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Bayesian Methods In Glaciology, Douglas Brinkerhoff

Geosciences

The problem of inferring the value of unobservable model parameters given a set of observations is ubiquitous in glaciology, as are large measurement errors. Bayes' theorem provides a unified framework for addressing such problems in a rigorous and robust way through Monte Carlo sampling of posterior distributions, which provides not only the optimal solution for a given inverse problem, but also the uncertainty. We apply these methods to three glaciological problems. First, we use Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling to infer the importance of different glacier hydrological processes from observations of terminus water flux and surface speed. We find that …

Detection, Source Location, And Analysis Of Volcano Infrasound, Kathleen F. Mckee

Geosciences

The study of volcano infrasound focuses on low frequency sound from volcanoes, how volcanic processes produce it, and the path it travels from the source to our receivers. In this dissertation we focus on detecting, locating, and analyzing infrasound from a number of different volcanoes using a variety of analysis techniques. These works will help inform future volcano monitoring using infrasound with respect to infrasonic source location, signal characterization, volatile flux estimation, and back-azimuth to source determination. Source location is an important component of the study of volcano infrasound and in its application to volcano monitoring. Semblance is a forward …

Satellite Remote Sensing Of Active Wildfires In Alaska's Boreal Forest, Christine F. Waigl

Geosciences

This research addresses improvements to the detection and characterization of active wildfires in Alaska with satellite-based sensors. The VIIRS I-band Fire Detection Algorithm for High Latitudes (VIFDAHL) was developed and evaluated against existing active fire products from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This new algorithm is based on VIIRS 375 m spatial resolution imagery and was tuned using fires in Alaska's boreal forest. It provides improved fire detection of low-intensity fires, especially during daytime and at sensor zenith angles smaller than approximately 50° off nadir. Low-intensity active fires, which represent residual …

Straying, Stress, And Potential For Reproductive Interactions Between Hatchery-Produced And Wild Chum Salmon (Oncorhynchus Keta) In Southeast Alaska, Casey John Mcconnell

Fisheries

Approximately 1.5 billion juvenile hatchery-produced Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) are currently released each year into Alaskan waters with goals of enhancing important fisheries and minimizing detrimental impacts on wild stocks. As the abundance of hatchery-produced salmon has increased, so have concerns about hatchery-origin strays entering wild systems and interactions with wild individuals on the spawning grounds. The influx of non-native strays and their associated fitness-related traits can reduce the resilience and productivity of recipient wild stocks, and is likely to be most deleterious when disparities in population sizes and heritable phenotypic characteristics between wild and hatchery fish exist. Thus, understanding …

Diets Of Four Eelpout Species (Genus Lycodes) In The U.S. Beaufort Sea Based On Analyses Of Stomach Contents And Stable Isotopes Of Nitrogen And Carbon, Sarah J. Apsens

Fisheries

Eelpouts of the genus Lycodes are an abundant group of demersal fishes in the U.S. Beaufort Sea. Currently eelpout diet and the exact role of eelpouts in the Arctic food web are poorly understood. Additionally, if and how eelpouts avoid intra- and interspecific competition for resources is unknown. In this study, diets of four common Beaufort Sea eelpout species were analyzed with respect to along-shelf (longitude) gradients, across-shelf (depth) gradients, and ontogeny (fish body length) to determine diet composition and patterns of resource partitioning. Diets of the four most numerous eelpout species were analyzed using a combination of stomach contents …

Pacific Sleeper Sharks In The Northeast Pacific Ocean: Relative Abundance, Plausible Incidental Exploitation Rates, Trophic Ecology, And Habitat Use, Dean Louis Courtney

Fisheries

Pacific sleeper shark relative abundance indices in the eastern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska were developed from sablefish longline surveys and the sustainability of a plausible range in Pacific sleeper shark incidental exploitation rates in the Gulf of Alaska was evaluated with a risk analysis using Monte Carlo simulation for use in fisheries management. A significant increase in Pacific sleeper shark relative abundance was identified in the Gulf of Alaska during the years 1989-2003. The aggregate risk of ending in an overfished condition in the Gulf of Alaska increased from 0% under a low exploitation rate scenario to 59% …

