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A Space For Every Student: Assessing The Utility Of A Family Friendly Study Room In A University Library, Tyler Graff, Bob Ridge, Holt Zaugg Jun 2019

A Space For Every Student: Assessing The Utility Of A Family Friendly Study Room In A University Library, Tyler Graff, Bob Ridge, Holt Zaugg

Faculty Publications

Students currently in and returning to college are increasingly likely to have children. The demands of academic and family life can conflict, making it difficult for student parents to navigate both. Brigham Young University recently built a Family Friendly Study Room in the university library to provide a place for student-parents to care for their children while engaging in academic work. This study assessed the impact of the FFSR on patrons. Results show that the space is highly valued and offers both academic and relationship benefits. Moreover, students’ suggestions provide important feedback for future improvements. Recommendations for creating family-friendly spaces …

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Cancerous Male And Female Gene Expression, Clarissa Farmer, E. Shannon Tass Jun 2019

Cancerous Male And Female Gene Expression, Clarissa Farmer, E. Shannon Tass

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Genetic diagnosing is becoming more popular, as well as more and more accurate. However, many genetic diseases have complex genetic effects and are still not fully understood. Transthyretin Amyloidosis (ATTR; also known as familial or hereditary amyloidosis) is a terminal genetic disease. It is caused by unstable transthyretin proteins that fold improperly, and then deteriorate. The fragmented proteins are deposited outside of the cell and build up in the tissues over time, forming insoluble oligomers. The oligomers continue to grow into Amyloid fibrils, which adversely affect many organs in the body, eventually causing their failure. In order to accurately diagnose, …

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Cluster Analysis Via Random Partition Distributions, Brandon Carter, Dr. David B. Dahl Jun 2019

Cluster Analysis Via Random Partition Distributions, Brandon Carter, Dr. David B. Dahl

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Cluster analysis is an important exploratory data analysis technique used in a wide variety of fields. Cluster analysis seeks to discover a natural grouping of the data, where items in the same cluster or group are more similar than items from different clusters. Through our research, we developed a novel method for cluster analysis which takes pairwise distance information as input. Our new method improves upon traditional cluster analysis methods which also take pairwise distance information as input, such as hierarchical clustering. Our method, cluster analysis via random partition distributions (CaviarPD) is based on probability distributions and therefore allows the …

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We Don’T Need Another Hero: Historiography And The Sophie Digital Library’S Science And Technology Collection, Michael Evans, Robert Mcfarland Jun 2019

We Don’T Need Another Hero: Historiography And The Sophie Digital Library’S Science And Technology Collection, Michael Evans, Robert Mcfarland

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Sophie Digital Library is an online library and resource center for works produced by German-speaking women. These works are focused on the publications from pre- 17th century through the early 20th century. Unfortunately, the group of women in Germany living during this time faced many challenges and one of them was being underrepresented in historical works published from their research and achievements. The Sophie Digital Library consists of works produced by German-speaking women from this time frame that help to highlight their successes that have assisted in shaping the future for other women who strive to achieve something great. …

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Modeling Main Group Metal Alkane Functionalization Reactions In Highly Acidic Carboxylic And Sulfuric Acid Solvents, Lily H. Carlson, Daniel H. Ess Jun 2019

Modeling Main Group Metal Alkane Functionalization Reactions In Highly Acidic Carboxylic And Sulfuric Acid Solvents, Lily H. Carlson, Daniel H. Ess

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Our group is interested in identifying the unknown mechanisms of main-group C-H functionalization reactions. In the long term, our goal is to use computational chemistry tools to develop general principles on mechanisms, intermediates, reactivity, and selectivity for hydrocarbon C-H functionalization reactions by p-block main-group compounds as well as provide prediction of new catalysts and reactions. However, in providing these predictions, it remains unclear if different mechanistic pathways and intermediates will be predicted if examined in a complete solvent sphere (see Figure 1 for technical details). This is especially important for non-aqueous solvents such as carboxylic acids and sulfuric acid. To …

