Digital Commons Network^™

Integration Of Sco2 Brayton Cycles With Carbon Capture Systems, Nathan C. Stearns, Rajarshi Roy, Brian Schooff, Andrew Chiodo, Andrew R. Fry, Brian D. Iverson

Faculty Publications

Increasing global energy consumption and greater market penetration of intermittent energy sources require a baseline power source to enable renewable energies. Here, a case is made for pairing supercritical CO₂ Brayton cycles with carbon capture to create low-emission, high-efficiency, combustion-based power generation systems. Pairing carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems with supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) Brayton cycles enables the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in combustion systems, but with an associated energy cost. Three different representative models of CCS systems (oxyfuel combustion, amine scrubbing, and cryogenic carbon capture) are considered for pairing with an sCO2 Brayton cycle, …

What Did The Global Adventist Pastors' Survey Reveal?, Robert K. Mciver, Wendy Jackson, Stephen J. Currow, Eerika Puni, Petr Činčala

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pastors’ Experiences And Understanding Of The Role Of Adventist Education, Safary Wa-Mbaleka, David Trim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Glucodensity Functional Profiles Outperform Traditional Continuous Glucose Monitoring Metrics, Marcos Matabuena, Rahul Ghosal Ph.D., Javier Enrique Aguilar, Ayya Keshet, Robert Wagner, Carmen Fernández Merino, Juan Sánchez Castro, Vadim Zipunnikov, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Francisco Gude

Faculty Publications

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data have revolutionized the management of type 1 diabetes, particularly when integrated with insulin pumps to mitigate clinical events such as hypoglycemia. Recently, there has been growing interest in utilizing CGM devices in clinical studies involving healthy and diabetic populations. However, efficiently exploiting the high temporal resolution of CGM profiles remains a significant challenge. Numerous indices—such as time–in–range metrics and glucose variability measures–have been proposed, but evidence suggests these metrics overlook critical aspects of dynamic glucose homeostasis. As an alternative method, this paper explores the clinical value of glucodensity metrics in capturing glucose dynamics—specifically the speed …

The Sensitivity Of Future Hydroclimate Projections To Topography And Large-Scale Dust Forcing In The Luquillo Mountains Of Eastern Puerto Rico, J. Preece, C. Johnson, T. Mote, P. Miller, M. Williams

Faculty Publications

Precipitation over Puerto Rico is expected to decline in coming decades, threatening an important source of surface water supply. However, earth system models neither resolve fine-scale orographic impacts nor the radiative effects of Saharan dust aerosols on precipitation over the island's mountains. Here, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem) to downscale global climate model projections to a convection-resolving 4-km resolution for both dust and no-dust scenarios. We compare the regional hydroclimate during three periods: historical (2014–2018), mid- (2045–2049) and end-21st century (2085–2089), using output from an RCP8.5 simulation of the Community Earth System Model, …

Polymorphism Crystal Structure Prediction With Adaptive Space Group Diversity Control, Sadman Saadeed Omee, Lai Wei, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Crystalline materials can form different structural arrangements (i.e., polymorphs) with the same chemical composition, exhibiting distinct physical properties depending on how they are synthesized or the conditions under which they operate. For example, carbon can exist as graphite (soft, conductive) or diamond (hard, insulating). Computational methods that can predict these polymorphs are vital in materials science, which help understand stability relationships, guide synthesis efforts, and discover new materials with desired properties without extensive trial-and-error experimentation. However, effective crystal structure prediction (CSP) algorithms for inorganic polymorph structures remain limited. ParetoCSP2 is proposed, a multi-objective genetic algorithm for polymorphism CSP that incorporates …

Effects Of Climate Change On River And Groundwater Nutrient Inputs To The Coastal Ocean, Christina M. Richardson, Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Shea Wyatt, Annie Bourbonnais, Vanessa Hatje, Claudia Frey, Tina Sanders, Diana E. Varela, Adina Paytan

