Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Exploring Hydrologic Responses To Different Wildfire Spatial Patterns Through The Lens Of Computational Modeling, Luke M. Telfer

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Severe wildfire disturbances are becoming increasingly common in high-elevation forests of the western United States. These fires alter watershed hydrologic processes, threatening critical downstream water resources and aquatic ecosystems. However, watershed-scale postfire hydrologic responses and water balance changes are highly uncertain. While postfire effects on individual processes such as runoff, infiltration, evapotranspiration, and snow dynamics are relatively well known, the role of wildfire spatial patterns in governing hydrologic connectivity and interactions between water balance components is poorly understood due to challenges associated with measuring and comparing fires at large scales. This thesis aims to examine pattern-related postfire interactions between various …

Bioactivity Assessment Of Veratrum Californicum Alkaloids, Madison Dirks

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The native Idaho plant Veratrum californicum is known to contain steroidal alkaloids that function as inhibitors of hedgehog signaling, a pathway utilized for the growth and differentiation of cells as well as proper tissue development. Veratrum californicum was originally noticed when pregnant ewes consumed the plant and later gave birth to lambs with craniofacial mutations such as a cyclopean eyes. These malformations were caused by the plant’s steroidal alkaloid cyclopamine blocking the hedgehog signaling pathway. This same pathway is used by more than 20 types of cancer for multiplication of cells. Additional alkaloids have been found in Veratrum californicum, …

Controls On The Frequency Content Of Near-Source Infrasound At An Open-Vent Volcano (Villarrica, Chile), Bryan Blake Rosenblatt

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The acoustic signals from open-vent volcanoes can contain specific information related to that volcano’s eruption dynamics and future activity. Thus, studying a specific volcano’s acoustics may provide critical warning mechanisms, signaling impending eruptions. Villarrica volcano, located in southern Chile, has an active lava lake that produces continuous infrasound with spectral peaks near 1 Hz and excursions of +/- ~0.2 Hz. The infrasound’s frequency content reveals key volcanic properties such as eruption style and crater shape. Leading up to Villarrica’s most recent paroxysm in 2015, infrasound spectral changes coincided with and indicated a rise in Villarrica’s lava lake level. As such, …

Dreams Of Molecular Beams: Indium Gallium Arsenide Tensile-Strained Quantum Dots And Advances Towards Dynamic Quantum Dots (Moleculare Radiorum Somnia: Indii Gallii Arsenicus Tensa Quanta Puncta Et Ad Dinamicae Quantae Puntae Progressus), Kevin Daniel Vallejo

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Through the operation of a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) machine, I worked on developing the homoepitaxy of high quality InAs with a (111)A crystallographic orientation. By tuning substrate temperature, we obtained a transition from a 2D island growth mode to step- ow growth. Optimized MBE parameters (substrate temperature = 500 °C, growth rate = 0.12 ML/s and V/III ratio ⩾ 40) lead to growth of extremely smooth InAs(111)A films, free from hillocks and other 3D surface imperfections. We see a correlation between InAs surface smoothness and optical quality, as measured by photoluminescence spectroscopy. This work establishes InAs(111)A as a platform …

Fair And Efficient Consensus Protocols For Secure Blockchain Applications, Golam Dastoger Bashar

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In blockchain technology, consensus protocols serve as mechanisms to reach agreements among a distributed network of nodes. In this work, we propose three novel protocols for permissioned, healthcare, and supply chain blockchain.

