Digital Commons Network^™

Improving Methods For The Successful Establishment Of Switchgrass, Whitney Marie Monin

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Our research investigated whether priming switchgrass seeds with water or ethephon would increase stand establishment in the field. ‘Alamo’ seed germinated faster and grew taller than ‘Cave-in-Rock.Seeds primed for six days in water or for one day in ethephon 10 mM had the greatest seedling densities. In growth chamber environments seed priming were tested to hasten germination velocity. Seeds primed for two, four or six days in water germinated faster than unprimed seeds. Ethephon treatments reduced overall germination and germination velocity. Accent and Accent Q herbicides containing nicosulfuron are used to control weeds. To test ‘Alamo’ sensitivity to these herbicides, …

Cosee Ocean Inquiry Group Report: Opportunities For Creating Lifelong Ocean Science Literacy, Paul Boyle, Vince Breslin, Lisa Craig Brisson, John Fraser, Alan J. Friedman, Katie Gardner, Sarah Schoedinger, Jerry Schubel, Steve Uzzo, Steven Yalowitz

School for the Environment General Publications

This Inquiry Group Report for the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence Ocean Communities in Education And Social Networks (COSEE OCEAN) provides a fresh look at how broader ocean science literacy can be developed, especially through less-recognized channels such as opportunistic learning, the private and “third” sectors, and the enormously varied activities under the heading of informal science education. The 10 authors of this report (see Contributors section) have been working together for two years to find and review a range of issues and resources for current and potential ocean science literacy providers, both professional and volunteer.

Several chapters provide …

Two-Source Energy Balance Model To Calculate E, T, And Et: Comparison Of Priestley-Taylor And Penman-Monteith Formulations And Two Time Scaling Methods, Paul D. Colaizzi, Nurit Agam, Judy A. Tolk, Steven R. Evett, Terry A. Howell, Prasanna H. Gowda, Susan A. O'Shaughnessy, William P. Kustas, Martha C. Anderson

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The two-source energy balance (TSEB) model calculates the energy balance of the soil-canopy-atmosphere continuum, where transpiration is initially determined by the Priestley-Taylor equation. The TSEB was revised recently using the Penman-Monteith equation to replace the Priestley-Taylor formulation, thus better accounting for the impact of large and varying vapor pressure deficits (VPD) typical of advective, semiarid climates. This study is a comparison of the Priestley- Taylor and Penman-Monteith versions of the TSEB (termed TSEB-PT and TSEB-PM, respectively). Evaporation (E), transpiration (T), and evapotranspiration (ET) calculated by the TSEB-PT and TSEB-PM versions were compared to measurements obtained with microlysimeters, sap flow gauges, …

Modeling Weather And Stocking Rate Effects On Forage And Steer Production In Northern Mixed-Grass Prairie, Q. X. Fang, A. A. Andales, J. D. Derner, L. R. Ahuja, L. Ma, P. N. S. Bartling, J. L. Reeves, Z. Qi

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Stocking rate (SR) is the primary management factor that influences livestock gains, plant community changes and forage production, as well as economic returns for livestock producers. More effective stocking decision making by ranchers in the semi-arid northern mixed-grass prairie requires clearly understanding forage production and yearling steer weight gain (SWG) responses to SR and high weather variability. The objectives of this study were to: (1) test the Great Plains Framework for Agricultural Resource Management-Range (GPFARM-Range) model for predicting forage production and SWG under three experimental SR treatments and long-term weather conditions on semiarid northern mixed-grass prairie in southeast Wyoming, USA; …

Larval Mortality And Development For Rotation-Resistant And Rotation-Susceptible Populations Of Western Corn Rootworm On Bt Corn, N A. Tinsley, J L. Spencer, R E. Estes, J. R. Prasifka, P M. Schrader, B. W. French, M E. Gray

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte, is one of the most economically important insect pests threatening the production of corn, Zea mays (L.), in the United States. Throughout its history, this insect has displayed considerable adaptability by overcoming a variety of pest management tactics, including the cultural practice of annual crop rotation. Since first reported in Illinois in the late 1980s, populations of the rotation-resistant western corn rootworm have spread over a wide area of the eastern Corn Belt. Currently, little information is available concerning the interaction of rotation resistance with the use of genetically modified corn expressing …

