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College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, October 2021, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 2, Issue 10

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 2 Awards and Recognition; Introducing Natural Sciences Student Ambassadors
Page 3 Media Coverage of CNS
Page 4 Spooky Science Outreach
Page 5 The BIG Event Outreach
Page 6 Geography Club Road Trip
Page 7 Aamlid Family Anatomy Lab
Page 8 Hobo Day Recap
Page 10 Open PRAIRIE Data; Grants Awarded in CNS

Why Neural Networks In The First Place: A Theoretical Explanation, Jonatan Contreras, Martine Ceberio, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Neural networks -- specifically, deep neural networks -- are, at present, the most effective machine learning techniques. There are reasonable explanations of why deep neural networks work better than traditional "shallow" ones, but the question remains: why neural networks in the first place? why not networks consisting of non-linear functions from some other family of functions? In this paper, we provide a possible theoretical answer to this question: namely, we show that of all families with the smallest possible number of parameters, families corresponding to neurons are indeed optimal -- for all optimality criteria that satisfy some reasonable requirements: : …

Uncertainty: Ideas Behind Neural Networks Lead Us Beyond Kl-Decomposition And Interval Fields, Michael Beer, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we know that there is a functional dependence between a quantity q and quantities a1, ..., an, but the exact form of this dependence is only known with uncertainty. In some cases, we only know the class of possible functions describing this dependence. In other cases, we also know the probabilities of different functions from this class -- i.e., we know the corresponding random field or random process. To solve problems related to such a dependence, it is desirable to be able to simulate the corresponding functions, i.e., to have algorithms that transform simple intervals or …

Ethical Dilemma Of Self-Driving Cars: Conservative Solution, Christian Servin, Vladik Kreinovich, Shahnaz Shahbazova

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

When designing software for self-driving cars, we need to make an important decision: When a self-driving car encounters an emergency situation in which either the car's passenger or an innocent pedestrian have a good change of being injured or even die, which option should it choose? This has been a subject of many years of ethical discussions -- and these discussions have not yet led to a convincing solution. In this paper, we propose a "conservative" (status quo) solution that does not require making new ethical decisions -- namely, we propose to limit both the risks to passengers and risks …

Ai: Friend Or Foe? (And What Business Leaders Need To Know), Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Artificial intelligence presents significant opportunities for business – as well as not insignificant threats to humanity – and governance frameworks are urgently needed to create a fair and equitable future under AI

Investing For The Future, Saker Nusseibeh

Perspectives@SMU

Even if you don’t believe in climate change, shifting consumer and governmental attitudes make businesses that prioritise sustainability more profitable

Sustainable Investment Across Generations, Darren Teo, Elaine Teo, Jansen Phee, Mitch Reznick, Reshma Lalvani Sujan, Ronil Sujan

Perspectives@SMU

Children that follow in a successful company’s founder's footsteps are paying more attention to sustainability

Realistic Binary Neutron Stars Collisions Simulations: Challenges And Opportunities, Maria Babiuc-Hamilton

Physics Faculty Research

Since 2015, when the LIGO-Virgo collaboration announced the first simultaneous detections of gravitational waves (GW150914) until now, more than 66 gravitational wave detections were reported, but only two signals came from a binary neutron star collision, the GW170817 and GW190425 events. GW170817 was accompanied by an electromagnetic outburst manifested as a kilonova and an off-axis jet. However, no conclusive electromagnetic signature was found to come from the GW190425. Indeed, nature proves again more complicated than our models, and it is still a big question how to model kilonovae, or to understand the mechanisms driving astrophysical jets and gamma ray bursts. …

Animal Communication And Sustainability Project, Reiko Kataoka, Tridha Chatterjee

Assignment Prompts

This assignment is for the Ling 123 course. This is a GE course under Area R, and it is a large course (about 10 sections, max 25 students in each section) taught by multiple instructors.

