Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Selection And Demography Drive Range-Wide Patterns Of Mhc Variation In Mule Deer (Odocoileus Hemionus), Rachel M. Cook

Theses and Dissertations

Variation at functional genes involved in immune response is of increasing concern as wildlife diseases continue to emerge and threaten populations. The amount of standing genetic variation in a population is directly associated with its potential for rapid adaptation to novel environments. For genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which are crucial in activating the immune response and which have extremely high levels of polymorphism, the genetic variation has been shown to be influenced by both parasite-mediated selection and historical population demography. To better understand the relative roles of parasite-mediated selection and demography on MHC evolution in large populations, …

Developing Effective Theories: A Case Study In Monolayer Iron Selenide, Joseph O'Halloran

Theses and Dissertations

In this work, we outline the development of a series of models which have allowed us to investigate the low-temperature phases of monolayer FeSe. These models are built using group theoretic arguments to ensure the constraints provided by the crystal symmetry are satisfied. We investigate the interplay between stripe antiferromagnetism and spin-vortex crystal order in the framework of the Landau theory of phase transitions. By considering inversion symmetry breaking terms in the Landau free-energy, we show that the spin-vortex crystal is preferred when the non-symmorphic parent symmetry group $P4/nmm$ is reduced to a symmorphic subgroup.

We also consider symmetry constraints …

Analysis Of Music Genre Clustering Algorithms, Samuel Walter Stern

Theses and Dissertations

Classification and clustering of music genres has become an increasingly prevalent focusin recent years, prompting a push for research into relevant algorithms. The most successful algorithms have typically applied the Naive Bayes or k-Nearest Neighbors algorithms, or used Neural Networks to perform classification. This thesis seeks to investigate the use of unsupervised clustering algorithms such as K-Means or Hierarchical clustering, and establish their usefulness in comparison to or conjunction with established methods.

Monitoring Of Soil Moisture And Human Breath Using Colorimetric Humidity Sensors, Emily Bialka

Theses and Dissertations

The monitoring of soil moisture is essential to optimize plant growth, harvest, and water use, and respiration monitoring is one of the major vital signs of human health. Current soil moisture sensors are either costly or ineffective, and current breath sensors which also detect humidity levels are electronic-based with narrow humidity ranges. The following study targets these two needs by developing a cost-effective, high-sensitivity soil moisture sensor and breath monitor. Responsive interference coloration humidity sensors which utilize thin-film interference are applied to track soil moisture content over time, and to monitor breath humidity levels and respiratory rate in various scenarios. …

Comparison Of Land Use And Flowslide Incidence In Palu Valley Following The 2018 Mw 7.5 Palu-Donggala Earthquake, Peta C. Fifield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The September 28 Mw 7.5 Palu-Donggala earthquake in Indonesia was the deadliest natural disaster in 2018. Five flowslides on the eastern side of Palu Valley, which were attributed to the substantial majority of deaths and economic losses in the region, occurred due to liquefaction of naturally dry alluvial deposits in gently sloping ground (2 to 6%). The requisite conditions for soil liquefaction are the presence of loose granular sediments and full saturation. Instigation of these catastrophic ground failures were linked to artificial saturation by an unlined agricultural irrigation canal. From a civil engineering perspective, the Palu ground failures on the …

Linear Nearest Neighbor Flocks With All Distinct Agents, R. G. Lyons, J. J. P. Veerman

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper analyzes the global dynamics of one-dimensional agent arrays with nearest neighbor linear couplings. The equations of motion are second-order linear ODE’s with constant coefficients. The novel part of this research is that the couplings are different for each distinct agent. We allow the forces to depend on the positions and velocity (damping terms) but the magnitudes of both the position and velocity couplings are different for each agent. We, also, do not assume that the forces are “Newtonian” (i.e. the force due to A on B equals the minus the force of B on A) as this assumption …

Editorial Introduction To The Special Issue: Supporting Future Scholarship On Cybercrime, Jaeyong Choi, Brandon Dulisse, Richard L. Wentling, Nathan Kruis

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

This editorial introduction will present an overview of the three papers published in this special issue of the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime. The winners of the student paper competition during the 2021 Whitehat Conference have prepared their papers for this special issue. Their research directs our attention to key issues regarding cybercrime that have often been overlooked in the literature ranging from North Korean cyberterrorism to the relationship between COVID-19 and cybercrime and to fear of online victimization.

Malware Infections In The U.S. During The Covid-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Study, Sydney Gero, Sinchul Back, Jennifer Laprade, Joonggon Kim

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in many ways, especially in the landscape of cyber threats. The pandemic has pro-vided cybercriminals with more opportunities to commit crimes due to more people engaging in online activities, along with the increased use of computers for school, work, and social events. The current study seeks to explore cybercrime trends, in particular malware infections, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study examines the relationship between the number of malware in-fections, COVID-19 positive cases, closed non-essential businesses, and closed K-12 public schools in the United States. Data utilized in this study derives from (1) …

Level Of Engagement With Social Networking Services And Fear Of Online Victimization: The Role Of Online Victimization Experiences, Yeonjae Park, Lynne M. Vieraitis

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

No abstract provided.

