Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Factors Affecting Irrigation Water Use In Southwest Missouri And Soil Microbial Response To Irrigation And Crop Residue, Shirley M. Dobbs

MSU Graduate Theses

Sustainable use of water resources in Southwest Missouri requires a better understanding of factors that influence groundwater use by crop producers. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of weather patterns and edaphic factors on water used for agricultural irrigation. Groundwater withdrawal data from 14 high-use agricultural irrigation wells were monitored between 2009 and 2016 as part of the Southwest Missouri Irrigation Project. Stepwise and linear regression was used to assess the relationship of weather and edaphic factors in response to annual water use from each well. Precipitation volume, number of precipitation events, average maximum and minimum …

Structural Re-Orientation Of Magmatic Fabrics And Layering In The Lower Oceanic Crust: Hole Gt1, Wadi Tayin Massif, Samail Ophiolite, Justin Guillot

Master's Theses

This thesis aims to re-orient borehole images of layered gabbros sampled beneath Hole GT1 in the Wadi Tayin massif of the Oman ophiolite by the Oman Drilling Project to better constrain models of crustal accretion. The gabbro glacier model proposes that crystallized basalt flows down and away from the crystallization site to form the lower crust while the sheeted sill model proposes that basaltic melt crystallizes at multiple levels in the crust through sills. Hole GT1 provides an unprecedented 400 m, 100% recovery, look at the lower oceanic crust. Cores lose their geographic orientation when drilled, requiring use of the …

The North Central Texas Urban Heat Island Magnitude And Its Relation To Severe And Extreme Drought, Linnea Clarke Standard

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses

This study focuses on how summer droughts affect the urban heat island (UHI) in Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW). The nocturnal UHI has been computed by comparing downtown temperature observations to rural temperature measurements under the condition that wind speed is less than 2 m/s, a cloudless sky, and no precipitation. To understand the combined effects of long-term climate change and UHI, trends of temperature anomalies from 1902 - 2019 for Waco and 1900 – 2019 DFW from NOAA COOP were determined relative to a baseline of 1951-1980. The differing trends of these temperature anomalies have been influenced by the UHI (which …

Advanced Algorithms For Combinatorial And Sequential Test Generation With Constraints, Feng Duan

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Combinatorial and sequential testing are software testing strategies that have attracted significant interests from both academic and industrial communities. This dissertation addresses the problem of how to efficiently generate tests for both combinatorial and sequential testing. The dissertation makes two major contributions. For combinatorial testing, we present several optimizations on an existing t-way test generation algorithm called IPOG. These optimizations are designed to reduce the number of tests generated by IPOG. For sequential testing, we develop a notion for expressing commonly used sequencing constraints and present a t-way test sequence generation algorithm that support constraints expressed using notation. We demonstrate …

Expeditious Approach To 3,3’-Bis-Silyl Binols, Biphenols, And 3,3’-Bis-Silyl Phosphoramidites Enabled By Catalytic C–H Silylation With A Traceless Acetal Directing Group, Hiep Hoang Nguyen

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

The research described in this dissertation is on two different projects namely i) Syntheses of 3,3’-bis functionalized BINOL and biphenol compounds, ii) Syntheses of 3,3’-bis silyl-BINOL-based phosphoramidites. The first chapter reports attempts at developing a unified strategy to access a range of 3,3’-bis-substituted BINOLs. This approach to access the 3,3’-functionalized BINOLs centers on the use of dioxasilines as a key intermediate generated through C-H activation catalytic reductive 3,3’-bis-silylation with a traceless acetal directing group. Dioxasilines successfully undergo nucleophilic addition to achieve various species of 3,3’-bis-silyl BINOLs with good yields. The scope is also expanded to a variety of silanes and …

Fluorinated Alcohol Induced Supramolecular Bipbasic Systems In Proteomics And Lipidomics, Mohammadmehdi Azizi

