Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

High Flow Air Sampler For Rapid Analysis Of Volatile And Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds, Xiaofeng Xie

Theses and Dissertations

Volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds are ubiquitous, and some of them are hazardous. The ability to rapidly detect and identify trace levels of them in air has become increasingly important. The conventional device used today for sampling and concentrating them in air is thermal desorption tubes filled with specific sorbents, which can only collect air samples at flow rates of 100-200 mL/min. In order to detect low concentration (ppt level) VOC compounds, long sampling time (>2 h) and sensitive detection are required. At the same time, portable instrumentation for on-site analysis has been developing rapidly. The somewhat lower performance …

Superimposed And Auxiliary Dunes Of The Northern Namib Sand Sea: A Ground-Penetrating Radar Study, Clayton K. Chandler

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding modern features allows for their use as analogues for understanding the environments of the past and even environments on other planetary bodies. This study uses Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) to image the near surface sedimentary structures on a large linear dune in the northern Namib Sand Sea and image the sedimentary structure of an auxiliary dune. GPR data was collected using a 200 MHz antenna with a continuous scan method and was processed by removing direct arrival, gain balancing, migration and more which produced the highest resolution imagery from this region to date. Large dune data was analyzed to determine …

Compression Bodies And Their Boundary Hyperbolic Structures, Vinh Xuan Dang

Theses and Dissertations

We study hyperbolic structures on the compression body C with genus 2 positive boundary and genus 1 negative boundary. We consider individual hyperbolic structures as well as special regions in the space of all such hyperbolic structures. We use some properties of the boundary hyperbolic structures on C to establish an interesting property of cusp shapes of tunnel number one manifolds. This extends a result of Nimershiem in [26] to the class of tunnel number one manifolds. We also establish convergence results on the geometry of compression bodies. This extends the work of Ito in [13] from the punctured-torus case …

Facilitating Corpus Annotation By Improving Annotation Aggregation, Paul L. Felt

Theses and Dissertations

Annotated text corpora facilitate the linguistic investigation of language as well as the automation of natural language processing (NLP) tasks. NLP tasks include problems such as spam email detection, grammatical analysis, and identifying mentions of people, places, and events in text. However, constructing high quality annotated corpora can be expensive. Cost can be reduced by employing low-cost internet workers in a practice known as crowdsourcing, but the resulting annotations are often inaccurate, decreasing the usefulness of a corpus. This inaccuracy is typically mitigated by collecting multiple redundant judgments and aggregating them (e.g., via majority vote) to produce high quality consensus …

Cooling Before Super-Eruption: No Role For Rejuvenation In The Cottonwood Wash Tuff Magma Body, Southern Great Basin Ignimbrite Province, Utah And Nevada, Keryn Tobler Ross

Theses and Dissertations

The model of rejuvenation of a near-solidus crystal mush to produce large volumes of crystal-rich magma is tested here by analyzing the mineralogical, chemical, modal, and physical characteristics of the 31.1 Ma super-eruptive (2000 km3) Cottonwood Wash Tuff. It is the oldest in a series of three so-called “monotonous intermediate” ignimbrites from the Indian Peak-Caliente volcanic field in southern Utah and Nevada. A crystal-rich (~50% Pl > Qz ≈ Hbl ≈ Bt > Mag ≈ Ilm > Cpx + Zrn + Ap+ Po) dacite (62 – 69 wt% SiO2), the Cottonwood Wash Tuff is similar in age, volume, mineralogy, crystallinity, and elemental composition …

Cooling Before Super-Eruption: No Role For Rejuvenation In The Cottonwood Wash Tuff Magma Body, Southern Great Basin Ignimbrite Province, Utah And Nevada, Keryn Tobler Ross

Theses and Dissertations

The model of rejuvenation of a near-solidus crystal mush to produce large volumes of crystal-rich magma is tested here by analyzing the mineralogical, chemical, modal, and physical characteristics of the 31.1 Ma super-eruptive (2000 km3) Cottonwood Wash Tuff. It is the oldest in a series of three so-called "monotonous intermediate" ignimbrites from the Indian Peak-Caliente volcanic field in southern Utah and Nevada. A crystal-rich (~50% Pl > Qz ≈ Hbl ≈ Bt > Mag ≈ Ilm > Cpx + Zrn + Ap+ Po) dacite (62 - 69 wt% SiO2), the Cottonwood Wash Tuff is similar in age, volume, mineralogy, crystallinity, and elemental composition …

