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Stem Stories, December 2015, #3, Daniel Vorwerk

STEM Stories

Program Spotlight - UNI STEM Summer Camp

Theoretical Analysis And Sph Simulation For The Wave Energy Captured By A Bottom-Hinged Owsc, Yu-Chi Chang, Da-Wei Chen, Yi-Chih Chow, Shiaw-Yih Tzang, Chen-Chou Lin, Jiahn-Horng Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This paper examines one type of wave energy converter, the Oscillating Wave Surge Converter (OWSC) with its bottom hinged on the sea bed. The simplest form of OWSC is a flapper connected with a power take-off (PTO). Theoretical analysis based on a 2D linear potential theory elucidates the mechanisms of the wave energy capture by a bottom-hinged OWSC in terms of impedances associated with the wave field, the flapper body, and the PTO. Criteria of impedance canceling and matching to maximize the energy capture factor can be deduced. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is established for simulating the same problem, and …

Current-Induced Seabed Scour Around A Pile-Supported Horizontal-Axis Tidal Stream Turbine, Jisheng Zhang, Peng Gao, Jinhai Zheng, Xiuguang Wu, Yuxuan Peng, Tiantian Zhang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Tidal stream energy has attracted more and more attentions of researchers and engineers of coastal studies in recent years, as it is renewable, predictable and environmentally friendly. Although many efforts have been made for the application of tidal stream energy, the scouring process in the vicinity of a pile-supported tidal stream turbine remains unclear. This study develops a mathematical model, consisting of hydrodynamic module, General Moving Object (GMO) module and sediment scour module, to numerically investigate the fluidstructure interaction and its induced sediment scour process around such a combined structure. Only a steady current is considered in the model, and …

Education And Entrepreneurship In Amman, Jordan, Nicole Bills

Senior Theses

My thesis examines the potential economic impact of entrepreneurial education in Amman, Jordan. In order to investigate this topic, I also considered the economic impacts of increased entrepreneurism and access to education more broadly. I found that entrepreneurial education is just a small piece of a much larger ecosystem needed to support economic development. In fact, encouraging the creation of nascent firms is a somewhat dubious aim given the lack of scholarship assessing whether there is a shortage of entrepreneurial activity in the Jordanian economy. Institutional factors are a vastly more important component of efforts to spur growth.

When Addressing Climate Change, Don’T Forget Animal Agriculture, Aaron Matzke

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

As COP 21 closes in Paris, global animal agriculture is a topic that has eluded the international media. Animal agriculture is responsible for more global greenhouse gas emissions than transportation according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. With global population and prosperity rising, the global meat supply is expected to nearly double by 2050. This increase in production will only be achieved if significant steps are taken to promote sustainability through existing techniques globally, and to regulate air contamination in industrial feedlots in the United States. Alternative meat production methods, which have seen considerable investment recently, could supplement animal …

U.S. Vehicle Efficiency Standards, Derek Baylog

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The United States is a driving force of the global economy and a major innovator in the technology sector. For decades the world has looked to The United States as a leader of great technological advancements with the strong economy to allow investors a chance make these technologies a reality. So why is it now that we lag behind other countries when it comes to making our technology energy efficient? Sure we’ve been steadily growing our production of renewable resources with wind and solar energy, bet we are still behind in the second largest source of pollution, transportation. According to …

Identifying Characteristics Of Expert Elementary School Technology Integration Teachers - A Cognitive Task Analysis, Mark Campoli

Doctor of Education in Teacher Leadership Dissertations

In all domains, certain individuals consistently perform better than their peers. In ill-structured domains such as education, the identification of experts can be difficult. This is especially true when considering technology integration experts (TIEs). In order to be a TIE, one must be an expert in content knowledge, pedagogy, and instructional technology. Systematically identifying and studying TIEs could provide characteristics consistent with expert performance.

Typically, it takes 1,000 hours, or ten years, of practice to acquire expertise. In domains such as education, the acquisition of expertise can happen sooner. Acquiring expertise can be further hastened by deliberate practice. Not all …

12-15-2015 Nominations Being Accepted For 4th Annual Tech Trek Camp At Swosu, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

THE BARK ARCHIVE 2015

Seventh grade girls from Oklahoma have the opportunity to experience a Tech Trek math and science camp at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford.