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Detecting Microcracks In Structures By Electromagnetic Excitation Of Acoustic Resonances, Joshua Gregg, Brian Anderson Jun 2019

Detecting Microcracks In Structures By Electromagnetic Excitation Of Acoustic Resonances, Joshua Gregg, Brian Anderson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Stainless steel structures are often affected by stress corrosion cracking, which makes microscopic cracks that can go unnoticed and eventually cause the structure to fail. A useful method for detecting stress corrosion cracking is nonlinear resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (NRUS). NRUS involves vibrating a sample and looking for amplitude-dependent shifts in the sample’s resonance frequencies. NRUS tests are typically performed by driving vibrations in rods with piezoelectric transducers and measuring the amplitude-dependent shifts in the resonance frequencies. I am developing a different technique for driving the vibrations, which has never been used for NRUS. The technique uses a coil attached to …

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Heterodinuclear Co-Zr Compound Shows Increased Reactivity In Kumada Coupling, James Coombs, Daniel Ess Jun 2019

Heterodinuclear Co-Zr Compound Shows Increased Reactivity In Kumada Coupling, James Coombs, Daniel Ess

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Heterodinuclear compounds containing a metal–metal bond represent a potentially useful subclass of catalyst in organic synthesis. Heterodinuclear compounds offer the possibility of increased reactivity due to interactions between metal centers (Scheme 1A). These so-called cooperative effects can enhance reactivity by changing the electronic density, increasing nucleophilicity/electrophilicity of the reactive metal, and by lowering the energy barriers for changes in oxidation state. These changes in reactivity can allow a heterodinuclear compound to be an effective catalyst for many chemical reactions that would be unfeasible with a mononuclear analogue.

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Making Mri Scans Quieter Through Time-Reversal Acoustics And Active Noise Control, Trent Furlong, Brian Anderson Jun 2019

Making Mri Scans Quieter Through Time-Reversal Acoustics And Active Noise Control, Trent Furlong, Brian Anderson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Noise from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment puts patients at risk for hearing damage.i Active noise control (ANC) systems have been implemented inside the MRI’s bore to reduce perceived noise, but the equipment used cannot have magnetic material or the ANC system will interfere with the MRI machine’s imaging quality. These systems are also limited in size because of the MRI machine’s small bore. Our project was to determine the feasibility of using time-reversal (TR) acoustics to remotely focus a noise-canceling signal to a desired point in space (e.g. a patient’s ear inside an MRI machine) and see if significant …

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Cyclic Peptide Catalyst Design, Millicent Campbell, David Michaelis Jun 2019

Cyclic Peptide Catalyst Design, Millicent Campbell, David Michaelis

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Enzymes found in nature are more efficient catalysts than those used in organic chemistry labs. However, natural enzymes are not ideal for organic synthesis because they only make one product and only work in specific conditions. The Michaelis lab designed a catalyst capable of mimicking enzyme-like reactivity in the lab. This catalyst consists of an alpha helix with an imidazolidinone catalyst and a thiourea catalyst (see figure 1). The imidazolidinone catalyst and thiourea catalysts are attached adjacent to each other on the alpha helix, which acts as a rigid scaffold that can mimic the proximity effects seen in natural enzymes. …

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Finding Planets Around Massive Stars, Elisabeth Frischnecht, Denise Stephens Jun 2019

Finding Planets Around Massive Stars, Elisabeth Frischnecht, Denise Stephens

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During the formation stages of a solar system, huge clouds of gas and dust contract into a disk around the growing star. These disks are the birthplace of planets, and are essential to our understanding of solar system formation. Historically, the search for planets outside of our solar system has typically been constrained to stars that are similar to the sun. However, Herbig Ae/Be (HAe/Be) stars offer promising results. HAe/Be stars are 2-10 times larger than the sun and retain their formation disks. These disks around these stars are brighter and larger than those around solar type stars, so they …

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Primordial Origins Of Supermassive Black Holes, William Black, David Neilson Jun 2019

Primordial Origins Of Supermassive Black Holes, William Black, David Neilson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

At the center of the Milky Way sits a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*1, which is over a million times the mass of our sun. Other galaxy centers host similar black holes which are up to thousands of times larger than even Sagittarius A*. Some of these giants have been sighted in the very early universe (700 million years after the Big Bang is still relatively early in the universe—it’s now been nearly 14 billion years!).