The assignment is designed as a term project. With one or two preparatory class meetings, this two-part project (three-part including the learning) could be completed in 4-5 weeks, culminating in group presentations. The assignment would be best given toward the end of the semester as a capstone project after students have gained in-depth knowledge on mechanisms and adaptive functions of animal communication systems and the …

Rip Curl: Community Activism For The Coast (The Ux Phase, Rip Curl And Sustainability, The Ui Phase), John Delacruz

Assignment Prompts

ADV 132 enables students to explore the craft and process of user experience and user interface design. They develop their skills within the context of a specific brief. The aim is to offer students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a particular problem and come up with creative solutions that will come to life on digital media platforms.

Community Table Project, Kohar Scott

Assignment Prompts

Food insecurity is a real issue unfortunately faced by many students at SJSU. The SJSU Spartan Food Pantry is a walk-in, full-service, staffed, food assistance program that provides a resource for students to receive non-perishable goods, fresh produce, and refrigerated items to eligible students. Imagine that our SJSU Spartan Food Pantry was redesigned with a more ecology-focused "systems approach" like loopstore.com.

Designed by students and for students, what do you want to see available and how can you improve the package and delivery? Pick a product that you would like to see available at the SJSU Spartan Food …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 62 Number 2, Fall 2021, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

18 - WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS The pandemic stole an entire year of games from them. But this team still won it all. Written by Harold Gutmann. Illustrated by Liam Eisenberg.

26 - INFORMED BY STRUGGLE. How hardship forged a sense of gratitude in SCU finance professor Meir Statman and his wife, Navah. Written by Deborah Lohse.

30 - TWEETING GOOD There’s a Bronco who finds hope, God, and cat pictures online. We talk with @padreSJ. Interviewed by Leslie Griffy. Illustrated by Kyle Hilton.

34 - SIGNALS FROM A CHANGING PLANET. The imprints of humans on the environment spell a …

Inferring Vortex And Dust Devil Statistics From Insight, Brian Jackson, Justin Crevier, Michelle Szurgot, Ryan Battin, Clément Perrin, Sébastien Rodriguez

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The InSight mission has operated on the surface of Mars for nearly two Earth years, returning detections of the first marsquakes. The lander also deployed a meteorological instrument package and cameras to monitor local surface activity. These instruments have detected boundary layer phenomena, including small-scale vortices. These vortices register as short-lived, negative pressure excursions and closely resemble those that could generate dust devils. Although our analysis shows that InSight encountered more than 900 vortices and collected more than 1000 images of the Martian surface, no active dust devils were imaged. In spite of the lack of dust devil detections, we …

Absolute Frequency Measurement Of The Llevel Of Neutral Using Two-Photon Spectroscopy, M. T. Herd, E. C. Cook, William Williams

Physics: Faculty Publications

We report absolute frequency measurements on the level of neutral using sub-Doppler two-photon spectroscopy. The absolute center-of-gravity energy for the level is determined to be , a factor of 170 times improvement over the previous measurement from 1964 of . This measurement also corrects a discrepancy with the previously measured value. The hyperfine coefficients were found to be and , which are consistent with previous results.

The Mass Of Β Pictoris C From Β Pictoris B Orbital Motion, S. Lacour, J. J. Wang, L. Rodet, M. Nowak, J. Shangguan, H. Beust, A. M. Lagrange, R. Abuter, A. Amorim, R. Asensio-Torres, M. Benisty, J. P. Berger, S. Blunt, A. Boccaletti, A. Bohn, M. L. Bolzer, M. Bonnefoy, H. Bonnet, G. Bourdarot, W. Brandner, F. Cantalloube, P. Caselli, B. Charnay, G. Chauvin, E. Choquet, V. Christiaens, Y. Clénet, V. Coudé Du Foresto, A. Cridland, R. Dembet, J. Dexter, P. T. De Zeeuw, K. Ward-Duong, Et Al

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

Aims. We aim to demonstrate that the presence and mass of an exoplanet can now be effectively derived from the astrometry of another exoplanet. Methods. We combined previous astrometry of β Pictoris b with a new set of observations from the GRAVITY interferometer. The orbital motion of β Pictoris b is fit using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations in Jacobi coordinates. The inner planet, β Pictoris c, was also reobserved at a separation of 96 mas, confirming the previous orbital estimations. Results. From the astrometry of planet b only, we can (i) detect the presence of β Pictoris c and …

