Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Detection Of Psilocybin Mushroom Analogs In Chocolate: Incorporating Current Events Into The Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory, Brandon Huskins, Christopher Dockery

Faculty and Research Publications

In this experiment, tryptamine is used as a psilocin analog and is dispersed onto a Fisher brand cellulose laboratory sponge to simulate dehydrated mushrooms. The resulting “mushroom” material is ground, molded into chocolate, and presented to student groups for real-world and applied analyses. Students isolate the tryptamine from the chocolate using their knowledge of drug chemistry, solubility, pH, extractions, etc. Qualitative analysis is conducted by comparison to standards (Thin Layer Chromatography or Gas Chromatography) and quantitative analysis is conducted by Gas Chromatography using the method of internal standards.

Indirect Gravimetric Determination Of Waters Of Hydration, Marina C. Koether

Faculty and Research Publications

An alternate gravimetric experiment is described that can be employed in the general chemistry or the quantitative analysis laboratory course. The procedure takes less time than conventional methods and introduces students to waters of hydration and indirect determinations.

A Graph Theoretic Summation Of The Cubes Of The First N Integers, Joseph Demaio, Andy Lightcap

Faculty and Research Publications

In this Math Bite we provide a combinatorial proof of the sum of the cubes of the first n integers by counting edges in complete bipartite graphs.

Object Oriented Program Correctness With Oosiml, José M. Garrido

Faculty and Research Publications

Software reliability depends on program correctness and robustness and these are extremely important in developing high-quality software. Correctness is also essential when considering aspects of software security. However, experience applying these concepts, associated methods, and supporting software with Eiffel and Java have shown that students find some diffculty learning program correctness and in learning the software tools provided. We have developed an experimental language, OOSimL, that includes an assertion notation similar to that of Eiffel but which has much more flexibility, and that provides the same semantics as Java.

The first part of this paper provides an overview of concepts …

Comparing Experts And Novices In Solving Electrical Circuit Problems With The Help Of Eye-Tracking, David Rosengrant, Colin Thomson, Taha Mzoughi

Faculty and Research Publications

In order to help introductory physics students understand and learn to solve problems with circuits, we must first understand how they differ from experts. This preliminary study focuses on problem-solving dealing with electrical circuits. We investigate difficulties novices have with circuits and compare their work with those of experts. We incorporate the use of an eye-tracker to investigate any possible differences or similarities on how experts and novices solve electrical circuit problems. Our results show similarities in gaze patterns among all subjects on the components of the circuit. We further found that experts would look back at the circuit while …

Why It Managers Don't Go For Cyber-Insurance Products, Tridib Bandyopadhyay, Vijay S. Mookerjee, Ram C. Rao

Faculty and Research Publications

Despite positive expectations, cyber-insurance products have failed to take center stage in the management of IT security risk. Market inexperience, leading to conservatism in pricing cyber-insurance instruments, is often cited as the primary reason for the limited growth of the cyber-insurance market. In contrast, here we provide a demand-side explanation for why cyber-insurance products have not lived up to their initial expectations. We highlight the presence of information asymmetry between customers and providers, showing how it leads to overpricing cyber-insurance contracts and helps explain why cyber insurance might have failed to deliver its promise as a cornerstone of IT security-management …

Detectability Of Convex-Shaped Objects In Digital Images, Its Fundamental Limit And Multiscale Analysis, Xiaoming Huo, Xuelei (Sherry) Ni

Faculty and Research Publications

Given a convex-shape inhomogeneous region embedded in a noisy image, we consider the conditions under which such an embedded region is detectable. The existence of low order-of-complexity detection algorithms is also studied. The main results are (1) an analytical threshold (of a statistic) that specifies what is detectable, and (2) the existence of a multiscale detection algorithm whose order of complexity is roughly the optimal O(n(2) log(2) (n)).

