Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Breast Ultrasound Image Segmentation Based On Uncertainty Reduction And Context Information, Kuan Huang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Breast cancer frequently occurs in women over the world. It was one of the most serious diseases and the second common cancer among women in 2019. The survival rate of stages 0 and 1 of breast cancer is closed to 100%. It is urgent to develop an approach that can detect breast cancer in the early stages. Breast ultrasound (BUS) imaging is low-cost, portable, and effective; therefore, it becomes the most crucial approach for breast cancer diagnosis. However, BUS images are of poor quality, low contrast, and uncertain. The computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system is developed for breast cancer to prevent …

Algorithms For Covering Barrier Points By Mobile Sensors With Line Constraint, Princy Jain

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In this thesis, we develop efficient algorithms for the problem of covering barrier points by mobile sensors. Each sensor is represented by a point in the plane with the same covering range r so that any point within distance r from the sensor can be covered by the sensor. Given a set B of m points (called “barrier points”) and a set S of n points (representing the “sensors”) in the plane, the problem is to move the sensors so that each barrier point is covered by at least one sensor and the maximum movement of all sensors is minimized. …

Foliar Photodegradation In Pesticide Environmental Modeling, Sean M. Lyons

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The work described here was conducted to better understand how pesticides will behave following their application to crops or soil. This understanding will allow for better use of pesticides which will protect the environment and non-target organisms while remaining effective against pests. The Pesticide Dissipation form Agricultural Land (PeDAL) model was developed to simulate pesticide behavior following application and laboratory experiments focused on the photodegradation of select pesticides on alfalfa leaves were conducted to support this model.

Constraining Deformation Mechanisms Of Fault Damage Zones: A Case Study Of The Shallow San Andreas Fault At Elizabeth Lake, Southern California., Caroline Studnicky

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Earthquakes nucleate at depth and rupture along the fault plane up to the Earth’s surface releasing seismic energy as the fault propagates. This energy creates the shaking we feel on the surface. Some faults do not rupture and create shaking but deform slowly and smoothly accommodating fault slip over extended time periods. This process is referred to as aseismic slip or creep. Whether a fault ruptures or creeps depends on the properties of the rocks through which the fault plane extends. In order to model seismic hazards correctly, we need to characterize the composition, deformation structures, and alteration materials of …

Comparative Study Of Machine Learning Models On Solar Flare Prediction Problem, Nikhil Sai Kurivella

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Solar flare events are explosions of energy and radiation from the Sun’s surface. These events occur due to the tangling and twisting of magnetic fields associated with sunspots. When Coronal Mass ejections accompany solar flares, solar storms could travel towards earth at very high speeds, disrupting all earthly technologies and posing radiation hazards to astronauts. For this reason, the prediction of solar flares has become a crucial aspect of forecasting space weather. Our thesis utilized the time-series data consisting of active solar region magnetic field parameters acquired from SDO that span more than eight years. The classification models take AR …

An Empirical And Theoretical Investigation Of Random Reinforced Forests And Shallow Convolutional Neural Networks, Nikhil Ganta

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For many years, the global population of honey bees has been decreasing due to inconclusive reasons resulting in the syndrome Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This syndrome has been plaguing bees and affecting commercial agriculture pollination since 1998. Many researchers have suggested that pesticides, in-hive chemicals, pathogens, etc., might be the causes of CCD. Researchers also believe that any changes in a beehive can disturb the bees, which may negatively affect their health. Honey bees are the most vital among all the animal pollinators contributing to approximately 30% of the world’s commercial pollination services. As they are of keystone importance to …

Plug-And-Play Sql, Shubham Swami

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

We present an efficient model to retrieve data from a database by implementing plug-and-play queries using the query guards. The model is efficient in the sense that it saves time when writing a query and promotes query portability and reuse. A plug-and-play query is a freestanding query that can couple to any data socket and self determine whether it can be evaluated reliably on the data. We use hierarchies to improve SQL querying in a way that eliminates the need to write a view to construct virtual tables or a set of tables to run a query. The hierarchy is …

