Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Characterizing The Relationship Between Species Richness And The Seasonal Phenomenon Of Tropical Fish Dispersal In New England Waters, Michael E. O'Neill

Graduate Masters Theses

The Gulf Stream exerts tremendous influence over oceanographic conditions in the Northwest Atlantic as it transports tropical water to higher latitudes. As the Gulf Stream’s path traverses the east coast of North America, there are implications for the biogeography of marine ecosystems within this range and beyond. While the meandering eddies and warm core rings generated by the Gulf Stream persist year-round, the seasonal warming of New England’s coastal waters afford many tropical species transported by the current temporary residence through the summer and fall. Many aspects that shape this phenomenon and its impact on coastal ecosystems remain a mystery. …

Small-Scale Resuspension And Redistribution Of Surface Sediments In The Northeast Gulf Of Mexico, Austin Harris

Master's Theses

Following the release of ~4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from the Macondo wellhead, a vast area of the seafloor contained recently deposited marine sediments contaminated by the oil spill. The initial deposition of these contaminated marine sediments was likely not the end of the journey for the particles. Downslope gravitational processes and events of increased current speed in the deep ocean setting can result in recently deposited sediments to resuspend and be moved laterally with the current flow, increasing the area effected by the oil spill. Erosion experiments performed in a closed-loop resuspension flume were …

Machine Learning Models For Deciphering Regulatory Mechanisms And Morphological Variations In Cancer, Saman Farahmand

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The exponential growth of multi-omics biological datasets is resulting in an emerging paradigm shift in fundamental biological research. In recent years, imaging and transcriptomics datasets are increasingly incorporated into biological studies, pushing biology further into the domain of data-intensive-sciences. New approaches and tools from statistics, computer science, and data engineering are profoundly influencing biological research. Harnessing this ever-growing deluge of multi-omics biological data requires the development of novel and creative computational approaches. In parallel, fundamental research in data sciences and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced tremendously, allowing the scientific community to generate a massive amount of knowledge from data. Advances …

Heart Rhythm Classification From Static And Ecg Time-Series Data Using Hybrid Multimodal Deep Learning, Ahmad Abdulrazaq Abdulla Alnajjar

Theses

Cardiovascular arrhythmia diseases are considered as the most common diseases that cause death around the world. Abnormal arrhythmia diseases can be identified by analyzing heart rhythm using an electrocardiogram (ECG). However, this analysis is done manually by cardiologists, which may be subjective and susceptible to different cardiologist observations and experiences, as well as to noise and irregularities in those signals. This can lead to misdiagnosis. Motivated by this challenge, an automated heart rhythm diagnosis approach from ECG signals using Deep Learning has been proposed. In order to achieve this goal, three research problems have been addressed. First, recognize the role …

Rare Earth Free Bright And Persistent White Light Emitting Zinc Gallo-Germanate Nanosheets: Technological Advancement To Fibers With Enhanced Quantum Efficiency, Bhupendra B. Srivastava, Santosh K. Gupta, Raul Barbosa, Alexa Villarreal, Karen Lozano, Yuanbing Mao

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent materials science and engineering research focused on defects, dopants, hosts, and morphological structures has resulted in novel cost efficient and sustainable phases with extraordinary properties and performance. Contributing in this direction we have designed dopant and rare earth free white lightemitting zincgallogermanate (ZGG) phosphors in nanosheet (NS) morphology. These ZGG NSs with interlayer and interfacial defects display bright white photoluminescence (PL) with significant quantum yield (QY). Thermal treatment of the as-synthesized ZGG NSs at 750 1C does not degrade their sheet-like morphology while resulting in long persistent luminescence (PerL) with a duration of approximately one hour. Furthermore, to improve …

Privacy Is Infringed In Plain Sight And How To Dissapear, Zachary Taylor

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This culminating project explored how Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft infringe on their user's information privacy. Focus was on tools and techniques one can use to strengthen their information privacy. Privacy or information privacy was defined as the right to have some control over how your personal information is collected and used. This project will also introduce a verity of open-source tools and techniques that would help the unsuspected user to maintain their privacy.The questions asked were: what are some common techniques that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft use to gain personal information?, At what cost would it …

