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Articles 31 - 60 of 70
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Elastic Waves Along A Fracture Intersection, Bradley C. Abell
Elastic Waves Along A Fracture Intersection, Bradley C. Abell
Open Access Dissertations
Fractures and fracture networks play a significant role in the subsurface hydraulic connectivity within the Earth. While a significant amount of research has been performed on the seismic response of single fractures and sets of fractures, few studies have examined the effect of fracture intersections on elastic wave propagation. Intersections play a key role in the connectivity of a fracture network that ultimately affects the hydraulic integrity of a rock mass. In this dissertation two new types of coupled waves are examined that propagate along intersections. 1) A coupled wedge wave that propagates along a surface fracture with particle motion …
Investigating Synergy: Mathematical Models For The Coupled Dynamics Of Hiv And Hsv-2 And Other Endemic Diseases, Christina M Alvey
Investigating Synergy: Mathematical Models For The Coupled Dynamics Of Hiv And Hsv-2 And Other Endemic Diseases, Christina M Alvey
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation presents epidemiological models that investigate synergy: synergy between HIV and HSV-2 or between humans and mosquitoes in a malaria study. Each of the three coupled disease models addresses different epidemiological questions with regard to gender or disease structure in the context of sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), while the malaria model focuses on age-structure of the human population. ^ Mounting evidence indicates that HSV-2 infection may increase susceptibility to HIV infection and that co-infection may increase infectiousness. Accordingly, antiviral treatment of people with HSV-2 may mitigate the incidence of HIV in populations where both pathogens occur. To better understand the …
Circular Bessel Field Statistics And The Pursuit Of Far-Subwavelength Resolution, Yulu Chen
Circular Bessel Field Statistics And The Pursuit Of Far-Subwavelength Resolution, Yulu Chen
Open Access Dissertations
The statistical description of wave propagation in random media is important for many applications. While polarized light in systems with weakly interacting scatterers and sufficient overall scatter has zero-mean circular Gaussian statistics, the underlying assumptions break down in the Anderson localization and weakly scattering regimes. Although probability density functions for wave intensity and amplitude exist beyond Gaussian statistics, suitable statistical descriptions for the field with strong and weak random scatter were unknown. The first analytical probability density function for the field that is effective in both the Anderson localization regime and the weakly scattering regime is derived by modeling the …
Biology And Ecology Of Bigheaded Carp In An Invaded Ecosystem, Alison Adele Coulter
Biology And Ecology Of Bigheaded Carp In An Invaded Ecosystem, Alison Adele Coulter
Open Access Dissertations
Globally, the homogenization of species has become a threat to biodiversity. As species are transported around the world, a portion of these species, released intentionally or accidentally, may become invasive and can produce negative impacts. Great effort has been invested into early identification and prevention of invasions as these are considered less expensive than managing an invasion. Unfortunately, species may exhibit varying characteristics across ecosystems, and so their behavior and potential survival in a new environment may be difficult to predict. Therefore, I examined trends in the biology and behavior of invasive fishes, including the plasticity surrounding these and how …
Divide And Recombine For Large Complex Data: The Subset Likelihood Modeling Approach To Recombination, Philip Gautier
Divide And Recombine For Large Complex Data: The Subset Likelihood Modeling Approach To Recombination, Philip Gautier
Open Access Dissertations
Divide and recombine (D&R) is a statistical framework for the analysis of large complex data. The data are divided into subsets. Numeric and visualization methods, which collectively are analytic methods, are applied to each subset. For each analytic method, the outputs of the application of the method to the subsets are recombined. So each analytic method has associated with it a division method and a recombination method. Here we study D&R methods for likelihood-based model fitting. We introduce a notion of likelihood analysis and modeling. We divide the data and fit a likelihood model on each subset. The fitted model …
