Digital Commons Network^™

Consistent Gauge-Fixing Conditions In Polymerized Gravitational Systems, Kristina Giesel, Bao Fei Li, Parampreet Singh, Stefan Andreas Weigl

Faculty Publications

For classical gravitational systems the lapse function and the shift vector are usually determined by imposing appropriate gauge-fixing conditions and then demanding their preservation with respect to the dynamics generated by a canonical Hamiltonian. Effective descriptions encoding quantum geometric effects motivated by loop quantum gravity for symmetry-reduced models are often captured by polymerization of connection (or related) variables in gauge-fixing conditions as well as constraints. Usually, one chooses the same form of polymerization in both cases. A pertinent question is if the dynamical stability of the effective gauge-fixing conditions under the effective dynamics generated by the polymerized canonical Hamiltonian is …

Effects Of Biochar And N-Stabilizers On Greenhouse Gas Emissions From A Subtropical Pasture Field Applied With Organic And Inorganic Nitrogen Fertilizers, Joseph Elias Rodrigues Mikhael, Jim J. Wang, Syam Dodla, Guillermo Scaglia, Sanku Dattamudi

Faculty Publications

Pasturelands contribute significantly to the global CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions. These gas emissions are influenced by the amount and type of N-fertilizers applied and local climate. Recent studies showed potential of biochar and N-stabilizer compounds in minimizing CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions by regulating N-release from N-fertilizers. The present study was aimed at determining and comparing the effects of biochar and N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide + dicyandiamide (N-stabilizer) on CO2, N2O and CH4 emissions from a pasture fertilized with cattle manure or urea. The study was conducted during 2015 and 2016 in an established bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon L. Pers.). Treatments …

Including Latinx Communities In Academic Libraries: A Theoretical Approach To Information Access, Andrew A. Wakelee, Kim M. Thompson

Faculty Publications

While more Latinx students continue to enroll in higher education, physical, intellectual, and socio-cultural barriers to information may continue to impede their success and inclusion. A tripartite theoretical model that examines physical, intellectual, and socio-cultural information access provides insights for academic libraries to better meet Latinx students’ information needs and include them in campus life. This paper gives an overview of the theoretical framework along with practical steps libraries can take to improve information equity.

Identification And Characterization Of A Stem Canker And Twig Dieback Disease Of Pear Caused By Neofusicoccum Parvum In Chinese Mainland, Feng He, Jie Yang, Yancun Zhao, Pedro Laborda, Yifan Jia, Asma Safdar, Alex Machio Kange, Bingxin Li, Lan Zhou, Quan Zeng, Sally Brown, Zheng Qing Fu, Fengquan Liu

Faculty Publications

Pear (Pyrus spp.) is one of the most consumed fruits in China, but the pear production has to confront the growing threat from fatal diseases. In this study, we report two incidences of stem canker and twig dieback disease on pear plants, which led to death of pear seedlings (approximately 10% of total plants) in Guangxi and Jiangsu provinces. Using a combination of morphological and molecular diagnoses, along with pathogenicity test, the causal agent of the disease in these two locations was identified to be the fungus Neofusicoccum parvum. However, the isolates were divided into two clades: CY-2 …

Constraints On Dark Photon Dark Matter Using Data From Ligo’S And Virgo’S Third Observing Run, Ligo Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration, Kagra Collaboration, Tiffany Z. Summerscales

Faculty Publications

We present a search for dark photon dark matter that could couple to gravitational-wave interferometers using data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run. To perform this analysis, we use two methods, one based on cross-correlation of the strain channels in the two nearly aligned LIGO detectors, and one that looks for excess power in the strain channels of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. The excess power method optimizes the Fourier transform coherence time as a function of frequency, to account for the expected signal width due to Doppler modulations. We do not find any evidence of dark photon …

