Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Investigating The Sources Of Fresh Water Affecting The Hydrological Balance Of Lakes Enriquillo And Azuei (Hispaniola) – Data Analysis, Daniel Comarazamy, Jorge Gonzalez, Fred Moshary, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, John Ibsen

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The Enriquillo and Azuei are saltwater lakes located in a closed water basin in the southwestern region of the island of La Hispaniola, these have been experiencing dramatic changes in total lake-surface area coverage during the period 1980-2012. The size of Lake Enriquillo presented a surface area of approximately 276 km2 in 1984, gradually decreasing to 172 km2 in 1996. The surface area of the lake reached its lowest point in the satellite observation record in 2004, at 165 km2. Then the recent growth of the lake began reaching its 1984 size by 2006. Based on surface area measurement for …

Direct Numerical Simulation Of Particle Saltation In Turbulent Channel Flow, Chunning Ji, Ante Munjiza, Eldad J. Avital, John J. R. Williams

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

This paper numerically investigates particle saltation in a turbulent channel flow having a rough bed consisting of 2-3 layers of densely packed spheres. The Shield’s Function is 0.065 which is just above the sediment entrainment threshold to give a bed-load regime. The applied methodology is a combination of three technologies, i.e., the direct numerical simulation of turbulent flow, the combined finite-discrete element modelling of the deformation, movement and collision of the particles, and the immersed boundary method for the fluid-solid interaction. It is shown that the presence of entrained particles significantly modifies the flow profiles of velocity, turbulent intensities and …

Weather Generator Tool For The Assessment Of Water Resource Planning In Mediterranean Watersheds, María José Polo, Marta Egüen, Sergio Nieto, Javier Herrero, Asunción Baquerizo, Miguel A. Losada

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Water resource planning requires the forecasting of precipitation at different time scales that are dependent on the planning horizon for decision making. In Mediterranean areas, the uncertainty associated to precipitation occurrence and amount is very much linked to alternate sequences of highly variable dry and wet pluriannual cycles, and the torrential character of some of the rainfall events within the wet season. Moreover, most of the precipitation is associated to cyclonic fronts passing over the region, and their interaction with the regional and local topography. This work presents a Weather Generator (WG) tool to simulate annual sequences of rainfall events …

Next Generation Hydro Software, Gennadii Donchyts, Fedor Baart, Arthur Van Dam, Erik De Goede, Joost Icke, Hans Van Putten

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

A few years ago Deltares started a large multidisciplinary project named Next Generation Hydro Software. The main focus of the project is to improve, harmonize and integrate existing hydro software that has been developed throughout the years. Important technological innovations include development of the new computational core D-Flow Flexible Mesh, as well as the user-friendly, open modelling environment Delta Shell. The project involves more than 40 scientists and software engineers. The new integrated system will allow both water managers and modellers to do their work better and faster. The unique characteristic of the project is that it focuses on the …

Comparison Of Ensemble Kalman Filtering And Particle Filtering On Short-Term Streamflow Forecasting Using A Distributed Hydrologic Model, Seong Jin Noh

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Floods are the most common and widespread disasters in the world and are responsible for a greater number of damaging events than any other type of natural event. However, due to various uncertainties that originate from simulation models, observations, and forcing data, it is still insufficient to obtain accurate flood forecasting results with the required lead times. Recently, ensemble forecasting techniques based on data assimilation (DA) have become increasingly popular, due to their potential ability to explicitly handle the various sources of uncertainty in operational hydrological models. Difficulty lies in DA for flood forecasting because nonlinearity increases sharply during flood …

Decision Support For Flood Control Operation Of A Multi-Purpose Reservoir Considering Operational One-Week Ensemble Forecast Of Precipitation, Yuya Nishioka, Daisuke Nohara, Tomoharu Hori, Yoshinobu Sato

