Digital Commons Network^™

Guide To Ph093 Viola Mary Hadlock Anderson Photograph Collection, Abbie Weiser

Finding Aids

The Viola Mary Hadlock Anderson photograph collection, PH093, dates from the 1940s. The collection consists of nine photographs of the campus of the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy (now UTEP).

The Intersection Of Food Deserts And Food Assistance Deserts In El Paso County, Texas, Jacob Joseph Aun

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although access to both supermarkets and food assistance sites are important for addressing food insecurity, previous studies have not examined how food deserts and food assistance deserts spatially coincide or analyzed their characteristics separately. This thesis sought to address this gap by identifying the locations and socio-demographic characteristics of neighborhoods classified on the basis of multiple food access categories in El Paso County, Texas: food deserts, food assistance deserts, and areas where both food deserts and food assistance deserts overlap. The goal was to determine if racial/ethnic minorities and other socially disadvantaged individuals are more likely to reside in neighborhoods …

Need For Shift-Invariant Fractional Differentiation Explains The Appearance Of Complex Numbers In Physics, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Complex numbers are ubiquitous in physics, they lead to a natural description of different physical processes and to efficient algorithms for solving the corresponding problems. But why this seemingly counterintuitive mathematical construction is so natural here? In this paper, we provide a possible explanation of this phenomenon: namely, we show that complex numbers appear if take into account that some physical system are described by derivatives of fractional order and that a physically meaningful analysis of such derivatives naturally leads to complex numbers.

Why Physical Processes Are Smooth Or Almost Smooth: A Possible Physical Explanation Based On Intuitive Ideas Behind Energy Conservation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While there are some non-smooth (and even discontinuous) processes in nature, most processes are smooth or almost smooth. This smoothness help estimate physical quantities, but a natural question is: why are physical processes smooth or almost smooth? Are there any fundamental reasons for this ubiquitous smoothness? In this paper, we provide a possible physical explanation for emirical smoothness: namely, we show that smoothness naturally follows from intuitive ideas behind energy conservation.

Building Postsecondary Pathways For Latinx Students In Computing: Lessons From Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Anne-Marie Núñez, David S. Knight, Sanga Kim

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the use of technology in education and the workforce, a shortage of computer scientists continues, and computing remains one of the least diverse STEM disciplines. Efforts to diversify the computing industry often focus on the most selective postsecondary institutions, which are predominantly White. We highlight the role of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) in gradating large numbers of STEM graduates of color, particularly Latinx students. HSIs are uniquely positioned to leverage asset-based approaches that value students’ cultural background. We describe the practices educators use in the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, a network of 40 HSIs …

So How Were The Tents Of Israel Placed? A Bible-Inspired Geometric Problem, Julio Urenda, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In one of the Biblical stories, prophet Balaam blesses the tents of Israel for being good. But what can be so good about the tents? A traditional Rabbinical interpretation is that the placement of the tents provided full privacy: from each entrance, one could not see what is happening at any other entrance. This motivates a natural geometric question: how exactly were these tents placed? In this paper, we provide an answer to this question.

Just-In-Time Teaching Adds Motivation But Is Less Efficient, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva, Christian Servin

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For each major, in addition to directly major-related topics, students also need to learn auxiliary topics –- e.g., math topics –- which are needed to understand more direct major-related ones. To learn these auxiliary topics, students are required to take some prerequisite math class. The problem is that when the students take these classes, they do not fully understand how these classes are related to their major. As a result, they often lack motivations, do not study well, and this hinders their performance in the follow-up major-related classes. One way to enhance the students' motivation is to use just-in-time teaching, …

The Hertzog Collection, Claudia A. Rivers

Presentations & Slide Shows

No abstract provided.

2021 Calendar: Art In The Archives, Special Collections Staff

Annual Calendars

This calendar features art and artists from the C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department's archival holdings. In addition to managing the UTEP Library's art collection, Special Collections contains papers from local artists and collections relating to El Paso art.