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

The Fluoroalcohol induced Supramolecular Biphasic (FAiS-BP) systems are composed of a supramolecular phase which is a highly concentrated mixture of a fluoroalcohol and an amphiphile, and a separate aqueous-rich phase. The first part of this study presents new classes of FAiS-BP systems and studies their application in identification and coverage enhancement of low-abundance and/or hydrophobic proteins, such as integral membrane proteins. By taking the advantage of FAiS-BP systems in proteomics, we can concomitantly extract, fractionate, and enrich proteins; therefore, an additional separation dimension and a simple step of enrichment would be added prior to the LC-MS. Yeast proteins (Saccharomyces cerevisiae …

Study Of Hierarchy And Pore Architechture Of Porous Materials, Poroshat Taheri

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations

Research to design, synthesize, and characterize porous materials is a rapidly growing field due to porous materials’ potential use in a wide range of applications. For any application, insights into the structure formation parameters and properties relating to those parameters are highly desired. This thesis deals with the combination of two classes of materials, aerogels and polymer-derived ceramics. Polymer Derived Ceramics (PDCs) are processed using liquid-based, hydrocarbon polymeric precursors at lower temperature, followed by heat treatments at higher temperature. Silicon oxycarbide (SiCO) is one type of PDC. Various types and ranges of porosity can be introduced into SiCO when using …

Ene Reactions Of Methylidene Thiazolidines, Key M. Tse

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses

This thesis describes the synthesis of seven new racemic molecules from methylidene thiazolidines reacting with two enophiles, N-phenylmaleimide and ethyl glyoxylate. The synthesis of these molecules was achieved through the ene reaction under thermal conditions, resulting in an adduct containing a single chiral carbon. This is foundational work in exploration of ene reactions of the methylidiene thiazolidines used in this work with different enophiles and eventually asymmetric catalysis to synthesize chiral compounds, such as non-natural amino acids. Chapter 1 of this thesis describes the ene reaction and the various molecules that were synthesized via an ene reaction. It also describes …

Physical Vulnerability Index, Karinna Nunez, Molly Mitchell, Alexander Renaud

Data

The Center for Coastal Resources Management at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science has developed a Physical Vulnerability Index (PVI) for the Chesapeake Bay region. PVI provides a broad perspective on the vulnerability of the Tidewater region, creating a composite measure of general flood impact rather than the threat of any one particular storm track. While there have been a number of efforts to categorize physical risk, the analysis behind this physical vulnerability index allows for application at a variety of scales, such as the county or US Census tract level. Calculating physical risk for geopolitically defined boundaries generates values …

High-Dimensional Random Forests, Roland Fiagbe

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The significant advances in technology have enabled easy collection and management of high-dimensional data in many fields, however, the process of modeling these data imposes a huge problem in the field of data science. Dealing with high-dimensional data is one of the significant challenges that degenerate the performance and precision of most classification and regression algorithms, e.g., random forests. Random Forest (RF) is among the few methods that can be extended to model high-dimensional data; nevertheless, its performance and precision, like others, are highly affected by high dimensions, especially when the dataset contains a huge number of noise or noninformative …

Application Of Machine Learning In Flood Depth Prediction, Armando Esquivel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Machine learning technologies have helped provide answers for problems with a high degree of complexity. Machine learning has been utilized by various disciplines within the Civil Engineering profession and has proven to be efficient in solving complex problems. Although machine learning is being used in the Civil Engineering profession, a formal framework on developing and integrating machine learning has not been developed for flood depth prediction. The proposed word uses machine learning to predict the depth of flood at Houston, TX, due to a 100-year 24-hour storm. The proposed work can be used to collect, store and analyze data to …

On Using Demographic Data With Deprivation Index For Predicting Chronic Diseases, Olugbenga Temitope Iyiola

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Researchers have worked on modeling and predicting the likelihood of developingchronic diseases, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, using medical data (e.g., heart-rate, blood sugar). However, many of these diseases demonstrate strong links with demographics and socio-economic status (e.g., race, gender, income). It is also less time-consuming to retrieve demographic and socio-economic data, some of which are publicly available through US Census Bureau, than to carry out medical tests. Hence, demographic data can give a quicker estimate of the susceptibility of a person to a chronic disease.

