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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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2010

Virginia Commonwealth University

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Articles 1 - 30 of 88

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Fitting A Distribution To Catastrophic Event, Ebenezer Osei Dec 2010

Fitting A Distribution To Catastrophic Event, Ebenezer Osei

Theses and Dissertations

Statistics is a branch of mathematics which is heavily employed in the area of Actuarial Mathematics. This thesis first reviews the importance of statistical distributions in the analysis of insurance problems and the applications of Statistics in the area of risk and insurance. The Normal, Log-normal, Pareto, Gamma, standard Beta, Frechet, Gumbel, Weibull, Poisson, binomial, and negative binomial distributions are looked at and the importance of these distributions in general insurance is also emphasized. A careful review of literature is to provide practitioners in the general insurance industry with statistical tools which are of immediate application in the industry. These …


Factors Influencing Macroinvertebrate Diversity And Community Composition In Riverine Freshwater Rock Pools, Chtaura Jackson Dec 2010

Factors Influencing Macroinvertebrate Diversity And Community Composition In Riverine Freshwater Rock Pools, Chtaura Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

I examined a system of 378-riverine rock pools situated along the James River in Richmond, Virginia, to uncover the factors influencing their macroinvertebrate diversity and community composition. I characterized (total = 60) the physical characteristics, water quality, hydrology, and community assemblages in July 2009 for a subset of pools. I examined whether selected environmental factors (pH, nearest neighbor distance, depth, surface area and inundation height) were related to macroinvertebrate diversity and community composition. Species richness and total abundance of all taxa increased with pool pH and surface area. Ordination indicates that nearest neighbor distance (NND) and pH varied significantly among …


Phytoremediation Of Copper Contaminated Waste Water Using Lemna Minor, Mark Apelt Nov 2010

Phytoremediation Of Copper Contaminated Waste Water Using Lemna Minor, Mark Apelt

Theses and Dissertations

The use of natural remediation methods to remove contaminants from waste water is becoming more popular. Plants have been used for several decades, yet their use for municipal waste water contaminated by heavy metals is limited to a few studies which focus on the Mercury and Chromium (Bennicelli, et.al, 2004). This study specifically attempted to determine the viability for using Lemna minor to remediate municipally generated wastewater contaminated with copper. The study used 100 ml samples of wastewater, artificially spiked with 8 mg/L of copper sulfate and seeded with approximately 100 Lemna minor fronds. Each treatment was repeated 15 times …


Inferential Methods For High-Throughput Methylation Data, Maria Capparuccini Nov 2010

Inferential Methods For High-Throughput Methylation Data, Maria Capparuccini

Theses and Dissertations

The role of abnormal DNA methylation in the progression of disease is a growing area of research that relies upon the establishment of sound statistical methods. The common method for declaring there is differential methylation between two groups at a given CpG site, as summarized by the difference between proportions methylated db=b1-b2, has been through use of a Filtered Two Sample t-test, using the recommended filter of 0.17 (Bibikova et al., 2006b). In this dissertation, we performed a re-analysis of the data used in recommending the threshold by fitting a mixed-effects ANOVA model. It was determined that the 0.17 filter …


Power And Sample Size For Three-Level Cluster Designs, Tina Cunningham Nov 2010

Power And Sample Size For Three-Level Cluster Designs, Tina Cunningham

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few decades, Cluster Randomized Trials (CRT) have become a design of choice in many research areas. One of the most critical issues in planning a CRT is to ensure that the study design is sensitive enough to capture the intervention effect. The assessment of power and sample size in such studies is often faced with many challenges due to several methodological difficulties. While studies on power and sample size for cluster designs with one and two levels are abundant, the evaluation of required sample size for three-level designs has been generally overlooked. First, the nesting effect introduces …


Allocating Homeland Security Screening Resources Using Knapsack Problem Models, Rebecca Dreiding Oct 2010

Allocating Homeland Security Screening Resources Using Knapsack Problem Models, Rebecca Dreiding

Theses and Dissertations

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the federal government is focused on homeland security and the fight against terrorism. This thesis addresses the idea of terrorist groups smuggling nuclear weapons through the borders of the United States. Security screening decisions are analyzed within maritime and aviation domains using discrete optimization models, specifically knapsack problems. The focus of the maritime chapters involves a risk-based approach for prescreening intelligence classifications for primary and secondary screening decisions given limited budget and resources. Results reveal that screening decisions are dependent on prescreening classification and the efficacy of the screening technologies. The screening decisions …


