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The University of Maine

Honors College

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Kinematic Vorticity And Porphyroclast Rotation In Mylonites Of The Norumbega Fault System: Implications For Paleoviscometry, Hendrik Lenferink Dec 2023

Kinematic Vorticity And Porphyroclast Rotation In Mylonites Of The Norumbega Fault System: Implications For Paleoviscometry, Hendrik Lenferink

Honors College

Crystallographic and shape preferred orientation (SPO) fabrics that develop in mylonitic shear zones can preserve the mean kinematic vorticity number (Wm) of bulk flow. Microstructural methods exploiting dynamically recrystallized quartz and porphyroclast SPO fabrics typically yield conflicting values of Wm. The Sandhill Corner Mylonite Zone of the Norumbega Fault System, Maine, USA, serves as a case study for investigating this discrepancy; Wm estimates range from 0.90 to 1.00 employing the former method (Method 1) and from 0.3 to 0.6 employing the latter method (Method 2). Using a numerical model, I show how a low-viscosity layer (LVL) surrounding clasts affects their …

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Coral Restoration: Comparisons In Space, Time, Impacts, And Costs, Allison Fargo Dec 2023

Coral Restoration: Comparisons In Space, Time, Impacts, And Costs, Allison Fargo

Honors College

Seventy-five percent of coral reefs globally face crisis due to anthropogenic disturbances, prompting heightened global coral restoration initiatives to preserve these vital ecosystems. Various regions employ diverse active coral restoration methodologies, including coral gardening, transplantation, micro-fragmentation, artificial reefs, and sexual propagation. Of these methods, coral gardening stands out as one of the most common and highly successful methods, alongside widespread transplantation practices. Restoration efforts predominantly focus on acroporids due to their relatively rapid growth and asexual fragmentation; however, a diverse range of coral species, including large, slow-growing varieties, is also employed in these endeavors. Costs vary significantly, ranging from $10,000 …

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One Theme, Infinite Interpretations. Exploring Perspective Through Photo Sharing., Avery Gosselin Apr 2023

One Theme, Infinite Interpretations. Exploring Perspective Through Photo Sharing., Avery Gosselin

Honors College

In this creative Honors Thesis project, I have developed an initial, beta version, of an application that celebrates diverse perspectives through photo sharing within an interactive mobile interface. This application, titled NüLens and developed using the React Native framework, takes the form of a participatory digital art project, where members of the public have captured and submitted photos that (in their eyes) represent a predefined theme (in this initial release, the theme of nature). These photos were then aggregated into a mosaic of all other user-submitted photos relating to that theme, along with options to filter and sort the images …

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Stratigraphic Architecture Of Pozuelo Mounds As Revealed By Earth Resistivity Tomography, Caeli Connolly Apr 2023

Stratigraphic Architecture Of Pozuelo Mounds As Revealed By Earth Resistivity Tomography, Caeli Connolly

Honors College

This study is a geoarchaeological analysis using earth resistance tomography (ERT) surveys of two of four mounds at Pozuelo (Formative Period, cal yr 3000 BP) in the Chincha Valley of coastal, southern Peru. Layers identified in the subsurface were to determine the presence or absence of regional continuity between the mounds. This effort is part of a larger investigation examining the paleoenvironmental setting of the site, and its influence on site location and use. Ten earth resistance tomography profiles were collected using an ABEM Terrameter LS2 and 81 pin array. These profiles were then topographically corrected using topographic survey data …

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Everyone's A Waiter: A Data-Driven Queuing Simulation Model Of Mike's Clam Shack, Natalie Robinson Apr 2023

Everyone's A Waiter: A Data-Driven Queuing Simulation Model Of Mike's Clam Shack, Natalie Robinson

Honors College

This thesis seeks to understand the mathematical foundation of several prominent concepts in queuing theory and apply them to gain a better understanding of nightly business levels and dining room queue behavior during the summer tourist season at Mike’s Clam Shack, which is a restaurant located in Wells, Maine. To do so, a variety of queue and server section data has been collected from Mike’s and analyzed to determine probability distributions for interarrival and service times. In addition, a queuing simulation model has been constructed in the R Programming Language, which uses this data to generate dining room and queue …

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Incel Bonding: Masculinity And Storytelling In Online Misogynist Spaces, Gunnar Eastman Apr 2023

Incel Bonding: Masculinity And Storytelling In Online Misogynist Spaces, Gunnar Eastman