The Solenoid And Warsawanoid Are Sharkovskii Spaces, Tyler Willes Hills

Theses and Dissertations

We extend Sharkovskii's theorem concerning orbit lengths of endomorphisms of the real line to endomorphisms of a path component of the solenoid and certain subspaces of the Warsawanoid. In particular, Sharkovskii showed that if there exists an orbit of length 3 then there exist orbits of all lengths. The solenoid is the inverse limit of double covers over the circle, and the Warsawanoid is the inverse limit of double covers over the Warsaw circle. We show Sharkovskii's result is true for path components of the solenoid and certain subspaces of the Warsawanoid.

Advanced Data Analysis Tools And Multi-Instrument Material Characterization, Bhupinder Singh

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on (i) the development of new analysis tools and methodologies for analyzing X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) data, and (ii) the comprehensive characterization of materials (nanodiamonds) using a multi-instrument approach. Chapter 1 contains (i) a discussion of the two techniques I focused on most in my work: XPS and ToF-SIMS, (ii) a discussion of the common chemometrics techniques used to analyze data from these methods, and (iii) the advantages/rationale behind the multi-instrument characterization of materials. Chapter 2 describes various good practices for obtaining reasonable peak fits in XPS, which can also …

Construction Of A 408 Nm Laser System For Use In Ion Interferometry, Lawrence Archibald

Theses and Dissertations

This work reports on the construction of a 408 nm laser system designed to drive stimulated Raman transitions between the F = 4 and F = 5 2 S 1/2 states of 87 Sr + using the 2 P 3/2 state as the intermediate state. This laser system will be used as part of a 87 Sr + ion interferometer. This work also includes a discussion of relevant theory describing the interaction of the ions and laser, along with a calculation of the transition rates as a function of laser power and detuning.

Hand-Portable Capillary Liquid Chromatography Instrumentation, Sonika Sharma

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the development of hand-portable capillary liquid chromatography (LC) instrumentation. In this work, battery-operable nano-flow pumping systems (isocratic and gradient) were developed and integrated with portable UV-absorption detectors for capillary LC. The systems were reduced in size to acceptable weights and power usage for field operation. A major advantage of the pumps is that they do not employ a splitter, since they were specifically designed for capillary column use, thereby greatly reducing solvent consumption and waste generation. UV-absorption detectors were specifically designed and optimized for on-column detection to minimize extra-column band broadening. Initially, an isocratic nano-flow pumping …

Silicon Carbon Nanotube Lithium Ion Batteries, Lawrence Kent Barrett

Theses and Dissertations

Silicon has the highest theoretical capacity of any known anode material, and silicon coated carbon nanotubes (Si-CNTs) have shown promise of dramatically increasing battery capacity. However, capacity fading with cycling and low rate capability prevent widespread use. Here, three studies on differing aspects of these batteries are presented. Here, three studies on differing aspects of these batteries are presented. The first examines the rate capability of these batteries. It compares the cycling of electrodes hundreds of microns thick with and without ten micron access holes to facilitate diffusion. The holes do not improve rate capability, but thinner coatings of silicon …

Interactive Machine Assistance: A Case Study In Linking Corpora And Dictionaries, Kevin P. Black

Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning can provide assistance to humans in making decisions, including linguistic decisions such as determining the part of speech of a word. Supervised machine learning methods derive patterns indicative of possible labels (decisions) from annotated example data. For many problems, including most language analysis problems, acquiring annotated data requires human annotators who are trained to understand the problem and to disambiguate among multiple possible labels. Hence, the availability of experts can limit the scope and quantity of annotated data. Machine-learned pre-annotation assistance, which suggests probable labels for unannotated items, can enable expert annotators to work more quickly and thus …

Building 3d-Printed Widgets To Incorporate Into Prototypes, David E. Brandt

Theses and Dissertations

Creating interactive prototypes can be a long and difficult process. It requires expertise in various fields. Prior work in developing interactive prototypes minimize time required to make a prototype, but generally sacrifice fidelity for fluidity. Advances in 3D printing create new opportunities to prototype with greater fidelity and fluidity. We investigate the use of several kinds of sensors, including IR photo interrupters, IR photo reflectors, push button switches, and potentiometers, to create interactive prototypes. We first design a library of 3D printable interaction components, buttons, sliders, and knobs using those sensors then we develop software to transform interaction events into …

