Digital Commons Network^™

Pmc Turbo: Studying Gravity Wave And Instability Dynamics In The Summer Mesosphere Using Polar Mesospheric Cloud Imaging And Profiling From A Stratospheric Balloon, David C. Fritts, Amber D. Miller, C. Bjorn Kjellstrand, Christopher Geach, Bifford P. Williams, Bernd Kaifler, Natalie Kaifler, Glenn Jones, Markus Rapp, Michele Limon, Jason Reimuller, Ling Wang, Shaul Hanany, Sonja Gisinger, Yucheng Zhao, Gunter Stober, Cora E. Randall

All Physics Faculty Publications

The Polar Mesospheric Cloud Turbulence (PMC Turbo) experiment was designed to observe and quantify the dynamics of small‐scale gravity waves (GWs) and instabilities leading to turbulence in the upper mesosphere during polar summer using instruments aboard a stratospheric balloon. The PMC Turbo scientific payload comprised seven high‐resolution cameras and a Rayleigh lidar. Overlapping wide and narrow camera field of views from the balloon altitude of ~38 km enabled resolution of features extending from ~20 m to ~100 km at the PMC layer altitude of ~82 km. The Rayleigh lidar provided profiles of temperature below the PMC altitudes and of the …

Climatology And Change Of Extreme Precipitation Events In Taiwan Based On Weather Types, Yi-Chao Wu, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang, Yi-Chiang Yu, Chu-Ying Kung, An-Hsiang Wang, Sebastian A. Los, Wan-Ru Huang

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Taiwan's most significant natural hazards are caused by hydrological extremes resulting from excessive precipitation. The threat of extreme precipitation is posed by several different types of weather patterns that affect Taiwan. This study examined the bi‐decadal changes in rainfall by defining an extreme precipitation occurrence (EPO) for a range of event durations from 1 to 24 hr. Three major weather types affecting EPO in Taiwan were identified from 1993 to 2015: the front type consisting of either a frontal zone or convective systems developing with an apparent Meiyu cloudband, diurnal rainfall events when no apparent synoptic features are present, and …

Educational Policies Committee Program Proposal, Jon M. Huntsman School Of Business, May 17, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Utah State University requests approval to offer the following Degree: BA/BS Degree in Finance with emphases effective Spring 2020.

Climatization-Negligent Attribution Of Great Salt Lake Desiccation: A Comment On Meng (2019), Michael L. Wine, Sarah E. Null, R. Justin Derose, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

A recent article reviewed data on Great Salt Lake (Utah) and concluded falsely that climate changes, especially local warming and extreme precipitation events, are primarily responsible for lake elevation changes. Indeed climatically influenced variation of net inflows contribute to huge swings in the elevation of Great Salt Lake (GSL) and other endorheic lakes. Although droughts and wet cycles have caused lake elevation changes of over 4.5 m, they have not caused a significant long-term change in the GSL stage. This recent article also suggests that a 1.4 °C rise in air temperature and concomitant increase in the lake's evaporative loss …

Graduate Student Mahyar Aboutalebi Receives Spie Award, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Graduate student Mahyar Aboutalebi recently received the Best Paper Award at the SPIE 'Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping IV' Conference in Baltimore, MD, April 2019. This is the second year in a row that Mahyar has received an award for an SPIE paper, since his entry last year was awarded runner up for Best Paper.

Gas Production Kinetics And In Vitro Degradability Of Tannin-Containing Legumes, Alfalfa And Their Mixtures., Sebastian Lagrange, S. Lobón, Juan J. Villalba

Wildland Resources Student Research

The aim of this study was to determine in vitro ruminal degradability and gas production kinetics of sainfoin (Onobrichis viciifolia; SF), birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus; BFT), alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.; ALF) and their binary or trinary mixtures using the gas production technique. The proportions in the mixtures represented: (1) those selected by lambs in a free-choice experiment (70:30 and 50:35:15 ratios for binary and trinary combinations, respectively), or (2) equal proportions (50:50 or 33:33:33 ratios for binary or trinary mixtures, respectively). Organic matter digestibility was greater in ALF and BFT than in SF (0.791 and 0.796 vs …

Electron Yield Measurements Of Multilayer Conductive Materials, Gregory Wilson, Matthew Robertson, Jordan Lee, Jr Dennison

Conference Proceedings

As energetic electrons interact with the surface of materials, they impart energy throughout the material. If the energy exchange is near the surface, secondary electrons within the material can be excited and emitted. It is also possible for the incident primary electron to undergo a quasi-elastic collision within the material, wherein the electron is backscattered and emitted from the surface. As the backscattered electron is leaving the material, it can continue to impart energy to the material, potentially exciting more secondary electrons as it approaches the surface on the way back out.