Maximal Spacelike Surfaces In A Certain Homogeneous Lorentzian 3-Manifold, Sungwook Lee

Faculty Publications

The 2-parameter family of certain homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds, which includes Minkowski 3-space and anti-de Sitter 3-space, is considered. Each homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifold in the 2-parameter family has a solvable Lie group structure with left invariant metric. A generalized integral representation formula for maximal spacelike surfaces in the homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds is obtained. The normal Gauß map of maximal spacelike surfaces and its harmonicity are discussed.

Global Famine After Nuclear War, Lilia Xia, Alan Robock, Kim J. N. Scherrer, Cheryl S. Harrison, Jonas Jaegermeyr, Charles G. Bardeen, Owen B. Toon, Ryan F. Heneghan

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Verification Of Environmental-Regime–Stratified Gfs Short-Range Vertical Sounding Forecasts, Dillon Blount

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the United States’ operational global numerical weather prediction model, the Global Forecast System (GFS), has been upgraded to include a new dynamical core and an updated turbulence parameterization. This updated turbulence parameterization uses a hybrid eddy-diffusivity, countergradient, and mass-flux formulation to approximate near-surface turbulent vertical mixing. The precise formulation used is based on the local stability, with the eddy-diffusivity, countergradient, and mass flux formulations used under stable, weakly unstable, and strongly unstable conditions, respectively. In this study, an objective classification of environmental regimes is used to verify GFS short-range vertical soundings, focusing on the planetary boundary layer …

Prediction Of Concurrent Hypertensive Disorders In Pregnancy And Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Using Machine Learning Techniques, Mary Ejiwale

Theses and Dissertations

Gestational diabetes mellitus and hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are serious maternal health conditions with immediate and lifelong mother-child health consequences. These obstetric pathologies have been widely investigated, but mostly in silos, while studies focusing on their simultaneous occurrence rarely exist. This is especially the case in the machine learning domain. This retrospective study sought to investigate, construct, evaluate, compare, and isolate a supervised machine learning predictive model for the binary classification of co-occurring gestational diabetes mellitus and hypertensive disorders in pregnancy in a cohort of otherwise healthy pregnant women. To accomplish the stated aims, this study analyzed an extract (n=4624, …

Semantic Analysis Of Vaccine And Mask Sentiments In Covid-19 Twitter Data, Mohammadreza Sediqin

Theses and Dissertations

SARS CoV-2 (COVID-19) was identified as the cause of severe respiratory disease in China in 2019. It is a virus that will be transferred person-to-person by sneezing, coughing, or talking. This phenomenon not only affects public health and economics but also mental health as well. SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and wearing masks plays significant rolesin preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but vaccine hesitancy and anti-mask beliefs threaten the efficacy of the government orders in prevention and immunization against Coronavirus. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been investigated from different aspects, but few large-scale studies focus on the opinion of …

Objective Methodology To Identify The Sea Breeze Circulation And Associated Low-Level Jet In The New York Bight, Elizabeth J. Mccabe

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

While the sea breeze has been studied for decades, in a complicated mid-latitude coastal region such as the New York Bight (NYB), the general thermodynamic structure and dynamics of the circulation is poorly characterized. The East Coast of the United States has become a critical area for offshore wind farm development, including a generally favorable wind resource, relatively shallow waters on an extensive continental shelf, frequent warm season sea breezes, and proximity to large populated areas. Thus the sea breeze will play a key role in the new energy economy, given the favorable wind speeds and capacity factors during periods …

Multi-Proxy Approach To Robustly Capture Earthquake Temperature Rise At The Punchbowl Fault, California, Emma M. Armstrong

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Earthquakes produce heat along a fault surface from friction created as two blocks of rock move past each other. The amount of heat generated depends on a variety of factors, including rock type, stresses, and thickness of the fault zone. Identifying evidence for and quantifying this earthquake (coseismic) temperature rise are essential for identifying past earthquakes in the rock record. Indirect methods, such as textures and geochemical signatures that change with temperature, can serve as paleothermometers. Here we compare two paleothermometers, biomarkers and thermochronometry, from two transects across the Punchbowl fault (PF), California. The PF is an ancient fault strand …

Designing Reactive Oxygen Species Producing Materials For Cancer And Wastewater Treatments, Nil Kanatha Pandey

