Digital Commons Network^™

Detection, Characterization, And Antibiotic Resistance Profiling Of Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria Isolated From Circulating Currency In The Northeastern Region Of Bangladesh, Moshiul Alam Mishu, Ashik Imran, Akash Saha, Shahida Ferdousee, Md. Rubiath Islam, Mohammad Abdullah-Al-Shoeb, Shahidul Islam, Muhammad Abul Kalam Azad

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Objectives

The study aims to investigate the prevalence of multidrug resistant bacteria on paper and coin currency obtained from various occupational groups in Bangladesh and to identify the bacterial species present. The research further seeks to evaluate the antibiotic resistance patterns of the identified bacterial isolates.

Methods

84 paper currency notes and 56 coins were collected from seven different sources. Bacterial contamination was assessed using standard bacteriological and biochemical tests to identify and characterize the bacteria. Antibiotic susceptibility of the isolated strains was evaluated using an antibiogram study.

Results

A total of 368 bacterial isolates were detected across the sampled …

Characterization Of Btex Species At Texas Commission On Environmental Quality (Tceq) Continuous Ambient Monitoring Station (Cams) Sites In Houston, Texas, Usa During 2018, Amit U. Raysoni, Sai Deepak Pinakana, August Luna, Esmeralda Mendez, Gabriel Ibarra-Mejia

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the atmosphere negatively impact human and environmental health. Various sources of VOCs include gasoline evaporation, solvent usage, traffic, etc. A dataset 1-year (2018) consisting of BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and m, p, and o-xylenes) concentrations in Houston, Texas, was analyzed to understand the spatial trends and sources of BTEX in the region. This study assesses 24-hour data concentrations from the Continuous Ambient Monitoring Station (CAMS) operated by the TCEQ Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in Houston. Spatial variations of the BTEX species across the various TCEQ CAMS sites were determined using multiple statistical analyses, …

The Nanograv 15 Yr Dataset: Posterior Predictive Checks For Gravitational-Wave Detection With Pulsar Timing Arrays, Gabriella Agazie, Akash Anumarlapudi, Anne M. Archibald, Zaven Arzoumanian, Jeremy G. Baier, Paul T. Baker, Bence Becsy, Joey S. Key, Jing Luo, Joseph D. Romano

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Pulsar timing array experiments have reported evidence for a stochastic background of nanohertz gravitational waves consistent with the signal expected from a population of supermassive black hole binaries. Their analyses assume power-law spectra for intrinsic pulsar noise and for the background, as well as a Hellings-Downs cross-correlation pattern among the gravitational-wave-induced residuals across pulsars. These assumptions may not be realized in actuality. We test them in the NANOGrav 15 yr dataset using Bayesian posterior predictive checks. After fitting our fiducial model to real data, we generate a population of simulated dataset replications. We use the replications to assess whether the …

China’S Readiness For Transitioning To A Low-Carbon Economy: Mitigant And Catalyst Factors For A Geopolitical Conflict, Yan Chen, Jiayi Lyu, Jaime Ortiz, Wenbin Song

International Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications

The transition from a carbon-intensive economy to a carbon-neutral one has become a critical global objective to address climate change. This study examines the relationship between Low-Carbon Economic Development (LCED) and Geopolitical Risk (GPR) in China by focusing on the challenges and opportunities they present. We use a qualitative analysis to identify that rising GPR, exacerbated by market instability, resource allocation conflicts, and trade disputes, significantly hinders LCED progress. However, these geopolitical tensions also act as a catalyst for accelerating the development of renewable energy, reducing reliance on traditional energy sources, and fostering low-carbon technologies. Furthermore, LCED can ameliorate GPR …

Addressing Class Imbalance Problem In Health Data Classification: Practical Application From An Oversampling Viewpoint, Edmund F. Agyemang, Joseph A. Mensah, Eric Nyarko, Dennis Arku, Benedict Mbeah-Baiden, Enock Opoku, Ezekiel Nii Noye Nortey

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

While analyzing health data is important for improving health outcomes, class imbalance in datasets poses major challenges to machine learning classification models. This work, therefore, considers the class imbalance problem in stroke prediction using models such as K-nearest neighbors, support vector machine, logistic regression, random forest, and decision tree. This work balances the stroke dataset, thereby enhancing model performance, through various oversampling strategies: random oversampling (RO), ADASYN, SMOTE, and SMOTE–Tomek. Compared to the results of the imbalanced dataset, all applied oversampling techniques enhanced the correct classification of stroke events by the ML model. Among these, RO–SVM with RBF kernel was …

