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Articles 61 - 90 of 1031
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Modeling Spatial Distributions Of Tidal Marsh Blue Carbon Using Morphometric Parameters From Lidar, Bonnie Turek
Modeling Spatial Distributions Of Tidal Marsh Blue Carbon Using Morphometric Parameters From Lidar, Bonnie Turek
Masters Theses
Tidal marshes serve as important “blue carbon” ecosystems that accrete large amounts of carbon with limited area. While much attention has been paid to the spatial variability of sedimentation within salt marshes, less work has been done to characterize spatial variability in marsh carbon density. Driven by tidal inundation, surface topography, and sediment supply, soil properties in marshes vary spatially with several parameters, including marsh platform elevation and proximity to the marsh edge and tidal creek network. We used lidar to extract these morphometric parameters from tidal marshes to map soil organic carbon (SOC) at the meter scale. Fixed volume …
Controlling Mechanical Properties Of Well-Defined Polymer Networks, Ipek Sacligil
Controlling Mechanical Properties Of Well-Defined Polymer Networks, Ipek Sacligil
Doctoral Dissertations
Polymer networks are one of the most versatile and highly studied material class that revolutionized many aspects of life. Connecting the final network properties to the molecular parameters of its building blocks remains a major research thrust. Recent advances in network synthesis techniques allowed for accurate predictions of elastic modulus in model networks. Tew Group has developed highly efficient, thiol-norbornene networks with controllable mechanical properties. Chapter 2 focuses on modifying the gel fracture energy predicted by Lake-Thomas theory by accounting for loop defects. This study allowed for a priori estimates of gel fracture energy by combining theory, experiments, and simulations. …
Determining Bond Strengths And Dissociation Dynamics Of Diatomic Metal-Containing Ions By Photofragment Imaging, Schuyler P. Lockwood
Determining Bond Strengths And Dissociation Dynamics Of Diatomic Metal-Containing Ions By Photofragment Imaging, Schuyler P. Lockwood
Doctoral Dissertations
Studies of simple metal ion – ligand complexes have primarily focused on understanding their roles in activating C-H and C-C bonds. However, data are often lacking on the fundamental properties of these species, which can have unusual bond orders and cluttered electronic structures with many states of multi-reference character, complicating their treatment in theoretical studies. Experimental work determining high-precision bond energies, ground state identities and excited state dynamics of a wider variety of metal-containing ions is needed to establish a robust set of well-characterized benchmark molecules. This work describes studies of the energetics and dynamics of several MX+ species, …
Dissecting The Most Extreme Starburst Events In The Universe With Gravitational Lensing, Patrick S. Kamienski
Dissecting The Most Extreme Starburst Events In The Universe With Gravitational Lensing, Patrick S. Kamienski
Doctoral Dissertations
Three billions years after the Big Bang, the rate at which galaxies in the Universe were forming stars was at its peak. Colloquially known as Cosmic Noon, this epoch (redshift z ~ 2) is crucial to our understanding of how galaxies evolve with time. Dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) offer important clues to such fueling and quenching of star formation. With extreme infrared luminosities (1012 − 1014 solar luminosities), their inferred star formation rates are 100−10000 solar masses per year. Yet, the physical mechanisms by which they fuel this short-lived maximal starburst phase remain poorly understood. With this dissertation, …
Rigorous Experimentation For Reinforcement Learning, Scott M. Jordan
Rigorous Experimentation For Reinforcement Learning, Scott M. Jordan
Doctoral Dissertations
Scientific fields make advancements by leveraging the knowledge created by others to push the boundary of understanding. The primary tool in many fields for generating knowledge is empirical experimentation. Although common, generating accurate knowledge from empirical experiments is often challenging due to inherent randomness in execution and confounding variables that can obscure the correct interpretation of the results. As such, researchers must hold themselves and others to a high degree of rigor when designing experiments. Unfortunately, most reinforcement learning (RL) experiments lack this rigor, making the knowledge generated from experiments dubious. This dissertation proposes methods to address central issues in …
Scanning Probe And Spectroscopic Investigations Of Polarization-Driven Electronic Interactions At The Inorganic/Organic Interface Of 2d Materials, Nicholas Hight-Huf