This process of imparting energy and charge to …

Strategies For Determining Electron Yield Material Parameters For Spacecraft Charge Modeling, Phil Lundgreen, Jr Dennison

Conference Proceedings

Modeling of space plasma environment-induced anomalies requires knowledge of:

• Environment and impinging fluxes during spacecraft orbits, which are mission specific and can be incorporated through environmental models and databases.
• Satellite geometry and orientation in the space environment, accomplished through such charging codes as NASCAP-2K, SPENVIS, or MUSCAT.
• Materials used in spacecraft construction, from the specific spacecraft design.
• Relevant materials properties characterizing the interaction of the materials with the environment and how these properties may change with exposure to the space environment.

A reliable, comprehensive database of spacecraft materials and the characterization of those materials is being created in the form …

Suppresion Of Electron Yield With Carbon Nanotube Forests: A Case Study, Brian Wood, Jordan Lee, Gregory Wilson, T.-C. Shen, Jr Dennison

Conference Proceedings

Electron emission of carbon nanotube (CNT) forests grown on silicon substrates was measured to investigate possible electron yield suppression due to the composition and morphology of CNT forests. CNT forests are vertically-oriented tubular formations of graphitic carbon grown on a substrate; these have been widely investigated for their extreme properties in optical, electrical, and mechanical aspects of physics and material sciences. CNT coatings are good candidates for yield reduction, in analogy with the near-ideal blackbody optical properties of CNT forests. Carbon with its low atomic number has an inherent low yield due to its low density of bulk electrons. Furthermore, …

Influence Of Vibrationally-Induced Structural Changes On Carbon Nanotube Forests Suppression Of Electron Yield, Jordan Lee, Brian Wood, Gregory Wilson, T.-C. Shen, Jr Dennison

Conference Proceedings

Carbon nanotube (CNT) forest coatings have been found to lower electron yield from material surfaces. The suppressed yields have been attributed to both the lower inherent yields of low-atomic number carbon and the enhanced electron recapture resulting from the morphology of the carbon layer. To explore the relative contributions of these two causes of yield suppression, tests have been made on CNT forest-coated conducting substrate samples subjected to vibrationally-induced changes of the coating structure. The extent of vibrationally-induced structural changes—due, for example, to shear-force conditions during space-vehicle transit—are of interest, as CNT have been a frequent topic of scientific curiosity …

Additional Thoughts On Rigor In Wildlife Science: Unappreciated Impediments, John A. Bissonette

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Traditionally, most scientists accepted reductionist and mechanistic approaches as the rigorous way to do science. Sells et al. (2018) recently raised the argument about reliability in wildlife science. Chamberlin (1890), Platt (1964), Romesburg (1981, 1991, 2009), and Williams (1997) were rightly referenced as very influential papers. My intention in this letter is not to refute the essence of the Sells et al. (2018) commentary but to add seldom addressed but important aspects that influence the attainment of rigor and certainty in wildlife studies. The elements of …

Communicating Computational Concepts And Practices Within High School Students’ Portfolios Of Making Electronic Textiles, Debora Lui, Justice T. Walker, Sheri Hanna, Yasmin B. Kafai, Deborah A. Fields, Gayithri Jayathirtha

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Portfolios have recently gained traction within computer science education as a way to assess students’ computational thinking and practices. Whereas traditional assessments such as exams tend to capture learning within artificial settings at a single point in time, portfolios provide more authentic opportunities to document a trajectory of students’ learning and practices in everyday contexts. Furthermore, because communication itself has been defined as an important computational thinking practice, portfolios give students a place to practice this skill in the classroom. In this study, we report on the implementation of a digital portfolio with a class of 21 high school students …

