Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Millenial-Aged Organic Carbon Subsidies To A Modern River Food Web, Steven T. Petsch, J. J. Cole, P. Raymond, J. E. Bauer, N. Caraco

Steven T. Petsch

Recent studies indicate that highly aged material is a major component of organic matter transported by most rivers. However, few studies have used natural 14C to trace the potential entry of this aged material into modern river food webs. Here we use natural abundance 14C, 13C, and deuterium (2H) to trace the contribution of aged and contemporary organic matter to an important group of consumers, crustacean zooplankton, in a large temperate river (the Hudson River, New York, USA). Zooplankton were highly 14C depleted (mean delta14C = -240 per thousand) compared to modern primary production in the river or its watershed …

Role Of Surface Charge Density In Nanoparticle-Templated Assembly Of Bromovirus Protein Cages, Mc Daniel, Ib Tsvetkova, Zt Quinkert, A Murali, M De, Vm Rotello, Cc Kao, B Dragnea

Vincent Rotello

Self-assembling icosahedral protein cages have potencially useful physical and chemical characteristics for a variety of nanotechnology applications, ranging from therapeutic or diagnostic vectors to building blocks for hierarchical materials. For application-specific functional control of protein cage assemblies, a deeper understanding of the interaction between the protein cage and its payload is necessary. Protein-cage encapsulated nanoparticles, with their well-defined surface chemistry, allow for systematic control over key parameters of encapsulation such as the surface charge, hydrophobicity, and size. Independent control over these variables allows experimental testing of different assembly mechanism models. Previous studies done with Brome mosaic virus capsids and negatively …

Continuous Generation Of Soliton Patterns In Two-Dimensional Dissipative Media By Razor, Dagger, And Needle Potentials, B Liu, Yj He, Ba Malomed, Xs Wang, Pg Kevrekidis, Tb Wang, Fc Leng, Zr Qiu, Hz Wang

Panos Kevrekidis

We report dynamic regimes supported by a sharp quasi-one-dimensional (1D) (“razor”), pyramid-shaped (“dagger”), and conical (“needle”) potentials in the 2D complex Ginzburg–Landau (CGL) equation with cubic-quintic nonlinearity. This is a model of an active optical medium with respective expanding antiwaveguiding structures. If the potentials are strong enough, they give rise to continuous generation of expanding soliton patterns by a 2D soliton initially placed at the center. In the case of the pyramidal potential with M edges, the generated patterns are sets of M jets for M≤5, or expanding polygonal chains of solitons for M≥6. In the conical geometry, these are …

Effect Of Nanoparticle Surface Charge At The Plasma Membrane And Beyond, Rr Arvizo, Or Miranda, Ma Thompson, Cm Pabelick, R Bhattacharya, Jd Robertson, Vm Rotello, Ys Prakash, P Mukherjee

Vincent Rotello

Herein, we demonstrate that the surface charge of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) plays a critical role in modulating membrane potential of different malignant and nonmalignant cell types and subsequent downstream intracellular events. The findings presented here describe a novel mechanism for cell-nanoparticle interactions and AuNP uptake: modulation of membrane potential and its effect on intracellular events. These studies will help understand the biology of cell-nanoparticle interactions and facilitate the engineering of nanoparticles for specific intracellular targets.

Gold Nanoparticle Self-Assembly Promoted By A Non-Covalent, Charge-Complemented Coiled-Coil Peptide, D Ernenwein, P Ghosh, V Rotello, J Chmielewski

Vincent Rotello

Non-covalent interactions between cationic gold nanoparticles and an anionic coiled-coil peptide were harnessed for coiled-coil mediated self-assembly of gold nanoparticles (GNPs)

Climate Variability, Oceanography, Bowhead Whale Distribution, And Iñupiat Subsistence Whaling Near Barrow, Alaska, Carin J. Ashjian, Stephen R. Braund, Robert G. Campbell, J. C. George, Jack Kruse, Wieslaw Maslowski, Sue E. Moore, Craig R. Nicolson, Stephen R. Okkonen, Barry F. Sherr, Evelyn B. Sherr, Yvette H. Spitz

