Digital Commons Network^™

Brooklyn Trash Problems, Christina Diaz

Capstones

Walk through the streets of New York and at some point you’ll inevitably pass by a wafting smell of garbage, but residents of North Brooklyn are handling more than their share of the smelly load and they’re tired of getting dumped on.

A newly formed coalition of neighbors and environmental activists has begun a turf war against Brooklyn Transfer LLC, a waste transfer station located on Thames Street in East Williamsburg, which handles private commercial waste through ­­­­­­­­­­­­­Five Star Carting.

Link to Map: https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=1769408

Losing Ground, Alison Kanski

Capstones

Climate change and sea level rise are slowly decimating beaches. But the U.S. government and loyal residents won't let go of the beaches so easily.

A determined resident of the Rockaways in New York fights for the money and attention from governments to sustain his lifelong home and stop it from washing away.

Greenpoint's Superfund Problem, Helina Selemon

Capstones

A feature observing a community living in the shadow of a superfund site, a toxic industrial site in need of cleanup, that was recently purchased for development. The story looks at the complicated nature of this particular superfund and the problems the community around it has--including potential health risks during cleanup, rapid development, and an inescapable industrial past.

Effects Of Aerosol On Cloud Water Path: Statistical Method A Potential Source For Divergence In Observation-Based Correlative Studies, Ousmane Sy Savane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Divergence between correlative studies involving aerosol and cloud proxies has been thought of in the past as the results of varying physical mechanisms. Although models have supported the existence of variable correlations, from an observational standpoint it is difficult to attribute with confidence the correlations to specific physical mechanisms. We explore a methodology to assess the correlation between cloud water path (CWP) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) using MODIS Aqua retrieved aerosol and cloud properties for regions dominated by different types of aerosol: Non Absorbing Aerosol Dominated Region over land (NAADR_Land), Non Absorbing Aerosol Dominated Region over Ocean (NAADR_Marine), Absorbing …

Equations Over Hyperbolic Groups, Alexander Kai-Chi Taam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We show that the Diophantine problem, for quadratic equations over a non-elementary torsion-free hyperbolic group, is NP-complete. Furthermore, given a finite system of equations over a torsion-free hyperbolic group $\Gamma$, there is an algorithm which constructs a canonical $Hom$-diagram and a complete set of induced $\Gamma$-NTQ systems, for $\Gamma_{R(S)}$. Finally, the class of $\Gamma$-limit groups is the same as that of iterated generalized doubles over $\Gamma$.

Another One Busts The Dust, Keiko Hiranaka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brown dwarfs are substellar objects with core temperatures insufficient for sustained hydrogen fusion. Their physical properties such as mass, temperature, and radius are similar to those of gas giant planets, so studying brown dwarfs may also benefit exoplanet studies.

There is a population of 'red' L dwarfs, which have redder J - K colors in the near-infrared than normal objects. Red L dwarfs include young, low-gravity objects, which are systematically red, and red field-gravity objects. The observed reddening in L dwarfs is not well explained by current atmosphere models.

We present an analysis of red L dwarfs using our model …

Friction, Avalanches And Phase Transitions In Granular Media., Aline Hubard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We explore the microscopic interactions and properties of dry granular materials in the plane using experiments and simulations. We use statistics of this microscopic information to better understand and predict the bulk behavior and evolution of granular materials.

In the first part, we study the geometric structure of mechanically stable packings of frictional disks in configuration space. Our experimental setup contains frictional disks confined in a vertical plane and subject to a series of small amplitude vibrations that compact the system by reducing the friction between contacts during each vibration step. We find that the evolution of the packings forms …

Large-Pore Mesoporous Organosilicas And Related Polymer Nanocomposites, Amanpreet Singh Manchanda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The research work in this dissertation covers the synthesis of mesoporous organosilicas and (organo)silica/polymer nanocomposites. The content can be divided into 4 parts (8 chapters).