Low Exposure Long-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Sensitivity Of The Dune Experiment, A. Aduszkiewicz, J. Aguilar, Z. Ahmad, B. Aimard, B. Ali-Mohammadzadeh, T. Alion, K. Allison, S. Alonso Monnsalve, M. Alrashed, C. Alt, A. Alton, P. Amedo, J. Anderson, C. Andreopooulos, M. Andreotti, M. P. Andrews, F. Andrianala, S. Andringa, N. Anfimov, Roberto Petti, Sanjib R. Mishra Ph.D., Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will produce world-leading neutrino oscillation measurements over the lifetime of the experiment. In this work, we explore DUNE’s sensitivity to observe charge-parity violation (CPV) in the neutrino sector, and to resolve the mass ordering, for exposures of up to 100 kiloton-megawatt-calendar years (kt-MW-CY), where calendar years include an assumption of 57% accelerator uptime based on past accelerator performance at Fermilab. The analysis includes detailed uncertainties on the flux prediction, the neutrino interaction model, and detector effects. We demonstrate that DUNE will be able to unambiguously resolve the neutrino mass ordering at a 4⁢𝜎 (5⁢𝜎) …

Water Circulation Driven By Cold Fronts In The Wax Lake Delta (Louisiana, Usa), Qian Zhang, Chunyan Li, Wei Huang, Jun Lin, Matthew Hiatt, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pocket2drug: An Encoder-Decoder Deep Neural Network For The Target-Based Drug Design, W T. Shi, M Singha, G Srivastava, L M. Pu, W T. Shi, M Brylinski

Faculty Publications

Computational modeling is an essential component of modern drug discovery. One of its most important applications is to select promising drug candidates for pharmacologically relevant target proteins. Because of continuing advances in structural biology, putative binding sites for small organic molecules are being discovered in numerous proteins linked to various diseases. These valuable data offer new opportunities to build efficient computational models predicting binding molecules for target sites through the application of data mining and machine learning. In particular, deep neural networks are powerful techniques capable of learning from complex data in order to make informed drug binding predictions. In …

Evaluation Of A Community-Based Performance Arts Programme For People Who Have Experienced Stroke In The Uk: Protocol For The Shaper-Stroke Odysseys Study, Carolina Estevao, Maria Baldellou Lopez, Rachel E. Davis, Lucinda Jarret, Tayana Soukup, Ioannis Bakolis, Andy Healey, Jean Harrington, Anthony Woods, Nikki Crane, Fiona Jones, Carmine Pariante, Daisy Fancourt, Nick Sevdalis

Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION: Stroke survivors, once in the community, face challenges with their long-term rehabilitation care and present higher levels of loneliness, depression and anxiety than the rest of the population. A community-based performance arts programme, Stroke Odysseys (SO), has been devised to tackle the challenges of living with stroke in the UK. In this study, we aim to evaluate the implementation, impact and experiences of SO for stroke survivors. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Scaling-up Health Arts Programmes: Implementation and Effectiveness Research (SHAPER)-SO aims to scale-up SO to 75 participants and 47 stakeholders, while simultaneously evaluating the effectiveness and implementation of the programme. …

The Ability To Classify Patients Based On Gene-Expression Data Varies By Algorithm And Performance Metric, Stephen Piccolo, Avery Mecham, Nathan P. Golightly, Jérémie L. Johnson, Dustin B. Miller

Faculty Publications

By classifying patients into subgroups, clinicians can provide more effective care than using a uniform approach for all patients. Such subgroups might include patients with a particular disease subtype, patients with a good (or poor) prognosis, or patients most (or least) likely to respond to a particular therapy. Transcriptomic measurements reflect the downstream effects of genomic and epigenomic variations. However, high-throughput technologies generate thousands of measurements per patient, and complex dependencies exist among genes, so it may be infeasible to classify patients using traditional statistical models. Machine-learning classification algorithms can help with this problem. However, hundreds of classification algorithms exist—and …

A Statistical Principal Component Regression-Based Approach To Modeling The Degradative Effects Of Local Climate And Traffic On Airfield Pavement Performance, Evan M. Fortney, Steven J. Schuldt, Sarah L. Brown, James P. Allen, Justin D. Delorit

Faculty Publications

Airfield pavement systems support the global economy, passenger travel, and national defense. Accurate pavement degradation predictions are critical inputs for maintenance and repair decisions, and when skillful, they may reduce the need for time-intensive, costly physical inspections that disrupt airfield operations. Existing airport pavement management systems (APMS) compute expected degradation as a function of pavement type and age, but they do not account for local climate and traffic conditions and they are not built to adapt to future changes in either mode of variability. This paper implements a bias-reduced statistical model that reveals the effects of local conditions using observed …

Mechanisms Of Organisational Learning In Hospitals: An Instrument Development Study, Bret Lyman, Emily L. Smith, Kaitlyn C. George

Faculty Publications

Aim: To develop a valid, reliable research instrument to measure mechanisms associated with organisational learning in hospitals.

