Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nebraska Tractor Summary: 1230 John Deere 6r 110 Infinitely Variable Transmission, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

A Historical Analysis Of The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agencies (Fema) Response And Recovery To Gulf Coast Hurricane And Other Weather-Related Disasters, Lauren Marie Denning

Graduate Research Papers

The growing changes in our environment combined with the increased number of catastrophic climate and weather- related events are occurring more frequently and continuing to intensify in the United States and Worldwide. These events are resulting in mass destruction in our environment and infrastructure, significant loss in human lives, and costing billions of dollars in response and recovery. Although there is no way to prevent these events, governments and populations can take steps to adapt and prepare for these events. This will ultimately decrease the overall impacts that these events have on our environment and future generations to come.

This …

Gene Silencing Provides Insights Into Bark Beetle Biology And Creates Potential For Broad Scale Forest Protection, Beth R. Kyre

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

Dendroctonus bark beetles are among the most economically and ecologically significant forest pests in North America and play a critical role in the overall health of conifer forest ecosystems. Dendroctonus bark beetles influence ecosystem benefits and biodiversity and drive forest succession, and adversely affect timber production, forest management, and recreation. As temperatures surge and climatic fluctuations become more extreme, catastrophic bark beetle outbreaks are increasing in frequency, escalating pressures on highly vulnerable conifer forests already compromised by heat and drought. Eruptive outbreaks of Dendroctonus beetles are largely unhindered by traditional silvicultural management; these practices further disrupt forest ecosystem services, including …

Patterns And Behaviours Of Barrier Breaching In Lacustrine Environments: A Case Study From The Point Pelee Foreland, Jenny Gharib

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Great Lakes are non-tidal, but experience significant water level fluctuations at hourly, seasonal, and decadal scales. In response to elevated water levels, barrier beach-ridges, including those located on the eastern shore of the Point Pelee foreland, experience accelerated erosion, overwash, and breaching leading to the removal or burial of vegetation, and damage to infrastructure and vulnerable habitat. Historical aerial imagery between 1931–2022 and annual average lake levels between 1920–2022 were examined to characterize barrier retreat and breach initiation, expansion, and closure. The timing and rate of transgression and progradation, overwash, and breaching are dependent on decadal-scale variations in water …

Mathematics Learning, Teaching, And Equity In Policy And Programs: The Case Of Secondary Mathematics Teacher Education In The United States, Eryn M. Stehr Maher, Hyunyi Jung, Jill Newton

Department of Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Professional organizations have provided recommendations for mathematics teaching and learning; however, few studies have investigated the practical integration of those recommendations into mathematics teacher education programs. In this study, we examine how the reported “big ideas” of courses in secondary mathematics teacher education programs emphasized the content and teaching practices necessary for future mathematics teachers, as recommended by policy documents. As part of a larger study, we conducted a series of interviews in secondary mathematics teacher education programs at four universities (names are descriptive pseudonyms): Great Lakes University (GLU), Midwestern Research University (MRU), Midwestern Urban University (MUU), and Southeastern Research …

Habitat Use And Diel Movements Of Silver Carp Hypophthalmichthys Molitrix In Two Southeastern Reservoirs, Levi Umland

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Bigheaded carp have spread rampantly throughout the Mississippi watershed and continue to spread by navigating through rivers, locks, and dams. The long-term effects these species will have on our ecosystems and natural resources is unknown. Their movements, behavior, and general seasonal patterns are well studied within rivers. However, their movements and behavior within reservoirs is poorly understood due to their initial numbers within reservoirs being lower than in rivers. To address this gap, I investigated the distribution and movement rates of Silver Carp within two reservoirs, Kentucky Reservoir and Barkley Reservoir, and possible correlative variables, including wind, temperature, residency, sex, …

Investigating Cut-Point Methods In Roc Analysis: A Critique Of Alternative Approaches, Gregory W. Mcguire

Master of Science in Mathematics

In 2017, Ilker Unal presented the Index of Union method for obtaining optimal cut-points in ROC analysis and claimed that it outperformed other methods, including the historied Youden Index. This is an investigation into that claim using generated data. It specifically pits the Youden Index method against the Index of Union (IU) method under various circumstances. The data sets have different ratios of diseased and non-diseased data points along with different ratios of true and false results based on a theoretical true cutpoint. The data was analyzed to see if any patterns emerged as to when the Youden Index obtain …

Investigating The Impacts Of Remote Learning During Covid-19 On Student Athletes’ End-Of-Course Assessments, Hillary Moreland

Master of Science in Mathematics

The education system has been in disarray since the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This research project plans to evaluate the learning process of in-person learning verses online learning. The purpose of this project is to provide an insight into online learning and the hope is to spark a conversation to improve it. The data for the project was collected from a high school located in Huntersville, North Carolina. The findings from this study are: (a) there is a statistically significant difference in means between the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school year state EOC scores, (b) there is a statistically …