Faculty Publications

Rivers and groundwater are major sources of nutrients to the global coastal ocean. Climate change is expected to impact nutrient fluxes from river basins and coastal aquifers through alterations to both hydrological and nutrient cycling processes. In this Review, we identify and summarize how climate change impacts, such as changes in precipitation, increased cryosphere melt, and sea level rise, will affect water discharge and nutrient concentrations in rivers and coastal groundwater, which ultimately control nutrient inputs to the coastal ocean. We also document key limitations in the current understanding of climate-related changes to nutrient fluxes, especially in coastal groundwater basins. …

The Expanded Regulatory Significance Of Saharan Dust Plumes In The United States, Paul Miller, Kimberly Hamilton-Wims, Ken Holmes, Doug Melancon, Jason Meyers, Tegan Treadaway

Faculty Publications

Given the recent reduction in the U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for annual PM2.5from 12 to 9 μg m^–3, the contribution of exceptional, though natural, particulate transport events has assumed greater regulatory relevance. This study examines the evolution of a June 2022 trans-Atlantic Saharan dust outbreak and contextualizes its impact on the 2023 PM2.5design values (DVs) for continental U.S. air quality monitors. The results demonstrate that the intrusion of Saharan dust yielded mean 24 h PM2.5values > 35 μg m^–3for multiple days across the Central U.S. and single-handedly elevated the 2022 mean annual PM2.5by > 0.5 …

An Event-Based Time-Incremented Snn Architecture Supporting Energy-Efficient Device Classification, David L. Weathers, Michael A. Temple, Brett J. Borghetti

Faculty Publications

Recent advances in Radio Frequency (RF)-based device classification have shown promise in enabling secure and efficient wireless communications. However, the energy efficiency and low-latency processing capabilities of neuromorphic computing have yet to be fully leveraged in this domain. This paper is a first step toward enabling an end-to-end neuromorphic system for RF device classification, specifically supporting development of a neuromorphic classifier that enforces temporal causality without requiring non-neuromorphic classifier pre-training. This Spiking Neural Network (SNN) classifier streamlines the development of an end-to-end neuromorphic device classification system, further expanding the energy efficiency gains of neuromorphic processing to the realm of RF …

Fostering Belonging Through Library Descriptions, Nicole Lewis, Sharolyn Swenson, Katie Yeo, Karen Glenn

Faculty Publications

In late 2023, the BYU Library adopted its Inclusive Metadata Policy as part of its commitment to fostering a campus culture of belonging. This policy reflects the Statement on Belonging, which affirms that we “value and embrace the variety of individual characteristics, life experiences and circumstances, perspectives, talents, and gifts of each member of the community and the richness and strength they bring to our community.”[1] Catalogers and archival processors at the library are engaging in practices of cultural humility to ensure that the language and frameworks we use to describe people, communities, and histories are inclusive and respectful. …

Dilute Magnetic Impurity-Induced Effective Phonon Magnetic Moment In Fe-Doped Monolayer Mos2, Hussam Mustafa, Gaihua Ye, Cynthia Nnokwe, Mengqi Fang, Mohamed Kandil, Abdullah Al-Mahboob, Kai Wu, Andrew James Stollenwerk, Timothy E. Kidd, Paul M. Shand, Jerzy T. Sadowski, Eui Hyeok Yang, Yinong Zhou, Rui He, Wencan Jin

Faculty Publications

Realization of large effective phonon magnetic moment in monolayer MoS2 has established an important route for exploring intriguing magnetic phenomena in a nonmagnetic material. The sizable coupling between the orbital transition and the circularly polarized phonon results in the large effective phonon magnetic moment. In this work, using magneto-Raman spectroscopy, we investigate substitutional doping of magnetic atoms as a tuning knob of the electronic and phononic properties of MoS2. We show that Fe-doping polarizes the spin of the conduction bands and introduces a localized Fe band underneath the conduction band. As a result, an additional orbital transition between the Mo …