In this work, we study the effect of using medical vs. demographics …

Gene Selection And Classification In High-Throughput Biological Data With Integrated Machine Learning Algorithms And Bioinformatics Approaches, Abhijeet R Patil

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the rise of high throughput technologies in biomedical research, large volumes of expression profiling, methylation profiling, and RNA-sequencing data are being generated. These high-dimensional data have large number of features with small number of samples, a characteristic called the "curse of dimensionality." The selection of optimal features, which largely affects the performance of classification algorithms in machine learning models, has led to challenging problems in bioinformatics analyses of such high-dimensional datasets. In this work, I focus on the design of two-stage frameworks of feature selection and classification and their applications in multiple sets of colorectal cancer data. The first …

Exploring Development Of Problem Solving Strategies In Emerging Mathematicians, Andrew Charles Kercher

Mathematics Dissertations

To solve an unfamiliar mathematics problem, students of the subject must know more than the appropriate prerequisite content knowledge. They must also know how best to strategically apply their knowledge, how to monitor and gauge the effectiveness of their work, and how to respond (both cognitively and emotionally) to unanticipated results. Expanding current research on the types of experiences that foster these skills is the objective of this study. In a sequence of two task-based interviews, eight graduate and four upper-division undergraduate mathematics students solved non-traditional mathematics problems, used their work on these problems as a basis to comment on …

The Commissioning Of The Low Frequency All Sky Monitor, The First Distributed Phased Array Telescope Specifically Designed To Search For Radio Transients At Long Wavelengths, Louis Percy Dartez

Physics Dissertations

The last two decades have seen a proliferation in the development of technology for low frequency radio astronomy based upon phased elements grouped into one or more large stations. Instruments fielding multiple large stations containing anywhere from dozens to hundreds of long wavelength dipole antenna elements include the Long Wavelength Array, the Low Frequency Array, and the Murchison Widefield Array. All of these instruments include the detection of radio transients within their broad scientific portfolios. I cover the early commissioning of the Low Frequency All Monitor (LoFASM), a phased array instrument, conceived and designed by Dr. Fredrick A. Jenet, similarly …

Application Of Machine Learning Techniques To Forecast Harmful Algal Blooms In Gulf Of Mexico, Bala Tripura Sundari Yerrapothu

Master's Theses

The Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) forecast is crucial for the mitigation of health hazards and to inform actions for the protection of ecosystems and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). For the sake of simplicity of our application we assume ocean color satellite imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a proxy for HABs.

In this study we use a deep neural network trained on the 2-Dimensional time series proxy data to provide a forecast of the HABs’ manifestations in the GoM.Our approach analyzes between both spatial and temporal features simultaneously. In addition, the network also helps …

The Physics Of Nanoaperture Optical Traps: Design, Fabrication And Experimentation, Chenyi Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Recent progress in nano optics, spurred by progress in nanofabrication, has allowed us to overcome these challenges. We use surface plasmon polaritons to break the optical diffraction limit and squeeze the photon energy into a local hot spot. The small mode volume of a plasmonic antenna or nanoaperature significantly enhances the local field and can be designed to resonate at a desired wavelength. By designing, fabricating, and testing these nanoapertures, I trap single nanoparticles with significantly reduced laser power by measuring the monochromatic transmission change of a resonant aperture. A freely diffused nanoparticle, behaving like a dipole antenna, interacts with …

2021 May - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Report

No abstract provided.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Supervised": An Investigation Of The Efficacy And Reasoning Process Of Self-Supervised Representations, Atharva Tendle