Tetrameric Structure Of Beta-Amylase 2 (Bam2) In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Lauren Elizabeth Pope

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Plants store starch during the day for use at night. This process of transitory starch degradation is mostly attributable to the β-Amylase (BAM) family, which are starch exohydrolases that cleave the penultimate α-1,4 glycosidic bonds of starch to release maltose. BAM2 was recently characterized as a catalytically active, K⁺-requiring tetramer with sigmoidal kinetics and cooperativity. All other catalytically active BAMs display Michaelis-Menten kinetics, no cooperativity, and do not require salt, making BAM2’s characteristics intriguing. Due to a lack of a crystal structure, a monomeric homology model of BAM2 was generated using I-TASSER based on a BAM5 from soybean. …

Using Social Narratives To Improve The Healthcare Experiences Of Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Margaret Spindel

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often experience significant emotional stress when they visit a healthcare provider. The focus of this research project was to explore the use of social narratives to help reduce stress associated with this environment. Social narratives are short stories designed to walk a child through a potential situation that they will encounter, that they may not be familiar with, or that they are not currently handling properly. As part of an initial literature review, evidence for the need for additional intervention in the healthcare setting for children with ASD was established. Continuing literature review then …

Navigating Culture: An Exploration Of Domestic Violence And Abuse Resource Provision To The Harrisonburg Iraqi Refugee Community, Kaitlin Michelle Holland

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

There are currently 22.5 million refugees worldwide who have been displaced from their home countries due to war, conflict, or persecution. Of this total, only 1% are recommended for resettlement each year. In recent years, many of these resettled refugees have come from Iraq, fleeing conflict stemming from the Iraq war and ISIS. Upon resettlement, refugees face significant acculturation difficulties that can negatively affect mental health. Additionally, experiencing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) can also negatively affect physical and mental health. I researched how the refugee migration experience and domestic violence and abuse affect mental health as well as what …

Committed Community Servants Honored At University, Tina Hahn

University of Mississippi News

No abstract provided.

Quantum Chemical Studies Of Noncovalent Interactions And Multicenter Bonds Utilizing Local Vibrational Modes, Vytor Oliveira

Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

Noncovalent interactions play an important role for the design of novel drugs, better catalysts, synthesis of complex supramolecular structures, and so on. To develop new materials, a well-founded knowledge of how to control the strength of these interactions is desirable. Despite the many investigations done so far, a quantitative assessment of the intrinsic strength of most types of noncovalent interactions is still missing. Recently and for the first time, the Konkoli-Cremer local modes analysis was successfully used to probe the intrinsic strength of hydrogen and pnicogen bonds. We extended these investigations to more than 300 halogen and chalcogen bonds. A …

Pathological Personality Traits And Neuropsychological Function, Rui Tang

Psychology Theses and Dissertations

Traditional categorical diagnosis in DSM-5 has received widespread criticism due to its extreme heterogeneity, poor diagnostic reliability, poor validity and high comorbidity. The alternative trait model introduced the domain of psychoticism, which captures the trait of positive schizotypy. Positive schizotypy has been linked to vulnerability to schizophrenia spectrum disorders, which has shown several areas of neuropsychological dysfunction. Considerable evidence has demonstrated that the dimensional model has superior reliability and validity and ties to important clinical constructs such as neuropsychological function. Little research has tied the dimensional model of personality pathology to neuropsychological domains including processing speed and executive function. The …

Muon-Neutrino Electron Elastic Scattering And A Search For The Muon-Neutrino Magnetic Moment In The Nova Near Detector, Biao Wang

Physics Theses and Dissertations

We use the NOvA near detector and the NuMI beam at Fermilab to study the neutrino-electron elastic scattering and the muon neutrino magnetic process beyond the Standard Model physics. The particle identifications of neutrino on electron elastic scattering are trained by using the multi-layer neural networks. This thesis provides a general discussion of this technique and shows a good agreement between data and MC for the neutrino-electron elastic weak scattering. By using 3.62e20 POT dataset in the NOvA near detector, we find 1.58e-9 Bohr magneton as the 90% C.L. upper limit. We also find a sensitivity of 8e-10 Bohr magneton …