Craig Nicolson

The annual migration of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) past Barrow, Alaska, has provided subsistence hunting to Iñupiat for centuries. Bowheads recurrently feed on aggregations of zooplankton prey near Barrow in autumn. The mechanisms that form these aggregations, and the associations between whales and oceanography, were investigated using field sampling, retrospective analysis, and traditional knowledge interviews. Oceanographic and aerial surveys were conducted near Barrow during August and September in 2005 and 2006. Multiple water masses were observed, and close coupling between water mass type and biological characteristics was noted. Short-term variability in hydrography was associated with changes in wind speed and …

Distantly Labeling Data For Large Scale Cross-Document Coreference, Sameer Singh, Michael Wick, Andrew Mccallum

Andrew McCallum

Cross-document coreference, the problem of resolving entity mentions across multi-document collections, is crucial to automated knowledge base construction and data mining tasks. However, the scarcity of large labeled data sets has hindered supervised machine learning research for this task. In this paper we develop and demonstrate an approach based on “distantly-labeling” a data set from which we can train a discriminative cross-document coreference model. In particular we build a dataset of more than a million people mentions extracted from 3:5 years of New York Times articles, leverage Wikipedia for distant labeling with a generative model (and measure the reliability of …

The Office For Harmonization In The Internal Market: Creating A 21st Century Public Agency, Jane Fountain, Raquel Galindo-Dorado, Jeffrey Rothschild

National Center for Digital Government

(first paragraph) President Wubbo de Boer and his department directors, his top management team, prepared for critical meetings of the Administrative Board and the Budget Committee in the winter of 2010. The European Union’s trademark and design registration agency in Alicante, Spain, grandly named the Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market (Trade Mark and Design) (OHIM), had exceeded all expectations for the establishment of the Community trade mark (CTM) and the Registered Community design (RCD). The new agency also could be proud of impressive achievements in productivity and transparency since it began registering trademarks in 1996. Through productivity gains, …

Local Surface Water Policy Under Conditions Of Climate Change, Elizabeth Brabec, Elisabeth Hamin, Chingwen Cheng

Elizabeth Brabec

Climate change means two things for local stormwater managers – that storm events will become more severe, and rainfall will, in many instances, become more erratic, causing enhanced periods of drought and flood. Two approaches are needed to deal with the eventualities: mitigation and adaptation.

While urbanization increases stormwater runoff and decreases the lag time of stormwater discharge, there is also a resulting lack of infiltration and reduction in evapotranspiration (Brunke and Gonser 1997). Stormwater detention, retention and infiltration have attempted to compensate, resulting in the concentrated point location infiltration of stormwater, which replenishes groundwater and baseflow. Equally important to …

Scalable Probabilistic Databases With Factor Graphs And Mcmc, Michael Wick, Andrew Mccallum, Gerome Miklau

Andrew McCallum

Probabilistic databases play a crucial role in the management and understanding of uncertain data. However, incorporating probabilities into the semantics of incomplete databases has posed many challenges, forcing systems to sacrifice modeling power, scalability, or restrict the class of relational algebra formula under which they are closed. We propose an alternative approach where the underlying relational database always represents a single world, and an external factor graph encodes a distribution over possible worlds; Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inference is then used to recover this uncertainty to a desired level of fidelity. Our approach allows the efficient evaluation of arbitrary …

Geometric And Combinatorial Aspects Of 1-Skeleta, Chris Ray Mcdaniel

Open Access Dissertations

In this thesis we investigate 1-skeleta and their associated cohomology rings. 1-skeleta arise from the 0- and 1-dimensional orbits of a certain class of manifold admitting a compact torus action and many questions that arise in the theory of 1-skeleta are rooted in the geometry and topology of these manifolds. The three main results of this work are: a lifting result for 1-skeleta (related to extending torus actions on manifolds), a classification result for certain 1-skeleta which have the Morse package (a property of 1-skeleta motivated by Morse theory for manifolds) and two constructions on 1-skeleta which we show preserve …

On The Frequency Of Finitely Anomalous Elliptic Curves, Penny Catherine Ridgdill

Open Access Dissertations

Given an elliptic curve E over Q, we can then consider E over the finite field Fp. If Np is the number of points on the curve over Fp, then we define ap(E) = p+1-Np. We say primes p for which ap(E) = 1 are anomalous. In this paper, we search for curves E so that this happens for only a finite number of primes. We call such curves finitely anomalous. This thesis deals with the frequency of their occurrence and finds several examples.