Scanning Probe And Spectroscopic Investigations Of Polarization-Driven Electronic Interactions At The Inorganic/Organic Interface Of 2d Materials, Nicholas Hight-Huf
Doctoral Dissertations
My thesis focuses on understanding the changes in electronic properties of two-dimensional materials produced by surface interactions not limited to charge exchange. Recent work from our group demonstrated that both small molecules and polymers can function as effective charge dopants for monolayered 2D materials such as MoS2 and graphene, changing the Fermi energy by either donating or accepting electron density to/from the 2D material. Additionally, the underlying support material was found to play a significant role, where higher dielectric constant supports result in larger magnitude of Fermi energy shift of the 2D material because less of the dopant interaction …
Self-Limiting Morphologies In Geometrically Frustrated Assemblies, Douglas M. Hall
Self-Limiting Morphologies In Geometrically Frustrated Assemblies, Douglas M. Hall
Doctoral Dissertations
Geometrically frustrated assembly, where locally preferred motifs are incompatible with constraints on global ordering of the assembly, may result in a super-extensive energy penalty to assembly growth and self-limitation of the assembly size. Using theory and simulation, we study how this mechanism may also shape the assembly's boundary and its interior packing, which are distinct morphological changes. In Chapter 1, we provide some background and a theoretical framework for understanding self-limiting behavior due to geometric frustration. Three distinct projects are detailed in the subsequent chapters: original numerical results are presented on competing responses to frustration in helical bundles made of …
Geomorphology Of Tidal Wetlands: Impacts Of Extreme And Annual Flood Events To Salt Marsh And Mangrove Systems, Frances R. Griswold
Geomorphology Of Tidal Wetlands: Impacts Of Extreme And Annual Flood Events To Salt Marsh And Mangrove Systems, Frances R. Griswold
Doctoral Dissertations
Tidal wetlands are vital for buffering coastal settings from the threats of accelerated sea level rise and storms. Understanding the factors that are most influential for the maintenance and recovery of tidal wetlands after extreme events compounded by future accelerated sea level rise is of the utmost importance, yet this knowledge is not well established. Two tidal wetland schemas investigated in this dissertation are mangrove systems in Vieques, Puerto Rico (including robust lagoonal-mangrove forest systems and fringing mangrove forests), and salt marshes in New England. While the climatic forcings, vegetation type, and locations are vastly different for these two tidal …
Effect Of Chemical Identity And Morphology On Amphiphilic-Zwitterionic Block Copolymer Membranes, Ria Ghosh
Effect Of Chemical Identity And Morphology On Amphiphilic-Zwitterionic Block Copolymer Membranes, Ria Ghosh
Doctoral Dissertations
Amphiphilic block copolymers have gained a broad research interest attributed to their self-assembly properties over a range of pH, temperature, and ionic strength. Polyzwitterions have attracted special attention due to their hydrophilicity, charge sensitivity and coulombic attraction of the opposite charges over a range of environments making them a popular material of study in the field of stimuli responsive systems, for example in self-healing hydrogels, and water transport membranes. Combining the stimuli responsiveness and higher hydrophilicity of zwitterionic polymers with self-assembly behavior of amphiphilic block copolymers created an interest to study the effect of composition and identity of the zwitterionic …
Learning From Sequential User Data: Models And Sample-Efficient Algorithms, Aritra Ghosh
Learning From Sequential User Data: Models And Sample-Efficient Algorithms, Aritra Ghosh
Doctoral Dissertations
Recent advances in deep learning have made learning representation from ever-growing datasets possible in the domain of vision, natural language processing (NLP), and robotics, among others. However, deep networks are notoriously data-hungry; for example, training language models with attention mechanisms sometimes requires trillions of parameters and tokens. In contrast, we can often access a limited number of samples in many tasks. It is crucial to learn models from these `limited' datasets. Learning with limited datasets can take several forms. In this thesis, we study how to select data samples sequentially such that downstream task performance is maximized. Moreover, we study …
Thermal Transport Across 2d/3d Van Der Waals Interfaces, Cameron Foss
Thermal Transport Across 2d/3d Van Der Waals Interfaces, Cameron Foss
Doctoral Dissertations