International Water And Food Security Development: Performance Evaluation And Assessment Of Research Needs At Multiple Scales, Caitlin Anne Grady
International Water And Food Security Development: Performance Evaluation And Assessment Of Research Needs At Multiple Scales, Caitlin Anne Grady
Open Access Dissertations
Water and food security remain the top development challenges of the decade, and perhaps the century. Since the Millennium Development Goals were established in 2000, billions of people have obtained access to more food, better nutrition, improved water, and basic sanitation facilities worldwide. This progress has been accomplished through the dedication of international organizations, non-governmental organizations, country-level governments, private corporations, and individuals at international, regional, and local scales. Truly tremendous strides have been made in water and food provisioning for humans worldwide. These past two decades have also seen the largest population growth on record, the highest rates of childhood …
Food Security In The Free State Province: Meaning Making As Democratic Agency, Jacqueline Del Valle Hanoman Ambrosio
Food Security In The Free State Province: Meaning Making As Democratic Agency, Jacqueline Del Valle Hanoman Ambrosio
Open Access Dissertations
People's stories are powerful means of explaining their realities, for their narratives reveal what meanings they make of the situations they are living, how they face these situations and what strategies they formulate to overcome them. Their meaning making is one of the most powerful tools of their agency, and this is what this study reveals. In it, I tell the stories of people in the Free State Province, South Africa, who face food insecurity within abundance, and their critical consciousness and agency as they struggle to survive in their democracy. Poverty is a rawness...Poverty is struggle... Poverty is shame...these …
Development Of Experimental And Instrumental Systems To Study Biological Systems, Amanda J Hemphill
Development Of Experimental And Instrumental Systems To Study Biological Systems, Amanda J Hemphill
Open Access Dissertations
Chapters 1-4 of this thesis describes the development of an experimental system to measure diffusion-limited reaction kinetics in a biological environment. About 100 years ago, the relationship between reaction rate and diffusion in homogenous solution, ie water or buffer, was described as a linear relationship by Smoluchowski. Applying this theory naively would suggest that since the diffusion coefficients drop by factors of 4-100 then the rates of reaction would drop by the same amount. However, recent theory and simulations suggest that this does not hold. Even though biological diffusion coefficients drop to 0.1-20% of that in buffer, these recent studies …
Discrete Epidemic Models With Arbitrarily Distributed Disease Stages, Nancy Hernandez Ceron
Discrete Epidemic Models With Arbitrarily Distributed Disease Stages, Nancy Hernandez Ceron
Open Access Dissertations
The use of discrete-time models (or discrete models) in the field of mathematical epidemiology has been limited while continuous-time models (or continuous models) are often times preferred, particularly because disease dynamics do occur continuously in time and more mathematical tools are available for model analysis. How- ever, discrete models are not only more tractable and easier to understand, but also more directly related to data, particularly when the disease stage distributions are arbitrarily distributed (e.g., when the data cannot be fitted by distributions from a parametric family). Under these circumstances continuous models usually lead to complex system of integral equations. …
Applications Of Microlocal Analysis To Some Hyperbolic Inverse Problems, Andrew J Homan
Applications Of Microlocal Analysis To Some Hyperbolic Inverse Problems, Andrew J Homan
Open Access Dissertations
This thesis compiles my work on three inverse problems: ultrasound recovery in thermoacoustic tomography, cancellation of singularities in synthetic aperture radar, and the injectivity and stability of some generalized Radon transforms. Each problem is approached using microlocal methods. In the context of thermoacoustic tomography under the damped wave equation, I show uniqueness and stability of the problem with complete data, provide a reconstruction algorithm for small attenuation with complete data, and obtain stability estimates for visible singularities with partial data. The chapter on synthetic aperture radar constructs microlocally several infinite-dimensional families of ground reflectivity functions which appear microlocally regular when …