Academic Success In Career Technical Schools For Students Who Have An Iep/504, Bryan M. Ropp

Master of Science in Mathematics

This study examines the interaction of career technical education and traditional school education and the impact each school type has on students with disabilities. Each school type is being measured on academic performance on ACT Scores taken during the student’s senior year and using Ohio End-of-Course Exams scores as a baseline that are taken during the student’s sophomore year. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to see what the best predictor of ACT Scores was using End-of-Course Exams scores, school type, gender, IEP, 504, and free-reduced lunch status as predictors. The study takes place in Greene County, Ohio where students …

An Analysis Of The Validity Of Xavier University’S Math Placement Exam And The Accuracy Of Placements Resulting From It, Andrew Ray Hill

Master of Science in Mathematics

Since the early 1980s, Xavier University (in Cincinnati, Ohio) has used its own placement exam as the sole criterion for placing incoming students into their first math courses. Even though the exam has been employed for over 40 years, there has never been a rigorous analysis of its design or of how appropriately it places students. So the purpose of this study was to provide such an analysis. The quality of the exam design was gauged in three ways. First, the study determined whether, for each of the 40 multiple choice questions that comprise the exam, the correct response was …

Joint Effects Of Fragmentation And Mercury Contamination On Marsh Periwinkle (Littoraria Irrorata) Movement, Marcos Krull, Michael C. Newman

VIMS Articles

There are different ways contaminants can interact and enhance the effects of habitat fragmentation, such as modifying the movement of organisms. The present study tested the hypothesis that mercury exacerbates the effects of
fragmentation by affecting the movement of the marsh periwinkle Littoraria irrorata and reducing the probability of snails crossing fragmented microlandscape experimental systems. How these changes could affect the search efficiency of organisms in the long term was assessed using hidden Markov models and random walks simulations. Bayesian nonlinear
models were used to analyze the effects of fragmentation and contamination on the mean speed and mean directional change …

Theoretical And Experimental Application Of Neural Networks In Spaceflight Control Systems, Pavel Galchenko

Doctoral Dissertations

“Spaceflight systems can enable advanced mission concepts that can help expand our understanding of the universe. To achieve the objectives of these missions, spaceflight systems typically leverage guidance and control systems to maintain some desired path and/or orientation of their scientific instrumentation. A deep understanding of the natural dynamics of the environment in which these spaceflight systems operate is required to design control systems capable of achieving the desired scientific objectives. However, mitigating strategies are critically important when these dynamics are unknown or poorly understood and/or modelled. This research introduces two neural network methodologies to control the translation and rotation …

Effect Of Trigonometric Transformations On The Machine Learning Prediction And Quality Control Of Air Temperature, Andrea Fenoglio [*], Torrey J. Wagner, Paul Auclair, Brent T. Langhals

Faculty Publications

Conducting effective quality control of weather observations in real time is vital to the 14th Weather Squadron’s mission of providing authoritative climate data. This study explored automated quality control of weather observations by applying multiple machine learning techniques to 43,487 surface weather observations from 5 years of data at a single location. Temperature predictors were evaluated using recursive feature elimination on linear regression and XGBoost algorithms, as well as using a neural network hyperparameter sweep. Modeling was repeated after calculating trigonometric transforms of temporal variables to give the models insight into the diurnal heating cycle of the Earth. All models …

Piecing It Together: Analysis And Treatment Of A Painted Silk Flag, Katya Zinsli

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Painted flags and banners lie at the intersection of painting and textile conservation. The 37^th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment’s battle flag from the Civil War presented challenges and advantages of bridging the two disciplines by providing an opportunity for study and experimentation for a graduate student from the Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Art Conservation Department at SUNY Buffalo State College. This study was conducted to better understand the materials and degradation products present in a painted Civil War flag, which then informed the subsequent treatment of said flag. By characterizing the materials, the severe damage in …

Heroes, Villains, And The In-Between: A Natural Language Processing Approach To Fairy Tales, Ruby Alling Ostrow

Senior Projects Spring 2022

While great strides have been made with natural language processing (NLP) techniques in the last few decades, there has been a notable lack of research into utilizing NLP for the genre of fiction. This project seeks to address this gap by considering the use of NLP techniques for the summarization of European fairy tales. This subgenre of fiction is an appropriate starting point for investigation due to its archetypal characters and relatively simple story arcs. My approach is to extract the main characters of texts, along with key descriptors in the form of modifying adjectives and verbal actions the characters …

A New Way To Make Music: Processing Digital Audio In Virtual Reality, Gavin E. Payne

