Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Stratigraphic Analysis Of The Capps Limestone In The North Norton Oil Field In Runnels County, Texas, William Thompson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Desmoinesian (Middle Pennsylvanian) Capps Limestone Member of the Mineral Wells Formation is a carbonate reservoir located in North Central Texas. It consists of interbedded limestone, sandstone, and shale units. Much of the Capps Limestone exists in the subsurface of Brown, Coleman, Runnels, Coke, Nolan, and Taylor counties, however, the Capps Limestone outcrops on the surface in Brown, Eastland, and Palo Pinto counties.

The cored interval from Runnels County was deposited in a marginal marine environment during the Middle Pennsylvanian Period. Although the Capps Limestone was first described in the 1890s, there is still much to be discovered about its …

Basis For Changes In The Disease Burden Estimates Related To Vitamin A And Zinc Deficiencies In The 2017 And 2019 Global Burden Of Disease Studies, Sonja Y. Hess, Alexander C. Mclain Ph.D., Haley Lescinsky, Kenneth H. Brown, Ashkan Afshin

Faculty Publications

Background:

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study provides estimates of death and disability from eighty-seven risk factors, including some micronutrient deficiencies.

Objectives:

To review methodological changes that led to large differences in the disease burden estimates for vitamin A and Zn deficiencies between the GBD 2017 and 2019 Studies.

Methods:

GBD publications were reviewed; additional information was provided by GBD researchers.

Results:

Vitamin A deficiency prevalence is based on plasma retinol concentration, whereas the estimate for Zn deficiency prevalence uses dietary adequacy as a proxy. The estimated global prevalence of vitamin A deficiency for children aged 1–4 years in …

Disease Biomarker Discovery And Fungal Metabolites Extraction Protocol Optimization Using Gcms Based Metabolomics, Chathuri Udeshika Gamlath Mohottige

Theses and Dissertations

Metabolomics is a powerful science that can be applied for the discovery of disease biomarkers, and investigation of altered metabolomes due to abiotic and biotic perturbations. This dissertation is focused on untargeted metabolomic applications to investigate fungal metabolite alterations associated with pathogenicity, fungal disease propagations, and symbiosis. This dissertation employs qualitative analysis of metabolite mixtures using HS-SPME coupled GC-MS and TMS derivatization followed by GC-MS analytical platforms. In the first study, we discovered a biomarker combination to diagnose fungal soft tissue disease in sweet potato at an early stage of disease propagation. We used an HS-SPME GC-MS untargeted metabolomics workflow …

Identifying Biogeochemical Factors Responsible For The Cyclical Precipitation Of Sphalerite And Galena In Low Temperature Mississippi Valley Type Ore Deposits, Daniel John Makowsky

Theses and Dissertations

Mississippi Valley Type (MVT) lead and zinc deposits provide a significant source of sedimentary galena and sphalerite. However, geochemical characteristics and genesis including the source and production of hydrogen sulfide required for galena and sphalerite ore formation and the reasoning for quick, episodic mineralization is not fully understood. By simulating regional MVT brines, the input and effect of biological by-products during the development of these ores as well as the cause of cyclicity within MVT deposits have been observed. Experiments using compositions from MVT fluid inclusions were conducted over two-week periods. Variables during the experiments included temperature, CO2, hydrogen sulfide …

Assessing The Potential For Lightning-Induced Damage In Commercial Broiler Houses In Mississippi And Alabama, Matthew R. Rowland

Theses and Dissertations

Modern broiler houses are expensive to build, maintain, and insure. Protecting them from extreme weather events is a major concern to producers, integrators, and insurance companies. Lightning strikes can cause catastrophic fires and electrical damage and can lead to costly bird losses. A greater understanding of the impact of lightning on the commercial broiler industries of MS and AL is needed. The objectives of this research were collection of baseline resistance data for broiler houses and equipment in both states, and mapping lightning strike densities across MS and AL, evaluating annual, monthly, seasonal, and diurnal patterns. 63.5% of surveyed broiler …

The Development Of Authentic Virtual Reality Scenarios To Measure Individuals’ Level Of Systems Thinking Skills And Learning Abilities, Vidanelage L. Dayarathna