(1) Proof of Queue (PoQ), for private blockchains, combines the lottery strategy of PoET with a specialized round-robin algorithm where each node has an equal chance to become a leader with equal access. PoQ is relatively scalable without any collision. Like PoET, PoQ uses Intel SGX, a Trusted Execution Environment, to generate a secure random waiting time to choose a leader and fairly distribute the leadership role to …

Fire Effects On Soil Properties: Amending Post-Fire Soils With Native Microbial Communities And Biochar To Improve Sagebrush Performance, Sabrina Marie Schuler

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Within the sagebrush steppe, fire has been shown to affect biogeochemical properties and the microbial community composition in soils. However, there is uncertainty about the magnitude and direction of these effects, since they vary by sites that differ in abiotic and biotic conditions. Moreover, differences in post-fire management strategies are likely to mediate the effect of fire on soil properties, thus further compounding this uncertainty. Any changes in soil biogeochemical properties following fire can prevent successful restoration of Artemisia tridentata sp. wyomingensis (sagebrush), leading to variable outcomes of restoration success in the sagebrush steppe. Previous research has shown that addition …

Training Wheels For Web Search: Multi-Perspective Learning To Rank To Support Children's Information Seeking In The Classroom, Garrett Allen

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Bicycle design has not changed for a long time, as they are well-crafted for those that possess the skills to ride, i.e., adults. Those learning to ride, however, often need additional support in the form of training wheels. Searching for information on the Web is much like riding a bicycle, where modern search engines (the bicycle) are optimized for general use and adult users, but lack the functionality to support non-traditional audiences and environments. In this thesis, we introduce a set of training wheels in the form of a learning to rank model as augmentation for standard search engines to …

Water Quality Responses To A Semi-Arid Beaver Meadow In Boise, Idaho, Luise Bayer Winslow

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Beavers have been instrumental in shaping the North American riverine landscape. However, land use change and beaver trapping have caused large decreases in beaver populations, resulting in fundamental changes to river morphology, hydrology, and biogeochemical function. Effective river restoration and remediation of arid western rivers relies on a comprehensive interpretation of how beaver activity influences water quantity and quality. In this study, I compared two stream reaches with and without beaver dams in a semi-arid watershed, to quantify the effects of beaver activity on hydrology and biogeochemistry. Within each reach, I combined dilution gauging and stream tracer experiments to determine …

Void Hunting: Ambient Noise Tomography For Spatio-Temporal Subsurface Imaging And Monitoring In Karst Environments, John B. Paustian

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Karst environments are characterized by voids, i.e. sinkholes and conduits of varying size that arise from the active dissolution of carbonate rock by acidic groundwater. These voids, whether air-, water-, or soil-filled, can be difficult to image using near-surface geophysical methods due to the limited investigation depths of most active-source methods. In addition, due to the significant effort it takes to collect active-source data, investigators are often unable to monitor spatio-temporal variations in the subsurface. The ability to detect, image, and monitor subsurface voids improves the understanding of processes that create and transform voids, a vitally important insight across a …

Fundamental Resonant Frequencies Derived From Shallow Sediment Properties For The Charleston, South Carolina Area, William Dale Schermerhorn

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Large historic earthquakes, low velocity near surface sediments, a poor understanding of earthquake sources, and a growing population base for the Charleston, South Carolina area suggest robust site response and active fault maps are needed. A Boise State University team acquired 14 km of new surface-based seismic data to obtain surface wave dispersion curves and reflection images for the southern isoseismal region of the 1886 earthquake. From these data, I generate shear wave velocity (Vs)-depth profiles through a grid search approach. I integrate my results with other published data to develop a soil thickness and high frequency fundamental resonance maps …

Assessing Controls On Ice Dynamics At Crane Glacier, Antarctic Peninsula Using A Numerical Ice Flow Model, Rainey Aberle

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The widespread retreat of glaciers and the collapse of ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula has been attributed to atmospheric and oceanic warming, which promotes mass loss. However, several glaciers on the eastern peninsula that were buttressed by the Larsen A and B ice shelves prior to collapse in 1995 and 2002, respectively, have been advancing in recent years. This asymmetric pattern of rapid retreat and long-term re-advance is similar to the tidewater glacier cycle, which can occur largely independent of climate forcing. Here, I use a width- and depth-integrated numerical ice flow model to investigate glacier response to ice …

Translating Risk Information To Protective Action: Examining Household Response To Information About Earthquake Hazards And Risk, Carson C. Macpherson-Krutsky