On The Ability Of Pnicogen Atoms To Engage In Both Σ And Π-Hole Complexes. Heterodimers Of Zf2C6H5 (Z = P, As, Sb, Bi) And Nh3, Wiktor Zierkiewicz, Mariusz Michalczyk, Rafał Wysokiński, Steve Scheiner

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

When bound to a pair of F atoms and a phenyl ring, a pyramidal pnicogen (Z) atom can form a pnicogen bond wherein an NH₃ base lies opposite one F atom. In addition to this σ-hole complex, the ZF₂C₆H₅ molecule can distort in such a way that the NH₃ approaches on the opposite side to the lone pair on Z, where there is a so-called π-hole. The interaction energies of these π-hole dimers are roughly 30 kcal/mol, much larger than the equivalent quantities for the σ-hole complexes, which are only 4–13 kcal/mol. On …

Improving Sram Fpga Radiation Reliability Through Low-Level Tmr Implementation, Matthew Cannon, Andrew Keller, Michael J. Wirthlin

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Mitigation techniques, such as TMR with repair, are used to reduce the negative effects of radiation on FPGAs deployed in space environments. While these techniques increase the robustness of the device, there is still room for improvement in the range of 100 to 1,000x. These improvements can be realized through the low-level implementation of the placement and routing on the device. This work has implemented a wide variety of techniques to realize these gains, achieving an overall improvement of 57,443x through fault-injection testing and an improvement of 350x in radiation testing.

Boiling Heat Transfer Of Impinging Jets On Superheated Superhydrophobic Surfaces, D. Jacob Butterfield, Julie Crockett

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Superhydrophobic surfaces possess desirable self-cleaning properties, but have also been shown to reduce heat transfer to subcooled water in impinging jet scenarios. Further investigation is required to explore the potential utility of such surfaces in high temperature applications such as rocket launch-pad cooling. Here, superheated silicon substrates with varying wettability are quenched by an impinging water jet, where the substrate temperature is above the boiling regime which has previously been unexplored. Silicon wafers are etched, coated, and integrated with an electric resistance heater and heated to temperatures up to 300 ° C before being quenched by an axisymmetric water jet. …

Administering Model-Based Patient-Specific Supplemental Oxygen Therapy, Kyle M. Burk, Joseph A. Orr

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Purpose: The oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve describes the relationship between the partial pressure of oxygen and the percent of hemoglobin saturated with oxygen and varies with chemical and physical factors that differ for every patient. If variability could be determined, patient specific oxygen therapy could be administered. We have developed a procedure for characterizing variations in the oxygen dissociation curve. The purpose of this study was to validate this procedure in surgical patients. Methods: The procedure uses an automated system to alter oxygen therapy and Hill's equation to fit measurements. Once measurements are gathered, the procedure uses an iterative least-squares method …

A Low-Cost Trajectory Estimation System For Drones And Rockets, Stephen A. Whitmore, Tyler J. Gardner

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Drone aircraft have become very popular during the last few years. These remote-controlled aircraft often rely on GPS receivers to track their position and velocity. However, it is often important for aircraft to measure other information that GPS cannot provide. Recent developments in single-board computers have facilitated the creation of cheap and effective embedded systems. This paper details the development and testing of a Raspberry Pi-based low-cost trajectory estimation system. Data acquired from a pitot probe, GPS receiver, altimeter, and accelerometer are fed into a Kalman filter to calculate a best-fit trajectory. The performance of the filter algorithm was evaluated …

Progress On Gps-Denied, Multi-Vehicle, Fixed-Wing Cooperative Localization, Gary Ellingson, Tim Mclain

Utah Space Grant Consortium

This paper first summarizes recent results of a proposed method for multiple, small, fixed-wing aircraft cooperatively localizing in GPS-denied environments. It then provides a significant future works discussion to provide a vision for the future of cooperative navigation. The goal of this work is to show that many, small, potentially-lower-cost vehicles could collaboratively localize better than a single, more-accurate, higher-cost GPS-denied system. This work is guided by a novel methodology called relative navigation, which has been developed in prior work. Initial work focused on the development and testing of a monocular, visual-inertial odometry for fixed-wing aircraft that accounts for fixed-wing …

