Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Structure Of Blood Coagulation Factor Viii In Complex With Anti-C2 Domain Inhibitory Antibody, Estelle K. Ronayne, Shaun C. Peters, Joseph Gish, Celena Wilson, H. Trent Spencer, Christopher B. Doering, Pete Lollar, P. Clint Spiegel Jr., Kenneth C. Childers

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Factor VIII (fVIII) is a procoagulant protein that binds to activated factor IX (fIXa) on platelet surfaces to form the intrinsic tenase complex. Due to the high immunogenicity of fVIII, generation of antibody inhibitors is a common occurrence in patients during hemophilia A treatment and spontaneously occurs in acquired hemophilia A patients. Non-classical antibody inhibitors, which block fVIII activation by thrombin and formation of the tenase complex, are the most common anti-C2 domain pathogenic inhibitors in hemophilia A murine models and have been identified in patient plasmas. In this study, we report on the X-ray crystal structure of a B …

Spike Protein Antibody Interactions Elicited By The Sars-Cov-2 Vaccine, Meghan Quinlan

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) arose as a novel virus in Wuhan China in December 2019. Then, as it rapidly spread across the world, it was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization in March 2020. SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has dramatically disrupted both normal life and the economy. In the past year and a half, there have been over 175 million cases globally1 (as of June 15, 2021). High death rates, disruption to education, and widespread job loss has necessitated the desperate need for a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. A …

Multifunctional Polymer-Nanoparticle Composites For Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Applications, Aliandra E. Pierce, Samantha A. Patrick, Steven R. Emory

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

To create a multifunctional nanoparticle-based optical sensor, a pH-responsive microgel consisting of 20% polystyrene (PS) and 80% poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP) surface-coated with gold nanoparticle (NP) seeds was synthesized. The pH-responsive microgel serves as a size-tunable scaffold for the assembly of the surface-enhanced Raman scatter active (SERS-active) metal, gold. The random copolymer of PS and P2VP (PS20P2VP80) is sterically stabilized by poly(ethyleneglycol) methyl ether methacrylate (PEGMA) and lightly crosslinked with divinylbenzene (DVB) to allow for reversible pH-swelling over multiple cycles of acid-base titration. The ability to swell and de-swell in response to changes in pH allows for the tuning of gold NP …

Quasipositive Braids And Ribbon Surfaces, Rachel Snyder

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Meant to serve as an accessible exploration of knot theory for undergraduates and those without much experience in topology, this paper will start by exploring the basics of knot theory and will work through investigating the relationships between knots and surfaces, ending with an analysis of the relationship between quasipositive braids and surfaces in 4-space. We will begin by defining a knot and introducing the ways in which we are able to manipulate them. Following that, we will explore the basics of surfaces, building up to a proof that all surfaces are homeomorphic to a series of disks and bands …

Environmental Impact Assessment: Nuyakuk River Small Scale Hydroelectric Project, Reed Squire, Amy Owen, Jessica Ngo-Ly, Tyler Sanderson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An environmental impact assessment of a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Nuyakuk River, AK. The proposed project was determined to have an impact of non-significance on the current environmental conditions.

Institutional Context Drives Mobility: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Academic And Economic Factors That Influence International Student Enrollment At United States Higher Education Institutions, Natalie Cruz

College of Education & Professional Studies (Darden) Posters

International student enrollment (ISE) has become a hallmark of world-class higher education institutions (HEIs). Although the U.S. has welcomed the largest numbers of international students since the 1950s, ISE shrunk by 10% in the previous three years from an all-time high of 903,127 students in 2016/2017 (IIE, 2019). Research studies about international student mobility and enrollment highlights the significant role that academic and economic rationales play for international students. This quantitative, ex post facto study focused on the influence of ranking, tuition, Optional Practical Training, Gross Domestic Product, and the unemployment rate on ISE at 2,884 U.S. HEIs from 2008 …

Unsupervised Multivariate Time Series Clustering, Md Monibor Rahman, Lasitha Vidyaratne, Alex Glandon, Khan Iftekharuddin

