Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Magic Squares Of Squares Of Order 4 Over Certain Finite Fields, Drew O’Neill

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

A magic square of order n over a commutative ring R is an n x n matrix such that all the rows, columns, and the two diagonals add up to a fixed sum, which is called the magic sum. If all of the numbers in a magic square are perfect squares in R, it is called a magic square of squares. The rings under consideration in this thesis are either Z or Zp where p is a prime. In this thesis I present methods of constructing magic squares of squares of order 4 from selected ones of order 3. A …

Directed Search For Continuous Gravitational Waves From The Galactic Center, J. Aasi, J. Abadie, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. Abbott, M. R. Abernathy, T. Accadia, Marc Favata, Shaon Ghosh, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present the results of a directed search for continuous gravitational waves from unknown, isolated neutron stars in the Galactic center region, performed on two years of data from LIGO's fifth science run from two LIGO detectors. The search uses a semicoherent approach, analyzing coherently 630 segments, each spanning 11.5 hours, and then incoherently combining the results of the single segments. It covers gravitational wave frequencies in a range from 78 to 496 Hz and a frequency-dependent range of first-order spindown values down to -7.86×10-8 Hz/s at the highest frequency. No gravitational waves were detected. The 90% confidence upper limits …

The Transient Gravitational-Wave Sky, Nils Andersson, John Baker, Krzystof Belczynski, Sebastiano Bernuzzi, Emanuele Berti, Laura Cadonati, Pablo Cerdá-Durán, James Clark, Marc Favata, Lee Samuel Finn

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Interferometric detectors will very soon give us an unprecedented view of the gravitational-wave sky, and in particular of the explosive and transient Universe. Now is the time to challenge our theoretical understanding of short-duration gravitational-wave signatures from cataclysmic events, their connection to more traditional electromagnetic and particle astrophysics, and the data analysis techniques that will make the observations a reality. This paper summarizes the state of the art, future science opportunities, and current challenges in understanding gravitational-wave transients.

Parameter Estimation For Compact Binary Coalescence Signals With The First Generation Gravitational-Wave Detector Network, J. Aasi, J. Abadie, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, M. Abernathy, T. Accadia, Marc Favata, Shaon Ghosh, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Compact binary systems with neutron stars or black holes are one of the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Gravitational radiation encodes rich information about source physics; thus parameter estimation and model selection are crucial analysis steps for any detection candidate events. Detailed models of the anticipated waveforms enable inference on several parameters, such as component masses, spins, sky location and distance, that are essential for new astrophysical studies of these sources. However, accurate measurements of these parameters and discrimination of models describing the underlying physics are complicated by artifacts in the data, uncertainties in the waveform models and …

Predicting Unobserved Exposures From Seasonal Epidemic Data, Eric Forgoston, Ira B. Schwartz

Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We consider a stochastic Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) epidemiological model with a contact rate that fluctuates seasonally. Through the use of a nonlinear, stochastic projection, we are able to analytically determine the lower dimensional manifold on which the deterministic and stochastic dynamics correctly interact. Our method produces a low dimensional stochastic model that captures the same timing of disease outbreak and the same amplitude and phase of recurrent behavior seen in the high dimensional model. Given seasonal epidemic data consisting of the number of infectious individuals, our method enables a data-based model prediction of the number of unobserved exposed individuals over very …

Enhanced Sensitivity Of The Ligo Gravitational Wave Detector By Using Squeezed States Of Light, J. Aasi, J. Abadie, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, M. R. Abernathy, C. Adams, Marc Favata, Shaon Ghosh, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of Earth-based gravitational wave observatories1-4 is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry. Photon shot noise, due to the quantum nature of light, imposes a fundamental limit on the attometre-level sensitivity of the kilometre-scale Michelson interferometers deployed for this task. Here, we inject squeezed states to improve the performance of one of the detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) beyond the quantum noise limit, most notably in the frequency region down to 150 Hz, critically important for several astrophysical …

