Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Pfas Mass Balance, Donovan Vitale

Honors Theses

First-generation, PFOS-dominant Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) concentrate of approximately 200 gallons was released to the sewer system from the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport on March 30, 2021. The AFFF release migrated to the Kalamazoo Water Reclamation Plant (KWRP), raising plant effluent above the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) PFOS water quality standard for a total of 46 days post-spill, although the influent concentrations exhibited sharp declines after only 7 days. By sampling influent, effluent, and biosolids daily, the only known long duration, high-frequency PFAS data set of an accidental AFFF release was generated. This study has …

Active Vs Passive Investing, Garret Buchheit

Honors Theses

With the increased popularity of passive investing, the long-term investment success of active management is being questioned more frequently. For this reason, this research seeks to find whether actively managed funds produce sufficient returns that cover the fees and management costs associated with them. A comparative analysis was made with 5401 actively managed U.S. mutual funds and several common market indices over three, five, and ten-year time spans ranging from 2012 to 2021. Additionally, an analysis was made comparing active and passive management in the recessionary period of 2007 to 2009. Finally, analysis was conducted on annual holdings turnover rates …

Industry 4.0, Zachary Zeitler

Honors Theses

The ultimate goal of this project is to automate quality control processes on various machines which include 3D printers, welders, routers, CNCs, and more. Using the “Digital Twin” approach, we want to automate monitoring, data collection, data analysis, and corrective action. Our involvement begins with building a new piece of software that can perform two specific functions and collect data from cameras. We are not attempting to analyze the data, make corrective action, or design a final version of the physical attributes. Our software provides the user with the ability to capture an image set or a 3D scan and …

Critically Observing The Challenges And Changes: An Analysis On Covid-19’S Impact With An Emphasis On Students In Higher Education, Landon Perkins

Honors Theses

This project involves comparing different visualizations related to COVID-19 and higher education in order to determine key impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on students in higher education, as well as higher education as a whole. The main metrics used to determine the impact were mental health indicators for anxiety or depressive disorders, enrollment numbers by control type (public, private non-profit, or private for-profit) and state for 2020 and 2021, and state mandate lift dates for a variety of mandates implemented across the United States. These metrics were analyzed both individually and against each other to determine if they had any …

A View Into Secondary Education Mathematics, Thomas Krieger Jr.

Honors Theses

Teaching methods, and the effects they can have on students, are important to consider for a classroom because when teaching you should allow for every student to have an opportunity. Every student should feel encouraged in the classroom, however not every method may allow for that. An important task for a teacher is to find out how to reach their students in their classroom; be it adapting methods or choosing when to implement one item over another. This task differs with every student that enters the classroom as no student is the same. Every students’ differences stem from their academic …

Improving Adjacency List Storage Methods For Polypeptide Similarity Analysis, Arianna Swensen

Honors Theses

Protein design is a complex biomolecular and computational problem. Working on increasingly large protein folding problems requires an improvement in current analysis methods available. This work first discusses various methods of protein design, including de novo protein design, which is the primary focus of this thesis. Then, a new approach utilizing a B+ tree to effectively store and query a graph of keys and vertices is proposed in order to store the number of times two polypeptides are considered to be similar. This approach is found to have a reduction in time complexity from current mapping methods and thus provides …

Growth And Mortality Of American Oysters (Crassostrea Virginica) For Several Years In The Mississippi Sound – Effects Of Freshwater Influence, Taylor Slade

Honors Theses

The American oyster, Crassostrea virginica, is a filter feeding bivalve native to the Gulf of Mexico, and an essential part of the Mississippi Sound estuarine ecosystem. In recent years, influx of freshwater into the Mississippi Sound as a result of frequent rainfall events has altered the water chemistry in several ways that are detrimental to the oyster populations. In this thesis, I examine the growth rate of C. virginica over the last five years in association with salinity fluctuations in the Mississippi Sound. Given diminishing populations and limited recruitment, researchers have facilitated citizen-scientist managed oyster gardens along the coast …

Impact Of The Choice Of Acidic Buffers On The Electrochemical Reduction Of Hexavalent Chromium In Water, Devin D. Meche

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Microplastic Fiber Abundance For South Carolina White Shrimp, Litopenaeus Setiferus, Across Two Habitats, Adriene Funck

Honors Theses

Coastal South Carolina is a prime destination for shrimping. The commercial White Shrimp, Litopenaeus setiferus, is one of the main species found in South Carolina estuaries and coastline. There are commercial and recreation fishing practices in South Carolina for L. setiferus, making it a species of interest for the public. Microplastics are additionally a large interest in the public and scientific community for research and solutions. The threats of plastic pollution are not fully understood in the marine environment, but there has been a boom of research discussing various effects and distributions of microplastics in the ocean recently. Shrimp species …

