Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sarah Pohjola, Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio, Earth's Destruction, Sarah Pohjola

Senior Art Portfolios

This work was created for the Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio 2024. This work includes graphic design and illustration focused on environmental conservation.

Supporting Neurodivergent Talent: Adhd, Autism, And Dyslexia In Physics And Space Sciences, Niescja E. Turner, Heather Haynes Smith

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Research

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts must include disability and neurodivergence. While there is a long history of famous scientists being identified or speculatively indicated to be neurodivergent, identification on an individual basis has been limited until fairly recently. Definitions have changed and broadened, and people are being identified or are identifying themselves as neurodivergent and are learning about their paths and their brains in a way that was unavailable to people two decades ago. In the contemporary physics or space science classroom or workplace, we have both a responsibility to include and support our neurodivergent learners and scientists, as …

Zeno Of Elea: A Dichotomy, Joseph Chaney

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This two-part poem interprets Zeno's paradoxes as dimensions of a paradoxical view of reality.

Electrochemical Approaches To Life-Support Resources In Space Missions And Nuclear Technologies: Hydrogen Peroxide And Uranium Films, Armando Manuel Pena-Duarte

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Space race has developed several technological advances that have achieved and continue to achieve the success of space missions in the aerospace timeline. Currently, the number of space technical and scientific innovations is still growing––demanding new materials and developments for extreme performing applications of fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors, and systems of nuclear energy. Space missions require life-support solutions, auto-sustainable closed-loop living environments, cleaning and sanitizing solutions against pathogens, and safe nuclear-based resources of energy––with fissile materials with well-controlled dimensions within the core fuel elements. Likewise, to guarantee safety conditions, reduce costs, and facilitate operational logistics, space missions must reduce their …

Machine Learning-Based Data Analytics For Understanding Space Weather And Climate, Yasser Abduallah

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses multiple crucial problems in space weather and climate, presenting new machine learning-based data analytics algorithms and models for tackling the problems.

First, the dissertation presents two new approaches to predicting solar flares. One approach, called DeepSun, predicts solar flares by utilizing a machine-learning-as-a-service (MLaaS) platform. The DeepSun system provides a friendly interface for Web users and an application programming interface (API) for remote programming users. It adopts an ensemble learning method that employs several machine learning algorithms to perform multiclass flare prediction. The other approach, named SolarFlareNet, forecasts the occurrence of solar flares within the next 24 …

Hydroponically Growing A Holistic Superfood Diet For Mars Exploration, Marianna Pezzella, Ruben A. Rosa Polonia

Beyond: Undergraduate Research Journal

In “Hydroponically Growing a Holistic Superfood Diet for Mars Exploration,” Project H.O.M.E. members conducted an experiment to help determine ways to provide future astronauts with a complete, balanced diet on a planet that does not receive as much sunlight as Earth. Sending massive amounts of food into space is incredibly expensive, takes up valuable spacecraft area, and is, overall, not a feasible way to provide astronauts with sustenance. Project H.O.M.E. has thus developed a hydroponic system to evaluate the growth and yield of various superfoods - including Moringa Oleifera, goji berries, and kale - under simulated Mars lighting conditions. Data …

On The Horizon: Nanosatellite Constellations Will Revolutionize The Internet Of Things (Iot), Diane Janosek

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

The Internet of Things has experienced exponential growth and use across the globe with 25.1 billion devices currently in use. Until recently, the functionality of the IoT was dependent on secure data flow between internet terrestrial stations and the IoT devices. Now, a new alternative path of data flow is on the horizon.

IoT device manufacturers are now looking to outer space nanosatellite constellations to connect to a different type of internet. This new internet is no longer terrestrial with fiber cables six feet underground but now looking up, literally, 200 to 300 miles above the earth, to communicate, connect …

Characterization Of A Plasma Source Simulating Solar Wind Plasma In A Vacuum Chamber, Blake Anthony Folta

Masters Theses

"The United States has set an aggressive time line to not only return to the Moon, but also to establish a sustained human presence. In the Apollo missions dust was a significant factor, but the duration of those missions was short so dust and surface charging were problems, but they did not pose an immediate threat. For a long-term mission, these problems instead become incredibly detrimental. Because of this, research needs to be conducted to investigate these phenomena so that mitigation techniques can be developed and tested. To this end, this thesis serves to demonstrate the Gas and Plasma Dynamics …