College of Engineering & Technology (Batten) Posters

Clustering is widely used in unsupervised machine learning to partition a given set of data into non-overlapping groups. Many real-world applications require processing more complex multivariate time series data characterized by more than one dependent variables. A few works in literature reported multivariate classification using Shapelet learning. However, the clustering of multivariate time series signals using Shapelet learning has not explored yet. Shapelet learning is a process of discovering those Shapelets which contain the most informative features of the time series signal. Discovering suitable Shapelets from many candidates Shapelet has been broadly studied for classification and clustering of univariate time …

Influence Of Monovalent And Divalent Ions In The Conformational Change Of Caspase-Cleaved Par-4 (Cl-Par-4) Tumor Suppressor Protein, Krishna K. Raut, Komala Ponniah, Steven M. Pascal

College of Sciences Posters

Prostate apoptosis response-4 (Par-4) is a pro-apoptotic tumor suppressor protein. We have shown that this 38 kDa full-length Par-4 (Fl-Par-4) protein is predominantly intrinsically disordered in vitro. In vivo, Par-4 is cleaved by caspase-3 at Asp-131 to generate a 24 kDa functionally active cleaved Par-4 (cl-Par-4) fragment. The cl-Par-4 protein inhibits the NF-κB-mediated cell survival pathway and causes selective apoptosis in various tumor cells. Our laboratory is interested in how the disorder-order balance within Fl-Par-4 and cl-Par-4 may be related to the balance between cell survival and cell death. Currently, we are using biophysical techniques such as circular …

Multi-Dimensional Numerical Integration On Parallel Architectures, Ioannis Sakiotis, Marc Paterno, Balsa Terzic, Mohammad Zubair, Desh Ranjan

College of Sciences Posters

Multi-dimensional numerical integration is a challenging computational problem that is encountered in many scientific computing applications. Despite extensive research and the development of efficient techniques such as adaptive and Monte Carlo methods, many complex high-dimensional integrands can be too computationally intense even for state-of-the-art numerical libraries such as CUBA, QUADPACK, NAG, and MSL. However, adaptive integration has few dependencies and is very well suited for parallel architectures where processors can operate on different partitions of the integration-space. While existing parallel methods exist, most are simple extensions of their sequential versions. This results in moderate speedup and in many cases failure …

End-To-End Physics Event Generator, Yasir Alanazi, N. Sato, Tianbo Liu, W. Melnitchouk, Michelle P. Kuchera, Evan Pritchard, Michael Robertson, Ryan Strauss, Luisa Velasco, Yaohang Li

College of Sciences Posters

We apply generative adversarial network (GAN) technology to build an event generator that simulates particle production in electron-proton scattering that is free of theoretical assumptions about underlying particle dynamics. The difficulty of efficiently training a GAN event simulator lies in learning the complicated pat- terns of the distributions of the particles physical properties. We develop a GAN that selects a set of transformed features from particle momenta that can be generated easily by the generator, and uses these to produce a set of augmented features that improve the sensitivity of the discriminator. The new Feature-Augmented and Transformed GAN (FAT-GAN) is …

Examining Arctic Melt Pond Dynamics Via High Resolution Satellite Imagery, Austin Abbott, Victoria Hill

College of Sciences Posters

The Arctic Ocean is a rapidly changing environment, and a key observational system for monitoring climate change. The Arctic is going under a rapid transition from thicker, multi-year ice, to thinner first-year ice, that may have many potential consequences. As first year Arctic sea ice begins to retreat in the spring and early summer, melting snow and ice form ponds on the surface- “melt ponds”. These melt ponds increase light transmission to the water column, resulting in warming and increased primary production under the ice. Recent advances in high resolution satellite imagery now allow us to monitor the development and …

Direct Visualization Of 3-Dimensional Force And Energy Map Of A Single Molecular Switch, Abeykoon Mudiyanselage Shashika Darshani Wijerathna, Zaw Myo Win, K. Z. Latt, Yang Li, A. T. Ngo, L. Curtiss, R. Zhang, S. W. Hla, Y. Zhang

College of Sciences Posters

Mechanical properties of molecules adsorbed on materials surfaces are increasingly vital for the applications of molecular thin films. Here, we conduct a fundamental research to induce conformational change mechanically on a single molecule and quantify the driving force needed for such molecular shape switch via a low temperature (~ 5K) Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and Qplus Atomic Force Microscope (Q+AFM). Our measurement maps a three-dimensional landscape for mechanical potential and force at single molecule level with high spatial resolution in all three dimensions of a few angstrom (10^-10 m).