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Natural hazards have been a part of the landscape since its existence, but they are becoming more devastating as they intersect with growing populations and as climate change increases their frequency and intensity. As these changes occur, the need to understand how to reduce disaster impacts becomes paramount. Despite growing concern and increasing costs of disasters over the past decade, household preparedness, which is at the foundation of disaster readiness, has seen little to no improvement. Using two research experiments, we adopt the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM; Lindell & Perry, 2004; 2012) as a framework to investigate what motivates …

Re-Evaluation Of The First Metamorphic P-T Path Using Quig Barometry And Equilibrium Thermodynamics, Sam Couch

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Quartz in garnet (“QuiG”) barometry is a relatively new technique that uses physical properties of minerals to estimate the pressure of garnet nucleation and growth history independent of chemical equilibrium. QuiG barometry was used to determine pressures of garnet growth and compared to thermodynamically calculated P-T conditions for two samples (FH-1M and Z3H) from the Lower Shieferhülle (Formation), Tauern Window, Austria. FH-1M was the first sample for which a P-T path was calculated through inversion of chemical zoning in garnet (Selverstone et al., 1984). Mineral Assemblage Diagrams (MADs) and geothermobarometric techniques were used to determine P-T conditions for garnet nucleation …

Laboratory Measurement Of Electrical And Hydraulic Properties Of Regolith Over Granitic Bedrock, Taylor James Bienvenue

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Characterizing water flux within the critical zone (CZ) is essential for a multitude of studies and applications related to irrigation, drainage, water management, and contaminant transport. Trying to measure water flux in the critical zone, specifically in the subsurface, is difficult due to the associated structural heterogeneity and complex interactions taking place between biological, chemical, and physical processes. Current methods (i.e., inferred from soil suction and soil moisture measurements) to characterize water flux within the critical zone can be time consuming and are not directly related to water flux. Recent literature has provided evidence that self-potential (SP) is a promising …

Dynamic Mass Loss From Greenland's Peripheral Glaciers, Katherine E. Bollen

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

While global glacier mass balance has decreased rapidly over the last two decades, mass loss has been greatest in regions with marine-terminating glaciers. In Greenland, peripheral glaciers and ice caps (GICs) cover only ~5% of Greenland’s area but contributed ~14-20% of the island’s ice mass loss between 2003-2008. Although Greenland GIC’s mass loss due to surface meltwater runoff have been estimated using atmospheric models, mass loss due to changes in ice discharge into surrounding ocean basins (i.e., dynamic mass loss) remains unquantified. Here, we use the flux gate method to estimate discharge from Greenland’s 594 marine-terminating peripheral glaciers between 1985 …

Seismic Imaging Of Active And Ancient Co2 Pathways In The Little Grand Wash Fault, Jonathan Yelton

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the migration behavior of carbon dioxide (CO2) during long-term geological storage is crucial to the success of carbon capture and sequestration technology. I explore p-wave and s-wave seismic properties across the Little Grand Wash fault in east-central Utah, a natural CO2 seep and analogue for a long-failed sequestration site. Travertines dated to at least 113,000 k.y. and geochemical surveys confirm both modern and ancient CO2 leakage along the fault. Outgassing is currently focused in damage zones where the total fluid pressure may reduce the minimum horizontal effective stress. Regional stress changes may be responsible for decadal- to millennial-scale changes …

An Integrative Approach For Environmental Assessment And Water Resources Management Using Direct Current Resistivity (Dc), Geographic Information System (Gis), Remote Sensing, And Gain And Loss Method, Dina Ragab Desouki Abdelmoneim

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Sustainable water resource management is a crucial national and global issue (Currell et al., 2012). In arid areas, groundwater is often the major source of water or at least a crucial supplement to other freshwater resources for agriculture, industry and domestic consumption (Vrba and Renaud, 2016). The complexity associated with groundwater-surface water interactions creates uncertainty about water resource sustainability in semi-arid environments, especially with urbanization and population growth. Flood irrigation in the early 1900s increased the shallow groundwater table in the Treasure Valley (TV), but with increasing irrigation efficiencies, they have been declining since the 1960s with a mean decline …