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

atoMulti-purpose reservoirs, which are operated for both of flood control and water use purposes, play an important role in water resources management. Consideration of operational hydrological predictions can potentially provide an improvement in operations of a multi-purpose reservoir by allowing adaptive operation according to the predicted future condition of the reservoir and the target river basin. In this paper, a decision support tool for flood control operation of a multi-purpose reservoir considering middle-range operational ensemble prediction is proposed. One-week Ensemble Forecast of precipitation, which is provided by Japan Meteorological Agency with 51 ensemble members for the coming eight days, is …

Application Of Water Cycle Algorithm For Optimal Cost Design Of Water Distribution Systems, Ali Sadollah, Do Guen Yoo, Jafar Yazdi, Joong Hoon Kim, Younghwan Choi

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Water distribution system (WDS) design is considered as a class of large combinatorial non-linear optimization problems having complex implicit constraints such as conservation of mass and energy equations. Due to the complexity and large feasible solution, traditional optimization techniques are not capable to tackle these kinds of problems. Recently, applications of metaheuristic algorithms, due to their efficiencies and performances, are increased dramatically. In this paper, water cycle algorithm (WCA), a recently developed population-based algorithm, coupled with hydraulic simulator, EPANET, are applied for finding the optimal cost design of WDS. The performance of the WCA is shown using well-known Balerma benchmark …

In-Situ Algae Control Using Water-Lifting Aerators In A Eutrophicated Source Water Reservoir, Xin Sun, Xue Wang, Tinglin Huang, Haibing Cong

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Algal pollution is a common water quality problem in many source water reservoirs worldwide and directly threatens the safety of drinking water. Water-lifting aeration has been recently developed to improve the source water quality and to control the excessive algae growth by transporting algae from the surface water to the bottom water of the reservoir. Taking the Shibianyu Reservoir supplying 20% source water to Xi’an, China, as a study case, the effect of in-situ algae control using water-lifting aerators was numerically investigated with Fluent. Two submerged water-lifting aerators with different circulation flow rates were installed with different local water depths …

Propagation Characteristics Of Density Currents And Implications To Pollutant Transport In A Stratified Reservoir, Xin Sun, Yan Xu, Tinglin Huang, Xiao Tang

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

With global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events were predicted to change more dramatically in the near future while the amount of total precipitation will change slightly. Large volume of turbid inflow will enter the source water reservoir after a heavy rainfall, and evolve in various types of density currents depending on the density difference between the inflow and background water. Density currents play an important role in the thermal structure and pollutant transport in the reservoir. Understanding the behaviors of density current is fundamental to study the changes of source water quality during the flooding season. …

A Probabilistic Tsunami Model For Chile, Vaclav Rara, Cristina Arango, Petr Puncochar, Goran Trendafiloski, Chris Ewing, Adam Podlaha, Deepak Vatvani, Maarten Van Ormondt

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In disaster-prone regions such as Chile, catastrophe models help (re)insurers to understand and quantify the risks facing their businesses. The 2010 (M8.8) Maule (Chile) earthquake highlighted the need for quantifying losses not only from primary perils (in this case earthquake) but also from secondary perils such as tsunamis, which contribute to the overall event losses but are not often modelled. This paper presents a new catastrophe model for Chile developed by Impact Forecasting (IF) in collaboration with Aon Benfield Research partners. The model has the capability to model losses due to earthquake (ground-shaking) and induced tsunamis along the Chilean coast …

An Architectural Overview Of Hydroshare, A Next-Generation Hydrologic Information System, Jefferson Heard, David G. Tarboton, Ray Idaszak, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Dan Ames, Alex Bedig, Anthony M. Castronova, Alva Couch

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

HydroShare is an online, open-source, collaborative system being developed for sharing hydrologic data and models as part of the NSF’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program. The goal of HydroShare is to enable scientists to easily discover and access hydrologic data and models, retrieve them to their desktop, or perform analyses in a distributed computing environment that may include grid, cloud, or high performance computing. Scientists may also publish outcomes (data, results or models) into HydroShare, using the system as a collaboration platform for sharing data, models, and analyses. HydroShare involves a large distributed software development effort requiring collaboration …

Odm Tools Python: Open Source Software For Managing Continuous Sensor Data, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Stephanie Reeder, Amber Spackman Jones