On The Use Of The Linear Interaction Energy Method To Predict Affinities Of Charged Aromatic Ammines To Naturally Occurring Clay Minerals, Milinda A. Samaraweera

Doctoral Dissertations

This study presents the use of the linear interaction energy (LIE) method as a predictive tool to approximate the free energies of sorption of organic cations to naturally occurring clay mineral montmorillonite. One objective of this thesis is to explore the applicability and the accuracy of LIE, originated in the biochemistry field, as a predictive tool to estimate the free energies of sorption of organic cations to naturally occurring aluminosilicates. For this purpose, a set of charged aromatic amines sorbing to a prototypical homoionic clay montmorillonite (MMT) with calcium ions were modeled using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. As the LIE …

A Preliminary Assessment Of Water Partitioning And Ecohydrological Coupling In Northern Headwaters Using Stable Isotopes And Conceptual Runoff Models, James P. Mcnamara

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

We combined a conceptual rainfall-runoff model and input–output relationships of stable isotopes to understand ecohydrological influences on hydrological partitioning in snow-influenced northern catchments. Six sites in Sweden (Krycklan), Canada (Wolf Creek; Baker Creek; Dorset), Scotland (Girnock) and the USA (Dry Creek) span moisture and energy gradients found at high latitudes. A meta-analysis was carried out using the Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV) model to estimate the main storage changes characterizing annual water balances. Annual snowpack storage importance was ranked as Wolf Creek > Krycklan > Dorset > Baker Creek > Dry Creek > Girnock. The subsequent rate and longevity of melt were reflected in calibrated parameters …

Orange Is The New Equal Protection Violation: How Evidence-Based Sentencing Harms Male Offenders, Shaina D. Massie

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Structural Evolution, Chemical Order, And Crystallization Of Metallic Liquids And Glasses, Mark Johnson

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Over the last 60 years, bulk metallic glasses have emerged as a new class of materials with highly desirable material properties. Their high strength, high elasticity, and corrosion resistance are attractive properties for viable commercial products. At its core, material properties are directly related to the underlying microstructure. By understanding the structural and chemical order in the liquid and undercooled liquid and their relationship to thermophysical properties such as viscosity, a greater understanding of bulk metallic glass formation can be achieved. In this dissertation, electrostatic levitation techniques are used to study the liquid in a containerless environment using a combination …

Solid-State Nmr Study Of The Tertiary Structure Of The Peptidoglycan Of Enterococcus Faecalis And The Structures Of Phorbol Diacetate And Bryostatin Bound To Protein Kinase Cδ C1b Domain, Hao Yang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Solid-state NMR was used to study the structures of phorbol diacetate and bryostatin bound to protein kinase Cδ C1b domain in lipid bilayers. The interaction of protein kinase C (PKC) with native physiological ligands drives fundamental cellular signal transductions, and aberrant PKC signaling is associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, stroke, pain, etc. Bryostatin modulates PKC and exhibits remarkable potential in treating cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and HIV/AIDS. However, the structural information and dynamics of this modulation, which are crucial for better understanding of PKC-ligand interactions in the membrane microenvironment to drive the development of new drugs, remain elusive. REDOR …

Investigating The Complexity Of Impact Crater Ejecta, Michael Raymond Zanetti

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The formation of an impact crater ejecta blanket can be viewed as a form of organized chaos. Material that is ejected from a crater is heavily brecciated, but falls back to the surface along ballistic trajectories, generally preserving an inverted sense of the original stratigraphy. As the ejecta re-impacts the area surrounding the crater it forms a thick blanket of ejected material and reworked target surface that gradually thins away from the crater rim. Within the crater, crater modification processes, such as wall terrace formation and impact melt drainage, transform the crater in expectable ways. The approach adopted in this …

From JEff=1/2 Insulator To P-Wave Superconductor In Single-Crystal Sr2Ir1−XRuXO4 (0≤X≤1), Shujuan Yuan, Saicharan Aswartham, Jsaminka Terzic, H. Zheng, H. D. Zhao, P. Schlottmann, Gang Cao

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

Sr₂IrO₄ is a magnetic insulator assisted by strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) whereas Sr₂RuO₄ is a p-wave superconductor. The contrasting ground states have been shown to result from the critical role of the strong SOC in the iridate. Our investigation of structural, transport, and magnetic properties reveals that substituting 4dRu⁴⁺(4d⁴) ions for 5dIr⁴⁺(5d⁵) ions in Sr₂IrO₄ directly adds holes to the t_2g bands, reduces the SOC, and thus rebalances the competing energies in single-crystal Sr …

Supermassive Black Hole Seed Formation At High Redshifts: Long-Term Evolution Of The Direct Collapse, Isaac Shlosman, Jun-Hwan Choi, Mitchell C. Begelman, Kentaro Nagamine

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We use cosmological adaptive mesh refinement code enzo zoom-in simulations to study the long-term evolution of the collapsing gas within dark matter haloes at z. This direct collapse process is a leading candidate for rapid formation of supermassive black hole (SMBH) seeds. To circumvent the Courant condition at small radii, we apply the sink particle method, focusing on evolution on scales ∼0.01–10 pc. The collapse proceeds in two stages, with the secondary runaway happening within the central 10 pc. The sink particles form when the collapsing gas requires additional refinement of the grid size at the highest refinement level. …