Stereotype Logit Models For High Dimensional Data, Andre Williams Oct 2010

Stereotype Logit Models For High Dimensional Data, Andre Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Gene expression studies are of growing importance in the field of medicine. In fact, subtypes within the same disease have been shown to have differing gene expression profiles (Golub et al., 1999). Often, researchers are interested in differentiating a disease by a categorical classification indicative of disease progression. For example, it may be of interest to identify genes that are associated with progression and to accurately predict the state of progression using gene expression data. One challenge when modeling microarray gene expression data is that there are more genes (variables) than there are observations. In addition, the genes usually demonstrate …


Electronic Structure Based Classification Of Neurotransmitters And Related Drugs, Amrita Jha Oct 2010

Electronic Structure Based Classification Of Neurotransmitters And Related Drugs, Amrita Jha

Theses and Dissertations

A fundamental understanding of the relationship between structure and activity of neurotransmitters in the human brain is of vital importance for the design targeted drugs. Using density functional theory and hybrid exchange correlation energy functionals we have studied the structure-activity-relationships of some important neurotransmitters and selected drugs by calculating their absolute hardness (η) and absolute electronegativity (χ). A plot of the η- χ diagram allowed us to assign them into three distinct groups, namely, (i) Acetylcholine analogs (positively charged structure), (ii) GABA analogs (zwitterionic structures) and (iii) monoamines. The results suggest that brain stem is chemically soft because of distribution …


Making Decisions About Screening Cargo Containers For Nuclear Threats Using Decision Analysis And Optimization, Jamie Dauberman Aug 2010

Making Decisions About Screening Cargo Containers For Nuclear Threats Using Decision Analysis And Optimization, Jamie Dauberman

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most pressing concerns in homeland security is the illegal passing of weapons-grade nuclear material through the borders of the United States. If terrorists can gather the materials needed to construct a nuclear bomb or radiological dispersion device (RDD, i.e., dirty bomb) while inside the United States, the consequences would be devastating. Preventing plutonium, highly enriched uranium (HEU), tritium gas or other materials that can be used to construct a nuclear weapon from illegally entering the United States is an area of vital concern. There are enormous economic consequences when our nation's port security system is compromised. Interdicting …


Ribosomal Synthesis Of N-Methylated Peptides, Sara Ahadi Jul 2010

Ribosomal Synthesis Of N-Methylated Peptides, Sara Ahadi

Theses and Dissertations

Natural peptide products isolated from various organisms often contain N-methylated backbones. Such a modification of backbone of the peptide changes its conformational rigidity. This modification improves the biological properties of the peptide, such as improved target affinity, proteolytic stability or membrane permeability. Therefore synthesis of N-methylated peptide libraries is valuable in screening for drug-like peptides suitable for therapeutic uses. Protein synthesis using recombinant elements (PURE) and Flexizyme were used in order to reassign specific codons to N-methyl amino acids. mRNA-dependent translation system enable us to make our desired peptides with N-methyl amino acids. This technology is a convenient tool for …


Adsorption Studies By Pulsed Streaming Potentials In Microfluidic Channels, Thutrang Nguyen Jul 2010

Adsorption Studies By Pulsed Streaming Potentials In Microfluidic Channels, Thutrang Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

In this work, an instrument for measuring pulsed streaming potentials was constructed and optimized for analytical and teaching applications. This thesis is divided in three chapters, the first one deals with the construction of the instrument, the second describes a microfluidic experiment designed for undergraduate and high school students using this instrument, and the third one shows an application of pulsed streaming potential measurements in the detection of heparin. Streaming potential is the electric field generated when a liquid is forced to flow by a pressure gradient through a channel or other stationary charged surfaces.1,2 These measurements were done in …


Synthesis, Functionalization And Characterization Of Dual Mode Nanoparticles For Biomedical Applications, Farah Radwan Jul 2010

Synthesis, Functionalization And Characterization Of Dual Mode Nanoparticles For Biomedical Applications, Farah Radwan

Theses and Dissertations

Three different approaches were used to prepare dual mode nanoparticles using a previously described reverse micelle technique. Superparamagnetic Fe@FeOx core shell nanoparticles were chosen to be the magnetic component for all three dual mode systems. In the first type of particles, 2- amino-1,3- propane diol (APD) was used as a functionalization ligand to stabilize the surface of the particles and its functional amino group also provided a binding site for the attachment of a fluorescent probe. The TEM analysis showed that the APD coated particles have a size range of 8-13 nm while XPS and MALDI measurements confirmed the presence …


