Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Estimating The Sediment Flux And Budget For A Data Limited Rift Valley Lake In Ethiopia, Alemu O. Aga, Assefa M. Melesse

Department of Earth and Environment

Information on sediment concentration in rivers is important for the design and management of reservoirs. In this paper, river sediment flux and siltation rate of a rift valley lake basin (Lake Ziway, Ethiopia) was modeled using suspended sediment concentration (SSC) samples from four rivers and lake outlet stations. Both linear and non-linear least squares log–log regression methods were used to develop the model. The best-fit model was tested and evaluated qualitatively by time-series plots, quantitatively by using watershed model evaluation statistics, and validated by calculating the prediction error. Sediment yield (SY) of ungauged rivers were assessed by developing and using …

Parallel Sampling-Pipeline For Indefinite Stream Of Heterogeneous Graphs Using Opencl For Fpgas, Muhammad Usman Tariq, Fahad Saeed

School of Computing and Information Sciences

In the field of data science, a huge amount of data, generally represented as graphs, needs to be processed and analyzed. It is of utmost importance that this data be processed swiftly and efficiently to save time and energy. The volume and velocity of data, along with irregular access patterns in graph data structures, pose challenges in terms of analysis and processing. Further, a big chunk of time and energy is spent on analyzing these graphs on large compute clusters and/or data-centers. Filtering and refining of data using graph sampling techniques are one of the most effective ways to speed …

Rip Current Generation, Flow Characteristics And Implications For Beach Safety In South Florida, Stephen B. Leatherman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rip currents are the most dangerous hazard at surf beaches. Rip currents in South Florida have previously not been studied. Beach profiles for three Florida beaches (Miami Beach, Lido Beach, Sarasota, and Pensacola Beach) and one Georgia beach (South Cumberland Island) were chosen for surveying because of their variable sand bar heights. Rip current hazard at each beach was assessed by lifeguard rip rescue and drowning statistics. A relationship was found between sand bar height, beach slope and rip current hazard.

Rip current measurements in South Florida, which involved utilizing GPS drifters, laser rangefinder and drone-imaged fluorescent tracer dye, showed …

A Model-Based Ai-Driven Test Generation System, Dionny Santiago

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Achieving high software quality today involves manual analysis, test planning, documentation of testing strategy and test cases, and development of automated test scripts to support regression testing. This thesis is motivated by the opportunity to bridge the gap between current test automation and true test automation by investigating learning-based solutions to software testing. We present an approach that combines a trainable web component classifier, a test case description language, and a trainable test generation and execution system that can learn to generate new test cases. Training data was collected and hand-labeled across 7 systems, 95 web pages, and 17,360 elements. …

Exploring The Neural Mechanisms Of Physics Learning, Jessica E. Bartley

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a series of neuroimaging investigations and achievements that strive to deepen and broaden our understanding of human problem solving and physics learning. Neuroscience conceives of dynamic relationships between behavior, experience, and brain structure and function, but how neural changes enable human learning across classroom instruction remains an open question. At the same time, physics is a challenging area of study in which introductory students regularly struggle to achieve success across university instruction. Research and initiatives in neuroeducation promise a new understanding into the interactions between biology and education, including the neural mechanisms of learning and development. These …

Aptamer-Based Assay For Detection Of Ochratoxin A, Amanda Nicole Bartley

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a potent mycotoxin found in a wide range of agricultural products that has been linked to mitochondrial damage and renal disease. The standard methods for OTA analysis currently rely on the use of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to fluorescence detection or mass spectrometry. Toward a highthroughput analysis of OTA, a single-stranded DNA aptamer, modified with a fluorophore, coupled to a complementary sequence, modified with a FRET-based quencher that dissociates in the presence of the target toxin, is proposed. In order to integrate “target trapping,” aptamer immobilization methods were explored to mediate interference issues. Assays were …

A Method And Tool For Finding Concurrency Bugs Involving Multiple Variables With Application To Modern Distributed Systems, Zhuo Sun