Exploring Electron-Sink Behaviors Of Molecular Assemblies, Yume Mai

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Metal carbonyl clusters, such as the [Ni₃₂C₆(CO)₃₆]^6- anion, have been documented to display electron-sink phenomena. However, such large clusters suffer from inefficient yields due to their demanding and unreliable synthesis routes. To approach this obstacle, we investigated the electrochemical properties of Fe₂(μ-PPh₂)₂(CO)₆, an organometallic complex known to experience a reversible two-electron transfer process. In this work, we report a modular synthetic strategy for expanding the electron-sink capacity of molecular assemblies by installing Fe₂(μ-PPh₂)₂(CO)₆ redox mediators to arylisocyanide ligands. …

Mafic Explosive Volcanism At Llaima Volcano: 3d X-Ray Microtomography Reconstruction Of Pyroclasts To Constrain Shallow Conduit Processes, Pedro Antonio Valdivia-Munoz

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Mafic eruptions, which are typically effusive to mildly explosive, can produce much stronger explosive eruptions. Eruption style is determined by the ability of gas to escape through the permeable network. If the permeability is sufficiently high to reduce vesicle overpressure during ascent, the volatiles may escape from the magma, inhibiting violent explosive activity. In contrast, if the permeability is sufficiently low to retain the gas phase within the magma during ascent, bubble overpressure may drive magma fragmentation. Rapid ascent rates may induce disequilibrium crystallization, increasing viscosity and explosivity, and have consequences for the geometry of the vesicle network. Quantitative vesicle …

3-D Ambient Noise Tomography Of Llaima Volcano, Chile, Claudia Kristina Rossavik

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Llaima is a glaciated, basaltic-andesitic stratocone in the South-Central Andean Volcanic Zone. It is one of the largest and most active volcanoes in Chile. However, uncertainty remains regarding the depths and geometry of where magma is stored and the routes which it takes towards the Earth's surface. To provide a structural framework for the interpretation of petrological and geochemical data, I apply ambient noise tomography (ANT) to produce a 3-D shear wave velocity (v_s) model of Llaima's magmatic plumbing. The results of this project show slow shear wave velocity anomalies within the upper 8 km of the …

Why Don't You Act Your Age?: Recognizing The Stereotypical 8-12 Year Old Searcher By Their Search Behavior, Michael Green

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Online search engines for children are known to filter retrieved resources based on page complexity, and offer specialized functionality meant to address gaps in search literacy according to a user's age or grade. However, not every searcher grouped by these identifiers displays the same level of text comprehension, or requires the same aid with search. Furthermore, these search engines typically rely on direct feedback to ascertain these identifiers. This reliance on self identification may cause users to accidentally misrepresent themselves. We therefore seek to recognize users from skill based signals rather than utilizing age or grade identifiers, as skill dictates …

Generating Test Inputs From String Constraints With An Automata-Based Solver, Marlin Roberts

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Software testing is an integral part of the software development process. To test certain parts of software, developers need to identify inputs that reach those parts. Data and control dependencies make this a non-trivial task, and as the complexity of software increases it becomes more difficult to manually derive such inputs. Due to complex data manipulations, this process is even more challenging for programs with string inputs, such as security applications. Thus, automated reachability test input generation for string data types is an important research area.

Symbolic Execution is a path-sensitive static program analysis technique that can automatically generate conditions …

Industrial Control System Data Resiliency, Daniel A. Bovard

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis identifies and fortifies against a critical vulnerability in industrial control system (ICS) security. A properly designed ICS security framework consists of a multi-layered approach starting with heavy fortifications in information technology and ending with control information of operational technology. Currently, ICS security frameworks lack visibility and place blind trust in devices at the lowest level of the control hierarchy. Attaining control data visibility at the lowest level of the control hierarchy is critical to increasing the resiliency of an ICS security posture. This thesis demonstrates how this data can be captured at the lowest level of the control …

A Case Study In Representing Scientific Applications (Geoac) Using The Sparse Polyhedral Framework, Ravi Shankar

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Tsunami detection and forecasting is a difficult problem that scientists are trying to tackle. Early path estimation and accurate prediction of the arrival time and size of a tsunami can save lives and help with impact assessment. Tsunami inducing earthquakes cause ground and sea-surface displacements that push up on the atmosphere. This atmospheric disturbance propagates upwards as an acoustic wave and eventually hits the ionosphere. IonoSeis is a software simulation package that leverages satellite-based ionospheric remote-sensing techniques to determine the epicenter of these earthquakes.

