Digital Commons Network^™

Compost And Biochar To Promote Soil Biological Activities Under Sweet Potatoes Cultivation In A Subtropical Semiarid Region, Josabeth Navarro, Jahdiel Salazar, James Jihoon Kang, Jason Parsons, Chu-Lin Cheng, Alexandria Castillo, Engil Isadora Pujol Pereira

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

South Texas is located in a subtropical semiarid climate, and due to high temperature and irregular precipitation, farmers opt to leave their fields fallow during the summer months jeopardizing overall soil health. We evaluated whether sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) cultivation coupled with drip irrigation could restore soil biological activities compared with bare fallow. Additionally, because sweet potatoes have high demand of soil nutrients, especially potassium (K), we evaluated the nutrient supply of locally sourced soil amendments. Sweet potato was cultivated during summer 2018 in McAllen, Texas, under control (no fertilizer), NPK (synthetic fertilizer), RC (yard-waste compost), and AC (compost produced …

Subnormality Of Powers Of Multivariable Weighted Shifts, Sang Hoon Lee, Woo Young Lee, Jasang Yoon

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Given a pair of commuting subnormal Hilbert space operators, the Lifting Problem for Commuting Subnormals (LPCS) asks for necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a commuting pair of normal extensions of and ; in other words, is a subnormal pair. The LPCS is a longstanding open problem in the operator theory. In this paper, we consider the LPCS of a class of powers of -variable weighted shifts. Our main theorem states that if a “corner” of a 2-variable weighted shift is subnormal, then is subnormal if and only if a power is subnormal for some . As a …

Characterization Of Pathogen Airborne Inoculum Density By Information Theoretic Analysis Of Spore Trap Time Series Data, Robin A. Choudhury, Neil Mcroberts

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

In a previous study, air sampling using vortex air samplers combined with species-specific amplification of pathogen DNA was carried out over two years in four or five locations in the Salinas Valley of California. The resulting time series data for the abundance of pathogen DNA trapped per day displayed complex dynamics with features of both deterministic (chaotic) and stochastic uncertainty. Methods of nonlinear time series analysis developed for the reconstruction of low dimensional attractors provided new insights into the complexity of pathogen abundance data. In particular, the analyses suggested that the length of time series data that it is practical …

Repeated Minimizers Of $P$-Frame Energies, Alexey Glazyrin, Josiah Park

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

For a collection of $N$ unit vectors ${X}=\{x_i\}_{i=1}^N$, define the $p$-frame energy of ${X}$ as the quantity $\sum_{i\neq j} |\langle x_i,x_j \rangle|^p$. In this paper, we connect the problem of minimizing this value to another optimization problem, thus giving new lower bounds for such energies. In particular, for $p<2$, we prove that this energy is at least $2(N-d) p^{-\frac p 2} (2-p)^{\frac {p-2} 2}$ which is sharp for $d\leq N\leq 2d$ and $p=1$. We also prove that for $1\leq m

Editorial: Carbon- And Inorganic-Based Nanostructures For Energy Applications, Federico Cesano, M. Jasim Uddin, Yuanbing Mao, Muhammad N. Huda

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Chemistry)

No abstract provided.

Classical And Quantum Integrability: A Formulation That Admits Quantum Chaos, Paul Bracken

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

The concept of integrability of a quantum system is developed and studied. By formulating the concepts of quantum degree of freedom and quantum phase space, a realization of the dynamics is achieved. For a quantum system with a dynamical group G in one of its unitary irreducible representative carrier spaces, the quantum phase space is a finite topological space. It is isomorphic to a coset space G=R by means of the unitary exponential mapping, where R is the maximal stability subgroup of a fixed state in the carrier space. This approach has the distinct advantage of exhibiting consistency between classical …

Different Approximation Algorithms For Channel Scheduling In Wireless Networks, Qiufen Ni, Chuanhe Huang, Panos M. Pardalos, Jia Ye, Bin Fu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We introduce a new two-side approximation method for the channel scheduling problem, which controls the accuracy of approximation in two sides by a pair of parameters . We present a series of simple and practical-for-implementation greedy algorithms which give constant factor approximation in both sides. First, we propose four approximation algorithms for the weighted channel allocation problem: 1. a greedy algorithm for the multichannel with fixed interference radius scheduling problem is proposed and an one side -IS-approximation is obtained; 2. a greedy -approximation algorithm for single channel with fixed interference radius scheduling problem is presented; 3. we improve the existing …

Host Density Dependence And Environmental Factors Affecting Laurel Wilt Disease Incidence, Robin A. Choudhury, H. L. Er, M. Hughes, J. A. Smith, G. E. Pruett, J. Konkol, R. C. Ploetz, J. J. Marois, K. A. Marois, A. H. C. Van Bruggen