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Transfer learning technique enables training Deep Learning (DL) models in a data-efficient way for solving computer vision tasks. It involves pretraining a DL model to learn representations from a large and general-purpose source dataset, then fine-tuning the model using the task-specific target dataset. The dominant supervised learning (SL) approach for pretraining representations suffers from some limitations that include expensive labeling and poor generalizability. Recent advancements in the self-supervised learning (SSL) approach made it possible to learn effective representations from unlabeled data. The performance of the fine-tuned DL models based on pretrained SSL representations is on par with the state-of-the-art pretrained …

Novel Applications Of Statistical And Machine Learning Methods To Analyze Trial-Level Data From Cognitive Measures, Chelsea Parlett

Computational and Data Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

Many cognitive tasks and measures can benefit from trial-level analyses including Item Response Theory models as well as other Bayesian and Machine Learning models. Specifically, this dissertation focuses mainly on task-based measures of metamemory and how within-set variability as well as item-level characteristics can improve the inferences researchers make about these measures.First, a clustering analysis of judgements of learning across a task is examined in order to detect different participant strategies on a metamemory task and whether strategy use differs by age. Second, the benefits of using item response theory models to analyze both individual and item-level differences in metamemory …

Cortical Dynamics Of Language, Kiefer Forseth

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

The human capability for fluent speech profoundly directs inter-personal communication and, by extension, self-expression. Language is lost in millions of people each year due to trauma, stroke, neurodegeneration, and neoplasms with devastating impact to social interaction and quality of life. The following investigations were designed to elucidate the neurobiological foundation of speech production, building towards a universal cognitive model of language in the brain. Understanding the dynamical mechanisms supporting cortical network behavior will significantly advance the understanding of how both focal and disconnection injuries yield neurological deficits, informing the development of therapeutic approaches.

Improving Treatment Of Local Liver Ablation Therapy With Deep Learning And Biomechanical Modeling, Brian Anderson, Kristy Brock, Laurence Court, Carlos Eduardo Cardenas, Erik Cressman, Ankit Patel

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

In the United States, colorectal cancer is the third most diagnosed cancer, and 60-70% of patients will develop liver metastasis. While surgical liver resection of metastasis is the standard of care for treatment with curative intent, it is only avai lable to about 20% of patients. For patients who are not surgical candidates, local percutaneous ablation therapy (PTA) has been shown to have a similar 5-year overall survival rate. However, PTA can be a challenging procedure, largely due to spatial uncertainties in the localization of the ablation probe, and in measuring the delivered ablation margin.

For this work, we hypothesized …

Food Insecurity And Risky Sexual Behaviors Among College Students, Bertille Octavie Mavegam Tango Assoumou M

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Food insecurity and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are growing public health problems in the United States. Young people in general, and particularly college students, exhibit high prevalence of food insecurity, STIs, and risky sexual behaviors (RSB). Food insecurity and STIs among college students can have short- and long-term impacts on their academic success and their lives. Several studies have reported an association between food insecurity and some risky sexual behaviors among specific populations including HIV-infected people and homeless people. However, little is known about the relationship between food insecurity and RSB among college students. Given the high prevalence of food …

Estimation Of Spatial Change In Cropland Area And Evaluation Of Irrigation Performance In Imperial Valley Using Remotely Sensed Data, Usha Poudel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Imperial Valley (IV) in the US is an extensively irrigated agricultural region, which includes multiple crops changing on an annual and semiannual basis. The valley is facing grave concerns about water management due to its semi-arid environment, water intensive crops, and limited water supply. A simple, inexpensive, and repeatable method to detect changes in cropping patterns may assist irrigation managers to understand crop diversification and associated consumptive use. In addition, a spatial assessment of existing water irrigation system performance and productivity is crucial to benchmark and improve current water management strategies. This thesis estimates the spatial pattern of change …

Kaleidoscope Of Urban Evapotranspiration: Exploring The Science And Modeling Approaches, Rubab Saher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Urban evapotranspiration is a complex physical process. It depends on various critical drivers, including the land surface temperature (LST), surface albedo, landscape types, and building orientations. All of these factors create difficulties in the estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) by changing the microclimate conditions. The literature has oversimplified microclimate conditions by considering temperature difference as the only variable defining climate. The physical process depends on land-use changes, building proximities, and landscape types. This study devised three objectives to understand the microclimate effects on ET.