Updated Pressure And Temperature Determinations For The Metapelites Of The Western Hudson Highlands, Ny, Eric W. Sonnenwald

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Pelitic sedimentary material was deposited along the eastern margin of North America in the Mesoproterozoic (~1300-1200 Ma) in an active continental arc basin setting and was subsequently metamorphosed during the Ottawan Orogeny (~1080-1030 Ma) as a part of a closing ocean basin between two continents (Volkert and Drake, 1999). The resulting metapelitic gneisses now exposed in the western Hudson Highlands in Harriman State Park, New York were analyzed to determine the sedimentary protolith and the peak metamorphic pressure-temperature (P-T) conditions during the Ottawan Orogeny that affected this region during the final assembly of Rodinia. The protolith, a clay-bearing arkosic sandstone, …

Spectroscopic Investigation Of The Interaction Of Fadh In Dna Photolyase With Uv-Damaged Dna, Kyle Luke Williams

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Skin cancer is the most prevalent malignancy found in humans, with the diagnosis rate continuing to steadily increase. The primary cause of this disease is overexposure to harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight, which can induce damage to the nitrogenous bases in DNA via dimerization. The most prevalent UV-induced photoproducts in DNA are cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers (CPDs), most commonly between adjacent thymidines.

Organisms have implemented methods by which to repair these CPDs, the primary of which are nucleotide excision repair (NER) and photoreactivation by photolyases. Photolyases are blue-light activated flavoproteins that are more efficient at recognizing and repairing CPDs than …

Modeling Amyloid-Ss Self-Assembly : Stability Of On-Pathway Aggregate Formation, Andrew Kevin Mauro

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Protein misfolding and concomitant aggregation towards amyloid formation is the underlying biochemical commonality among a wide range of human pathologies. Amyloid formation involves the conversion of proteins from their native monomeric states (intrinsically disordered or globular) to well-organized, fibrillar aggregates in a nucleation-dependent manner. Understanding the mechanism of aggregation is important not only to gain better insight into amyloid pathology but also to simulate and predict molecular pathways. One of the main impediments in doing so is the highly stochastic nature of interactions that complicates the development of meaningful insights. In this study, we have utilized a well-characterized intermediate along …

Teaching Social Justice Mathematics In A Privileged Setting, Rick Mcnamee

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This practitioner action research using qualitative techniques of gathering data looks at the experiences of students in a mostly white, upper-middle class suburb who enrolled in a class that integrated mathematics with social justice issues. The researcher designed the curriculum and co-taught the one semester course. The data were collected from pre-interviews, beginning and end of class questionnaires, quick writes, field notes, and end of class focus group interviews with all the students. The author chose a practitioner action research design because he wanted to be an integral part of the study. The cyclical nature of action research allowed him …

Number Theory Applications In Cryptography, Francesca Pizzigoni

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis provides a unique cryptosystem comprised of different number theory applications. We first consider the well-known Knapsack Problem and the resulting Knapsack Cryptosystem. It is known that when the Knapsack Problem involves a superincreasing sequence, the solution is easy to find. Two cryptosystems are designed and displayed in this thesis that allow two parties often called Alice and Bob use a common superincreasing sequence in the encryption and decryption process. They use this sequence and a variation of the Knapsack Cryptosystem to send and receive binary messages. The first cryptosystem assumes that Alice and Bob agree on a shared …

Climate Evolution Of The Antarctic Peninsula Over The Last 1,000 Years : An Environmental Magnetism Analysis Of Two High Resolution Sediment Cores, Brendan Reilly

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Two marine sediment cores from very different depositional environments, off the coast of western and northeastern Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula (AP), record high resolution climatic records of the last 1,000 years. This study finds evidence in the sedimentary magnetic signature for a regional shift from warmer to colder climatic conditions around 1100-1400 AD. The first core, from middle Barilari Bay, western AP, displays a shift from seasonally open marine conditions to sub/proximal ice shelf ca. 1100 AD, with evidence for multiple grounding line advances in the magnetic mineral distributions during the first half of the last millennium. Prior to the …