Microarchitectural Malware Detection Via Translation Lookaside Buffer (Tlb) Events, Cristian Agredo, Daniel F. Koranek, Christine M. Schubert Kabban, Jose R. Gutierrez Del Arroyo, Scott R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Prior work has shown that Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) data contains valuable behavioral information. Many existing methodologies rely on timing features or focus solely on workload classification. In this study, we propose a novel approach to malware classification using only TLB-related Hardware Performance Counters (HPCs), explicitly excluding any dependence on timing features such as task execution duration or memory access timing. Our methodology evaluates whether TLB data alone, without any timing information, can effectively distinguish between malicious and benign programs. We test this across three classification scenarios: (1) A binary classification problem involving distinguishing malicious from benign tasks, (2) a …

On Good Terms: Pathways To Decolonizing Science-Appropriated Indigenous Terminologies In Arctic Research, Stanislav Saas Ksenofontov, Vera Kuklina, Alexander Kholodov, Andrey Petrov

Faculty Publications

Many western scientific disciplines adopted Indigenous Knowledge and terminology without deference to or understanding of the original meanings and values attached to Indigenous terms and concepts. This form of scientific appropriation has become a serious barrier to efforts of decolonizing Arctic research. The notion of Alaas is an example of such appropriation by the western science-based system of Indigenous knowledge about human–nature relations. This paper aims to discuss the term Alaas as it is conceptualized in both western science and Indigenous knowledge. The paper will explore the development of “alas” as an international permafrost science term and Alaas as an …

Effect Of Vitamin D Supplementation During Pregnancy And Lactation On The Development Of Infants Born To Tanzanian Women Living With Hiv: A Secondary Analysis Of A Randomised Controlled Trial, Temiwunmi Shobanke, Alfa Muhihi, Nandita Perumal Phd, Nzovu Ulenga, Fadhlun M. Alwy Al-Beity, Christopher P. Duggan, Wafaie W. Fawzi, Karim P. Manji, Christopher R. Sudfeld

Faculty Publications

Background Infants born to pregnant women living with HIV (WLHIV) are at greater risk for morbidity and mortality and may also have poorer developmental outcomes as compared with infants who are not exposed to HIV. Nutrition interventions in pregnancy may affect developmental outcomes.

Objectives This study evaluated the effect of maternal vitamin D supplementation on infant development outcomes.

Design We conducted a secondary analysis of a randomised, triple-blind, placebo-controlled trial of maternal vitamin D supplementation from June 2015 to October 2019.

Setting Antenatal care clinics in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Participants Pregnant WLHIV and their offspring.

Interventions Daily 3000 IU …

Impression Motivations And Mental Health In Collegiate Athletes And Musicians: The Benefits Of Promoting Virtues, Mary L. Inman, Olufemi A. Oluyedun, Erin Moran, Brendyn Mroz, Madison Mccreery

Faculty Publications

This study identifies two key impression-management motivations that arise in public settings: promoting virtues and preventing harm to one’s image. We explored their impact on mental health—specifically, socially-based perfectionism and depressive symptoms. Drawing from regulatory-focus theory, we predicted promotion motivations would predict strong mental health, prevention motivations would predict poor mental health, and promotion motivations would buffer against the negative effects of prevention motivations. Collegiate athletes and musicians (N = 262) completed validated measures of impression motivation, perfectionism, and depressive symptoms. Results revealed that athletes reported lower levels of perfectionism and depressive symptoms than did musicians. Across both groups, …

Wave Intensity Analysis With Exercise Identifies Impairments In Pulmonary Hypertension, Christopher G. Lechuga, Farhan Raza, Mitchel J. Colebank, Claudia E. Korcarz, Jens C. Eickhoff, Naomi C. Chesler