Our analysis has two main components. We first show that in a discrete image, the number of convex sets increases faster than any finite degree polynomial of the image size n. Hence …

Two-Loop Soft Anomalous Dimensions With Massive And Massless Quarks, Nikolaos Kidonakis

Faculty and Research Publications

I present results for two-loop soft anomalous dimensions, which are derived from dimensionally regularized diagrams with eikonal quark lines and control soft-gluon emission in hard-scattering processes. Detailed results for the UV poles of the eikonal integrals are shown for massive quarks, and the massless limit is also taken. The construction of soft anomalous dimensions at two-loops allows soft-gluon resummations at NNLL accuracy.

Security And Network Analysis Using Simulation, Victor A. Clincy

Faculty and Research Publications

ITGuru is a powerful simulation environment developed by OpNET Corporation. ITGuru is unique because of its ability to model the entire networking domain, including its routers, switches, protocols, servers, and the individual applications they support. ITGuru improves network researchers' and instructors' ability to identify and solve problems throughout the network. The OpNET Corporation provides a FREE academic copy of their simulation environment to universities for both teaching and research.

Heavy-Flavor Production At Accelerators, Nikolaos Kidonakis

Faculty and Research Publications

I discuss heavy flavor production at hadronic facilities. I present total cross sections and differential distributions for top quark, bottom quark, and charm quark production at the rrevatron and LHC colliders, and at fixed-target experiments such as HERA-B. The calculations include complete next-to-leading order corrections as well as higher-order soft-gluon corrections which are important near kinematical threshold.

Higher-Order Corrections To Top-Antitop Pair And Single Top Quark Production, Nikolaos Kidonakis

Faculty and Research Publications

I present the latest results on the theoretical cross section for top-antitop pair production as well as for single top production at the Tevatron and the LHC. The calculations include higher-order soft-gluon corrections which are dominant near threshold. The top quark transverse momentum distribution is also presented.

Two-Loop Soft Anomalous Dimensions And Next-To-Next-To-Leading-Logarithm Resummation For Heavy Quark Production, Nikolaos Kidonakis

Faculty and Research Publications

I present results for two-loop soft anomalous dimensions for heavy quark production which control soft-gluon resummation at next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm accuracy. I derive an explicit expression for the exact result and study it numerically for top quark production via e(+) e(-) -> t (t) over bar t, and I construct a surprisingly simple but very accurate approximation. I show that the two-loop soft anomalous dimensions with massive quarks display a simple proportionality relation to the one-loop result only in the limit of vanishing quark mass. I also discuss the extension of the calculation to single top and top pair production in hadron …

Closed Knight's Tours With Minimal Square Removal For All Rectangular Boards, Joseph Demaio, Thomas Hippchen

Faculty and Research Publications

A closed knight's tour of a chessboard uses legal moves of the knight to visit every square exactly once and return to its starting position. In 1991 Schwenk completely classified the rectangular chessboards that admit a closed knight's tour. For a rectangular chessboard that does not contain a closed knight's tour, this paper determines the minimum number of squares that must be removed in order to admit a closed knight's tour. Furthermore, constructions that generate a closed tour once appropriate squares are removed are provided.

Enhancing Ocean Literacy Using Real-Time Data, Lisa G. Adams, George Matsumoto

Faculty and Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Ecotourism In Dominica: Studying The Potential For Economic Development, Environmental Protection And Cultural Conservation, Vanessa Slinger-Friedman

Faculty and Research Publications

Over the last 20 years, the government of the small Caribbean island nation of Dominica has pursued the development of ecotourism on the island. The hope is that this industry will promote dispersed economic development while providing environmental protection and cultural conservation. However, not enough has been done to determine whether or not the industry is achieving the desired results. To this end, this study explores the growth of the tourism industry on Dominica and shows that, while not perfect, ecotourism is providing some definite benefits to the island in this regard.