Generalized Emp And Nonlinear Schrodinger-Type Reformulations Of Some Scaler Field Cosmological Models, Jennie D'Ambroise

Open Access Dissertations

We show that Einstein’s gravitational field equations for the Friedmann- Robertson-Lemaître-Walker (FRLW) and for two conformal versions of the Bianchi I and Bianchi V perfect fluid scalar field cosmological models, can be equivalently reformulated in terms of a single equation of either generalized Ermakov-Milne- Pinney (EMP) or (non)linear Schrödinger (NLS) type. This work generalizes or presents an alternative to similar reformulations published by the authors who inspired this thesis: R. Hawkins, J. Lidsey, T. Christodoulakis, T. Grammenos, C. Helias, P. Kevrekidis, G. Papadopoulos and F.Williams. In particular we cast much of these authors’ works into a single framework via straightforward …

On The Design Of Methods To Estimate Network Characteristics, Bruno F. Ribeiro

Open Access Dissertations

Social and computer networks permeate our lives. Large networks, such as the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), AND wireless smartphones, have indisputable economic and social importance. These networks have non-trivial topological features, i.e., features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random networks. Estimating characteristics of these networks from incomplete (sampled) data is a challenging task. This thesis provides two frameworks within which common measurement tasks are analyzed and new, principled, measurement methods are designed. The first framework focuses on sampling directly observable network characteristics. This framework is applied to design a novel multidimensional random …

Western Woburn Greenway Study, Jennifer H. Masters, Bryan C. Aldeghi, Eric C. Kells, Maureen C. Pollock, Rebekah Lynne Decourcey, Carol Waag, Youjin Kwon, Kathryn E. Ostermier, Patrick T. Mcgeough, Ryan Patrick Ball

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

In spring 2010, the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst was asked to complete a landscape planning study, the “Western Woburn Greenway Study” for the City of Woburn, MA. The study was undertaken by a team of graduate students, supervised by Professor Jack Ahern. The goals of that study are as follows.

The City of Woburn currently has two large parcel groups of undeveloped land, Whispering Hill (the north focus area) and Winning/Shannon Farms (the south focus area) that are, or may become, available for acquisition (see “Scope of Project” below). The first …

Discovery Of Complex Regulatory Modules From Expression Genetics Data, Manjunatha Jagalur

Open Access Dissertations

Mapping of strongly inherited classical traits have been immensely helpful in understanding many important traits including diseases, yield and immunity. But some of these traits are too complex and are difficult to map. Taking into consideration gene expression, which mediates the genetic effects, can be helpful in understanding such traits. Together with genetic variation data such data-set is collectively known as expression genetics data. Presence of discrete and continuous variables, observed and latent variables, availability of partial causal information, and under-specfied nature of the data make expression genetics data computationally challenging, but potentially of great biological importance. In this dissertation …

A History And Test Of Planetary Weather Forecasting, Bruce Scofield

Open Access Dissertations

A unique methodology for forecasting weather based on geocentric planetary alignments originated in ancient Mesopotamia. The method, called astrometeorology, was further developed by Greek, Arab, and Renaissance scientists including Ptolemy, Al-Kindi, Tycho Brahe and Joannes Kepler. A major 17th century effort to test the method in a Baconian fashion was made by John Goad. Building on the ideas of Kepler and Goad, I test an isolated component of the method, specifically a correlation between geocentric Sun-Saturn alignments and cold temperatures, using modern daily temperature data from New England, Central England, Prague and other locations. My hypothesis states there is a …

Whole-Body Strategies For Mobility And Manipulation, Patrick Deegan

Open Access Dissertations

The robotics community has succeeded in creating remarkable machines and task-level programming tools, but arguably has failed to apply sophisticated autonomous machines to sophisticated tasks. One reason is that this combination leads to prohibitive complexity. Biological systems provide many examples of integrated systems that combine high-performance and flexibility, with logically-organized low-level control. Sophisticated organisms have evolved that depend on physical dexterity to thrive in a particular ecological niche while mitigating computational and behavioral complexity. This dissertation investigates the potential for a new kind of hybrid robotic design process. A design for performance that combines mechanical dexterity with low-level embedded firmware …