Faculty Publications

Wave intensity analysis provides a novel approach to understanding the dynamic interactions between the right ventricle and pulmonary vasculature, particularly in pulmonary hypertension, a condition characterized by elevated pulmonary arterial pressures and vascular remodeling. This prospective study used wave intensity analysis to evaluate right ventricular and pulmonary vascular mechanics in 22 participants with pulmonary hypertension (including precapillary, isolated postcapillary, and combined pre/postcapillary pulmonary hypertension), and three without pulmonary hypertension. Forward and backward compression and decompression waves were quantified at rest and during incremental exercise (25, 50, and 75 W). Relationships between metrics of wave intensity analysis, hemodynamics, right ventricular function, …

Resolution Of Physics And Deep Learning-Based Protein Engineering Filters: A Case Study With A Lipase For Industrial Substrate Hydrolysis, Spencer Gardiner, Peter Dollinger, Filip Kovacic, Jörge Pietruszka, Daniel Ess, Karl-Erich Jaeger, Gunnar F. Schröder, Dennis Della Corte

Faculty Publications

Computational enzyme design remains a powerful yet imperfect tool for optimizing biocatalysts, especially when targeting non-natural substrates. Using design tools we investigated Pseudomonas aeruginosa LipA, a lipase with a flexible lid domain crucial for substrate binding and turnover, aiming to enhance its hydrolysis of the industrially relevant substrate Roche ester. We generated an initial set of single-point mutations based on structural proximity to the active site and evaluated their effects using a computational pipeline integrating molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, density functional theory (DFT) calculations, and ensemble-based energy scoring. While we identified several active variants, attempts to rank them by activity …

Physical Function And Pain As Predictors Of Movement Behaviors In Adults With Arthritis, Scott Jamieson, Sarah Wilcox Phd, Chih-Hsiang Yang Ph.D., Ye Sil Kim Phd, Christine Pellegrini Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

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Event-Based Sensor Noise Modeling For Space-Based Space Domain Awareness, Rachel Oliver, Brian Mcreynolds, Dmitry Savransky

Faculty Publications

Building off the foundation of a physics-based end-to-end model for event-based vision sensors (EVS) observing resident space objects (RSOs), we apply new techniques to model realistic low-light sensor noise. While previous approaches simulate memorized current leakage and apply temporal noise models, our methods improve on these approaches and additionally account for current-following noise as an event source. These improvements are key components for accurate event-generating simulators which can advise requirements and concepts of operations for dedicated event-based Space Domain Awareness (SDA) architectures. The EVS pixel’s independent and asynchronous recording of changes in photocurrent produces data with high temporal resolution and …

A C++ Library For Turbulent Mixing Simulation Using Hierarchical Parcel Swapping (Hips), Masoomeh Behrang, Tommy Starick, Heiko Schmidt, David O. Lignell

Faculty Publications

Turbulence models are crucial for simulating flows at all scales, capturing both large-scale structures and small-scale mixing. Software libraries that implement such models should support modular integration, customization, and scalability across different simulation frameworks. This paper presents Hierarchical Parcel Swapping (HiPS), a C++ library documented with Doxygen and available on GitHub. HiPS supports both mixing and reactions and can be used as a standalone model or as a subgrid model in CFD simulations. The code includes examples for users to run it as a standalone model. Additionally, considerations for using it as a subgrid model are provided.

Magnetic Nanoparticles Tethered With Zn–Dpa For The Removal Of Bacteria From Red Blood Cell Suspension, Tochukwu P. Okonkwo, Rajendra P. Gautam, Jacob B. Limburg, Breckin L. Forstrom, Bowen J. Houser, Aaron Rappleyea, Tyler P. Green, Joseph P. Talley, Alexander D. Daum, Stacey J. Smith, Karine Chesnel, William G. Pitt, Roger G. Harrison