The execution time of the ray-tracing component of IonoSeis prevents its use as a real-time modeling …

Modeling Real And Fake News Sharing In Social Networks, Abishai Joy

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Online media is changing the traditional news industry and diminishing the role of journalists, newspapers, and even news channels. This in turn is enhancing the ability of fake news to influence public opinion on important topics. The threat of fake news is quite imminent, as it allows malicious users to share their agenda with a larger audience. Major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc., are making it easy to spread fake news due to the minimal moderation/ fact-checking on these platforms.

This work aims at predicting fake and real news sharing in social media. Specifically, we employ a multi-level …

Into The Unknown: Exploration Of Search Engines' Responses To Users With Depression And Anxiety, Ashlee Milton

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Mental health disorders (MHD) are a rising, yet stigmatized, topic. With statistics reporting that one in five adults in the United States will be afflicted by a MHD in their lifetime, researchers have begun exploring the behavioral nuances that emerge from interactions of these individuals with persuasive technologies, mainly social media. Yet, there is a gap in the analysis pertaining to a persuasive technology that is part of their everyday lives: search engines (SE). Each day, users with MHD embark on information seeking journeys using SE. Every step of the search process for better or worse has the potential to …

Modeling And Analyzing Users' Privacy Disclosure Behavior To Generate Personalized Privacy Policies, A.K.M. Nuhil Mehdy

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Privacy and its importance to society have been studied for centuries. While our understanding and continued theory building to hypothesize how users make privacy disclosure decisions has increased over time, the struggle to find a one-size solution that satisfies the requirements of each individual remains unsolved. Depending on culture, gender, age, and other situational factors, the concept of privacy and users' expectations of how their privacy should be protected varies from person to person. The goal of this dissertation is to design and develop tools and algorithms to support personal privacy management for end-users. The foundation of this research is …

Tukey Morphisms Between Finite Binary Relations, Rhett Barton

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Let A = (A₋, A₊, A) and B = (B₋, B₊, B) be relations. A morphism is a pair of maps φ₋ : B₋ → A₋ and φ₊ : A₊ → B₊ such that for all b ∈ B₋ and a ∈ A₊, φ₋(b)Aa ⟹ bBφ₊(a). We study the existence of morphisms between finite relations. The ultimate goal is to identify the conditions under which morphisms exist. In this thesis …

Actors For The Internet Of Things, Arjun Shukla

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The actor model is a model for concurrent computation, centered around message passing between entities in a system. It is well suited for distributed programming, due to its semantics including very little guarantees or assumptions of reliability. Actor model implementations have grown more widespread in many languages.

The library Akka (written in Scala) is one of the most popular actor libraries. However, Akka is missing some key features. Our goal is to create our own actor library called Aurum, which not only has these features but exhibits higher performance. The new features include easy ways to forge references, configure and …

Assessment Of Icesat-2 Level 3a Products For Snow Depth Estimation In Remote, Mountainous Watersheds, Colten Michael Elkin

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Seasonal snowpack accounts for ~70% of the water supply in the western United States, and measuring snow accumulation and ablation remotely has long been a stated goal of NASA. The 2018 launch of ICESat-2, a spaceborne Lidar system, has offered unparalleled spatial and temporal coverage of mountainous terrain with the potential for unprecedented vertical accuracy. Data from ICESat-2 are used to measure seasonal snow depths using the level-3A ATL08 (land and canopy elevation) product for the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed in southwest Idaho and the ATL06 (land ice elevation) product for Wolverine Creek in the Kenai Mountains of Alaska. The …