Molecular Diagnosis Of Cancer Using Ambient Ionization Mass Spectrometry, Kevin S Kerian
Molecular Diagnosis Of Cancer Using Ambient Ionization Mass Spectrometry, Kevin S Kerian
Open Access Dissertations
My dissertation focuses on advancing the development and application of ambient ionization mass spectrometry methodology and technology to the biomedical field. The primary ambient ionization method used in my studies is desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) imaging, which has been previously used to analyze and differentiate disease state (i.e. tumor and normal) and in some cases tumor subtype of human liver, kidney, bladder, testicular, prostate, and brain cancers. DESI-MS imaging is an ideal method for disease diagnosis, because it can be used to directly correlate disease state with histopathology to develop and validate MS libraries built using the molecular …
Functional Inequalities And The Curvature Dimension Inequality On Totally Geodesic Foliations, Bumsik Kim
Functional Inequalities And The Curvature Dimension Inequality On Totally Geodesic Foliations, Bumsik Kim
Open Access Dissertations
We discover following analytic / geometric properties on Riemannian foliations with bundle-like metric and totally geodesic leaves, or shortly, totally geodesic foliations. Under a certain curvature condition, we obtain (1) Sobolev-isoperimetric inequalities, global Poincar\'e inqualities, and a lower bound for Cheeger's isoperimetric constant, (2) Poincar\'e inequalities on balls and uniqueness of positive(or $L^p,p\geq 1$) solutions for the subelliptic heat equation, (3) A lower bound for the first non-zero eigenvalue of sub-Laplacians (Lichnerowicz theorem), and Obata's sphere theorem. In this context, the curvature condition is a sub-Riemannian analogue of lower bounds for Ricci curvature tensor. Earlier, it is given by Baudoin-Garofalo's …
Mathematical Approaches To Food Nutrient Content Estimation With A Focus On Phenylalanine, Jieun Kim
Mathematical Approaches To Food Nutrient Content Estimation With A Focus On Phenylalanine, Jieun Kim
Open Access Dissertations
Managing the intake of a certain nutrient can be an effective treatment for some inherited metabolic disorders. An example of such dietary treatments is for phenylketonuria (PKU), for which patients must follow a low-phenylalanine diet for life. Some food databases provide the phenylalanine (Phe) content for a large number of unprocessed foods, and a limited number of composite foods; however, they are not exhaustive. As an attempt to complete this list, we introduce three mathematical approaches to estimate a bound for the Phe content based on the available nutritional information. The first approach is based on the statistical distribution of …
A Pure-Jump Market-Making Model For High-Frequency Trading, Chi Wai Law
A Pure-Jump Market-Making Model For High-Frequency Trading, Chi Wai Law
Open Access Dissertations
We propose a new market-making model which incorporates a number of realistic features relevant for high-frequency trading. In particular, we model the dependency structure of prices and order arrivals with novel self- and cross-exciting point processes. Furthermore, instead of assuming the bid and ask prices can be adjusted continuously by the market maker, we formulate the market maker's decisions as an optimal switching problem. Moreover, the risk of overtrading has been taken into consideration by allowing each order to have different size, and the market maker can make use of market orders, which are treated as impulse control, to get …
Fully Electronic Method Of Measuring Post-Release Gap And Gradient/Residual Stress Of A Mems Cantilever, Andrew Stephen Kovacs
Fully Electronic Method Of Measuring Post-Release Gap And Gradient/Residual Stress Of A Mems Cantilever, Andrew Stephen Kovacs
Open Access Dissertations
Smartphones and other wireless devices have become ubiquitous over the past decade, and the RF front-end inside of them has become more complex and disproportionately consumes more power compared to other components. Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have a huge potential to reduce these problems while simultaneously offering superior performance compared to current leading-edge technology. However, MEMS technology has difficulty transitioning from the lab to large-scale manufacturing due to the unpredictability of device lifetime and manufacturability issues. This can be mitigated by investigating how critical material or physical parameters (gap, stress, Young's modulus, material thickness, etc.) vary from manufacturing uncertainties and how …