Background: A valid, reliable instrument for measuring mechanisms of organisational learning would enable nurse leaders and researchers to improve health care through facilitation and study of organisational learning.

Methods: The Organizational Learning in Hospitals model was used as a framework to develop the Organizational Learning Instrument-Mechanisms. Cognitive interviews and expert reviews were used to refine and evaluate item-level and scale-level content validity. The instrument was distributed by email to a random sample of nurses working in inpatient hospitals in Utah (n = 1253). …

Expanding Immigrant Justice By Training Professionals, Michele R. Pistone

Faculty Publications

As a law professor at Villanova University, I headed a clinic that helps hundreds of asylum seekers gain protection in the United States. On good days, I would remember the Talmudic saying, “whoever saves one life saves the world entire,” and take great pride in what my students and I were able to accomplish. On bad days, however, the fruits of our work could seem but a drop in the bucket, for every visit to immigration court demonstrated anew that our clients were the exception. Most immigrants face the immigration system without legal representation of any sort. This unfortunate and …

Electron Mobility And Velocity In Ai 0.45 Ga 0.55 N-Channel Ultra-Wide Bandgap Hemts At High Temperatures For Rf Power Applications, Hansheng Ye, Mikhail Gaevski, Grigory Simin, Asif Khan, Patrick Fay

Faculty Publications

Ultra-wide bandgap AlGaN has attracted recent attention as a promising channel material for next-generation high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) for RF power due to its high critical field, excellent transport properties, and potential for operation in extreme environments. However, the effects of temperature on the transport properties are not fully understood. Here, Al_0.62Ga_0.38N/Al_0.45Ga_0.55N HEMTs have been fabricated and characterized up to 150 °C at DC and RF to evaluate the effect of temperature on electron mobility and carrier velocity. Measured results indicate that both mobility and carrier velocity exhibit modest dependence on …

Behavior Of One-Way Reinforced Concrete Slabs With Polystyrene Embedded Arched Blocks, Ali Hussein Ali Al-Ahmed, Falah Hasan Ibrahim, Abbas Abdulmajeed Allawi, Ayman El-Zohairy

Faculty Publications

This study presents experimental and numerical investigations on seven one-way, reinforced concrete (RC) labs with a new technique of slab weight reduction using polystyrene-embedded arched blocks (PEABs). All slabs had the same dimensions, steel reinforcement, and concrete compressive strength. One of these slabs was a solid slab, which was taken as a control slab, while the other six slabs were cast with PEABs. The main variables were the ratio of the length of the PEABs to the length of the slab (lp/L) and the ratio of the height of the PEABs to the total slab depth (hP/H). The minimum decrease …

Adapted Physical Educators’ Social Media Usage For Professional Learning, Scott Mcnamara, Kwok Ng, Sean Healy

Faculty Publications

Physical educators report a multitude of benefits from accessing informal learning opportunities via social media. However, a lack of research has been conducted on adapted physical education (APE) teachers’ usage of social media for professional learning (PL) purposes. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore how APE teachers use social media to learn about APE content. A survey was used to identify APE teachers’ (n = 73) social media usage patterns. Descriptive statistics were reported, and multiple t-tests were used to compare how participants perceived the usefulness of social media vs. conferences for PL purposes. Multiple linear regression …

Measurement Of Structure Dependent Radiative K+ -> E,Sup>(+) Vy Gamma Decays Using Stopped Positive Kaons, H. Ito, A. Kobayashi, S. Bianchin, T. Cao, C. Djalali, D. H. Dongwi, T. Gautam, D. Gill, M. D. Hasinoff, K. Horie, Y. Igarashi, J. Imazato, N. Kalantarians, H. Kawai, S. Kimura, S. Kodama, M. Kohl, H. Lu, O. Mineev, Steffen Strauch, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

The structure dependent radiative K + → e+νγ (K^SD+_e2γ) decay was investigated with stopped positive kaons. The e⁺ momentum spectra containing 574±30 K^SD+_e2γ events with a K + → μ+ν (K_μ2) background of 28 ± 19 events were measured with and without a photon in coincidence and analyzed with Monte Carlo simulations for acceptance and detector response to extract the ratio of the branching ratio of the K^SD+_e2γ decay and the K + → e+ν decay including the internal bremsstrahlung process (K_{e2(γ )}). …