Faculty Publications

Bacterial infections continue to drive the need for more effective and rapid methods for bacterial analysis. To address this, magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have emerged as promising tools, especially when their surfaces are modified with bacteria binders. The bis-zinc–dipicolylamine (Zn–DPA) complex is known for its broad affinity to bacteria. We have synthesized MNPs via a thermal decomposition method, encapsulated them in silica, modified their surface with Zn–DPA, and tested their ability to remove bacteria. The MNPs retain their superparamagnetic properties and crystallite structure after being encapsulated. The MNPs coated with silica and Zn–DPA effectively bind and remove both Gram-positive and Gram-negative …

Time Series Changes Of Surficial Sediments On Eastern Ship Shoal, Louisiana Shelf, Adam Gartelman, Kehui Xu, Brian J. Roberts, David Samuel Johnson, Madison Liotta

Faculty Publications

Ship Shoal, a large transgressive sand body on the Louisiana continental shelf, is a critical sediment source for coastal restoration. This study evaluates spatial and temporal variability in sediment grain size, percents organic matter (%OM), and carbonate (%CO3) across the shoal crest (REF), Caminada Dredge Pit (CAM), and Terrebonne Dredge Pit (TER). Sediment samples were collected between 2020 and 2022 using box cores and analyzed for grain size, %OM, and %CO3, with temporal and spatial patterns assessed through statistical comparisons, correlation analyses, and random forest regression models. Results show that dredged areas act as sinks for fine-grained, organic-rich sediments, with …

A Comparison Of Characteristics Of Infilling Sediments In Three Mud-Capped Dredge Pits On The Louisiana Continental Shelf, Wenqiang Zhang, Kehui Xu, Chaochen Jia, Adam Gartelman, Omar Alawneh, Navid Jafari, Colin Herke, Madison Liotta, Samuel J. Bentley

Faculty Publications

Due to high sedimentation rate up to ~1 m/year, mud-capped dredge pits (MCDP) are often considered natural laboratories for studying sedimentary processes, slope stability and the impacts of dredging activities on marine environments. Although many studies have been performed on the Louisiana shelf, there is a lack of high spatial resolution research covering the eastern, central and western Louisiana shelf to comprehensively investigate sediment infilling. Eighteen vibracores were collected from the Peveto Channel dredge pit (PC), Raccoon Island dredge pit (RI) and Sandy Point dredge pit (SP), and more than 1300 samples were analyzed to study the spatial variation in …

A Test Of The Abundant-Center Hypothesis For Stream Fishes, Matthew L.W. Zink, Brandon K. Peoples, Julian D. Olden, Lily M. Thompson, William K. Annis, Stephen R. Midway

Faculty Publications

The abundant-center hypothesis (ACH) provides a conceptual model for predicting range-wide distributions of species abundance, suggesting that abundance peaks in the center of the geographic range and declines towards range edges. Empirical studies testing the ACH and its subsequent derivations predominantly occurred in terrestrial systems and reported mixed support. Moreover, none of these models consider the possibility of multiple geographic areas of elevated abundance (which we refer to as ‘abundant cores'). Naturally dispersal limited species may exhibit multiple abundant cores, requiring refinement of the ACH. We used fish species abundances from 29 206 community monitoring surveys and weighted geospatial kernel …

Exact And Approximate Conformal Inference For Multi-Output Regression, Chancellor Johnstone, Eugene Ndiaye

Faculty Publications

It is common in machine learning to estimate a response y given covariate information x . However, these predictions alone do not quantify any uncertainty associated with said predictions. One way to overcome this deficiency is with conformal inference methods, which construct a set containing the unobserved response with a prescribed probability. Unfortunately, even with a one-dimensional response, conformal inference is computationally expensive despite recent encouraging advances. In this paper, we explore multi-output regression, delivering exact derivations of conformal inference p-values when the predictive model can be described as a linear function of y . Additionally, we introduce a multivariate …

Comparative Analysis Of Different Magnetic Anomaly Datasets Using Navigation Performance With Flight Test Data, Aaron P. Nielsen, Brandon M. Blakely, Patrick Duff