Designing improved field-effect-transistors (FETs) that are mass-producible and meet the fabrication standards set by legacy silicon CMOS manufacturing is required for pushing the microelectronics industry into further enhanced technological generations. Historically, the downscaling of feature sizes in FETs has enabled improved performance, reduced power consumption, and increased packing density in microelectronics for several decades. However, many are claiming Moore's law no longer applies as the era of silicon CMOS scaling potentially nears its end with designs approaching fundamental atomic-scale limits -- that is, the few- to sub-nanometer range. Ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) materials present a new paradigm of materials science and …
Vapor Deposition Of Self-Wrinkling Polymer Films, Robert N. Enright
Vapor Deposition Of Self-Wrinkling Polymer Films, Robert N. Enright
Doctoral Dissertations
Initiated chemical vapor deposition is used to grow polymer films on substrates of various three-dimensional shapes which exhibit wrinkling during film growth, termed self-wrinkling. Self-wrinkling avoids separate film growth and compression steps and more-closely mimics processes observed in nature. The self-wrinkling process is elucidated on flat elastic substrates, revealing control over the amount of compressive stress by changing deposition conditions. Next, a study of films grown on liquid substrates with interface profiles that either resemble cylinders or contain repeating concave cones, saddles, and bowls affirms the principle that the wrinkle roundness increases with interface curvature. The selection of high versus …
The Relative Effects Of Functional Diversity And Structural Complexity On Carbon Dynamics In Late-Successional, Northeastern Mixed Hardwood Forests, Samantha Myers
Masters Theses
Late-successional forests provide a unique opportunity to explore adaptive management approaches that mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels through carbon storage while also enhancing ecological resilience to novel climate and disturbances. Typical benchmarks for adaptive forest management include species diversity and structural complexity, which are widely considered to increase ecosystem stability and productivity. However, the role of functional trait diversity (e.g., variation in leaf and stem traits) in driving forest productivity and ecosystem resilience remains underexplored. We leveraged existing continuous forest inventory (CFI) data and collected local functional trait observations from CFI plots within late-successional forests in western Massachusetts to explore …
Differential Toxicity Of Pm2.5 Components And Modified Health Effects Modeling: A Case Study In Nepal, Jeremy Brownholtz
Differential Toxicity Of Pm2.5 Components And Modified Health Effects Modeling: A Case Study In Nepal, Jeremy Brownholtz
Masters Theses
During the latter part of the 20th century, a transition away from coal as a major energy source in developed countries was accompanied by a notable decrease in air pollution-related deaths in those countries. Currently the same phenomenon is being observed in developing nations like China and India. However, many areas that do still rely on coal for their energy production or industrial needs also reflect a gap in research on the effects of those specific processes on local populations. Located in Nepal at the foot of the Himalayan Plateau, Kathmandu represents one such location. The local economy of …
Inverse Probability Weighting In Survival Analysis And Network Analysis, Yukun Lu
Inverse Probability Weighting In Survival Analysis And Network Analysis, Yukun Lu
Doctoral Dissertations
Inverse probability weighting is a popular technique to accommodate selection bias due to non-random sampling and missing data. In the first chapter, we develop an inverse probability weighted estimator and an augmented inverse probability weighted estimator of regression coefficients for a linear model with randomly censored covariates, when the censoring mechanism may be dependent on the outcome. We investigate the asymptotic properties of both estimators and evaluate their finite sample performance through extensive simulation studies. We apply the proposed methods to an Alzheimer’s disease study. In the second chapter, we present an application of network analysis in a study of …
Water Resources Planning Under Deep Uncertainty For Physically, Socially, And Politically Complex Systems, Sarah St. George Freeman
Water Resources Planning Under Deep Uncertainty For Physically, Socially, And Politically Complex Systems, Sarah St. George Freeman
Doctoral Dissertations
