Digital Commons Network^™

Rethinking Holocene Ecological Relationships Among Caribou, Muskoxen, And Human Hunters On Banks Island, Nwt, Canada: A Stable Isotope Approach, Jordon S. Munizzi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the ecology of caribou (Rangifer tarandus spp.) and muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus), and its relevance to human hunters on Banks Island, NWT, Canada, over the last 4000 years, primarily through the isotopic analysis of modern and archaeological faunal remains.

First, we establish baseline carbon and nitrogen isotope relationships between modern vegetation and caribou and muskox bone collagen using Bayesian mixing models. The models indicate that dwarf shrub (Salix arctica) does not contribute significantly to bone collagen isotopic compositions in either species, while sedges and yellow lichen (Cetraria tilesii) do. These findings …

Adsorbed Gas Behaviour And Guest-Host Interactions In Ultramicroporous Metal-Organic Frameworks, Bligh Desveaux

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of porous materials that have attracted much attention due to their large surface areas, high tunability and their high selectivity for gas adsorption applications. In this work, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) experiments and single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) experiments are used to investigate carbon dioxide adsorption within the ultramicroporous MOFs SIFSIX-3-Zn (Chapter 2) and ZnAtzOx. (Chapter 3). Analysis finds that the CO₂ SIFSIX-3-Zn undergoes wobbling motions with a low temperature dependence, and in ZnAtzOx undergoes wobbling and hopping motions with a low temperature dependence. SCXRD is used to precisely determine the CO …

Hazmat Storage Near Nyc Waterways Endangers Communities, Brett E. Dahlberg, Nicole Acevedo

Capstones

New York City has 520 miles of shoreline--that’s more than Miami and Los Angeles combined. These waterfronts are home to some of the city’s most polluted sites because major part of it is zoned for industrial use. Dozens of industrial plants in this area store toxic chemicals in flood zones: substances that are hazardous to our health, like Benzene, which is used in rocket fuel, toluene, a paint thinner, and lead a neurotoxin. In a flood, these chemicals can easily get caught up in moving waters and pollute entire neighborhoods.

That’s exactly what happened when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. …

Seasonal Resource Selection And Habitat Treatment Use By A Fringe Population Of Greater Sage-Grouse, Rhett Boswell

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Movement and habitat selection by Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus uropasianus) is of great interest to wildlife managers tasked with applying conservation measures for this iconic western species. Current technology has created small and lightweight GPS (Global Positioning Systems) transmitters that can be attached to sage-grouse. Using GIS software and statistical programs such as Program R, land managers can analyze GPS location data to assess how sage-grouse are geospatially interacting with their habitats. Within the Panguitch Sage-Grouse Management Area (SGMA) thousands of acres of land have been restored or manipulated to enhance sage-grouse habitat; this usually involves removal of pinyon pine …

Can Addressing Language Skills For Fifth Grade Ells In A Multiplication Curriculum Help Address The Achievement Gap In Math? A Multiplication Workbook For Big Kids, Michelle Douglas

Master's Projects and Capstones

Currently, the state of California has 1,332,405 students from grades k-12 who speak a language other than English at home (Caledfacts, 2016). When I started my first year teaching fifth grade with 95% of my students being English language learners (ELLs), I was surprised to see an achievement gap of two to three years in my student’s reading and math skills. I found that my student’s developmental language and math skills contributed to a lack of engagement during math time. Upon further research, I found that these three factors play a role in the wide achievement gaps between ELLs and …

Probing Consciousness, Samia Bouzid

Capstones

For centuries, the study of consciousness remained the purview of philosophers, spiritualists and religious leaders. But in the 1980s, the co-discoverer of the double-helix, James Crick, initiated a quest for a scientific explanation for consciousness — in a secret club. In the decades that followed, consciousness gained ground as a respectable area of scientific study, in fields such as neuroscience, artificial intelligence and physics. Yet, the more scientists learn about consciousness, the more it calls into question our fundamental assumptions about the way the world works. https://samiabouzid.atavist.com/probing-consciousness

Breadcrumbs: Privacy As A Privilege, Prachi Bhardwaj

Capstones

Breadcrumbs: Privacy as a Privilege Abstract

By: Prachi Bhardwaj

In 2017, the world saw more data breaches than in any year prior. The count was more than the all-time high record in 2016, which was 40 percent more than the year before that.

