Digital Commons Network^™

Report On Advances In The Field Of Artificial Intelligence Attributed To Captcha, Craig M. Schow

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

A CAPTCHA is a specialized human interaction proof that exploits gaps between human and computer recognition abilities. By design, the hardness of a CAPTCHA is based on the difficulty of advancing the underlying artificial intelligence [AI] technology to a level that eliminates any exploitable gap. Due to this fact computer scientists have concluded that the widespread use of CAPTCHA would accelerate research in the underlying fields of AI eventually leading to near-­‐human capabilities in certain AI systems. Despite these predictions no attempt has been made to identify advances in AI which can be attributed to the use of CAPTCHA.

The …

Algebraic Properties Of Killing Vectors For Lorentz Metrics In Four Dimensions, Jesse W. Hicks

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

Four-dimensional space-times with symmetry play a central role in the theory of general relativity. In 1961, in the book Einstein Spaces, A.Z. Petrov gave a complete local classification of four-dimensional space-times based upon their local isometry group, that is, their Lie algebra of Killing vector fields. In this report we discuss algebraic and geometric properties of these Lie algebras. A database of these properties has been computed for the five-dimensional Lie algebras of Killing vectors found in Petrov. As an application of our work, we present dieomorphisms between a few pairs of these Lie algebras of Killing vectors.

Enhancing Inettest By Improving The Programming Question And Group Grading, Sushil Dosi

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

This report describes an improvement to the Utah State University iNetTest testing system. The iNetTest system allows instructors and/or students to: • Create/take tests with rich sets of question types (multiple choice, essay, true/false, computational programming question, etc.); • Monitor the test takers for cheating; • Auto-grade for many types of questions, as well as group grade for all question types; and • Send scores to students via either email or SMS. Specifically, this report discusses the design and development of an improved computational programming question for the iNetTest system. For programming questions, iNetTest allows for the use of various …

The Interrelationship Between The Bio- And Sequence Stratigraphy Of The Middle Cambrian Spence Shale Of Northern Utah And Southern Idaho, Eva Lyon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This project was undertaken with the objective of discerning the relationship between sea level change and changes in the fauna of the Spence Shale. A combination of field and lab work was employed to undertake this research. The Spence Shale is rich in fossils from the earliest period of visible life on this planet. It provides a unique window onto the evolution of life and changes in the Earth at this time. It is important to study this relationship between sea level and life changes as these conditions are constantly changing, particularly in this day and age. A better understanding …

Potential Effects Of Altered Precipitation Regimes On Primary Production In Terrestrial Ecosystems, Joanna S. Hsu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In addition to causing an increase in mean temperatures, climate change is also altering precipitation regimes across the globe. General circulation models project both latitude-dependent changes in precipitation mean and increases in precipitation variability. These changes in water availability will impact terrestrial primary productivity, the fixation of carbon dioxide into organic matter by plants. In my thesis, I addressed the following three questions: 1.) What will be the relative effect of changes in the mean and standard deviation of annual precipitation on mean annual primary production? 2.) Which ecosystems will be the most sensitive to changes in precipitation? 3.) Will …

An Embedded Atom Method Investigation Into The Lattice Dynamics Of Metallic Surfaces, Richard B. Wilson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The explosion in electronic devices over the last half century is a result of the successful development and application of theories that explain the physical properties of solids. For example, the theory of lattice vibrations developed in the first half of the 20^th century has had a huge impact on our ability to understand and design devices. The idea that atoms vibrate together in grouped vibrational modes, called phonons, has enabled scientists to quantify the impact that atomic motion has on mechanical, thermal, electrical, and optical properties. This has aided the creation of all sorts of useful technology ranging …

Pedestrian Leadership And Egress Assistance Simulation Environment (Please), Kyle D. Feuz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Pedestrian simulation models are used in many different applications including, the design of safer buildings, the validation of fire codes, and automatic video surveillance and tracking. By improving the simulation model used, each of the application areas can experience similar improvements in accuracy. Current simulation models fail to address key concerns in representing pedestrian knowledge and in accurately modeling group formation. This project has at its core the goal of bringing attention these areas of concern and providing an initial look at ways to solve these problems.