Core-Shell Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Design, And Characterization, Kyler Carroll Jul 2010

Core-Shell Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Design, And Characterization, Kyler Carroll

Theses and Dissertations

The design of core/shell nanoparticles is of great interest for a wide range of applications. The primary focus of this dissertation is on the design and optimization of two synthetic routes. The first one is an aqueous reduction method using sodium borohydride and sodium citrate. This method was extended to design two types of core/shell nanoparticles, both of which have many applications in bio-sensing, magnetic resonance imaging, and magnetically guided SERS for the identification of environmental threats. The first, Fe/Ag core/shell nanoparticles were designed using a novel one-pot method by varying the AgNO3 addition time in the system. For …


Impact Of Nickel Doping On Hydrogen Storage In Porous Metal-Organic Frameworks, Tanushree Banerjee Jul 2010

Impact Of Nickel Doping On Hydrogen Storage In Porous Metal-Organic Frameworks, Tanushree Banerjee

Theses and Dissertations

A supply of clean, carbon neutral and sustainable energy is the most scientific and technical challenge that humanity is facing in the 21st century. Though there is enough fossil fuels available for a few centuries, their use would increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. This would lead to global warming and may pose serious threats such as rising of sea level, change in hydrological cycle, etc. Hence there is a need for an alternative source of fuel that is clean and sustainable. Among the many resources considered as an alternative power source, hydrogen is considered one of the …


An Inferential Framework For Network Hypothesis Tests: With Applications To Biological Networks, Phillip Yates Jun 2010

An Inferential Framework For Network Hypothesis Tests: With Applications To Biological Networks, Phillip Yates

Theses and Dissertations

The analysis of weighted co-expression gene sets is gaining momentum in systems biology. In addition to substantial research directed toward inferring co-expression networks on the basis of microarray/high-throughput sequencing data, inferential methods are being developed to compare gene networks across one or more phenotypes. Common gene set hypothesis testing procedures are mostly confined to comparing average gene/node transcription levels between one or more groups and make limited use of additional network features, e.g., edges induced by significant partial correlations. Ignoring the gene set architecture disregards relevant network topological comparisons and can result in familiar n<


Mechanistic Studies On The Electrochemistry Of Proton Coupled Electron Transfer And The Influence Of Hydrogen Bonding, Timothy Alligrant Jun 2010

Mechanistic Studies On The Electrochemistry Of Proton Coupled Electron Transfer And The Influence Of Hydrogen Bonding, Timothy Alligrant

Theses and Dissertations

This research has investigated proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) of quinone/hydroquinone and other simple organic PCET species for the purpose of furthering the knowledge of the thermodynamic and kinetic effects due to reduction and oxidation of such systems. Each of these systems were studied involving the addition of various acid/base chemistries to influence the thermodynamics and kinetics upon electron transfer. It is the expectation that the advancement of the knowledge of acid/base catalysis in electrochemistry gleaned from these studies might be applied in fuel cell research, chemical synthesis, the study of enzymes within biological systems or to simply advance the knowledge …


Characterization Of Stabilized Palladium Nanocatalysts, Meghann Broderick Jun 2010

Characterization Of Stabilized Palladium Nanocatalysts, Meghann Broderick

Theses and Dissertations

Metal nanoparticles have received much interest for their application in catalysis due to high surface-to-volume ratios resulting in more available active sites. Ideally these catalysts are heterogeneous and allow for facile separation from the catalytic reaction mixture making them ideal for industrial application. Dispersed metal nanoparticles are explored due to their high reactivity in solution and are stabilized by surfactants and polymers. However, it is difficult to determine whether or not a catalyst is truly heterogeneous as a certain degree of leaching from the metal nanoparticle is inevitable. Determining the mechanisms involved in nanocatalysis is also a challenge. In this …


A Case Study Of Network Design For Middle East Water Distribution, Rachel Bullene May 2010

A Case Study Of Network Design For Middle East Water Distribution, Rachel Bullene