Science And Nature In The Medieval Ecological Imagination, Jessica Rezunyk

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersections between nature and culture in medieval literature and art with particular focus on Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame, the thirteenth-century French Bible Moralisée (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Codex Vindobonensis 2554), and William Langland’s Piers Plowman. Current academic paradigms tend to place the study of nature firmly within the sciences and the study of culture firmly within the humanities, creating a gap between the fields that effectively isolates their respective methodologies and vocabularies from one another. This dissertation seeks to bridge that gap between the sciences and the humanities by approaching medieval literature through the lens of …

Investigation Of 89zr-Siderophores As Molecular Imaging Agents For Positron Emission Tomography Imaging Of Bacterial Infections, Nora C. M. Goscinski

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Siderophores are small molecules synthesized by bacteria to harvest Fe³⁺ from their environment. In infection scenarios, their production can increase infection virulence by increasing the ability of bacteria to obtain Fe³⁺ and therefore grow more rapidly. The selective uptake of siderophores in vivo in multi-bacteria environments indicates that this class of molecules has a potential use as selective imaging agents. In this work, DFO-NCS and a library of trihydroxamate siderophores were evaluated as vehicles to deliver ⁸⁹Zr selectively to bacteria for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging of bacterial infections. Productive work with radiometals involves thorough knowledge of …

Humans Integrate Monetary And Liquid Incentives To Motivate Cognitive Task Performance, Debbie Yee

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

It is unequivocal that a wide variety of incentives can motivate behavior. However, few studies have explicitly examined whether and how different incentives are integrated in terms of their motivational influence. The current study examines the combined effects of monetary and liquid incentives on cognitive processing, and whether appetitive and aversive incentives have distinct influences. We introduce a novel task paradigm, in which participants perform cued task-switching for monetary rewards that vary parametrically across trials, with liquid incentives serving as post-trial performance feedback. Critically, the symbolic meaning of the liquid was held constant (indicating successful reward attainment), while liquid valence …

Mineralogy And Geochemistry Of Late Archean And Paleoproterozoic Granites And Pegmatites In The Northern Penokean Terrane Of Marquette And Dickinson Counties, Michigan, Christopher M. Johnson, Christopher M. Van Daalen

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on mineralogy, geochemistry, and origin of eight pegmatites and two spatially associated granites of Late Archean and Paleoproterozoic ages located in Marquette and Dickinson Counties, Michigan. Biotite geochemistry reveals that both granites and all pegmatites are peraluminous and have an orogenic signature. However, bulk composition reveals the Humboldt granite is a peraluminous A-type granite and the Bell Creek granite is a peraluminous mix between I-, S-, and A-type granites. The Republic Mine pegmatite appears to be geochemically similar to the Bell Creek granite and Grizzly pegmatite. The Crockley pegmatite is genetically related to the Humboldt granite. The …

Identifying The Origin Of Galactic Cosmic Rays With The Supertiger Instrument, Ryan Patrick Murphy

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The SuperTIGER (Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) experiment was launched on a long-duration balloon flight from Williams Field, Antarctica, on December 8, 2012. The instrument measured the relative elemental abundances of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) in the charge (Z) range Z>10 with excellent charge resolution, displaying well resolved individual element peaks for 10 ≤ Z ≤ 40. During its record-breaking 55-day flight, SuperTIGER collected ~4.15 x10^6 Iron nuclei, ~ 7.5 times as many as detected by its predecessor, TIGER, with charge resolution at iron of < 0.18 cu. SuperTIGER measures charge (Z) and energy (E) using a combination of three scintillator and two Cherenkov detectors, and employs a scintillating fiber hodoscope for event trajectory determination. The SuperTIGER data have been analyzed to correct for instrument effects and remove events that underwent nuclear interactions within the instrument. The data include more than 600 events in the charge range 30 < Z ≤ 40. SuperTIGER is the first experiment to resolve elemental abundances in this charge range with single-element resolution and high statistics. The relative abundances of the galactic cosmic ray source have been derived using atmospheric and interstellar propagations of the measured relative elemental abundances. The SuperTIGER measured abundances are generally consistent with previous experimental results from TIGER and ACE-CRIS, with improved statistical precision. The SuperTIGER results confirm the earlier results from TIGER, supporting a model of cosmic-ray origin in OB associations, with preferential acceleration of refractory elements over volatile elements ordered by atomic mass (A).

An Inventory Of Sports Economics Courses In The Us, Joshua C. Hall, Brad R. Humphreys, Hyunwoong Pyun

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Sports economics is a young, growing field in the discipline of economics. An examination of course catalogs at 169 national liberal arts colleges and 254 national universities uncovered undergraduate sports economics classes offered at 17% of the liberal arts colleges and 29.5% of the universities. The characteristics of colleges and universities offering sports economics courses are analyzed. The state of the undergraduate curriculum in economics and barriers to the creation of new elective course offerings are also discussed.