Honors College

The incel subculture, short for “involuntary celibate,” is one that exists mostly online, but boasts a relatively large number of dedicated members. The goal of this research is to determine how the incel subculture shares their ideology and develops a sense of group identity. The study reviewed 76 threads of posts across two incel forum websites, and was able to conduct three interviews of members from one of those sites. That content was analyzed iteratively for cohesive themes. Several themes emerged, chief among them was the activity of storytelling, which appeared to be done in three different major ways, with …

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Understanding Community Abundance And Anthropogenic Impact On Acadia National Park's Rocky Intertidal Ecosystem Through Photoplot Analysis, Kayla Mclagan Apr 2023

Understanding Community Abundance And Anthropogenic Impact On Acadia National Park's Rocky Intertidal Ecosystem Through Photoplot Analysis, Kayla Mclagan

Honors College

Acadia National Park’s rocky intertidal ecosystem is one that supports a variety of different species and is highly susceptible to changes from human activity. This study aims to assess the pros and cons of using photo plots and community abundance analysis, compared to point-intersect transects, in rapid assessment protocols monitoring Acadia’s rocky intertidal ecosystem. I piloted the photoplot method, a photograph taken of the area contained within a foot-byfoot quadrat, to assess community abundance of the rocky intertidal ecosystem. Histograms and a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination were used to analyze the community structure of various testing sites. This method of …

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Lethal And Sublethal Effects Of Beauveria Bassiana On Maine Ticks Across Soil Ph, Alexander Mahar Apr 2023

Lethal And Sublethal Effects Of Beauveria Bassiana On Maine Ticks Across Soil Ph, Alexander Mahar

Honors College

Ticks are obligate parasite arthropods that are becoming increasingly common in northern regions of the United States. Ticks such as the black-legged tick (Ixodes scapularis) and the American dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis) are vectors for pathogens that cause a wide range of diseases, and as these ticks increase their exposure to humans, the diseases they transmit become more prevalent. This upward trend in cases of tick-borne illnesses has necessitated the pursuit of tick control methods that can be used across the diverse environments that are present in tick habitat ranges. One such control method is the fungal biological control, Beauveria …

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Assessing College Students' Understanding Of Geologic Timescales, Ethan Couture Apr 2023

Assessing College Students' Understanding Of Geologic Timescales, Ethan Couture

Honors College

Geologic timescales are central to many concepts in the natural sciences, including evolution, climate change and plate tectonics. However, geologic time scales can be challenging to appreciate, especially for those who have not had exposure to such topics previously. During primary and secondary education (K-12) students are provided with foundational information about geology that is then further developed in specialized classes in college. Yet most students are not getting this foundation, which could arguably lead to deficits in their post-secondary education. Despite the importance of these concepts, especially for those interested in careers associated with geologic timescales, there have been …

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Modeling Franconia Ridge, New Hampshire Using Structure From Motion And Developing New Techniques For Fracture Detection, Dane Johnson Apr 2023

Modeling Franconia Ridge, New Hampshire Using Structure From Motion And Developing New Techniques For Fracture Detection, Dane Johnson

Honors College

Bedrock fracture density is an important characteristic of bedrock that determines its structural formation, the potential for groundwater or fluid flow, and the capacity of erosion for exposed features. In the case of the Franconia Range, there are two primary bedrock lithologies that we wish to analyze. In this research, we conduct the first structural analysis and quantification of the bedrock fracture density of this region using Structure from Motion modeling and machine learning algorithms. Additionally, the algorithms were supplemented to be useful in determining fracture density in the subsurface geology of Ground-Penetrating-Radar (GPR) radargrams. The products of this work …

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Directional Tensile Strength Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polylactic Acid In Extrusion Based Additive Manufacturing For Custom Failure Parts, Lucinda Slattery Apr 2023

Directional Tensile Strength Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polylactic Acid In Extrusion Based Additive Manufacturing For Custom Failure Parts, Lucinda Slattery

Honors College

Inherently, additive manufacturing printed parts have faults between layers perpendicular to the direction of printing, both in the plane parallel to the build plate and in the z direction (out of the build plate). For most parts, these “built-in” faults from the manufacturing process act as limiting conditions for the part's mechanical strength. While perpendicular to printing is typically the weakest due to layer adhesion faults, parallel to printing is typically the strongest due to cohesive material and fiber orientation. Fiber orientation can be measured through various methods, with the two explored being X-Ray Microscopy (XRM) for 3D analysis, and …

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Thermal Stability Of Platinum-Silicon Alloy Films Grown On Langasite Substrates For Use In Microwave Acoustic Sensor Technology, Kell Fremouw Apr 2023

Thermal Stability Of Platinum-Silicon Alloy Films Grown On Langasite Substrates For Use In Microwave Acoustic Sensor Technology, Kell Fremouw