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The work of this project attempts to provide new methods of creating music with technology. The product, Fields, is a functional piece of virtual reality software, providing users an immersive and interactive set of tools used to build and design instruments in a modular manner. Each virtual tool is analogous to musical hardware such as guitar pedals, synthesizers, or samplers, and can be thought of as an effect or instrument on its own. Specific configurations of these virtual audio effects can then be played to produce music, and then even saved by the user to load up and play with …

Enforcing A More Complex Notion Of Proper Posture With Pose Estimation, Marco Alessandro Scanni

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Practicing poor posture for many hours throughout the day can lead to a myriad of both physical and mental morbidities. People tend to put their postures in jeopardy for multiple hours per day when using the computer. Pose estimation has the ability to track human positions in real-time with high accuracy and performance. The goal of this thesis is to provide evidence for what proper posture is, and enforce this proper posture through the use of a pose estimation model, namely BlazePose.

Hidden Symmetries Of The Kepler Problem, Julia Kathryn Sheffler

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The orbits of planets can be described by solving Kepler’s problem which considers the motion due to by gravity (or any inverse square force law). The solutions to Kepler’s problem, for energies less then 0, are ellipses, with a few conserved quantities: energy, angular momentum and the Laplace-Runge-Lenz (LRL) vector. Each conserved quantity corresponds to symmetries of the system via N ̈other’s theorem. Energy conservation relates to time translations and angular momentum to three dimensional rotations. The symmetry related to the LRL vector is more difficult to visualize since it lives in phase space rather than configuration space. To understand …

Methods And Means For Registration, Measurement, Processing And Evaluation Of Thermographic Information With Application In Systems For Medical Diagnostics And Ecology, Stanyo Kolev

Books

Chapter 1. General principles in methods and means for recording, measuring and processing thermographic information. Applications of thermography, mainly in the fields of medicine and ecology, are presented. Problems related to the accuracy of measurement with an infrared camera are discussed. External (Atmosphere, Physical characteristics of body coverings, Geometric factors, Environment, Infrared characteristics of the object under study and Behavioral factors) and internal (Stressor, Blood circulation, Physical activity, Sweating, etc.) factors that affect the accuracy of measurement are described. The causes leading to errors in thermographic measurements are analyzed, the main ones being: water vapor, ozone and carbon dioxide in …

Natural Carbon Sequestration In The Commonwealth, Carbon Sequestration Task Force, Virginia Coastal Policy Center, William & Mary Law School, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

The Virginia General Assembly created the Carbon Sequestration Task Force in 2021 to examine the feasibility and potential to increase carbon sequestration in the Commonwealth. Specifically, the Task Force must (i) consider possible methods of increasing carbon sequestration within the natural environment through state land and marine resources use policies; agricultural, aquacultural, and silvicultural practices; and other practices to achieve natural resources restoration and long-term conservation; (ii) recommend short-term and long-term benchmarks for increasing carbon sequestration; (iii) develop a standardized methodology to establish baseline carbon levels and account for increases in carbon sequestration over time; (iv) identify existing carbon markets …

Grassland Bird Responses To Bison And Prescribed Fire Disturbances At Nachusa Grasslands And Kankakee Sands, Antonio Del Valle

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Grazing from native herbivores such as bison (Bison bison), in combination with prescribed fire, are applied to tallgrass prairies by managers to recreate important disturbance patterns in this ecosystem. Bird communities may be indirectly impacted by these disturbances through their direct impact on plants that provides critical breeding habitat for grassland birds. The objectives of this research are to determine the impacts that bison and prescribed fire have on grassland breeding birds in two tallgrass prairie preserves, Kankakee Sands and Nachusa Grasslands. Birds, vegetation structure, and bison activity were surveyed systematically at these two preserves in 2020 and 2021. Prescribed …

Gas Phase C-H And C-C Bond Activation By Ternary Metal Complexes, Kevin Parker

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The activation of relatively inert C-H bonds has remained a challenge in organic chemistry for over a century. Metal catalysts have been deployed to overcome the labile reactivity of these bonds and through gas-phase studies, detailed mechanisms can be elucidated for this important class of chemistry. The powerful combination of ion-molecule reactions, collisional activation of ions, and density functional theory calculations allows for structural elucidation, intermediate determination, and as shown throughout this work, a complete picture of catalytic processes. Modified linear ion-trap mass spectrometers were used to trap and generate reactive intermediates of the form [(L)(M)(X)]+ (L= auxiliary ligand; M= …

Modeling And Visualization Of Long-Term Public Opinion On Covid-19 Vaccine, Ashiqur Rahman