G-Frobenius Manifolds, Byeongho Lee
G-Frobenius Manifolds, Byeongho Lee
Open Access Dissertations
The goal of this dissertation is to introduce the notion of G-Frobenius manifolds for any finite group G. This work is motivated by the fact that any G-Frobenius algebra yields an ordinary Frobenius algebra by taking its G-invariants. We generalize this on the level of Frobenius manifolds. To define a G-Frobenius manifold as a braided-commutative generalization of the ordinary commutative Frobenius manifold, we develop the theory of G-braided spaces. These are defined as G-graded G-modules with certain braided-commutative "rings of functions", generalizing the commutative rings of power series on ordinary vector spaces. As the genus zero part of any ordinary …
Studies Of The Interaction Of Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds And Nox In Forest Environments, Kevin M. Mcavey
Studies Of The Interaction Of Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds And Nox In Forest Environments, Kevin M. Mcavey
Open Access Dissertations
Ozone is a pollutant that causes crop damage, adverse health effects, and is a contributor to global climate change. Ozone concentrations are predicted to rise over the next half-century along with global temperature. Ozone production is controlled by the chemistry between biogenic volatile organic compounds and NOx (NO + NO2), and therefore, a greater understanding of NOx + BVOC chemistry along with their sources and sinks is needed. One large uncertainty in understanding NOx + BVOC chemistry is the production of organic nitrates (RONO2), which act as a radical termination step in the …
Spectroscopic Characterization And Photochemistry Of Nitrogen-Containing Molecules Relevant To Titan's Atmosphere, Deepali N. Mehta-Hurt
Spectroscopic Characterization And Photochemistry Of Nitrogen-Containing Molecules Relevant To Titan's Atmosphere, Deepali N. Mehta-Hurt
Open Access Dissertations
Titan's atmospheric chemistry has been the source of intrigue since the planetary body's discovery. Though there is a growing understanding of the atmospheric chemistry of small molecules on Titan, much less is known about larger molecule formation, and particularly about nitrile chemistry. This dissertation characterizes nitrile/isonitrile intermediates that are postulated to be important in Titan's atmosphere, adding to the necessary foundation for understanding Titan's atmospheric chemistry. The vibronic spectroscopy of para-diisocyanobenzene (pDIB, C≡N-Ph-N≡C) has been characterized as a first step towards photochemical studies that can test the transformation of the isonitrile group to other nitrogen-based functionalities.p …
An Investigation Into The Phenomenological Relation Between Solar Activity And Nuclear Beta-Decay Rates, Tasneem M. Mohsinally
An Investigation Into The Phenomenological Relation Between Solar Activity And Nuclear Beta-Decay Rates, Tasneem M. Mohsinally
Open Access Dissertations
We investigate experimental evidence for time-varying nuclear decay rates, in contrast to the widely-accepted view that nuclear decaying isotopes disintegrate at a constant rate unaffected by external conditions. We study several past cases of radioactive isotopes exhibiting annual periodicities in their decay rates, presumably related to the annual variation in Earth-Sun distance. Following recent indications of shorter-lived anomalies in 54Mn decay rates concomitant with an X-class flare in 2006, we attempt to design and develop a series of unique signal detection algorithms to identify regions of anomalous activity in a nuclear decay signal. With stringent threshold cut-offs and filtering …
The Dynamics Of Ultracold Atoms In Light-Induced Synthetic Gauge Fields, Abraham J. Olson
The Dynamics Of Ultracold Atoms In Light-Induced Synthetic Gauge Fields, Abraham J. Olson
Open Access Dissertations
A central aim of this research is to study the dynamics of ultracold atoms in synthetic gauge fields. In this work, we developed a method to optimize the evaporation of ultracold atoms to the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) phase. We implement a model of atomic evaporation in a trapping potential, and we find optimal parameters for the trap depth and stiffness during evaporation. Using this model, we achieve a high efficiency of optical evaporation (γ eff = 4.0).^ Using that BEC, we study the dynamics of the BEC in various light-induced synthetic gauge fields. In particular, we have studied the transition …
Experiments With Synthetic Spin-Orbit Coupling And Spin Transport In Bose Einstein Condensates, Robert John Niffenegger