Vignette 08: Connection To Place: Indigenous Leadership In Səlilwət (Burrard Inlet), Tsleil-Waututh Nation’S Treaty Lands And Resources Department

Institute Publications

Since time out of mind, Tsleil-Waututh have used and occupied Burrard Inlet and surrounding watersheds. Generations of Tsleil-Waututh people were brought up with the teaching, “When the tide went out, the table was set.” About 90% of our diet was once derived from Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River, but today the Inlet is unable to support our needs. Cumulative effects of colonial settlement and development have eroded the ecological health, integrity, and diversity of the Inlet. Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN) has a goal to restore the health of the Inlet so that we, and future generations of Tsleil-Waututh People, can …

Vignette 04: Olympia Oysters, Jodie Toft, Betsy Peabody

Institute Publications

Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida) are our only native oyster species here in the Salish Sea. Olympia oysters once covered an estimated 13-26% of the intertidal area in Puget Sound, mostly near the heads of inlets. A combination of overharvest, pollution, and habitat loss reduced the current population to less than 4% of historic numbers, though sparse numbers of Olympia oysters can still be found throughout most of their historic distribution. Looking to the future, as our region’s marine waters experience effects of climate change and ocean acidification (OA), native species such as the Olympia oyster may prove to …

Vignette 14: Eelgrass Wasting Disease, Olivia Graham, Morgan Eisenlord, Drew Harvell

Institute Publications

Rising seawater temperatures can increase the risk of disease outbreaks in many taxa. Pathogens are potentially the ultimate keystone species in that their small biomass can have massive impacts that ripple through ecosystems. Disease outbreaks can be particularly damaging when they affect ecosystem engineers, such as seagrasses. Outbreaks of wasting disease in seagrasses are one of a myriad of stressors associated with declining temperate and tropical seagrass meadows around the globe. Levels of eelgrass wasting disease are high in the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound. These increasing levels of disease are a threat to sustainability of eelgrass meadows, our …

Vignette 13: The Salish Sea Model, Tarang Khangaonkar P.E.

Institute Publications

Given numerous concerns related to the health of the ecosystem and the possibility of anthropogenic impacts—from population growth to climate impacts, such as sea level rise—scientists, engineers, and planners seek an improved basic understanding of the biophysical behavior of the Salish Sea. The Salish Sea Model (SSM) development was motivated by this urgent need for a comprehensive predictive model that could diagnose water quality issues and concerns and serve as a planning tool in support of Puget Sound restoration efforts. The SSM was developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in collaboration with the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) …

Vignette 15: Eelgrass Variations Ties To Sea Level Variations, Ronald Thom

Institute Publications

This vignette shares an overview of the process and results of a long-term eelgrass monitoring effort at the mouth of Sequim Bay. Coupling these local long-term findings with research and monitoring across the Salish Sea and the globe will help better understand the longer-term effects of global warming and perhaps other human and natural-derived pressures on coastal ecosystems, and provide clues on how to make these systems more resilient to pressures.

How Accurate Are Fuzzy Control Recommendations: Interval-Valued Case, Juan Carlos Figueroa-Garcia, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

As a result of applying fuzzy rules, we get a fuzzy set describing possible control values. In automatic control systems, we need to defuzzify this fuzzy set, i.e., to transform it to a single control value. One of the most frequently used defuzzification techniques is centroid defuzzification. From the practical viewpoint, an important question is: how accurate is the resulting control recommendation? The more accurately we need to implement the control, the more expensive the resulting controller.

The possibility to gauge the accuracy of the fuzzy control recommendation follows from the fact that, from the mathematical viewpoint, centroid defuzzification is …

Sustainability Of Modern Groundwater Pumping Technologies, Life Cycle Assessment, Hesham Mahmood Alshehabi

Theses

The sustainability of groundwater equipment systems is not well addressed in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC). The typical technology practiced in the GCC is the borehole pumps coupled with asynchronous motors. This thesis is evaluating the sustainability of various alternatives for groundwater equipment through the three pillars of sustainability. Economic assessment seeking the Levelized cost of water given typically in $/m³ and main factors affecting the energy intensity through a statistical comparative analysis approach. Environmental evaluation through performing a life cycle assessment model for four pumping alternatives, and finally, societal impact assessment aiming to identify the best practices and …