That’s because consumer data is incredibly valuable today. In the last three decades, data storage has gone from being stored physically to being stored almost entirely digitally, which means consumer data is more accessible and applicable to business strategies. As a result, companies are gathering data in ways previously unknown to the average consumer, and hackers are …

Best Practices For Test Driven Development, Timothy Tacker

All Student Theses

In his award-winning book, Test-driven Development By Example, Kent Beck wrote, "Clean code that works...is the goal of Test-driven Development (TDD)." TDD is a style of software development that first begins with the creation of tests and then makes use short, iterative development cycles until all test requirements are fulfilled. In order to provide the reader with sufficient background to understand the concepts discussed, this thesis begins by presenting a detailed description of this style of development. TDD is then contrasted with other popular styles, with a focus toward highlighting the many benefits this style offers over the others. This …

Synthesis, Characterization, And Spectroscopy Of Donor-Acceptor Charge Transfer Complexes, Dominic K. Kersi

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

A series of square-planar metal (diimine)(dichalcogenolene) chromophoric complexes have been synthesized, characterized and studied spectroscopically. Studies conducted on diimineplatinum(II) dichalcogenolene complexes (LPtL’) using time resolved spectroscopic techniques such as transient absorption and emission, reveal a charge-separated excited state of the type dichalcogenolene → diimine charge-transfer (LL’CT) [(dichalcogenolene^•+)Pt(diimine^•-) with an open shell donor-acceptor biradical character. Long-live excited state lifetimes were observed for these complexes upon visible photoexcitation of the LL’CT or MMLL’CT band. A direct linear relationship is observed to exist between photoluminescence rates, calculated SOC matrix elements, and ¹³C-NMR chemical shifts.

A series of …

Untangling The Mechanics Of Co-Entangled Cytoskeletal Networks, Shea Ricketts

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Active networks of interlinked protein filaments comprising the cytoskeleton largely control cellular mechanics and cell architecture. By forming cytoskeleton networks that combine motile, semiflexible actin with rigid, supportive microtubules, cells maintain structural integrity and shape while being able to flow and move. To elucidate the complex mechanical processes that arise between interacting networks of actin and microtubules within cells, we create a suite of randomly-oriented, well mixed networks of actin and microtubules by co-polymerizing varying ratios of both proteins in situ. We use optical tweezer microrheology in order to characterize the nonlinear mesoscale mechanics of in vitro co-entangled actin-microtubule composites. …

Investigation Of Neonatal Pulmonary Structure And Function Via Proton And Hyperpolarized Gas Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Nara Savoye Higano

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a modality that utilizes the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to yield tomographic images of the body. Proton (1H) MRI has historically been successful in soft tissues but has suffered in the lung due to a variety of technical challenges, such as the low proton-density, rapid T2* relaxation time of the lung parenchymal tissue, and inherent physiological motion in the chest. Recent developments in radial ultrashort echo time (UTE) MRI have in part overcome these issues. In addition, there has been much progress in techniques for hyperpolarization of noble gases (3He and 129Xe) out …

Structured Illumination Diffuse Optical Tomography For Mouse Brain Imaging, Matthew Reisman

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have transformed the study of human brain function, they have also widened the divide between standard research techniques used in humans and those used in mice, where high quality images are difficult to obtain using fMRI given the small volume of the mouse brain. Optical imaging techniques have been developed to study mouse brain networks, which are highly valuable given the ability to study brain disease treatments or development in a controlled environment. A planar imaging technique known as optical intrinsic signal (OIS) imaging has been a powerful tool for capturing functional …

New Ventures In Amidine-Based Catalyst Design, Nicholas Alan Ahlemeyer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two new cascade transformations of α,β-unsaturated thioesters catalyzed by amidine-based catalysts have been developed. First, a reagent-free transformation of o-formylaryl cinnamoyl thioesters catalyzed by HBTM-2 to produce 2-substituted thiochromenes achieved high enantioselectivities and yields while forming carbon dioxide as the only byproduct. Second, a highly diastereo- and enantioselective tandem rearrangement of less reactive enone thioesters into tricyclic thiochromanes in the presence of electron-rich amidine-based catalysts was developed. These catalysts were designed with the help of DFT calculations. H-PIP, the first chiral amidine-based catalyst synthesized in our group, performed the best overall in the thiochromane synthesis.