Quantifying Electron Precipitation In The Van Allen Radiation Belts, Timothy Raeder

Honors Theses and Capstones

The spatial and temporal distribution of high energy electron precipitation from the Van Allen radiation belts is not currently well-understood. The FIREBIRD-II mission (2015-present) and the Van Allen Probes (2012-2019) provide a unique opportunity to examine the behaviors and drivers of high energy electron precipitation. This study quantifies electron precipitation observed by FIREBIRD-II as a function of radial distance (L-shell), magnetic local time (MLT), hemisphere, and geomagnetic indices (Kp). Electron precipitation was observed to peak at L-shell 4.5-5. Regions of elevated electron precipitation were identified at L-shell 4-6 at dawn (MLT 6-9) and dusk (MLT 15-21). Hemisphere filtering indicated very …

Yang-Mills Sources For Biconformal Gravity, Walter Davis Muhwezi

Physics Capstone Projects

We present a gauge formulation of Yang-Mills matter sources for Biconformal gravity. Biconformal gravity is a 2n-dimensional conformal gauge theory with a curvature linear action that has been shown to reproduce scale invariant general relativity on the cotangent bundle of n-dimensional space time. We present a generalization of Yang-Mills theories in biconformal space and show that the field equations with sources reduce the Yang-Mills sector to n-dimensional Yang-Mills theory in curved spacetime. We compute the restrictive conditions on the energy-momentum tensor required by the gravitational field equations.

Developing And Securing Software For Small Space Systems, Brandon L. Shirley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The space systems industry is moving towards smaller multi-vendor satellites, known as Small Space. This shift is driven by economic and technological factors that necessitate hardware and software components that are modular, reusable, and secure. This research addresses two problems associated with the development of modular, reusable, and secure space systems: developing software for space systems (the Development Problem) and securing space systems (the Security Problem). These two problems are interrelated and this research addresses them together.

The Development Problem encompasses challenges that space systems developers face as they try to address the constraints induced by reduced budgets, …

Elements Of Functional Analysis And Applications, Chengting Yin

MSU Graduate Theses

Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis that studies vector spaces with a limit structure (such as a norm or inner product), and functions or operators defined on these spaces. Functional analysis provides a useful framework and abstract approach for some applied problems in variety of disciplines. In this thesis, we will focus on some basic concepts and abstract results in functional analysis, and then demonstrate their power and relevance by solving some applied problems under the framework. We will give the definitions and provide some examples of some different spaces (such as metric spaces, normed spaces and inner …

Construction Of A Hyperspectral Camera Using Off-The-Shelf Parts And 3d-Printed Parts, Connor Heo

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences (ACSPS) is working together with the Mechanical Engineering Department to build a modifiable camera with 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf parts (sourced from Edmund Optics and Amazon). The design is to be readily changeable, primarily with the 3D printed parts, as to accommodate new ideas and functionalities in the future. Ultimately, the camera should be relatively cheap while maintaining functionality for proposed use cases. Earlier versions of the design will be tested extensively and rapidly updated in the ACSPS labs with benchtop testing. This will involve subjects with both visible and infrared emissions, …

Drones And “Ghost Guns”: Unregulated Legal Space, Tori Bodine

Research on Capitol Hill

Law enforcement agencies are fighting a two - pronged battle when it comes to emerging technologies: keeping up with new ways criminals are using technology and developing effective ways to combat these innovations, while balancing these challenges against preserving the individual liberties of law - abiding citizens. This conflict is especially apparent with regard to criminal use of commercial drones and the developing fringe market surrounding homemade untraceable firearms (“ghost guns”).

Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach To The Ufo Phenomenon, Dr. Michael P. Masters

Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Books

Identified Flying Objects cautiously examines the premise that ‘UFOs’ & ‘Aliens’ are simply our distant human descendants, returning from the future to study their own hominin evolutionary past. This text challenges readers to consider new possibilities while cultivating conversations about our ever-evolving understanding of time & time travel.

A Multi-Frequency Study Of Arecibo Pulsars, Timothy Eugene Edward Olszanski

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Compact Objects (Neutron Stars) form in the last moments of a star's life, during the violent events known as supernovae. As the star's core fusion falters, matter undergoes a dramatic gravitational compression resulting in internal densities rivaling subatomic particles. Ever since their discovery in the mid-twentieth century, these highly magnetized and rapidly rotating balls of condensed matter have provided a bountiful playground for astronomers seeking out exotic physics.