Hilbert’S 10th Problem Via Mordell Curves, Somnath Jha, Debanjana Kundu, Dipramit Majumdar

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We show that for 5 / 6 -th of all primes p, Hilbert’s 10th problem is unsolvable for the ring of integers of Q ( ζ 3 , 3 √ p ) . We also show that there is an infinite set S of square-free integers such that Hilbert’s 10th problem is unsolvable over the ring of integers of Q ( ζ 3 , √ D , 3 √ p ) for every D ∈ S and for every prime p ≡ 2 , 5 ( mod 9 ) . We use the CM elliptic curves y 2 = x …

Sin-Seg: A Joint Spatial-Spectral Information Fusion Model For Medical Image Segmentation, Siyuan Dai, Kai Ye, Charlie Zhan, Haoteng Tang, Liang Zhan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In recent years, the application of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) to medical image segmentation has shown significant promise in computer-aided detection and diagnosis (CAD). Leveraging features from different spaces (i.e. Euclidean, non-Euclidean, and spectrum spaces) and multi-modalities of data have the potential to improve the information available to the CAD system, enhancing both effectiveness and efficiency. However, directly acquiring data from different spaces across multi-modalities is often prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Consequently, most current medical image segmentation techniques are confined to the spatial domain, which is limited to utilizing scanned images from MRI, CT, PET, etc. Here, we …

The Rider (2025-02-24), Rebeca Salinas

The Rider Archives

Vol. 10, No. 20

Stabilization Of Argan Oil Nanoemulsions Using Chitosan Extracted From Pink Shrimp Shells, Yousra Mdarhri, Ikram Bouziane, Ilyace Korodowou, Narjisse Mokhtari, Lama Rissouli, Fakhita Touhami, Mohamed Chabbi, Ahmed Touhami

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

This study investigates the use of chitosan, extracted from pink shrimp shells, as a stabilizer for argan oil nanoemulsions. Chitosan was obtained through demineralization, deproteination, bleaching, deacetylation, and purification, then characterized through potentiometric titration, viscometry, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and purity assessments. The resulting chitosan was used to stabilize nanoemulsions formulated with extra-virgin argan oil and a nonionic surfactant using the phase inversion composition (PIC) method. The stability of the nanoemulsion was assessed through light scattering, zeta potential, viscosity, and pH measurements. The extracted chitosan exhibited high purity, a deacetylation degree of 88.34%, a molecular weight of …

Swift-Bat Guano Follow-Up Of Gravitational-Wave Triggers In The Third Ligo–Virgo–Kagra Observing Run, Gayathri Raman, Samuele Ronchini, James Delaunay, Aaron Tohuvavohu, Teviet Creighton, Mario C. Diaz, Francisco Llamas, Soma Mukherjee, Gaukhar Nurbek, Volker Quetschke, Wenhui Wang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

We present results from a search for X-ray/gamma-ray counterparts of gravitational-wave (GW) candidates from the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA network using the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (Swift-BAT). The search includes 636 GW candidates received with low latency, 86 of which have been confirmed by the offline analysis and included in the third cumulative Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogs (GWTC-3). Targeted searches were carried out on the entire GW sample using the maximum-likelihood Non-imaging Transient Reconstruction and Temporal Search pipeline on the BAT data made available via the GUANO infrastructure. We do not detect any significant electromagnetic emission that is …

Evidence-Based Teaching Interventions For Emergent Multilingual Students In High School Science Classrooms: A Literature Review, Uma Ganesan

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

As student populations in the United States grow increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse, asset-oriented pedagogical approaches become essential for leveraging the linguistic talents of multilingual students in science education. This literature review explores evidence-based instructional interventions supporting emergent multilingual learners in deeply engaging with scientific practices and communication in high school science classrooms. The review examined nine peer-reviewed studies published between 2012 and 2023, focusing on instructional strategies for multilingual learners in secondary science education. Findings reveal promising interventions such as the 5E instructional model, think-pair-share discussions, translanguaging techniques, and culturally responsive pedagogy. These approaches, grounded in sociocultural theory and …

Semilinear Klein-Gordon Equation In Space-Time Of Black Hole Which Is Gaining Mass In The Universe With Accelerating Expansion, Karen Yagdjian, Anahit Galstyan

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

In this paper, we consider the propagation of waves in the space-time of a single black hole with a static Schwarzschild radius in the expanding universe, namely, the solutions of the linear and semilinear Klein-Gordon equations.