Investigating Planetary Magnetic Fields : 1. Paleosecular Variation And Relative Paleointensity Curves From Maxwell Bay, Antarctica 2. Rock Magnetic And Remanence Properties Of Natural And Synthetic Martian Basalts, Deepa Shah

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis study investigates two individual projects to determine the paleomagnetic records from sediment core NBP0502-1B from Maxwell Bay Antarctica and SNC Martian meteorite Yamato-908459. Core NBP0502-1B from Maxwell Bay, South Shetland Islands, recovered a 108 m sedimentary record dating between 14.1-14.8 ka. The core has a silty-clay lithology and a calcite based radiocarbon chronology, making this an ideal site to reconstruct an independently dated record of paleosecular variation (PSV) and relative paleointensity (RPI). The interval 0-72 mbsf displays a normal sedimentary fabric, with K_mjn inclination values nearly vertical and K_int and K_max distributed within the bedding …

Collocation Error Correction In Web Queries And Text Documents, Alan T. Varghese

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Collocations are words in English that occur together frequently. Non-native speakers of English tend to confuse certain terms with other similar terms. This causes one of the terms to be substituted with a term that is not commonly used with the other term. “Powerful tea” is an example of such an odd collocation. In this scenario the more commonly used term is “strong tea”.

This paper proposes an approach called CollOrder to detect such odd collocations in written English. CollOrder also provides suggestions to correct the odd collocate. These suggestions are filtered and ranked as top-k suggestions.

We make use …

Variations Of The Combinatorial Game Tron, Miriam Parnes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The combinatorial game Tron is a two player game played on a graph, in which players move to adjacent vertices, but cannot move to any vertex which is currently occupied or which has been occupied by either player earlier in the course of the game. It was introduced by Hans Bodlaender, inspired by the Disney movie of the same name. Bodlaender and, later, Tillmann Miltzow considered the complexity of the question of whether a player has a winning strategy in the game. Miltzow also considered an extremal question regarding the ratio of the vertices taken by the second player over …

Proper Connection Of Bipartite Circulant Graphs, Melissa Marie Fuentes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The study of proper edge-colorings of graphs has been a popular topic in graph theory since the work of Vizing. While the proper edge-colorings of entire graphs was the topic of interest when the subject began decades ago, more recent works have focused on the study of properly colored subgraphs, as opposed to proper colorings of graphs as a whole. The types of properly colored subgraphs that we will be most concerned with are paths. The topic of finding certain types of properly colored paths within larger edge-colored graphs, though seemingly specific in nature, has been a topic of much …

Fe(Vi) As A New Chemical Agent For Treatment Of Landfill Leachate, Christopher Gravesen

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

More than 50% municipal solid waste (MSW) is being disposed of within landfills in the United States. Despite many benefits, landfills inevitably produce highly contaminated wastewater - landfill leachate. Landfill leachate represents one of the most challengeable wastewaters in the world. Refractory organic matters and ammonia nitrogen are two major persistent traditional contaminants in landfill leachate. The contaminants ought to be properly removed prior to discharge into natural water resources.

Ferrate (FeO₄^2-) is a potential water treatment chemical agent in which iron is in its + 6 oxidation state. In engineering practice, Fe(VI) can concurrently function as …

A Historical, Empirical Analysis Of The Relationship Between Urbanization And Stream Baseflow In The Eastern United States, Jared Michael Lopes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The population density of the United States has more than tripled over the last century causing increased urbanization and greater anthropogenic influences in previously rural watersheds. Urbanization leads to increased impervious surfaces and the compaction of soils, both of which combine to reduce infiltration rates. Reduced baseflow can directly limit water availability for approximately half the U.S. population that depends on surficial waters for their drinking water. This project empirically investigated the baseflow-urbanization relationship on a geographic and temporal scale that has not been previously investigated. USGS river gage data in 11 eastern U.S. states (NY south of the Adirondacks, …

