Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling Residential Foreclosures In Kent County, Kaitlyn Ratkowiak

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Residential Foreclosures in Kent County have become commonplace in the past few years. In this project, we hope to analyze data on foreclosures since 2004 to learn more about the mounting crisis, with the hope that we can identify neighborhoods at risk of foreclosures and its associated consequences.

Water Resources Year In Review - Winter 2009 Vol 21. No 2, Annis Water Resources Institute

AWRI Reviews

No abstract provided.

Status And Trends Report - November 2009, Erik Nordman, Betty Gajewski, Paul Isely, John Koches, Stuart Kramer, Kurt Thompson, Jon Vandermolen

Technical Reports

The deployment of thousands of wind energy facilities required to meet various renewable energy targets will bring changes to the nation’s landscapes, communities, and economies. Identifying and reconciling the trade-offs that inevitably arise from projects such as locating wind energy facilities is a major challenge to successfully meeting renewable energy targets. These complex challenges span scientific disciplines, involve multiple scales, lack well-defined solutions, and involve public values. Integrated assessment has been used effectively to address a number of complex challenges, ranging from climate change to “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico. The intent of this integrated assessment project, and …

Use Of The Chambira Palm (Astrocaryum Chambira) In Rainforest Communities Of The Peruvian Amazon, Anel Guel, Jim Penn

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

We proposed to research the use of chambira palm fibers and the sale of chambira crafts in four communities located about 100 miles from the city of Iquitos, Peru. In this part of the Peruvian Amazon, women are organized into groups that work to obtain the fibers and sell their products in a sustainable way, and at the same time promote the cultivation of the palm trees in their family gardens. As is the case with so many products from tropical forests, there is great geographic variation in the abundance of the resource (chambira) and variation in the amount of …

Progress Toward The Synthesis Of A Truncated Ergoline, Ryan D. Enck, Matthew Hart

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Many people are diagnosed with thyroid related disorders, and many more are unaware of their existing thyroid problems. T1AM, a naturally occurring metabolite of the thyroid hormone (TH), has been shown to activate the Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) and exhibits effects that oppose those of the TH. It is, therefore, likely that there is regulatory relationship between T1AM and the TH. In order to better understand this relationship, a compound must be developed that will effectively block TAAR1. Previously our lab has examined the two different mirror images of apomorphine. One of the mirror images inhibited and the …

Production Of O2 Herzberg States In The Deep Uv Photodissociation Of Ozone, Reinhard Schinke, George C. Mcbane, L. Shen, P. C. Singh, A. G. Suits

Peer Reviewed Articles

High-resolution imaging experiments combined with new electronic structure and dynamics calculations strongly indicate that the O(³P)+O₂ products with very low kinetic energy release (E_tr2: A' ³Δ_u(v=0, 1, 2) and A ³Σ⁺_u(v=0, 1). This interpretation contradicts the earlier assignment to very high (v≥26) vibrational states of O²(³Σ^-_g).

Wind Power West Michigan - Project Overview, Erik Edward Nordman

Technical Reports

Wind energy has the potential to be an environmentally sensitive alternative to fossil fuels because wind is renewable and can be used to generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Michigan’s coastal zones possess abundant wind resources. However, wind energy development might present challenges for tourism-dependent lakeshore communities. Poorly sited wind farms may interfere with other uses of the coast, such as recreation, commercial fishing, and nature preservation, and not all communities are prepared to manage these conflicts.

An Exchange-Coulomb Model Potential Energy Surface For The Ne-Co Interaction. I. Calculation Of Ne-Co Van Der Waals Spectra, Ashok K. Dham, Frederick R. W. Mccourt, William J. Meath, George C. Mcbane

Peer Reviewed Articles

Exchange-Coulomb model potential energy surfaces have been developed for the Ne–CO interaction. The initial model is a three-dimensional potential energy surface based upon computed Heitler–London interaction energies and literature results for the long-range induction and dispersion energies, all as functions of interspecies distance, the orientation of CO relative to the interspecies axis, and the bond length of the CO molecule. Both a rigid-rotor model potential energy surface, obtained by setting the CO bond length equal to its experimental spectroscopic equilibrium value, and a vibrationally averaged model potential energy surface, obtained by averaging the stretching dependence over the ground vibrational motion …

Does The Mg/Ca In Foraminifera Tests Provide A Reliable Temperature Proxy?, Sarah Clark, Figen Mekik