The Pedestrian Leadership and Egress Assistance Simulation Environment (PLEASE) is developed specifically to …

A Dynamic State Metabolic Journey: From Mass Spectrometry To Network Analysis Via Estimation Of Kinetic Parameters, Arockia Ranjitha Dhanasekaran

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The term "metabolism" refers to the chemical processes occurring in a living organism to convert the food consumed into the energy needed to maintain a living state. Metabolism consists of two states, namely, a dynamic state and a steady state. In the dynamic state, the rate of chemical conversion of a substance is proportional to the amount of substance available, whereas in the steady state this rate is constant and independent of the amount of substance present (Chapter 4 Figure 1). Like all other fields of engineering, metabolic engineering involves the analysis and synthesis of metabolism. Molecular biological tools for …

Accelerating Production Of Slow-Growing Intermountain West Native Plants By Modifying Their Microclimate, Sam A. Miller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Water shortages are a recurring problem in the western US. As much as 70% of yearly municipal water consumption may be used to irrigate urban landscapes. Significant water savings can be realized by installing low water landscapes, where turfgrass is replaced by low water trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials. Intermountain West (IMW) native trees and shrubs are excellent candidates for low water landscaping. However, due to their slow initial growth, many native trees and shrubs are simply unavailable to consumers, as they are not cost effective for nursery growers to produce. In an effort to accelerate the yearly growth rates …

Determining Co2 Storage Potential: Characterization Of Seal Integrity And Reservoir Failure In Exposed Analogs, Daniel Corey Barton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into subsurface porous sandstone is proposed as a method for reducing accumulation of anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Natural exposures of reservoir and top-seal pairs in central and southeastern Utah are identified as analogs to proposed CO₂ injection targets. Reservoir and top-seal pairs in natural analog exposures are analyzed in tandem to evaluate evidence for paleo-migration of fluids and/or hydrocarbons from the reservoir through the top seal. The San Rafael Swell and Monument Uplift exhibit similar structure and exposures of Jurassic units yet differ in amount and type of …

Modeling Phloem Temperatures Relative To Mountain Pine Beetle Phenology, Matthew Jared Lewis

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

We explore a variety of methods to estimate phloem temperatures from ambient air temperatures suitable for the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. A model's ability to induce the same phenology generated from observed phloem temperatures measures its effectiveness rather than a simple reconstruction of phloem temperatures. From a model's phenology results we are able to ascertain whether the model produces a similar amount of developmental energy exhibited by observed phloem temperatures.

Three models performed best: Newton, Newton South and Matching. The Newton model uses Newton's Law of Cooling to effectively estimate northern aspect phloem temperatures. The Newton South model …

Software For Analyzing Municipal Water Data To Design Water Conservation Strategies, Adrian Patton Welsh

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

Planning for drought and growth-induced water scarcity is a challenge confronting municipal water departments. When water shortages occur, demand management policies and programs are often implemented to encourage water conservation. Due to the nature of water resources and municipal water delivery systems, cities are concerned about meeting citizens’ water needs. A city can review water billing records to see how much water people use, but how do they know how much water people need? Standards and guidelines have been established for indoor water use (gallons/person/day), but the amount of water needed to irrigate outdoor landscapes is more variable, highly contextualized, …

Dietary Patterns And Cognitive Decline In Aged Populations, Austin J. Bowles

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

In this paper, we discuss distinctive features of longitudinal studies, and illustrate two regression-based methods for the analysis of longitudinal data. A study of dietary patterns and cognitive decline (Cache County Memory Study) is used to motivate our discussion and analysis. Cognitive decline is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, the sixth leading cause of all deaths among Americans. The study attempted to identify dietary patterns associated with reduced risk of age-related cognitive decline in elderly populations. Higher levels of adherence to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and/or Mediterranean diets were found to be associated with increased cognitive …

Stressors Across The Lifespan And Dementia Risk: A Statistical Method Analysis, Megan Platt Borrowman

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

The Cache Lifespan Stressors and Alzheimer's Disease (LSAD) study has access to data from the Cache County Study on Memory Health and Aging (CCS) that have been linked to the extensive genealogical and vital records from the Utah Population Database (UPDB). Information about stressful life events experienced by the original 5092 CCS participants has been extracted objectively from the UPDB, without the possibility of recall bias. This information was then statistically analyzed to look for relationships between key stressors and dementia risk. The LSAD study made it possible to examine the correlation between stressors as well as look at patterns …

An Extendable Software Architecture For Massively Parallel Biological Simulation, Karthik Iyer

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

Information technology has aided tremendously in the growth of the medical sciences industry. Tissue simulation is one such area wherein information technology aids in the field of medical science. This project focuses on defining, designing, and developing a computational architecture that performs repetitive and rigorous tissue simulation runs under different conditions and utilizes parallel computation.

