Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Biblical Value Of Pi In Light Of Traditional Judaism, Morris Engelson

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

There are numerous attempts at a solution to the puzzle as to why the Biblical value of pi, as demonstrated by the measurements of King Solomon's pool, is exactly 3 and not a better approximation. This article shows that virtually all such published solutions are deficient because volume-based factors are ignored. Issues respecting the volume of this pool are explained, and some possible solutions of the puzzle are presented.

Perchance To Dream: Art, Mathematics, And Shakespeare, Randall E. Cone

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Visual representation of textual works has often aided in the understanding of sophisticated concepts. In the Digital Age this is particularly true, given the advent of natural language processing, the ubiquity of general programming languages, and the maturation of digital visualization. In this article, we eschew the traditional disciplinary boundaries to view and analyze Shakespeare’s works in various ways. Our point of departure is Hamlet, where we first examine the play as a unity — both graphically and analytically. We then focus on Act III, Scene 1, where we analyze one of the most famous passages in English Literature: Hamlet ...

Front Matter

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Development Of An Hplc-Based Oligosaccharide Synthesizer, Salvatore Pistorio

Dissertations

Carbohydrates are the most abundant molecules on Earth. They are involved in a wide range of fundamental biological processes: anti-inflammation, immune response, joint lubrication, cell growth, antigenic determination. Carbohydrates are also held responsible for many damaging cellular processes, such as bacterial and viral infections, development of tumors, etc.. Therefore, the development of effective methods for the synthesis of complex carbohydrates has become a critical area of glycosciences. One challenge that stands out is the stereocontrol in the synthesis of glycosidic bonds, the linkage that serves as the only means to connect simple monosaccharides into complex oligomeric networks. Beyond this, the ...

Parts Of The Whole: Why I Teach This Subject This Way, Dorothy Wallace

Numeracy

The importance of mathematics to biology is illustrated by search data from Google Scholar. I argue that a pedagogical approach based on student research projects is likely to improve retention and foster critical thinking about mathematical modeling, as well as reinforce quantitative reasoning and the appreciation of calculus as a tool. The usual features of a course (e.g., the instructor, assessment, text, etc.) are shown to have very different purposes in a research-based course.

Lewis Carroll And Mathematical Ideals Of John Allen Paulos: Review Of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (1865) And Through The Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There (1871), Paul H. Grawe

Numeracy

At first blush it may seem that linking the acclaimed achievements of John Allen Paulos and the acclaimed achievements of Lewis Carroll (a.k.a. Oxford mathematics don Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is merely an exercise in free association. Both are prestigious academic mathematicians. Both have an obvious interest in humor. Both have made it to best-seller lists.

That free association, however, is not the issue here. Instead, the issue is whether John Allen Paulos has highlighted basic questions of mathematical literacy and whether the issues that Paulos highlights do not, in fact, reflect mathematical and artistic concerns of Lewis Carroll ...

Rethinking The Numerate Citizen: Quantitative Literacy And Public Issues – Discussion, Kira H. Hamman

Numeracy

I dispute Erickson's claim in Numeracy 9(2), Article 4 (2016), that quantitative literacy is neither necessary nor appropriate for informed citizenship, and explore his suggestion that Hardwig's notion of epistemic dependence is more suited to the task.

Quantitative Literacy In The Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions To Devlin’S The Math Instinct, Victor J. Ricchezza, H. L. Vacher

Numeracy

Building on suggestions from alumni from a recent interview project, students in Computational Geology at the University of South Florida were tasked with reading a popular non-fiction book on mathematics and writing about the book and their feelings about math. The book, The Math Instinct by Keith Devlin, was chosen because we believed it would give the students something interesting to write about and not because we had any expectations in particular about what it might reveal about or do for their math anxiety. The nature of the responses received from the students led to the performance of a post-hoc ...