Faunal Comparison And Analysis Of The Blufftown Formation-Cusseta Sand Contact At Hannahatchee Creek, Georgia, Seth Fradella

Honors Theses

The origin of fossil material in the highly fossiliferous bed above the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Blufftown Formation-Cusseta Sand contact at Hannahatchee Creek, Georgia, has long been a subject of scientific curiosity; however, no research has yet been conducted to specifically investigate discrepancies between the fossil assemblages of the upper Blufftown Formation and the basal Cusseta Sand, which overlies it unconformably. In the most recent published hypothesis, Case and Schwimmer (1988) propose that the basal Cusseta Sand contains a mixture of original fauna as well as material reworked and redeposited from the underlying Blufftown Formation, resulting in a lag deposit above …

A Faunal Composition Of The Late Cretaceous Blue Springs Site In Northeastern Mississippi And Evidence For Potential Paleoenvironmental Differences Between Beds, Ginger Trochesset

Honors Theses

The Maastrichtian-age Blue Springs locality of the Coon Creek Member of the Ripley Formation is known for abundant, well-preserved marine fossils, including many genera of microfossils, bivalves, gastropods, decapods, cephalopods, actinopterygians, and other vertebrate organisms. This research contributes to the understanding of the paleontology of the site, as well as the changing paleoenvironmental conditions of the beds throughout deposition.

This project analyzed bulk material collected in 2021 from three fossiliferous beds at Blue Springs: the Lower Corbula Bed (Bed C), the Pebble Bed (Bed G), and the Exogyra-Pycnodonte Bed (Bed J). Unconsolidated material from Beds C and J was processed …

Characterization Of Mumian And Host Rock In Al-Amerat Cave, Oman., Sara Alqamshouai

Honors Theses

Mumian is a sticky black-brown material found in the Mumian cave in Wadi Al Mayh, Al Amerat, Oman. Mumian has been used for centuries as traditional medicine by the local Omani people. Though commonly ingested orally to resolve a variety of common ailments, very little is known about the Mumian material in terms of its chemical composition. The principle aim of this study is to characterize the Mumian and the host rock in terms of the mineralogy and chemical characteristics using a variety of analytic instruments, including XRD, NMR, FT-IR, XRF, and UV- VIS. A secondary goal of this study …

Fine-Tuning A 𝑘-Nearest Neighbors Machine Learning Model For The Detection Of Insurance Fraud, Alliyah Stout

Honors Theses

Billions of dollars are lost within insurance companies due to fraud. Large money losses force insurance companies to increase premium costs and/or restrict policies. This negatively affects a company’s loyal customers. Although this is a prevalent problem, companies are not urgently working toward bettering their machine learning algorithms. Underskilled workers paired with inefficient computer algorithms make it difficult to accurately and reliably detect fraud.

The goal of this study is to understand the idea of -Nearest Neighbors ( -NN) and to use this classification technique to accurately detect fraudulent auto insurance claims. Using -NN requires choosing a value and a …

Development Of Quantitative Methods To Study Pfas Using Proton Induced Gamma-Ray Emission, Colin Langton

Honors Theses

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals that have become a major environmental concern. They can be found in a broad range of everyday products and pose a significant risk to the public due to their adverse health effects. They are persistent, bioaccumulate and do not break down in the environment. This project specifically aims to determine the concentration of Fluorine, a key identifier of PFAS, in environmental samples. To do this, we employ proton induced gamma-ray emission (PIGE) to screen for Fluorine within our samples. PIGE is performed at the Union College Ion Beam Analysis Laboratory using a …

Investigating The Thermodynamics And Seismic Profile Of The Europan Hydrosphere Through Pure-Water Modeling And Saltwater Experiments, Samantha Rosenfeld

Honors Theses

We explore the properties of the hydrosphere on Europa involving both a modeling technique and experimental methods. We perform a computational analysis of the thermodynamic properties for an ideal, pure-water Europan ice shell using a Python programming framework called SeaFreeze. We create four models assuming surface temperatures of either 50 K or 140 K and ice shell thicknesses of either 3 km or 30 km. We observe mostly linear trends for the density and seismic wave velocities with respect to depth and find that surface temperature has the greatest effect on the models. Simultaneously, we experimentally investigate the phase diagram …

Sewage And Pathogen Contamination In Urban Streams In Schenectady In The Lower Mohawk Watershed, Joanna Wright