Experiments With Synthetic Spin-Orbit Coupling And Spin Transport In Bose Einstein Condensates, Robert John Niffenegger
Open Access Dissertations
In this thesis I will describe my experiments to study spin transport of spin Bose Einstein Condensates (BECs) with synthetic spin-orbit coupling. First I will describe procedures used to reproduce previous experiments with synthetic gauge fields in Bose-Einstein Condensates, from constant vector potentials to synthetic electric fields and synthetic spin-orbit coupling as well as all of the necessary calibration experiments. Next I will describe new experiments measuring spin transport induced by synthetic spin-dependent electric fields in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs). The one dimensional (1D) spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is created with counter propagating Raman lasers which couple hyperfine sub-levels and …
On Several Problems Regarding The Application Of Opportunistic Proximate Links In Smartphone Networks, Wei Peng
Open Access Dissertations
A defining characteristic of smartphones is the availability of short-range radio transceivers (the proximate channel) such as Bluetooth, NFC, and Wi-Fi Direct, in addition to traditional long-range cellular telecommunication technologies (the cellular channel). Coupled with smartphones' portability and their human users' mobility, the proximate channel provides opportunistic proximate links as a supplement/alternative to the cellular channel's persistent infrastructural links for data communication.^ Opportunistic proximate links have a diverse set of applications, with each application scenario bringing a unique set of often conflicting objectives to balance. This dissertation presents a study on several problems regarding the application of opportunistic proximate links …
Quantification Of Molecular Aggregation Equilibria Using Spectroscopic Measurements And Random Mixing Modeling, Blake M. Rankin
Quantification Of Molecular Aggregation Equilibria Using Spectroscopic Measurements And Random Mixing Modeling, Blake M. Rankin
Open Access Dissertations
Molecular aggregation equilibria, such as the binding of ligands to a central solute molecule, are prevalent throughout biological processes and energy storage devices. However, both the sign and magnitude of hydrophobic and ionic interactions remains a subject of theoretical debate, and has yet to be experimentally determined. Here, Raman vibrational spectroscopy is combined with multivariate curve resolution (Raman-MCR) to experimentally quantify both the number of hydrophobic contacts between alcohol molecules in water and the affinity of ions for molecular hydrophobic interfaces. Furthermore, a generalized theoretical model is developed based on random statistics in which it is assumed that the concentration …
Dynamic Re-Optimization Techniques For Stream Processing Engines And Object Stores, Naresh Kumar Reddy Rapolu
Dynamic Re-Optimization Techniques For Stream Processing Engines And Object Stores, Naresh Kumar Reddy Rapolu
Open Access Dissertations
Large scale data storage and processing systems are strongly motivated by the need to store and analyze massive datasets. The complexity of a large class of these systems is rooted in their distributed nature, extreme scale, need for real-time response, and streaming nature. The use of these systems on multi-tenant, cloud environments with potential resource interference necessitates fine-grained monitoring and control. In this dissertation, we present efficient, dynamic techniques for re-optimizing stream-processing systems and transactional object-storage systems.^ In the context of stream-processing systems, we present VAYU, a per-topology controller. VAYU uses novel methods and protocols for dynamic, network-aware tuple-routing in …
A P-Adic Spectral Triple, Sumedha Hemamalee Rathnayake
A P-Adic Spectral Triple, Sumedha Hemamalee Rathnayake
Open Access Dissertations
We construct a spectral triple for the C*-algebra of continuous functions on the space of p-adic integers. On the technical level we utilize a weighted rooted tree obtained from a coarse grained approximation of the space combined with the forward derivative D on the tree. Our spectral triple satisfies the properties of a compact spectral metric space and the metric on the space of p-adic integers induced by the spectral triple is equivalent to the usual p-adic metric. Furthermore, we show that the spectrum of the operator D*D is closely related to the roots of a certain …