Significance Of Water-Related Features On Mars, Eileen Marie Mcgowan

Open Access Dissertations

The debate on whether water exists on Mars has been resolved by recent data from the Mars Phoenix Polar Lander. The lander found water ice just below the surface in the high northern latitudes of Mars. The questions to be answered now are: how much water was present in the past, how much water is currently present, what was the state the water in the past, and what is the current state of water on Mars. The morphology and spatial relationships are examined between three different landforms (pitted cones, giant polygons, and putative shorelines) considered to be the result of …

Quaternary Structure Of Chemoreceptors In Active Signaling Complexes Differs From Crystal Structure Of Isolated Fragments: Evidence From Solid-State Nmr, Daniel John Fowler

Open Access Dissertations

The receptor dimers that mediate bacterial chemotaxis form high-order signaling complexes with CheW and the kinase CheA. From the packing arrangement in two crystal structures of different receptor cytoplasmic fragments, two different models have been proposed for receptor signaling arrays: the trimers-of-dimers and hedgerow models. We identified an interdimer distance that differs substantially in the two models, labeled the atoms defining this distance through isotopic enrichment, and measured it with 13C-19F REDOR. This was done in two types of receptor samples: first, isolated bacterial membranes containing overexpressed, intact receptor, and second, soluble receptor fragments reconstituted into kinase-active signaling complexes. In …

Observation Of Geo-Neutrinos, G. Bellini, J. Benziger, S. Bonetti, M. Buizza Avanzini, B. Caccianiga, L. Cadonati, F. Calaprice, C. Carraro, A. Chavarria, F. Dalnoki-Veress, D. D'Angelo, S. Davini, H. De Kerret, A. Derbin, A. Etenko, G. Fiorentini, K. Fomenko, D. Franco, C. Galbiati, S. Gazzana, C. Ghiano, M. Giammarchi, M. Goeger-Neff, A. Goretti, E. Guardincerri, S. Hardy, Aldo Ianni, Andrea Ianni, M. Joyce, V. V. Kobychev, Y. Koshio, G. Korga, D. Kryn, M. Laubenstein, M. Leung, T. Lewke, E. Litvinovich, B. Loer, P. Lombardi, L. Ludhova, I. Machulin, S. Manecki, W. Maneschg, G. Manuzio, Q. Meindl, E. Meroni, L. Miramonti, M. Misiaszek, D. Montanari, V. Muratova, L. Oberauer, M. Obolensky, F. Ortica, M. Pallavicini, L. Papp, L. Perasso, S. Perasso, Andrea Pocar, R. S. Raghavan, G. Ranucci, A. Razeto, A. Re, B. Ricci, P. Risso, A. Romani, D. Rountree, A. Sabelnikov, R. Saldanha, C. Salvo, S. Schönert, H. Simgen, M. Skorokhvatov, O. Smirnov, A. Sotnikov, S. Sukhotin, Y. Surorov, R. Tartaglia, G. Testera, D. Vignaud, R. B. Vogelaar, F. Von Feilitzsch, J. Winter, M. Wojcik, A. Wright, M. Wurm, J. Xu, O. Zaimidoroga, S. Zavaterelli, G. Zuzel

Andrea Pocar

Geo-neutrinos, electron anti-neutrinos produced in β decays of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes in the Earth, are a unique direct probe of our planet's interior. We report the first observation at more than 3σ C.L. of geo-neutrinos, performed with the Borexino detector at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. Anti-neutrinos are detected through the neutron inverse β decay reaction. With a 252.6 ton yr fiducial exposure after all selection cuts, we detected 9.9+4.1−3.4(+14.6−8.2) geo-neutrino events, with errors corresponding to a 68.3% (99.73%) C.L. From the View the MathML source profile, the statistical significance of the Borexino geo-neutrino observation corresponds to a 99.997% …