Theses and Dissertations

The Middle Eastern region encompassing Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories (West Bank and Gaza) is an arid region with fast growing populations. Adequate and equitable access to water for all the people of the region is crucial to the future of Middle East peace. However, the current water distribution system not only fails to provide an adequate and equitable allocation of water, but also results adverse impacts on the environment. This project involves building a mathematical model to aid decision-makers in designing an optimal water distribution network. A new method for incorporating uncertainty in optimization that is based on …


An Empirical Approach To Evaluating Sufficient Similarity: Utilization Of Euclidean Distance As A Similarity Measure, Scott Marshall May 2010

An Empirical Approach To Evaluating Sufficient Similarity: Utilization Of Euclidean Distance As A Similarity Measure, Scott Marshall

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals are exposed to chemical mixtures while carrying out everyday tasks, with unknown risk associated with exposure. Given the number of resulting mixtures it is not economically feasible to identify or characterize all possible mixtures. When complete dose-response data are not available on a (candidate) mixture of concern, EPA guidelines define a similar mixture based on chemical composition, component proportions and expert biological judgment (EPA, 1986, 2000). Current work in this literature is by Feder et al. (2009), evaluating sufficient similarity in exposure to disinfection by-products of water purification using multivariate statistical techniques and traditional hypothesis testing. The work of …


Density Functional Studies Of The Stability Of Clusters, Penee Clayborne May 2010

Density Functional Studies Of The Stability Of Clusters, Penee Clayborne

Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical studies using the Kohn-Sham density functional formalism have been carried out to identify and investigate the stability of a variety of atomic clusters for their use in cluster assembled materials. The stable behavior found in a cluster system provides a way to classify inorganic clusters. The clusters in this study can be categorized in one of the following, jellium, all-metal aromatic, Zintl analogue or as a covalent metal-carbide. By understanding the electronic structure and ultimately the stable nature of a cluster first, it is proposed one can construct assemblies based on the stable cluster. The methodology presented is a …


Cost And Accuracy Comparisons In Medical Testing Using Sequential Testing Strategies, Anwar Ahmed May 2010

Cost And Accuracy Comparisons In Medical Testing Using Sequential Testing Strategies, Anwar Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

The practice of sequential testing is followed by the evaluation of accuracy, but often not by the evaluation of cost. This research described and compared three sequential testing strategies: believe the negative (BN), believe the positive (BP) and believe the extreme (BE), the latter being a less-examined strategy. All three strategies were used to combine results of two medical tests to diagnose a disease or medical condition. Descriptions of these strategies were provided in terms of accuracy (using the maximum receiver operating curve or MROC) and cost of testing (defined as the proportion of subjects who need 2 tests to …


Thermodynamics Of Modified Theories Of Gravity, Aric Hackebill May 2010

Thermodynamics Of Modified Theories Of Gravity, Aric Hackebill

Theses and Dissertations

Einstein’s equations are derived by following Jacobson’s thermodynamic method. It is seen that a family of possible field equations exist which satisfy the thermodynamic argument. Modified theories of gravity are addressed as possible candidates for replacing dark matter as an explanation for anomalous cosmological phenomena. Many of the proposed modified theories are not powerful enough to explain the currently observed phenomena and are rejected as viable theories of gravity. A surviving candidate, TeVeS, is further analyzed under the aforementioned thermodynamic argument to check for its consistency with thermodynamics.


Analysis Of Medical Images By Colonies Of Prehending Entities, Rebecca Smith May 2010

Analysis Of Medical Images By Colonies Of Prehending Entities, Rebecca Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of emergent behavior is difficult to define, but can be considered as higher-level activity created by the individual actions of a population of simple agents. A potential means to model such behavior has been previously developed using Alfred North Whitehead's concept of Actual Entities. In computational form, actual entities are agents which evolve over time in response to interactions with their environment via the process of prehension. This occurs within the context of a Colony of Prehending Entities, a framework for implementation of AE concepts. This thesis explores the practical application of this framework in analysis of medical …


Theoretical Investigation Of The Structures And Stability Of Gas Phase Neutral And Cationic Tixoy Clusters., Baljeet Kaur May 2010

Theoretical Investigation Of The Structures And Stability Of Gas Phase Neutral And Cationic Tixoy Clusters., Baljeet Kaur

Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical investigation of the structure and stability of neutral and cationic TixOy cluster series (where y =2x-1, 2x, 2x+1) have been performed. The lowest lying structures for the neutral clusters are usually found in the singlet state. Generally, in bulk and in the case of the neutral TixOy clusters, the 2x cluster series is relatively more abundant than the 2x-1 and the 2x+1 cluster series. But in the case of cationic TixOy clusters, the 2x-1 series is more abundant. To understand the origin of the stability of the TixO2x-1+ clusters, we use density functional theory within the NRLMOL set of …


Domination In Benzenoids, Nisreen Bukhary May 2010

Domination In Benzenoids, Nisreen Bukhary

Theses and Dissertations

A benzenoid is a molecule that can be represented as a graph. This graph is a fragment of the hexagon lattice. A dominating set $D$ in a graph $G$ is a set of vertices such that each vertex of the graph is either in $D$ or adjacent to a vertex in $D$. The domination number $\gamma=\gamma(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the size of a minimum dominating set. We will find formulas and bounds for the domination number of various special benzenoids, namely, linear chains $L(h)$, triangulenes $T_k$, and parallelogram benzenoids $B_{p,q}$. The domination ratio of a graph $G$ is …


The Axiom Of Choice, Cristian Allen May 2010

The Axiom Of Choice, Cristian Allen

Theses and Dissertations

We will discuss the 9th axiom of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with choice, which is often abbreviated ZFC, since it includes the axiom of choice (AC). AC is a controversial axiom that is mathematically equivalent to many well known theorems and has an interesting history in set theory. This thesis is a combination of discussion of the history of the axiom and the reasoning behind why the axiom is controversial. This entails several proofs of theorems that establish the fact that AC is equivalent to such theorems and notions as Tychonoff's Theorem, Zorn's Lemma, the Well-Ordering Theorem, and many more.


Single-Step Factor Screening And Response Surface Optimization Using Optimal Designs With Minimal Aliasing, David Hien Truong May 2010

Single-Step Factor Screening And Response Surface Optimization Using Optimal Designs With Minimal Aliasing, David Hien Truong

Theses and Dissertations

Cheng and Wu (2001) introduced a method for response surface exploration using only one design by using a 3-level design to first screen a large number of factors and then project onto the significant factors to perform response surface exploration. Previous work generally involved selecting designs based on projection properties first and aliasing structure second. However, having good projection properties is of little concern if the correct factors cannot be identified. We apply Jones and Nachtsheim’s (2009) method for finding optimal designs with minimal aliasing to find 18, 27, and 30-run designs to use for single-step screening and optimization. Our …


The Axiom Of Determinacy, Samantha Stanton May 2010

The Axiom Of Determinacy, Samantha Stanton

Theses and Dissertations

Working within the Zermelo-Frankel Axioms of set theory, we will introduce two important contradictory axioms: Axiom of Choice and Axiom of Determinacy. We will explore perfect polish spaces and games on these spaces to see that the Axiom of Determinacy is inconsistent with the Axiom of Choice. We will see some of the major consequences of accepting the Axiom of Determinacy and how some of these results change when accepting the Axiom of Choice. We will consider 2-player games of perfect information wherein we will see some powerful results having to do with properties of the real numbers. We will …


Multivariate Steepest Ascent Using Bayesian Reliability, Jeffrey Fuerte May 2010

Multivariate Steepest Ascent Using Bayesian Reliability, Jeffrey Fuerte

Theses and Dissertations

The path of steepest ascent can used to optimize a response in an experiment, but problems can occur with multiple responses. Past approaches to this issue such as Del Castillo’s overlap of confidence cones and Mee and Xiao’s Pareto Optimality, have not considered the correlations of the responses or parameter uncertainty. We propose a new method using the Bayesian reliability to calculate this direction. We utilize this method with four examples: a 2 factor, 2-response experiment where the paths of steepest ascent are similar, ensuring our results match Del Castillo’s and Mee and Xiao’s; a 2 factor, 2-response experiment with …


Automated Selected Of Mixed Integer Program Solver Parameters, Charles Stewart Apr 2010

Automated Selected Of Mixed Integer Program Solver Parameters, Charles Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a method that uses designed experiments and statistical models to extract information about how solver parameter settings perform for classes of mixed integer programs. The use of experimental design facilitates fitting a model that describes the response surface across all combinations of parameter settings, even those not explicitly tested, allowing identification of both desirable and poor settings. Identifying parameter settings that give the best expected performance for a specific class of instances and a specific solver can be used to more efficiently solve a large set of similar instances, or to ensure solvers are being compared at …