Cvic: Cluster Validation Using Instance-Based Confidences, Dean M. Lebaron

Theses and Dissertations

As unlabeled data becomes increasingly available, the need for robust data mining techniques increases as well. Clustering is a common data mining tool which seeks to find related, independent patterns in data called clusters. The cluster validation problem addresses the question of how well a given clustering fits the data set. We present CVIC (cluster validation using instance-based confidences) which assigns confidence scores to each individual instance, as opposed to more traditional methods which focus on the clusters themselves. CVIC trains supervised learners to recreate the clustering, and instances are scored based on output from the learners which corresponds to …

Alternating Direction Implicit Method With Adaptive Grids For Modeling Chemotaxis In Dictyostelium Discoideum, Christopher F. Loomis

Theses and Dissertations

Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd) is a model organism, studied for reasons from cell movement to chemotaxis to human disease control. Creating a computer model of the life cycle of Dd has garnered great interest, one part of which is the Aggregation Stage, where thousands of amoeba gather together to form a slug. Chemotaxis is the mechanism through which this is accomplished. This thesis develops two- and three-dimensional alternating direction implicit code which solves the diffusion equation on an adaptive grid. The calculated values for both two and three dimensions are checked against the actual solution and error results are provided. Comparisons …

Data Selection Using Topic Adaptation For Statistical Machine Translation, Hitokazu Matsushita

Theses and Dissertations

Statistical machine translation (SMT) requires large quantities of bitexts (i.e., bilingual parallel corpora) as training data to yield good quality translations. While obtaining a large amount of training data is critical, the similarity between training and test data also has a significant impact on SMT performance. Many SMT studies define data similarity in terms of domain-overlap, and domains are defined to be synonymous with data sources. Consequently, the SMT community has focused on domain adaptation techniques that augment small (in-domain) datasets with large datasets from other sources (hence, out-of-domain, per the definition). However, many training datasets consist of topically diverse …

Low-Shield Volcanism: A Comparison Of Volcanoes On Syria Planum, Mars And Snake River Plain, Idaho, Amanda Olivia Henderson

Theses and Dissertations

Volcanoes are key indicators of a planet's internal structure, mechanics, and evolutionary history. Consequently, understanding the types and ages of volcanoes on a planet's surface is an important endeavor. In an attempt to better understand the relationship between morphometry and volcanic processes, we compared low-shield volcanoes on Syria Planum, Mars, with basaltic shields of the eastern Snake River Plain. We used 133 volcanoes on Syria Planum that are covered by Mars Orbiting Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) elevation data and 246 eSRP shields covered by the National Elevation Dataset (NED) for this comparison. Shields on Syria …

Development And Validation Of A Physically Based Ela Model And Its Application To The Younger Dryas Event In The Graubünden Alps, Switzerland, Durban Gregg Keeler

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid rate of global warming currently underway highlights the need for a deeper understanding of abrupt climate change. The Younger Dryas is a Late-Glacial climate event of widespread and unusually rapid change whose study can help us address this need for increased understanding. Reconstructions from the glacial record offer important contributions to our understanding of the Younger Dryas due to (among other things) the direct physical response of glaciers to even minor perturbations in climate. Because the glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) provides a more explicit comparison of climate than properties such as glacier length or area, ELA methods …

Information Behaviors Of Nuclear Scientists At Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Youngchoon Chun, Jiho Yi, Jung-Ran Park, Sangki Choi

Journal of East Asian Libraries

The goal of the study was to analyze the information use behaviors of researchers in the science and technology domain. A survey and interviews were conducted targeting nuclear scientists at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. Study results indicate that the nuclear scientists mainly use the Institute library/information center and Internet portal/search engines during information acquisition. Easy access to information, accuracy, currency and cost are the most critical factors in selecting and obtaining information. The most frequently used database for executing research is the Institute’s electronic library (NUCLIS21) followed by the Citation Index SCOPUS. The results of the study indicate …