Symmetric Presentation Of Finite Groups, And Related Topics, Marina Michelle Duchesne

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

We have discovered original symmetric presentations for several finite groups, including 2²:^.(2⁴:(2^.S₃)), M₁₁, 3:(PSL(3,3):2), S₈, and 2^.M₁₂. We have found homomorphic images of several progenitors, including 2^*18:((6x2):6), 2^*24:(2^.S₄), 2^*105:A₇, 3^*3:_m(2³:3), 7^*8:_m(PSL(2,7):2), 3^*4:_m(4²:2²), 7^*5:(2xA₅), and 5^*6:_mS₅. We have provided the isomorphism type of …

Synthesis And Photophysical Studies Of Nitrogen Heterocycles Containing Benzothiazines, Benzothiazoles, Indoles And Quinolines, Ealin N. Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nitrogen heterocycles such as quinolines, benzothiazines, benzothiazoles, and indoles are widely found in nature and these compounds have significance in organic and medicinal chemistry, biochemistry as well as materials science. Monomeric units of eumelanin (brominated 5,6- dimethoxyindolecarboxylate derivatives) were synthesized and regioselectively functionalized to form three monobrominated, three dibrominated, and a tribrominated variant using thermally induced nitrene insertions. After deprotection, three monobrominated 5,6-dihydroxyindole carboxylate (DHICA) derivatives were synthesized, and their UV-Vis absorbance was compared to DHICA. Bominated DHICA derivatives showed similar λmax as DHICA (~330 nm) but did not show aerial oxidation as evident by absence of chromophore absorbance at …

Factors That Affect E-Learning Platforms After The Spread Of Covid-19: Post Acceptance Study, Rana Saeed Al-Maroof, Khadija Alhumaid, Iman Akour, Said Salloum

All Works

The fear of vaccines has led to population rejection due to various reasons. Students have had their own inquiries towards the effectiveness of the vaccination, which leads to vaccination hesitancy. Vaccination hesitancy can affect students' perception, hence, acceptance of e-learning platforms. Therefore, this research attempts to explore the post-acceptance of e-learning platforms based on a conceptual model that has various variables. Each variable contributes differently to the post-acceptance of the e-learning platform. The research investigates the moderating role of vaccination fear on the post-acceptance of e-learning platforms among students. Thus, the study aims at exploring students' perceptions about their post-acceptance …

A Comprehensive Review Of Retinal Vascular And Optical Nerve Diseases Based On Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography, Fatma Taher, Heba Kandil, Hatem Mahmoud, Ali Mahmoud, Ahmed Shalaby, Mohammed Ghazal, Marah Talal Alhalabi, Harpal Singh Sandhu, Ayman El-Baz

All Works

The optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a noninvasive imaging technology which aims at imaging blood vessels in retina by studying decorrelation signals between multiple sequential OCT B-scans captured in the same cross section. Obtaining various vascular plexuses including deep and superficial choriocapillaris, is possible, which helps in understanding the ischemic processes that affect different retina layers. OCTA is a safe imaging modality that does not use dye. OCTA is also fast as it can capture high-resolution images in just seconds. Additionally, it is used in the assessment of structure and blood flow. OCTA provides anatomic details in addition to …

Industry Funding Scheme Regulations: A Review Of Operation And Effectiveness, May 2021, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Biosecurity published reports

Section 147 of the Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Act 2007 requires the Minister for Agriculture and Food to carry out a review of the operation and effectiveness of any regulations made for the purposes of establishing an Industry Funding Scheme (IFS) every five years.

