Digital Commons Network^™

Multidimensional Poverty Of The Ethnic Tibetan Farm And Herder Households In Gansu Province, China, Fan Yang, Krishna Paudel, Tianhui Zhuang, Yao Jiang

Faculty Publications

© 2019, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. All rights reserved. Ethnic Tibetan farm and herder households (FHH) in Gansu Province, China are stricken with poverty. Solving the poverty problem in this or other poverty pockets across China has special importance for the country’s political stability, ethnic unity, social well-being, and ecological security. This paper calculates the multidimensional poverty situation of ethnic Tibetan farm and herder households of Gansu Province, China by using the Alkire-Foster method. Twelve indicators are included in the multidimensional poverty indicator system. Results showed that 1) in the single indicator measure, the adult family members received at …

Union Bound For Quantum Information Processing, Samad Khabbazi Oskouei, Stefano Mancini, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we prove a quantum union bound that is relevant when performing a sequence of binary-outcome quantum measurements on a quantum state. The quantum union bound proved here involves a tunable parameter that can be optimized, and this tunable parameter plays a similar role to a parameter involved in the Hayashi–Nagaoka inequality (Hayashi & Nagaoka 2003 IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 49, 1753–1768. (doi:10.1109/TIT.2003.813556)), used often in quantum information theory when analysing the error probability of a square-root measurement. An advantage of the proof delivered here is that it is elementary, relying only on basic properties of projectors, Pythagoras’ …

Normal Tissue Damage: Its Importance, History And Challenges For The Future, Jacqueline P. Williams, Wayne Newhauser

Faculty Publications

Sir Oliver Scott, a philanthropist and radiation biologist and, therefore, the epitome of a gentleman and a scholar, was an early Director of the BECC Radiobiology Research Unit at Mount Vernon. His tenure preceded that of Jack Fowler, with both contributing to basic, translational and clinical thought and application in radiation across the globe. With respect to this review, Fowler's name in particular has remained synonymous with the use of models, both animal and mathematical, that assess and quantify the biological mechanisms that underlie radiation-associated normal tissue toxicities. An understanding of these effects is critical to the optimal use of …

Kojima-1lb Is A Mildly Cold Neptune Around The Brightest Microlensing Host Star, A. Fukui, D. Suzuki, N. Koshimoto, E. Bachelet, T. Vanmunster, D. Storey, H. Maehara, K. Yanagisawa, T. Yamada, A. Yonehara, T. Hirano, D. P. Bennett, V. Bozza, D. Mawet, M. T. Penny, S. Awiphan, A. Oksanen, T. M. Heintz, T. E. Oberst, V. J.S. Béjar, N. Casasayas-Barris, G. Chen, N. Crouzet, D. Hidalgo, P. Klagyivik, F. Murgas, N. Narita, E. Palle, H. Parviainen, N. Watanabe, N. Kusakabe, M. Mori, Y. Terada

Faculty Publications

We report the analysis of additional multiband photometry and spectroscopy and new adaptive optics (AO) imaging of the nearby planetary microlensing event TCPJ05074264+2447555 (Kojima-1), which was discovered toward the Galactic anticenter in 2017 (Nucita et al.). We confirm the planetary nature of the light-curve anomaly around the peak while finding no additional planetary feature in this event. We also confirm the presence of apparent blending flux and the absence of significant parallax signal reported in the literature. The AO image reveals no contaminating sources, making it most likely that the blending flux comes from the lens star. The measured multiband …

A Fast Approximate Approach To Microlensing Survey Analysis, Somayeh Khakpash, Matthew Penny, Joshua Pepper

Faculty Publications

Microlensing can be used to discover exoplanets of a wide range of masses with orbits beyond ∼1 au, and even free-floating planets. The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission will use microlensing to discover approximately 1600 planets by monitoring ∼100 million stars to find ∼50,000 microlensing events. Modeling each microlensing event, especially the ones involving two or more lenses, is typically complicated and time consuming, and analyzing thousands of WFIRST microlensing events is possibly infeasible using current methods. Here, we present an algorithm that is able to rapidly evaluate thousands of simulated WFIRST binary-lens microlensing light curves, returning an …