Neutron Stars that emit electromagnetic radiation are seen by observers as Pulsars, named such for the pulse of intensity as the pulsar's radiation beam passes into our line of sight. These beams …

Oscillation Of The Ionosphere At Planetary-Wave Periods, Jeffrey M. Forbes, Astrid Maute, Xiaoli Zhang, Maura E. Hagan

All Physics Faculty Publications

F‐region ionospheric oscillations at planetary‐wave (PW) periods (2–20 days) are investigated, with primary focus on those oscillations transmitted to the ionosphere by PW modulation of the vertically propagating tidal spectrum. Tidal effects are isolated by specifically designed numerical experiments performed with the National Center for Atmospheric Research thermosphere‐ionosphere‐electrodynamics general circulation model for October 2009, when familiar PW and tides are present in the model. Longitude versus day‐of‐month perturbations in topside F‐region electron density (Ne) of order ±30–50% at PW periods occur as a result of PW‐modulated tides. At a given height, these oscillations are mainly due to vertical oscillations in …

Building Up Biogeography: Pattern To Process, William D. Pearse, A. Marcia Barbosa, Susanne A. Fritz, Sally A. Keith, Luke J. Harmon, John Harte, Daniele Silvestro, Xiao Xiao, T. Jonathan Davies

Ecology Center Publications

Linking pattern to process across spatial and temporal scales has been a key goal of the field of biogeography. In January 2017, the 8th biennial conference of the International Biogeography Society sponsored a symposium on Building up biogeography—process to pattern that aimed to review progress towards this goal. Here we present a summary of the symposium, in which we identified promising areas of current research and suggested future research directions. We focus on (1) emerging types of data such as behavioral observations and ancient DNA, (2) how to better incorporate historical data (such as fossils) to move beyond what we …

Pivot-Based Metric Indexing, Lu Chen, Yunjun Gao, Baihua Zheng, Christian S. Jensen, Hanyu Yang, Keyu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The general notion of a metric space encompasses a diverse range of data types and accompanying similarity measures. Hence, metric search plays an important role in a wide range of settings, including multimedia retrieval, data mining, and data integration. With the aim of accelerating metric search, a collection of pivot-based indexing techniques for metric data has been proposed, which reduces the number of potentially expensive similarity comparisons by exploiting the triangle inequality for pruning and validation. However, no comprehensive empirical study of those techniques exists. Existing studies each offers only a narrower coverage, and they use different pivot selection strategies …

Microcontroller And Memory Card Survivability In Space Conditions, Windy Olsen

Senior Theses and Projects

The Utah State University (USU) Materials Physics Group (MPG) is interested in the performance of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) microcontrollers in space conditions. Microcontrollers are commonly used on CubeSats, small relatively inexpensive satellites that are flown in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at altitudes of ~160 km-2000 km. There is a large area of interest in COTS microcontrollers because they provide a more cost-effective on-board computer for CubeSats. This experiment focused on the functionality of an ATmega328 microcontroller on an Arduino Uno board inside the MPG’s Space Survivability Test (SST) Chamber. A diagnostic program was used to try to detect …

Microcontroller Survivability In Space Conditions, Windy Olsen

Physics Capstone Projects

The Utah State University (USU) Materials Physics Group (MPG) is interested in the performance of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) microcontrollers in space conditions. Microcontrollers are commonly used on CubeSats, small relatively inexpensive satellites that are flown in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at altitudes of ~160 km-2000 km. There is a large area of interest in COTS microcontrollers because they provide a more cost-effective on-board computer for CubeSats. This experiment focused on the functionality of an ATmega328 microcontroller on an Arduino Uno board inside the MPG’s Space Survivability Test (SST) Chamber. A diagnostic program was used to try to detect …

Power And Politics In Research Design And Practice: Opening Up Space For Social Equity In Interdisciplinary, Multi-Jurisdictional And Community-Based Research, Valoree Gagnon, Hugh Gorman, Emma Norman

Michigan Tech Publications

Working collaboratively with communities is commonly considered a cornerstone of good practice in research involving social-ecological concerns. Increasingly, funding agencies also recognise that such collaborations are most productive when community partners have some influence on the design and implementation of the projects that benefit from their participation. However, researchers engaged with this work often struggle to actively engage community members in this way and, in particular, Indigenous peoples. In this article, we argue that useful strategies for facilitating such engagement are to leave space in the research plan for questions of interest to community partners and to encourage equitable interactions …

