Digital Commons Network^™

Biodiversity Scale-Dependence And Opposing Multi-Level Correlations Underlie Differences Among Taxonomic, Phylogenetic And Functional Diversity, Nadejda A. Mirochnitchenko, Erica F. Stuber, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Aim: Biodiversity is a multidimensional property of biological communities that represents different information depending on how it is measured, but how dimensions relate to one another and under what conditions is not well understood. We explore how taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity can differ in scale-of-effect dependence and habitat-biodiversity relationships, and subsequently how spatial differences among biodiversity dimensions may arise. Location: Nebraska, United States. Taxon: Birds. Methods: Across 2016 and 2017, we conducted 2,641 point counts at 781 sites. We modeled the occupancy of 141 species using Bayesian Bernoulli-Bernoulli hierarchical logistic regressions. We calculated species richness (SR), phylogenetic diversity (PD), …

Continuous Turbidity Data Used To Compute Constituent Concentrations In The South Loup River, Nebraska, 2017–18, David L. Rus, Brenda K. Densmore

United States Geological Survey: Water Reports and Publications

The South Loup River in central Nebraska has been impaired by bacteria since at least 2004, which has resulted in the river not meeting its intended use as a recreational waterway. As part of a strategy for reducing the bacterial load in the river, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Lower Loup Natural Resources District, made continuous estimates of Escherichia coli (E. coli) and nutrient concentrations during seasonal monitoring at the South Loup River at Saint Michael, Nebraska, during 2017–18. Continuous turbidity data were collected from mid-April through October in 2017 and 2018 …

"A Novel And Controversial Technology." Artificial Face Recognition, Privacy Protection, And Algorithm Bias In Europe, Andrea Pin

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

R (Bridges) v. Chief Constable of South Wales Police's Court of Appeals ruling... showcases the variety and the thickness of the legal, ethical, and political considerations that lie underneath the deployment of [Artificial Face Recognition]-based police tools and its ramification within Europe and beyond. More broadly, the topic of "[f]acial recognition technologies provide[s] a useful case study of the complex and unpredictable ways that norms of procedural fairness, equality, and privacy interact when the state deploys machine-learning tools to draw inferences from otherwise unilluminating data." This Article uses Bridges as a proxy to sketch out the main legal issues …

Docket Selection And Judicial Responsiveness: The Use Of Ai In The Colombian Constitutional Court, Pablo Rueda Saiz

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article addresses some of the limitations of AI as a tool to preselect a long or shortlist of cases for a court at the apex of the judicial system to review. It focuses on the Colombian Constitutional Court, as an example of a court at the apex of the judicial system that has been historically responsive to claims for fundamental rights. Docket selection is an example of a classification problem using supervised learning, in which a machine groups data according to preestablished characteristics.

This Article draws from two different bodies of literature to analyze the consequences of using AI …

Gasification Based Waste Tire Integrated Energy Conversion Systems, Karah Powell

Honors Theses

The objective of this study was to evaluate the operating parameters impacts on the performance of a gasification-based waste tire integrated energy conversion system. In this system, the waste tires are put into a downdraft gasifier that is providing fuel for a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). The system is evaluated by the syngas production, power generation, and overall efficiency under various operating conditions. A hybrid 1-D model was adopted to perform a parametric study of the tire gasification and calculations were done to estimate the integrated system power generation and overall efficiency using MATLAB. Three parameters were studied: the …

Examining An Intersection Of Environmental Justice And Covid-19 Risk Assessment: A Review, Ashley Ellis

Honors Theses

This study views the risks associated with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as an environmental injustice issue due to the connection between existing environmental disparities and the disproportional negative impacts brought upon by the virus. The social and health determinants attributed to those environmental disparities have traditionally been evaluated as individual risk factors, an approach that fails to gauge the complexity of an environmental injustice issue. This study employs the emerging theory of intersectionality, a belief that phenomena cannot be linked to one principal cause but instead an interconnected web of influences, in order to synthesize the multitude of factors believed …