The Equivalence Principle At Work In Radiation From Unaccelerated Atoms And Mirrors, S. A. Fulling, J. H. Wilson

Faculty Publications

The equivalence principle is a perennial subject of controversy, especially in connection with radiation by a uniformly accelerated classical charge, or a freely falling charge observed by a supported detector. Recently, related issues have been raised in connection with the Unruh radiation associated with accelerated detectors (including two-level atoms and resonant cavities). A third type of system, very easy to analyze because of conformal invariance, is a two-dimensional scalar field interacting with perfectly reflecting boundaries (mirrors). After reviewing the issues for atoms and cavities, we investigate a stationary mirror from the point of view of an accelerated detector in 'Rindler …

Spatiotemporal Coupling Of Attosecond Pulses, Hampus Wikmark, Chen Guo, Jan Vogelsang, Peter W. Smorenburg, Hélène Coudert-Alteirac, Jan Lahl, Jasper Peschel, Piotr Rudawski, Hugo Dacasa, Stefanos Carlström, Sylvain Maclot, Mette B. Gaarde, Per Johnsson, Cord L. Arnold, Anne L'Huillier

Faculty Publications

The shortest light pulses produced to date are of the order of a few tens of attoseconds, with central frequencies in the extreme UV range and bandwidths exceeding tens of electronvolts. They are often produced as a train of pulses separated by half the driving laser period, leading in the frequency domain to a spectrum of high, odd-order harmonics. As light pulses become shorter and more spectrally wide, the widely used approximation consisting of writing the optical waveform as a product of temporal and spatial amplitudes does not apply anymore. Here, we investigate the interplay of temporal and spatial properties …

Ecogeographical Rules And The Macroecology Of Food Webs, Benjamin Baiser, Dominique Gravel, Alyssa R. Cirtwill, Jennifer A. Dunne, Ashkaan K. Fahimipour, Luis J. Gilarranz, Joshua A. Grochow, Daijiang Li, Neo D. Martinez, Alicia Mcgrew, Timothée Poisot, Tamara N. Romanuk, Daniel B. Stouffer, Lauren B. Trotta, Fernanda S. Valdovinos, Richard J. Williams, Spencer A. Wood, Justin D. Yeakel

Faculty Publications

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aim: How do factors such as space, time, climate and other ecological drivers influence food web structure and dynamics? Collections of well-studied food webs and replicate food webs from the same system that span biogeographical and ecological gradients now enable detailed, quantitative investigation of such questions and help integrate food web ecology and macroecology. Here, we integrate macroecology and food web ecology by focusing on how ecogeographical rules [the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), Bergmann's rule, the island rule and Rapoport's rule] are associated with the architecture of food webs. Location: Global. Time period: …

Bibliometrics For Faculty Evaluation: A Statistical Comparison Of H-Indexes Generated Using Google Scholar And Web Of Science Data, David J. Dunaway

Faculty Publications

The growing need for quantification of research performance for promotion and tenure

and grant funding decisions has lead many to rely on citation metrics. There are many metrics to choose from but one of the most common is the h-index. While the h-index has been criticized by many, the metric itself is not the only concern. The source of the citation information used to calculate the h-index is also important. In this case study the h-index was calculated using citation data from Clarivate’s Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar (GS) for a selection of faculty working at a large …

Quantifying Amphibian Range Fragmentation In The Southeastern United States, Catherine E. Newman, Christopher C. Austin

Faculty Publications

© the authors. An often overlooked component of research on factors that drive amphibian geographic distributions is description of species range shape. Broad-scale range disjunction has implications for phylogeography, ecology, and conservation, but descriptions of fragmentation are usually based on subjective visual assessment of range maps. Here, we describe a method for objectively quantifying range fragmentation and use this method to describe the patterns of amphibian species range shapes in the southeastern United States, home to the highest amphibian species richness in North America. Species ranges varied widely in degree of fragmentation, from completely contiguous to highly fragmented, and degree …

Bottom-Up Trait-Mediated Indirect Effects Decrease Pathogen Transmission In A Tritrophic System, Bret D. Elderd