Crucial Silence, Amy Howard

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

James Baldwin tells the story of being arrested in Paris for allegedly stealing a single hotel bedsheet. After spending several weeks and Christmas Day in a cold prison cell, Baldwin was brought to trial. As he was acquitted for the petty crime which he did not commit, he heard “great merriment in the courtroom.” Baldwin said, “I was chilled by their merriment even thought it was meant to warm me. It could only remind me of the laughter I had often heard at home, laughter which I had sometimes deliberately elicited. This laughter is the laughter of those who consider …

Real-Time Intelligent And Multi-Spectral Inspection Of Structural Components, Mst Mousumi Rizia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Conventional, manual inspection methods are the most commonly used inspection approaches to this day; that cause downtime and can be erroneous due to their repetitive nature, heavy workload, and human error. The overarching goal of this work is to advance structural inspection with intelligent and autonomous techniques across infrastructures. In particular, this project will develop path-planning schemes for close navigation around the structures and intelligent algorithms for crack and corrosion detection.

The introduced novel navigation method uses advanced manufacturing techniques to generate aerial inspection trajectories in GPS-denied areas. The proposed method is validated using the `Gazebo' robotics simulator; the results …

Fundamental Studies Of Nanomaterial-Mediated Photothermal Effects And Novel Applications In Visual Quantitative Disease Diagnoses, Wan Zhou

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Infectious diseases and cancers frequently cause public health concerns and high burdens on health care globally. Early diagnosis of these diseases can provide an important guide on prevention, treatment, and prognosis in clinical practice. However, current laboratory diagnostic methods, such as nucleic acid- and protein-based detection methods, require sophisticated infrastructure, expensive and bulky instrumentation, well-trained personnel, and time-consuming processes, which significantly leads to high cost of detection assays and limit their wide accessibility, especially in low-resource settings. To address these issues, we have developed multiple simple, low-cost, and visual quantitative diagnostic methods based on nanomaterial-mediated photothermal effects for the detection …

The Effects Of Eating A High Fat Diet On Sensitivity Of Rats To Methamphetamine-Induced Conditioned Place Preference, Kayla Galindo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Eating a high fat diet causes several negative health consequences, including dysfunction to dopamine systems. For example, eating a high fat diet enhances sensitivity of rats to methamphetamine-induced locomotor sensitization. However, it is not known if sensitivity to other (i.e., the rewarding) effects of methamphetamine are similarly enhanced in rats eating a high fat diet. Females are more sensitive than males to the behavioral effects of stimulants in general, and therefore might also be particularly vulnerable to the effects of diet on the rewarding effects of stimulant drugs. To test the hypoThesis that eating high fat chow enhances sensitivity of …

Emocolor : Fine-Grained Emotion Recognition From Skin Color Information, Maria Guadalupe Jimenez Velasco

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In everyday human-to-human communication, emotions play a fundamental role. Emotions represent the affective behavior of humans that is multi-modal, subtle, and complex. Previous approaches based on conventional computer vision explicitly used shape information. Modern approaches based on deep learning implicitly exploit all information available in the image, but by their nature make it difficult to assess the contributions of each source of information. In addition, skin color as a unimodal technique to recognize emotions has been explored to recognize only three coarse-grained emotions in valence space.To the best of our knowledge, this work presents the first approach to fine-grained emotion …

Application Of Compressive Sensing To Microwave Tomography, Rafael Gerardo Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Microwave tomography(MT) allows the safe, non-intrusive examination of the internal structureof an object by irradiating it with microwave signals and measuring how they get attenuated and diffracted as they propagate through the object. Measurement of these signals is difficult and slow, it depends on the objectâ??s physical properties and the test setup used for this. MT is based on a scanning process that yields measurement data with unique characteristics that make it difficult to process using standard computational methods. As the number of measurements needed for an image with acceptable resolution increases, the complexity of processing all the data becomes …

Paso Del Norte Economic Indicator Review, December, Hunt Institute For Global Competitiveness

Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Highlights From The Borderplex Economic Outlook To 2022, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Students Who Took The Class Help Studenrs Who Are Taking It: What Is The Best Arrangement?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The more help students get, the better. It is therefore reasonable to ask students who took the class to help students who are currently taking this class. This arrangement also help the helpers: it is known that the best way to learn the material is to teach it. An important question is: how to pair the students to get the maximal effect? In this paper, we show that, under reasonable conditions, the best effect is when we match the best performing "older" student with the worst performing "younger" one, the second best with the second worst, etc.