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Hydrologic and water quality data is being collected at high frequencies, for extended durations, and with spatial distributions that require infrastructure for data storage and management. The Observations Data Model (ODM), which is part of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS), was developed as a framework in which to organize, store, and describe point observations data. In this paper we describe ODM Tools Python, which is an open source software application that allows ODM users to query and export, visualize, and edit data stored in an ODM database. Previous versions …

Decolorization Of Hair Dye By Lignocellulosic Waste Materials From Contaminated Waters, Habib Zahir, Michelle Naidoo, Rada-Mayya Kostadinova, Karla A. Ortiz, Rosario Sun-Kuo, Abel E. Navarro

Publications and Research

Basic yellow 57 (BY57) was chosen as a model hair dye due to its prevalence in cosmetics wastewaters. This study proposes the use of lignocellulosic materials like spent tea leaves of peppermint (PM), chai tea (CT), and chamomile (CM) as raw adsorbents for the removal of BY57 from contaminated solutions. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out at room temperature to achieve the maximum adsorption capacity. Results indicate that the highest removal is achieved at pH 6–8, with a minimum adsorbent mass of 75 mg and in the absence of salinity, crowding agents and heavy metals. Adsorption equilibria were modeled according …

On The Effects Of Competition Between Agent-Based Double Auction Markets, Kai Cai, Jinzhong Niu, Simon Parsons

Publications and Research

Real market institutions, stock and commodity exchanges for example, do not occur in isolation. The same stocks and commodities may be listed on multiple exchanges, and traders who want to deal in those goods have a choice of markets in which to trade. While there has been extensive research into agent-based trading in individual markets, there is little work on this kind of multiple market scenario. Our work seeks to address this imbalance, examining how standard economic measures, like allocative efficiency, are affected by the presence of multiple markets for the same good. We find that while dividing traders between …

Looking For Cosmic Neutrino Background, Chiaki Yanagisawa

Publications and Research

Since the discovery of neutrino oscillation in atmospheric neutrinos by the Super-Kamiokande experiment in 1998, study of neutrinos has been one of exciting fields in high-energy physics. All the mixing angles were measured. Quests for (1) measurements of the remaining parameters, the lightest neutrino mass, the CP violating phase(s), and the sign of mass splitting between the mass eigenstates m₃ and m₁, and (2) better measurements to determine whether the mixing angle θ₂₃ is less than π/4, are in progress in a well-controlled manner. Determining the nature of neutrinos, whether they are Dirac or Majorana particles …

The Application Of Dispersion Staining And Infrared Microspectroscopy To Analyze Physical Evidence In Developing Countries, Thiti Mahacharoen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In developing countries like Thailand and in remote forensic laboratories around the world, scientific investigations of crimes are limited by the shortage of trained personnel and financial resources. The premise of this research is that polarized light microscope and dispersion staining methods will be developed which allow investigators with limited training to analyze physical evidence at a minimal cost. This research identifies specific liquids for the analysis of trace evidence using the dispersion staining technique. The development of dispersion staining technique and identification of specific liquid will extend the application of forensic science to remote laboratories and in the field …

The Lived Experience Of Young Adult Burn Survivors' Use Of Social Media, Marie S. Giordano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to illuminate the meaning of social media use by young adult burn survivors. Five females and four males, aged 20-25, who sustained burns > 25%, were interviewed. Van Manen's (1999) phenomenological methodology provided the framework for this study. The meaning of the context of the lived experience is described in the five essential themes of identity, connectivity, social support, making meaning, and privacy. These young adult burn survivors, having experienced the traumatic effects of a burn during adolescence, use social media as a way of expressing their identity, while being cautious about privacy. Part …

Metal Nanoparticles Immobilized On Basic Supports As Catalysts For Hydrogenation And Dehydrogenation Reactions Of Relevance To Cleaner Fossil Fuels And Alternative Sources Of Energy, Reena Rahi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We developed a series of catalysts, composed of metal nanoparticles immobilized on basic supports for the hydrogenation of heteroaromatics of relevance to cleaner fossil fuels and biodiesel, and for the dehydrogenation of heteroaromatics of relevance to hydrogen storage in organic liquids. Our catalyst design involves nanostructured catalysts composed of metal particles immobilized on basic supports capable of ionic mechanism that may avoid catalyst poisoning and enhance catalytic activity.