Modelling The Behavior Of Human Crowds As Coupled Active-Passive Dynamics Of Interacting Particle Systems, Thoa Thieu, Roderick Melnik

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

The modelling of human crowd behaviors offers many challenging questions to science in general. Specifically, the social human behavior consists of many physiological and psychological processes which are still largely unknown. To model reliably such human crowd systems with complex social interactions, stochastic tools play an important role for the setting of mathematical formulations of the problems. In this work, using the description based on an exclusion principle, we study a statistical-mechanics-based lattice gas model for active-passive population dynamics with an application to human crowd behaviors. We provide representative numerical examples for the evacuation dynamics of human crowds, where the …

A Comparative Evaluation Of Alectinib For Alk-Positive Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer: A Systematic Review, Monica Kharat, Harshitha Nookala, Jabez David John, Tirath Patel, Pragnesh Kalyandrug, Sonya Emmanuel, Anaya Noor, Dhruv Jignesh Kumar Halani, Abhishek Goyal, Bharathi Gadad

School of Medicine Publications

Background:

Lung cancer, a significant global health challenge, notably the non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) subtype, is a topic of utmost importance. The continuous advancements in NSCLC treatment, especially in the context of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive NSCLC, are of great interest. A thorough review of alectinib’s comparative efficacy and safety with other treatment modalities is a crucial step, and the role of clinicians and surgeons is integral in optimizing patient care. This review can also inform neoadjuvant therapies and enhance surgical education, facilitating more informed decision-making processes between surgeons and patients.

Methods:

This comprehensive systematic review results from rigorous screening. …

Hierarchical Search Method For Gravitational Waves From Stellar-Mass Binary Black Holes In Noisy Space-Based Detector Data, Yao Fu, Yan Wang, Soumya D. Mohanty

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Future space-based laser interferometric detectors, such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), will be able to detect gravitational waves (GWs) generated during the inspiral phase of stellar-mass binary black holes (SmBBHs). These detections contain a wealth of important information concerning astrophysical formation channels and fundamental physics constraints. However, the detection and characterization of GWs from SmBBHs poses a formidable data analysis challenge, arising from the large number of wave cycles that make the search extremely sensitive to mismatches in signal and template parameters in a likelihood-based approach. This makes the search for the maximum of the likelihood function over …

Hemodynamics Of Slip Surfaces For Thrombosis Control In Implanted Cardiovascular Devices, Kieun Choi, Weiguang Yang, On Shun Pak, Jongmin Seo

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Percutaneous medical devices are preferred for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases due to their minimal intervention compared to surgery. However, complications such as thrombosis remain significant challenges. This study aims to investigate the hemodynamic effects of slip surfaces on pacemaker leads and coronary stents using computational fluid dynamics under physiological conditions. Two computational models were developed: a venous anatomical model with a pacemaker lead and a coronary artery model with a stent. Slip boundary conditions were applied to these devices, and we quantitatively analyzed critical hemodynamic parameters, including wall shear stress (WSS) and residence time (RT), which are associated with …

Voronoi Conjecture For Five-Dimensional Parallelohedra, Alexey Garber

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We prove the Voronoi conjecture for five-dimensional parallelohedra. Namely, we show that if a convex five-dimensional polytope P tiles ℝ5 with translations, then P is an affine image of the Dirichlet-Voronoi polytope for a five-dimensional lattice.
/="/">Our proof is based on an exhaustive combinatorial analysis of possible dual 3-cells and incident dual 4-cells encoding local structures around two-dimensional faces of five-dimensional parallelohedron P and their edges aiming to prove existence of a free direction for P paired with new properties established for parallelohedra (in any dimension) that have a free direction that guarantee the Voronoi conjecture for P.

