data Processing In A Database Management System Using Parallel Processing, Stephen Shears

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research project will be focused on parallel processing as it is used with database management systems to process data. Specifically, the goal is to see if creating a database management system with parallel processing at the forefront of its data processing can offer enough of an efficiency increase to warrant using it against a sequential database management system and is it possible to make that system just as reliable as those databases without parallel processing. A parallel processed database will be created with a focus on monitoring its data reliability and consistency. It will then be compared to two …

Resume Parser And Job Search, Stephan Gunawardana

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The basic goal of this project was to create a four-tier web application which would allow users to upload their personal resumes to the website, and it ultimately would parse the resume and look for keywords. Then using these keywords, it would use a job API to look for these values and ultimately display job information to the user based on their skills. While applications exist which would look for jobs based on skills, it was mostly manually inputted skills. However, with my application you can simply upload your resume to the website, and it will basically take care of …

Reinforcement Of Elastomers By Reactive Ionic Surfactant, Nicole Vickerman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Elastomers without cross-linking agents or fillers do not have the necessary properties for practical applications in the rubber industry. Elastomers must be reinforced with fillers and/or cross-linking agents to achieve the needs of physical and mechanical properties for commercial products. Sodium octyl 6-mercaptohexyl phosphate (SOMP) and sodium ethyl (6-mercaptohexyl) phosphate (SEMP) were used to investigate the influence of a reactive ionic surfactant and its influence on the physical properties of peroxide crosslinked styrene butadiene rubber (SBR). SEMP and SOMP were both found to be able to be grafted successfully on to the SBR chains within the rubber using extraction testing …

Sportiasts, Yuvraj Subedi

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Sportiasts is an online platform that connects sports enthusiasts. This platform explores the most recent back-end tool: Django and PostgreSQL to provide sports enthusiasts a platform to connect with each other. This platform is versatile and dynamic for the users to have their best experience connecting with sports communities. Anyone with sports interests can use this application to explore, connect, and create sports communities.

Analysis Of Minor League Rule Changes Effect On Stolen Bases, Zachary Houghtaling

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study uses various statistical analyses to evaluate the justification of rule changes for Major League Baseball that were implemented within the Minor Leagues during the 2021 minor league season. The primary focus of the study is predicting how some of these Minor League rule changes could affect the stolen base success rate and the number of attempts per game within the Major Leagues. A survey was conducted to evaluate how fans feel about stolen bases within the current game and if rules should be altered to increase the number of stolen bases that occur. Additionally, recorded Major and Minor …

The Utility Of Electroencephalography For User Input, Caleb Maurice

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this paper is to introduce the use of noninvasive brain-computer interfaces to prospective computer scientists. Electroencephalography is explained starting with how a user’s brain waves are measured and ending with how the data is parsed to software programs. To further expand on the ability to implement electroencephalography into software code, and example of a simple game is given. This game is an endless runner, meaning that it has no end and stops once the player’s game piece collides with an object. It is coded in the Python computer language.

Applying Machine Learning Algorithms For Face Mask Detections, Mackenzie Frato

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Goal: Apply multiple machine learning techniques to Face Mask images to detect if a student is wear a Face Mask and/or wearing it incorrectly or not at all. Methodology: Use 2-3 different machine learning techniques to develop this program. Will choose these techniques as I research over the semester. The best technique will be the final one used, but many will be explored. Validation techniques will be used to see which is the best technique. Timeline: Choose Dataset - October 1st, Choose techniques - October 31st, Research techniques/validation - November 31st, Begin writing code - December 13th, Finish code - …

Sequential Block Copolymers Of Polyisobutylene And Polyolefins, Manwel Labib

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A two-step approach will be utilized to synthesize random polyolefin multiblock-copolymers. This strategy takes advantage of a,w-terminated telechelic polyolefins. Polypropylene (iPP)/polyethylene (PE) are picked because of their strength, and polyisobutylene (PIB) because of its hemocompatibility. This copolymer is theorized to make for robust bio-inert plastic, which can be used for surgical mesh implants.

Viscous Anisotropy Of Wet Olivine Aggregates, Megan Ryan

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

I will deform natural olivine aggregates (Anita Bay dunite) cores in various orientations relative to a natural mineral alignment in the rock under both dry and wet conditions. Different orientations in regards to this mineral alignment will produce deformation on different slip systems. Stress measurements will be taken during the deformation of the samples in order to characterize any changes in viscous anisotropy observed due to the changes in slip system. Anita Bay dunite is a proxy for the main mineral found in the mantle wedge of subduction zones. Therefore, understanding the transformation of viscosity and slip systems in this …

The Influence Of Hydrogen Peroxide On The Enrichment Of Fe(Iii) Reducing Bacteria From Acid Mine Drainage, Susami Seth