Water supply systems, particularly those of large cities, are complex systems linking supply, regulatory and distribution infrastructure, and points of use. Despite their physical complexities, it is infrequent that full supply, distribution, end use, and feedbacks therein are considered in an integrated manner. These complex systems-of-systems face large uncertainties related to physical aspects such as degradation of infrastructure, changing demand, and climate variability and change. Though great, such physical uncertainties often pale in comparison to the those related to the human systems in place to manage them and yet uncertainty in the decision-making landscape is often grossly simplified in our …
Manganese Bioavailability Drives Organic Matter Transformations Across Oxic-Anoxic Interfaces Via Biotic And Abiotic Pathways, Nathan A. Chin
Manganese Bioavailability Drives Organic Matter Transformations Across Oxic-Anoxic Interfaces Via Biotic And Abiotic Pathways, Nathan A. Chin
Masters Theses
Soil organic matter decomposition is a critical process that affects nutrient cycling, CO2 emissions, and carbon storage in terrestrial environments. Recent evidence suggests reactive manganese (Mn) phases, potent oxidants that depolymerize compounds like lignocellulose in soil organic matter, act as critical drivers of organic matter decomposition in soil and sediment environments. Furthermore, oxic-anoxic interfaces (OAIs) have been shown to be crucial hotspots for the formation of reactive Mn(III) species and associated organic matter degradation. However, the extent to which microbially mediated Mn(III) formation and subsequently Mn(III)-driven organic matter oxidation depends on Mn availability remains largely unknown. Additionally, the relative …
Identifying New Invasives In The Face Of Climate Change: A Focus On Sleeper Populations, Ayodelé C. O'Uhuru
Identifying New Invasives In The Face Of Climate Change: A Focus On Sleeper Populations, Ayodelé C. O'Uhuru
Masters Theses
Sleeper populations are established populations of a non-native species whose population growth is limited by one or more abiotic or biotic conditions, such as climate change. While the northeastern US is predicted to be a hotspot for future invasions, identifying potential sleeper populations before they become invasive can inform proactive, climate-smart invasive species management. I focused on 169 introduced species that are established in one or more northeastern states. I used the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) framework to systematically identify and review the peer-reviewed literature for these candidate species to quantify their negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts. …
Labeled Modules In Programs That Evolve, Anil K. Saini
Labeled Modules In Programs That Evolve, Anil K. Saini
Doctoral Dissertations
Multiple methods have been developed for Inductive Program Synthesis, i.e., synthesizing programs consistent with a set of input-output examples. One such method is genetic programming, which searches for programs with desirable properties from the space of all possible programs through an iterated process of variation and selection that is inspired by natural evolution. Genetic programming has been successful in solving problems from multiple domains. These problems are often challenging because of the range of data types and control structures they require to be solved. Nonetheless, there are many programming problems that are routinely solved by human programmers that cannot be …
Enabling Daily Tracking Of Individual’S Cognitive State With Eyewear, Soha Rostaminia
Enabling Daily Tracking Of Individual’S Cognitive State With Eyewear, Soha Rostaminia
Doctoral Dissertations
Research studies show that sleep deprivation causes severe fatigue, impairs attention and decision making, and affects our emotional interpretation of events, which makes it a big threat to public safety, and mental and physical well-being. Hence, it would be most desired if we could continuously measure one’s drowsiness and fatigue level, their emotion while making decisions, and assess their sleep quality in order to provide personalized feedback or actionable behavioral suggestions to modulate sleep pattern and alertness levels with the aim of enhancing performance, well-being, and quality of life. While there have been decades of studies on wearable devices, we …
Low Resource Language Understanding In Voice Assistants, Subendhu Rongali
Low Resource Language Understanding In Voice Assistants, Subendhu Rongali
Doctoral Dissertations
Voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant have become ubiquitous. They rely on spoken language understanding, which typically consists of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) component and a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) component. ASR takes user speech as input and generates a text transcription. NLU takes the text transcription as input and generates a semantic parse to identify the requested actions, called intents (play music, turn on lights, etc.) and any relevant entities, called slots (which song to play? which lights to turn on?).