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Increasing Cryptographic Security Through Quantum Erasure, Richard Barney, Jean-Françios S. Van Huele Jun 2019

Increasing Cryptographic Security Through Quantum Erasure, Richard Barney, Jean-Françios S. Van Huele

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In our increasingly data-driven society, the ability to transmit secure messages is more essential than ever. This ability allows economies to thrive and protects both personal and national security. In order to achieve this security, cryptographers have developed methods to encrypt data. One of the most successful of these methods is to use a secure key to encrypt and decrypt the sensitive data. This method has been very successful but it is still possible for outside agents to obtain the secure key and thereby access sensitive information.

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Early Intervention For At-Risk Online Students, Carolyn Andrews Jun 2019

Early Intervention For At-Risk Online Students, Carolyn Andrews

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

Design and development project. The purpose of this project was to design and develop an intervention for at-risk students enrolled in an online class at Brigham Young University. The overarching goal of creating an intervention was to facilitate online learning and improve student satisfaction by helping students increase their performance. The development of the intervention was done in coordination with BYU Online administrators and select BYU faculty.

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Personalized Feedback: Testing A Tutoring System That Was Informed By Learning Analytics, Mckenzie Emmett Staples Jun 2019

Personalized Feedback: Testing A Tutoring System That Was Informed By Learning Analytics, Mckenzie Emmett Staples

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

Computer-based tutoring systems have been extensively studied and shown to be generally effective. In this study, I worked with an online beginner’s course that teaches spreadsheets basics to business students. I designed four sets of practice problems that utilized a new tutoring feedback system that was designed for this course. In order to test the effectiveness of this feedback system, 839 Brigham Young University students that utilized this online course were randomly assigned to either a treatment condition where they worked through these new practice problems with the accompanying feedback system, or to a control condition, where they worked through …

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Quantifying Appearance For Opaque Surfaces Using Spectral Bidirectional Reflectivity, Christopher Richard Brooks Jun 2019

Quantifying Appearance For Opaque Surfaces Using Spectral Bidirectional Reflectivity, Christopher Richard Brooks

Theses and Dissertations

Quantifying the appearance of a surface is an important aspect in quality control. Becauseobjects at room temperature emit negligible amounts of radiation into the visible spectrum, aspectsof their appearance may be quantified using reflected light. Therefore, the appearance of opaquesurfaces may be quantified using measurements of the spectral, bidirectional reflectivity. However,measuring the spectral, bidirectional reflectivity of even one point at every set of incident andreflected directions is a time intensive process that is infeasible for quality control.The objective of this work was to determine whether a limited number of spectral, bidirectionalreflectance measurements may be used to characterize the appearance of …

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Computational Design And Analysis Of Molecular Ethylene Oligomerization Catalysts, Doo Hyun Kwon Jun 2019

Computational Design And Analysis Of Molecular Ethylene Oligomerization Catalysts, Doo Hyun Kwon

Theses and Dissertations

Linear alpha olefins (LAOs) are key petrochemical precursors for the synthesis of larger polymers, detergents, plasticizers, and lubricants. Most catalytic ethylene oligomerization processes generate a wide distribution of LAO carbon chain lengths. A major ongoing industrial challenge is to develop homogeneous catalysts that result in selective and tunable ethylene oligomerization to 1-hexene and 1-octene alkenes. Quantum mechanical calculations coupled with rapidly advancing technology have enabled the ability to calculate small molecule systems with high accuracy. Employing computational models to advance from empirical to quantitative prediction of product selectivities has become an active area of exploration. In this work, we demonstrate …