Implementing Origami-Based Mechanisms Through Modeling Of Mechanical Advantage And Developing Self-Deploying Configurations, Jared Butler, Spencer Magleby

Utah Space Grant Consortium

This work provides an overview of two developments in origami-based mechanism design. Past methods of predicting mechanical advantage in compliant mechanisms were adapted to predict the mechanical advantage in multi-input origami-based mechanisms. The model was verified against experimental testing of an origami-based mechanism. A method for creating selfdeploying flat-foldable thick origami was proposed with details to guide the design of a single vertex. This method was demonstrated in physical prototypes. The mechanical advantage model and Regionally-Sandwiching of Compliant Sheets (ReCS) technique proposed in this work should serve to make origami-based mechanisms more capable of aiding NASA in their objectives.

First Ground‐Based Conjugate Observations Of Stable Auroral Red (Sar) Arcs, C. Martinis, J. Baumgardner, M. Mendillo, Michael J. Taylor, T. Moffat-Griffin, J. Wroten, C. Sullivan, R. Macinnis, B. Alford, Y. Nishimura

All Physics Faculty Publications

During the geomagnetic storm of 1 June 2013, all‐sky imagers located at geomagnetically conjugate locations at Millstone Hill, USA (42.6°N, 71.4°W, 50.9° mag lat) and at Rothera, Antarctica (67.5°S, 68.1°W, ‐53.2° mag lat), allowed us to measure a stable auroral red (SAR) arc simultaneously in both hemispheres for the first time. The arc measured in one hemisphere was observed very close to its conjugate location in the opposite hemisphere. While spatial characteristics, such as equatorward motion and latitudinal extent, were similar at both sites, morphological properties, for example, arc brightness and shape of the poleward edges, differed. The overall brightness …

Structures Of Clusters Surrounding Ions Stabilized By Hydrogen, Halogen, Chalcogen, And Pnicogen Bonds, Steve Scheiner, Mariusz Michalczyk, Wiktor Zierkiewicz

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Four H-binding HCl and HF molecules position themselves at the vertices of a tetrahedron when surrounding a central Cl-. Halogen bonding BrF and ClF form a slightly distorted tetrahedron, a tendency that is amplified for ClCN which forms a trigonal pyramid. Chalcogen bonding SF2, SeF2, SeFMe, and SeCSe occupy one hemisphere of the central ion, leaving the other hemisphere empty. This pattern is repeated for pnicogen bonding PF3, SeF3 and AsCF. The clustering of solvent molecules on one side of the Cl- is attributed to weak attractive interactions between them, including chalcogen, pnicogen, halogen, and hydrogen bonds. Binding energies of …

On The Relationship Between North India Summer Monsoon Rainfall And East Equatorial Indian Ocean Warming, Ramesh Kumar Yadav, Mathew Koll Roxy

Plants, Soils and Climate Student Research

Generally, a strong north India summer-monsoon rainfall (NISR) is associated with anomalous upper troposphere ridge over northwest of India. This ridge triggers anomalous northerly winds over Tibetan Plateau and easterlies over India. The easterly anomaly over India reduces the tropospheric wind shear, while the northerly at Tibetan plateau allows frequent intrusions of high-latitude dry and cold meridional winds to interact with the lower-level relatively warm and moist easterly monsoonal flow, enhancing the NISR. The current study, using a suite of observations, reanalysis products and numerical model sensitivity experiments, explores the changes in NISR, and its association with the warming in …

Octonionic Maxwell Equations, Ben Shaw

Physics Capstone Projects

An introduction to Quaternions and Octonions is given, and the Maxwell Equations are formulated in terms of each. The conventional, source-free relativistic theory of eight dimensional electromagnetism is introduced and examined. Similarly, the source-free Octonionic Maxwell Equations are developed, and it is shown that the seven dimensional electric and magnetic fields–pure Octonions–each admit plane wave solutions. An Octonionic Faraday tensor is constructed and compared with the conventional Faraday tensor, and it is shown that, in the source-free case, the conventional and Octonionic theories are equivalent.