Lakshadweep High Propagation And Impacts On The Somali Current And Eddies During The Southwest Monsoon, Paul A. Ernst, Bulusu Subrahmanyam, Corinne B. Trott

Faculty Publications

Climatological eddies in the Arabian Sea (AS), including the Lakshadweep High (LH) and the Great Whirl (GW), play major roles in the regional fluxes of upper ocean properties. For the first time, we apply an eddy tracking algorithm to the LH using altimetric sea surface height observations from 1993 through 2019. We additionally analyze the LH's water mass composition throughout its life cycle using the 1/12° Global eddy resolving physical ocean and sea ice reanalysis (GLORYS12). We observe that the second annual downwelling coastal Kelvin wave's (CKW) arrival during the winter monsoon is primarily responsible for generating the LH. In …

Descripción Panorámica Del Español En La República Dominicana, Orlando Alba

Faculty Publications

El objetivo de esta presentación consiste en facilitar una ojeada general al español hablado en la República Dominicana. Las principales características fonéticas, morfosintácticas y léxicas son descritas con el aval de múltiples ilustraciones orales que permiten observar de forma directa y segura la realidad lingüística dominicana.

Fast-Decaying Plant Litter Enhances Soil Carbon In Temperate Forests But Not Through Microbial Physiological Traits, Matthew E. Craig, Kevin M. Geyer, Katilyn V. Beidler, Edward R. Brzostek, Serita D. Frey, A. Stuart Grandy, Chao Liang, Richard P. Phillips

Faculty Publications

Conceptual and empirical advances in soil biogeochemistry have challenged long-held assumptions about the role of soil micro-organisms in soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics; yet, rigorous tests of emerging concepts remain sparse. Recent hypotheses suggest that microbial necromass production links plant inputs to SOC accumulation, with high-quality (i.e., rapidly decomposing) plant litter promoting microbial carbon use efficiency, growth, and turnover leading to more mineral stabilization of necromass. We test this hypothesis experimentally and with observations across six eastern US forests, using stable isotopes to measure microbial traits and SOC dynamics. Here we show, in both studies, that microbial growth, efficiency, and …

Pemnet: A Transfer Learning-Based Modeling Approach Of High-Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Electrochemical Systems, Luis A. Briceno-Mena, José A. Romagnoli, Christopher G. Arges

Faculty Publications

Widespread adoption of high-temperature electrochemical systems such as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFCs) requires models and computational tools for accurate optimization and guiding new materials for enhancing fuel cell performance and durability. While robust and better suited for extrapolation, knowledge-based modeling has limitations as it is time-consuming and requires information about the system that is not always available (e.g., material properties and interfacial behavior between different materials). Data-driven modeling, on the other hand, is easier to implement but often necessitates large datasets that could be difficult to obtain. In this contribution, knowledge-based modeling and data-driven modeling are combined by …

Considerations For Radio Frequency Fingerprinting Across Multiple Frequency Channels, Jose A. Gutierrez Del Arroyo, Brett J. Borghetti, Michael A. Temple

Faculty Publications

Radio Frequency Fingerprinting (RFF) is often proposed as an authentication mechanism for wireless device security, but application of existing techniques in multi-channel scenarios is limited because prior models were created and evaluated using bursts from a single frequency channel without considering the effects of multi-channel operation. Our research evaluated the multi-channel performance of four single-channel models with increasing complexity, to include a simple discriminant analysis model and three neural networks. Performance characterization using the multi-class Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) revealed that using frequency channels other than those used to train the models can lead to a deterioration in performance from …

Determinants Of Covid-19 Vaccinations Among A State-Wide Year-Long Surveillance Initiative In A Conservative Southern State, Lídia Gual-Gonzalez, Maggie S.J. Mccarter, Kyndall Dye-Braumuller, Stella Self, Connor H. Ross, Chloe Rodriguez-Ramos, Virginie G. Daguise, Melissa Nolan Ph.D., Mph

Faculty Publications

By the end of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in over 54 million cases and more than 800,000 deaths in the United States, and over 350 million cases and more than 5 million deaths worldwide. The uniqueness and gravity of this pandemic have been reflected in the public health guidelines poorly received by a growing subset of the United States population. These poorly received guidelines, including vaccine receipt, are a highly complex psychosocial issue, and have impacted the successful prevention of disease spread. Given the intricate nature of this important barrier, any single statistical analysis methodologically fails to address all …