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops virtual reality modules to capture individuals’ learning abilities and systems thinking skills in dynamic environments. In the first chapter, an immersive queuing theory teaching module is developed using virtual reality technology. The objective of the study is to present systems engineering concepts in a more sophisticated environment and measure students learning abilities. Furthermore, the study explores the performance gaps between male and female students in manufacturing systems concepts. To investigate the gender biases toward the performance of developed VR module, three efficacy measures (simulation sickness questionnaire, systems usability scale, and presence questionnaire) and two effectiveness measures (NASA …

Electrocatalytic Oxidation Of Carbohydrates Via Surface Immobilized Viologen, Dallin D.V. Scott

Theses and Dissertations

Earths most abundant biomolecules, carbohydrates, offer tremendous potential forelectricity production. Carbohydrate fuel cells are electrical fuel cells that can harvest the stored electrons in carbohydrates and offer a cheap and efficient method that could help solve growing energy demands, while providing a renewable green energy source. Viologen-mediated carbohydrate fuel cells have demonstrated the ability to accelerate carbohydrate oxidation while decreasing partial or incomplete oxidation products reducing the electricity production. Subsequent studies suggested polymeric viologen compounds could improve the efficiency by increasing the local concentration of viologen. This thesis presents the utility of surface-immobilized viologen mediators for the oxidation of simple …

Field Investigations And Numerical Modeling Of Earthquake And Tsunami Risk At Four Vulnerable Sites In Indonesia, Claire E. Ashcraft

Theses and Dissertations

Maps and models of seismic and tsunami risk are constructed from a variety of measurements taken in Indonesia, which have the potential to reduce loss of life and infrastructure. The first study uses the multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) method to calculate the time-averaged shear wave velocity to 30 m depth (Vs30). These measurements were taken at 58 sites in the city of Pacitan, Java and on the islands of Lombok, Ambon, and the Banda Islands. Vs30 calculations are compared with local geologic maps to extrapolate site class for locations not measured directly. Site class maps are then compared …

Galectin-1: Development Of A Novel Protein Therapy For Lgmd2b, Mary Lorena Vallecillo Munguia

Theses and Dissertations

Muscular dystrophies are a heterogeneous group of genetic diseases that involve mutations in genes leading to progressive muscular weakness. Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy 2B (LGMD2B) is a subset of muscular dystrophy caused by mutations in the DYSF gene, which encodes for dysferlin protein and has an incidence of 1/100,000-1/200,000 people, or 1/300 people of Libyan Jewish descent. Since there is no effective treatment that can cure or reverse effects of LGMD2B once diagnosed, our goal is to investigate and develop a protein therapy that mitigates effects of this disease in patients. Galectin-1 (Gal-1) is a small, soluble 14.5 kDa protein with …

Eating Detection With A Head-Mounted Video Camera, Shengjie Bi, David Kotz

Computer Science Technical Reports

In this paper, we present a computer-vision based approach to detect eating. Specifically, our goal is to develop a wearable system that is effective and robust enough to automatically detect when people eat, and for how long. We collected video from a cap-mounted camera on 10 participants for about 55 hours in free-living conditions. We evaluated performance of eating detection with four different Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. The best model achieved accuracy 90.9% and F1 score 78.7% for eating detection with a 1-minute resolution. We also discuss the resources needed to deploy a 3D CNN model in wearable or …

A Framework For Phrase Based Smt In The Technical Translation Domain, Hisham Farouk Khodeir

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Using Parallel Primary Caches To Improve Capacity And Bandwidth, John Rubena Wani

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Error Correction In Quantum Cryptography, Mohamed Salah El Ashmawy

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Burning And Management Alternatives On Forage Accumulation And Floristic Composition Of A Native Pasture, I. Heringer, A. V. A. Jacques

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The forage accumulation and floristic composition of native pasture, submitted to burning and alternative management practices, was evaluated during one year. The experimental design was a completely randomized, with five treatments and three replications. The forage accumulation was evaluated in a grazing exclusion cage, and the floristic composition was estimated with Botanal method. The systems without burning were more productive and, among these, the forage accumulation was similar between the one without burning and without mowing and the improve treatments, and the annual accumulation was greater than 9,000 Kg/ha of green forage dry matter. The species Paspalum notatum, P. …

Nitrogen Flow To Duodenum Of Steers Grazing On Orchardgrass And Meadowfescue Pastures, Masaaki Hanada, Y. Aibibula, Meiji Okamoto