Faculty Publications

© 2018 by the Ecological Society of America A plant's induction of secondary defenses helps to decrease herbivore damage by changing resource quality. While these chemical or physical defenses may directly decrease herbivory, they can also have indirect consequences. In a tritrophic system consisting of a plant, an insect herbivore, and an insect pathogen, plant based trait-mediated indirect effects (TMIEs) can alter host–pathogen interactions and, thereby, indirectly affect disease transmission. In a series of field experiments, individual soybean plants (Glycine max) were sprayed with either a jasmonic acid (JA) solution to trigger induction of plant defenses or a similar control …

A Note On The Connectivity Of 2-Polymatroid Minors, Zachary Gershkoff, James Oxley

Faculty Publications

Brylawski and Seymour independently proved that if M is a connected matroid with a connected minor N, and e ∈ E(M) − E(N), then M\e or M/e is connected having N as a minor. This paper proves an analogous but somewhat weaker result for 2-polymatroids. Specifically, if M is a connected 2-polymatroid with a proper connected minor N, then there is an element e of E(M) − E(N) such that M\e or M/e is connected having N as a minor. We also consider what can be said about the uniqueness of the way in which the elements of E(M) − …

Dependencies Among Dependencies In Matroids, James Oxley, Suijie Wang

Faculty Publications

In 1971, Rota introduced the concept of derived matroids to investigate “de-pendencies among dependencies” in matroids. In this paper, we study the derived matroid δM of an F-representation of a matroid M. The matroid δM has a naturally associated F-representation, so we can define a sequence δM, δ2M,. The main result classifies such derived sequences of matroids into three types: finite, cyclic, and divergent. For the first two types, we obtain complete characterizations and thereby resolve some of the questions that Longyear posed in 1980 for binary matroids. For the last type, the divergence is estimated by the coranks of …

A Matroid Extension Result, James Oxley

Faculty Publications

Adding elements to matroids can be fraught with difficulty. In the Vámos matroid V 8 , there are four pairs X 1 , X 2 , X 3 , and X 4 that partition E(V 8 ) such that (X 1 ∪ X 2 , X 3 ∪ X 4 ) is a 3-separation while exactly three of the local connectivities (X 1 , X 3 ), (X 1 , X 4 ), (X 2 , X 3 ), and (X 2 , X 4 ) are one, with the fourth being zero. As is well known, there is no …

A Splitter Theorem For 3-Connected 2-Polymatroids, James Oxley, Charles Semple, Geoff Whittle

Faculty Publications

Seymour’s Splitter Theorem is a basic inductive tool for dealing with 3-connected matroids. This paper proves a generalization of that theorem for the class of 2-polymatroids. Such structures include matroids, and they model both sets of points and lines in a projective space and sets of edges in a graph. A series compression in such a structure is an analogue of contracting an edge of a graph that is in a series pair. A 2-polymatroid N is an s-minor of a 2-polymatroid M if N can be obtained from M by a sequence of contractions, series compressions, and dual-contractions, where …

Performance Analysis Of A High-Sensitivity Multi-Pinhole Cardiac Spect System With Hemi-Ellipsoid Detectors, Narayan Bhusal, Joyoni Dey, Jingzhu Xu, Kesava Kalluri, Arda Konik, Joyeeta M. Mukherjee, P. Hendrik Pretorius

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a noninvasive imaging modality, used in myocardial perfusion imaging. The challenges facing the majority of clinical SPECT systems are low sensitivity, poor resolution, and the relatively high radiation dose to the patient. New generation systems (GE Discovery, DSPECT) dedicated to cardiac imaging improve sensitivity by a factor of 5–8. This improvement can be used to decrease acquisition time and/or dose. However, in the case of ultra-low dose (~3 mCi) injections, acquisition times are still significantly long, taking 10–12 min. The purpose of this work is to investigate a new gamma camera design with …

Simplicial Volume Of Links From Link Diagrams, Oliver Dasbach, Anastasiia Tsvietkova

Faculty Publications

The hyperbolic volume of a link complement is known to be unchanged when a half-twist is added to a link diagram, and a suitable 3-punctured sphere is present in the complement. We generalise this to the simplicial volume of link complements by analysing the corresponding toroidal decompositions. We then use it to prove a refined upper bound for the volume in terms of twists of various lengths for links.