In 2010, regulations establishing three IFSs commenced to address pest and disease threats relevant to Western Australia’s broadacre and pastoral cropping and livestock sectors. This report documents the second fifth-year anniversary statutory review of the following regulations:

• Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Industry Funding Scheme (Cattle) Regulations 2010

• Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Industry Funding Scheme …

Discovering Kepler’S Third Law From Planetary Data, Boyan Kostadinov, Satyanand Singh

Publications and Research

In this data-inspired project, we illustrate how Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion can be discovered from fitting a power model to real planetary data obtained from NASA, using regression modeling. The power model can be linearized, thus we can use linear regression to fit the model parameters to the data, but we also show how a non-linear regression can be implemented, using the R programming language. Our work also illustrates how the linear least squares used for fitting the power model can be implemented in Desmos, which could serve as the computational foundation for this project at a lower …

Evaluating Marsh Restoration Success Using Structural And Trophic Metrics On Deer Island, Ms, Emelia Marshall

Master's Theses

Coastal marshes in the northern Gulf of Mexico provide essential habitat for various consumer species, however, land loss has severely degraded marsh habitat in this region. Few studies have examined restored black needlerush (Juncus roemerianus) marshes, such as those found in Mississippi (MS), and how they affect faunal inhabitants.

Restoration of Juncus-dominated marshes on Deer Island, MS sought to reestablish ecological functions with the intention of supporting natural consumer assemblages. To test this, quadrat and minnow trap sampling were used to compare invertebrate and nekton abundance, species richness, and diversity of two restored marshes (5+ yrs and …

Adaptive Optimal Market Making Strategies With Inventory Liquidation Cost, Yi Zhang

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Along the lines of the paper \cite{zoe}, we find a general form of the optimal market making strategy for a high-frequency market maker (HFM) in a discrete-time Limit Order Book (LOB) model. Unlike \cite{zoe}, the optimal market making strategy is adaptive depending on the arrival of Market Order (MO) in the previous time intervals. We provide a method to make each placement of Limit Orders (LO) dependent on previous information in the same trading day and prove the admissibility of the optimal market making strategy under some general assumptions. Empirical study shows the adaptive optimal strategies outperform the non-adaptive strategy …

Population Genomics Of Invasive Rodents On Islands: Genetic Consequences Of Colonization And Prospects For Localized Synthetic Gene Drive, Kevin P. Oh, Aaron B. Shiels, Laura Shiels, Dimitri V. Blondel, Karl J. Campbell, J. Royden Saah, Alun L. Lloyd, Paul Q. Thomas, Fred Gould, Zaid Abdo, John R. Godwin, Antoinette J. Piaggio

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Introduced rodent populations pose significant threats worldwide, with particularly severe impacts on islands. Advancements in genome editing have motivated interest in synthetic gene drives that could potentially provide efficient and localized suppression of invasive rodent populations. Application of such technologies will require rigorous population genomic surveys to evaluate population connectivity, taxonomic identification, and to inform design of gene drive localization mechanisms. One proposed approach leverages the predicted shifts in genetic variation that accompany island colonization, wherein founder effects, genetic drift, and island-specific selection are expected to result in locally fixed alleles (LFA) that are variable in neighboring nontarget populations. Engineering …

Refined Moderation Analysis With Binary Outcomes, Eric Anto

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the growing interest in personalized or precision medicine, it is indispensable thatmoderation analysis which is primarily related to the study of differential treatment effects among patients with different characteristics, also serves as the bedrock for precision medicine is taken more seriously. Concerning moderation analysis with binary outcomes, we start with an interesting observation, which shows that heterogeneous treatment effects could be equivalently estimated via a role exchange between the outcome and the treatment variable. The result holds for both experimental data and observational data, yet with an important difference in interpretation. Two estimators of moderating effects corresponding to two …

Two Developments For Efficient And Accurate Density Functional Theory Calculations, Zachary John Buschmann

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Density functional theory (DFT) has long been the workhorse of quantum chemists and materials scientists. As the ability of modern DFT codes to address larger and more complex molecular systems has grown, so too has the computational cost, with cutting edge simulations requiring thousands of hours of wall time on the worldâ??s fastest supercomputers.For this reason, efficiency in both memory and time is critical at every step of the process. In fact, the increasing scope of physical systems that can be modeled is as much a function of computational elegance as of the physical fidelity of the simulation. The continuing …

Stability Of Blood Lead Levels In Children With Chronic Low-Level Lead Absorption, Michelle Del Rio