Honors College

Wireless sensors that can operate in temperatures up to 1000°C are widely needed for real time monitoring of large-scale industrial processes. Such sensors will improve efficiency and prevent component failure. Under previous work at UMaine, Surface Acoustic Wave Resonator (SAWR) sensors fabricated on piezoelectric langasite (La3Ga5SiO14) wafers have shown promise for wireless strain measurements at high temperatures. However, there is a major technical challenge in attaching SAWR langasite based sensors to metal parts because the large differences in the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between langasite and metals leads to large thermal stresses and …

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From Points To Potlucks: An Exploration Of Fixed Point Theorems With Applications To Game Theory Models Of Successful Integration Practices, Llewellyn Searing Aug 2022

From Points To Potlucks: An Exploration Of Fixed Point Theorems With Applications To Game Theory Models Of Successful Integration Practices, Llewellyn Searing

Honors College

Potlucks have many names: shared community dinners, faith suppers, “bring-a-dish” dinners, etc. They represent the desire to share food with other people and make new friends, sometimes learning about other cultures in the process. Not only does one have to decide what dish to bring, but one must also decide how large of a dish, if there will be a theme, and what course it will fit. For instance, if everyone brings side dishes, there will not be enough food for everyone, and if someone brings food that most of the group cannot eat, then feelings will be hurt on …

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Utilizing Post-Newtonian Expansion To Determine Parameters Of Compact Binary Black Hole Mergers, Jarrod E. Rudis May 2022

Utilizing Post-Newtonian Expansion To Determine Parameters Of Compact Binary Black Hole Mergers, Jarrod E. Rudis

Honors College

The process of determining parameters of black hole mergers requires complicated formulae like the Einstein Field Equations (EFEs) that can only be solved numerically with the help of supercomputers. This paper sought to explore an alternative method to prediction of parameters through the use of 1st order Post-Newtonian Expansion (PNE), which is a way of approximating solutions to the EFEs. Two binary- black hole mergers, GW170814 and GW170809 were analyzed with the use of 1st order PNE to obtain the chirp mass and radiated energy parameters. These parameters were then compared with the parameters obtained using numerical solutions to the …

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Riders On The Storm: Using Satellite Transmitters To Quantify American Woodcock Movement Behavior Following Extreme Weather Events, Katherine Trebilcock May 2022

Riders On The Storm: Using Satellite Transmitters To Quantify American Woodcock Movement Behavior Following Extreme Weather Events, Katherine Trebilcock

Honors College

The American Woodcock (Scolopax minor) has experienced steady declines in abundance over the past fifty years, which has raised questions as to why (Sauer et al. 1991). Migration for many birds, woodcock included, is energetically intensive, and may be the cause for greater mortality compared to other times of the year (Newton 2007). Despite this, there remains uncertainty in how conditions encountered during migration affect their movements and survival. One obstacle that birds must face is extreme weather, which has been increasing in intensity and occurrence due to climate change. How these events impact a migrating woodcock has been speculated …

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Design, Construction, And Investigation Of A Small Polarimeter, Kelvy Zucca May 2022

Design, Construction, And Investigation Of A Small Polarimeter, Kelvy Zucca

Honors College

This project uses a custom polarimeter to measure the polarization of light we receive from stars. Most bright stars emit unpolarized radiation, so measuring non-zero polarization is significant. Even highly polarized stars only have degrees of polarization around five percent. Polarized light from a star may mean 1) the star is actually a binary system, 2) the star has a significant magnetic field, or 3) the star has some other feature or variability that is atypical of the majority of bright stars. A polarimeter is used to measure polarization. As the Jordan Observatory did not have a polarimeter, the project …

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For The Women Who Wear Pi Day Shirts, Jacqui Weaver May 2022

For The Women Who Wear Pi Day Shirts, Jacqui Weaver

Honors College

This project, entitled To The Women Who Wear Pi Day Shirts, is a poetry manuscript that explores a journey of a women in STEM. While taking college English courses, I read about characters such as the creature in Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, who had intelligence, yet was physically hideous, an outsider from the human population. The creature was an outsider to the normal human, much like how I feel as a woman in STEM, which gave me the idea to write about my own journey. The poetry in this manuscript is a reflection from being in elementary school learning mathematics …

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Solvent Effects In Phenol Hydrogenation On A Supported Ruthenium Catalyst, Daniel Mckeon May 2022

Solvent Effects In Phenol Hydrogenation On A Supported Ruthenium Catalyst, Daniel Mckeon