Oceans Of Space, Stephanie Steinbrecher '16

EnviroLab Asia

"Oceans of Space" relates my observations of the 2016 EnviroLab Asia Clinic Trip to Singapore and Sarawak, Malaysia. In this meditation, the concept of space serves as a lens to examine assumptions of geopolitical, historical, and philosophical positioning—regionally and globally. At the center of my inquiry is EnviroLab's connection to the Dayak communities in Baram, Sarawak. This region is experiencing dramatic social and ecological change as a result of industrial development. By triangulating my subjective impressions of this space, various knowledge systems, and the qualitative data EnviroLab gathered in Southeast Asia, I aim to untangle some paradoxes that complicate the …

General Relativity And Differential Geometry, Harry Hausner

Honors Theses

N/A

Earth's Place In Space, John J. Renton, Thomas Repine

Readings and Notes

I've always thought that a story should start at the beginning. Since this book is the story of Earth, we will start at the beginning. According to the astronomers, in the beginning, there was no need for geology because there were no minerals or rocks; there was no Earth; there was no Sun; there were no stars or planets. According to the astronomers, there was a time when even our present universe didn't exist. In the 1920s, the Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre hypothesized that everything presently contained within the entire Universe was once compressed into in a sphere he called …

A Determination Of The Gamma-Ray Flux And Photon Spectral Index Distributions Of Blazars From The Fermi-Lat 3lac, Jack Singal

Physics Faculty Publications

We present a determination of the distributions of gamma-ray photon flux – the so-called LogN–LogS relation – and photon spectral index for blazars, based on the third extragalactic source catalogue of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's Large Area Telescope, and considering the photon energy range from 100 MeV to 100 GeV. The data set consists of the 774 blazars in the so-called Clean sample detected with a greater than approximately 7σ detection threshold and located above ±20° Galactic latitude. We use non-parametric methods verified in previous works to reconstruct the intrinsic distributions from the observed ones …

Correlated Nanosims, Tem, And Xanes Studies Of Presolar Grains, Evan Edward Groopman

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis is to describe the correlated study of individual presolar grains via Nano-scale Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (NanoSIMS), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy (STXM) utilizing X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES), with a focus on connecting these correlated laboratory studies to astrophysical phenomena. The correlated isotopic, chemical, and microstructural studies of individual presolar grains provide the most detailed description of their formation environments, and help to inform astrophysical models and observations of stellar objects.

As a part of this thesis I have developed and improved upon laboratory techniques for micromanipulating presolar grains …

The 2d Distribution Of Iron-Rich Ejecta In The Remnant Of Sn 1885 In M31, Robert A. Fesen, Peter A. Höflich, Andrew J. S. Hamilton

Dartmouth Scholarship

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ultraviolet Fe i and Fe ii images of the remnant of Supernova 1885 (S And) which is observed in absorption against the bulge of the Andromeda galaxy, M31. We compare these Fe i and Fe ii absorption line images to previous HST absorption images of S And, of which the highest quality and theoretically cleanest is Ca ii H and K. Because the remnant is still in free expansion, these images provide a 2D look at the distribution of iron synthesized in this probable Type Ia explosion, thus providing insights and constraints …

Empyreal Radiance: An Application Of Sonification In The Field Of Astrophysics, Ryan Loth

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

Broadly, this paper discusses the application of sonification and its potential for increasing knowledge. The paper is broken up into three sections: the theory of sonification, sonification for artistic purposes, and lastly an extensive look at one process of sonification dealing with solar winds in space. Concerning the theory of sonification, the paper will divulge into the process of sonification and ask questions about the limitations of it as well. The second section discusses how sonification is a way to build the curiosity of not just scientists, but also the general public. The final section addresses my composition Empyreal Radiance …

Space Use, Daily Movements, And Roosting Behavior Of Male Wild Turkeys During Spring In Louisiana And Texas, John T. Gross, Andrew R. Little, Bret A. Collier, Michael J. Chamberlain

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Because wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are an important game species and turkey hunter numbers are increasing, the need for better information on how turkeys use their environment is critical. With the recent advent of GPS technology suitable for use on wild turkeys, we are now able to collect data on a scale not previously possible. We used backpack style GPS units to detail home range and core area sizes, daily movement distances, and roosting characteristics of male Eastern (M. g. silvestris) and Rio Grande (M. g. intermedia) wild turkeys in Louisiana and Texas. Mean …