Molecule TBrPP-Co (a cobalt porphyrin) deposited on an atomically clean …

The Magnetic Field Penetration Measurement Of Thin Film And Multilayered Superconductors For Srf Cavities, Iresha Harshani Senevirathne, Jean Delayen

College of Sciences Posters

Radio Frequency (RF) Cavities are used in particle accelerators and they are typically formed from or coated with superconducting materials. High purity niobium is the material of choice for SRF cavities and niobium cavities operate at their theoretical field limits. SRF researchers have begun a significant R&D effort to develop alternative materials to continue to keep up with the demands of new accelerator facilities. To achieve high performance with high accelerating gradient, cavity material should have an ability to persist in superconducting state under high magnetic field without magnetic flux penetration through the cavity wall. Therefore, the magnetic field at …

Quality Of Diabetes Care In Blended Fee-For-Service And Blended Capitation Payment Systems., Mary Aderayo Bamimore, Rose Anne Devlin, Gregory S Zaric, Amit X Garg, Sisira Sarma

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

OBJECTIVES: In the middle to late 2000s, many family physicians switched from a Family Health Group (FHG; a blended fee-for-service model) to a Family Health Organization (FHO; a blended capitation model) in Ontario, Canada. The evidence on the link between physician remuneration schemes and quality of diabetes care is mixed in the literature. We examined whether physicians who switched from the FHG to FHO model provided better care for individuals living with diabetes relative to those who remained in the FHG model.

METHODS: Using longitudinal health administrative data from 2006 to 2016, we investigated the impact of physicians switching from …

The Infosys Times, Vol. 6, No. 2, St. Cloud State University

The Infosys TIMES

• Teaching in the Challenging Times of Covid-19 Pandemic
• Farewell to Dr. Dien Phan
• Grants Received for Installing the Department's First Digital Forensic Lab
• Meet the New Faculty
• Stringline Video Shoot
• Cyber Security Awareness Week
• Today's Technology Opportunities for Women Leaders
• Excellence in Leadership Award Recipients
• Alumni Updates
• InfoSys Diaries
• $9,332 Research Fund received from Jazan University, Saudi Arabia
• The National Society of Leadership and Success Experience

Precise Transit And Radial-Velocity Characterization Of A Resonant Pair: The Warm Jupiter Toi-216c And Eccentric Warm Neptune Toi-216b, R. I. Dawson, C. X. Huang, R. Brahm, K. A. Collins, M. J. Hobson, A. Jordán, J. Dong, J. Korth, T. Trifonov, L. Abe, A. Agabi, I. Bruni, R. P. Butler, M. Barbieri, K. I. Collins, D. M. Conti, J. D. Crane, N. Crouzet, G. Dransfield, P. Evans, N. Espinoza, T. Gan, T. Guillot, T. Henning, J. J. Lissauer, Eric L. N. Jensen, W. M. Sainte, D. Mékarnia, G. Myers, S. Nandakumar, H. M. Relles, P. Sarkis, P. Torres, S. Shectman, F.-X. Schmider, A. Shporer, C. Stockdale, J. Teske, A. H. M. J. Triaud, S. X. Wang, C. Ziegler, G. Ricker, R. Vanderspek, D. W. Latham, S. Seager, J. Winn, J. M. Jenkins, L. G. Bouma, J. A. Burt, D. Charbonneau, A. M. Levine, S. Mcdermott, B. Mclean, M. E. Rose, A. Vanderburg, B. Wohler

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

TOI-216 hosts a pair of warm, large exoplanets discovered by the TESS mission. These planets were found to be in or near the 2:1 resonance, and both of them exhibit transit timing variations (TTVs). Precise characterization of the planets' masses and radii, orbital properties, and resonant behavior can test theories for the origins of planets orbiting close to their stars. Previous characterization of the system using the first six sectors of TESS data suffered from a degeneracy between planet mass and orbital eccentricity. Radial-velocity measurements using HARPS, FEROS, and the Planet Finder Spectrograph break that degeneracy, and an expanded TTV …