Honors College

Growing concerns around climate have piqued interest in using biobased alternatives in place of fuels and chemicals traditionally made from petroleum. Lignocellulosic biomass has been noted for its potential as a biobased chemical precursor in the context of a biorefinery. It can be pyrolyzed to yield an oil, but catalytic upgrading is required to lower oxygen content to suitable levels. Ruthenium supported on titania has been identified as a catalyst suitable for hydrodeoxygenation of oxygenated aromatic pyrolysis products in the liquid phase. In liquid phase reactions, intermolecular attractions between the solvent and the reactants can significantly change chemical activities and …

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Enso Cycle Driven Spatio-Temporal Variability Of Temperature, Salinity, And Nitrate In In The California Current, Nathan Shunk May 2021

Enso Cycle Driven Spatio-Temporal Variability Of Temperature, Salinity, And Nitrate In In The California Current, Nathan Shunk

Honors College

Nitrate, temperature, and salinity conditions in the coastal upwelling regions of the California Current System vary on decadal timescales due to El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycles. This study examines the quarterly variations in these conditions over the period 1979 to 2018 for CalCOFI cross-shelf transect 80, located at Point Conception. The CalCOFI dataset was indexed by NOAA’s Multivariate ENSO Index version two, climatologies were formed over El Nino, La Nina, and neutral quarters and then anomalies were calculated from these climatologies. Variations are most predominantly visible in the upper 200m of the water column and can be seen both …

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Effects Of The Transportation And Climate Initiative On The Maine Economy: An Analysis Of Cap-And-Invest And Its Heterogeneous Impacts On Rural And Urban Households, William L. Somes May 2021

Effects Of The Transportation And Climate Initiative On The Maine Economy: An Analysis Of Cap-And-Invest And Its Heterogeneous Impacts On Rural And Urban Households, William L. Somes

Honors College

In December 2020, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was released by the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P), a collaboration of 13 jurisdictions in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. Modeled on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the TCI-P follows a cap-and-invest framework to reduce emissions from the transportation sector by 26% from 2022 to 2032. Since the TCI-P is expected to raise the price of gasoline by 5¢ to 9¢ per gallon, there has been concern that some populations may be disproportionately affected. The present research studies the potential heterogeneous impacts of the TCI-P …

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Modelling The Filling Of Methane In Heterogenous Pore Networks, Samuel Bonnevie May 2021

Modelling The Filling Of Methane In Heterogenous Pore Networks, Samuel Bonnevie

Honors College

In the field of heterogeneous catalysis, there is great interest in the transport properties of ordered mesoporous materials such as SBA-15, but inverting quasi-elastic neutron scattering data for materials with a distribution of pore sizes such as SBA-15is an ill-posed problem. This project aimed to generate an idealized model of methane adsorption in the pores of SBA-15so that in the future, molecular dynamics simulations can be used to study diffusion.By sampling over a canonical ensemble using the Metropolis Monte Carlo Method and using Widom’s insertion method alongside Vaitheeswaran and Rasaiah’s insertion/removal method to calculate the chemical potential, isotherms comparable to …

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Rift: A Mobile Application For Umaine, Michael Ciance May 2021

Rift: A Mobile Application For Umaine, Michael Ciance

Honors College

COVID-19 affected schools and universities nationwide in 2020 and is still an ongoing threat to public safety. With many institutions converting to remote learning and distanced campuses, students and faculty face many challenges. The social climate and issues facing students and faculty is leading to stress, low morale, and overall poor moods. Universities are trying to accommodate as best as possible but what they do is not always enough. A sense of community surrounding schools can be damaged by the processes of social distancing and working from home. Students need a way to communicate what they believe to be important …

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Capturing Climate Change: Investigating The Connections Between Environmental Science & Photography, Sophia Wilcox May 2021

Capturing Climate Change: Investigating The Connections Between Environmental Science & Photography, Sophia Wilcox

Honors College

A powerful symbiotic relationship is the one between photography and the field of environmental science. They coexist together in such a way that the progress of one inherently allows for progress in the other. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and illuminate this specific link. From the earliest cameras, photography was able to capture small details that the eye wasn’t able to see. This ability gave scientists the opportunity to capture images of up-close cells, viruses, certain species, and more. As the popularity of caring for the environment increased, the technologies of science and photography grew alongside. The …

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Predicting Range Shifts For The Virginia Opossum In Maine, Sara Griffin May 2021