These components require massive amounts of training data to achieve good performance. …
Neural Approaches For Language-Agnostic Search And Recommendation, Hamed Rezanejad Asl Bonab
Neural Approaches For Language-Agnostic Search And Recommendation, Hamed Rezanejad Asl Bonab
Doctoral Dissertations
There are significant efforts toward developing better neural approaches for information retrieval problems. However, the vast majority of these studies are conducted using English-only data. In fact, trends and statistics of non-English content and users on the Internet show exponential growth and that novel information retrieval systems need to be language-agnostic; they need to bridge the language barrier between users and content, leverage data from high-resource settings for lower-resourced settings, and be able to extend to new languages and local markets easily. To this end, we focus on search and recommendation as two vital components of information systems. We explore …
Quantum Field Theory In Nontrivial Backgrounds And Particle Production, Yue Qiu
Quantum Field Theory In Nontrivial Backgrounds And Particle Production, Yue Qiu
Doctoral Dissertations
Production of particles from nontrivial backgrounds is an important phenomenon in quantum field theory. In this thesis, we review some useful formulae of Bogoliubov formalism and explain how to derive the spectra of particle production. We then apply the formalism to study several scenarios. We first study the Schwinger effect in compact $(1+1)$ dimensions spacetime. Using the in-in formalism, we compute the correction to the electric field from the creation of charged particles both when the spatial dimension is compact and when it is non-compact. Secondly, we investigate the thermodynamic properties of the Schwarzschild-de Sitter (SdS) system. We explore particle …
Vapor Deposition Strategies For Tuning Surface And Interface Chemistry For Optoelectronics And Biosensors, Kwang-Won Park
Vapor Deposition Strategies For Tuning Surface And Interface Chemistry For Optoelectronics And Biosensors, Kwang-Won Park
Doctoral Dissertations
Ordered assemblies of molecular semiconductors have been of particular interest for their integral role in organic optoelectronics, originating from interesting optical and charge transport properties. Compared with disordered films, organized nanostructured organic semiconductors display enhanced optoelectronic characteristics. However, past studies using template layer and self-assembly strategies are not applicable to molecular heterointerfaces and cannot be practically integrated into existing device fabrication routines to achieve large-area optoelectronic devices. This dissertation demonstrates unprecedented strategies to create one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures of molecular semiconductors using vapor deposition techniques. We begin this work by investigating how the interplay between dipole-dipole and van der Waals interactions …
Unobtrusive Assessment Of Upper-Limb Motor Impairment Using Wearable Inertial Sensors, Brandon R. Oubre
Unobtrusive Assessment Of Upper-Limb Motor Impairment Using Wearable Inertial Sensors, Brandon R. Oubre
Doctoral Dissertations
Many neurological diseases cause motor impairments that limit autonomy and reduce health-related quality of life. Upper-limb motor impairments, in particular, significantly hamper the performance of essential activities of daily living, such as eating, bathing, and changing clothing. Assessment of impairment is necessary for tracking disease progression, measuring the efficacy of interventions, and informing clinical decision making. Impairment is currently assessed by trained clinicians using semi-quantitative rating scales that are limited by their reliance on subjective, visual assessments. Furthermore, existing scales are often burdensome to administer and do not capture patients' motor performance in home and community settings, resulting in a …
Estimation Of Causal Effects In Complex Clustered Data, Joshua R. Nugent
Estimation Of Causal Effects In Complex Clustered Data, Joshua R. Nugent
Doctoral Dissertations