Measuring, Mapping, And Managing Outdoor Recreation On Public Lands In Utah With Social Media Data, Hongchao Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Social media platforms allow people to post photos, text, and video clips that include embedded information about the geographic location, time, and date that of the posts. Recently, researchers have utilized these data to study outdoor recreation management. In particular, geotagged social media posts can be used to understand outdoor recreation behavior and visitation patterns on public lands. Consequently, it can be used to inform the decisions of agencies and organizations that manage recreational uses of public land. I conducted three studies to explore the ways social media information can help provide recreation managers with a better understanding of visitor …

Deep Learning Data And Indexes In A Database, Vishal Sharma

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A database is used to store and retrieve data, which is a critical component for any software application. Databases requires configuration for efficiency, however, there are tens of configuration parameters. It is a challenging task to manually configure a database. Furthermore, a database must be reconfigured on a regular basis to keep up with newer data and workload. The goal of this thesis is to use the query workload history to autonomously configure the database and improve its performance. We achieve proposed work in four stages: (i) we develop an index recommender using deep reinforcement learning for a standalone database. …

The Color Number Of Cubic Graphs Having A Spanning Tree With A Bounded Number Of Leaves, Analen A. Malnegro, Gina A. Malacas, Kenta Ozeki

Theory and Applications of Graphs

The color number c(G) of a cubic graphG is the minimum cardinality of a color class of a proper 4-edge-coloring of G. It is well-known that every cubic graph G satisfies c(G) = 0 if G

The Battle Over Cattle: Livestock Management In A Changing Rural Landscape, Monique Salomon, Robert Fincham, Terry Everson

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

No abstract provided.

Recent Innovations In Education‐Extension‐Research Networks Of Industrialised Agricultures, Mark Paine, Marianne Cerf

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

No abstract provided.

Contributions To The Teaching And Learning Of Fluid Mechanics, Ashwin Vaidya

Department of Mathematics Facuty Scholarship and Creative Works

This issue showcases a compilation of papers on fluid mechanics (FM) education, covering different sub topics of the subject. The success of the first volume [1] prompted us to consider another follow-up special issue on the topic, which has also been very successful in garnering an impressive variety of submissions. As a classical branch of science, the beauty and complexity of fluid dynamics cannot be overemphasized. This is an extremely well-studied subject which has now become a significant component of several major scientific disciplines ranging from aerospace engineering, astrophysics, atmospheric science (including climate modeling), biological and biomedical science …

Integrated Machine Learning Approaches To Improve Classification Performance And Feature Extraction Process For Eeg Dataset, Mohammad Masum

Doctor of Data Science and Analytics Dissertations

Epileptic seizure or epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder that occurs due to brain neurons' abnormal activities and has affected approximately 50 million people worldwide. Epilepsy can affect patients’ health and lead to life-threatening emergencies. Early detection of epilepsy is highly effective in avoiding seizures by intervening in treatment. The electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, which contains valuable information of electrical activity in the brain, is a standard neuroimaging tool used by clinicians to monitor and diagnose epilepsy. Visually inspecting the EEG signal is an expensive, tedious, and error-prone practice. Moreover, the result varies with different neurophysiologists for an identical reading. Thus, …

Nanoscale Assembly Of Dectin-1 And Its Glucan Ligand In Immunocyte Membranes And Pathogen Cell Walls, Akram Etemadi Amin

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Candida spp. pathogens continue to be a significant health care burden with high mortality and exceeding enormous healthcare costs. Candida infection range varies from dermatological infection to more severe bloodstream infection in debilitated patients. Due to this, research dedicated to understanding biophysical interactions between Candida species and the host’s immune cells is essential. The C-type lectin’s (CtLs) are known to bind to Candida cell walls and play a crucial role in downstream immune signaling. It is known that β-glucans, the highly immunogenic polysaccharide in Candida’s cell wall, are mostly masked underneath a layer of mannosylated proteins. The amount of …

A Typology Of Drought Decision Making: Synthesizing Across Cases To Understand Drought Preparedness And Response Actions, Amanda E. Cravens, Jen Henderson, Jack Friedman, Nina Burkardt, Ashley E. Cooper, Tonya Haigh, Michael Hayes, Jamie Mcenvoy, Stephanie Paladino, Adam K. Wilke, Hailey Wilmer

Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management even greater. Many diverse actors – including private landowners, business owners, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and managers and policymakers within tribal, local, state, and federal government agencies – play multiple, often overlapping roles in preparing for and responding to drought. Managing water is, of course, one of the most important roles that humans play in both mitigating and responding to droughts; but, focusing only on “water managers” …

Reflecting On, And Revising, International Best Practice Principles For Eia Follow-Up, Angus Morrison-Saunders, Jos Arts, Alan Bond, Jenny Pope, Francois Retief

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Follow-up is a vital component of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), being essential for understanding assessment outcomes. Long-standing international best practice principles for EIA follow-up are reviewed, and revisions proposed, based on workshops with academics and practitioners, literature review and self-reflection. The proposed revision of EIA follow-up principles will feature an introduction with a simple definition and explanation of objectives for follow-up, and 15 principles. The revised principles address: objective; context; early establishment; project life-cycle; transparency; accessibility; accountability; performance criteria provision; enforcement; learning; adaptive environmental management; flexible or adaptive approach; tiering; cumulative effects and overall performance evaluation. Through publishing this proposal, …

Macroscopic Superposition States In Isolated Quantum Systems, Roman V. Buniy, Stephen D. H. Hsu

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

For any choice of initial state and weak assumptions about the Hamiltonian, large isolated quantum systems undergoing Schrödinger evolution spend most of their time in macroscopic superposition states. The result follows from von Neumann’s 1929 Quantum Ergodic Theorem. As a specific example, we consider a box containing a solid ball and some gas molecules. Regardless of the initial state, the system will evolve into a quantum superposition of states with the ball in macroscopically different positions. Thus, despite their seeming fragility, macroscopic superposition states are ubiquitous consequences of quantum evolution. We discuss the connection to many worlds quantum mechanics.

Predicting Flow Through The Causeway Of The Great Salt Lake Using Hydrodynamic Simulations And Artificial Neural Networks, Som Dutta, Brian Mark Crookston, Michael Rasmussen, Eric Larsen

Reports

At the Great Salt Lake, the northern and southern portions of the lake are divided by an east-to-west causeway that disrupts natural lake currents and significantly increases salt concentrations in the norther portion. To support management efforts to address rising environmental and economic concerns, the causeway was recently modified to include a new breach that typically exhibits a strong density-driven bidirectional flow pattern. To obtain much needed insights into the hydraulic performance of this hydraulic structure and the exchange between the two sections of the lake, a field campaign coupled with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling and an artificial neural …

Weedy Relations: Narratives Of Invasion And Intimacy With Tamarisk In The Chihuahuan Desert, Shannon S. Pepper

Geography ETDs

Tamarix spp., also known as salt cedar or tamarisk, is a shrub that has garnered a notorious reputation in North America as an invasive plant, with widespread policy and research advocating for its eradication in the Southwest U.S. and Northern Mexico. This study examines both governmental conservation documents and news articles to investigate narrative trends on tamarisk in the Southwestern U.S. and Northern Mexico as a contiguous region (the Chihuahuan Desert), expanding on current research to include transborder effects on the perception and management of introduced species. This paper asks: In the last 25 years, how has the movement, …

Cubical Models Of Higher Categories, Brandon Doherty

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis concerns model structures on presheaf categories, modeling the theory of infinity-categories. We introduce the categories of simplicial and cubical sets, and review established examples of model structures on these categories for infinity-groupoids and (infinity, 1)-categories, including the Quillen and Joyal model structures on simplicial sets, and the Grothendieck model structure on cubical sets. We also review the complicial model structure on marked simplicial sets, which presents the theory of (infinity, n)-categories. We then construct a model structure on the category of cubical sets whose cofibrations are the monomor- phisms and whose fibrant objects are defined by the right …

Socioapp: Detecting Your Sociability Status With Your Smartphone, Aaron Walker, Dheryta Jaisinghani Ph.D., Sarah Diesburg Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

We are still recovering from the pandemic’s psychological effects and figuring out how to break out of our quarantine. Students may not realize they have antisocial behaviors that have a negative affect on students’ grades. Our smartphones are packed with sensors that can help us to passively detect social status of a subject and propose prospective remedies. Our hypothesis is that you are social when co-doing certain activities like walking and talking. Thus, we begin with detecting activities such as, walking, sitting, and cooking using the movement sensors accelerometer and gyroscope; then, we detect proximity with another person using the …

The Phosphorescence Of Wind Cave Cavern, And The Level Of Organics Associated With It, Steven Gomez, Joshua Sebree

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

An analysis of the level of organics in Wind Cave Cavern, South Dakota.