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

It is hypothesized that the ocean of Europa, a Jupiter moon, hosts bacteria on its oceanic floor. Understanding how Fe(III) reducing bacteria (FeRB) from AMD utilize organic materials within its surrounding environment outlines how FeRB could thrive and tolerate extreme conditions. FeRB are known to tolerate metals and highly reactive oxidants species (ROS), but in this experiment, H₂O₂ was the experimental factor to further test FeRB tolerance. H₂O₂ is a common ROS and is damaging to living material such as proteins, DNA, and RNA. A range of H₂O₂ concentrations were fed …

Effect Of Pre-Existing Fault Orientation On Strain Localization In A Foliated Granitic Gneiss, Geoffrey Hilliard

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The effect of fault orientation relative to the applied stress on reactivation of pre-existing brittle faults instead of forming new faults is well-explained by Mohr-Coulomb theory. However, Mohr-Coulomb theory does not explain the effect of orientation on reactivation of faults with a ductile rheology and no work has been performed to assess the effect of orientation of a pre-existing ductile fault on fault strength. In order to determine how rock strength and localization of strain into a ductile fault is affected when the orientation of the pre-existing fault (artificial fault) is changed, experiments were performed on pre-faulted cores of a …

Creation Of A Neural Network For The American Sign Language To Russian Translation App, John T. Simmons

Capstone Projects

1. A large population of people utilize American Sign Language for their primary method of communication.
2. No commercially available product is available for these people for when they need to communicate with speakers of a foreign language.
3. We must investigate methods to make communication between these two parties easier and more accessible.
4. By using a neural network to classify images of American Sign Language letters, we can build a service to make translation of American Sign Language into foreign languages possible.

Polybenzodiazine Aerogels: All-Nitrogen Analogues Of Polybenzoxazines Synthesis, Characterization, And High-Yield Conversion To Nanoporous Carbons, Vaibhav A. Edlabadkar, Saidulu Gorla, Rushi U. Soni, A. B.M.Shaheen Ud Doulah, Joseph Gloriod, Samuel Hackett, Nicholas Leventis, Chariklia Sotiriou-Leventis

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Tetrahydroquinazoline (THQ) was designed as an all-nitrogen analogue of main-stream benzoxazine monomers. THQ solutions in DMF gelled at 100 °C via HCl-catalyzed ring-opening polymerization to polybenzodiazine (PBDAZ) wet gels, which were dried in an autoclave with supercritical fluid CO₂ to aerogels. These as-prepared PBDAZ-100 aerogels undergo ring-fusion aromatization at 240 °C under O₂. This oxidized form is referred to as PBDAZ-240. Chemical identification of PBDAZ-100 and PBDAZ-240 relied on consideration of all nine possible polymerization pathways, in combination with elemental analysis, infrared and solid-state 13C NMR spectroscopy, and 15N NMR spectroscopy of aerogels from the selectively 15N-enriched …

Extensive Thiol Profiling For Assessment Of Intracellular Redox Status In Cultured Cells By Hplc-Ms/Ms, Jiandong Wu, Anna Chernatynskaya, Annalise Pfaff, Huari Kou, Nan Cen, Nuran Ercal, Honglan Shi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Oxidative stress may contribute to the pathology of many diseases, and endogenous thiols, especially glutathione (GSH) and its metabolites, play essential roles in the maintenance of normal redox status. Understanding how these metabolites change in response to oxidative insult can provide key insights into potential methods of prevention and treatment. Most existing methodologies focus only on the GSH/GSH disulfide (GSSG) redox couple, but GSH regulation is highly complex and depends on several pathways with multiple redox-active sulfur-containing species. In order to more fully characterize thiol redox status in response to oxidative insult, a high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry …

Volunteer Selection In Collaborative Crowdsourcing With Adaptive Common Working Time Slots, Riya Samanta, Vaibhav Saxena, Soumya K. Ghosh, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Skill-based volunteering is an expanding branch of crowdsourcing where one may acquire sustainable services, solutions, and ideas from the crowd by connecting with them online. The optimal mapping between volunteers and tasks with collaboration becomes challenging for complex tasks demanding greater skills and cognitive ability. Unlike traditional crowdsourcing, volunteers like to work on their own schedule and locations. To address this problem, we propose a novel two-phase framework consisting of Initial Volunteer-Task Mapping (i-VTM) and Adaptive Common Slot Finding (a-CSF) algorithms. The i-VTM algorithm assigns volunteers to the tasks based on their skills and spatial proximity, whereas the a-CSF algorithm …

An Icn-Based Secure Task Cooperation Scheme In Challenging Wireless Edge Networks, Ningchun Liu, Shuai Gao, Teng Liang, Xindi Hou, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Task cooperation is an effective way to execute a complex task in challenging wireless edge networks. Existing TCP/IP-based solutions encounter the problem of low network resource utilization and the heavy dependency of infrastructure connections. Information-centric networking (ICN) is a promising architecture to address these issues. In existing ICN-based task cooperation schemes, the data reuse feature of ICN improves the utilization of network resources, which also brings potential security threats to the reused data. To guarantee the security of data reuse in task cooperation without affecting the data reuse feature, we propose an ICN-based secure task cooperation scheme. In our scheme, …