African-American Males, Part-Time Work, And Persistence, Ami M. Tripp

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The central research question for this study asked how do African-American males perceive working part-time, while enrolled full-time, to have an impact on their persistence? A secondary question asked, what factors influenced African-American male students to persist through graduation? The participants comprised of 35 African-American male college students who graduated Spring 2016. This study was focused on part-time employment and its support of persistence for African-American men. Hence, persistence theory was the most pertinent lens through which to view the literature and the data collected in this study. This study employed a case study research, as it is an empirical …

An Informatics Solution For Operating Room Efficiency, Richard A. Barrow

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Problem: For most hospitals, a major cost is the operating room. Inefficiency increases costs and risks for adverse events. An efficient operating room can also be a major revenue generator.

Context: This evidence-based performance improvement project was conducted in a small rural Veteran’s Hospital, which belongs to an integrated health network in Central California. The facility has four operating rooms and is expanding services provided to their patients.

Intervention: The intervention was the use of analytics and evaluations to improve the operating room efficiency by five percent. The use of 3 separate queries which were combined to generate reports and …

Rgb Image-Based Pupillary Diameter Tracking With Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Chatchai Wangwiwattana

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Pupillary diameter monitoring has proven successful at objectively measuring cognitive load. This work presents three robust RGB video based pupillary diameter trackers and compares them for measuring cognitive load using commodity cameras. We investigate the use of modified starburst algorithm from previous work and propose two algorithms: 2-Level Snakuscules and a convolutional neural network which we call PupilNet. Our results show PupilNet outperforms other algorithms in measuring pupil dilation, is robust to various lighting conditions, and robust to different eye colors. In addition, this work explores various deep learning architecture for extracting the pupillary response as well as understand the …

"Philfog": Celts, Theorists, And Other "Others", Kristen Mills

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Medieval Trolls, Mansplainers, And Bullies: Reading Gontier Col's Letters To Christine De Pizan, Elizabeth A. Hubble

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Constructing Prejudice In The Middle Ages And The Repercussions Of Racism Today, Nahir Otano Gracia, Daniel Armenti

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Enhanced Recent Local Moisture Recycling On The Northwestern Tibetan Plateau Deduced From Ice Core Deuterium Excess Records, Wenling An, Shugui Hou, Qiong Zhang, Wangbin Zhang, Shuang-Ye Wu, Hao Xu, Hongxi Pang, Yetang Wang, Yaping Liu

Department of Earth, Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Local moisture recycling plays an essential role in maintaining an active hydrological cycle of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Previous studies were largely limited to the seasonal time scale due to short and sparse observations, especially for the northwestern TP. In this study, we used a two‐component mixing model to estimate local moisture recycling over the past decades from the deuterium excess records of two ice cores (i.e., Chongce and Zangser Kangri) from the northwestern TP. The results show that on average almost half of the precipitation on the northwestern TP is provided by local moisture recycling. In addition, the local …

Design, Fabrication, And Demonstration Of Square Holey Dielectric Thz Waveguides, Nafiseh Aflakian

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

A variety of novel dielectric THz waveguides were demonstrated to increase a channel capacity in a chip-to-chip communication system. Square holey cladding dielectric THz waveguides were designed, fabricated, and characterized. The single material holey cladding waveguide is low loss and easy to fabricate compared to doped core fibers. The square geometry supports two states of polarization with minimum cross-talk for polarization division multiplexing applications. Simulations show the waveguide supports two states of polarization across the frequency range of 180 GHz to 360 GHz. In addition, simulations show good mode isolation and low bending losses. Holey cladding square waveguide was fabricated …

Implementation Of Switching Circuit Models As Vector Space Transformations, David Kebo Houngninou

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Modeling of switching circuits is the foundation for many Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tasks and is commonly used at various phases of the design flow for tasks such as simulation, justification, and other analyses. State-of-the-art simulation tools are based on discrete event algorithms using switching algebraic models and are highly optimized and mature. Symbolic simulation may also be implemented using a discrete event approach, or other approaches based on extracted functional models. The common foundation of modern simulation tools is that of a switching or Boolean algebraic model that may be augmented with timing information. Justification using switching circuit models …

Minutes, Altrusa International Of Tampa, 2017, Altrusa International Of Tampa Bay, Inc.