Chronic Kidney Disease In Hispanic Population In Us: A Public Health Research Gap, Shyam Chirravoori

Health & Biomedical Sciences Faculty Publications

Hispanic population is very fast growing in the United States of America. The incidence and prevalence of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is Hispanics is higher than that of non-Hispanic Whites. The Hispanics with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) are at a greater risk for kidney failure. The main contributing factors for this higher burden of chronic kidney disease are diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Both diabetes and metabolic syndrome are common in Hispanics. In addition, Health care access, quality of health care, language barrier, health literacy, low socioeconomic status, life style etc., may further contribute to the increased disease burden of …

Group Approach To Geometric Quantization Of Two Physical Groups, Paul Bracken

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Physical systems as a rule are associated with a symmetry group. One way of quantizing the system is to use this symmetry group to construct a geometric form of quantization procedure. This group quantization procedure is discussed and illustrated here on two different systems. Group cohomology and extensions of groups play a key role. Many important groups in physics can be extended by the local U(1) group. The process is introduced here and applied to two nontrivial systems.

Significance Of Multi-Level Fusion In Multi-Component Fault Diagnosis Under Speed Varying Condition In Rotational Machinery, S. Sowmya, M. Saimurugan, Immanuel A. Edinbarough

Informatics and Engineering Systems Faculty Publications

Most well-known challenging effects of identifying multiple defects in a rotational machine when speed is varied, are illustriously inspected by many researchers. However, different fusion logics are evolved in the series of research attempt, but not paid much attention in interrogating it for unsteady speed signals.Addressing this literature void, this paper focusses on multi-level fusion strategy with the help of sensor-centric feature integration and Dempster Shafer’s (D-S) theory of evidence for uncovering multi-faults in bearings, shafts and gears of rotational machines under speed variational condition. Primarily, instantaneous frequency and envelope from the acquired vibration and sound signals of complex system …

Stochastic Games Of Parental Vaccination Decision Making And Bounded Rationality, Andras Balogh, Tamer Oraby

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Vaccination is an effective strategy to prevent the spread of diseases. However, hesitancy and rejection of vaccines, particularly in childhood immunizations, pose challenges to vaccination efforts. In that case, according to rational decision-making and classical utility theory, parents weigh the costs of vaccination against the costs of not vaccinating their children. Social norms influence these parental decision-making outcomes, deviating their decisions from rationality. Additionally, variability in values of utilities stemming from stochasticity in parents' perceptions over time can lead to further deviations from rationality. In this paper, we employ independent white noises to represent stochastic fluctuations in parental perceptions of …

A Review Of Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, And Robots Through The Lens Of Stakeholder Theory, Michael J. Matthews, Su Runkun, Lindsey Yonish, Shawn Mcclean, Joel Koopman, Kai Chi Yam

Management Faculty Publications

With the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, intelligent machines are affecting the daily lives of multiple organizational stakeholders. However, despite the continued expansion of intelligent machines in society, management scholarship has generally lagged, and current frameworks are under-equipped to offer meaningful guidance regarding the intersection of intelligent machines and organizations. We address this issue via a multidisciplinary review and a novel framework of intelligent machines and value creation. First, we discuss the characteristics of intelligent machines (i.e., autonomy, learning, inscrutability, and materiality) and how variation in these characteristics impacts their affordances and, subsequently, the value offered to stakeholders. We …

The Role Of Molecular Profiling In De-Escalation Of Toxic Therapy In Breast Cancer, Sonia Y. Khan, Tonjeh Bah, Rakhshanda Layeequr Rahman

School of Medicine Publications

The prevalence and mortality associated with breast cancer have forced healthcare providers to leverage surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy to achieve a cure. Whereas mortality has significantly dropped over the decades, long-term toxicities and healthcare costs are prohibitive. Therefore, a better understanding of tumor biology through molecular profiling is being utilized for de-escalation of treatment where appropriate. As research evolves, there is growing evidence that less aggressive treatment regimens, when appropriately tailored, can be equally effective for certain patient populations. This approach not only enhances the quality of life for patients by reducing the financial, physical, and emotional burdens …

The Rider (2025-02-03), Rebeca Salinas

The Rider Archives

Vol.10 No.17

Effective Learning Strategies In Stem, Muzammil Arshad, Rebecca R. Romatoski, Mamoona Muzammil