Testing The Relationship Between Confidence And Effort: A Behavioral Finance Perspective On The Problem Of Financial Literacy, Louie Bernard A. Jacob, Miguel Angelo S. Rabago, Hans Erickson A. Tan, Lawrence B. Dacuycuy, Gerardo L. Largoza, Maria Fe Carmen L. Dabbay

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

This experimental study tested the relationship between confidence and effort with the ultimate objective of discovering how these factors may influence financial literacy. This was done through a modified version of a slider test and ball allocation task. The population consisted of 85 random participants who were primarily approached through social media. A simple OLS regression, along with robustness checks, namely the Tobit model and instrumental variable (IV) regression model using Tobit estimators, were utilized to confirm the causal relationship between confidence and effort.

Plasma-Laser Wakefield Acceleration, Jonathan Babu

Physics

Many texts detailing the derivations and science of Wakefield Acceleration are aimed at graduate and doctorate level scholars, and these may seem intimidating to new physics students. This paper is meant to be an introduction to the nature of plasmas, lasers, laser-plasma interactions, and Laser Wakefield Acceleration (LWFA), with sources given where extra detail may be required. I recognize that this paper is not meant to be an all-encompassing review on the nature of the topics, as these topics are complex and subject of entire textbooks. Instead, I aim to provide an introduction to these topics to a college-level scholar …

Modeling Cherenkov Light Detection Timing For The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System, Keilan Finn Ramirez

Physics

The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is an array of four 12-meter telescopes which use the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique to conduct high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. VERITAS detects magnitude and location information associated with Cherenkov light, and uses this information to indirectly observe gamma-rays through a software reconstruction process. VERITAS also records timing information corresponding to Cherenkov light detection, and this additional information could theoretically be incorporated into the reconstruction process to improve the accuracy of gamma-ray observations. The first step to including timing information is to understand when Cherenkov light detection would be expected from a known …

Swarming Oscillators With Time-Delayed Interactions, Nicholas S. Blum

Physics

We investigate the role of delay in the collective dynamics of particles that swarm in space and possess an internal oscillatory degree of freedom, called swarmalators. Swarmalators were introduced recently by O’Keeffe, Hong, and Strogatz in Nature Communications 8, 1504 (2017). The addition of a time delay into the system of swarmalators was motivated by the biology of early embryonic development. This delay leads to a rich phenomenology, which includes two new collective states, which we call "semi-static crystal" and "boiling". In the semi-static crystal state, all particles in a cluster undergo decaying radial oscillations completely in phase with one …

Assessing Universal Basic Income Proposals: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Established Studies., Zachary Paul Baker

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The development of welfare within western cultures has become incredibly polarized over the last decades. Propositions for ideas such as Universal Basic Income (UBI) has reemerged into the mainstream conversation, with some lofty promises. What is the credibility of UBI as a welfare policy platform? Do the results of the studies on the effects of cash-transfers show the possibility of UBI as a new national program, or do they reveal issues that highlight major structural problems with UBI? This thesis examines over twenty different studies within various categories of cash-transfers to see the positives and negatives revealed by previous researchers. …

Temperature-Pressure Phase Diagrams Of Metal Nitrogen Compounds Through Density Functional Theory Computations And Thermodynamic Calculations, Hanof Alkhaldi

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations - Archive

The need for novel materials for new generations of applications is growing tremendously. One of many pathways to attain new materials is the route of high pressure synthesis. A particular active area in this high–pressure research is to attain nitrogen-rich compounds. Many of these compounds discovered over the last decades have a potential use as hard material or as high–energy storage material. While it is not possible to predict a potential application for a compound before its experimental realization, it is worthy to explore beforehand what opportunities may exist. This kind of targeted development requires understanding of the synthesis process, …

Multinuclear Copper(I) And Silver(I) Pyrazolates: Synthesis, Luminescence, And Catalysis, Monika R. Patterson