Mass Spectrometry Based Proteomics And Lipidomics Studies, Huan Kang

Theses and Dissertations

Mass spectrometry has emerged as having a vital role in various applications to biochemical fields. In this thesis, we have utilized a variety of mass spectrometry techniques for both bacteriophage proteomics and colostrum and milk lipidomics studies. Our first study was the proteome characterization of Great Salt Lake bacteriophage NS01 with SDS-PAGE GEL to separate the viral proteins and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with an LTQ Orbitrap to identify the proteins after in-gel digestion. In this project, we have successfully identified 11 proteins with high confidence, p-values < 0.01, including coat protein gp88 with a coverage of 91% and tail protein gp86 with a coverage of 40.96%, which facilitated the classification of NS01 as a T7-like phage. Our second study was the discovery of colostrum and milk biomarkers that can be used to predict the likelihood of development of production-related metabolic diseases (PRMDs) in dairy cows through a lipidomics approach. In this study, an electrospray ionization, time-of-flight mass spectrometer was applied to lipid profiling, quantification and significant biomolecule selection. A Q-Star quadrupole, orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometer and an Agilent 6530 accurate-mass quadrupole/time-of flight mass spectrometer were both used for lipid biomarker fragmentation and identification. According to linear discriminative statistical modeling, three panels of biomarkers were defined. A combination of 2 milk lipid predictors, including DG18:0/18:0 and TG 18:0/18:0/18:1, provided PRMD predictions with 75.0% sensitivity at 90.0% specificity. A combination of 3 colostrum lipid predictors, including TG16:0/18:1/18:3, DG16:0/16:0 and C₄₀H₆₀NO, provided PRMD prediction with 90.0% sensitivity at …

Mechanisms And Timing Of Pluton Emplacement In Taranaki Basin, New Zealand Using Three-Dimensional Seismic Analysis, Phillip C. Cammans

Theses and Dissertations

Several off-shore volcano-plutonic complexes are imaged in detail in the Parihaka 3D seismic survey in the Taranaki Basin of New Zealand. Three intrusions were analyzed for this study. Part of the Mohakatino Volcanic Centre (15 to 1.6 Ma), these intrusions have steep sides, no resolvable base reflectors, no internal stratification or structure, and they exhibit doming and faulting in the sedimentary strata above the intrusions. Deformation along the sides is dominated by highly attenuated, dipping strata with dips of 45° or higher that decrease rapidly away from the intrusions. Doming extends several hundred meters from the margins and produced many …

Image-Charge Detection €“ Novel Instrumentation And Applications, Brandon Lee Barney

Theses and Dissertations

Image-charge detection is an analytical technique in which a highly-charged particle is detected by the magnitude of the image current that it generates in a detecting electrode. This current is represented as a voltage between the charged particle and the sensing electrode. It is a single particle detection method, ideal for the analysis of large, variable mass particles such as biological cells. Some of the physical properties of Bacillus subtilis spores were explored using different applications of image-charge detection. B. subtilis is a gram-negative spore-forming bacteria that has been shown to exhibit extremophile behavior. The particular extremophile behavior that was …

Fast Inference For Interactive Models Of Text, Jeffrey A. Lund

Theses and Dissertations

Probabilistic models of text are a useful tool for enabling the analysis of large collections of digital text. For example, Latent Dirichlet Allocation can quickly produce topical summaries of large collections of text documents. Many important uses cases of such models include human interaction during the inference process for these models of text. For example, the Interactive Topic Model extends Latent Dirichlet Allocation to incorporate human expertiese during inference in order to produce topics which are better suited to individual user needs. However, interactive use cases of probabalistic models of text introduce new constraints on inference - the inference procedure …

Improving Production Of Carbon Nanotube Composites, Dan Broadbent

Faculty Publications

Carbon nanotube (CNT) composites offer great promise for making lighter, thinner and stronger structures. Producing CNT composites, however, can be tricky. The focus of this work is to improve production yields of CNT composites by doing research and development in two areas:

• Research the relationship between ethylene gas concentrations used during CNT growth and yields of usable composite films produced.
• Develop furnace for growing larger CNT samples, which will enable larger sizes and quantities of research product.