The second chapter of this …

Fast Monte Carlo Simulations For Quality Assurance In Radiation Therapy, Yuhe Wang

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is generally considered to be the most accurate method for dose calculation in radiation therapy. However, it suffers from the low simulation efficiency (hours to days) and complex configuration, which impede its applications in clinical studies. The recent rise of MRI-guided radiation platform (e.g. ViewRay’s MRIdian system) brings urgent need of fast MC algorithms because the introduced strong magnetic field may cause big errors to other algorithms. My dissertation focuses on resolving the conflict between accuracy and efficiency of MC simulations through 4 different approaches: (1) GPU parallel computation, (2) Transport mechanism simplification, (3) Variance reduction, …

Accurate Determination And Application Of Local Strain For Studying Tissues With Gradients In Mechanical Properties, John Boyle

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Determination of the mechanical behavior of materials requires an understanding of deformation during loading. While this is traditionally accomplished in engineering by examining a force displacement curve for a whole sample, these techniques implicitly ignore local geometric complexities and local material inhomogeneities commonly found in biologic tissues. Techniques such as normalized cross correlation have been classically applied to address this issue and resolve deformation at the local level; however, these techniques have proven unreliable when deformations become large, if the sample undergoes a rotation, and/or if strain fields become incompatible (e.g. at or near failure).

Presented here is a toolbox …

Evaluating Potential For Water Quality Decline In Maine Lakes, Kaci N. Fitzgibbon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding lake vulnerability with respect to eutrophication and loss of water quality is important for sustainability of aquatic ecosystems. This project aims at identifying and quantifying the effects of relevant physiochemical, climate, and watershed characteristics on lake vulnerability in order to develop management decision tools for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MEDEP). In a changing chemical and physical environment, using independent variables from each of these categories and then relating them to the summer lake epilimnetic phosphorus (P) concentrations allows for development of models to inform stakeholders of lake vulnerability to eutrophication problems.

We studied 24 lakes covering a …

Multiscale Imaging Of The Mouse Cortex Using Two-Photon Microscopy And Wide-Field Illumination, Jonathan Richard Bumstead

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The mouse brain can be studied over vast spatial scales ranging from microscopic imaging of single neurons to macroscopic measurements of hemodynamics acquired over the majority of the mouse cortex. However, most neuroimaging modalities are limited by a fundamental trade-off between the spatial resolution and the field-of-view (FOV) over which the brain can be imaged, making it difficult to fully understand the functional and structural architecture of the healthy mouse brain and its disruption in disease. My dissertation has focused on developing multiscale optical systems capable of imaging the mouse brain at both microscopic and mesoscopic spatial scales, specifically addressing …

Boulder Distribution Analysis Of Impact Craters In The Tharsis Region And Elysium Planitia, Mars, Nicole Button

LSU Master's Theses

Crater counting is an accepted method for dating the surface of a planetary body. An older landscape will have a higher areal density of craters due to exposure of impacts occurring over a longer time period. Since each initial impact only forms one primary crater, secondary craters need to be excluded in the crater counting method to appropriately catalog only distinct impact events. However, small primary craters may be difficult to distinguish from secondary craters. Understanding physical features of impact craters, such as the ejecta blanket, would improve the planetary community’s ability to differentiate between the two types of craters. …

The Chemistry And Biology Of Iron-Scavenging Natural Products From Pathogenic Acinetobacter Baumannii, Justin Shapiro