Figures And First Years: An Analysis Of Calculus Students' Use Of Figures In Technical Reports, Nathan J. Antonacci, Michael Rogers, Thomas J. Pfaff, Jason G. Hamilton

Numeracy

This three-year study focused on first-year Calculus I students and their abilities to incorporate figures in technical reports. In each year, these calculus students wrote a technical report as part of the Polar Bear Module, an educational unit developed for use in partner courses in biology, computer science, mathematics, and physics as part of the Multidisciplinary Sustainability Education (MSE) project at Ithaca College. In the first year of the project, students received basic technical report guidelines. In year two, the report guidelines changed to include explicit language on how to incorporate figures. In year three, a grading rubric was added ...

31p Nmr Study Of Gtp-Cation Interactions, Zhiyan Song, Destiny L. Allen, Olarongbe Olubajo, Chellu S. Chetty

Georgia Journal of Science

Guanosine 5'-triphosphate (GTP) plays a pivotal role in many biologi­cal processes. The interactions of cations with GTP are essential to the stabilization of this nucleotide and the regulation of its functions. In this study, we present solution ³¹P NMR data on GTP samples in varied salt concentrations or pHs. From chemical shifts and T₁ , T₂ relaxations, it is concluded that the interaction strengths of cations with GTP are in the order of Ca²⁺ > Mg²⁺ > Li⁺ > Na⁺ for the cations, and in the order of beta > gamma > alpha for the phosphate groups. An increased ...

The Influence Of Long-Term Anthropogenically-Induced Compaction On Select Properties Of Soils In The Midwestern United States, Eric C. Brevik

Georgia Journal of Science

Soil compaction by heavy equipment has become one of the most important problems in modern large-scale plant production, but one area that has not received much attention is the effect of soil compaction on prairie soils over time periods in excess of about 10 years. This study addresses this issue by comparing properties in compacted to noncompacted soils in an abandoned farmyard and along a preserved stretch of the Mormon Trail. Properties compared include soil morphology, bulk density, carbon, C/N ratio, and ap­parent electrical conductivity (EC_a). Bulk density, organic carbon, and EC_a values were consistently different ...

Wideband Photometry Of Saturn In 2004-2005, Richard W. Schmude Jr.

Georgia Journal of Science

The writer made 60 photometric measurements of Saturn + rings between Nov. 5, 2004 and Jan. 21, 2005. The normalized magnitudes of Saturn for a ring tilt angle of 22° are B(1,0) = -8.55 ± 0.01, V(1,0) = -9.60 ± 0.01, B(1,0) = -10.27 ± 0.01, and I(1,0) = -10. 4 7 ± 0.01; the corresponding solar phase angle coefficients are c_B = 0.027 ± 0.006, c_V = 0.021 ± 0.005, c_B = 0.020 ± 0.005, and c_B = 0.022 ± 0.005. The 2005 opposition surge values (in magnitudes at ...

Conflict-Free Vertex Coloring Of Planar Graphs, Shawn Seymour

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The conflict-free coloring problem is a variation of the vertex coloring problem, a classical NP-hard optimization problem. The conflict-free coloring problem aims to color a possibly proper subset of vertices such that there is a unique color within the closed neighborhood (a vertex and its neighbors) of every vertex. This paper presents recent findings and heuristics to solve the conflict-free coloring problem on both general graphs and planar graphs.

Touchscreen Smartphone User Interfaces For Older Adults, Ai Sano

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Today the world is experiencing the rapid growth of the older population. The number of older adults who own digital devices such as smartphones is increasing as well. The current smartphone user interfaces, however, appear not optimized for older adults. When designing smartphone user interfaces for older adults, we must consider their age-related physical and cognitive changes, which most likely affect their user experience. The present paper explores smartphone user interface guidelines for older adults and heuristics for evaluating the usability of Android launchers for older adults as well as a research study that developed an Android launcher for older ...

Identifying Twitter Spam By Utilizing Random Forests, Humza S. Haider

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The use of Twitter has rapidly grown since the first tweet in 2006. The number of spammers on Twitter shows a similar increase. Classifying users into spammers and non-spammers has been heavily researched, and new methods for spam detection are developing rapidly. One of these classification techniques is known as random forests. We examine three studies that employ random forests using user based features, geo-tagged features, and time dependent features. Each study showed high accuracy rates and F-measures with the exception of one model that had a test set with a more realistic proportion of spam relative to typical testing ...