Identification Of Fungi And Their Secondary Metabolites From Wind Cave [Poster], Kyle J. Biscoglia, Kirk Manfredi Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Eighteen fungal samples were isolated from samples of water collected in Wind Cave, South Dakota. Ten of the samples underwent chemical extraction, a growth inhibition test, and were analyzed using proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy. All eighteen of the fungal samples were able to be identified to the genus level using the ITS region of their DNA, however confident identification of the species level was more difficult to attain just looking at one portion of the sequence.

Sustainable And Biodegradable Nanocellulose Composite Materials, Jacob Scheel, Tim Kidd Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Nanocellulose is made from a mixture of cellulose powder, and a variety of different materials and liquids. Unfortunately the cost to produce nanocellulose isn’t ideal, thanks to shrinkage. The goal of my research this year was to try to make nanocellulose more cost effective, by reduce shrinkage.

Chemical Substitution Induced Half-Metallicity In Crmnsb0.5si0.5, Lukas Stuelke, Pavel Lukashev Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Background

⮚Research on magnetic materials for potential applications in spin-based electronics: one of the most active fields in academia and industry. ⮚High degree of spin polarization – wanted in spintronics. ⮚Spintronics – an emerging technology utilizing a spin degree of freedom. ⮚Various mechanisms alter degree of spin polarization – mechanical strain, structural disorder, temperature, termination surface/interface, etc. ⮚Magnetic materials that conduct electrons of only one spin are called half-metals, and have a great potential in spintronics.

Analog Studies Of Organic Pathways In Wind Cave Through Cave Water And Crystals, Wilson Mcnaughton, Joshua Sebree Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

In Wind Cave, organic molecules from the surface dissolved in water will slowly filter down into the cave through the porous limestone. While the water slowly proceeds down through the limestone, the water dissolves the limestone along the way. This dissolving of the limestone causes a quasi-equilibrium that deposits the organic molecules into the calcite structures found in Wind Cave. These large trapped organic molecules, mainly humic and fulvic acid, can be tracked by using UV light. The UV light causes these molecules to fluoresce blue, while the calcite structures generally do not have a strong blue fluorescence. The water …

Comparison Of Chalk Types And Their Ghosting Effects, Felicienne Alexandre, Shoshanna Coon, Kirk Manfredi

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Chalkboard ghosting is a faint image on a chalkboard's surface after writing is erased. Many types of chalk leave a positive image, while the Crayola An-du-septic Anti-dust chalk leaves a negative image. To better understand what cause the ghosting effects, two different types of Crayola chalk (regular and anti-dust) were investigated. Raman spectroscopy and infrared (IR) spectroscopy were used to determine the majority material the chalk was made of, by comparison with pure substances. To identify the organic compound binders holding the chalk sticks together, pulverized chalk was immersed in 40 mL of toluene for at least 30 minutes. After …

On The Vulnerability Of Openthread To Agile Denial Of Service Attacks, Casey Cronin, Sarah Diesburg Ph.D., Dheryta Jaisinghani Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

The Internet of Things (IoT) includes physical devices such as sensors, connected home appliances, video monitoring systems, and smart classroom or smart warehouse applications. These devices can capture large amounts of data while using low amount of power to do it, as well as keep track of things going on around it and turn it into usable data for the user depending on what task it is performing.

IoT devices are not immune from security concerns, such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. These attacks are important to investigate because they can play a dangerous role in shutting down applications, …

Electronic, Magnetic, And Structural Properties Of Comnvsb, Adam Ramker, Pavel Lukashev Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Background

• Spin degree of freedom in electronic devices.
• Ideal candidate – room temperature half-metal.
• Heusler compounds attractive because of high Curie temperature
• Various mechanisms altering degree of spin polarization – mechanical strain, structural disorder, temperature, termination surface/interface, etc.
• CoMnVSb: nearly a spin gapless semiconductor.