Physics Dissertations

This dissertation is focused on using nanotechnology to improve conventional photodynamic therapy (PDT) and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) for cancer and wastewater treatments, respectively. Even though PDT has a great potential for cancer treatment, the insufficient penetration depth of the external light source and hypoxic nature of the tumor microenvironment severely hinder PDT’s applications in clinical settings. Fortunately, microwaves (MWs) offer a potential opportunity to overcome these limitations. In the first part of the dissertation, a facile synthesis method of copper-cysteamine (Cu-Cy) nanoparticles is discussed, and their reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and cancer cell killing performances upon MW exposure …

Localized Bands And Their Effects In The Strongly Correlated D And F Electron Systems: A First Principles Study, Hori Pada Sarker

Physics Dissertations

Strongly correlated materials such as d and f-electron systems manifest a broad range of interesting phenomena such as metal-insulator transition, high temperature superconductivity, topologically insulating behavior etc. Due to the highly localized nature of d and f-electrons, they are tightly bound about the associated atoms within the crystal lattice and hence strongly interact with intra-site electrons and the corresponding ionic cores. Such a strong localization of electrons results in the creation of polaron quasi-particles in strongly correlated system like BiVO4, a promising photoanode material for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting for H2 fuel generation using solar irradiation. Using first principles density …

A Novel Supervised Dimensionality Reduction Method: Integrating Pca With Svm, Faezeh Soleimani

Mathematics Dissertations

Data curation and storage methods have changed over the past few decades with the use of new technologies, and gathering data on a huge number of features (dimensions) is now very common among diverse scientific and engineering fields. Prior to classification or regression, dimensionality reduction is necessary to eliminate irrelevant features and to deal with data with high dimensions. A number of numerical methods have already been proposed to reduce the dimension of data, for example, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and Supervised Principal Component Analysis (SPCA). In this dissertation, we will introduce a novel way of …

Studies On Enantioselective Desymmetrizing Alkyne Hydrosilylation, Yao Chung Chang

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses

This research focuses on the design and synthesis of enantioselective desymmetrizing α-hydrosilylation of propargyl alcohols to provide α-hydroxy (E)-vinylsilanes. Transition metal-catalyzed, regio-and stereoselective intramolecular hydrosilylation of propargylic alcohols with an easily removable acetal directing group has been studied. This project thus far screened 35 chiral ligands with rhodium (I) to achieve enantioselective alkyne hydrosilylation. This strategy consists of sequential hydrosilylation of bis-propargyl formate with iridium catalyst and intramolecular alkyne hydrosilylation with chiral rhodium catalyst. To this end, a variety of chiral phosphine ligands has been tested, yet an enantiomeric excess of the α-hydroxy (E)-vinylsilanes has not been fruitful thus far, …

Tuning The Solubility, Cellular-Uptake And Activity Of Microtubule Stabilizing Ruthenium Polypyridyl Complexes, Melissa Marie Reardon

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses

Many Ru(II) Polypyridyl Complexes (RPCs) are being investigated as they show potent cytotoxicity and acceptable toleration in animals. Some of these RPCs are thought to target DNA and/or mitochondria in cells. Recently, [Ru(dip)3]2+ (dip= 4,7-diphenylphenanthroline) with cytotoxicity ranging from 1-4 µM, has shown to target microtubules (MTs) and exhibit strong microtubule stabilizing activity (MSA). Determination of [Ru(dip)3]2+:MT stoichiometry was difficult due to poor solubility. Therefore, to study this new metallo-organic target, a less lipophilic RPC is needed to enhance solubility, while still achieving cytotoxicity. The purpose of this thesis is to test the following hypothesis. We postulate that by systematically …

Bullet Ricochet Of Polymer Coated Bullets, Stephen Daly

Student Theses

Polymer coated bullets were designed to limit a shooter’s exposure to lead. However, despite the advantages that these bullets give there are still difficulties which arise in a forensic firearms examination. Unlike in a typical metal coated bullet, individualizing striations will typically not be imparted to a polymer coated bullet making it unable to be linked to a specific firearm. Due to this difficulty any information that can be gained at the scene of the crime could be crucial. Some obtainable information includes the angle of ricochet and the angle of incidence of the discharged bullet as well as traces …

Search For The Decay Bs0 →Η′Η, N. K. Nisar, V. Savinov, I. Adachi, H. Aihara, S. Al Said, D. M. Asner, H. Atmacan, T. Aushev, R. Ayad, V. Babu, S. Bahinipati, P. Behera, J. Bennett, M. Bessner, V. Bhardwaj, B. Bhuyan, T. Bilka, J. Biswal, G. Bonvicini

Faculty and Student Publications

We report the results of the first search for the decay Bs0→η′η using 121.4 fb-1 of data collected at the I (5S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e-collider. We observe no significant signal and set a 90% confidence-level upper limit of 6.5×10-5 on the branching fraction of this decay.