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multidrug resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacteria represent a global health crisis. Traditional antibiotics create selective pressure and breed resistance, making our current drugs less and less effective. Targeting of bacterial virulence factors has gained interest as an alternative strategy to potentially circumvent this problem. Virulent Acinetobacter baumannii synthesize and secrete pre-acinetobactin, a small molecule metal chelator that scavenges life-sustaining iron and is critical for establishing infection. The work described herein sheds light on the unusual properties of a non-enzymatic isomerization from pre-acinetobactin to acinetobactin and proposes a siderophore-swapping mechanism by which A. baumannii expands its pH window for virulence. Knowledge from …

A Spatio-Temporal Approach To Mitigate Automotive Radar Spoofing Attacks, Prateek Kapoor

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Cyber-physical system (CPS) has become an integral part of human life, ranging from aircraft to health care systems. The security of these critical components ensures its wider acceptability. Traditionally, many works to secure cyber-physical system (CPS) has been done in the cyber domain, like securing inter/intra CPS communication, securing the exposed software, rebuilding control input derived from sensor data post-digitization, using sensor fusion. All of this security software suffers from a basic attack wherein an attacker compromises the physical/analog sensing system. Researchers have made some progress in mitigating such attacks on physical/analog signals of CPS, the current state of the …

Knowledge Driven Approaches And Machine Learning Improve The Identification Of Clinically Relevant Somatic Mutations In Cancer Genomics, Benjamin John Ainscough

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For cancer genomics to fully expand its utility from research discovery to clinical adoption, somatic variant detection pipelines must be optimized and standardized to ensure identification of clinically relevant mutations and to reduce laborious and error-prone post-processing steps. To address the need for improved catalogues of clinically and biologically important somatic mutations, we developed DoCM, a Database of Curated Mutations in Cancer (http://docm.info), as described in Chapter 2. DoCM is an open source, openly licensed resource to enable the cancer research community to aggregate, store and track biologically and clinically important cancer variants. DoCM is currently comprised of 1,364 variants …

System Characterizations And Optimized Reconstruction Methods For Novel X-Ray Imaging, Huifeng Guan

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In the past decade there have been many new emerging X-ray based imaging technologies developed for different diagnostic purposes or imaging tasks. However, there exist one or more specific problems that prevent them from being effectively or efficiently employed. In this dissertation, four different novel X-ray based imaging technologies are discussed, including propagation-based phase-contrast (PB-XPC) tomosynthesis, differential X-ray phase-contrast tomography (D-XPCT), projection-based dual-energy computed radiography (DECR), and tetrahedron beam computed tomography (TBCT). System characteristics are analyzed or optimized reconstruction methods are proposed for these imaging modalities. In the first part, we investigated the unique properties of propagation-based phase-contrast imaging technique …

System Optimization And Iterative Image Reconstruction In Photoacoustic Computed Tomography For Breast Imaging, Yang Lou

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Photoacoustic computed tomography(PACT), also known as optoacoustic tomography (OAT), is an emerging imaging technique that has developed rapidly in recent years. The combination of the high optical contrast and the high acoustic resolution of this hybrid imaging technique makes it a promising candidate for human breast imaging, where conventional imaging techniques including X-ray mammography, B-mode ultrasound, and MRI suffer from low contrast, low specificity for certain breast types, and additional risks related to ionizing radiation. Though significant works have been done to push the frontier of PACT breast imaging, it is still challenging to successfully build a PACT breast imaging …

Locality-Aware Concurrency Platforms, Jordyn Chrystopher Raymond Maglalang

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Modern computing systems from all domains are becoming increasingly more parallel. Manufacturers are taking advantage of the increasing number of available transistors by packaging more and more computing resources together on a single chip or within a single system. These platforms generally contain many levels of private and shared caches in addition to physically distributed main memory. Therefore, some memory is more expensive to access than other and high-performance software must consider memory locality as one of the first level considerations.