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Host size, density, and distribution, in addition to climate, can affect the likelihood a pathogen will invade and saturate landscapes. Laurel wilt, caused by the vector‐borne pathogen Raffaelea lauricola, has devastated populations of native Lauraceae in the Southeastern US, and continues to spread. We surveyed 87 plots in six coastal islands in South Carolina, Georgia, and North Florida, and one inland site (Archbold Biological Station) in South Florida for laurel wilt‐affected and non‐affected individual plants belonging to the genus Persea. The coastal island sites were surveyed once in 2008 or 2009, and the inland site was surveyed eight …

Early Civil Rights In The Rio Grande Valley: Mexican American Activism In The Early Twentieth Century (Elementary Social Studies K-5), Maritza De La Trinidad

Fall Workshop November 2020

Relevant TEKS for Elementary.

Tobacco Hornworm (Manduca Sexta) Oral Secretion Elicits Reactive Oxygen Species In Isolated Tomato Protoplasts, Akanksha Gandhi, Rupesh R. Kariyat, Cruz Chappa, Mandeep Tayal, Nirakar Sahoo

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Biology)

Plants are under constant attack by a suite of insect herbivores. Over millions of years of coexistence, plants have evolved the ability to sense insect feeding via herbivore-associated elicitors in oral secretions, which can mobilize defense responses. However, herbivore-associated elicitors and the intrinsic downstream modulator of such interactions remain less understood. In this study, we show that tobacco hornworm caterpillar (Manduca sexta) oral secretion (OS) induces reactive oxygen species (ROS) in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) protoplasts. By using a dye-based ROS imaging approach, our study shows that application of plant-fed (PF) M. sexta OS generates significantly higher ROS while artificial diet-fed …

Improving The Robustness Of The Advanced Ligo Detectors To Earthquakes, Eyal Schwartz, A. Pele, J. Warner, B. Lantz, Joseph Betzwieser, K. L. Dooley, S. Biscans, K. E. Ramirez

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Teleseismic, or distant, earthquakes regularly disrupt the operation of ground–based gravitational wave detectors such as Advanced LIGO. Here, we present EQ mode, a new global control scheme, consisting of an automated sequence of optimized control filters that reduces and coordinates the motion of the seismic isolation platforms during earthquakes. This, in turn, suppresses the differential motion of the interferometer arms with respect to one another, resulting in a reduction of DARM signal at frequencies below 100 mHz. Our method greatly improved the interferometers' capability to remain operational during earthquakes, with ground velocities up to 3.9 μm s−1 rms …

Invited Article By M. Gidea Extreme Events And Emergency Scales, Veniamin Smirnov, Zhuanzhuan Ma, Dimitri Volchenkov

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

An event is extreme if its magnitude exceeds the threshold. A choice of a threshold is subject to uncertainty caused by a method, the size of available data, a hypothesis on statistics, etc. We assess the degree of uncertainty by the Shannon's entropy calculated on the probability that the threshold changes at any given time. If the amount of data is not sufficient, an observer is in the state of Lewis Carroll's Red Queen who said "When you say hill, I could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley". If we have enough data, the …

Marine Wild-Capture Fisheries After Nuclear War, Kim J. N. Scherrer, Cheryl S. Harrison, Ryan F. Heneghan, Eric Galbraith, Charles G. Bardeen, Joshua Coupe, Jonas Jägermeyr, Nicole S. Lovenduski, August Luna, Alan Robock, Jessica Stevens, Samantha Stevenson, Owen B. Toon, Lili Xia

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Nuclear war, beyond its devastating direct impacts, is expected to cause global climatic perturbations through injections of soot into the upper atmosphere. Reduced temperature and sunlight could drive unprecedented reductions in agricultural production, endangering global food security. However, the effects of nuclear war on marine wild-capture fisheries, which significantly contribute to the global animal protein and micronutrient supply, remain unexplored. We simulate the climatic effects of six war scenarios on fish biomass and catch globally, using a state-of-the-art Earth system model and global process-based fisheries model. We also simulate how either rapidly increased fish demand (driven by food shortages) or …

Electromagnetic-Triboelectric-Hybrid Energy Tile For Biomechanical Green Energy Harvesting, Elaijah Islam, Abu Musa Abdullah, Aminur Rashid Chowdhury, Farzana Tasnim, Madelyne Martinez, Carolina Olivares, Karen Lozano, Mohammed Uddin

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Chemistry)

Highlights

• Hybrid nanogenerator based floor-tile was developed to convert the Bio-Mechanical energy of human footsteps to Electrical Energy.