We prepared a new catalyst composed of Pd nanoparticles immobilized on MgO by NaBH4 reduction of Na2PdCl4 in methanol in the presence of the support. TEM measurements revealed well-dispersed 1.7 nm Pd …

Initial Conditions In High-Energy Collisions, Elena Petreska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is focused on the initial stages of high-energy collisions in the saturation regime. We start by extending the McLerran-Venugopalan distribution of color sources in the initial wave-function of nuclei in heavy-ion collisions. We derive a fourth-order operator in the action and discuss its relevance for the description of color charge distributions in protons in high-energy experiments. We calculate the dipole scattering amplitude in proton-proton collisions with the quartic action and find an agreement with experimental data. We also obtain a modification to the fluctuation parameter of the negative binomial distribution of particle multiplicities in proton-proton experiments. The result …

Variation In Habitat Thresholds: An Analysis Of Minimum Habitat Requirements Of North American Breeding Birds, Yntze Van Der Hoek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many species show dramatic changes in population extinction or persistence probability at particular habitat amounts. These `extinction thresholds' could be translated to conservation targets, under the condition that we can derive generalities. I investigated the level of variation in landscape-level habitat thresholds for a suite of North American, forest-associated, breeding birds. Records from Breeding Bird Atlases and the availability of remotely-sensed land cover data allowed me to compare habitat thresholds for 25 species across the states of Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. I show that variation in thresholds is considerable (Chapter II, III), as thresholds range from …

Dynamics And Manipulation Of Nanomagnets, Liufei Cai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents my work on the spin dynamics of nanomagnets and investigates the possibility of manipulating nanomagnets by various means. Most of the work has been published\cite{LC-PRB2010, LC-PRB2012, LC-PRB2013, LC-EPL2014}. Some has been submitted for publication\cite{LC-arxiv2014}. The structure of this thesis is as follows.

In Chapter 1, I present the theory of manipulation of a nanomagnet by rotating ac fields whose frequency is time dependent. Theory has been developed that maps the problem onto Landau-Zener problem. For the linear frequency sweep the switching phase diagrams are obtained on the amplitude of the ac field and the frequency sweep rate. …

Temporal Information Extraction And Knowledge Base Population, Taylor Cassidy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temporal Information Extraction (TIE) from text plays an important role in many Natural Language Processing and Database applications. Many features of the world are time-dependent, and rich temporal knowledge is required for a more complete and precise understanding of the world. In this thesis we address aspects of two core tasks in TIE. First, we provide a new corpus of labeled temporal relations between events and temporal expressions, dense enough to facilitate a change in research directions from relation classification to identification, and present a system designed to address corresponding new challenges. Second, we implement a novel approach for the …

Yang-Mills Theories As Deformations Of Massive Integrable Models, Axel Cortes Cubero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Yang Mills theory in 2+1 dimensions can be expressed as an array of coupled (1+1)-dimensional principal chiral sigma models. The SU(N) principal chiral sigma model in 1+1 dimensions is integrable, asymptotically free and has massive excitations. We calculate all the form factors and two- point correlation functions of the Noether current and energy-momentum tensor, in

't Hooft's large-N limit (some form factors can be found even at finite N). We use these new form factors to calculate physical quantities in (2+1)-dimensional Yang-Mills theory, generalizing previous SU(2) by P. Orland to SU(N). The anisotropic gauge theory is related to standard isotropic …

The Role Of Water In The Rise, Prominence, And Decline Of Nabataean Petra, Dennis Cummins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper evaluates the rise of Nabataean Petra, its prominence, and eventual decline. The predominant context is effective water management as a pivotal driving factor in the growth of the Nabataean kingdom, which fostered an environment in which its famous incense trade could develop. Rising incense demand was the catalyst for growth from the first century BC through the first century AD; in AD 106 when Rome annexed the Nabataean kingdom, Petra began its gradual decline. In AD 363 an earthquake destroyed much of the city, and Petra did not return to its earlier prominence. From the outset, water played …