Honors Theses

Urban streams are becoming increasingly polluted by anthropogenic activity, and in Schenectady (NY) two primary stressors include poor wastewater infrastructure and road salt use. Urban streams in Schenectady include Mill Creek and Cowhorn Creek that empty into the Binnekill (feeder to the Mohawk), and the Hans Groot Kill that empty directly into the Mohawk River. These streams were sampled to evaluate water quality and analyzed for pathogens. This study is primarily focused on fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) Enterococcus, which is an EPA-approved method of determining surface water quality and it is an established indicator of sewage in waterways. The average …

Impact Of Movements On Facial Expression Recognition, Zhebin Yin

Honors Theses

The ability to recognize human emotions can be a useful skill for robots. Emotion recognition can help robots understand our responses to robot movements and actions. Human emotions can be recognized through facial expressions. Facial Expression Recognition (FER) is a well-established research area, how- ever, the majority of prior research is based on static datasets of images. With robots often the subject is moving, the robot is moving, or both. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of movement on facial expression recognition. We apply a pre-existing model for FER, which performs around 70.86% on a given …

Tracking Xenophobic Terminology On Twitter Using Nlp, Harper Lyon

Honors Theses

Social media is a major driver of political thought, with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok having a massive impact on how people think and vote. For this reason we should take seriously any large shifts in the language used to describe issues or groups on social media, as these are likely to either denote a change in political thought or even forecast the same. Of particular interest, given the international reach of social media, is the way that discussions around foreign relations and immigration play out. In the United States of America online spaces have become the default space …

Sewer System Infrastructure And Stressors On Water Quality In Streams Within The Alplaus Watershed In Upstate Ny, Camryn Ragland

Honors Theses

Healthy aquatic ecosystems require clean water, but many creeks and streams may be impaired by human activity. This study is focused on surface water quality of the Alplaus, and Indian Kill streams located within the Alplaus Watershed in Schenectady and Saratoga Counties (NY). The primary goal of this study is to understand the extent of water quality impairment within the Alplaus and Indian Kill using a range of indicators to understand the impacts of failing infrastructure and stressors to surface water. Sixty-five water samples were collected in the fall of 2021 from six locations in the Alplaus and Indian Kill …

Bootstrapped Fractional Designs Applied To Models With Both Mixture And Process Variables, Laura Vinton

Honors Theses

Mixture variables are unique as the components must sum to 1, causing problems when there is interaction between mixture and process variables. The best model is the fully linearized model, but this can get large quickly. We began by comparing models on multiple data sets. These models include linear and nonlinear models. After seeing that nonlinear models appear to be the best alternatives, we used the systematically selected fractions of each data set in order to obtain an in and out of sample RMSE. This allows us to see if there is evidence of overfitting, how well the model predicts …

External Beam Alignment System For Quantitative Proton Induced Gamma-Ray Emission (Pige) Spectroscopy, Elias Ottens

Honors Theses

The effects of pollution on the ecosystem are paramount in our society, permeating air, soil, and drinking water. One contaminant of concern is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also referred to as "forever chemicals", which contains fluorine (F), a potentially harmful element to humans. To investigate pollution in the environment, it is necessary to make accurate measurements of the distribution and concentrations of these PFAS chemicals. To do this, soil samples are collected and analyzed using Particle Induced Gamma-ray Emission (PIGE) via the Union College Ion Beam Analysis Laboratory's (UCIBAL) particle accelerator. A 2.2 MeV proton beam comes into contact …

Corrective Feedback Timing In Kanji Writing Instruction Apps, Phoenix Mulgrew

Honors Theses

The focus of this research paper is to determine the correct time to provide corrective feedback to people who are learning how to write Japanese kanji. To do this, we developed a system that is able to recognize Japanese kanji that is handwritten onto an iPad screen and check for errors such as wrong stroke order. Previous research has achieved success in developing similar systems, but this project is unique because the research question involves the timing of corrective feedback. In particular, we are looking at whether immediate or delayed corrective feedback results in better learning.

Analysis Of Covid-19 And Vaccine Administration In Mississippi, Megan Sickinger

Honors Theses

In this work, we develop a simple mathematical model to observe the spread of COVID-19 and vaccine administration in Mississippi. Based on the well-known Kermack-McKendrick Susceptible-Infected-Removed epidemiological model, the ASIRD−V model has eight ordinary differential equations that split infected populations and recovered populations into vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. After determining that the system is reliable for real-world applications, we investigate and determine the stability and equilibrium points of this system. The system is found to be disease-free when R0 < 1 and endemic when R0 > 1. We use MATLAB to numerically solve the system and optimize the model’s parameters over four short periods, two with the …

Fluid Pathways In Magmatic Fluid-Dominated Hydrothermal System: Upper Resurgent Cone, Brothers Volcano, New Zealand, Esther G. Goita

