Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Merging Peg Solitaire In Graphs, John Engbers, Ryan Weber

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Peg solitaire has recently been generalized to graphs. Here, pegs start on all but one of the vertices in a graph. A move takes pegs on adjacent vertices x and y, with y also adjacent to a hole on vertex z, and jumps the peg on x over the peg ony to z, removing the peg on y. The goal of the game is to reduce the number of pegs to one.

We introduce the game merging peg solitaire on graphs, where a move takes pegs on vertices x and z (with a hole on y) and merges them to …

A Perspective On The Challenges And Issues In Developing Biomarkers For Human Allergic Risk Assessments, Ying Mu, Dianne E. Godar, Stephen Merrill

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

A Privacy Preserving Framework For Rfid Based Healthcare Systems, Farzana Rahman, Anwarul A. Bhuiyan, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is anticipated to be a core technology that will be used in many practical applications of our life in near future. It has received considerable attention within the healthcare for almost a decade now. The technology’s promise to efficiently track hospital supplies, medical equipment, medications and patients is an attractive proposition to the healthcare industry. However, the prospect of wide spread use of RFID tags in the healthcare area has also triggered discussions regarding privacy, particularly because RFID data in transit may easily be intercepted and can be send to track its user (owner). In a …

A Direct D-Bar Method For Partial Boundary Data Electrical Impedance Tomography With A Priori Information, Melody Alsaker, Sarah J. Hamilton, Andreas Hauptmann

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive imaging modality that uses surface electrical measurements to determine the internal conductivity of a body. The mathematical formulation of the EIT problem is a nonlinear and severely ill-posed inverse problem for which direct D-bar methods have proved useful in providing noise-robust conductivity reconstructions. Recent advances in D-bar methods allow for conductivity reconstructions using EIT measurement data from only part of the domain (e.g., a patient lying on their back could be imaged using only data gathered on the accessible part of the body). However, D-bar reconstructions suffer from a loss of sharp edges …

Comparing Grounded Theory And Topic Modeling: Extreme Divergence Or Unlikely Convergence?, Eric P.S. Baumer, David Mimno, Shion Guha, Emily Quan, Geri K. Gay

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Researchers in information science and related areas have developed various methods for analyzing textual data, such as survey responses. This article describes the application of analysis methods from two distinct fields, one method from interpretive social science and one method from statistical machine learning, to the same survey data. The results show that the two analyses produce some similar and some complementary insights about the phenomenon of interest, in this case, nonuse of social media. We compare both the processes of conducting these analyses and the results they produce to derive insights about each method's unique advantages and drawbacks, as …

Symptom Levels In Care-Seeking Bangladeshi And Nepalese Adults With Advanced Cancer, Richard Love, Tahmina Ferdousy, Bishnu D. Paudel, Shamsun Nahar, Rumana Dowla, Mohammad Adibuzzaman, Golam Mushih Tanimul Ahsan, Miftah Uddin, Reza Selim, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

Three-fourths of patients with advanced cancer are reported to suffer from pain. A primary barrier to provision of adequate symptom treatment is failure to appreciate the intensity of the symptoms patients are experiencing. Because data on Bangladeshi and Nepalese patients’ perceptions of their symptomatic status are limited, we sought such information using a cell phone questionnaire.

Methods

At tertiary care centers in Dhaka and Kathmandu, we recruited 640 and 383 adult patients, respectively, with incurable malignancy presenting for outpatient visits and instructed them for that single visit on one-time completion of a cell phone platform 15-item survey of questions …

Eit Imaging Of Admittivities With A D-Bar Method And Spatial Prior: Experimental Results For Absolute And Difference Imaging, Sarah J. Hamilton

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is an emerging imaging modality that uses harmless electrical measurements taken on electrodes at a body's surface to recover information about the internal electrical conductivity and or permittivity. The image reconstruction task of EIT is a highly nonlinear inverse problem that is sensitive to noise and modeling errors making the image reconstruction task challenging. D-bar methods solve the nonlinear problem directly, bypassing the need for detailed and time-intensive forward models, to provide absolute (static) as well as time-difference EIT images. Coupling the D-bar methodology with the inclusion of high confidence a priori data results in a …