Using Experimentally Calibrated Regularized Stokeslets To Assess Bacterial Flagellar Motility Near A Surface, Orrin Shindell, Hoa Nguyen, Nicholas Coltharp, Frank G. Healy, B. Rodenborn

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Research

The presence of a nearby boundary is likely to be important in the life cycle and evolution of motile flagellate bacteria. This has led many authors to employ numerical simulations to model near-surface bacterial motion and compute hydrodynamic boundary effects. A common choice has been the method of images for regularized Stokeslets (MIRS); however, the method requires discretization sizes and regularization parameters that are not specified by any theory. To determine appropriate regularization parameters for given discretization choices in MIRS, we conducted dynamically similar macroscopic experiments and fit the simulations to the data. In the experiments, we measured the torque …

Land, Racial Formations, And Power: Exploring The Network Of Power Relationships During Climate Change Planning In Coastal South Carolina, Teresa Norman

Theses and Dissertations

Climate change projections for the coastline of South Carolina predict that by mid-century there will be around 1.2 feet of sea level rise, and potentially up to 4 feet of rise by 2100. Additionally, climate change is linked to intensified hurricanes, a hazard for the South Carolina coastline every year. Both of these scenarios result in increases in the regularity and severity of coastal flooding, making the threat of permanent or temporary displacement (relocation) from coastal lands a reality. This is a particularly pressing matter for African American communities already made vulnerable by the long history of racial discrimination in …

Marginally Interpretable Models And Multilevel Models For Quantile Regression With Random-Effects, Nahid Sultana Sumi

Theses and Dissertations

The quantile regression model is an active area of statistical research that has received a lot of attention. This complements the most widely used statistical tool, that is, mean regression analysis. Quantile regression analysis It has become more flexible because of its properties that include no assumption on the distribution of the response variable, equivalent to monotone transformations, and robustness to outliers. However, regression analysis offers methodological challenges if the observations are not independent. Cluster, multilevel, and repeated measures (longitudinal data) designs introduce such dependence. The correlation between observations on the same units or clusters should be accounted for to …

Technology, Values, And Faith With Computer Scientist Derek Schuurman, Derek Schuurman

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Dr. Schuurman is a fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation, part of the leadership team for the West Michigan ASA chapter, an associate fellow of the The Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, senior member of the IEEE, member of the ACM, CES, ACMS, a book review editor for Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, a regular contributor to the Christian Scholars Review blog, and a regular columnist for Christian Courier.

Association Between The Beta Band Neural Response And The Behavioral Performance In Aphasic And Neurologically Intact Individuals, Yilun Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

The complex motor act of speech requires integrating linguistic and sensorimotor processes. Sensorimotor interaction mainly supports speech production in the form of state feedback control architecture. While speaking, subjects react to perturbations in the pitch of voice auditory feedback by changing their tone in the opposite direction to pitch-shift stimuli to compensate for the perceived pitch shift. Aphasia is a communication impairment affecting patients’ speaking, understanding, reading, and writing. The present study aims to examine the association between brain neural activity and the ability for speech auditory feedback error correction in both post-stroke aphasia and neurologically intact individuals. There are …

Embedding Spheres In Knot Traces, P. Feller, Allison N. Miller, M. Nagel, P. Orson, M. Powell, A. Ray

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Works

The trace of the n-framed surgery on a knot in S³ is a 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere. We characterise when a generator of the second homotopy group of such a manifold can be realised by a locally flat embedded 2-sphere whose complement has abelian fundamental group. Our characterisation is in terms of classical and computable 3-dimensional knot invariants. For each n, this provides conditions that imply a knot is topologically n-shake slice, directly analogous to the result of Freedman and Quinn that a knot with trivial Alexander polynomial is topologically slice.

Mgrre_Pureoilscouttickets_Doolittle_1_21127016180000, Mgrre

Legacy Scout Tickets from Pure Oil Company

No abstract provided.