Laboratory Studies On The Production Of Alpha-Pinene-Derived Organic Nitrates And Their Atmospheric Fate, Joel David Rindelaub
Laboratory Studies On The Production Of Alpha-Pinene-Derived Organic Nitrates And Their Atmospheric Fate, Joel David Rindelaub
Open Access Dissertations
Currently, the formation yields of organic nitrates from the oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds, such as α-pinene, is highly uncertain, negatively impacting our knowledge on tropospheric ozone production and the fate of atmospheric NOx. To lower this uncertainty, we quantified the organic nitrate yield from the OH radical oxidation of α-pinene under high NOx conditions. The α-pinene- derived nitrates created in chamber experiments readily partitioned to the aerosol phase and underwent particle phase hydrolysis, indicating that these processes are likely a sink for atmospheric NOx. The hydrolysis of organic nitrates was found to be …
Improving Capacity-Performance Tradeoffs In The Storage Tier, Eric P. Villasenor
Improving Capacity-Performance Tradeoffs In The Storage Tier, Eric P. Villasenor
Open Access Dissertations
Data-set sizes are growing. New techniques are emerging to organize and analyze these data-sets. There is a key access pattern emerging with these new techniques, large sequential file accesses. The trend toward bigger files exists to help amortize the cost of data accesses from the storage layer, as many workloads are recognized to be I/O bound. The storage layer is widely recognized as the slowest layer in the system. This work focuses on the tradeoff one can make with that storage capacity to improve system performance. ^ Capacity can be leveraged for improved availability or improved performance. This tradeoff is …
Spatial Analysis Of Passenger Vehicle Use And Ownership And Its Impact On The Sustainability Of Highway Infrastructure Funding, Matthew Volovski
Spatial Analysis Of Passenger Vehicle Use And Ownership And Its Impact On The Sustainability Of Highway Infrastructure Funding, Matthew Volovski
Open Access Dissertations
Across the United States, the sustainability of highway funding is at risk due to increasing need and uncertainty in the factors that drive revenue. Past studies on highway funding sustainability have identified that the root cause of changing highway revenue are the shifts in social demographics and economic characteristics. Unfortunately, from the revenue perspective (the focus of this dissertation), the ability of previous research to account for these factors has been rather limited in two ways; first, the inability to accurately assess current regional vehicle use (a typical prerequisite for statistical modeling of highway revenues) due to difficulties associated with …
Assessment Of High-Fidelity Collision Models In The Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Method, Andrew Brian Weaver
Assessment Of High-Fidelity Collision Models In The Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Method, Andrew Brian Weaver
Open Access Dissertations
Advances in computer technology over the decades has allowed for more complex physics to be modeled in the DSMC method. Beginning with the first paper on DSMC in 1963, 30,000 collision events per hour were simulated using a simple hard sphere model. Today, more than 10 billion collision events can be simulated per hour for the same problem. Many new and more physically realistic collision models such as the Lennard-Jones potential and the forced harmonic oscillator model have been introduced into DSMC. However, the fact that computer resources are more readily available and higher-fidelity models have been developed does not …
Growth Of Low Disorder Gaas/Algaas Heterostructures By Molecular Beam Epitaxy For The Study Of Correlated Electron Phases In Two Dimensions, John D. Watson
Growth Of Low Disorder Gaas/Algaas Heterostructures By Molecular Beam Epitaxy For The Study Of Correlated Electron Phases In Two Dimensions, John D. Watson
Open Access Dissertations
The unparalleled quality of GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy has enabled a wide range of experiments probing interaction effects in two-dimensional electron and hole gases. This dissertation presents work aimed at further understanding the key material-related issues currently limiting the quality of these 2D systems, particularly in relation to the fractional quantum Hall effect in the 2nd Landau level and spin-based implementations of quantum computation.^ The manuscript begins with a theoretical introduction to the quantum Hall effect which outlines the experimental conditions necessary to study the physics of interest and motivates the use of the semiconductor growth …