Memory locality is often difficult for application developers to consider directly, however, since many of these NUMA affects are …

Abiotic- And Biotic-Formation Of Manganese Oxides And Their Fate In Environmental Systems, Haesung Jung

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Manganese (hydr)oxide (Mn (hydr)oxide) minerals are ubiquitous in aquatic and terrestrial environments. These minerals have high surface areas and are highly sorptive and redox active. From decades of accumulated knowledge about natural redox cycling, we have found that Mn (hydr)oxides play critical roles as electron donors and acceptors in elemental geochemical cycling and biological metabolisms in nature. Thus, Mn (hydr)oxides have garnered increasing interest to understand natural systems. Considering the variety of redox reactions with Mn (hydr)oxides in nature, it is also expected that there should be diverse pathways to form Mn (hydr)oxides through abiotic and biotic processes. Previous studies …

Two-Component Hydrogel As Biomimetic Vitreous Substitutes, Sruthi Santhanam

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The vitreous humor of the eye is a biological hydrogel principally composed of fibrillary collagen interspersed with semi-flexible polyelectrolyte, hyaluronic acid (HA). Certain pathological conditions necessitate its removal and replacement. Current vitreous substitutes, such as silicone oils and perfluorocarbons, are hydrophobic, do not resemble the properties of the vitreous, and have known complications. An ideal vitreous substitute should have properties of the natural vitreous, perform its functions, and be biocompatible in the eye. Inspired by the structure and composition of the natural vitreous, we used bio-mimicry to develop an injectable two-component hydrogel. The hydrogel is composed of a fibrillary gellan, …

Remediation Strategies For Mercury Contaminated Lakes And Reservoirs Within The State Of California, Emily Chortek

Master's Projects and Capstones

Mercury is an environmental and public health concern due to its neurodegenerative effects and ubiquitous concentration within the environment. To mitigate these risks and reduce concentrations within the environment, remediation methods are necessary. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and evaluate the efficacy of a number of remediation options for mercury contaminated lakes and reservoirs in the State of California. This paper also identifies a number of challenges associated with the implementation of each method and provides recommendations for environmental managers to use when remediating mercury contaminated lakes. Hypolimnetic oxygenation (HOS) was found to be the least problematic …

Environmental Ngo-Private Sector Partnerships: A Tool To Generate Business Value And Protect The Natural World, Carolyn Nogy Nogy

Master's Projects and Capstones

Many environmental challenges are complicated by complex and social, cultural, economic and political interactions, which are difficult to address by a single entity. However, partnerships can offer the necessary depth and versatility to address them effectively. By working together, there is an opportunity for cross sector partners to leverage their unique expertise, while blending resources to achieve more comprehensive and sustainable solutions to existing environmental problems. This project examines the use of partnerships between environmental NGOs and the private sector to manage complex environmental problems, providing a critical assessment of the partnership attributes that generate the most mutual benefit. The …

Planning Cities, Economically Or Communally: A Comparative Study Of Amsterdam And San Francisco, Raina Dawn Whittekiend

Master's Theses

Globalization has spun “community” off its axis. What once defined community is no longer the current state of the community. Increased economic transactions have led to the instability of communities that once depended on one another at the local level. These communities are now dependent on systems that do not know nor understand their actors. This lack of relationship between development and subject is witnessed and highly scrutinized in developing countries all over the world and has been intensely researched in academic literature. This thesis intends to better understand why in modernized global cities these same processes of development and …

Fabrication And Modification Of Titania Nanotube Arrays For Harvesting Solar Energy And Drug Delivery Applications, Ahmed El Ruby Abdel Rahman Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The fast diminishing of fossil fuels in the near future, as well as the global warming caused by increasing greenhouse gases have motivated the urgent quest to develop advanced materials as cost-effective photoanodes for solar light harvesting and many other photocatalytic applications. Recently, titania nanotube arrays (TNTAs) fabricated by anodization process has attracted great interest due to their excellent properties such as: high surface area, vertically oriented, highly organized, one-dimensional, nanotubular structure, photoactivity, chemical stability and biocompatibility. This unique combination of excellent properties makes TNTAs an excellent photoanode for solar light harvesting. However, the relatively wide band gap energy of …