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background and Significance: Despite the many historical efforts by the U.S. to reduce lead (Pb) in the environment, childhood Pb poisoning continues to be a public health issue today. Pb has been identified as a child hazard because children are highly vulnerable to the effects even at lower levels of exposure (blood lead levels (BLLs) < 10 μg/dL), and these effects can be physical, cognitive, and behavioral. Current state and federal blood lead level screening guidelines for identifying exposed children are based on assumptions that BLLs < 10 μg/dL will remain stable or decline over time (with age); disregard the effects of lowest-range Pb exposure; and disregard Pb levels in children older than approximately age 6. We have observed in past clinical studies that in one U.S./Mexico border community, children in high-risk neighborhoods experienced substantially higher proportions of elevated blood lead levels (CDC reference level of ≥ 5 μg/dL) than the rest of the U.S., and a large proportion of children had detectable blood lead levels. To test current policy assumptions regarding child blood lead level screening, this study examined whether time and/or other possible factors over time, predicted child blood lead levels in children with chronic low-level Pb absorption. Whether time was a significant predictor was examined, and also whether age, sex, and living in families with incomes below the U.S. poverty line, living in an older home, and living near industries predicted child blood lead levels.

Aims and Objectives: Changes in current policy must be evidence-based. The over-arching goal of this study was to test current assumptions that one blood lead level test is sufficient to rule out child lead exposure, and that lead exposure and risk of lead exposure, reliably …

Seismic Tomographic Modeling Of The Coast Mountains Batholith, British Columbia, Canada, Sarah M. Quinonez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Coast Mountains Batholith on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, comprises a series of granitic to tonalitic plutons. The felsic continental crust is generated from mafic oceanic crust subduction by partial melting and fractionation, leaving ultra-mafic roots. In July of 2009, a sizeable controlled-source experiment was conducted along a 400km east-west transect from Bella Bella into central British Columbia. Student volunteers from multiple universities deployed 1,800 one-component and 200 three-component geophones connected to Texan data recorders with 200-m spacing intervals and shot spacing at 30-km. The 18-point sources ranged from 160 to 1,000 kg of high yield explosives. …

Examining The Quality Of Life In Transgender Women Following Gender Affirming Voice Treatment, Georgina L. Salas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Transgender women are reported to have a lower quality of life. Gender affirming voice treatment is reported to increase quality of life in transgender women. This study examined 3 participants and their quality of life after gender affirming voice treatment. The results of this study indicated gender affirming therapy did not improve participants' quality of life.

Dynamic Task Allocation In Partially Defined Environments Using A* With Bounded Costs, James Hendrickson

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The sector of maritime robotics has seen a boom in operations in areas such as surveying and mapping, clean-up, inspections, search and rescue, law enforcement, and national defense. As this sector has continued to grow, there has been an increased need for single unmanned systems to be able to undertake more complex and greater numbers of tasks. As the maritime domain can be particularly difficult for autonomous vehicles to operate in due to the partially defined nature of the environment, it is crucial that a method exists which is capable of dynamically accomplishing tasks within this operational domain. By considering …

Evaluating The Capacity Of Ascophyllum Nodosum Habitats To Act As Carbon Sinks In The Gulf Of Maine, Megan Sinclair

Honors College

Some coastal ecosystems are defined as being carbon sinks for their ability to absorb more carbon than they release as a result of their high primary productivity. There has been support for the claim that macroalgal communities can act as carbon sinks and reduce levels of CO2in seawater through photosynthesis and potentially mitigate some local effects of climate change (Chung et al., 2011; Chung et al., 2013; Hill et al., 2015; Sondak et al., 2017). Within the state of Maine, rocky intertidal zones are coastal ecosystems that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and dominated by Ascophyllum nodosum (rockweed) communities …

Local Dynamics And Atomic-Level Structures In Metallic Liquids And Glasses, Zengquan Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Structure and dynamics at the atomic level in metallic glasses and liquids are poorly understood when compared to the crystalline solids. For instance, even though viscosity is the basic property of liquids, its atomistic origin is not well elucidated. Also, the physics of the fragility of liquids and the crossover phenomenon is far from full understanding. Earlier, through molecular dynamics (MD) simulations a direct connection was found between the timescale describing the macroscopic viscous behavior, the Maxwell relaxation time (t_M = h/G_∞, h is the shear viscosity and G_∞ is the high-frequency shear modulus) and …