Faculty Publications

Magnetic Anomaly Navigation (MagNav) is a map-based method of navigation which relies on accurately obtaining the anomaly field to a high level of precision to achieve good navigation results. This requires utilizing high quality sensors, accurately modeling disturbance fields from the aircraft & other sources, and creating high-fidelity maps. Aeromagnetic survey data or marine track survey data must be processed into a product that can be used as a reference for a magnetic navigator and a variety of techniques can be utilized for this processing. The data collection for different survey types reflects choices typically made to study the underlying …

Recovery Of The X-Ray Polarisation Of Swift J1727.8-1613 After The Soft-To-Hard Spectral Transition (Corrigendum) (Astronomy And Astrophysics (2024) 686 (L12) Doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202450566), J. Podgorný, J. Svoboda, M. Dovčiak, A. Veledina, J. Poutanen, P. Kaaret, S. Bianchi, A. Ingram, F. Capitanio, S. R. Datta, E. Egron, H. Krawczynski, G. Matt, F. Muleri, P. O. Petrucci, T. D. Russell, J. F. Steiner, N. Bollemeijer, M. Brigitte, N. Castro Segura, R. Emami, J. A. García, K. Hu, M. N. Iacolina, V. Kravtsov, L. Marra, G. Mastroserio, T. Muñoz-Darias, E. Nathan, M. Negro, A. Ratheesh, N. Rodriguez Cavero, R. Taverna

Faculty Publications

(Figure presented) In Fig. 4, the X-ray hardness value for observation 8 was plotted using a count-based ratio instead of the energy-flux-based ratio used for other points in the figure. The correction of the position of this point in Fig. 4 does not affect any other figures, results, or conclusions in the paper.

Sub-Gev Dark Matter And Mev Gamma-Ray Detection With Cosi, Yu Watanabe, Shigeki Matsumoto, Christopher M. Karwin, Tom Melia, Michela Negro, Thomas Siegert, Yuki Watanabe, Hiroki Yoneda, Tadayuki Takahashi

Faculty Publications

Sub-GeV dark matter (DM) has been attracting more attention due to the negative results searching for traditional weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Such particles are expected to produce gamma rays from annihilation in the MeV energy region. Advancements in technology have opened up possibilities to precisely detect MeV gamma rays, leading to the upcoming space-based mission of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI). We comprehensively and quantitatively study the phenomenology of sub-GeV DM to determine if the COSI observations will probe their viable model parameter regions. We first construct models to describe sub-GeV DM based on the minimality and renormalizability …

Phase-Amplitude Separation Of Wave Function As Local Gauge Transformation, A. R.P. Rau

Faculty Publications

A quantum-mechanical wave function is complex, but all observations are real, expressible through expectation values and transition matrix elements that involve the wave functions. It can be useful to separate at the outset the amplitude and phase as real quantities that together carry the same information that is contained in the complex wave function. Two main avenues for doing so go way back in the history of the subject and have been used both for scattering and bound states. A connection is made here to gauge transformations of electrodynamics where the advent of quantum mechanics and later quantum field theory …

Root Exudates: The Rhizospheric Frontier For Advancing Sustainable Plant Protection, Muhammad Rahil Afzal, Misbah Naz, Youbo Yu, Lisha Yan, Peiyi Wang, Janaki Mohotti, Gefei Hao, Jing-Jiang Zhou, Zhou Chen, Libo Zhang, Qian Wang

Faculty Publications

Root exudates (REs), a diverse array of bioactive metabolites secreted by plant roots in response to environmental stimuli, serve as key mediators of rhizosphere ecology and plant defense responses, offering a promising avenue for sustainable pest management and eco-friendly plant protection. While earlier reviews primarily focus on root exudates in the context of general rhizosphere dynamics and plant-microbial interactions, critical knowledge gaps persist in REs-plant-pest tripartite interactions, the mechanistic basis of REs-mediated plant defense, and their practical integration with integrated pest management (IPM) frameworks. This review provides a synthesis of the latest literature on the biochemical diversity and functions of …