Predicting Range Shifts For The Virginia Opossum In Maine, Sara Griffin

Honors College

Species distribution and movement are increasingly influenced by climate change and human expansion. The Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) has been observed expanding their range northward due to the warming temperatures and urbanization. The Virginia opossums’ northern range is thought to be restricted by two abiotic winter factors, snow cover and low temperatures, which prevents foraging and ultimately leads to starvation. For this study, I predicted the movement of the Virginia opossum northward into central Maine and beyond based on current climate change trends. Microclimate temperatures were recorded using data-loggers and climate variable datasets were used to determine if …

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Evaluating The Capacity Of Ascophyllum Nodosum Habitats To Act As Carbon Sinks In The Gulf Of Maine, Megan Sinclair May 2021

Evaluating The Capacity Of Ascophyllum Nodosum Habitats To Act As Carbon Sinks In The Gulf Of Maine, Megan Sinclair

Honors College

Some coastal ecosystems are defined as being carbon sinks for their ability to absorb more carbon than they release as a result of their high primary productivity. There has been support for the claim that macroalgal communities can act as carbon sinks and reduce levels of CO2in seawater through photosynthesis and potentially mitigate some local effects of climate change (Chung et al., 2011; Chung et al., 2013; Hill et al., 2015; Sondak et al., 2017). Within the state of Maine, rocky intertidal zones are coastal ecosystems that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and dominated by Ascophyllum nodosum (rockweed) communities …

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The Synthesis Of Photoswitchable Triptan Derivatives, Chelsea Sainsbury May 2021

The Synthesis Of Photoswitchable Triptan Derivatives, Chelsea Sainsbury

Honors College

Serotonin has various functions throughout the body and directly effects many neurological diseases/disorders, like depression, that are linked to the dysregulation of serotonin. Triptans are indole containing drugs that bind to a subset of serotonin receptors (5-HT1Band 5-HT1D) and are used to treat migraines. In this project, the synthesis of anindole intermediate is attempted. Ideally, an azobenzene would have been added to the 5th position (replacing the primary amine). Azobenzenes are compounds composed of 2 benzene rings connected by a nitrogen-nitrogen double bond that can switch between cis and trans conformations by absorbing different wavelengths of light. The transformation of …

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A Mathematical Model Of The Opioid Epidemic In The State Of Maine, Cole Butler Aug 2020

A Mathematical Model Of The Opioid Epidemic In The State Of Maine, Cole Butler

Honors College

For the past two decades the United States has been embroiled in a prescription drug epidemic that has since grown in magnitude and complexity. The ripples of this epidemic have been especially apparent in the state of Maine, which has fought hard to mitigate the damage caused by addiction to pharmaceutical and illicit opioids. Us- ing data from state and federal sources, we construct a mathematical model capturing the dynamics of the opioid epidemic in the state of Maine, specifically as it pertains to pharmaceutical opioids and heroin. Parameter fitting is performed followed by an uncertainty analysis to quantify potential …

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Distribution Of First Row Transition Elements In Eclogites, Natalie Harmon Aug 2020

Distribution Of First Row Transition Elements In Eclogites, Natalie Harmon

Honors College

Surficial materials are recycled back into the deep Earth at subduction zones. The oxidation state of subducted materials affects the oxidation state of major geochemical reservoirs in the Earth, such as the mantle and the crust. First row transition elements (FRTEs), such as V and Sc, are highly redox sensitive and thus have the potential to track important redox processes in subduction zones. In this project, concentrations of FRTEs in garnet, omphacite, and rutile were determined for a global suite of oceanic eclogites, which represent exhumed subducted materials. Data were collected by LA-ICP-MS using an ESI NWR193UC laser ablation system …

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Investigating The Stability Of Observed Low Semi-Major Axis Exoplanetary Systems With Hypothetical Outer Planets Using The Program Mercury6, Kendall Butler May 2020

Investigating The Stability Of Observed Low Semi-Major Axis Exoplanetary Systems With Hypothetical Outer Planets Using The Program Mercury6, Kendall Butler

Honors College

This project investigates the stability of observed planetary systems, and whether this stability remains in the presence of additional outer planets. This made use of the program Mercury6, an n-body integrator that computes the changes in planetary orbits over time. The Systems HD 136352, GJ 9827, and HD 7924 were studied with initial conditions taken from the available observational data. This information was curated using the online NASA Exoplanet archive of confirmed exoplanets. With these initial conditions, Mercury6 computed the changing planetary orbits of each system for 5 million years. For each of these systems, a single outer planet, which …

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A Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Community Solar For Low To Moderate Income Residents Of Mount Desert Island, Maine, Abigayle Hargreaves May 2020

A Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Community Solar For Low To Moderate Income Residents Of Mount Desert Island, Maine, Abigayle Hargreaves

Honors College

No abstract provided.

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