Einstein@Home All-Sky Search For Periodic Gravitational Waves In Ligo S5 Data, J. Aasi, J. Abadie, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, M. Abernathy, T. Accadia, Marc Favata, Shaon Ghosh, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper presents results of an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range [50,1 190] Hz and with frequency derivative range of ∼[-20,1.1]×10-10 Hz s-1 for the fifth LIGO science run (S5). The search uses a noncoherent Hough-transform method to combine the information from coherent searches on time scales of about one day. Because these searches are very computationally intensive, they have been carried out with the Einstein@Home volunteer distributed computing project. Postprocessing identifies eight candidate signals; deeper follow-up studies rule them out. Hence, since no gravitational wave signals have been found, we report upper limits on …

Orbitally Paced Shifts In The Particle Size Of Antarctic Continental Shelf Sediments In Response To Ice Dynamics During The Miocene Climatic Optimum, Sandra Passchier, Candice J. Falk, Fabio Florindo

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The AND-2A drill hole (ANDRILL [Antarctic Geological Drilling Program] Southern McMurdo Sound Project), ∼10 km from the East Antarctica coastline, records nearly 6 m.y. of sedimentation across the Miocene climatic optimum at a high-latitude site. Sedimentological studies of bedforms and particle size distributions indicate that the paleoenvironment was strongly affected by waves and currents, consistent with deposition in a glacially influenced neritic environment. We document abrupt shifts in mud percent within glacial-interglacial cycles ca. 17.8 Ma and between ca. 16.7 and 15.7 Ma that we attribute to the hydrodynamic effects of wave stirring tied to episodes of ice growth and …

Search For Gravitational Waves From Binary Black Hole Inspiral, Merger, And Ringdown In Ligo-Virgo Data From 2009-2010, J. Aasi, J. Abadie, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, M. Abernathy, T. Accadia, Marc Favata, Shaon Ghosh, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We report a search for gravitational waves from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of binary black holes (BBH) with total mass between 25 and 100 solar masses, in data taken at the LIGO and Virgo observatories between July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010. The maximum sensitive distance of the detectors over this period for a (20,20)M⊙ coalescence was 300 Mpc. No gravitational wave signals were found. We thus report upper limits on the astrophysical coalescence rates of BBH as a function of the component masses for nonspinning components, and also evaluate the dependence of the search sensitivity on component …

A First Search For Coincident Gravitational Waves And High Energy Neutrinos Using Ligo, Virgo And Antares Data From 2007, S. Adrián-Martínez, I. Al Samarai, A. Albert, M. André, M. Anghinol, G. Anton, S. Anvar, Marc Favata, Shaon Ghosh, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present the results of the first search for gravitational wave bursts associated with high energy neutrinos. Together, these messengers could reveal new, hidden sources that are not observed by conventional photon astronomy, particularly at high energy. Our search uses neutrinos detected by the underwater neutrino telescope ANTARES in its 5 line configuration during the period January - September 2007, which coincided with the fifth and first science runs of LIGO and Virgo, respectively. The LIGO-Virgo data were analysed for candidate gravitational-wave signals coincident in time and direction with the neutrino events. No significant coincident events were observed. We place …

Early Eocene To Middle Miocene Cooling And Aridification Of East Antarctica, Sandra Passchier, Steven M. Bohaty, Francisco J. Jiménez‐Espejo, Jörg Pross, Ursu Röhl, Tina Van De Flierdt, Carlota Escutia, Henk Brinkhuis

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

[1] Few high‐latitude terrestrial records document the timing and nature of the Cenozoic “Greenhouse” to “Icehouse” transition. Here we exploit the bulk geochemistry of marine siliciclastic sediments from drill cores on Antarctica's continental margin to extract a unique semiquantitative temperature and precipitation record for Eocene to mid‐Miocene (~54–13 Ma). Alkaline elements are strongly enriched in the detrital mineral fraction in fine‐grained siliciclastic marine sediments and only occur as trace metals in the biogenic fraction. Hence, terrestrial climofunctions similar to the chemical index of alteration (CIA) can be applied to the alkaline major element geochemistry of marine sediments on continental margins …