Honors Theses

The Tonga-Kermadec Arc is an active volcanic arc located between New Zealand and Fiji. The arc expands over an approximate distance of 2530 km. The Kermadec Arc is currently host to over 30 volcanoes, the majority of which are submarine. The magmatic activity along the arc is characterized by the convergence between the Pacific and Australian plates. Brothers volcano is the most active hydrothermal system along the Kermadec arc and hosts two distinct hydrothermal systems, one magmatic fluid dominated, and the other seawater dominated, making the site perfect for studying nascent volcanogenic massive sulfide formation and fluid pathways. The International …

Statistical Effects Of Synthetic Template Mismatch With Model Deimos Observations, Christos Kakogiannis

Honors Theses

High-precision kinematics of individual stars in Milky Way satellite galaxies and globular clusters is crucial for studies of galaxy formation, cosmology, alternative gravity models, and dark matter. We tested a rigorous method that matches model DEIMOS observations of such targets with synthetic template spectra that deduces radial velocities and [Fe/H] abundances. We added noise to create a model spectrum with SNR = 30, fitted templates with different parameters to it, and calculated the
best-match velocity and the goodness of the fit. The best fits occur for templates that are close in parameter space to the model spectrum, and the fits …

Investigation Of Python Variable Privacy, Joshua Bartholomew

Honors Theses

This study looks at the relative security of Python regarding private variables and functions used in most other programming languages. Python has only grown in popularity due to its simple syntax and developing capabilities. However, little research has been published about how secure Python code and programs compiled from Python code actually are. This research seeks to expose vulnerabilities in Python code and determine what must be done for these vulnerabilities to be exploited by hackers to abuse potentially sensitive information contained within the program.

The proposed methodology includes examining the private variable concept in other programming languages and conducting …

Synthetic Investigations In Chemical Probe Development Part 1: Design And Synthesis Of Novel Triton X-405 Adenosine Conjugates; Part 2: Synthesis Of 2,8-Dihydroxychrysene, Rachel Irene Hammond

Honors Theses

Although not drugs themselves, chemical probes are a necessary tool in biomedical research for the interrogation of biological systems. In the present synthetic investigation, two chemical probes were developed – a Triton X-405 adenosine conjugate (TX-405A) and 2,8-dihydroxychrysene. The designed TX-405A conjugate was generated in four steps through tosylation and amination of TX-405 such that EDC-coupling of TX-amine with 2’,3’-Isopropylidene adenosine-5’-carboxylic acid afforded TX-405A following acetonide deprotection. The development of TX-405A represents the first report of the synthesis and utilization of a detergent-linked dosimeter. The synthesis of 2,8-dihydroxychrysene provided an in-depth exploration on the unique reactivity of chrysene. The desired …

A Performance Analysis Of The Belle Ii Detector, John Stacy

Honors Theses

The Belle II experiment has recently (2018) started data taking at the SuperKEKB electron-positron collider in Tsukuba, Japan. Detector performance studies are necessary to understand early data and prepare for more complex analyses. This study of the proton detection efficiency of the Belle II detector compares real and simulated data to find discrepancies with the intention to provide useful information for detector and calibration experts to better gauge detector performance. It also attempts to improve the characterization of proton identification efficiency at low momenta, which performs poorly under the current fitting model. This helps analysts exploring final states that include …

A Study Of Cannabigerolic Acid And Its Derivatives Via Raman Spectroscopy And Density Functional Theory, Trevor Wolfe

Honors Theses

The cannabinoids are a class of molecules endogenous to the cannabis plant. Their scientific relevance has increased in recent years due to the mercurial legal status of marijuana across the United States. Some of the most known are cannabidiol (CBD), δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (δ9-THC), and δ8-THC due in large part to their widespread use, especially in states where marijuana and related products are legal. However, cannabigerolic acid (CBGA) is arguably the most important cannabinoid; it is enzymatically converted into other acidic cannabinoids, which subsequently undergo non-enzymatic processes (isomerization, thermal decarboxylation, oxidation, etc.) to synthesize further cannabinoids. Although there is a wealth of …

Lc-Ms Identification Of Serum Proteins Adsorbed Onto Ionic Liquid-Coated Nanoparticles, Anh M. Hoang

Honors Theses

Nanocarriers are promising candidates for drug delivery due to their size and tunable surface characteristics. However, when they are intravenously injected, few particles make it to their designated location. This is because upon entering the bloodstream, the serum in the blood, which is rich with a diversity of proteins, adsorbs onto the particles’ surfaces forming a protein corona. Many of the attached proteins trigger the mobile immune system and are removed by macrophages, and many particles are then filtered out by the liver and kidneys. Ionic Liquids (ILs), which consist of asymmetric, bulky components that are liquid