Delivery With Uavs: A Simulated Dataset Via Ats, Giulio Rigoni, Cristina M. Pinotti, Bhumika, Debasis Das, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We consider a delivery food service operated by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Due to the absence of a dataset on UAVs deliveries in the literature, and since it is not possible to perform real tests, we create a dataset using an open-Air Traffic Simulator (ATS). Precisely, we converted a set of food deliveries operated by wheeled vehicles, proposed in the literature [1], into a set of simulated UAVs deliveries. For each delivery, we ran a UAV flight from the source to the destination. The results showed that, as expected, the UAV's course is shorter than the vehicle trajectory on the …

Locality-Aware Qubit Routing For The Grid Architecture, Avah Banerjee, Xin Liang, R. Tohid

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Due to the short decohorence time of qubits available in the NISQ-era, it is essential to pack (minimize the size and or the depth of) a logical quantum circuit as efficiently as possible given a sparsely coupled physical architecture. In this work we introduce a locality-aware qubit routing algorithm based on a graph theoretic framework. Our algorithm is designed for the grid and certain 'grid-like' architectures. We experimentally show the competitiveness of algorithm by comparing it against the approximate token swapping algorithm, which is used as a primitive in many state-of-the-art quantum trans pilers. Our algorithm produces circuits of comparable …

Privacy-Preserving Data Falsification Detection In Smart Grids Using Elliptic Curve Cryptography And Homomorphic Encryption, Sanskruti Joshi, Ruixiao Li, Shameek Bhattacharjee, Sajal K. Das, Hayato Yamana

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), the electric utility collects power consumption data from smart meters to improve energy optimization and provides detailed information on power consumption to electric utility customers. However, AMI is vulnerable to data falsification attacks, which organized adversaries can launch. Such attacks can be detected by analyzing customers' fine-grained power consumption data; however, analyzing customers' private data violates the customers' privacy. Although homomorphic encryption-based schemes have been proposed to tackle the problem, the disadvantage is a long execution time. This paper proposes a new privacy-preserving data falsification detection scheme to shorten the execution time. We adopt …

Anomaly Based Incident Detection In Large Scale Smart Transportation Systems, Jaminur Islam, Jose Paolo Talusan, Shameek Bhattacharjee, Francis Tiausas, Sayyed Mohsen Vazirizade, Abhishek Dubey, Keiichi Yasumoto, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern smart cities are focusing on smart transportation solutions to detect and mitigate the effects of various traffic incidents in the city. To materialize this, roadside units and ambient trans-portation sensors are being deployed to collect vehicular data that provides real-time traffic monitoring. In this paper, we first propose a real-time data-driven anomaly-based traffic incident detection framework for a city-scale smart transportation system. Specifically, we propose an incremental region growing approximation algorithm for optimal Spatio-temporal clustering of road segments and their data; such that road segments are strategically divided into highly correlated clusters. The highly correlated clusters enable identifying a …

More To Less (M2l): Enhanced Health Recognition In The Wild With Reduced Modality Of Wearable Sensors, Huiyuan Yang, Han Yu, Kusha Sridhar, Thomas Vaessen, Inez Myin-Germeys, Akane Sano

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Accurately recognizing health-related conditions from wearable data is crucial for improved healthcare outcomes. To improve the recognition accuracy, various approaches have focused on how to effectively fuse information from multiple sensors. Fusing multiple sensors is a common choice in many applications but may not always be feasible in real-world scenarios. For example, although combining bio signals from multiple sensors (i.e., a chest pad sensor and a wrist wearable sensor) has been proved effective for improved performance, wearing multiple devices might be impractical in the free-living context. To solve the challenges, we propose an effective more to less (M2L) learning framework …

Chimeranet: U-Net For Hair Detection In Dermoscopic Skin Lesion Images, Norsang Lama, Reda Kasmi, Jason R. Hagerty, R. Joe Stanley, Reagan Harris Young, Jessica Miinch, Januka Nepal, Anand Nambisan, William V. Stoecker

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hair and ruler mark structures in dermoscopic images are an obstacle preventing accurate image segmentation and detection of critical network features. Recognition and removal of hairs from images can be challenging, especially for hairs that are thin, overlapping, faded, or of similar color as skin or overlaid on a textured lesion. This paper proposes a novel deep learning (DL) technique to detect hair and ruler marks in skin lesion images. Our proposed ChimeraNet is an encoder-decoder architecture that employs pretrained EfficientNet in the encoder and squeeze-and-excitation residual (SERes) structures in the decoder. We applied this approach at multiple image sizes …