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations - Archive

Copper and silver pyrazolate complexes have numerous fascinating properties such as luminescence, catalytic ability, and complexation with small molecules. Using both more widely studied non-fluorinated pyrazolates and less common highly fluorinated pyrazolates as supporting ligands, we successfully synthesized and investigated several new coinage metal complexes. Synthetic details, structures, and properties i.e., luminescence and catalytic ability, have been studied. Chapter 2 of this research describes the synthesis of a new pyrazole with highly fluorinated aryl groups and corresponding trinuclear copper(I), silver(I), and gold(I) complexes. All three metal complexes exhibit bright blue luminescence under exposure to UV light. Additionally, the copper(I) complex …

Fluoroalcohol Induced Supramolecular Biphasic Systems Of Zwitterionic Surfactants, Mixed Amphiphiles, And Polar Organic Solvents In Proteomics And Environmental Analysis, Durga Khanal

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations - Archive

In this research, we have investigated several HFIP-induced biphasic systems of zwitterionic surfactants like CHAPS and DMMAPS and their mixed amphiphilic systems for the extraction, enrichment, and fractionation of mixture of standard proteins and complex sample mixture of yeast proteins. The biphasic systems of zwitterionic surfactants (CHAPS and DMMAPS) and their mixed amphiphiles with quaternary ammonium salts (QUATS= TBAB, TEAB) provide concomitant extraction of hydrophobic membrane proteins, enrichment of lower abundance proteins to one phase, and fractionation of complex sample mixture into two phases. The results obtained from these biphasic systems were compared with control systems of aqueous solutions of …

Optimizing Mixed Reality Simulation To Support Stem Graduate Teaching Assistants In Developing Student-Centered Pedagogical Skills, Constance Doty

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Physics graduate teaching assistants (GTA) often instruct student-centered lab and recitation sections at large universities, creating the opportunity to positively impact students. However, as STEM GTA professional development varies by institution and discipline, GTAs rarely receive feedback about their teaching. In K-12 teacher preparation, "microteaching", where a teacher teaches a lesson to peers acting as students, is used to provide feedback. Research has demonstrated benefits to microteaching in K-12 teacher and STEM GTA preparation, but practicing teachers find microteaching can lack authenticity. Recently, researchers have explored integrating technology, like simulation, in pedagogy training to provide a more authentic training experience. …

American Burying Beetle, Plant Richness, And Soil Property Responses To Collapse Of Juniperus Virginiana Woodlands With Fire, Alison K. Ludwig

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Grasslands are declining in the Great Plains due to land use changes, woody plant encroachment, and loss of historic fire cycles. Prescribed burn associations have utilized prescribed fire to collapse invading woodlands and allow the restoration of grasslands. This fire is considered “extreme” because it is capable of changing the structure and function of an ecosystem. Our study site is the Loess Canyons Experimental Landscape, a long-term, ecoregion-scale experiment to apply prescribed fire across the region to restore grasslands. The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project established the Loess Canyons ecoregion as a Biologically-Unique Landscape in 2005 with the state’s wildlife action …

“As A Father You Shall Be To Me”: Examining The Anglo-Saxon Oath In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Lord Of The Rings, Brady Kruse

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Learning Large Neighborhood Search Policy For Integer Programming, Yaoxin Wu, Wen Song, Zhiguang Cao, Jie Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a deep reinforcement learning (RL) method to learn large neighborhood search (LNS) policy for integer programming (IP). The RL policy is trained as the destroy operator to select a subset of variables at each step, which is reoptimized by an IP solver as the repair operator. However, the combinatorial number of variable subsets prevents direct application of typical RL algorithms. To tackle this challenge, we represent all subsets by factorizing them into binary decisions on each variable. We then design a neural network to learn policies for each variable in parallel, trained by a customized actor-critic algorithm. We …

Data Fusion For Trust Evaluation, Zheng Yan, Qinghua Zheng, Laurence T. Yang, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Trust evaluation is a process to quantify trust by analyzing the data related to the factors that affect trust. It has been widely applied in many fields to facilitate decision making, system entity collaboration and security establishment. For example, in social networking, trust evaluation helps users make a social decision, reduce the risk of social interactions, and ensure the quality of a social networking environment. In digital communications, trust evaluation can be applied to detect malicious nodes, filter unwanted traffic and improve communication security. In e-commerce and cloud services, trust evaluation helps users selecting an appropriate product or service from …