The first part of the dissertation is the introduction, which covers the background and progress in the field of mesoporous silicas, periodic mesoporous organosilicas and related inorganic/polymer nanocomposites. The second part of the dissertation (Chapter 2-5) involves the synthesis of mesoporous organosilicas from different organosilane precursors at mild acid concentration (0.1 M HCl) and low temperature (0 or 7 ℃) using Pluronic F127 (EO₁₀₆PO₇₀EO₁₀₆) as a surfactant template. Chapter …

Polymer Pen Printing: A Tool For Studying 2d Enzymatic Lithography And Printing 3d Carbon Features, Zhantong Mao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Polymer Pen Lithography (PPL) is a promising molecular printing approach which combines the advantages of both microcontact printing (low cost, high-throughput) and the dip pen lithography (DPN) (arbitrary writing, high-resolution) into one cohesive lithography method to create 2 dimensional (2-D) patterns with micro/nano-features on different substrates. The goal of this dissertation is to design and develop a new tool based upon PPL, which is not limited to forming 2D parallel patterns, but can also create 3D complex microstructures, finding applications in both biotechnology and Micro-Electro-Mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. This novel approach is named Polymer Pen Printing. Different from PPL using …

Algorithmic Properties Of Poly-Z Groups And Secret Sharing Using Non-Commutative Groups, Bren Cavallo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Computational aspects of polycyclic groups have been used to study cryptography since 2004 when Eick and Kahrobaei proposed polycyclic groups as a platform for conjugacy based cryptographic protocols.

In the first chapter we study the conjugacy problem in polycyclic groups and construct a family of torsion-free polycyclic groups where the uniform conjugacy problem over the entire family is at least as hard as the subset sum problem. We further show that the conjugacy problem in these groups is in NP, implying that the uniform conjugacy problem is NP-complete over these groups. This is joint work with Delaram Kahrobaei. We also …

Growth And Characterization Of Type-Ii Submonolayer Zncdte/Zncdse Quantum Dot Superlattices For Efficient Intermediate Band Solar Cells, Siddharth Dhomkar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we discuss the growth procedure and the characterization results obtained for epitaxially grown submonolayer type-II quantum dot superlattices made of II-VI semiconductors. The goal behind this study is to show the feasibility of this novel material system in fabricating an efficient intermediate band solar cell.

Intermediate band solar cells can potentially have an efficiency of 63.2% under full solar concentration, but the material systems investigated until now are far from optimum and are fraught with growth related issues including low quantum dot densities, presence of wetting layers, strain driven dislocations etc. Here, we have investigated a novel …

Studies Toward A General Synthesis Of Poly-Substituted Alpha-Hydroxytropolones, Christine Marie Meck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1: This chapter gives a brief history of α-hydroxytropolones, how they were discovered and unique properties of these substrates. Included is a background on the bioactivity of these substrates in cellular targets such as bacteria, fungi, parasites, tumors and toxicity, as well as their ability to inhibit various metallo-based enzymes. Structure activity relationships studies are reviewed on important metalloenzymes HIV-Reverse Transcriptase (RT) and Inositol monophosphatase (IMPase). Finally the chapter finishes with a synthetic overview of α-hydroxytropolones including natural product targets such as puberulic acid, puberulonic acid, β-thujaplicinol, and β-hydroxytropolone.

Chapter 2: A brief review on β-hydroxy-γ-pyrone based oxidopyrylium cycloadditions …

On String Topology Operations And Algebraic Structures On Hochschild Complexes, Manuel Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The field of string topology is concerned with the algebraic structure of spaces of paths and loops on a manifold. It was born with Chas and Sullivan's observation of the fact that the intersection product on the homology of a smooth manifold $M$ can be combined with the concatenation product on the homology of the based loop space on $M$ to obtain a new product on the homology of $LM$, the space of free loops on $M$. Since then, a vast family of operations on the homology of $LM$ have been discovered.

In this thesis we focus our attention on …

Eastern Tropical Pacific Climate And El Niño Variability During The Past Millennium, Gerald Thomas Rustic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been implicated in large-scale climate shifts of the past millennia, but paleoclimate records from the dynamically vital eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean (EEP) spanning the past millennium are sparse. This has limited our understanding of tropical Pacific dynamics, leaving questions regarding the source of ENSO variability unanswered. Here I seek to address some of these questions regarding relationship between ENSO and tropical Pacific mean state, and the relationship between the tropical Pacific and large-scale climate. Mean EEP sea surface temperature (SST) for the past millennium was reconstructed using Mg/Ca ratios in Globigerinoides ruber from …

Accurate Deterministic Solutions For The Classic Boltzmann Shock Profile, Yubei Yue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Boltzmann equation or Boltzmann transport equation is a classical kinetic equation devised by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872. It is regarded as a fundamental law in rarefied gas dynamics. Rather than using macroscopic quantities such as density, temperature, and pressure to describe the underlying physics, the Boltzmann equation uses a distribution function in phase space to describe the physical system, and all the macroscopic quantities are weighted averages of the distribution function. The information contained in the Boltzmann equation is surprisingly rich, and the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics can be derived from it using series expansions. Moreover, …