Weighted Distributions: A Brief Review, Perspective And Characterizations, Aamir Saghir, Gholamhossein G. Hamedani, Sadaf Tazeem, Aneeqa Khadim

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

The weighted distributions are widely used in many fields such as medicine, ecology and reliability, to name a few, for the development of proper statistical models. Weighted distributions are milestone for efficient modeling of statistical data and prediction when the standard distributions are not appropriate. A good deal of studies related to the weight distributions have been published in the literature. In this article, a brief review of these distributions is carried out. Implications of the differing weight models for future research as well as some possible strategies are discussed. Finally, characterizations of these distributions based on a simple relationship …

Deriving A Provisional Tolerable Intake For Intravenous Exposure To Silver Nanoparticles Released From Medical Devices, Laura C. Savery, Rene Vinas, Amber M. Nagy, Prachi Pradeep, Stephen Merrill, Subhas G. Malghan, Peter L. Goering, Ronald P. Brown

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Silver nanoparticles (AgNP) are incorporated into medical devices for their anti-microbial characteristics. The potential exposure and toxicity of AgNPs is unknown due to varying physicochemical particle properties and lack of toxicological data. The aim of this safety assessment is to derive a provisional tolerable intake (pTI) value for AgNPs released from blood-contacting medical devices. A literature review of in vivo studies investigating critical health effects induced from intravenous (i. v.) exposure to AgNPs was evaluated by the Annapolis Accords principles and Toxicological Data Reliability Assessment Tool (ToxRTool). The point of departure (POD) was based on an i. v. 28-day …

Sexual Dimorphism In Digit Ratios Derived From Dorsal Digit Length Among Adults And Children, Sanjay Kumar, Martin Voracek, Maharaj Singh

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Sexual dimorphism in ventrally measured digit ratios (2D:4D and other) has been related to prenatal sex-hormone levels. In the present series of three studies, we measured all digit lengths (excluding the thumb) on the dorsal, rather than the ventral, side of left and right hands and investigated the sexual dimorphism in digit ratios in three independent samples, two of them comprising adults (Study I, N = 104; Study II, N = 154), and one further, comprising kindergarten children (Study III, N = 64). Results show that men have lower digit-ratio values compared to women in digit ratios that include digit …

An Online Educational Program Improves Pediatric Oncology Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitudes, And Spiritual Care Competence, Cheryl L. Petersen, Margaret Callahan, Donna O. Mccarthy, Ronda G. Hughes, Rosemary White-Traut, Naveen K. Bansal

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

This study evaluated the potential impact of an online spiritual care educational program on pediatric nurses’ attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and their competence to provide spiritual care to children with cancer at the end of life. It was hypothesized that the intervention would increase nurses’ positive attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and increase nurses’ level of perceived spiritual care competence. A positive correlation was expected between change in nurses’ perceived attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and change in nurses’ perceived spiritual care competence. A prospective, longitudinal design was employed, and analyses included one-way …

Genome Resources For Climate‐Resilient Cowpea, An Essential Crop For Food Security, Maria Munoz-Amatriain, Hamid Mirebrahim, Pei Xu, Steve Wanamaker, Ming-Cheng Luo, Hind Alhakami, Matthew Alpert, Ibrahim Atokple, Benoit J. Batieno, Ousmane Boukar, Serdar Bozdag, Ndiaga Cisse, Issa Drabo, Jeffrey D. Ehlers, Andrew Farmer, Christian Fatokun, Yong Q. Gu, Yi-Ning Guo, Bao-Lam Huynh, Scott A. Jackson, Francis Kusi, Cynthia T. Lawley, Mitchell R. Lucas, Yaqin Ma, Michael P. Timko, Jiajie Wu, Frank You, Noelle A. Barkley, Philip A. Roberts, Stefano Lonardi, Timothy J. Close