Momentum Of Particles From Time-Of-Flight Measurements, Joseph Best

Senior Theses

In order to find the momentum of particles from time of flight measurements, I used a program called Geant4 to simulate experiments. I made a simple two detector setup, and I recreated a real world experiment. I spent a lot of time learning to code in C++ so I could use Geant4 correctly. I simulated these experiments shooting electrons, muons, and pions through the geometry and measured the time at two points in their flight. Subtracting the second time from the first gave me the time of flight distribution for each particle. I used ROOT to draw histograms of the …

The Force Of Water: Columbia After The Flood, Rebecca Johnson

Senior Theses

Nearly two months have passed, and South Carolina is still recovering from the unprecedented inundation of rain that pelted down in early October. Record amounts of precipitation pounded the state over just a few days, resulting in the flooding and erosion of land, the deterioration of public infrastructure and the loss of human life and capital.

The worst of it was in the capital city. Columbia recorded the highest water levels and the highest number of fatalities of all the affected areas. The city’s utilities could not handle the torrent of water: dams were destroyed, canals were compromised, roads were …

The Historical Role Of The Use Of Derivatives For Speculation, Charles Austin Boyd Ii

Senior Theses

As long as humans have had a concept of possession of items and a means of trading for them, there have been speculative position in the form of derivative contracts. The first instance of a written code of laws contains protection for farmers leveraging their future crops. Aristotle writes of an instance of the equivalent of call options being used to secure a monopoly on olive presses. Many features of contemporary derivative markets were developed in Europe during Medieval trade fairs or Renaissance bourse marketplaces. The development of the first modern stock exchange brought with it further development in the …

Energy Dissipation In The Course Of The Fatigue Degradation: Mathematical Derivation And Experimental Quantification, Ali Kahirdeh, M. M. Khonsari

Faculty Publications

This paper is concerned with a continuum formulation for irreversible energy dissipation that accounts for generated acoustic emissions during the loading of the materials. Within a thermodynamically consistent framework, the coupling between the mechanical, thermal and acoustic fields is formulated. The evolution of the dissipative energy is experimentally measured as the material is degraded. A statistically similar behavior is observed in different forms of the dissipated energy as the material degrades.

A Seismic Transect Across West Antarctica: Evidence For Mantle Thermal Anomalies Beneath The Bentley Subglacial Trench And The Marie Byrd Land Dome, Andrew J. Lloyd, Douglas A. Wiens, Andrew A. Nyblade, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Richard C. Aster, Audrey D. Huerta, Terry J. Wilson, Ian W. D. Dalziel, Patrick J. Shore, Dapeng Zhao

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

West Antarctica consists of several tectonically diverse terranes, including the West Antarctic Rift System, a topographic low region of extended continental crust. In contrast, the adjacent Marie Byrd Land and Ellsworth-Whitmore mountains crustal blocks are on average over 1km higher, with the former dominated by polygenetic shield and stratovolcanoes protruding through the West Antarctic ice sheet and the latter having a Precambrian basement. The upper mantle structure of these regions is important for inferring the geologic history and tectonic processes, as well as the influence of the solid earth on ice sheet dynamics. Yet this structure is poorly constrained due …

The Bg News December 15, 2015, Bowling Green State University

BG News (Student Newspaper)

The BGSU campus student newspaper. December 15, 2015. Volume 95-Issue 33.

Integrated Step Selection Analysis: Bridgingthe Gap Between Resource Selection And Animal Movement, Tal Avgar, Jonathan R. Potts, Mark A. Lewis, Mark S. Boyce

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

A resource selection function is a model of the likelihood that an available spatial unit will be used by an animal, given its resource value. But how do we appropriately define availability? Step selection analysis deals with this problem at the scale of the observed positional data, by matching each ‘used step’ (connecting two consecutive observed positions of the animal) with a set of ‘available steps’ randomly sampled from a distribution of observed steps or their characteristics. Here we present a simple extension to this approach, termed integrated step selection analysis (iSSA), which relaxes the implicit assumption that observed movement …

Reducing Bias And Quantifying Uncertainty In Watershed Flux Estimates: The R Package Loadflex, Alison P. Appling, Miguel C. Leon, William H. Mcdowell

New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station Publications

Many ecological insights into the function of rivers and watersheds emerge from quantifying the flux of solutes or suspended materials in rivers. Numerous methods for flux estimation have been described, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Currently, the largest practical challenges in flux estimation are to select among these methods and to implement or apply whichever method is chosen. To ease this process of method selection and application, we have written an R software package called loadflex that implements several of the most popular methods for flux estimation, including regressions, interpolations, and the special case of interpolation known as …