Propagation Of Non-Stationary Noise In Waveguides, Jonathan Samuel Ben-Benjamin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis consists of research regarding pulse and noise propagation in dispersive media. The research consists of three parts. In Part I we develop an approach for the propagation of non-stationary noise in waveguides, and in particular, we focus on the two-plate waveguide, which is a standard model for the ocean. he fundamental aim is to obtain the propagation of the space-time autocorrelation function. In our formulation, the noise is described by a Wigner spectrum, from which the autocorrelation function can be obtained. We discuss how to obtain the Wigner spectrum of a noise field from the Wigner spectrum of …

Counting Restricted Integer Partitions, David Dakota Blair

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The first chapter examines $p_b(n)$, the number of partitions of $n$ into powers of $b$, along with a family of identities which can be deduced by iterating a recurrence satisfied by $p_b(n)$ in a suitable way. These identities can then be used to calculate $p_b(n)$ for large values of $n$.

The second chapter restricts these types of partitions even further, limiting the multiplicity of each part. Its object of study is $p_{b,d}(n)$, that is, the number of partitions of $n$ into powers of $b$ repeating each power at most $d$ times. The methods of the first chapter are applied, and …

The Moduli Space Of Rational Maps, Lloyd William West

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We construct the moduli space, M_d, of degree d rational maps on ℙ¹ in terms of invariants of binary forms. We apply this construction to give explicit invariants and equations for M₃.

Using this construction, we give a method for solving the following problems: (1) explicitly construct, from a moduli point P ∈ M_d(k), a rational map ∅ with the given moduli; (2) find the field of definition of a rational map ∅. We work out the method in detail for the case d = 3.

Some Bernstein Type Results Of Graphical Self-Shrinkers With High Codimension In Euclidean Space, Hengyu Zhou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A self-shrinker characterizes the type I singularity of the mean curvature flow. In this thesis we concern about some Bernstein type results of graphical self-shrinkers with high codimension in Euclidean space.

There are two main tools in our work. The first one is structure equations of graphical self-shriners in terms of parallel forms (Theorem 2.3.6). This is motivated by M.T.Wang's work ([Wan02]) on graphical mean curvature flows with arbitrary codimension in product manifolds. The second one is an integration technique (Lemma 2.4.5) based on the fact that every graphical graphical self-shrinker has the polynomial volume growth (Corollary 2.4.4). Because of …

Density Functional Theory For The Investigation Of Transition Metal Complexes: Structure, Binding, And Spectroscopy Of Metal-Siderophores And The Catalase-Peroxidase Enzyme, Bonnie I. Kruft

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920's and with the introduction of the Schrödinger equation in 1926, various methods to solve the Schrödinger equation have evolved. With advances in these computational methods, we are now able to solve the Schrödinger equation for systems that did not seem possible less than a century ago. Density functional theory (DFT) is a valuable tool for the exploration of the molecular properties of biological systems, and is based upon the theory that the exact energy could be determined from the knowledge of the electron density. The purpose of this dissertation is to …

Hybridized Criticality And Elementary Excitations In Lihof4, Haifu Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I study the magnetic properties of LiHoF₄. Quantum criticality in rare earth ferromagnet LiHoF₄ is complicated by the presence of strong crystal field and hyperfine interactions resulting, e.g., in incomplete mode softening reported by Rønnow et al. We construct a systematic framework for treating elementary excitations in this material across the phase diagram. These excitations interpolate between purely electronic, nuclear and lattice modes and exhibit two-types of quantum critical softening, both complete (as anticipated by elementary treatments, see e.g. Sachdev) but also incomplete, in close correspondence with nuclear scattering results.

Studies On Bell's Theorem, Veli Ugur Guney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this work we look for novel classes of Bell's inequalities and methods to produce them. We also find their quantum violations including, if possible, the maximum one.

The Jordan bases method that we explain in Chapter 2 is about using a pair of certain type of orthonormal bases whose spans are subspaces related to measurement outcomes of incompatible quantities on the same physical system. Jordan vectors are the briefest way of expressing the relative orientation of any two subspaces. This feature helps us to reduce the dimensionality of the parameter space on which we do searches for optimization. The …

Accessing Medicinally-Relevant Scaffolds Via Organocatalyzed Cascade Reactions, Joshua Hadley Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The field of asymmetric catalysis embodies the efforts of chemists to mimic the stereoselectivity routinely achieved by biological systems. Asymmetric organocatalysis, a sub-field of asymmetric catalysis, is broadly based on the catalytic activity of non-transition metal, small molecules that transmit chirality to substrates. This dissertation describes experimental work towards the construction of versatile, medicinally-relevant molecular scaffolds using chiral, diarylprolinol silyl ether organocatalysts. Specifically, these catalysts were used in 1-pot, iminium-enamine catalyzed cascade reactions to functionalize α,β-unsaturated aldehydes. A comprehensive review of iminium and enamine organocatalysis is provided, including its development towards iminium-enamine cascade reactions. This review provides background for the …

Optimal Measurements Tasks And Their Physical Realizations, Vadim Yerokhin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis reflects works previously published by the author and materials hitherto unpublished on the subject of quantum information theory. Particularly, results in optimal discrimination, cloning, and separation of quantum states, and their relationships, are discussed.