Ecotypes Of An Ecologically Dominant Prairie Grass (Andropogon Gerardii) Exhibit Genetic Divergence Across The U.S. Midwest Grasslands’ Environmental Gradient, Miranda M. Grey, Paul St. Amand, Nora M. Bello, Matthew B. Galliart, Mary Knapp, Karen A. Garrett, Theodore J. Morgan, Sarah G. Baer, Brian R. Maricle, Eduard D. Akhunov, Loretta C. Johnson

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) is an ecologically dominant grass with wide distribution across the environmental gradient of U.S. Midwest grasslands. This system offers an ideal natural laboratory to study population divergence and adaptation in spatially varying climates.

Objectives were to: (i) characterize neutral genetic diversity and structure within and among three regional ecotypes derived from 11 prairies across the U.S. Midwest environmental gradient, (ii) distinguish between the relative roles of isolation by distance (IBD) vs. isolation by environment (IBE) on ecotype divergence, (iii) identify outlier loci under selection and (iv) assess the association between outlier loci and climate.

Using two …

Design And Development Of Scalable Solar Powered Water Purification Systems For Developing Nations, Shavin Pinto

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This thesis presents the design and development of solar powered water purification systems. The systems were designed to meet specific customer requirements that were established from the experiences gained after the installation of five water purification systems in various Haitian communities. The systems are scalable and are able to supply 10,000-20,000 gallons of clean drinking water per day. The design consists of a three-stage filtration system with a disc-type sediment filter, a 0.1 micron ultrafiltration membrane, and an ultraviolet light for disinfection. The backwash cycle extends the life of the ultrafiltration membrane to 4-7 years before a new filter is …

The Undergraduate 2014, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.

Spectrum 2014, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.

Comparing Skew Schur Functions: A Quasisymmetric Perspective, Peter R. W. Mcnamara

Faculty Journal Articles

Reiner, Shaw and van Willigenburg showed that if two skew Schur functions s_A and s_B are equal, then the skew shapes $A$ and $B$ must have the same "row overlap partitions." Here we show that these row overlap equalities are also implied by a much weaker condition than Schur equality: that s_A and s_B have the same support when expanded in the fundamental quasisymmetric basis F. Surprisingly, there is significant evidence supporting a conjecture that the converse is also true.

In fact, we work in terms of inequalities, showing that if the F-support of s_{A …}

On Groups With A Class-Preserving Outer Automorphism, Peter A. Brooksbank

Faculty Journal Articles

Four infinite families of 2-groups are presented, all of whose members possess an outer automorphism that preserves conjugacy classes. The groups in these families are central extensions of their predecessors by a cyclic group of order 2. For each integer r>1, there is precisely one 2-group of nilpotency class r in each of the four families. All other known families of 2-groups possessing a class-preserving outer automorphism consist entirely of groups of nilpotency class 2.

Groups Acting On Tensor Products, Peter A. Brooksbank

Faculty Journal Articles

Groups preserving a distributive product are encountered often in mathematics. Examples include automorphism groups of associative and non associative rings, classical groups, and automorphisms of p-groups. While the great variety of such products precludes any realistic hope of describing the general structure of the groups that preserve them, it is reasonable to expect that insight may be gained from an examination of the universal distributive products: tensor products. We give a detailed description of the groups preserving such tensor products over semisimple and semi primary rings, and present effective algorithms to construct generators for these groups. We also discuss …

Outsourcing Management Of Engineering Work In Petroleum Exploration And Production, Panunee Thongprasom

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Since there is no official outsourcing management system in the studied Petroleum Exploration and Production company, many outsourcing projects under the studied company have been facing with a lot of schedule delays. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to find an appropriate and efficient outsourcing management system which consists of workflow and procedure including supporting tools and techniques for using with outsourcing engineering work in the studied company to minimize the delays. The approach is to review outsourcing management practices and recommended tools from literatures and gather information from the studied company’s outsourcing experiences including best practices to develop …

Mitigating Man-In-The-Middle Attacks On Smartphones – A Discussion Of Ssl Pinning And Dnssec, Veelasha Moonsamy, Lynn Batten