In the first objective, land-use change effects on LST, surface albedo, and ET were analyzed over a …

Orbital Dynamics And Stability Of Circumbinary Planetary Systems And Small Bodies In The Solar System, Cheng Chen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My main research focuses on the dynamics and stability of circumbinary planetary systems and of small bodies in the solar system. Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem is more complex as there are stronger interactions with two massive bodies in the system. In the outer solar system, the apsidal precession secular resonance with Neptune makes comets in the Kuiper belt unstable in the early stages of the solar system. This resonance a likely origin for the nitrogen-delivering comets that impacted the Earth bringing some of the nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere today. Beyond the solar system, we have observed …

Petrogenesis Of Hawaiian Lavas: Investigations Using Radiogenic And Non-Traditional Stable Isotopes, Christopher Defelice

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Earth’s mantle is the most voluminous part of the planet and is inaccessible to direct investigations. It is only possible to study it through indirect methods, such as the chemical makeup of erupted lavas. The Hawaiian Islands are thought to be the product of the mantle plume hypothesis, sometimes called a hot spot. Material from the Earth’s mantle is brought to the surface and erupted as magnesium rich lavas and form basalts. Hawaii is the longest lived active hot spot on Earth and makes it an ideal candidate for understanding the evolution of the Earth’s mantle and how lavas cool …

Anti-Inflammatory And Immunomodulatory Properties Of Fermsented Plant Food, Roghayeh Shahbazi, Farzaneh Sharifzad, Rana Bagheri, Nawal Alsadi, Hamed Yasavoli-Sharahi, Chantal Matar

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Fermented plant foods are gaining wide interest worldwide as healthy foods due to their unique sensory features and their health-promoting potentials, such as antiobesity, antidiabetic, antihypertensive, and anticarcinogenic activities. Many fermented foods are a rich source of nutrients, phytochemicals, bioactive compounds, and probiotic microbes. The excellent biological activities of these functional foods, such as anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory functions, are widely attributable to their high antioxidant content and lactic acid-producing bacteria (LAB). LAB contribute to the maintenance of a healthy gut microbiota composition and improvement of local and systemic immunity. Besides, antioxidant compounds are involved in several functional properties of fermented …

Fine-Grained And Controllably Redactable Blockchain With Harmful Data Forced Removal, Huiying Hou, Shidi Hao, Jiaming Yuan, Shengmin Xu, Yunlei Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Notoriously, immutability is one of the most striking properties of blockchains. As the data contained in blockchains may be compelled to redact for personal and legal reasons, immutability needs to be skillfully broken. In most existing redactable blockchains, fine-grained redaction and effective deletion of harmful data are mutually exclusive. To close the gap, we propose a fine-grained and controllably redactable blockchain with harmful data forced removal. In the scheme, the originator of the transaction has fine-grained control over who can perform the redaction and which portions of the transaction can be redacted. The redaction transaction is performed after collecting enough …

Immigrant Families' Health-Related Information Behavior On Instant Messaging Platforms: Health-Related Information Exchange In Immigrant Family Groups On Instant Messaging Platforms, Lev Poretski, Taamannae Taabassum, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

For immigrant families, instant messaging family groups are a common platform forsharing and discussing health-related information. Immigrants often maintain contact with their family abroad and trust information in shared IM family groups more than the information from local authorities and sources. In this study, we aimed to understand health-related information behaviors of immigrant families in their IM family groups. Based on the interviews with 6 participants from immigrant families to Canada, we found that immigrant families’ discourse on IM platforms is motivated by love and care for other family members. The families used local and international sources of information, judged …