Altrusa International of Tampa Bay, Inc. - Records

The meeting minutes for the Altrusa International of Tampa, for January through December 2017.

Brain Motion, Deformation, And Potential Injury During Soccer Heading, Charles F. Babbs

Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering Faculty Working Papers

This paper addresses the problem of what is happening physically inside the skull during head-ball contact. Mathematical models based upon Newton’s laws of motion and numerical methods are used to create animations of brain motion and deformation inside the skull.

Initially a 1 cm gap filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) separates the brain from the rigid skull in adults and older children. Whole head acceleration induces a pulse of artificial gravity within the skull. Because brain density differs slightly from that of CSF, the brain accelerates and strikes the inner aspect of the skull, undergoing viscoelastic deformation, ranging from 1 …

System For Powered Ankle-Foot Prosthesis With Active Control Of Dorsiflexion-Plantarflexion And Inversion-Eversion, Mo Rastgaar, Evandro Ficanha, Kenton Kaufman

Michigan Tech Patents

A system and method for operating a prosthesis is provided. The system includes a socket configured to engage a residual limb of a subject and a shaft having a first end connected to the socket and an opposing second end. The system also includes a foot piece connected to the second end of the shaft. The foot piece includes an ankle plate and a sole piece configured to contact a surface. The system also includes at least one computer configured to detect a state of the foot piece and to transmit an indication of the state of the foot. The …

Shoppers Aren't Buying What Ivanka Trump Has To Offer, Elizabeth Ramanand

Capstones

My capstone is on Ivanka Trump's business, how it's really doing and how politics plays a role. For many shoppers buying her products is a political statement but not purchasing is just as big of a statement to enforce their political beliefs. Even though her business is not public I used research, reporting and interviews to prove that her company isn't doing as well as she claims it is. From super discounted products to lawsuits on her brand and boycott movements, Ivanka Trump's brand is suffering under her father's presidency.

https://journalizt.atavist.com/shoppers-arent-buying-ivanka-trump

Predicted Suitable Habitat Declines For Midwestern United States Amphibians Under Future Climate And Land-Use Change Scenarios, Brock Struecker, Joseph Milanovich

Biology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

With current declines of vertebrate taxa meeting or exceeding those of historic mass extinction events, there is a growing need to investigate the main drivers of losses. Two of the main drivers of declines are global climate and land-use changes, both affecting multiple groups of taxa. Amphibians are at great risk from these two drivers of change and investigations into the impact of future change could assist with the formation of conservation plans to mitigate losses. Forecasting changes in suitable habitat with ecological niche modeling serves as a useful tool to begin to understand how species may respond to anthropogenic …

Femfog And Fencing: The Risks For Academic Feminism In Public And Online, Jennifer C. Edwards

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Ionis Scientists Provide Initial Assessment Of Successful Phase 1/2a Huntington's Disease Trial And Discuss Next Steps, Kenneth P. Serbin

At Risk for Huntington's Disease

No abstract provided.

Best Practices Used By Assistant Superintendents Of Curriculum And Instruction: Improving Teacher Instruction In A High Accountability Environment, Julie Madden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative multi-case study investigated not only the role of assistant superintendents of curriculum and instruction, but the strategies and best practices used by four assistant superintendents of curriculum and instruction and a deputy superintendent of teaching and learning from East Texas in order to improve classroom instruction and support teachers in the high-stakes testing environment. The study sheds light on the role of central office leaders, their views related to the high-stakes testing environment and the impact they have on instruction for teachers and students. The responses given in this qualitative case study were carefully analyzed in order to …