The Effects Of Beta Radiation On The Electrostatic Discharge Of Ldpe, Kip Quilter

Physics Capstone Projects

Spacecraft charging is one of the leading causes of space environment induced anomalies [1]. Spacecraft charging occurs when an electric charge builds up on a spacecraft; one way for the charge to accumulate is from natural space plasma [1]. The charge can lead to many different problems, including electrostatic discharge (ESD). Insulating materials such as highly disordered polymers do not allow charge to move freely; this can result in areas of localized charge to build up creating differing electric potentials [2]. Once the difference in potentials is great enough, electrostatic discharge occurs causing irreversible damages to the insulating polymers.

ESD …

Altruism Or Self-Interest? Exploring The Motivations Of Open Access Authors, Robert Heaton, Dylan Burns, Becky Thoms

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

More than 250 authors at Utah State University published an Open Access (OA) article in 2016. Analysis of survey results and publication data from Scopus suggests that the following factors led authors to choose OA venues: ability to pay publishing charges, disciplinary colleagues’ positive attitudes toward OA, and personal feelings such as altruism and desire to reach a wide audience. Tenure status was not an apparent factor. This article adds to the body of literature on author motivations and can inform library outreach and marketing efforts, the creation of new publishing models, and the conversation about the larger scholarly publishing …

Utah State University Commencement, 2019 – Main Campus, Utah State University

Commencement Programs

132nd Annual Commencement of Utah State University.

Building The Medieval Trebuchet, Daniel A. Bertrand

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The counterweight trebuchet was the heavy artillery of the Middle Ages, using gravity to hurl projectiles and destroy fortifications. In use from the mid-12^th century until the mid-15^th century, trebuchets became huge machines. Some were more than 60 feet tall and threw stones weighing more than 300lbs farther than 300 yards. These weapons changed the landscape of Europe until being replaced by later gunpowder cannons.

It is unclear how trebuchets were conceived or constructed. While replica historical machines have been made in modern times, the methods of building and assembling trebuchets have not been widely published. Learning how …

Juxtaposition At 45 Km Of Temperatures From Rayleigh-Scatter Lidar And Reanalysis Models, David K. Moser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Weather and climate forecasts are almost exclusively produced by computer models, which use atmospheric measurements as starting points. It is a well-known and joked-about fact that model predictions can be incorrect at times. One of the reasons this happens is due to gaps in our knowledge of atmospheric conditions in areas where measurements don’t often taken place, such as the mesosphere, which stretches from roughly 45-90 km altitude.

A lidar is a device that can shoot out short bursts of laser light to measure things such as atmospheric thickness at a distance. From this information one can then derive the …

An Examination Of Seasonal Shifts In Climate And Visitation, And Perspectives On Seasonal Shifts And Climate Adaptation Strategies In Tourism And Recreation Businesses For Moab, Utah, Elizabeth Cook

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The city of Moab, an outdoor recreation hub in eastern Utah, has been encountering both shifts in the seasonality of visitation, and increases in tourist visitation, even with summer temperatures above the normal high. Tourism research describing the effects of climate change on the outdoor recreation industry has focused on winter, snow-dependent activities, while studies in Moab city have focused on the economic value of outdoor recreational activities. Few studies have described the relationship between seasonal tourism and climate change for arid desert locations. The purpose of this study is to describe how the tourism and recreation industry in Moab, …

A Case Study Of The Driven 2 Teach Program: Site-Based Experiential Professional Development For History Teachers, Hadyn Bowen Call

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Driven 2 Teach is a privately funded program for history teachers in the state of Utah. The program emphasizes the importance of teacher travel to educate history teachers in the places where history happened. This study investigated the program’s influence on participant gains in learning about history and how to best teach about the past, social studies professional development, teacher beliefs, and changes in instructional practices. This study utilized a case study methodology, autoethnography, and six interconnected frameworks: Professional development, experiential education, site-based learning, pedagogical content knowledge, teacher beliefs, and professional learning communities. This study helps demonstrate the effectiveness of …