Our interest lies in the scenario where we are given one of two quantum states prepared with a known a-priori probability. We are given full information about the states and are assigned the task of performing an optimal measurement on the incoming state. Given that none of these tasks is in general possible to perform perfectly we must choose a figure of merit to …

The Geometry And Combinatorics Of Closed Geodesics On Hyperbolic Surfaces, Chris Arettines

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we obtain combinatorial algorithms that determine the minimal number of self-intersections necessary for a free homotopy class $[\gamma]$ on an orientable surface, using algebraic input. Using this same input, we describe another algorithm which determines whether or not a minimally intersecting curve in $[\gamma]$ is \textit{filling}, that is, whether or not the complement is a disjoint union of disks or punctured disks. Next, we use these algorithms as inspiration for proving the existence of filling curves which self-intersect $2g-1$ times, which is the minimal number of intersections possible. The combinatorial viewpoint that is developed can then be …

Zirconium-89: Radiochemistry And Ligand Development Toward Improved Pet Applications, Melissa Ann Deri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Antibodies are attractive targeting vectors for positron emission tomography (PET) based imaging agents due to their high affinity and selectivity to a variety of biological targets. Creating such imaging agents requires a radionuclide with suitable decay characteristics. This role has been filled by zirconium-89 which has a 78.41 h half-life that ideally matches the multi-day biological half-life of IgG antibodies.

However, the use of a radiometal necessitates the use of a bifunctional chelator to bind the metal and conjugate to the antibody. For ⁸⁹Zr this has been the purview of various derivatives of desferrioxamine B (DFO); however, the observed …

Biophysical Characterization Of A De Novo Elastin, Kelly Nicole Greenland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Natural human elastin is found in tissue such as the lungs, arteries, and skin. This protein is formed at birth with no mechanism present to repair or supplement the initial quantity formed. As a result, the functionality and durability of elastin's elasticity is critically important. To date, the mechanics of this ability to stretch and recoil is not fully understood. This study utilizes de novo protein design to create a small library of simplistic versions of elastin-like proteins, demonstrate the elastin-like proteins, maintain elastin's functionality, and inquire into its structure using solution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).

Elastin is formed from …

Order And Asymmetry In Jammed Systems, Zhusong Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Granular matter is composed of particles that are big enough that thermal effects may be neglected. We studied both granular flow and granular statics using numerical simulation. In granular flow, we simulated 2D granular flow in a hopper. A hopper is a container with an opening at the bottom. Simulated disks are placed in the hopper with the bottom closed and then released. We developed a new tangential force model to simulate hopper flow, that matches experiments and shows that the output flux is proportional to the bottom opening size to the 3/2 power. We also see clogging or jamming …

Metasurfaces For Photon Sorting And Selective Absorption, Isroel Moshe Mandel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamaterials are a recent discovery gaining much interest due to their promising applications to multiple devices in sensing, imaging, photovoltaics, nonlinear optics, heat conversion, sorters, and multitudes of other devices. These metamaterials are made of subunits called meta-atoms which take a role similar to that of atoms in bulk crystals. However, unlike their atom counterparts, these meta-atoms are macroscopic and can be engineered to respond to a driving field in a desired way. Metasurfaces, the 2-dimensional analog of metamaterials, have been shown to possess the ability to control light in novel ways. In this work, we investigate a particular type …

Ordering And Topological Defects In Solids With Quenched Randomness, Thomas Chapman Proctor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We explore multiple different examples of quenched randomness in systems with a continuous order parameter. In all these systems, it is shown that understanding the effects of topology is critical to the understanding of the effects of quenched randomness.

We consider n-component fixed-length order parameter interacting with a weak random field in d = 1,2,3 dimensions. Relaxation from the initially ordered state and spin-spin correlation functions have been studied on lattices containing hundreds of millions sites. At n - 1 < d presence of topological structures leads to metastability, with the final state depending on the initial condition. At n …