Structural Characterization Of Two Large Icosahedral Dna Viruses And Their Capsid Assembly Mechanisms, Yuejiao Xian

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the last three decades, many large DNA viruses were discovered and grouped into a loosely defined clade of Nucleocytoplasmic Large DNA Viruses (NCLDVs). NCLDVs infect a wide range of hosts from single cellular protists to large animals. Recently, these viruses were classified as a new phylum of Nucleocytoviricota under the kingdom of Bamfordvirae. The genomes of these Nucleocytoviricota viruses (NCVs) are remarkedly large and complicated, containing many cellular genes from all three domains of life, which raised intensive debates on their evolutionary origins. Despite being classified in the same phylum, their physical structures vary and can be roughly classified …

Why Was Nicholson's Theory So Successful: An Explanation Of A Mysterious Episode In 20 Century Atomic Physics, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the early 1910s, John Nicholson suggested that all atoms are formed by four basic elementary particles. This theory had a spectacular match with observations: it explained, with an unbelievable accuracy of 0.1, the atomic weights of all 92 elements known at that time. Specifically, it was shown that every atomic weight can be represented, with this accuracy, as an integer combination of four basic atomic weights. However, in a few years, this theory turned out to be completely wrong: atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons, not of Nicholson's particles. This mysterious episode seems to contradict the usual development …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 4, Number 12, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate, Ignacio Santana

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Guide To Ms132 El Paso County Records Wills, Special Collections Staff

Finding Aids

The wills in the El Paso County records are local governmental records housed in Special Collections as part of the Texas Regional Historical Resources Depository program. These handwritten and typed wills date circa 1886 – 1930 and were indexed as part of the probate records.

Guide To Ms132 El Paso County Records - Old Civil Cases, Abbie Weiser

Finding Aids

The “Old Civil Cases” are local governmental records housed in Special Collections as part of the Texas Regional Historical Resources Depository program. These files, part of the El Paso County records, date 1866 – 1918.

The Prospector, November 3, 2020, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Public Health Crisis Trickles to UTEP

How To Find The Dependence Based On Measurements With Unknown Accuracy: Towards A Theoretical Justification For Midpoint And Convex-Combination Interval Techniques And Their Generalizations, Somsak Chanaim, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In practice, we often need to find regression parameters in situations when for some of the values, we have several results of measuring this same value. If we know the accuracy of each of these measurements, then we can use the usual statistical techniques to combine the measurement results into a single estimate for the corresponding value. In some cases, however, we do not know these accuracies, so what can we do? In this paper, we describe two natural approaches to solving this problem. In addition to describing general techniques, our results also provide a theoretical explanation for several semi-heuristic …

Why Ancient Egyptians Preferred Some Sum-Of-Inverses Representations Of Fractions?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Ancient Egyptians represented a fraction as a sum of inverses of natural numbers, with the smallest possible number of terms. In our previous paper, we explained that this representation makes sense since it leads to the optimal way of solving a problem frequently mentioned in the Egyptian papyri: dividing bread between workers. However, this does not explain why ancient Egyptians preferred some representations with the same number of terms but not others. For example, to represent 2/3, they used the sum 1/2 + 1/6 but not the sum 1/3 + 1/3 with the same number of terms. In this paper, …

What If You Are Late On Several (Relatively Small) Tasks?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In practice, we sometimes end up in a situation when we are late on several relatively small tasks. We cannot finish them all, so which ones should we do first? We show that in general, this is an NP-complete problem. In the typical situation when all the tasks are of approximately the same importance and requires approximately the same time to finish, we can have an explicit solution to this problem. In a nutshell, the resulting (somewhat counterintuitive) recommendation is to start with things which are not yet late or only a few days late. Actually, this recommendation makes sense: …

A Possible (Qualitative) Explanation Of The Hierarchy Problem In Theoretical Physics, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the important open problem in theoretical physics is the hierarchy problem: how to explain that some physical constant are many orders of magnitude larger than others. In this paper, we provide a possible qualitative explanation for this phenomenon.

Possibility To Algorithmically Check: Yet Another Reason Why Current Definitions Have Been Selected In Elementary Mathematics, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

At first glance, many definitions in mathematics -- especially in elementary mathematics -- seem arbitrary. Why is 1 not considered a prime number? Why is a square considered to be a particular case of a parallelogram -- in some old textbooks, a parallelogram was defined in such a way as to exclude the square. In his 2018 article, Art Duval explained many such definitions by a natural requirement to make the corresponding results (theorems) as simple as possible. However, elementary mathematics is not just about theorems and proofs, it is also about computations. In this paper, we show that from …

Why Strings, Why Quark Confinement: A Simple Qualitative Explanation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this pedagogical article, we recall the infinities problem of modern physics, and we show that the natural way to overcome this problem naturally leads to strings and to quark confinement.