The goal of this work is to demonstrate a parallel network-based architecture involving multiple clients interacting with a server that sends and receives voluminous data. The project assumes large memory capacity for the clients and the servers, but limits bandwidth requirements. The work demonstrates a …

Charm Web-Interface, Nirmal G. Tiwari

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

This project presents a web-based interface for Child Health Advanced Record Management System (CHARM) users that provides easy and fast access to child information from multiple data sources. This project’s overarching goal is to integrate child information from different participating programs under a single interface to allow any CHARM user (including users not belonging to any particular participating program) to view information from different participating programs. To that end, the interface allows any registered CHARM user to access child information from multiple data sources without the user being a registered member of any particular participating program. Thus, the user can …

A Merging System For Integrated Person-Centric Information Systems, Swati Jain

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

Large-scale integrated information systems correlate equivalent or related information from multiple data sources to provide a unified view of data. This report describes the design and implementation of a tool called xMerger that provides a unified view from multiple matching records, which could be multi-source duplicates and overlapping records. To achieve this xMerger provides a merging process that generates a complete and accurate merged record from conflicting and incomplete records. This report also discusses the challenges present in the process of merging and xMerger’s solutions. xMerger’s design and implementation was validated by adapting it to CHARM, a real world integrated …

Creating A Representation Of Items And Version That Support Efficient Evaluation Of The Transaction-Time Axis In Xml-Based Databases, Kaylan Goutham Mekala

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

This project was developed to create a platform for implementing the features and query support provided by the transaction time axis (tt-axis). The basis for this platform is a new numbering plan called item version timestamp level numbering (IVTLN), and it extends an existing numbering plan, namely, dewey level numbering (DLN), by including version and timestamp information. Thus, the transaction time axis provides a temporal perspective for XML nodes in addition to non-temporal axes like the ancestor and descendant axes. This project provides an efficient, extensible, and comprehensible platform for the implementation of the new numbering plan and the services …

Ecologically-Based Manipulation Practices For Managing Bromus Tectorum-Infested Rangelands, Beth Fowers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is an invasive annual grass common in several semiarid plant communities in the western U.S. B. tectorum presence increases fire frequency and size, reducing species diversity, and leading to annual species-dominated systems with inconsistent livestock forage potential and degraded wildlife habitat value. Most efforts to manage B. tectorum-dominated rangelands have focused on controlling the plant itself rather than addressing the causes of vegetation change. An alternative approach, ecologically-based invasive plant management (EBIPM), identifies treatments that can alter factors associated with the causes of succession, leading to a more desirable vegetation state. This study utilized …

Reducing Reliance On Supplemental Winter Feeding In Elk (Cervus Canadensis): An Applied Management Experiment At Deseret Land And Livestock Ranch, Utah, Dax L. Mangus

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wildlife managers have fed elk in North America for nearly 100 years. Giving winter feed to elk can compensate for a shortage of natural winter range and may boost elk populations while also helping prevent commingling with livestock and depredation of winter feed intended for livestock. In contrast to these benefits of supplemental feeding, there are economic and environmental costs associated with feeding, and elk herds that winter on feeding grounds have a higher risk of contracting and transmitting disease. Brucellosis is of primary concern now, and Chronic Wasting Disease may be in the future. Many see the discontinuation of …

Test Data Extraction And Comparison With Test Data Generation, Ali Raza

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Testing an integrated information system that relies on data from multiple sources can be a challenge, particularly when the data is confidential. This thesis describes a novel test data extraction approach, called semantic-based test data extraction for integrated systems (iSTDE) that solves many of the problems associated with creating realistic test data for integrated information systems containing confidential data. iSTDE reads a consistent cross-section of data from the production databases, manipulates that data to obscure individual identities while still preserving overall semantic data characteristics that are critical to thorough system testing, and then moves that test data to …

Collecting, Analyzing And Interpreting Bivariate Data From Leaky Buckets: A Project-Based Learning Unit, Florence Funmilayo Obielodan

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

Despite the significance and the emphasis placed on mathematics as a subject and field of study, achieving the right attitude to improve students‟ understanding and performance is still a challenge. Previous studies have shown that the problem cuts across nations around the world, both developing countries and developed alike. Teachers and educators of the subject have responsibilities to continuously develop innovative pedagogical approaches that will enhance students‟ interests and performance. Teaching approaches that emphasize real life applications of the subject have become imperative. It is believed that this will stimulate learners‟ interest in the subject as they will be able …