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Analytical Expressions For Acoustic Radiation Modes Of Simple Curved Structures, Caleb Burley Goates Jun 2019

Analytical Expressions For Acoustic Radiation Modes Of Simple Curved Structures, Caleb Burley Goates

Theses and Dissertations

The search for a convenient connection between vibration patterns on a structure and the sound radiated from that structure is ongoing in structural acoustics literature. Common techniques are wavenumber domain methods, or representation of the vibration in terms of some basis, such as structural modes or elementary radiators, and calculating the sound radiation in terms of the basis. Most choices for a basis in this situation exhibit strong coupling between the basis functions, but there is one choice which does not: Acoustic radiation modes are by definition the basis that orthogonalizes the radiation operator, meaning the radiation modes do not …

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Multi-Human Management Of A Hub-Based Colony: Efficiency And Robustness In The Cooperative Best M-Of-N Task, John Rolfes Grosh Jun 2019

Multi-Human Management Of A Hub-Based Colony: Efficiency And Robustness In The Cooperative Best M-Of-N Task, John Rolfes Grosh

Theses and Dissertations

Swarm robotics is an emerging field that is expected to provide robust solutions to spatially distributed problems. Human operators will often be required to guide a swarm in the fulfillment of a mission. Occasionally, large tasks may require multiple spatial swarms to cooperate in their completion. We hypothesize that when latency, bandwidth, operator dropout, and communication noise are significant factors, human organizations that promote individual initiative perform more effectively and resiliently than hierarchies in the cooperative best-m-of-n task. Simulations automating the behavior of hub-based swarm robotic agents and groups of human operators are used to evaluate this hypothesis. To make …

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Mirror Symmetry For Non-Abelian Landau-Ginzburg Models, Matthew Michael Williams Jun 2019

Mirror Symmetry For Non-Abelian Landau-Ginzburg Models, Matthew Michael Williams

Theses and Dissertations

We consider Landau-Ginzburg models stemming from non-abelian groups comprised of non-diagonal symmetries, and we describe a rule for the mirror LG model. In particular, we present the non-abelian dual group G*, which serves as the appropriate choice of group for the mirror LG model. We also describe an explicit mirror map between the A-model and the B-model state spaces for two examples. Further, we prove that this mirror map is an isomorphism between the untwisted broad sectors and the narrow diagonal sectors in general.

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Secondary Preservice Mathematics Teachers' Curricular Reasoning, Kimber Anne Mathis Jun 2019

Secondary Preservice Mathematics Teachers' Curricular Reasoning, Kimber Anne Mathis

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have found that teachers' decisions affect students' opportunity to learn. Prior researchers have investigated teachers' decisions while planning, implementing, or reflecting on lessons, but few researchers have studied teachers' decisions and their reasoning throughout the teaching process. It is important to study teachers' reasoning for why they make the decisions they do throughout the teaching process. Furthermore, because inservice and preservice teachers differ in experience and available resources that they draw on while making decisions, it is helpful to consider the resources PSTs' draw on while reasoning. Curricular reasoning is a framework that describes teachers' thinking processes when making …

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Management Of Global Reservoir Sedimentation: Evaluating Rescon 2 For Sediment Management Alternatives, Christopher Jacob Garcia Jun 2019

Management Of Global Reservoir Sedimentation: Evaluating Rescon 2 For Sediment Management Alternatives, Christopher Jacob Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Reservoir sedimentation occurs as dams impound streams and rivers, preventing the delivery of sediments downstream. Globally, reservoirs lose approximately 40 million acre-ft of storage to sediments each year. Several methods for managing reservoir sedimentation have been developed to help extend project life. In 2017, the World Bank sponsored REServoir CONservation (RESCON) 2, a pre-feasibility program aimed to help users select sediment management practices to consider for more detailed studies.There are two main objectives to this research: 1) perform a sensitivity analysis to understand which parameters require greater precision and which can be roughly approximated, and 2) evaluate RESCON 2 suggested …