The Gauss Decomposition Of Products Of Spherical Harmonics, Ricardo Estrada

Faculty Publications

The product of two homogeneous harmonic polynomials is homogeneous, but not harmonic, in general. We give formulas for the Gauss decomposition of the product of two homogeneous harmonic polynomials.

The Funk-Hecke Formula, Harmonic Polynomials, And Derivatives Of Radial Distributions, Ricardo Estrada

Faculty Publications

We give a version of the Funk-Hecke formula that holds with minimal assumptons and apply it to obtain formulas for the distributional derivatives of radial distributions in Rn of the type Yk ∇ ∆j (f (r)), where Yk is a harmonic homogeneous polynomial. We show that such derivatives have simpler expressions than those of the form p ∇ (f (r)) for a general polynomial p.

Backstepping Design For Output Feedback Stabilization For A Class Of Uncertain Systems, Frédéric Mazenc, Laurent Burlion, Michael Malisoff

Faculty Publications

We construct bounded globally asymptotically stabilizing output feedbacks for a family of nonlinear systems, using a dynamic extension and a converging-input-converging-state assumption. We provide sufficient conditions for this assumption to hold, in terms of Lyapunov functions. The novelty is that our construction provides formulas for the control bounds while allowing uncertainties that prevent the use of classical backstepping, and cases where only part of the state variable is available for measurement, without requiring the time lagged states in the feedback control that were required in the artificial delays approach. We illustrate the relevance of our work to engineering in an …

Diet Of Lesser Scaup Wintering On Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, Clay M. Stroud, Claire E. Caputo, Michael A. Poirrier, Kevin M. Ringelman

Faculty Publications

The lesser scaup Aythya affinis has been a species of conservation concern since continental breeding populations began declining in the 1980s. The causes of this decline are likely multifaceted, but cross-seasonal effects are believed to play a prominent role: females unable to acquire sufficient nutrient reserves during winter and spring migration have poor survival and breeding success. Understanding scaup diet composition and prey selection can help managers not only diagnose mechanisms underlying wintering scaup distributions, but may also help direct management actions to increase forage availability and quality. We evaluated the diet of 60 scaup collected from a major wintering …

Calibrating A Taper Model For Oriental Spruce In Turkey, Ramazan Özçelik, Quang V. Cao, Hakkı Yavuz

Faculty Publications

In this study, Max and Burkhart (1976)’s segmented taper model was used to describe stem profile and predict stem volume of oriental spruce in Turkey. Thirty procedures were evaluated, which include five fitting methods and six adjustment strategies. The fitting methods resulted in parameters that were optimized for (1) taper, (2) cumulative volume, (3) taper and cumulative volume, (4) taper and total volume, and (5) taper, cumulative volume, and total volume. The adjustment strategies are (1) unadjusted, and adjusted to match (2) DBH, (3) predicted total volume, (4) DBH and predicted total volume, (5) a combined estimator, and (6) DBH …

A Method To Derive A Tree Survival Model From Any Existing Stand Survival Model, Quang V. Cao

Faculty Publications

This study addresses a situation in which a forest manager has been using a whole-stand model that seems to predict well for their stands and now wants to derive an individual-tree model from it to form an integrated system that can perform well at both stand and tree levels. A simple method was developed to derive tree survival models from three existing stand-level survival models. The derived tree survival models were based on the difference between the diameter of a given tree and the diameter at which tree and stand survival probabilities are equal. For stand survival prediction, each stand …

Food-Burying Behavior In Red Imported Fire Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Wenquan Qin, Xuan Chen, Linda M. Hooper-Bùi, Jiacheng Cai, Lei Wang, Zhaohui Sun, Xiujun Wen, Cai Wang

Faculty Publications

The food-burying behavior has been reported in many mammals and birds, but was rarely observed in invertebrates. The red imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta Buren, is an invasive pest in many areas of the world that usually performing food-burying during the foraging processes. However, the impacted factors and measureable patterns of this behavior is largely unknown. In the present study, food-burying vs food-transport behaviors of Solenopsis invicta were observed under laboratory and field conditions. When starved (no food was provided for 37 days) in the laboratory, food (sausage) was consumed by large numbers of ants, and few burying behaviors were …

Radon Transforms Over Lower-Dimensional Horospheres In Real Hyperbolic Space, William O. Bray, Boris Rubin

Faculty Publications

We study horospherical Radon transforms that integrate functions on the n-dimensional real hyperbolic space over horospheres of arbitrary fixed dimension 1 ≤ d ≤ n-1. Exact existence conditions and new explicit inversion formulas are obtained for these transforms acting on smooth functions and functions belonging to L^p. The case d = n 1 agrees with the well-known Gelfand-Graev transform.