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

This experiment was conducted to evaluate nitrogen flow to the duodenum of steers grazing on orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L., OG) or meadowfescue (Festuca elatior L., MF) pasture. Holstein steers fitted with cannulas in the rumen and duodenum were used. Nitrogen content and in vitro dry matter digestibility of herbage did not differ between OG and MF pastures. Herbage nitrogen intake of steers grazing on OG and MF pastures averaged 229 and 271 g/day, respectively. Nitrogen flows to the duodenum of steers grazing on orchardgrass and meadowfescue pastures averaged 187 and 195g/d, respectively. Microbial nitrogen flow to the duodenum …

The Effects Of Post-Grazing Sward Conditions On Herbage Accumulation In Winter And Spring, F. P. Hughes, P. N. P. Matthews, C. Matthew

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Two on-farm experiments were conducted in the winter and spring of 1998 on a New Zealand seasonal production dairy farm to determine the effect of herbage mass present after grazing on subsequent pasture growth rates. Experiments involved a range of post-grazing levels of herbage mass (870, 1140, 1390, 1640, 1920 kg DM/ha in winter, and 1100, 1420, 1700 and 1910 kg DM/ha in spring) representing a range in cow intakes of 6.1-20.0 and 7.6-18.5 kg DM/cow/day in winter and spring, respectively. In both experiments there was a range of postgrazing herbage mass (1200-1600 kg DM/ha in winter and 1400-1800 kg …

A Computational Study On A Globular Protein And An Intrinsically Disordered Protein, Cecilia Chavez Garcia

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of two protein targets for drug design: Triosephosphate isomerase (TIM) and Methyl CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2). First, we studied three TIM proteins: TcTIM, TbTIM and a chimeric protein (Mut1). The first two are homologous enzymes with high sequence similarity, albeit different biophysical parameters. The chimeric protein has TbTIM’s sequence and 13 single point mutations, which are sufficient to obtain TcTIM-like behaviour in reactivation experiments. We analyzed the residue interaction networks observed in the all-atom MD simulations, as well as their electrostatic interactions and the impact of simulation length on them. A conserved salt …

Some Optical And Electrical Properties Of Cadmium Sulfide And Lead Sulfide Thin Films Prepared By Electron Beam Deposition, Achiri Celestine Tange

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Resource Optimization Property Manager For Autonomic Computing, Hazem A. M. Sharaf El Din

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Moment-Preserving Piecewise Approximation For 1-D And 2-D Signals, Soha M. A. A. Seif

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

For Children’S Sake, Gerry Boyle

Colby Magazine

For three decades, Steve Nicholas has worked to create more sustainable cities. He tells videographer Reggie Huang why we must make progress on this urgent problem before it’s turned over to the next generation.

Fighting Climate Change Is A Capital Idea: Graham Macmillan Sees Market Incentives As Powerful Tools, Gerry Boyle

Colby Magazine

In coming years, action on climate may come from what some would consider the least likely direction—capital markets. Where some people might consider the demands of capital markets to be at the root of social and environmental problems, Graham Macmillan ’97 sees market incentive as wielding powerful leverage to help bring about solutions to the world’s most vexing challenges.

Spatio-Temporal Relation Modeling For Few-Shot Action Recognition, Anirudh Thatipelli, Sanath Narayan, Salman Hameed Khan, Rao Muhammad Anwer, Fahad Shahbaz Khan, Bernard Ghanem

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

We propose a novel few-shot action recognition framework, STRM, which enhances class-specific feature discriminability while simultaneously learning higher-order temporal representations. The focus of our approach is a novel spatio-temporal enrichment module that aggregates spatial and temporal contexts with dedicated local patch-level and global frame-level feature enrichment sub-modules. Local patch-level enrichment captures the appearance-based characteristics of actions. On the other hand, global framelevel enrichment explicitly encodes the broad temporal context, thereby capturing the relevant object features over time. The resulting spatio-temporally enriched representations are then utilized to learn the relational matching between query and support action sub-sequences. We further introduce a …

Ten Simple Rules For Creating A Scientific Web Application, Jessica L. Burnett, Renee Dale, Chung-Yi Hou, Gabriela Palomo-Muoz, Kaitlin Stack Whitney, Steve Aulenbach, Robert Sky Bristol, Denis Valle, Tristan P. Wellman