Triple Oxygen Isotope Constraints On Atmospheric O2 And Biological Productivity During The Mid-Proterozoic, Peng Liu, Jingjin Liu, Aoshaung Ji, Christopher T. Reinhard, Noah J. Planavsky, Dmitri Babikov, Raymond G. Najjar, James F. Kasting

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Reconstructing the history of biological productivity and atmospheric oxygen partial pressure (pO₂) is a fundamental goal of geobiology. Recently, the mass-independent fractionation of oxygen isotopes (O-MIF) has been used as a tool for estimating pO₂ and productivity during the Proterozoic. O-MIF, reported as Δ′¹⁷O, is produced during the formation of ozone and destroyed by isotopic exchange with water by biological and chemical processes. Atmospheric O-MIF can be preserved in the geologic record when pyrite (FeS₂) is oxidized during weathering, and the sulfur is redeposited as sulfate. Here, sedimentary sulfates from …

2d Covalent Organic Frameworks With An Incorporated Manganese Complex For Light Driven Carbon Dioxide Reduction, Denan Wang, Daniel Streater, Yun Peng, Jier Huang

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have emerged as a novel class of crystalline porous photocatalytic materials due to their unique properties such as large surface area, tunable porosity, and rigid structure. In this work, we report the direct incorporation of a manganese CO₂ molecular catalyst (MC) into COFs (Mn−TTA-COF) and the evaluation of its capability as photocatalyst for visible light driven CO₂ reduction to form CO. We found that the photocatalytic activity of Mn−TTA-COF is quite low, which mainly results from the elimination of the CO ligand in the Mn MC upon light illumination, rendering its short duration in …

Remixed, Remastered: Investigating Organizational Adaptation In Higher Music Education, Jacob Bruce Hertzog

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Higher music education presents a unique opportunity to examine change within higher education due to the digital revolution in the music industry over the past two decades. The purpose for conducting this study was to describe, map, and explain the strategies that higher music education programs are using to adapt to the digital revolution in the music industry. This study was grounded in organizational adaptation theory, drawing upon nine well-established theories: population ecology, life cycles, strategic choice, isomorphism, symbolic action, resource dependence, cybernetics, and network theory. Critical concepts of the turbulent environment, environmental perception, and organizational adaptation strategy emerged from …

Relationship Between Dike Injection And B-Value For Volcanic Earthquake Swarms, Allen F. Glazner, Stephen R. Mcnutt

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Dike swarms are the fossil remains of regions of the crust that have undergone repeated magma injections. Volcanic earthquake swarms and geodetic measurements are, at least in part, a record of active injection of fluids (water, gas, or magma) into fractures. Here, we link these two ways of observing magmatic systems by noting that dike thicknesses and earthquake magnitudes share similar scaling parameters. In the Jurassic Independence dike swarm of eastern California median dike thickness is ∼1 m, similar to other swarms worldwide, but glacially polished exposures reveal that a typical dike comprises a number of dikelets that are lognormally …

Investigation Of Added Mass Of Heeled 2-D Sections In A Seaway Using The Patch Method In Heave, Roll, And Sway Motions, Adam N. Bacon

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the effects of the angle of heel and beam-to-draft ratio on the sectional added mass of primitive cross-sectional shapes in regular harmonic waves in the frequency domain using 2-D boundary element method for uncoupled heave, sway, and roll motion. This 2-D boundary element method uses the patch method developed by Söding (1993b) [4] to compute the added mass of asymmetric geometry. The angles of heel used varied from 0 to 90 degrees in 5-degree intervals, while the beam-to-draft ratios varied from B/T = 0.5 to B/T = 3.0 in half increments. Triangles, rectangles, and rectangles with rounded …

Reaction Microscope For Investigating Ionization Dynamics Of Weakly Bound Alkali Dimers, N. Kurz, Daniel Fischer, T. Pfeifer, A. Dorn