An Overview Of Modern Global Illumination, Skye A. Antinozzi

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Advancements in graphical hardware call for innovative solutions, which can improve the realism of computer generated lighting. These innovative solutions aim to generate state of the art computer generated lighting through a combination of intelligent global illumination models and the use of modern hardware. The solution described in this paper achieves global illumination by ray tracing over geometry within a 3D scene from distributed light field probes and proceeds to shade the scene with a deferred renderer. Such a solution provides the flexibility and robustness that many other global illumination models have previously lacked while still achieving realistic lighting that ...

Assessing The Potential Of Land Use Modification To Mitigate Ambient No2 And Its Consequences For Respiratory Health, Meenakshi Rao, Linda A. George, Vivek Shandas, Todd N. Rosenstiel

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Understanding how local land use and land cover (LULC) shapes intra-urban concentrations of atmospheric pollutants—and thus human health—is a key component in designing healthier cities. Here, NO₂ is modeled based on spatially dense summer and winter NO₂ observations in Portland-Hillsboro-Vancouver (USA), and the spatial variation of NO₂ with LULC investigated using random forest, an ensemble data learning technique. The NO₂ random forest model, together with BenMAP, is further used to develop a better understanding of the relationship among LULC, ambient NO₂ and respiratory health. The impact of land use modifications on ambient NO ...

Constructing Globular, Sheeted, And Helical Polyalanine Structures Using Nanotubes As Templates For Computational Studies, Caley Allen, Travis Bailey, Opie Bowen, Virginia Bryant, Nikolas Kitchens, Jason Lackey, Inez Mills, Om Patel, Nicholas Richardson, Shanda Sermons, Thomas Shaw, Calandra Stafford, Tiffany Stoney, Chad Ward, Samuel Zipperer, Thomas J. Manning

Georgia Journal of Science

In this experiment polyalanine was folded into globular, sheeted, and helical structures through the use of carbon nanotubes. The rigidity of the nanotubes allowed for molding the polyalanine into the various structures. Nanotubes of different diameters and volumes were used in this experiment. Once the three dimensional peptide structures were formed and detached from the carbon nanotubes, a number of thermodynamic calculations were performed. Computational meth­ods were used to calculate parameters such as Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, entropy, and molecular volume. By attaining the measure­ments of the phi and psi angles, Ramachandran plots were constructed using linear, globular ...

Wideband Photometric Magnitude Measurements Of Saturn Made During The 2005-06 Apparition, Richard W. Schmude Jr.

Georgia Journal of Science

The writer made 37 brightness measurements of Saturn + rings between Nov. 3, 2005 and March 16, 2006 using the B (blue), V (green), R (red), and I (infrared) filters. The selected normalized magnitudes of Saturn at a ring tilt angle of 18° are: B(1,0) = - 8.43 ± 0.03, V(1,0) = -9.48 ± 0.02, R(1,0) = -10.16 ± 0.04, and 1(1,0) = -10.28 ± 0.02. The selected phase angle coefficients of Saturn, in magnitudes/degree, are: c_B = 0.022 ± 0.014, c_V = 0.021 ± 0.008, c_R = 0.027 ± 0 ...

Using Well-Known Probability Density Functions To Evaluate Certain Integrals In Calculus, Stacy Pitman, Andreas Lazari

Georgia Journal of Science

A major source of anxiety for engineering and science majors who must take calculus is the topic of integration. The techniques of integration necessary for solving practical problems in the sciences are lengthy and complex. In this paper, we are introducing a method that minimizes the algebra as well as the number of computations for certain types of integrals. It is important to note that we are not suggesting that the conventional methods for teaching techniques of integration be replaced with the innovation we are proposing. Rather, the new approach we suggest is to be presented only after the traditional ...