Alternative Futures For The Upper Colorado River Ecosystem: Phase Ii, Temis G. Taylor

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

Wildlife habitat and biodiversity in the Upper Colorado River Ecosystem are threatened by growth of urban areas, subdivision of rural lands, and exploitation of natural resources. The White-Yampa, Colorado Headwaters, and Gunnison River Watersheds within the region were investigated to discover areas supporting high biodiversity that would be possible candidates for conservation efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Using an alternative futures planning process and principles of landscape ecology, development of energy of the resources in the region was found to be the primary driver for land use and impacts to wildlife habitat. Through application of geospatial modeling …

Climate Change And Community Dynamics: A Hierarchical Bayesian Model Of Resource-Driven Changes In A Desert Rodent Community, Glenda M. Yenni

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

Predicting effects of climate change on species persistence often assumes that those species are responding to abiotic effects alone. However, biotic interactions between community members may affect species’ ability to respond to abiotic changes. Latent Gaussian models of resource availability using precipitation and NDVI and accounting for spatial autocorrelation and rodent group-level uncertainty in the process are developed to detect differences in seasons, groups, and the experimental removal of one group. Precipitation and NDVI have overall positive effects on rodent energy use as expected, but meaningful differences were detected. Differences in the importance of seasonality when the dominant group was …

Solving Equations Applet Project, Kimberly Thatcher

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

The purpose of this paper is to summarize a Masters Project for the MMath Degree. The purpose of the project was to create and evaluate an applet that maintains the advantages of the existent manipulatives (Hands-On Equations® and the NLVM applet) while also overcoming the limitations of each. Another product of this project is accompanying lesson plans for teachers.

Mathematical Justification Of Introductory Hypothesis Tests And Development Of Reference Materials, Jennifer L. Loveland

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

This purpose of this project was to create a set of reference material for an introductory level statistics course. The focus was on the Neyman-Pearson approach to hypothesis testing. A brief historical development of the Neyman-Pearson approach is followed by mathematical proofs of each of the hypothesis tests covered in the reference material. The reference material includes the basic hypothesis tests taught in an introductory statistics course, the accompanying distributions, and prerequisite information.

Estimation Of Beta In A Simple Functional Capital Asset Pricing Model For High Frequency Us Stock Data, Yan Zhang

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

This project applies the methods of functional data analysis (FDA) to intra-daily returns of US corporations. It focuses on an extension of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to such returns. The CAPM is essentially a linear regression with the slope coefficient β. Returns of an asset are regressed on index return. We compare the estimates of β obtained for the daily and intra-daily returns. The variability of these estimates is assessed by two bootstrap methods. All computations are performed using statistical software R. Customized functions are developed to process the raw data, estimate the parameters and assess their variability. …

Do Fee-Access Hunting Programs Conserve Wildlife Habitat? A Case Study Of Utah's Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit Program, Adam L. Perschon

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

Landscapes in the American West are undergoing dramatic changes as land-use patterns shift to accommodate the region’s explosive population growth. Trends toward low-density settlement patterns, or exurban development, compound the problem by consuming a disproportionately large amount of land compared to the population they support. The result is the rapid conversion of the West’s most highly productive agricultural and range lands, many of which provide benefits to biodiversity that surpass those found in permanently protected areas. Ruralists, ranchers, and conservationists alike are seeking ways to protect these ecologically important private lands from future development. One method purported to mitigate rural …

Charm Components Monitoring System (Ccms), Cemal Aktas

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

Integrated systems need to be monitored regularly for operational problems such as network failures, loss of data, bottle necks, and other process failures. One of the best ways to monitor a system is through a graphical visualization of system activities. Humans are good at spotting patterns in graphic visualizations. This report describes a monitoring facility for integrated systems that can present wide range of graphics visualizations. As a proof of concept, it is implemented for the CHARM system, which is a distributed system used by the Utah Department of Health.

Ranking Score Vectors Of Tournaments, Sebrina Ruth Cropper

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

Given , a tournament on vertices, Landau derived a method to determine how close is to being transitive or regular. This comparison is based on the tournament’s hierarchy number, ̅, a value derived from its score vector ̅ ( ). Let be the set of all score vectors of tournaments on vertices with the entries listed in non-decreasing order. A partial order, poset, exists on the set using the following binary relation. Given ̅ ̅ such that ̅ ̅, let ̅ ̅ if Σ Σ for and Σ Σ . Let this poset be represented as ( ) ( ) …