Predicting Bus Travel Times In Washington, Dc Using Artificial Neural Networks (Anns), Stephen Arhin, Babin Manandhar, Hamdiat Baba Adam, Adam Gatiba

Mineta Transportation Institute

Washington, DC is ranked second among cities in terms of highest public transit commuters in the United States, with approximately 9% of the working population using the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Metrobuses to commute. Deducing accurate travel times of these metrobuses is an important task for transit authorities to provide reliable service to its patrons. This study, using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), developed prediction models for transit buses to assist decision-makers to improve service quality and patronage. For this study, we used six months of Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) data for six Washington …

Taxonomic Annotation Of Near-Coral Seawater Microbiota In Kilifi, Kenya, Megan Ruoff

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The general objective of this study was to analyze the microbiome of seawater above a coral reef in Kilifi, Kenya. Specific objectives included establishing a baseline microbiota profile, classifying the identified organisms at various taxonomic levels, and conjecturing about reef health from the presence or absence of bioindicator species including Vibrio bacteria. Sequenced 16S rRNA gene sequences from seawater samples at Kuruwitu Conservancy in Kilifi, Kenya were taxonomically classified by exact matching employing the Dada2 software package and the naïve Bayesian classifier method with 97% similarity cut off. The seawater microbiota contained mostly Proteobacteria (73.28%), followed by Bacteroidetes (14.08%) and …

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, April 2021, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 2, Issue 4

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 2 & 3 Awards & Recognition
Page 4 Student Spotlight: Allsion Bjornstad
Page 5 Research Spotlight: Dr. Vondruska & Students
Page 6 Department Head Interviews
Page 7 Media Coverage of CNS
Page 8 Open PRAIRIE Data
Page 9 Student Club Spotlight: BMGSA
Page 10 Then & Now: Urban Geography

Instantaneous Frequency Estimation And Signal Separation Using Fractional Continuous Wavelet Transform, Abdelbaset R. Zeyani

Dissertations

In the signal processing field, time-frequency representations (TFR's) have intensively been improved to provide effective and powerful tools for reliable signal analysis. One of the most valuable and frequently used tools is Fourier transform (FT) which has been used to study the frequency content of stationary signals in the Fourier domain (FD). However, FT is not sufficient to study the frequency of non-stationary signals. For this particular type of signals to be best analyzed, some transforms such as the short time Fourier transform (STFT) and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) have been introduced to provide us with a signal representation …

Usgs 104b Grant Program: Kentucky’S Annual Report Fy 2019, Emily Koyagi, Steve Evans, Lindell Ormsbee

KWRRI Annual Technical Reports (USGS’s 104b Grant Program)

The Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute (KWRRI) is one of 54 Water Resource Research Institutes or Centers located throughout the United States and its territories. The state water resources research institutes are authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-379 codified at 42 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.) through the Water Resources Research Institutes Program administered by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and organized as the National Institutes for Water Resources (NIWR). NIWR cooperates with the US Geological Survey (USGS) to support, coordinate and facilitate research.

The KWRRI administers several state-level USGS grant programs for water research …

Single-Photon Generation From Self-Assembled Gaas/Inalas(111)A Quantum Dots With Ultrasmall Fine-Structure Splitting, Christopher F. Schuck, Robert Boutelle, Kevin Silverman, Galan Moody, Paul J. Simmonds

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present a novel semiconductor single-photon source based on tensile-strained (111)-oriented GaAs/InAlAs quantum dots (QDs) exhibiting ultrasmall exciton fine-structure splitting (FSS) of ≤ 8 µeV. Using low-temperature micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy, we identify the biexciton-exciton radiative cascade from individual QDs, which, combined with small FSS, indicates these self-assembled GaAs(111) QDs are excellent candidates for polarization-entangled photon-pair generation.