A Neutral Network Based Vehicle Classification System For Pervasive Smart Road Security, Naixue Xiong, Jing (Selena) He, Jong Hyuk Park, Donald Cooley

Faculty and Research Publications

Pervasive smart computing environments make people get accustomed to convenient and secure services. The overall goal of this research is to classify vehicles along the I215 freeway in Salt Lake City, USA. This information will be used to predict future roadway needs and the expected life of a roadway. The classification of vehicles will be performed by a synthesis of multiple sets of features. All feature sets have not yet been determined; however, one such set will be the reduced wavelet transform of the image of a vehicle. In order to use such a feature, it is necessary that the …

On The Estimation Of Averages Over Infinite Intervals With An Application To Average Persistence In Population Models, Sean F. Ellermeyer

Faculty and Research Publications

We establish a general result for estimating the upper average of a continuous and bounded function over an infinite interval. As an application, we show that a previously studied model of microbial growth in a chemostat with time–varying nutrient input admits solutions (populations) that exhibit weak persistence but not weak average persistence.

Using Paired Comparison Matrices To Estimate Parameters Of The Partial Credit Rasch Measurement Model For Rater-Mediated Assessments, Mary Garner, George Engelhard Jr.

Faculty and Research Publications

The purpose of this paper is to describe a technique for estimating the parameters of a Rasch model that accommodates ordered categories and rater severity. The technique builds on the conditional pairwise algorithm described by Choppin (1968, 1985) and represents an extension of a conditional algorithm described by Garner and Engelhard (2000, 2002) in which parameters appear as the eigenvector of a matrix derived from paired comparisons. The algorithm is used successfully to recover parameters from a simulated data set. No one has previously described such an extension of the pairwise algorithm to a Rasch model that includes both ordered …

Bifurcation Analysis Of A Kaldor-Kalecki Model Of Business Cycle With Time Delay, Liancheng Wang, Xiaoqin P. Wu

Faculty and Research Publications

In this paper, we investigate a Kaldor-Kalecki model of business cycle with delay in both the gross product and the capital stock. Stability analysis for the equilibrium point is carried out. We show that Hopf bifurcation occurs and periodic solutions emerge as the delay crosses some critical values. By deriving the normal forms for the system, the direction of the Hopf bifurcation and the stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions are established. Examples are presented to confirm our results.

Positive Solutions For The (N, P) Boundary Value Problem, Bo Yang

Faculty and Research Publications

We consider the (n, p) boundary value problem in this paper. Some new upper estimates to positive solutions for the problem are obtained. Existence and nonexistence results for positive solutions of the problem are obtained by using the Krasnosel'skii fixed point theorem. An example is included to illustrate the results.

Towards Solving Similarity Search Problems Using Fuzzy Concept For Multi-Dimensional Data, Yong Shi

Faculty and Research Publications

In this paper, we present continuous research on data analysis based on our previous work on similarity search problems. PanKNN[13] is a novel technique which explores the meaning of K nearest neighbors from a new perspective, redefines the distances between data points and a given query point Q, and efficiently and effectively select data points which are closest to Q. It can be applied in various data mining fields. In this paper, we applied the Fuzzy concept to improve the performance of PanKNN, targeting the better decision making for the calculation of the distance between a data …

Animated Courseware Support For Teaching Database Design, Meg C. Murray, Mario Guimaraes

Faculty and Research Publications

Database technologies are a core component of computing technology curricula. Their importance will only continue to expand as more and more data are retained in database systems. An effective database system is predicated on a good data model. Database design is the conceptualization of an underlying data model that progresses from identifying user requirements to graphically depicting those requirements and finally mapping the graphical models to a set of tables implemented in a physical database system. The abstract nature of much of database design makes it challenging to teach. This paper presents a set of software animations designed to support …

A Dynamic Insertion Approach For Multi-Dimensional Data Using Index Structures, Yong Shi

Faculty and Research Publications

Nowadays large volumes of data with high dimensionality are being generated in many fields. Most existing indexing techniques degrade rapidly when dimensionality goes higher. A large amount of data sets are time related, and the existence of the obsolete data in the data sets may seriously degrade the data processing. In our previous work[7], we proposed ClusterTree⁺, a new indexing approach representing clusters generated by any existing clustering approach. It is a hierarchy of clusters and subclusters which incorporates the cluster representation into the index structure to achieve effective and efficient retrieval. It also has features from the …