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The use of scientific web applications (SWApps) across biological and environmental sciences has grown exponentially over the past decades or so. Although quantitative evidence for such increased use in practice is scant, collectively, we have observed that these tools become more commonplace in teaching, outreach, and in science coproduction (e.g., as decision support tools). Despite the increased popularity of SWApps, researchers often receive little or no training in creating such tools. Although rolling out SWApps can be a relatively simple and quick process using modern, popular platforms like R shiny apps or Tableau dashboards, making them useful, usable, and sustainable …

Exploring The Impact Of Social Influence Mechanisms And Network Density On Societal Polarization, Justin Mittereder

Student Research Submissions

I present an agent-based model, inspired by the opinion dynamics
(OD) literature, to explore the underlying behaviors that may induce
societal polarization. My agents interact on a social network, in which
adjacent nodes can influence each other, and each agent holds an array
of continuous opinion values (on a 0-1 scale) on a number of separate
issues. I use three measures as a proxy for the virtual society’s “po-
larization:” the average assortativity of the graph with respect to the
agents’ opinions, the number of non-uniform issues, and the number
of distinct opinion buckets in which agents have the same …

Responses Of Benthic Calcifying Algae To Ocean Acidification Differ Between Laboratory And Field Settings, Heather N. Page, Keisha D. Bahr, Tyler Cyronak, Elizabeth B. Jewett, Maggie D. Johnson, Sophie J. Mccoy

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Accurately predicting the effects of ocean and coastal acidification on marine ecosystems requires understanding how responses scale from laboratory experiments to the natural world. Using benthic calcifying macroalgae as a model system, we performed a semi-quantitative synthesis to compare directional responses between laboratory experiments and field studies. Variability in ecological, spatial, and temporal scales across studies, and the disparity in the number of responses documented in laboratory and field settings, make direct comparisons difficult. Despite these differences, some responses, including community-level measurements, were consistent across laboratory and field studies. However, there were also mismatches in the directionality of many responses …

Determining The Biochemical Mechanisms And Binding Activities Of A Type Iv-A Crispr-Cas Ding Helicase, Matt Armbrust

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

CRISPR-Cas systems are adaptive prokaryotic immune systems that enable host cells to defend against attack from foreign nucleic acids such as phage infections or plasmids. CRISPR-Cas systems are diverse and encompass 2 classes, 6 types, and 33 subtypes. The Type IV-A CRISPR-Cas system from Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain 83 is composed of five different genes (csf1, csf2, csf3, cas6, and dinG). Type IV-A systems are poorly understood, and currently there is little research detailing their biological and biochemical mechanism of immunity. CasDinG, an ancillary protein within the Type IV-A system, is required for an immune response in vivo. However, the role …

Measuring Irregularity Via Approximate Entropy: How Does Perceived Human Instability Affect One's Own Stability?, Madi Braunersrither

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

In a study performed at Utah State University, participants were prompted to evaluate the stability of pictured human postures while standing on a force plate. The force plate was used to collect the center of pressure of the subjects by recording measurements in the vertical and horizontal directions. The way these factors fluctuate over time and the irregularity in this fluctuation, specifically, can give insight into the subject’s postural stability. Rather than working with summary statistics such as means and variances of fitting parameters of a distribution as commonly done in statistics, we want to measure irregularity through analyzing the …

Climate Change Impacts On Atmospheric Ammonia And Implications For Human Health, Casey Olson, Connor Snow, Bridger Jorgensen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

According to national data Cache Valley has the highest concentrations of atmospheric ammonia in the nation. This study aims to answer the questions of whether climate variables and events such as precipitation, averaged winds, geopotential height, and teleconnections can be used to predict the behavior of pollutants and how human biology is potentially affected. Data from the Utah Climate Center shows that the 3rd yearly quartile has the highest levels of airborne ammonia due to the high levels of fertilizer use and livestock emissions in the farming industry in Cache Valley. After data analysis, there seems to be a connection …

Explicit Synchronized Solitary Waves For Some Models For The Interaction Of Long And Short Waves In Dispersive Media., Bruce Brewer

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Four systems have recently been proposed for the study of the interaction of long and short waves in dispersive media. This poster establishes the synchronized solitary wave solutions for one of these systems.