Combination Of Cluster Number Counts And Two-Point Correlations: Validation On Mock Dark Energy Survey, Chun-Hao To, Elisabeth Krause, Eduardo Rozo, Heidi Wu, Daniel Gruen, Joseph Derose, Eli Rykoff, Risa H. Wechsler, Matthew Becker, Matteo Costanzi, Tim Eifler, Maria Elidaiana Da Silva Pereira, Nickolas Kokron

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present a method of combining cluster abundances and large-scale two-point correlations, namely galaxy clustering, galaxy–cluster cross-correlations, cluster autocorrelations, and cluster lensing. This data vector yields comparable cosmological constraints to traditional analyses that rely on small-scale cluster lensing for mass calibration. We use cosmological survey simulations designed to resemble the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 (DES-Y1) data to validate the analytical covariance matrix and the parameter inferences. The posterior distribution from the analysis of simulations is statistically consistent with the absence of systematic biases detectable at the precision of the DES-Y1 experiment. We compare the χ² values in simulations …

An Education Theory Of Fault For Autonomous Systems, William D. Smart, Cindy M. Grimm, Woodrow Hartzog

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

Automated systems like self-driving cars and “smart” thermostats are a challenge for fault-based legal regimes like negligence because they have the potential to behave in unpredictable ways. How can people who build and deploy complex automated systems be said to be at fault when they could not have reasonably anticipated the behavior (and thus risk) of their tools? Part of the problem is that the legal system has yet to settle on the language for identifying culpable behavior in the design and deployment for automated systems. In this article we offer an education theory of fault for autonomous systems—a new …

Cross-Topic Rumor Detection Using Topic-Mixtures, Weijieying Ren, Jing Jiang, Ling Min Serena Khoo, Hai Leong Chieu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There has been much interest in rumor detection using deep learning models in recent years. A well-known limitation of deep learning models is that they tend to learn superficial patterns, which restricts their generalization ability. We find that this is also true for cross-topic rumor detection. In this paper, we propose a method inspired by the “mixture of experts” paradigm. We assume that the prediction of the rumor class label given an instance is dependent on the topic distribution of the instance. After deriving a vector representation for each topic, given an instance, we derive a “topic mixture” vector for …

Redox-Active Coordination Complexes For Small Molecule Activation With Environmental Applications, Hanalei Lewine

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Nitrate and nitrate are harmful pollutants resulting from the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture. The pyridinediimine ligand scaffold with a hemilabile pendant phosphine shows reactivity towards these species to selectively reduce them to NO on a mononitrosyl iron complex (MNIC). Experimental work is supported by DFT broken symmetry calculations.

Reflections On Setting Up The Cyber Range Intrusion Detection System, William Pearson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A short reflection on the project to set up an Intrusion Detection System for the Cyber Range at Western Washington University Poulsbo.

A Neural Network Approach To Identifying Ysos And Exploring Solar Neighborhood Star-Forming History, Aidan Mcbride, Ryan Lingg, Marina Kounkel, Kevin Covey, Brian Hutchinson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Stellar ages can act as a marker of birth cluster membership for young stellar objects (YSOs), which allows for an improved understanding of the history of star formation in the solar neighborhood. However, the ages of YSOs have historically been difficult to predict on a large scale. Here, we develop a system of convolution neural network models to differentiate between YSOs and their more-evolved counterparts and predict YSO ages using Gaia and 2MASS photometry. The full model and resulting catalog recovers the properties of well-studied young stellar populations to a distance of five kiloparsecs, with significantly higher sensitivity within one …

Mentoring Through Moss: Measuring Air Pollution With High School Youth In The Duwamish Valley, Nichole Vargas

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This report is a reflection on my participation in the Duwamish Valley Moss and Air Quality Study. In this internship experience, I am mentoring South Seattle high schoolers participating in the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps to collect, prepare, and analyze moss samples from trees in the Duwamish Valley. This project is in collaboration with Seattle community organizations such as the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, Dirt Corps, El Centro de La Raza, the South Park Area Redevelopment Committee; and Just Health Action. This is the second year that this study has been done. Last year, the study found hotspots of heavy …

Activating Vacant Spaces: An Art And Environmental Justice Project - Assessment In Cleveland, Ohio’S Slavic Village Neighborhood, Patrick Connolly

Community Engagement Student Work

The overdevelopment of cities has caused residents to suffer from environmental and economic harm. Situated near a steel mill and a highway, and with less than 20% tree canopy, the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio is a community that may be in need of environmental justice. The movement to introduce green elements to urban environments is growing, and there are clear economic benefits to greening urban areas. Using art as a tool for education, this project proposes a series of six sustainable art installations that attempt to teach the community about environmental issues. Using this art project as a …