Source Parameters And Time‐Dependent Slip Distributions Of Slow Slip Events On The Cascadia Subduction Zone From 1998 To 2008, D. A. Schmidt, Haiying Gao

Haiying Gao

We invert for the time‐dependent slip history of slow slip events on the Cascadia subduction zone using GPS data from 1998 to 2008. The 16 slip transients have sufficient station coverage to solve for the slip distribution on the plate interface. GPS time series are inverted for fault slip using the Extended Network Inversion Filter. Limited station coverage south of Portland (45.5°N latitude) restricts our analysis to events on the northern half of the subduction zone. Slip is resolved at the base of the seismogenic zone and the slip distributions suggest a potential segment boundary near Seattle (47.6°N) that correlates …

Traveling And Stationary Intrinsic Localized Modes And Their Spatial Control In Electrical Lattices, Lq English, F Palmero, Aj Sievers, Pg Kevrekidis, Dh Barnak

Panos Kevrekidis

This work focuses on the production of both stationary and traveling intrinsic localized modes (ILMs), also known as discrete breathers, in two closely related electrical lattices; we demonstrate experimentally that the interplay between these two ILM types can be utilized for the purpose of spatial control. We describe a novel mechanism that is responsible for the motion of driven ILMs in this system, and quantify this effect by modeling in some detail the electrical components comprising the lattice.

New Experimental Limits On The Pauli-Forbidden Transitions In 12c Nuclei Obtained With 485 Days Borexino Data, G. Bellini, J. Benziger, S. Bonetti, M. Buizza Avanzini, B. Caccianiga, L. Cadonati, F. Calaprice, C. Carraro, A. Chavarria, F. Dalnoki-Veress, D. D'Angelo, S. Davini, H. De Kerret, A. Derbin, A. Etenko, K. Fomenko, D. Franco, C. Galbiati, S. Gazzana, C. Ghiano, M. Giammarchi, M. Goeger-Neff, A. Goretti, C. Grieb, E. Guardincerri, S. Hardy, Aldo Ianni, Andrea Ianni, M. Joyce, G. Korga, D. Kryn, M. Leung, T. Lewke, E. Litvinovich, B. Loer, P. Lombardi, L. Ludhova, I. Machulin, S. Manecki, W. Maneschg, G. Manuzio, Q. Meindl, E. Meroni, L. Miramonti, M. Misiaszek, D. Montanari, V. Muratova, L. Oberauer, M. Obolensky, F. Ortica, M. Pallavicini, L. Papp, L. Perasso, S. Perasso, Andrea Pocar, R. S. Raghavan, G. Ranucci, A. Razeto, A. Re, P. Risso, A. Romani, D. Rountree, A. Sabelnikov, R. Saldanha, C. Salvo, S. Schoenert, H. Simgen, M. Skorokhvatov, O. Smirnov, A. Sotnikov, S. Sukhotin, Y. Surorov, R. Tartaglia, G. Testera, D. Vignaud, R. B. Vogelaar, F. Von Feilitzsch, Y. Winter, M. Wojcik, M. Wurm, J. Xu, O. Zaimidoroga, S. Zavatarelli, G. Zuzel

Andrea Pocar

The Pauli exclusion principle (PEP) has been tested for nucleons (n,p) in 12C with the Borexino detector. The approach consists of a search for γ, n, p, and β± emitted in a non-Paulian transition of 1P3/2-shell nucleons to the filled 1S1/2 shell in nuclei. Due to the extremely low background and the large mass (278 tons) of the Borexino detector, the following most stringent up-to-date experimental bounds on PEP violating transitions of nucleons have been established: τ(12C→12C~+γ)⩾5.0×1031 yr, τ(12C→11B~+p)⩾8.9×1029 yr, τ(12C→11C~+n)⩾3.4×1030 yr, τ(12C→12N~+e-+νe~)⩾3.1×1030 yr, and τ(12C→12B~+e++νe)⩾2.1×1030 yr, all at 90% C.L. The corresponding upper limits on the relative strengths for …

A Low Threshold For North Atlantic Ice Rafting From “Low-Slung Slippery” Late Pliocene Ice Sheets, Ian Bailey, Clara T. Bolton, Robert M. Deconto, David Pollard, Ralf Schiebel, Paul A. Wilson