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Concurrency bugs are extremely hard to detect due to huge interleaving space. They are happening in the real world more often because of the prevalence of multi-threaded programs taking advantage of multi-core hardware, and microservice based distributed systems moving more and more applications to the cloud. As the most common non-deadlock concurrency bugs, atomicity violations are studied in many recent works, however, those methods are applicable only to single-variable atomicity violation, and don't consider the specific challenge in distributed systems that have both pessimistic and optimistic concurrency control. This dissertation presents a tool using model checking to predict atomicity violation …

Multi-Robot Coordination And Scheduling For Deactivation & Decommissioning, Sebastian A. Zanlongo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large quantities of high-level radioactive waste were generated during WWII. This waste is being stored in facilities such as double-shell tanks in Washington, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Due to the dangerous nature of radioactive waste, these facilities must undergo periodic inspections to ensure that leaks are detected quickly. In this work, we provide a set of methodologies to aid in the monitoring and inspection of these hazardous facilities. This allows inspection of dangerous regions without a human operator, and for the inspection of locations where a person would not be physically able to enter.

First, …

Automatic Extraction Of Narrative Structure From Long Form Text, Joshua Daniel Eisenberg

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Automatic understanding of stories is a long-time goal of artificial intelligence and natural language processing research communities. Stories literally explain the human experience. Understanding our stories promotes the understanding of both individuals and groups of people; various cultures, societies, families, organizations, governments, and corporations, to name a few. People use stories to share information. Stories are told –by narrators– in linguistic bundles of words called narratives.

My work has given computers awareness of narrative structure. Specifically, where are the boundaries of a narrative in a text. This is the task of determining where a narrative begins and ends, a …

Polarization Observables For Γp −> K+Λ At Photon Energies Up To 5.45 Gev, Shankar Dayal Adhikari

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Excited nucleon states are established as an important milestone to understand quantum chromodynamics in the non-perturbative region. Even after decades of study, not all of the excited states predicted by different theoretical approaches have been verified. The disparity between the predicted states and the verified states is known as the “missing baryon problem". The verified states were mostly established using pion beam data or through Nπ decay channels, but are not sufficient to address the missing baryon problem. In recent years, new experiments were conducted worldwide at CLAS in Jefferson Lab, ELSA in Bonn, MAMI in Mainz, and so on, …

A Mathematical Framework On Machine Learning: Theory And Application, Bin Shi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation addresses the research topics of machine learning outlined below. We developed the theory about traditional first-order algorithms from convex opti- mization and provide new insights in nonconvex objective functions from machine learning. Based on the theory analysis, we designed and developed new algorithms to overcome the difficulty of nonconvex objective and to accelerate the speed to obtain the desired result. In this thesis, we answer the two questions: (1) How to design a step size for gradient descent with random initialization? (2) Can we accelerate the current convex optimization algorithms and improve them into nonconvex objective? For application, …

A Mixed Method Study Of Prospective Teachers' Epistemic Beliefs And Web Evaluation Strategies Concerning Hoax Websites, Jennifer Coccaro-Pons

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teachers need to be equipped with the tools necessary to evaluate content on the Internet and determine if it is a credible source, or a hoax website since they are expected to instruct and prepare students on how to evaluate the sites which is now a relevant phenomenon. The purpose of the mixed‑method study was to obtain an understanding of the web evaluation strategies of prospective teachers regarding the evaluation of hoax websites and how their epistemic beliefs may influence their evaluation. Another aspect of this study was to find out what outcomes resulted from providing guidance, or not to …

Game-Theoretic And Machine-Learning Techniques For Cyber-Physical Security And Resilience In Smart Grid, Longfei Wei

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The smart grid is the next-generation electrical infrastructure utilizing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), whose architecture is evolving from a utility-centric structure to a distributed Cyber-Physical System (CPS) integrated with a large-scale of renewable energy resources. However, meeting reliability objectives in the smart grid becomes increasingly challenging owing to the high penetration of renewable resources and changing weather conditions. Moreover, the cyber-physical attack targeted at the smart grid has become a major threat because millions of electronic devices interconnected via communication networks expose unprecedented vulnerabilities, thereby increasing the potential attack surface. This dissertation is aimed at developing novel game-theoretic and …

Elemental Analysis Of Adhesive Tapes By Laser-Based Methods, Claudia Martinez Lopez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adhesive tapes are a common type of evidence involved in violent crimes and national security threats. This research evaluated the utility of LA-ICP-MS and LIBS for the characterization of the trace elemental signature in adhesive tapes for forensic comparisons. LA-ICP-MS and LIBS methods were developed, for the first time, for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of adhesive tapes.