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

Effective learning strategies were developed, implemented, and applied at five separate institutions of higher education in the United States, and one in the Middle East. The research has been dedicated to determining effective learning strategies for student learning and success. The research series developed grading rubric for homework and exams, developed a course structure for hybrid and face-to-face courses in STEM, and studied the impact of the syllabus design on student learning and motivation. A pedagogical methodology constituting the designed course structure was utilized to use various activity-based modules. Course lectures were designed to utilize PowerPoint presentations and/or OneNote as …

Potential Effects Of Statistical Complexity Measure In Improving The Fault Diagnosis Performance Under Speed Fluctuations, S. Sowmya, M. Saimurugan, N. Kannan, Immanuel A. Edinbarough

Informatics and Engineering Systems Faculty Publications

Many research studies are performed in extracting non-stationary signal properties such as instantaneous frequency (IF) and envelope to diagnose machinery faults under time-varying speed conditions. But accurate IF extraction is difficult from such complex fluctuating signals to identify the faults efficiently. Therefore, this paper proposes the Statistical Complexity Measure (SCM) as a feature that evaluates the randomness and complexity without any additional requirement, providing an outstanding result in multi-component fault detection under speed fluctuations. Primarily, the influence of SCM is proved by ranking the features with the help of the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. The fault classification of individual signal …

Flow And Heat Transfer Experimental Study For 3d-Printed Solar Receiving Tubes With Helical Fins At Internal Surface, Fouad Haddad, Naznin Nuria Afrin, Jianzhi Li, Peiwen Li, Bharath Pidaparthi, Samy Missoum, Ben Xu

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

3D-printing technology was applied to fabricate novel solar thermal collection tubes that have internal heat transfer enhancement fins and external surfaces with high solar absorptivity and low emissivity due to the ability to use different materials in one tube. Helical fins were selected to introduce circumferential flow and thus minimize the circumferential temperature difference of the tube that receives sunlight on one side. The structures of the helical fins were previously optimized from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis with the objective of low entropy production rate by looking for high heat transfer coefficient and relatively lower pressure loss. High-temperature alloy, …

Dft Study Of The Mechanism Of Selective Hydrogenation Of Acetylene By Rhodium Single-Atom Catalyst Supported On Hy Zeolite, Melisa Su Yordanlı, Roberto Escobar, Jessica Meza, Deniz Akgül, Yuxin Zhao, Alper Uzun, Fatma Ahu Akin, Viktorya Aviyente, Abdurrahman Cagri Atesin, Tülay A. Ateşin

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

The selectivity of acetylene hydrogenation by the Rh single-atom catalyst (SAC) supported on HY zeolite was investigated using density functional theory (DFT) and a 5/83T quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) embedded cluster model. The calculated activation barrier (ΔG‡) for the oxidative addition of dihydrogen to the Rh metal center (15.9 kcal/mol) is lower in energy than that for the σ-bond metathesis of dihydrogen to the Rh—C bond (22.7 kcal/mol) and the Rh—O bond (28.4 kcal/mol). The activation barriers of the oxidative addition of subsequent dihydrogen molecules are significantly higher than that of the oxidative addition of the first dihydrogen molecule. These …

Construction Of Electrically Heated Pavement Using Recycled Waste Rubber Tires, Islam M. Radwan, Mohamed Abdel-Raheem

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Accumulated snow on roads presents a dual risk of accidents and financial losses. Conventional de-icing methods, which rely on chemicals, salt, and heavy machinery, are unsustainable and detrimental to both the environment and infrastructure. Furthermore, they demand significant labor and pose hazards in densely populated areas. In response, heated pavement systems such as hydronic and electrically conductive concrete (ECON) have gained traction for mitigating snow accumulation on roads. However, the use of carbon fiber and carbon black in ECON raises costs and depletes valuable resources. This research introduces an inventive and sustainable approach to address snow accumulation on rigid pavements …

Order-2 Delaunay Triangulations Optimize Angles, Herbert Edelsbrunner, Alexey Garber, Morteza Saghafian

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

The local angle property of the (order-1) Delaunay triangulations of a generic set in R2" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">R2R2 asserts that the sum of two angles opposite a common edge is less than π. This paper extends this property to higher order and uses it to generalize two classic properties from order-1 to order-2: (1) among the complete level-2 hypertriangulations of a generic point set in R2" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">R2R2, the order-2 Delaunay triangulation lexicographically maximizes the sorted angle vector; (2) among the maximal level-2 hypertriangulations …