Robert M DeConto

Suborbital variability in late Pleistocene records of ice-rafted debris and sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean appears most extreme during times of enlarged ice sheets with a well-constrained benthic oxygen isotope-defined “ice volume threshold” (δ18OT) for the “100 ka (inter)glacial” world. Information on climate instability for the earlier Pleistocene and late Pliocene is more fragmentary and/or of much lower temporal resolution, but the data available suggest similar behavior with δ18OT remaining more or less constant over the past 3000 ka. This finding is puzzling because it implies that ice rafting is highly sensitive to ice volume on short …

Enzyme-Amplified Array Sensing Of Proteins In Solution And In Biofluids, Or Miranda, Ht Chen, Cc You, De Mortenson, Xc Yang, Uhf Bunz, Vm Rotello

Vincent Rotello

We have developed an enzyme−nanoparticle sensor array where the sensitivity is amplified through enzymatic catalysis. In this approach cationic gold nanoparticles are electrostatically bound to an enzyme (β-galactosidase, β-Gal), inhibiting enzyme activity. Analyte proteins release the β-Gal, restoring activity and providing an amplified readout of the binding event. Using this strategy we have been able to identify proteins in buffer at a concentration of 1 nM, substantially lower than current strategies for array-based protein sensing. Moreover, we have obtained identical sensitivity in studies where the proteins are spiked into the complex protein matrix provided by desalted human urine (1.5 μM …

Self-Trapping Of Optical Vortices At The Surface Of An Induced Semi-Infinite Photonic Lattice, Dh Song, Cb Lou, Kjh Law, Lq Tang, Zy Ye, Pg Kevrekidis, Jj Xu, Zg Chen

Panos Kevrekidis

We demonstrate self-trapping of singly-charged vortices at the surface of an optically induced two-dimensional photonic lattice. Under appropriate conditions of self-focusing nonlinearity, a singly-charged vortex beam can self-trap into a stable semi-infinite gap surface vortex soliton through a four-site excitation. However, a single-site excitation leads to a quasi-localized state in the first photonic gap, and our theoretical analysis illustrates that such a bandgap surface vortex soliton is always unstable. Our experimental results of stable and unstable topological surface solitons are corroborated by direct numerical simulations and linear stability analysis.

Interaction Of Excited States In Two-Species Bose-Einstein Condensates: A Case Study, T Kapitula, Kjh Law, Pg Kevrekidis

Panos Kevrekidis

In this paper we consider the existence and spectral stability of excited states in two-species Bose–Einstein condensates in the case of a pancake magnetic trap. Each new excited state found in this paper is to leading order a linear combination of two one-species dipoles, each of which is a spectrally stable excited state for one-species condensates. The analysis is done via a Lyapunov–Schmidt reduction and is valid in the limit of weak nonlinear interactions. Some conclusions, however, can be made at this limit which remain true even when the interactions are large.

Expanding Ethics Education In Science & Engineering, Jane E. Fountain

Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse

This presentation was part of the AAAS Annual Conference professional development workshop, National Science Foundation and Ethics Education in Science and Engineering, during the recent meeting in San Diego, California (18-22 February). Dr. Michael Gorman, Program Director, Science, Technology & Society, National Science Foundation, moderated the workshop presentations and the discussion that followed. In addition, he contributed a set of powerpoint slides outlining the role of NSF in its response to the America Competes Act, including a commitment to support an online resource in ethics education. Dr. Philip Langlais, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies & Research, Old Dominion University, presented …

Nsf Supported Case-Studies Done By Systems Engineering Graduate Students At Uva, Michael Gorman

Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse

This presentation was part of the AAAS Annual Conference professional development workshop, National Science Foundation and Ethics Education in Science and Engineering, during the recent meeting in San Diego, California (18-22 February). Dr. Michael Gorman, Program Director, Science, Technology & Society, National Science Foundation, moderated the workshop presentations and the discussion that followed. In addition, he contributed a set of powerpoint slides outlining the role of NSF in its response to the America Competes Act, including a commitment to support an online resource in ethics education. Dr. Philip Langlais, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies & Research, Old Dominion University, presented …