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report on the implementation of a far-off-resonant, optical dipole force trap in a reaction microscope combined with a magneto-optical trap. Kinematically complete multi-photon ionization experiments were performed on optically trapped 6Li atoms and photo-associated 6Li2 molecules in their highest vibrational state. The apparatus allows us to distinguish different ionization mechanisms related to the presence of the IR field of the optical dipole trap that can occur during ionization of 6Li and 6Li2 in strong fields. In a series of proof-of-principle experiments, we detect weakly bound dimers via three-photon ionization with femtosecond pulses (τ = 30 fs) at a central …

Theoretical Investigations Of The Structural, Dynamical, Electronic, Magnetic, And Thermoelectric Properties Of Corhysi (Y = Cr, Mn) Quaternary Heusler Alloys, Abdullah Hussain Hzzazi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thermoelectric materials have potential properties for utilizing waste heat. The computations are used to estimate the electronic structure of CoRhYSi (Y = Cr, Mn) Quaternary Heusler alloys, as well as their elastic and magnetic characteristics. The full-potential linearized augmented plane wave is used in the calculations. The exchange-correlations are addressed using Perdew–Burke and Ernzerhof's generalized gradient approximation (GGA-PBE). With the exception of CoRhCrSi and CoRhMnSi, which are simple ferromagnets that are approximately half metallic in nature, electronic structure calculations demonstrate that these compounds have a gap in the minority states band and are obviously half-metallic ferromagnets. The magnetic moments of …

Data Analytics For Sustainable Food And Agriculture Systems, Megan Lord Reavis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increasing concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is altering the climate, posing a serious threat to global agriculture and food security. Agriculture and food production contribute a quarter of all GHG emissions produced, so there is a critical need to limit emissions in this area while increasing food production to feed the anticipated 10 billion people by 2050. To address the needs of the future, data-driven solutions are needed to guide decision-making and provide support for actionable climate mitigation and survival strategies. Research efforts must be focused on analyzing problems on multiple scales, identifying new ways to …

Faculty Perception Of Inclusive Instruction At Three South-Central Community Colleges, Karen R. O'Donohoe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Enrollment rates for student with disabilities in higher education continue to rise, particularly in 2-year colleges, but graduation rates have not kept pace due to barriers not addressed by traditional disability supports (Black et al., 2014; NCES, 2019; Smedema et al., 2015). Inclusive instruction is a low-cost, high-impact solution that can be implemented on any campus (Black et al., 2014; Lombardi et al., 2013; Roberts et al., 2011). This quantitative study utilized a cross-sectional descriptive non-experimental research design that explored faculty self-reported attitudes and actions associated with inclusive instruction at three of the largest degree-granting, two-year institutions in a single …

Multifunctional Programmable Self-Assembled Nanoparticles In Nanomedicine, Yoshie Sakamaki

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Developing methodologies to control the architecture of nanoparticles (NPs) at the atomic level prevents their inhomogeneity and leads to a variety of expected functions. Rationally designed nanoparticles can either be programmed or crystallized structures into pre-determined structures achieving tunable particle pore size and physiochemistry. In this dissertation, two broad classes of multifunctional nanoparticles are developed, metal-organic frameworks and DNA-NP aggregates.

Metal-organic frameworks are a novel class of highly porous crystalline materials built from organic linkers and metal cluster-based secondary building units. However, applications in bioremediation have not been developed very well especially in applications regarding drug delivery systems (DDS). The …

Palmer Amaranth [Amaranthus Palmeri (S.) Wats.] Resistance To S-Metolachlor In The Mid-Southern Us And S-Metolachlor Dissipation In Soil, Koffi Badou Jeremie Kouame

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Palmer amaranth [Amaranthus palmeri (S.) Wats.] presents both a high genetic diversity and propensity to evolve resistance to herbicides of several sites-of-action which have made it one of the worst weeds in US agriculture. In Arkansas, Palmer amaranth is resistant to herbicides of seven sites-of-action, which are 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) inhibitor, acetolactate synthase inhibitors, microtubule inhibitors, protoporphyrinogen oxidase inhibitors, very long chain fatty acid inhibitors, glutamine synthetase inhibitors, and hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase inhibitors. Sustainable management requires a better understanding of its biology and that of herbicide environmental fate. This research had five objectives: 1) characterize the current status of Palmer amaranth …