The backings of 90 black electrical tapes, previously characterized by conventional techniques (physical examination, IR, Py-GC-MS, and SEM-EDS), were analyzed by LA-ICP-MS to evaluate the ability of the technique to discriminate samples originating from different sources and to associate pieces of tapes …

Unrefined Humic Substances As A Potential Low-Cost Remediation Method For Groundwater Contaminated With Uranium In Acidic Conditions, Hansell Gonzalez Raymat

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic activities such as uranium mining and milling, nuclear weapons production, and nuclear reprocessing have left a legacy of groundwater and soil contaminated with uranium that needs to be addressed. Therefore, developing new remediation technologies to sequester uranium in situ is crucial. The objective of the study was to determine if low-cost commercially available unrefined humic substances, such as Huma-K, can be used to facilitate uranium sorption to minerals in soil and sediment. Sediments from the saturated zone beneath the F-Area seepage basins at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina were used for the present study. The SRS …

Fundamental Mechanistic Studies On The Ultrasonic Treatment Of Problematic Water Pollutants And Toxins, Danni Cui

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Problematic organic pollutants in industrial and drinking water sources are a leading cause of water scarcity. Among the advanced oxidation processes, sonolytic degradation has received considerable attention because it combines oxidation processes initiated by reactive oxidant species and a pyrolysis processes associated with the high temperatures produced during cavitation.

The degradation of the semi-volatile compound, MCHM, was rapid and followed pseudo-first order kinetics. The Freundlich kinetic model for heterogeneous systems was successfully applied to describe the non-uniform distribution of MCHM at the gas-liquid interface during ultrasonic treatment. Two primary products were confirmed by GC-MS. Computational studies were also applied to …

Mapping Of The Chromium And Iron Pyrazolate Landscape, Jessica Maria Lopez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of this project is to synthesize the first family of polynuclear chromium pyrazolate complexes. Complexity in analysis of the experimental magnetic data of multinuclear complexes arises from their (2S +1)^N microstates, where S is the spin of each metal center and N is the number of metal centers. For example, high-spin (HS)-Fe^III₃ has 216 microstates and HS-Fe^III₈ ≈ 1.7x10⁶ microstates (S= 5/2). However, complexes with chromium(III) S = 3/2 will have a noticeable reduction of microstates. Mononuclear complexes with formula [mer-CrCl₃(pzH*)₃] (pz*H = pyrazole, 3-Me-pzH, …

An Investigation Into The Adduct Forming Potential Of Drugs Of Abuse With Peptides And Proteins, Richard Allen Gilliland

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hemoglobin and serum albumin, two prevalent proteins in human blood, contain unbound cysteine thiol moieties, creating a nucleophilic site with the potential for covalent modification by reactive chemical species. These covalent modifications, called “adducts”, are stable entities that accumulate during acute and chronic exposure and remain covalently bound for the life-span of the protein. Despite their current use as exposure markers for a variety of compounds, the use of adducts in assessing exposure to drugs of abuse has not yet been explored. The goal of this work was to examine the in vitro adduct forming capability of selected drugs of …

Forensic Toxicological Screening And Confirmation Of 800+ Novel Psychoactive Substances By Lc-Qtof-Ms And 2d-Lc Analysis, Melanie N. Eckberg

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) represent a great challenge to toxicologists due to the ability of illicit drug manufacturers to alter NPS chemical structures quickly and with ease to circumvent legislation regulating their use. Each time a new structure is introduced, there is a possibility that it has not been previously recorded in law enforcement or scientific databases. Many toxicology laboratories use targeted analytical methods that rely on libraries of known compounds to identify drugs in samples. However, these libraries do not include large numbers of NPS which could result in non-identification or detection.