Ribosome Component Turnover Kinetics Describes A Two-Pool Kinetic Model In Dietary Restriction That Suggests Rpl10 Is Exchanged During Ribosome Lifespan, Andrew David Mathis

Theses and Dissertations

The eukaryotic ribosome is a large molecular machine consisting of ~80 ribosomal proteins and 4 rRNAs. The 40S and 60S ribosomal subunits are assembled in the nucleolus by ~200 helper proteins then shipped into the cytoplasm or to the endoplasmic reticulum where protein translation takes place. Eventually ribosomes are removed from the cytoplasm and recycled through ribophagy, however, very is little is known about ribosomal protein exchange after assembly but before ribophagy. Using kinetic turnover measurements of ribosomal proteins and rRNA in vivo we determined ribosomal protein replacement rates are diverse suggesting ribosomal components may be replaced without destruction of …

Design, Fabrication, And Optimization Of Miniaturized Devices For Bioanalytical Applications, Suresh Kumar

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation work integrates the techniques of microfabrication, micro/nanofluidics, and bioanalytical chemistry to develop miniaturized devices for healthcare applications. Semiconductor processing techniques including photolithography, physical and chemical vapor deposition, and wet etching are used to build these devices in silicon and polymeric materials. On-chip micro-/nanochannels, pumps, and valves are used to manipulate the flow of fluid in these devices. Analytical techniques such as size-based filtration, solid-phase extraction (SPE), sample enrichment, on-chip labeling, microchip electrophoresis (µCE), and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) are utilized to analyze biomolecules. Such miniaturized devices offer the advantages of rapid analysis, low cost, and lab-on-a-chip scale integration …

A Nonabelian Landau-Ginzburg B-Model Construction, Ryan Thor Sandberg

Theses and Dissertations

The Landau-Ginzburg (LG) B-Model is a significant feature of singularity theory and mirror symmetry. Krawitz in 2010, guided by work of Kaufmann, provided an explicit construction for the LG B-model when using diagonal symmetries of a quasihomogeneous, nondegenerate polynomial. In this thesis we discuss aspects of how to generalize the LG B-model construction to allow for nondiagonal symmetries of a polynomial, and hence nonabelian symmetry groups. The construction is generalized to the level of graded vector space and the multiplication developed up to an unknown factor. We present complete examples of nonabelian LG B-models for the polynomials x^2y + y^3, …

Peroxy Radical - Water Complexes: Their Role In The Atmosphere, Sambhav Rajendra Kumbhani

Theses and Dissertations

The importance of radical-water complexes in the atmosphere is explored in this dissertation. Radicals, although present in small concentrations in the atmosphere, play a significant role in creating and removing atmospheric pollution. As the atmosphere warms and consequently gets wetter, it is essential to understand the effects of water vapor on radical chemistry. This dissertation reports studies on the effects of water vapor on the kinetics of the self-reaction of β-hydroxyethyl peroxy radical (β-HEP), a prominent organic peroxy radical in the atmosphere. Both experimental and computational studies have been performed to examine the effects of water vapor on the kinetics …

Progress Towards The Total Synthesis Of Yaku'amide A, Zhiwei Ma

Theses and Dissertations

The synthetic progress towards yaku'amide A is described. The study leads to development of new synthetic methodologies. Base-free regioselective aminohydroxylation is convenient to deliver β-tert-hydroxyamino acids. A sequence consisting of alkylative esterification, Martin sulfurane mediated anti dehydration, a tandem azide reduction-O→N acyl transfer allows the rapid access of E- and Z-dehydroisoleucine-containing peptides from β-tert-hydroxyisoleucine derivatives. Those methods are effective in constructing complicated peptides and advanced subunits of yaku'amide A.

Geologic Mapping Of Ice Cave Peak Quadrangle, Uintah And Duchesne Counties, Utah With Implications From Mapping Laramide Faults, Gabriel J. Poduska

Theses and Dissertations

Geologic mapping (1:24,000 scale) of the Ice Cave Peak quadrangle, Uintah and Duchesne Counties, Utah has produced a better understanding of the geologic structures present in the quadrangle and has increased our understanding of faulting in northeastern Utah. Map units in the quadrangle range in age from late Neoproterozoic to Quaternary and include good exposures of Paleozoic rocks (Mississippian to Permian), limited exposures of Mesozoic rocks, and good exposures of Tertiary strata (Duchesne River Formation and Bishop Conglomerate) deposited during uplift of the Uinta Mountains. Lower Mississippian strata along the south flank of the Uinta Mountains have typically been mapped …