Ultra-High Speed Video Observations Of Intracloud Lightning Flash Initiation, Maribeth Stolzenburg, Thomas C. Marshall, Sampath Bandara, Brian Hurley, Raymond Siedlecki

Faculty and Student Publications

This study describes results from video observations of five intracloud flashes located ≤ 20 km from the camera and recorded with 6.1 µs exposure time and 6.66 µs frame intervals. Video data are supported with electric field change (E-change) and VHF measurements, with emphasis on the flash initiating event (IE) and initial breakdown (IB) stage. In four of the five flashes, the IE is accompanied by weak luminosity, ≤ 5% above background, lasting for 300–500 µs. Two of these four IEs were positive Narrow Bipolar Events (NBEs) with VHF powers of 43 and 990 W; these are the first (known) …

Ava: Adversarial Vignetting Attack Against Visual Recognition, Binyu Tian, Felix Juefei-Xu, Qing Guo, Xiaofei Xie, Xiaohong Li, Yang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Vignetting is an inherent imaging phenomenon within almost all optical systems, showing as a radial intensity darkening toward the corners of an image. Since it is a common effect for photography and usually appears as a slight intensity variation, people usually regard it as a part of a photo and would not even want to post-process it. Due to this natural advantage, in this work, we study the vignetting from a new viewpoint, i.e., adversarial vignetting attack (AVA), which aims to embed intentionally misleading information into the vignetting and produce a natural adversarial example without noise patterns. This example can …

A Lagrangian Column Generation Approach For The Probabilistic Crowdsourced Logistics Planning, Chung-Kyun Han, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years we have increasingly seen the movement for the retail industry to move their operations online. Along the process, it has created brand new patterns for the fulfillment service, and the logistics service providers serving these retailers have no choice but to adapt. The most challenging issues faced by all logistics service providers are the highly fluctuating demands and the shortening response times. All these challenges imply that maintaining a fixed fleet will either be too costly or insufficient. One potential solution is to tap into the crowdsourced workforce. However, existing industry practices of relying on human planners …

Reproducibility Companion Paper: Knowledge Enhanced Neural Fashion Trend Forecasting, Yunshan Ma, Yujuan Ding, Xun Yang, Lizi Liao, Wai Keung Wong, Tat-Seng Chua, Jinyoung Moon, Hong-Han Shuai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This companion paper supports the replication of the fashion trend forecasting experiments with the KERN (Knowledge Enhanced Recurrent Network) method that we presented in the ICMR 2020. We provide an artifact that allows the replication of the experiments using a Python implementation. The artifact is easy to deploy with simple installation, training and evaluation. We reproduce the experiments conducted in the original paper and obtain similar performance as previously reported. The replication results of the experiments support the main claims in the original paper.

Cosy: Counterfactual Syntax For Cross-Lingual Understanding, Sicheng Yu, Hao Zhang, Yulei Niu, Qianru Sun, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Pre-trained multilingual language models, e.g., multilingual-BERT, are widely used in cross-lingual tasks, yielding the state-of-the-art performance. However, such models suffer from a large performance gap between source and target languages, especially in the zero-shot setting, where the models are fine-tuned only on English but tested on other languages for the same task. We tackle this issue by incorporating language-agnostic information, specifically, universal syntax such as dependency relations and POS tags, into language models, based on the observation that universal syntax is transferable across different languages. Our approach, named COunterfactual SYntax (COSY), includes the design of SYntax-aware networks as well as …

Discovery Of Mental Wellness Via Social Analytics For Liveability In An Urban City, Kar Way Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart cities, are often perceived as urban areas that use technologies to manage resources, improve economy and enhance community livelihood. In this paper, we share an approach which uses multiple sources of data for evidence-based analysis of the public's views, concerns and sentiments on the topic related to mental wellness. We hope to bring forth a better understanding of the existing concerns of the citizens and available social support. Our study leverages on social sensing via text mining and social network analysis to listen to the voices of the citizens through revealed content from web data sources, such as social …

A Survey On Complex Knowledge Base Question Answering: Methods, Challenges And Solutions, Yunshi Lan, Gaole He, Jinhao Jiang, Jing Jiang, Wayne Xin Zhao, Ji-Rong Wen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Knowledge base question answering (KBQA) aims to answer a question over a knowledge base (KB). Recently, a large number of studies focus on semantically or syntactically complicated questions. In this paper, we elaborately summarize the typical challenges and solutions for complex KBQA. We begin with introducing the background about the KBQA task. Next, we present the two mainstream categories of methods for complex KBQA, namely semantic parsing-based (SP-based) methods and information retrieval-based (IR-based) methods. We then review the advanced methods comprehensively from the perspective of the two categories. Specifically, we explicate their solutions to the typical challenges. Finally, we conclude …