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Since their introduction, smartphones remain one of the most used handheld devices and this trend is predicted to continue in the coming years. Consequently, the number of attacks on smartphones is increasing exponentially; current market research shows that data traffic generated by smartphones will escalate by tenfold in 2019. Such an increase in traffic indicates that the smartphone industry will remain an attractive target for attackers. Whilst smartphone users are aware of the benefits of installing antivirus applications for malware evasion, they have limited knowledge on how to mitigate MiTM attacks. Furthermore, application developers do not always consider implementing appropriate …

Cache-Timing Attack Against Aes Crypto System - Countermeasures Review, Yaseen H. Taha, Settana M. Abdulh, Naila A. Sadalla, Huwaida Elshoush

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Side channel attacks are based on side channel information, which is information that is leaked from encryption systems. Implementing side channel attacks is possible if and only if an attacker has access to a cryptosystem (victim) or can interact with cryptosystem remotely to compute time statistics of information that collected from targeted system. Cache timing attack is a special type of side channel attack. Here, timing information caused by cache effect is collected and analyzed by an attacker to guess sensitive information such as encryption key or plaintext. Cache timing attack against AES was known theoretically until Bernstein carry out …

The Impact Of Social Constructivism On Erp Systems Security: A Critical Social Review, Kennedy Njenga

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Little is understood about the effects of social constructivism that shapes conflicting concerns regarding Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) security and usability during implementation. This work looks at social constructivism as produced and reproduced by stakeholders in the ERP systems implementation phase. Social constructivism is characterised by the embedded trade-off for usability, espoused by end-user and security, espoused by developers. Social constructivism was conceptualised qualitatively from a selected case study. Critical Social Theory (CST) was used as the theoretical lens. Stakeholders concerned with ERP security aspects in the implementation phase were interviewed and data transcribed and interpreted. Hermeneutical interpretation was applied …

12th Australian Information Security Management Conference, 2014, Edith Cowan University: Conference Details, Security Research Institute, Edith Cowan University

Australian Information Security Management Conference

No abstract provided.

The Application Of An Agile Approach To It Security Risk Management For Smes, Damien Hutchinson, Chris Armitt, Dean Edwards-Lear

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper demonstrates the application of an agile risk management approach to perform asset-based risk analysis to meet the information security requirements of SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises). This approach is proposed as an alternative to traditional methods that are cumbersome, resource intensive and costly, often hindering their value and use by SMEs. The organisation being studied is an Aged Care Facility (ACF) with legal and ethical responsibilities. Within the business there is little knowledge regarding potential information technology threats that could impact on these responsibilities. The ACF maintains a system containing client personal and medical records, network communications, as …

15th Australian Information Warfare Conference, 2014, Edith Cowan University - Conference Details, Security Research Institute, Edith Cowan University

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

No abstract provided.

Detecting Covert Communication Channels In Raster Images, Brian Cusack, Jarrett Chambers

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

Digital image steganography is a method for hiding secret messages within everyday Internet communication channels. Such covert communications provide protection for communications and exploit the opportunities available in digital media. Digital image steganography makes the nature and content of a message invisible to other users by taking ordinary internet artefacts and using them as cover objects for the messages. In this paper we demonstrate the capability with raster image files and discuss the challenges of detecting such covert communications. The contribution of the research is community awareness of covert communication capability in digital media and the motivation for including such …

Assessing Visual Perception Using Letters And Numbers, Janet Richmond

ECU Posters

To create a new visual perceptual test using letters and numbers in isolation and in context. Producing a linear scale to measure the ability of primary school children to visually discriminate upper and lower case letters in readiness for learning to read and perform mathematical calculations.

Using Acl2 To Verify Loop Pipelining In Behavioral Synthesis, Disha Puri, Sandip Ray, Kecheng Hao, Fei Xie

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Behavioral synthesis involves compiling an Electronic System-Level (ESL) design into its RegisterTransfer Level (RTL) implementation. Loop pipelining is one of the most critical and complex transformations employed in behavioral synthesis. Certifying the loop pipelining algorithm is challenging because there is a huge semantic gap between the input sequential design and the output pipelined implementation making it infeasible to verify their equivalence with automated sequential equivalence checking techniques. We discuss our ongoing effort using ACL2 to certify loop pipelining transformation. The completion of the proof is work in progress. However, some of the insights developed so far may already be of …

