Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Modeling Seed Dispersal And Population Migration Given A Distribution Of Seed Handling Times And Variable Dispersal Motility: Case Study For Pinyon And Juniper In Utah, Ram C. Neupane

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The spread of fruiting tree species is strongly determined by the behavior and range of fruit-eating animals, particularly birds. Birds either consume and digest seeds or carry and cache them at some distance from the source tree. These carried and settled seeds provide some form of distribution which generates tree spread to the new location. Firstly, we modal seed dispersal by birds and introduce it in a dispersal model to estimate seed distribution. Using this distribution, we create a population model to estimate the speed at which juniper and pinyon forest boundaries move.

Secondly, we introduce a fact that bird …

Spatial Epidemiology Of Birth Defects In The United States And The State Of Utah Using Geographic Information Systems And Spatial Statistics, Samson Y. Gebreab

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Oral clefts are the most common form of birth defects in the United States (US) and the State of Utah has among the highest prevalence of oral clefts in the nation. The overall objective of this dissertation was to examine the spatial distribution of oral clefts and their linkage with a broad range of demographic, behavioral, social, economic, and environmental risk factors through the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial statistics. Using innovative linked micromaps plots, we investigated the geographic patterns of oral clefts occurrence from 1998 to 2002 and their relationships with maternal smoking rates and proportion …

Assessment Of Utah Bankruptcies By Census Tracts: A Spatial Statistical Approach, Kenneth Pena

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

There are two questions raised when looking at the spatial pattern of the rate of bankruptcies in Utah: (i) are there similarities between the bankruptcy data in adjacent census tracts and (ii) can local cluster and outliers be identified within the data? Specifically, are there similar rates of bankruptcies in bordering census tracts and are there any localized areas of interest where we find extremely high or extremely low rates of bankruptcies? This study uses spatial statistics to perform tests for spatial autocorrelation to address these two questions. It also looks at commonalities in the clusters and differences in the …

Comparison Of Transition Matrices Between Metropolitan And Non-Metropolitan Areas In The State Of Utah Using Juvenile Court Data, Sung-Ik Song

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this paper is to use Markov Chains for the study of youths referred to the juvenile court in the metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas of the state of Utah.

Two computer programs were written for creating case histories for each person referred to the court and for testing for the significance of the difference among several transition matrices.

Another computer program, which was written by Soo Hong Uh, was used for analyzing realizations of a Markov chains up to the 4th order; a third computer program, originally written by David White, was used for interpreting Markov chains.

The …