Domain Decomposition For Quasi-Periodic Scattering By Layered Media Via Robust Boundary-Integral Equations At All Frequencies, Carlos Pérez-Arancibia, Stephen P. Shipman, Catalin Turc, Stephanos Venakides

Faculty Publications

We develop a non-overlapping domain decomposition method (DDM) for scalar wave scattering by periodic layered media. Our approach relies on robust boundary-integral equation formulations of Robin-to-Robin (RtR) maps throughout the frequency spectrum, including cutoff (or Wood) frequencies. We overcome the obstacle of non-convergent quasi-periodic Green functions at these frequencies by incorporating newly introduced shifted Green functions. Using the latter in the definition of quasi-periodic boundary-integral operators leads to rigorously stable computations of RtR operators. We develop Nyström discretizations of the RtR maps that rely on trigonometric interpolation, singularity resolution, and fast convergent windowed quasi-periodic Green functions. We solve the tridiagonal …

A Finite Element Method For A Phase Field Model Of Nematic Liquid Crystal Droplets, Amanda E. Diegel, Shawn W. Walker

Faculty Publications

We develop a novel finite element method for a phase field model of nematic liquid crystal droplets. The continuous model considers a free energy comprised of three components: the Ericksen’s energy for liquid crystals, the Cahn-Hilliard energy representing the interfacial energy of the droplet, and an anisotropic weak anchoring energy that enforces a condition such that the director field is aligned perpendicular to the interface of the droplet. Applications of the model are for finding minimizers of the free energy and exploring gradient flow dynamics. We present a finite element method that utilizes a special discretization of the liquid crystal …

Mathematical Modeling Of Frontal Polymerization, John A. Pojman

Faculty Publications

© EDP Sciences, 2019 Frontal polymerization is way to convert liquid resin into a solid material with a self-propagating reaction. The reaction spreads like a flame from the heat of the reaction that diffuses into neighboring regions, starting more reaction. The frontal velocity has been accurately modeled for free-radical polymerization systems. The dynamics of fronts have been studied theoretically and experimentally. If the viscosity of the initial medium is low, then fronts can become unstable due to buoyancy-driven convection. A fascinating aspect of frontal polymerization is that fronts often do not propagate as a plane waves but exhibit complex modes …

The Search For Microbial Martian Life And American Buddhist Ethics, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Multiple searches hunt for extraterrestrial life, yet the ethics of such searches in terms of fossil and possible extant life on Mars have not been sufficiently delineated. In response, in this essay I propose a tripartite ethic for searches for microbial Martian life that consists of default nonharm toward potential living beings, default nonharm to the habitats of potential living beings, but also responsible, restrained scientific harvesting of some microbes in limited transgression of these default nonharm modes. Although this multifaceted ethic remains secular and hence adaptable to space research settings, it arises from both a qualitative analysis of authoritative …

Redmond (2002) Revisited: Have Standardized Behavioral Rating Scales Gotten Better At Accommodating For Overlapping Symptoms With Language Impairment?, Kirsten M. Hannig, Sean M. Redmond, Amy Wilder

Faculty Publications

Seventeen years ago, Redmond ¹ reviewed five standardized behavioral rating scales and identified several aspects of their design that made them prone to mischaracterize language impairments as socioemotional behavioral disorders. The purpose of this report is to provide an update and extension of the original audit. We consulted test manuals to evaluate: (1) representation of children with language impairments in their standardization samples; (2) presence of language, or academic items within their inventories; (3) accommodations for administering the measure to children with language impairments; and (4) procedures for identifying inordinately punitive ratings. Overlapping language and academic symptoms continued to be …