Martingales In Floating Asean+3 Currencies*, Cesar C. Rufino

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The martingale properties of the floating exchange rates of the ASEAN+3 region are analyzed in this study using contemporary (2000 to 2012) weekly data of inter-bank call rates. The main goal of the analysis is to see if informational efficiency is a feature floating (managed or independently floating) currencies in this coalition of countries still possess despite the current credit crisis and other economic shocks during the period. Employing relevant state-of-the-art econometric techniques, the study sets to empirically determine the presence of two important ingredients of informationally efficient market—the existence of the unit root component and the presence of uncorrelated …

Estimating The Efficiency Of Philippine Public High Schools Using Spatio-Temporal Stochastic Frontier Analysis, Michael Ralph M. Abrigo, Rouselle F. Lavado, Erniel B. Barrios, Brian C. Gozun

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This paper proposes a method for modeling production function of education using a stochastic frontier model with spatial temporal terms. Using a unique dataset that combines school achievement scores with school characteristics from 2005-2008, the efficiency of 4,900 public high schools in the Philippines in converting school inputs into test scores was estimated. Results show that the average inefficiency is at 41% and that there is a significant positive spatial externality in efficiency, which means that efficiency in one school can spill over to its neighbors. The model was found to be robust to various environmental variables included in the …

An Approximation Of The Internal Rate Of Return Of Investment In Selected Undergraduate Degree Programs, Editha A. Lupdag–Padama, John Paolo R. Rivera, Rhory C. Fernandez–Go, Krista Danielle S. Yu, Francesca Dianne B. Solis, Rosanina A. Sayoc

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The situation of a typical Filipino household, overseas employment, and the culture of migration are deemed as determinants for investing in higher education such as in the specialized fields of accountancy, education science and teacher training, engineering, and nursing. We examine both local and international labor demand for accountants, teachers, engineers, and nurses as well as its underlying implications on the exodus of professionals. As such, the determination of the internal rate of return to investment is of crucial importance to households to fully maximize educational opportunities and for the government and other institutions to confront this globally-changing situation. Using …

The Strategy Dilemma: Why Big Business Moves Seldom Pan Out As Planned, Niceto S. Poblador

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This article looks at the complex dynamics that underlie organizational change and attempts to explain why, under present uncertain environmental conditions, it is not possible to determine in advance the results of strategic moves made by businesses and other types of organizations. It discusses an alternative approach to strategy in today’s world of business and explores the practical applications of experimental methods to the management of change in today’s highly complex, extensively interconnected, and knowledge-driven world.

Estimating The Incidence Of Japanese Encephalitis In Divisions Of Bangladesh, Craig Michael Rothenberg

Public Health Theses

Japanese Encephalitis (JE) is a mosquito-borne viral disease responsible for 30,000 to 50,000 reported cases and up to 15,000 reported deaths every year. The disease is a significant public health concern in Bangladesh, but there is no regular surveillance or immunization for JE in the country. The objective of this study is to determine whether a practical model to estimate the incidence of JE in Bangladesh can be developed using data on population, environmental characteristics, and/or vector distribution for JE-endemic countries in Asia and the Western Pacific. Information on JE incidence, area, land cover, climate, population characteristics, land elevation, and …

Modeling The Zoonotic Transmission Dynamics Of Nipah Virus: Implications For Outbreak Control And Model-Guided Fieldwork, Natasha Wenzel

Public Health Theses

Introduction: Nipah virus is considered a biosafety level-4 pathogen that is endemic to bats of the genus Pteropus. Infection in humans presents clinically as febrile encephalitis with an extremely high case-fatality rate (78.2%). Outbreaks of Nipah virus infection have occurred in Bangladesh and India almost annually since 2001, most recently in January 2013.

Methods: To elucidate Nipah virus persistence at the endemic host and human population level we developed a Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered dynamic model and parameterized it from published epidemiological case data and serological bats surveys on the Nipah Virus-Bangladesh variant. We conducted a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation to estimate …

Would Utility Models Improve American Innovation? Evidence From Brazil, Germany, And The United States, Tyler J. Boschert

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Dragnet Nation: A Quest For Privacy, Security, And Freedom In A World Of Relentless Surveillance Chapter 1: Hacked, Julia Angwin

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.