High-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) has been suggested …

Characterization Of The Uranium-Bearing Phases Produced By Novel Remediation Technologies For Sequestration Of Mobile Radiological Contaminants In The Hanford 200 Area Vadose Zone, Robert Michael Lapierre

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Of the many toxic chemicals released into the Hanford vadose zone over the decades of nuclear weapons production, uranium has emerged as a contaminant of significant interest. The ammonia gas injection remediation method has been identified as a promising approach towards mitigating the risks to the ecosystem by limiting the mobility of the radionuclide in the vadose zone. The remediation method was replicated using synthetic porewater solutions with a range of constituent concentrations equal to that of the Hanford 200 Area vadose zone. The uranium-bearing products of the remediation method were characterized using kinetic phosphorescence analysis for aqueous uranium, scanning …

Interaction Of High Molecular Weight Compounds With A, Β-Unsaturated Carbonyl Moiety With Mammalian And Drosophila Melanogaster Thioredoxin Reductase, Anupama Tuladhar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thioredoxin system is the major cellular reductant system present in the cell, whose role is to maintain cellular redox homeostasis. It does this in part, by regulating the activity of many other enzymes including ribonucleotide reductase, which is essential for DNA synthesis. It also acts as an antioxidant, reducing destructive reactive oxygen species. The thioredoxin system is comprised of thioredoxin (Trx) which reduces target protein disulfide bridges by thiol-disulfide exchange and thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) which reduces Trx back to its active state. Thioredoxin reductase is a common target for many cancer drugs including cisplatin and auranofin. Recently we have …

Cultural Politics Of Community-Based Conservation In The Buffer Zone Of Chitwan National Park, Nepal, Yogesh Dongol

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation research examines the socio-economic and political effects of community-based conservation initiatives within the Bagmara buffer zone community forests of Chitwan National Park, Nepal. In particular, the study investigates the role of buffer zones creation in structuring the way rural property rights have been defined, negotiated, and contested, in reinforcing or reducing patterns of ethnic dominance and exclusion, and in influencing how cultural identities are constituted and renegotiated. Using a political ecology framework with a specific focus on theoretical concepts of environmentality and territorialization, I conducted 12 months ethnographic and quantitative survey field research in the buffer zone communities …

Design Of Low Impact Development And Green Infrastructure At Flood Prone Areas In The City Of Miami Beach, Florida, Usa, Noura Alsarawi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the effectiveness of Low Impact Development Infrastructure (LIDI) and Green Infrastructure (GI) in reducing flooding resulting from heavy rainfall events and sea-level rise, and in improving stormwater quality in the City of Miami Beach (CMB). InfoSWMM was used to simulate the 5, 10, and 100-year, 24-hour storm events, total suspended solids (TSS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) loadings, and in evaluating the potential of selected LIDI and GI solutions in North Shore neighborhood.

Post-development results revealed a decrease of 48%, 46%, and 39% in runoff, a decrease of 57%, 60%, and 62% in …

A Simplified Secure Programming Platform For Internet Of Things Devices, Halim Burak Yesilyurt

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) revolution has introduced many useful applications that are utilized in our daily lives. Users can program these devices in order to develop their own IoT applications; however, the platforms and languages that are used during development are abounding, complicated, and time-consuming. The software solution provided in this thesis, PROVIZ+, is a secure sensor application development software suite that helps users create sophisticated and secure IoT applications with little software and hardware experience. Moreover, a simple and efficient domain-specific programming language, namely Panther language, was designed for IoT application development to unify existing programming languages. …