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) is a legume crop that is resilient to hot and drought‐prone climates, and a primary source of protein in sub‐Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world. However, genome resources for cowpea have lagged behind most other major crops. Here we describe foundational genome resources and their application to the analysis of germplasm currently in use in West African breeding programs. Resources developed from the African cultivar IT97K‐499‐35 include a whole‐genome shotgun (WGS) assembly, a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) physical map, and assembled sequences from 4355 BACs. These resources and WGS sequences of …

Anonpri: A Secure Anonymous Private Authentication Protocol For Rfid Systems, Farzana Rahman, Md. Endadul Hoque, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Privacy preservation in RFID systems is a very important issue in modern day world. Privacy activists have been worried about the invasion of user privacy while using various RFID systems and services. Hence, significant efforts have been made to design RFID systems that preserve users' privacy. Majority of the privacy preserving protocols for RFID systems require the reader to search all tags in the system in order to identify a single RFID tag which not efficient for large scale systems. In order to achieve high-speed authentication in large-scale RFID systems, researchers propose tree-based approaches, in which any pair of tags …

Incorporating A Spatial Prior Into Nonlinear D-Bar Eit Imaging For Complex Admittivities, Sarah J. Hamilton, Jennifer L. Mueller, Melody Alsaker

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) aims to recover the internal conductivity and permittivity distributions of a body from electrical measurements taken on electrodes on the surface of the body. The reconstruction task is a severely ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem that is highly sensitive to measurement noise and modeling errors. Regularized D-bar methods have shown great promise in producing noise-robust algorithms by employing a low-pass filtering of nonlinear (nonphysical) Fourier transform data specific to the EIT problem. Including prior data with the approximate locations of major organ boundaries in the scattering transform provides a means of extending the radius of the low-pass …

Processdriver: A Computational Pipeline To Identify Copy Number Drivers And Associated Disrupted Biological Processes In Cancer, Brittany Baur, Serdar Bozdag

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Copy number amplifications and deletions that are recurrent in cancer samples harbor genes that confer a fitness advantage to cancer tumor proliferation and survival. One important challenge in computational biology is to separate the causal (i.e., driver) genes from passenger genes in large, aberrated regions. Many previous studies focus on the genes within the aberration (i.e., cis genes), but do not utilize the genes that are outside of the aberrated region and dysregulated as a result of the aberration (i.e., trans genes). We propose a computational pipeline, called ProcessDriver, that prioritizes candidate drivers by relating cis genes to …

Nature Of Mathematical Modeling Tasks For Secondary Mathematics Preservice Teachers, Jia He, Eryn Stehr, Hyunyi Jung

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

This study investigated the nature of written modeling tasks reported by instructors of required courses in five secondary mathematics teacher education programs. These tasks were analyzed based on a framework addressing potential cognitive orientation (simple procedures, complex procedures, and rich tasks) and purpose (epistemological, educational, contextual, and socio-critical modeling) of the tasks. Our analysis suggests that most tasks included questions of more than one cognitive orientation and more than half of the tasks were coded as contextual modeling. We also found that tasks that were coded as contextual modeling offered opportunities for future teachers to engage with questions at all …

Characterizations Of Kumaraswamy-Laplace, Mcdonald Inverse Weibull And New Generalized Exponential Distributions, Gholamhossein G. Hamedani

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Nassar (2016) considers an interesting univariate continuous distribution called Kumaraswamy-Laplace which has different forms on two subintervals. He studies certain properties and applications of this distribution. Shahbaz et al. (2016) consider another interesting distribution called McDonald Inverse Weibull distribution. They present some basic properties of their distribution and study the estimations of the parameters as well as discussing its application via an illustrative example. What is lacking in both papers, in our opinion, is the characterizations of these two interesting distributions. the present work is intended to complete, in some way, the works of Nassar and Shahbaz et al. via …

Hypothesis Testing For High-Dimensional Problems, Naveen K. Bansal

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

For high-dimensional hypothesis problems, new approaches have emerged since the publication. The most promising of them uses Bayesian approach. In this chapter, we review some of the past approaches applicable to only law-dimensional hypotheses testing and contrast it with the modern approaches of high-dimensional hypotheses testing. We review some of the new results based on Bayesian decision theory and show how Bayesian approach can be used to accommodate directional hypotheses testing and skewness in the alternatives. A real example of gene expression data is used to demonstrate a Bayesian decision theoretic approach to directional hypotheses testing with skewed alternatives.

Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma Incidences Analyzed Worldwide By Sex, Age, And Skin Type Over Personal Ultraviolet-B Dose Shows No Role For Sunburn But Implies One For Vitamin D3, Dianne E. Godar, Madhan Subramanian, Stephen Merrill

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Because the incidence of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) was reported to increase with increasing terrestrial UVR (290–400 nm) doses in the US back in 1975 and a recent publication showed no association exists with UVR exposure at all, we set out to fully elucidate the role of UVR in CMM. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the CMM incidences over latitude and estimated the average personal UVR dose in the US and numerous countries (> 50) on 5 continents around the world. Using data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2005, we performed worldwide analysis of CMM …

Extremal H-Colorings Of Trees And 2-Connected Graphs, John Engbers, David Galvin

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

For graphs G and H, an H-coloring of G is an adjacency preserving map from the vertices of G to the vertices of H. H-colorings generalize such notions as independent sets and proper colorings in graphs. There has been much recent research on the extremal question of finding the graph(s) among a fixed family that maximize or minimize the number of H-colorings. In this paper, we prove several results in this area.

First, we find a class of graphs H with the property that for each H∈H, the n-vertex tree that minimizes the number of …

Protein Structure Classification And Loop Modeling Using Multiple Ramachandran Distributions, Seyed Morteza Najibi, Mehdi Maadooliat, Lan Zhou, Jianhua Z. Huang, Xin Gao

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Recently, the study of protein structures using angular representations has attracted much attention among structural biologists. The main challenge is how to efficiently model the continuous conformational space of the protein structures based on the differences and similarities between different Ramachandran plots. Despite the presence of statistical methods for modeling angular data of proteins, there is still a substantial need for more sophisticated and faster statistical tools to model the large-scale circular datasets. To address this need, we have developed a nonparametric method for collective estimation of multiple bivariate density functions for a collection of populations of protein backbone angles. …

Untangling The Most Probable Role For Vitamin D3 In Autism, Dianne E. Godar, Stephen J. Merrill

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Recent studies indicate an important role for vitamin D₃ in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), although its mechanism is not completely understood. The most puzzling aspect of ASD is that identical twins, who share identical DNA, do not have 100% concordance rates (∼88% for identical and ∼31% for fraternal twins). These findings provide major clues into the etiology: ASD must involve an environmental factor present in the prenatal milieu that both identical twins are not always exposed to because they do not always share it (i.e., placentas). Combined with the exponential increasing rates of ASD around the world, these observations …

Mapping The Stk4/Hippo Signaling Network In Prostate Cancer Cell, Damien Ready, Kader Yagiz, Pooneh Amin, Yuksel Yildiz, Vincent Funari, Serdar Bozdag, Bekir Cinar

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Dysregulation of MST1/STK4, a key kinase component of the Hippo-YAP pathway, is linked to the etiology of many cancers with poor prognosis. However, how STK4 restricts the emergence of aggressive cancer remains elusive. Here, we investigated the effects of STK4, primarily localized in the cytoplasm, lipid raft, and nucleus, on cell growth and gene expression in aggressive prostate cancer. We demonstrated that lipid raft and nuclear STK4 had superior suppressive effects on cell growth in vitro and in vivo compared with cytoplasmic STK4. Using RNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis, we identified several differentially expressed (DE) genes that responded to ectopic …

All Sites But Skin Cancer Incidences Analyzed Worldwide By Sex, Age, And Skin Type Over Time (1955-2007), Advancing Age, And Uvb Dose Reveals Important Carcinogenic Drivers, Dianne E. Godar, Rossen Gurov, Stephen Merrill