The Magellan-Tess Survey. I. Survey Description And Midsurvey Results, J. Teske, S. X. Wang, A. Wolfgang, T. Gan, M. Plotnykov, D. J. Armstrong, R. P. Butler, B. Cale, J. D. Crane, W. Howard, Eric L.N. Jensen, N. Law, S. A. Shectman, P. Plavchan, D. Valencia, A. Vanderburg, G. R. Ricker, R. Vanderspek, D. W. Latham, S. Seager, J. N. Winn, J. M. Jenkins, V. Adibekyan, D. Barrado, S. C. C. Barros, Z. Benkhaldoun, D. J. A. Brown, E. M. Bryant, J. Burt, D. A. Caldwell, D. Charbonneau, R. Cloutier, K. A. Collins, K. I. Collins, K. D. Colon, D. M. Conti, O. D. S. Demangeon, J. D. Eastman, M. Elmufti, F. Feng, E. Flowers, N. M. Guerrero, S. Hojjatpanah, J. M. Irwin, G. Isopi, J. Lillo-Box, F. Mallia, B. Massey, M. Mori, S. E. Mullally, N. Narita, T. Nishiumi, A. Osborn, M. Paegert, J. P. De Leon, S. N. Quinn, M. Reefe, R. P. Schwarz, A. Shporer, A. Soubkiou, S. G. Sousa, C. Stockdale, P. A. Strøm, T.-G. Tan, J. Tang, P. Tenenbaum, P. J. Wheatley, J. Wittrock, D. A. Yahalomi, F. Zohrabi

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

Kepler revealed that roughly one-third of Sunlike stars host planets orbiting within 100 days and between the size of Earth and Neptune. How do these planets form, what are they made of, and do they represent a continuous population or multiple populations? To help address these questions, we began the Magellan-TESS Survey (MTS), which uses Magellan II/PFS to obtain radial velocity (RV) masses of 30 TESS-detected exoplanets and develops an analysis framework that connects observed planet distributions to underlying populations. In the past, small-planet RV measurements have been challenging to obtain due to host star faintness and low RV semiamplitudes …

The Infosys Times, Vol. 7, No. 1, St. Cloud State University

The Infosys TIMES

• Cyber Security Awareness Week
• Anderson Trucking Field Visit
• The Values of Data Analytic Skills
• Information Systems Club: Meeting with CentraCare's IT Department
• Graduate Assistant for Digital Forensic Lab
• Data Analytics Certificates
• Study Abroad for 2 Weeks & Earn 6 Credits!

Toi-3362b: A Proto Hot Jupiter Undergoing High-Eccentricity Tidal Migration, J. Dong, C. X. Huang, G. Zhou, R. I. Dawson, J. E. Rodriguez, J. D. Eastman, K. A. Collins, S. N. Quinn, A. Shporer, A. H. M. J. Triaud, S. Wang, T. Beatty, J. M. Jackson, K. I. Collins, L. Abe, O. Suarez, N. Crouzet, D. Mékarnia, G. Dransfield, Eric L.N. Jensen, C. Stockdale, K. Barkaoui, A. Heitzmann, D. J. Wright, B. C. Addison, R. A. Wittenmyer, J. Okumura, B. P. Bowler, J. Horner, S. R. Kane, J. Kielkopf, H. Liu, P. Plavchan, M. W. Mengel, G. R. Ricker, R. Vanderspek, D. W. Latham, S. Seager, J. N. Winn, J. M. Jenkins, J. L. Christiansen, M. Paegert

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

High-eccentricity tidal migration is a possible way for giant planets to be placed in short-period orbits. If this happens often, one would expect to catch proto hot Jupiters on highly elliptical orbits undergoing high-eccentricity tidal migration. As of yet, few such systems have been discovered. Here, we introduce TOI-3362b (TIC-464300749b), an 18.1 day, 5 M_Jup planet orbiting a main-sequence F-type star that is likely undergoing high-eccentricity tidal migration. The orbital eccentricity is 0.815 (+0.023)/(-0.032). With a semimajor axis of 0.153 (+0.002)/(-0.003) au, the planet's orbit is expected to shrink to a final orbital radius of 0.051 (+0.008)/(-0.006) au after …