Oil Pollution In Water Bodies Of Restricted Circulation, Michael A. Kruge

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Coastal lagoons and embayments near urban centers around the world share many common characteristics and problems. Physical impediments to free water circulation (spits, barrier islands, internal islands, tombolos, submerged sills) often lead to water stagnation and, in the presence of excess nutrients, eutrophication. Urban and industrial activities provoke (usually accidental) spills of hazardous materials into these confined water bodies, such as crude petroleum and refined petroleum products, leading to difficulties for resident biota and potential hazards for human health. The sluggish turnover of these water bodies (or low-energy zones within them) may retard the natural attenuation of the spilled contaminants. …

Decision Support In Data Centers For Sustainability, Michael Pawlish, Aparna Varde, Stefan Robila

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this paper, we propose a decision support system (DSS) for the greening of data centers to help the environment, hence promoting sustainability. As society continues the relentless shift towards electronic communications there is a growing demand for greater storage and processing on data centers. A potential area of improvement is to gain greater server utilization rates since traditionally the phenomenon of 'server sprawl' occurs where more servers are added to the data center without seeking greater utilization rates on existing servers first. This implies maintaining more servers than actually needed that translates to greater carbon dioxide emissions causing potential …

Citizens’ Perspectives Of Access To The Decision Making Process And Community Improvement As Determinants Of Brownfields Redevelopment Success, Shevon Jean Letang

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Brownfields redevelopment is acclaimed as a successful program that has revitalized struggling urban communities and returned unproductive, underutilized, and abandoned industrial and commercial properties to municipalities’ tax rolls. Despite a major brownfields' redevelopment goal being to improve the communities and their citizens' quality of life, to date, the program has not been evaluated from the mainstreams' perspective as to its impact on their neighborhoods and their quality of life. A survey of 129 citizens from urban, suburban and exsuburban municipalities in Passaic County New Jersey sought to evaluate the social outcomes of three redeveloped projects from the affected mainstreams' perspective. …

Corporate Social Responsibility And The Gold Mining Industry : The Ghana Experience, Aimann Sadik

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In 2012, the price of gold is sky rocketing due to strong demand and tight supply. Investors have revived their interest in gold investments at the expense of financial assets such as bonds and equities because of the current financial market turbulence. In addition, the trend in price has been fuelled by the strategic reserve holdings decisions by the central banks of advanced western economies to halt the sale of their gold reserves while that of emerging markets are acquiring gold holdings to protect their wealth during a period of global financial crisis. The supply of gold has not responded …

Energy-Aware Scheduling For Acyclic Synchronous Data Flows On Multiprocessors, Dawei Li, Jie Wu

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Synchronous Data Flow (SDF) is a useful computational model in image processing, computer vision, and DSP. Previously, throughput and buffer requirement analyses have been studied for SDFs. In this paper, we address energy-aware scheduling for acyclic SDFs on multiprocessors. The multiprocessor considered here has the capability of Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), which allows processors to operate at different power/energy levels to reduce the energy consumption. An acyclic SDF graph can first be transformed to an equivalent homogeneous SDF graph and then to a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) for one iteration of it. We propose pipeline scheduling to address …

Decoration Of Graphene With Metal Nanoparticles And Its Application For Bioanalysis, Keun Soo Kwon

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Graphene is a two-dimensional monolayer of tightly packed sp² hybridized Carbon atoms. Formed from graphite, the theoretical surface area of the monolayer is about 2630 m²/g, and the initial formation of graphene oxide from graphite oxide introduces a variety o f functional groups, such as -COOH, -C=0, and -OH, on its surface. The high surface area and the rich presence of functional groups, along with the potential formation o f sp² bonding networks within graphene oxide, all serve as critical factors allowing for additional chemical modifications. There are extensive research attempts being performed to explore and …