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Frequency Response And Recovery Of Muscles And Effects Of Wrapping The Lower Leg On Surface Velocity Measurements, Cameron David Smallwood Jun 2019

Frequency Response And Recovery Of Muscles And Effects Of Wrapping The Lower Leg On Surface Velocity Measurements, Cameron David Smallwood

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is comprised of two studies. The objective of the first study was to find the frequency response and stiffness of the biceps brachii muscle group during recovery from exercise induced damage and to determine whether these data could be used to track muscle recovery by correlating changes in the frequency response with changes in muscle stiffness. Stiffness moduli were collected using Shear Wave Elastography (SWE) which were then applied to a proportional first mode frequency analysis. Data were collected for the muscle stiffness and frequency response for fifteen subjects (25.6 +- 4.5). By comparing the proportion of the …

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Basinward Trends In Fluvial Architecture, Connectivity, And Reservoir Characterization Of The Trail Member, Ericson Sandstone, Mesaverde Group In Wyoming, Utah, And Colorado, Usa, Chelsea Anne Jolley Jun 2019

Basinward Trends In Fluvial Architecture, Connectivity, And Reservoir Characterization Of The Trail Member, Ericson Sandstone, Mesaverde Group In Wyoming, Utah, And Colorado, Usa, Chelsea Anne Jolley

Theses and Dissertations

The Late Cretaceous Trail Member of the Ericson Sandstone represents a regionally extensive fluvial system that transported sediments from the Sevier fold and thrust belt and Uinta Mountain uplift to the Western Interior Seaway. The Trail Member is a petroleum reservoir target that has unpredictable production rates due to the unknown behavior and connectivity of channel sandstones. The abundant outcrop, wellbore, and core data available allows for a comprehensive analysis of how the fluvial architecture, connectivity, and reservoir quality change along 65 km of depositional dip. Observations made at Flaming Gorge and Clay Basin (most landward field locations) suggest a …

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Video Prediction With Invertible Linear Embeddings, Robert Thomas Pottorff Jun 2019

Video Prediction With Invertible Linear Embeddings, Robert Thomas Pottorff

Theses and Dissertations

Using recently popularized invertible neural network We predict future video frames from complex dynamic scenes. Our invertible linear embedding (ILE) demonstrates successful learning, prediction and latent state inference. In contrast to other approaches, ILE does not use any explicit reconstruction loss or simplistic pixel-space assumptions. Instead, it leverages invertibility to optimize the likelihood of image sequences exactly, albeit indirectly.Experiments and comparisons against state of the art methods over synthetic and natural image sequences demonstrate the robustness of our approach, and a discussion of future work explores the opportunities our method might provide to other fields in which the accurate analysis …

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Deep Synthetic Noise Generation For Rgb-D Data Augmentation, Patrick Douglas Hammond Jun 2019

Deep Synthetic Noise Generation For Rgb-D Data Augmentation, Patrick Douglas Hammond

Theses and Dissertations

Considerable effort has been devoted to finding reliable methods of correcting noisy RGB-D images captured with unreliable depth-sensing technologies. Supervised neural networks have been shown to be capable of RGB-D image correction, but require copious amounts of carefully-corrected ground-truth data to train effectively. Data collection is laborious and time-intensive, especially for large datasets, and generation of ground-truth training data tends to be subject to human error. It might be possible to train an effective method on a relatively smaller dataset using synthetically damaged depth-data as input to the network, but this requires some understanding of the latent noise distribution of …

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Mechanically Scanned Interference Pattern Structured Illumination Imaging, Jarom Silver Jackson Jun 2019

Mechanically Scanned Interference Pattern Structured Illumination Imaging, Jarom Silver Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