Hd 183579b: A Warm Sub-Neptune Transiting A Solar Twin Detected By Tess, T. Gan, M. Bedell, S. X. Wang, D. Foreman-Mackey, J. Meléndez, S. Mao, K. G. Stassun, S. B. Howell, C. Ziegler, R. A. Wittenmyer, C. Hellier, K. A. Collins, A. Shporer, G. R. Ricker, R. Vanderspek, D. W. Latham, S. Seager, J. N. Winn, J. M. Jenkins, B. C. Addison, S. Ballard, T. Barclay, J. L. Bean, B. P. Bowler, C. Briceño, I. J. M. Crossfield, J. Dittman, J. Horner, Eric L.N. Jensen, S. R. Kane, J. Kielkopf, L. Kreidberg, N. Law, A. W. Mann, M. W. Mengel, E. D. Morgan, J. Okumura, H. P. Osborn, M. Paegert, P. Plavchan, R. P. Schwarz, B. Shiao, J. C. Smith, L. Spina, C. G. Tinney, G. Torres, J. D. Twicken, M. Vezie, G. Wang, D. J. Wright, H. Zhang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

We report the discovery and characterization of a transiting warm sub-Neptune planet around the nearby bright (V = 8.75 mag, K = 7.15 mag) solar twin HD 183579, delivered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The host star is located 56.8 ± 0.1 pc away with a radius of R_* = 0.97 ± 0.02 R_⊙ and a mass of M_* = 1.03 ± 0.05 M_⊙. We confirm the planetary nature by combining space and ground-based photometry, spectroscopy, and imaging. We find that HD 183579b (TOI-1055b) has a radius of R_{p …}

A Biological Assessment Of Water Quality In El Placer, Ecuador: The Effect Of Agriculture On Stream Health And The Quality Of Historical Versus Current Drinking Water Sources, Danielle Kleinberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Although fresh water is one of Ecuador’s most abundant resources, high quality drinking water for its inhabitants is scarce (Wingfield et al., 2021). The most prevalent sources of water pollution in Ecuador are domestic waste, silver and gold mining, oil production, and agricultural chemicals (Buckalew et al., 1997). El Placer, a village located in Tungurahua, Ecuador, is highly dependent on agriculture as a source of income. The first objective of this study was to determine the effect of agriculture on the El Placer’s Tía Anita Stream through comparing the water quality at three sites with varying agricultural influence. The second …

Abundance, Foraging Levels, And Dietary Preferences Of Chaetodon Capistratus On Reefs Surrounding Porvenir Island In The Guna Yala Comarca Of Panamá, Eleanor Ann Casement

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Reef fish are a physically and functionally diverse group of organisms that live in close association with coral reef habitats. Chaetodontidae represents the most species rich family of corallivorous fish, and their reliance on corals as food resources has led to their designation as indicator species of coral cover and health. However, the majority of research on the foraging ecology of Caribbean Chaetodontids dates back several decades, and therefore does not account for recent changes in coral community composition as the result of disease, climate change, and other stressors. As the novel and deadly stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) …

Search For Lepton-Flavor-Violating Tau-Lepton Decays To ℓγ At Belle, K. Uno, K. Hayasaka, K. Inami, I. Adachi, H. Aihara, D. M. Asner, H. Atmacan, T. Aushev, R. Ayad, V. Babu, J. Bennett, F. Bernlochner, M. Bessner, V. Bhardwaj, J. Biswal, A. Bobrov, G. Bonvicini, A. Bozek, M. Bračko

Faculty and Student Publications

Charged lepton flavor violation is forbidden in the Standard Model but possible in several new physics scenarios. In many of these models, the radiative decays τ± → ℓ±γ (ℓ = e, μ) are predicted to have a sizeable probability, making them particularly interesting channels to search at various experiments. An updated search via τ± → ℓ±γ using full data of the Belle experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 988 fb−1, is reported for charged lepton flavor violation. No significant excess over background predictions from the Standard Model is observed, and the upper limits on the branching fractions, B(τ± → …

Flavor Su(3) In Cabibbo-Favored D-Meson Decays, Bhubanjyoti Bhattacharya, Alakabha Datta, Alexey A. Petrov, John Waite

Faculty and Student Publications

Model-independent description of nonleptonic decays of charmed mesons is a challenging task due to large nonperturbative effects of strong interactions on the transition amplitudes. We discuss the equivalence of two different flavor-SU(3)-based descriptions of Cabibbo-favored non-leptonic decays of charmed mesons to two-pseudoscalars final states including the η and η′ mesons.