Analysis of clustered data from randomized trials or observational data often poses theoretical and practical statistical challenges, including but not limited to small numbers of independent units, many adjustment variables, continuous exposures, and/or differential clustering across trial arms. Further, commonly-used parametric methods rely on assumptions that may be violated in practice. Motivated by three scientific questions in public health, methods are developed and/or demonstrated for non-parametric estimation of causal effects. In Chapter 1, methods are elaborated for a cluster randomized trial (CRT) with missing individual-level data at baseline and follow-up, a complex sampling strategy, and limited number of clusters. Chapter …
Applications Of Statistical Physics To Ecology: Ising Models And Two-Cycle Coupled Oscillators, Vahini Reddy Nareddy
Applications Of Statistical Physics To Ecology: Ising Models And Two-Cycle Coupled Oscillators, Vahini Reddy Nareddy
Doctoral Dissertations
Many ecological systems exhibit noisy period-2 oscillations and, when they are spatially extended, they undergo phase transition from synchrony to incoherence in the Ising universality class. Period-2 cycles have two possible phases of oscillations and can be represented as two states in the bistable systems. Understanding the dynamics of ecological systems by representing their oscillations as bistable states and developing dynamical models using the tools from statistical physics to predict their future states is the focus of this thesis. As the ecological oscillators with two-cycle behavior undergo phase transitions in the Ising universality class, many features of synchrony and equilibrium …
A Representation For Cmc 1 Surfaces In H^3 Using Two Pairs Of Spinors, Tetsuya Nakamura
A Representation For Cmc 1 Surfaces In H^3 Using Two Pairs Of Spinors, Tetsuya Nakamura
Doctoral Dissertations
For Bryant's representation $\Phi\colon \widetilde{M} \rightarrow \SL_2(\C)$ of a constant mean curvature (CMC) $1$ surface $f\colon M\rightarrow \Hyp^3$ in the $3$-dimensional hyperbolic space $\Hyp^3$, we will give a formula expressed only by the global $\tbinom{P}{Q}$ and local $\tbinom{p}{q}$ spinors and their derivatives. We will see that this formula is derived from the Klein correspondence, understanding $\Phi$ as a null curve immersion into a $3$-dimensional quadric. We will show that, if $f$ is a CMC $1$ surface with smooth ends modeled on a compact Riemann surface, the linear change of $\tbinom{P}{Q}\oplus \tbinom{p}{-q}$ by some $\Sp(\C^4)$ matrices gives rise to a transformtion …
High-Quality Automatic Program Repair, Manish Motwani
High-Quality Automatic Program Repair, Manish Motwani
Doctoral Dissertations
Software developers spend significant time and effort fixing bugs. Automatic program repair promises to significantly reduce bug-fixing costs. Program repair requires: fault localization — identifying program elements that cause the bug, patch generation — identifying modifications to those program elements to attempt to repair the bug, and patch validation — verifying that the modification actually repairs the bug. Most automatic program repair techniques use the developer-written tests for the repair process and produce seemingly good patches for 11–19% of the bugs in real-world software. However, most of these patches are not correct, as they overfit to the developer-written tests and …
Synthesis And Assembly Of Polymer Materials At Interfaces, Xiaoshuang Wei
Synthesis And Assembly Of Polymer Materials At Interfaces, Xiaoshuang Wei
Doctoral Dissertations
The overarching goal of the thesis is to understand growth and assembly of polymer materials at interfaces. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 study simultaneous polymer growth and assembly at fluid interfaces, where in-situ photopolymerization and vapor phase deposition were utilized to grow polymers, respectively. Chapter 4 leverages capillary condensation to pattern polymer growth at solid substrates. Chapter 1 provides background information on polymer materials at interfaces, and vapor phase deposition method (initiated chemical vapor deposition, iCVD) to grow polymers. This chapter also reviews polymer thin film wetting, and colloidal assemblies at interfaces. In Chapter 2, we demonstrate the preparation …