• Hybridization of Triboelectric Nanogenerator and Electro-Magnetic Generator consisting of Aluminum and Kapton.

• MoS2 is working as an electron acceptor.

• The maximum output is 1200V as open-circuit voltage, 5mA as short-circuit current, and 6W as power.

• Produces 20% more power than a commercially sold energy-harvester floor tile.

Abstract

Since the invention of Piezoelectric Nanogenerator in 2006, nanogenerators has become an attractive technology to the researchers for scavenging mechanical energy from the ambient environment for real life applications. Hybridization of these nanogenerators has been …

Contact Graphs Of Ball Packings, Alexey Glazyrin

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

A contact graph of a packing of closed balls is a graph with balls as vertices and pairs of tangent balls as edges. We prove that the average degree of the contact graph of a packing of balls (with possibly different radii) in R3 is not greater than 13.955. We also find new upper bounds for the average degree of contact graphs in R4 and R5.

Review Of Principles Of Microeconomics 2e, Jean-Baptiste Tondji

Open Educational Resources - Reviews

No abstract provided.

Evo Morales And Electoral Fraud In Bolivia: A Natural Experiment And Discontinuity Evidence, Diego Escobari, Gary A. Hoover

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper uses a unique data set and a natural experiment based on the shutdown in the official preliminary vote counting system to identify and estimate the size of electoral fraud in the 2019 Bolivian presidential elections. The 2016 Constitutional Referendum and the participation of other political parties serve as controls to estimate various difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences specifications. The results show evidence of a statistically significant electoral case of fraud that increased the votes of the incumbent Movimiento al Socialismo and decreased the votes of the runner up Comunidad Ciudadana. We estimate that the extent of the fraud is 2.50% …

Greenhouse Gas Emission Efficiencies Of World Countries, Levent Kutlu

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Greenhouse gas emissions have increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. This has led to an unnatural increase in the global surface temperature, and to other changes in our environment. Acknowledging this observation, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change started an international environmental treaty. This treaty was extended by Kyoto protocol, which was adopted on 11 December 1997. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we analyze the efficiencies of countries in terms of achieving the lowest greenhouse gas emission levels per GDP output in the years between 1990–2015. We find that the average greenhouse gas emission efficiencies of world countries …

Brown Spot In Table Grape Redglobe Controlled In Study With Sulfur Dioxide And Temperature Treatments, Cassandra A. Young, Robin A. Choudhury, Carlos H. Crisosto, W. Douglas Gubler

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Brown spot is a postharvest disease of grapes caused by Cladosporium species in the San Joaquin Valley of California. It spreads during cold storage and transport, resulting in severe economic losses to late table grape cultivars, which are grown mainly for export to countries such as China and Mexico. We examined the effect of temperature and sulfur dioxide (SO2) treatments on fungal growth and infection of Redglobe berries by three Cladosporium species: Cladosporium ramotenellum, C. cladosporioides and C. limoniforme. Redglobe is especially popular for export. Fungal colonies growing on potato dextrose agar in petri plates stored at −2°C grew slower …

Structural Evolution And Magnetic Properties Of Gd2hf2o7 Nanocrystals: Computational And Experimental Investigations, Madhab Pokhrel, Nicholas Dimakis, Gamage Chamath Dannangoda, Santosh K. Gupta, Karen S. Martirosyan, Yuanbing Mao

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Structural evolution in functional materials is a physicochemical phenomenon, which is important from a fundamental study point of view and for its applications in magnetism, catalysis, and nuclear waste immobilization. In this study, we used x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy to examine the Gd₂Hf₂O₇ (GHO) pyrochlore, and we showed that it underwent a thermally induced crystalline phase evolution. Superconducting quantum interference device measurements were carried out on both the weakly ordered pyrochlore and the fully ordered phases. These measurements suggest a weak magnetism for both pyrochlore phases. Spin density calculations showed that the Gd^{3+ …}

The Rider (2020-10-12), Jacqueline Peraza

The Rider Archives

Vol.6 No.8

The Efficient Synthesis Of D-Xylulose And Formal Synthesis Of Syringolide 1, Sudhakar Kalagara, Gabriel Orozco, Shizue Mito

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Chemistry)

Wittig reaction and asymmetric dihydroxylation were used as the key steps in the synthesis of D-xylulose, a commercially available but costly carbohydrate. The effects of protecting groups and reactions conditions on asymmetric dihydroxylation are demonstrated. Optically pure D-xylulose was obtained after 4-6 steps from readily available hydroxyacetone and ethylene glycol. The method also involves some other valuable intermediates along the synthesis. Those intermediates were applied in the formal synthesis of Syringolides. A key precursor butenolide to Syringolide 1, the first non-proteinaceous specific elicitors of plant hypersensitive response, was obtained after 3 steps from the intermediate (8–10 steps from hydroxyacetone and …