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The coronavirus pandemic created significant dependence on social media. While the social web was crucial in spreading timely information and informing the public, misinformation has also spread with little to no oversight. Several works have focused on identifying misinformation and topic analysis in COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2) tweets. While most of the previous studies focus on a shorter time frame, we analyzed a larger dataset starting from the beginning of the pandemic until the end of December 2021. Our work focuses on a novel area that identifies the motivating and demotivating topics of COVID-19 vaccination and analyzes these topics based on time, …

¿Quién Soy Yo? [Who Am I?]: Exploring Identity Through Analyzing Afro-Cuban Poetry And Creative Coding In A Post-Secondary Spanish Literature Classroom, F. Megumi Kivuva

Senior Projects Spring 2022

With efforts to broaden participation in computing by integrating CS education into humanities and developing more critical pedagogy, this research focuses on teaching computing in a post-secondary Spanish literature class through analyzing Afro-Cuban poetry. Its goal was to evaluate how participants may use Twine to reflect on Afro-Cuban poetry and their own identities. A group of 5 participants, one professor, and five students, learned how to use Twine to create interactive narratives reflecting on “El apellido,” a poem by Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. Through analyzing researcher notes, participants’ projects, post-workshop surveys, and interviews, the research revealed that students were able …

Does Bias Have Shape? An Examination Of The Feasibility Of Algorithmic Detection Of Unfair Bias Using Topological Data Analysis, Ansel Steven Tessier

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Artificial intelligence and machine learning systems are becoming ever more prevalent; at every turn these systems are asked to make decisions that have lasting impacts on peoples’ lives. It is becoming increasingly important that we ensure these systems are making fair and equitable decisions. For decades we have been aware of biased and unfair decision making in many sectors of society. In recent years a growing body of evidence suggests these biases are being captured in data that are then used to build artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, which themselves perpetuate these biases. The question is then, can we …

Interval Driven Melodic Mutation Using A Genetic Algorithm, Jack A. Carson

Senior Projects Spring 2022

This work presents a genetic algorithm in which melodies evolve according to levels of consonance. A user inputs a melody that over many iterations is mutated to be made up of new notes. Notes are only changed if they better match a level of consonance decided by the user. The larger the distances between notes are in the melody, the better the program is able to perform.

Sustainable Energy Imaginaries: Utilizing Mie Optics To Reengineer Photobioreactors And Reimagine The Socio-Spatial Conditions Of Autonomous Energy Production, Spencer Morgan Checkoway

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In order to build a more sustainable future, society must transition toward carbon negative energy production and infrastructure. Algae photobioreactors have proven to be an efficient producer of lipid rich oil which can be synthesized into carbon neutral biodiesel. However, the neutrality of such a technology rests in its ability to yield adequate algal biomass through photosynthesis. In order to reach maximum quantum efficiency of algal cells, solar flux must be transformed so that photon absorption can occur without oversaturating the constituent matter. This project looks at the scattering effects of iridocyte-like structures and their potential to create cost effective …

Developing An Open Database To Support Forensic Investigation Of Disasters In South East Asia: Forinsea V1.0, Andres Payo, Raushan Arnhardt, Angelo Carlo R. Galindo, Pham Van Dong, Ma. Aileen Leah G. Guzman, Yasmin O. Hatta, Andrew Bevan, Jose Claro N. Monje

Electronics, Computer, and Communications Engineering Faculty Publications

This article describes the development of a bespoke database, FORINSEA1.0, created to address the need for a systematic curation of information needed for the descriptive phase of the FORIN approach and its application to two study areas in the South East Asia region. FORINSEA1.0 allows researchers, for the first time, to explore and make use of subnational, geocoded data on major disasters triggered by natural hazards (flooding, earthquake, landslide and meteorological hazards) since 1945 until 2020 in the hydrological catchment of the Red River in Vietnam and the Marikina Basin in the Philippines. FORINSEA1.0 also contains relevant subnational information on …

Deformation And Stress Theory Of Surrounding Rock Of Shallow Circular Tunnel Based On Complex Variable Function Method, Guizhen Wang, Linglong Zhou, Reem Alotaibi, Roaya Hdeib

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

After reviewing many literature foundations, the thesis combines the basic methods of elastic mechanics with mathematical knowledge, sets the bipotential stress potential complex function and analyses the relationship between stress component, strain component and stress potential function, and applies the complex variable function. The expression of the relevant stress component is derived, and the displacement boundary conditions of the surrounding rock of shallow circular tunnel are obtained. Furthermore, the paper applies the basic theory of complex variable function to solve the boundary condition complex variable function for common tunnel sections, and obtains the analytical expression of the surrounding rock stress …

Stoichiometry Question Sets, Myungshim Kang

Open Educational Resources

This is a question pool for general chemistry. This consists of question sets, each of which contains variations of questions for topics, including the mole, molar mass, balancing chemical equations, and quantitative relationships in chemical reactions.