A method of lensless, single pixel imaging is presented. This method, referred to as MAS-IPSII, is theoretically capable of resolutions as small as one quarter of the wavelength of the imaging light. The resolution is not limited by the aperture of any optic, making high resolutions (including subwavelength) feasible even at very large (greater than a meter) distances. Imaging requires only flat optics and a coherent source, making it a good candidate for imaging with extreme wavelengths in the UV and x-ray regimes. The method is demonstrated by the imaging of various test targets. Both real and complex imaging (i.e. …

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Robust Visual-Inertial Navigation And Control Of Fixed-Wing And Multirotor Aircraft, Jerel Bendt Nielsen Jun 2019

Robust Visual-Inertial Navigation And Control Of Fixed-Wing And Multirotor Aircraft, Jerel Bendt Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

With the increased performance and reduced cost of cameras, the robotics community has taken great interest in estimation and control algorithms that fuse camera data with other sensor data.In response to this interest, this dissertation investigates the algorithms needed for robust guidance, navigation, and control of fixed-wing and multirotor aircraft applied to target estimation and circumnavigation.This work begins with the development of a method to estimate target position relative to static landmarks, deriving and using a state-of-the-art EKF that estimates static landmarks in its state.Following this estimator, improvements are made to a nonlinear observer solving part of the SLAM problem.These …

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Toward Using Empirical Mode Decomposition To Identify Anomalies In Stream Flowdata And Correlations With Other Environmental Data, Saul Gallegos Ramirez Jun 2019

Toward Using Empirical Mode Decomposition To Identify Anomalies In Stream Flowdata And Correlations With Other Environmental Data, Saul Gallegos Ramirez

Theses and Dissertations

I applied empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the Hilbert-Herbert transforms, as tools to analyze streamflow data. I used the EMD method to extract and analyze periodic processes and trends in several environmental datasets including daily stream flow, daily precipitation, and daily temperature on data from the watersheds of two rivers in the Upper Colorado River Basin, the Yampa and the Upper-Green rivers. I used these data to identify forcing functions governing streamflow. Forcing functions include environmental factors such as temperature and precipitation and anthropogenic factors such as dams or diversions. The Green and Yampa Rivers have similar headwaters, but the …

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Replacement Rates Of Initially Hydrocarbon-Filled Microscopic Cavities With Water, Hans Christian Larson Jun 2019

Replacement Rates Of Initially Hydrocarbon-Filled Microscopic Cavities With Water, Hans Christian Larson

Theses and Dissertations

Wetting behaviors influence many aspects of life and industry from consumer product goods to oil recovery to cosmetics. While the traditional solid-liquid-vapor (SLV) system has been studied for many years now, wetting transitions in the solid-liquid-liquid (SLL) system has remained relatively unexplored. The purpose of this work is to bring light to the wetting transition of the solid-liquid-liquid system and to understand the replacement rates of initially hydrocarbon-filled microscopic cavities with water and the factors affecting these rates. Factors studied were viscosity, density, diffusion related properties, and surface related properties in both hydrocarbon-saturated and hydrocarbon-non-saturated conditions. Cylindrical microscopic cavities were …

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Geological And Geochemical Controls On Non-Tuberculous Mycobacterium Transmission: Examples From Hawaii, Schuyler Thomas Robinson Jun 2019

Geological And Geochemical Controls On Non-Tuberculous Mycobacterium Transmission: Examples From Hawaii, Schuyler Thomas Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

The opportunistic environmental microbes, non-tuberculous Mycobacterium (NTM), pose an increasing risk of disease and death in both immunodeficient and immunocompetent individuals in the USA and across the world. NTM lung disease is particularly prevalent in Hawaii, although the modes of NTM acquisition and transport in Hawaii are not fully understood. This study evaluated 149 soil and 50 water samples across the Hawaiian Islands to determine geochemical factors controlling NTM. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and principal component analyses (PCA) of modern soils show variables such as Total Organic Carbon (TOC), pH, P, mafic silicate minerals, and Pb seem to control NTM …

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