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Because we observed increasing incidences over time, advancing age, higher estrogen levels, decreasing UVB (290-315 nm) doses, or lower vitamin D₃, and Human Papillomavirus hiding in immune-privileged sites of hair follicles play roles in melanoma, we wondered if the majority of cancers might have similar carcinogenic drivers. To investigate this possibility, we performed worldwide analysis of all sites but skin cancer over time (1955-2007), advancing age, and UVB doses for males and females with all skin types and ages (0-85+) and in five age groups using IARC data. To investigate Human Papillomavirus’s role, we analyzed the incidences of …

Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma Incidences Analyzed Worldwide By Skin Type Over Advancing Age Of Males And Females: Evidence Estrogen And Androgenic Hair Are Risk Factors, Dianne E. Godar, Madhan Subramanian, Stephen Merrill

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

We previously analyzed cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) incidences worldwide by sex, age, and Fitzpatrick skin type over time (1955-2007) and found only European-ancestry populations have exponential increasing incidences and about a 2-log increase in the risk between the youngest age groups (0-14 and 15-29 yr). We proposed the increasing incidence over time may be from the spread of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) found in CMM biopsies, and that the 2-log incidence increase between the youngest age groups might be from developing androgenic hair. The increasing incidence with age may be from white hairs transmitting UV radiation to follicular melanocytes. Here …

Some Extended Classes Of Distributions: Characterizations And Properties, Gholamhossein G. Hamedani, Gauss M. Cordeiro, M. C.S. Lima, A. D.C. Nascimento

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Based on a simple relationship between two truncated moments and certain functions of the th order statistic, we characterize some extended classes of distributions recently proposed in the statistical literature, videlicet Beta-G, Gamma-G, Kumaraswamy-G and McDonald-G. Several properties of these extended classes and some special cases are discussed. We compare these classes in terms of goodness-of-fit criteria using some baseline distributions by means of two real data sets.

A Short Note On The Paper: "New Characterizations Of The Pareto Distribution", Gholamhossein G. Hamedani, M. Rasekhi

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Nofal and El Gebaly (2017), presented certain characterizations of the Pareto distribution based on the conditional expectations of power of the order statistics. In this short note we show that the same results can easily be obtained in terms of the power of the random variable.

Privacy Vulnerabilities In The Practices Of Repairing Broken Digital Artifacts In Bangladesh, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Shion Guha, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Faysal Hossain Shezan, Nicola Dell

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

This paper presents a study on the privacy concerns associated with the practice of repairing broken digital objects in Bangladesh. Historically, repair of old or broken technologies has received less attention in ICTD scholarship than design, development, or use. As a result, the potential privacy risks associated with repair practices have remained mostly unaddressed. This paper describes our three-month long ethnographic study that took place at ten major repair sites in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We show a variety of ways in which the privacy of an individual’s personal data may be compromised during the repair process. We also examine people’s perceptions …

K-8 Pre-Service Teachers’ Algebraic Thinking: Exploring The Habit Of Mind Building Rules To Represent Functions, Marta T. Magiera, John C. Moyer, Leigh A. Van Den Kieboom

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

In this study, through the lens of the algebraic habit of mind Building Rules to Represent Functions, we examined 18 pre-service middle school teachers' ability to use algebraic thinking to solve problems. The data revealed that pre-service teachers' ability to use different features of the habit of mind Building Rules to Represent Functions varied across the features. Significant correlations existed between 8 pairs of the features. The ability to justify a rule was the weakest of the seven features and it was correlated with the ability to chunk information. Implications for mathematics teacher education are discussed.

Xinupi3: Teaching Multicore Concepts Using Embedded Xinu, Priva Bansal, Rade Latinovich, Tom Lazar, Patrick J. Mcgee, Dennis Brylow

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

As computer platforms become more advanced, the need to teach advanced computing concepts grows accordingly. This paper addresses one such need by presenting XinuPi3, a port of the lightweight instructional operating system Embedded Xinu to the Raspberry Pi 3. The Raspberry Pi 3 improves upon previous generations of inexpensive, credit card-sized computers by including a quad-core, ARM-based processor, opening the door for educators to demonstrate essential aspects of modern computing like inter-core communication and genuine concurrency.

Embedded Xinu has proven to be an effective teaching tool for demonstrating low-level concepts on single-core platforms, and it is currently used to …