The Asymptotic Dirichlet Problems On Manifolds With Unbounded Negative Curvature, Ran Ji

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Elton P. Hsu used probabilistic method to show that the asymptotic Dirichlet problem is uniquely solvable if the curvature satisfies the condition $-C e^{(2-\eta)r(x)} \leq K_M(x)\leq -1$ with $\eta>0$. We give an analytical proof of the same statement. In addition, using this new approach we are able to establish two boundary Harnack inequalities under the curvature condition $-C e^{(2/3-\eta)r(x)} \leq K_M(x)\leq -1$ with $\eta>0$. This implies that there is a natural homeomorphism between the Martin boundary and the geometric boundary of $M$. As far as we know, this is the first result of this kind under unbounded curvature …

Exploring Platform (Semi)Groups For Non-Commutative Key-Exchange Protocols, Ha Lam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this work, my advisor Delaram Kahrobaei, our collaborator David Garber, and I explore polycyclic groups generated from number fields as platform for the AAG key-exchange protocol. This is done by implementing four different variations of the length-based attack, one of the major attacks for AAG, and submitting polycyclic groups to all four variations with a variety of tests. We note that this is the first time all four variations of the length-based attack are compared side by side. We conclude that high Hirsch length polycyclic groups generated from number fields are suitable for the AAG key-exchange protocol.

Delaram Kahrobaei …

Echolocation: Using Word-Burst Analysis To Rescore Keyword Search Candidates In Low-Resource Languages, Justin Richards

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

State of the art technologies for speech recognition are very accurate for heavily studied languages like English. They perform poorly, though, for languages wherein the recorded archives of speech data available to researchers are relatively scant. In the context of these low-resource languages, the task of keyword search within recorded speech is formidable. We demonstrate a method that generates more accurate keyword search results on low-resource languages by studying a pattern not exploited by the speech recognizer. The word-burst, or burstiness, pattern is the tendency for word utterances to appear together in bursts as conversational topics fluctuate. We give evidence …

Stable Commutator Length In Amalgamated Free Products, Timothy Susse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We show that stable commutator length is rational on free products of free Abelian groups amalgamated over Z^k, a class of groups containing the fundamental groups of all torus knot complements. We consider a geometric model for these groups and parameterize all surfaces with specified boundary mapping to this space. Using this work we provide a topological algorithm to compute stable commutator length in these groups. We then use the combinatorics of this algorithm to prove that for a word w in the (p, q)-torus knot complement, scl(w) is quasirational in p and q. Finally, we analyze central …

Asymptotic Invariants And Flatness Of Local Endomorphisms, Nikita Miasnikov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For a local endomorphism of a noetherian local ring we introduce 3 asymptotic invariants one of which we call entropy. We use this notion of entropy to extend numerical conditions in Kunz' regularity criterion to every contracting endomorphism of a noetherian local ring, and to give a characteristic-free interpretation of the definition of Hilbert-Kunz multiplicity. We also show that every finite endomorphism of a complete noetherian local ring of equal characteristic can be lifted to a finite endomorphism of a complete regular local ring. The local ring of an algebraic or analytic variety at a point fixed by a finite …

Bass In Your Face: A Case-Study Exploration Of Networked Culture, Samantha Phyllis Kretmar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using dubstep DJ Bassnectar as a case-study example, this thesis explores the impact of social networks and mobile connectivity. As evidenced by Bassnectar's digitally based approach to experiencing, distributing, and consuming music, these developments have contributed to the shift to a new model I describe as Networked Culture.

Figure 1 is a video highlighting the Bassnectar concert experience. Figure 2 is an audio clip illustrating the "drop" in dubstep. Figure 3 is another audio clip demonstrating the dubstep sound. Figure 4 is an image of an Ableton Live sound library. Figure 5 is an image of Ableton Live's functionality. Figure …