Do Relationships Still Make Great Colleges?, Paul A. Djupe

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

One Planet: One Health. A Call To Support The Initiative On A Global Science-Policy Body On Chemicals And Waste, Werner Brack, Damia Barcelo Culleres, Alistair B.A. Boxall, Helene Budzinski, Sara Castiglioni, Adrian Covaci, Valeria Dulio, Beate I. Escher, Peter Fantke, Faith Kandie, Despo Fatta-Kassinos, Felix J. Hernandez, Klara Hilscherova, Juliane Hollender, Henner Hollert, Annika Jahnke, Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, Stuart J. Khan, Andreas Kortenkamp, Klaus Kuemmerer, Brice Lalonde, Marja H. Lamoree, Yves Levi, Pablo Antonio Lara Martin, Cassiana C. Montagner, Christian Mougin, Titus Msagati, Joerg Oehlmann, Leo Posthuma, Malcolm Reid, Martin Reinhard, Susan D. Richardson, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

The chemical pollution crisis severely threatens human and environmental health globally. To tackle this challenge the establishment of an overarching international science–policy body has recently been suggested. We strongly support this initiative based on the awareness that humanity has already likely left the safe operating space within planetary boundaries for novel entities including chemical pollution. Immediate action is essential and needs to be informed by sound scientific knowledge and data compiled and critically evaluated by an overarching science–policy interface body. Major challenges for such a body are (i) to foster global knowledge production on exposure, impacts and governance going beyond …

Cluttering In The Speech Of Young Men With Fragile X Syndrome, Katherine Bangert, Kathleen Scaler Scott, Charley Adams, Jessica S. Kisenwether, Lisa Giuffre, Jenna Reed, Angela John Thurman, Leonard Abbeduto, Jessica Klusek

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Cluttering is a fluency disorder that has been noted clinically in individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS). Yet, cluttering has not been systematically characterized in this population, hindering identification and intervention efforts. This study examined the rates of cluttering in male young adults with FXS using expert clinical opinion, the alignment between expert clinical opinion and objectively quantified features of cluttering from language transcripts, and the association between cluttering and aspects of the FXS phenotype.

Method: Thirty-six men with FXS (aged 18-26 years; M = 22, SD = 2.35) contributed language samples and completed measures of nonverbal cognition, autism …

Automated Machine Learning: A Case Study Of Genomic “Image-Based” Prediction In Maize Hybrids, Giovanni Galli, Felipe Sabadin, Rafael Massahiro Yassue, Cassia Galves, Humberto Fanelli Carvalho, Jose Crossa, Osval Antonio Montesinos-López, Roberto Fritsche-Neto

Faculty Publications

Machine learning methods such as multilayer perceptrons (MLP) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have emerged as promising methods for genomic prediction (GP). In this context, we assess the performance of MLP and CNN on regression and classification tasks in a case study with maize hybrids. The genomic information was provided to the MLP as a relationship matrix and to the CNN as “genomic images.” In the regression task, the machine learning models were compared along with GBLUP. Under the classification task, MLP and CNN were compared. In this case, the traits (plant height and grain yield) were discretized in such …

Estimating The Earnings Loss Associated With A Criminal Record And Suspended Driver’S License, Colleen Chien, Alexandra George, Srihari Shekhar, Robert Apel

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Madfam: Microarchitectural Data Framework And Methodology, Tor J. Langehaug, Scott R. Graham, Christine M. Schubert Kabban, Brett J. Borghetti

Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of Spectre and Meltdown researchers have proposed a variety of attack detection solutions by applying machine learning to data collected from hardware performance monitoring units. Although many microarchitectural attack detection systems provide high-accuracy detection results, the behavior of the underlying data collection mechanisms is not well described or understood. This research introduces the MicroArchitectural Data Framework And Methodology (MADFAM) to prescribe a systematic approach to collecting and preserving the information available in sequences of microarchitectural data. The proposed framework focuses on hardware performance counters (HPCs) as the primary data source. HPC configuration is complex, which makes it …

Relationship Of Microplastics To Body Size For Two Estuarine Fishes, Ahmed K. Gad, Stephen R. Midway

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.