Relocating Units In Robot Swarms With Uniform Control Signals Is Pspace-Complete, David Caballero, Angel A. Cantu, Timothy Gomez, Austin Luchsinger, Robert Schweller, Tim Wylie

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper investigates a restricted version of robot motion planning, in which particles on a board uniformly respond to global signals that cause them to move one unit distance in a particular direction on a 2D grid board with geometric obstacles. We show that the problem of deciding if a particular particle can be relocated to a specified location on the board is PSPACE-complete when only allowing 1x1 particles. This shows a separation between this problem, called the relocation problem, and the occupancy problem in which we ask whether a particular location can be occupied by any particle on the …

Planning Our Lessons, J. Joy Esquierdo

Fall Workshop November 2020

No abstract provided.

Border Security And Immigration Policy Management In South Texas By The Numbers: Perception, Stories And The Knowledge Analytic, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), primarily the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Agency, will be analyzed through the lens of the knowledge analytic (KA) developed in earlier work (Garrett 2001; 2004; 2010, and Hummel 2006). Stories told by managers (Hummel 1991) and others in organizations are important for understanding the modern organizational pyramid and the differences between knowledges with regard to border security operatives and their attitudes towards migration policy and other issues along the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS and subordinate agencies rank perennially at or near the bottom of the federal government in terms of the Federal Employees Viewpoint …

Testing Mediation Via Indirect Effects In Pls-Sem: A Social Networking Site Illustration, Murad Moqbel, Rakesh Guduru, Ahasan Harun

Information Systems Faculty Publications

Mediation analysis, in the context of structural equation modeling via partial least squares (PLSSEM), affords a better understanding of the relationships among independent and dependent variables, when the variables seem to not have a definite connection. In this paper, we demonstrate such an analysis in the context of social networking sites, using WarpPLS, a leading PLS-SEM software tool.

Energy Spectrum Of Linear Internal Wave Field In The Vicinity Of Continental Slope, Ranis N. Ibragimov, Austin Biondi, Nathan Arndt, Maria Castillo, Guang Lin, Vesselin Vatchev, Sheng Zhang

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

The purpose of the research was to investigate two-dimensional modeling of efficiency of mixing, resulting from the reflection of a linear internal wave field (IWF) off a continental slope. Efficiency of deep ocean mixing was associated with the energy balance of the radiating IWF into an interior of the ocean in the vicinity of a sloping bottom topography. Since waves are generated not only at the fundamental frequency but also at all of its harmonics ωn = nω less than buoyancy frequency N and greater than Coriolis frequency f, our analysis includes, in general, an infinite number of …

Deep Sea Isopods From The Western Mediterranean: Distribution And Habitat, Joan E. Cartes, Diego F. Figueroa

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Isopods are a highly diversified group of deep-sea fauna, with a wide variety of shapes which must reflect a similar great variety of adaptations to the deep environments. The deep Mediterranean, however, has a low diversity of isopods related to its oligotrophy, the thermal stability of deep-water masses (∼12.8 °C below 150 - 200 m) and rather homogeneous geomorphology. The main factor defining isopod habitats in the Balearic Basin is insularity vs mainland influence. Desmosomatidae and Ischnomesidae, examples of epibenthic species (with lack of paddle-shaped legs and non/low-natatory capacity) are mainly linked to mainland areas with higher % organic matter …

The Majority Rule: A General Protection On Recommender System, Lei Xu, Lin Chen, Martin Flores, Hansheng Lei, Liyu Zhang, Mahmoud K. Quweider, Fitratullah Khan, Weidong Shi

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Recommender systems are widely used in a variety of scenarios, including online shopping, social network, and contents distribution. As users rely more on recommender systems for information retrieval, they also become attractive targets for cyber-attacks. The high-level idea of attacking a recommender system is straightforward. An adversary selects a strategy to inject manipulated data into the database of the recommender system to influence the recommendation results, which is also known as a profile injection attack. Most existing works treat attacking and protection in a static manner, i.e., they only consider the adversary’s behavior when analyzing the influence without considering normal …

On Triangular Paperfolding Patterns, Alexey Garber

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We introduce patterns on a triangular grid generated by paperfolding operations. We show that in case these patterns are defined using a periodic sequence of foldings, they can also be generated using substitution rules and compute eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the corresponding matrices. We also prove that densities of all basic triangles are equal in these patterns.