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

The Mg/Ca in foraminifera shells is commonly used as a proxy to estimate ocean temperatures in Earth’s past. However, studies have shown that both dissolution and salinity influence the Mg/Ca in shells of tropical foraminifera, which can cause paleotemperature estimates to be inaccurate. We measured Mg/Ca in shells of Globigernoides ruber and Globigerinoides sacculifer from core tops in the eastern equatorial Pacific. We compared our results with global core top data, which paleotemperature equations have been calibrated and published. We find that Mg/Ca values range greatly at the same surface ocean temperature. We also find that salinity and dissolution do …

Modeling Problem Solving: Creating And Evaluating, Kaitlin M. Downey, Nathan Barrows

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

The purpose of this project was to create novice-level screencasts and to investigate students’ perceptions and usage of them. A survey of 61 general chemistry students revealed polarity, Lewis structures, molecular geometry, and bond polarity to be topics of greatest concern. Over 25 screencasts were created using Camtasia Studio software and a Dell TabletPC. A blog (http://mi-chemed.net) was created to host the tutorials and monitor student usage. After students registered and logged in to the blog, their viewing patterns were recorded. They were encouraged to comment on the content and technical features of the videos (e.g. animations). Online comments and …

Rook Polynomials In Higher Dimensions, Nicholas Krzywonos, Feryal Alayont

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

A rook polynomial counts the number of placements of non-attacking rooks on a board. In this paper we describe generalizations of the definition and properties of rook polynomials to "boards" in three and higher dimensions. We also defefine generalizations of special two dimensional boards to three dimensions, including the triangle board and the board representing the probleme des rencontres. The number of rook placements on these three dimensional families of rook boards are shown to be related to famous number sequences, such as central factorial numbers, the number of Latin rectangles and the Genocchi numbers.

Fundamentals For Using Geographic Information Science To Measure The Effectiveness Of Land Conservation Projects, Robert G. Pontius Jr., Shaily Menon, Joseph Duncan, Shalini Gupta

Other Scholarly Publications

Some humans spend a tremendous amount of effort to change landscapes from a “natural” state to a “developed” state for a variety of desirable economic uses, such as urban, agriculture, transportation, and mining. Others spend a tremendous amount of effort to prevent such development in order to conserve the landscapes for a variety of important environmental uses, such as biodiversity maintenance, carbon storage, water filtration, and landslide prevention. It would be efficient in theory if a society were to focus its development efforts at locations that give the largest economic utility per area developed, and to focus its conservation efforts …

Water Evaporation From Atmospheric Aerosols, Patrick Louden, Christopher Lawrence

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

With the recent discovery of the ubiquity of organic material in tropospheric aerosols, it has been postulated that the rates of water evaporation and condensation into the aerosols could be affected by thin surfactant films, which could ultimately affect cloud formation. Nathanson et al. have begun to study the effect of water evaporation from sulfuric acid solutions through the short-chain surfactant, butanol. They have found that a nearly full monolayer of butanol fails to reduce water evaporation from the acid. This unexpected result raises many questions about the mechanism of water evaporation. We used molecular modeling to help answer some …

Capillary Electrophoresis Based Microbial Detection And Separation, Ryan Nelson, Andrew Lantz

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) represents a significant tool for the separation of microorganisms as well as the detection and isolation of Candida albicans (CA) fungus in human blood. There currently exists few rapid means by which biological pathogens can be tested, at low concentration, in blood, and other organic matrices. Other common chromatographic techniques, such as GC, HPLC, IR and MS do not have the capability of analyzing living microorganisms, nor the ability to separate them with any precision. CE offers the rare opportunity to separate individual cells by the charge to size ratio as well as their isoelectric focusing point …

Conversion Of Cellulose To Value Added-Chemicals, Shane Mcgrath, Dalila Kovacs, Jim Krikke

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Biomass-derived feedstock is of growing importance in the development of new synthetic pathways for commodity and specialty chemicals. Utilizing basic catalytic concepts such as hydrolysis, dehydration, isomerisation, and other common transformations of sugar in biomass conversion has already produced significant advances in the fundamental understanding of biomass conversion.

Despite the progress that has already been made, very few studies are dedicated to understanding the fundamentals of cellulose conversion under heterogeneous catalytic conditions. This is due to the complexity of both the catalytic steps at the metal/support interface and the structure of cellulose itself, being a highly functionalized homopolymer, characterized by …