The Effect Of Microbial Growth On The Spectral Induced Polarization Response In Hanford Vadose Zone Sediment In The Presence Of Autunite, Alejandro Garcia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Uranium contamination of the subsurface remains a significant problem at the Department of Energy Hanford site. A series of column experiments were conducted on Hanford sediment saturated with simulated groundwater to study the effects of aqueous bicarbonate and microbial growth on the mobility of Uranium. Spectral induced polarization (SIP) measurements in the columns were conducted concurrently with pore water sampling in order to monitor changes occurring inside the sediment after the initiation of microbial growth induced by glucose injection. The microbial growth caused significant increases in the real component of the complex conductivity and is the result of ion release …

Aptamer Sensors For Drugs Of Abuse And Medical Biomarkers: Design, Engineering And Application In Complex Samples, Daniel Roncancio

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aptamers are short oligonucleotide sequences (DNA or RNA) capable of high affinity and specific binding to a molecule or a family of molecules. Aptamers are lower in cost and exhibit higher reproducibility when compared to antibodies and thus are well-suited for recognition and detection of small molecular targets such as drugs of abuse and small medical biomarkers. While aptamers have been extensively utilized for development of small molecule sensors, several limitations prevent measurements of complex or real-world samples. This dissertation describes methods, technologies, and assays that were developed with the goal of producing and/or improving aptamer-based sensors for target detection …

Evaluating Changes To Natural Variability On A Warming Globe In Cmip5 Models, Heather Vazquez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Global mean surface temperatures (GMST) warmed in the early 20th century, experienced a mid-century lull, and warmed again steadily until 1997. Observations at the turn of the 21st century have revealed another period of quiescent warming of GMSTs from 1998 to 2012, thus prompting the notion of a global warming “hiatus”. The warming hiatus occurred concurrently with steadily increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, and retreating arctic sea ice. The occurrence of the warming hiatus suggests that natural variability continues to be a sizable contributor to modern climate change and implies that energy is rearranged or changed within …

Environmental Factors Controlling The Distributions Of Botryococcus Braunii (A, B And L) Biomarkers In A Subtropical Freshwater Wetland, Ding He, Bernd R.T. Simoneit, Rudolf Jaffe

FCE LTER Journal Articles

Here we report the molecular biomarker co-occurrence of three different races of Botryococcus braunii (B. braunii) in the freshwater wetland ecosystem of the Florida Everglades, USA. Thespecific biomarkers include C32–C34 botryococcenes for race B, C27–C32 n-alkadienes and n-alkatrienes for race A, and lycopadiene for race L. The n-alkadienes and n-alkatrienes were present up to 3.1 and 69.5 µg/g dry weight (dw), while lycopadiene was detected in lower amounts up to 3.0 and 1.5 µg/g dw in periphyton and floc samples, respectively. Nutrient concentrations (P and N) did not significantly correlate with the abundances of …

Qcd Process In Few Nucleon Systems, Dhiraj Maheswari

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the important issues of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) - the fundamental theory of strong interaction, is the understanding of the role of the quark-gluon interactions in the processes involving nuclear targets. One direction in such studies is to explore the onset of the quark gluon degrees of freedom in nuclear dynamics. The other direction is using the nuclear targets as a “micro-labs” in studies of the QCD processes involving protons and neutrons bound in the nucleus. In the proposed research, we work in both directions considering high energy photo- and electro-production reactions involving deuteron and 3 He nuclei.

In …

Developing Ocean Color Algorithm Using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Modis) Sensor For Shallow Coastal Water Bodies, Mohd Manzar Abbas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyses the spatial and temporal variability of chlorophyll-a in Chesapeake Bay; assesses the performance of Ocean Color 3M (OC3M) algorithm; and develops a novel algorithm to estimate chlorophyll-a for coastal shallow water. The OC3M algorithm yields an accurate estimate of chlorophyll-a concentration for deep ocean water (RMSE=0.016), but it failed to perform well in the coastal water system (RMSE=23.17) of Chesapeake Bay. A novel algorithm was developed which utilizes green and red bands of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. The novel algorithm derived the chlorophyll-a concentration more accurately in Chesapeake Bay (RMSE=4.20) than the OC3M algorithm. …