Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Spectral Reflectance As An Indicator Of Foliar Concentrations Of Arsenic In Common Sunflower (Helianthus Annuus), Yuridia Patricia Peralta De Gandy Dec 2010

Spectral Reflectance As An Indicator Of Foliar Concentrations Of Arsenic In Common Sunflower (Helianthus Annuus), Yuridia Patricia Peralta De Gandy

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Studies were conducted to investigate the use of spectral reflectance by foliage of common sunflower as a potential indicator of arsenic contamination of soil. Germination method was developed for sunflower seeds, and cohorts of sunflower seedlings in hydroponic tanks were established. The cohorts were exposed to 0 ppm, 5 ppm, 7.5 ppm, and 10 ppm treatments of As (V) and reflectance measurements of foliage were collected using a spectroradiometer during two experiments.Results demonstrated the feasibility of using spectral reflectance by foliage of common sunflower as a potential indicator of arsenic contamination. In both experiments, arsenic concentrations in leaf tissues were …


Identification Of Parameters And The Distribution Of The Maximum And The Minimum, Lijuan Bi Aug 2010

Identification Of Parameters And The Distribution Of The Maximum And The Minimum, Lijuan Bi

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In problems of competing risks, where an individual may be subject to m causes of death and X(i) is the lifetime of an individual exposed to the ith cause, the X(i)s are not observable but only is their minimum, and inference is needed on the X(i) based on their minimum. The same is the case with a m-component system, where the components are connected in series, and we are interested in inference on the lifetimes of the individual components. These examples motivate problems on parameter identification by the distribution of the minimum. Similarly, the example of a m-component system where …


Distributed Storage And Queryng Techniques For A Semantic Web Of Scientific Workflow Provenance, Jaime Alberto Navarro Aug 2010

Distributed Storage And Queryng Techniques For A Semantic Web Of Scientific Workflow Provenance, Jaime Alberto Navarro

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In scientific workflow environments, scientists depend on provenance, which records the history of an experiment. Resource Description Framework is frequently used to represent provenance based on vocabularies such as the Open Provenance Model. For complex scientific workflows that generate large amounts of RDF triples, single-machine provenance management becomes inadequate over time. In this thesis, we research how HBase capabilities can be leveraged for distributed storage and querying of provenance data represented in RDF. We architect the ProvBase system that incorporates an HBase/Hadoop backend, propose a storage schema to hold provenance triples, and design querying algorithms to evaluate SPARQL queries in …


Multi-Soliton Solutions To A Model Equation For Shallow Water Waves, Zhijiang Qiao Aug 2010

Multi-Soliton Solutions To A Model Equation For Shallow Water Waves, Zhijiang Qiao

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In Soliton theory, Hirota direct method is most efficient tool for seeking one soliton solutions or multi-soliton solutions of integrable nonlinear partial differential equations. The key step of the Hirota direct method is to transform the given equation into its Hirota bilinear form. Once the bilinear form of the given equation is found, we can construct the soliton and multi-soliton solutions of that model. Many interesting characteristics of Pfaffians were discovered through studies of soliton equations. In this thesis, a shallow water wave model and its bilinear equation are investigated. Using Hirota direct method, we obtain the multi-soliton solutions and …


Study On Energy Absorption Behaviors Of Hydrophobic Mesoporous Materials, Zhongyuan Sun Aug 2010

Study On Energy Absorption Behaviors Of Hydrophobic Mesoporous Materials, Zhongyuan Sun

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Nanoporous energy absorption system has been developed tremendously as an advanced energy storage system in recent years. This research is to optimize the mesoporous energy absorption matrixes via surface treatment to find out the optimum conditions for higher energy conversion efficiency. Five mesoporous silica matrixes with pore size in a range of 3 to 31.6 nm were investigated. Six alkylchlorosilanes were used as the modification reagents. The results showed that the energy absorption density via pressure-induced infiltration is as high as 8.0 J/g which is 100 times larger than that of conventional energy absorption materials. The controllability of the energy …


New Algorithms For Protein Structure Comparison And Protein Structure Prediction, Zaixin Lu Jul 2010

New Algorithms For Protein Structure Comparison And Protein Structure Prediction, Zaixin Lu

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Proteins show a great variety of 3D conformations, which can be used to infer their evolutionary relationship and to classify them into more general groups; therefore algorithms of protein structure alignment, protein similarity search and protein structure prediction are very helpful for protein biologists. We developed new algorithms for the problems in this field. The algorithms are tested with structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and SCOP, a Structure Classification of Protein Database. The experimental results show that our tools are more efficient than some well known systems for finding similar protein structures and predicting protein structures.


Modeling Instabilities Of Electrically Driven Jets With Finite Conductivity Under Constant Or Variable Applied Field, Saulo I. Orizaga Jul 2010

Modeling Instabilities Of Electrically Driven Jets With Finite Conductivity Under Constant Or Variable Applied Field, Saulo I. Orizaga

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

We investigate the problem of spatial (S), combined spatial and temporal (CST), and non-linear temporal instability (NLT) of electrically driven viscous jets with finite electrical conductivity and in the presence of either a constant or a variable applied electric field. A mathematical model, which is developed and used for the spatially growing disturbances in electrically driven jet flows, leads to a lengthy equation for the unknown growth rate and frequency of the disturbances. This equation is solved numerically using Newton‟s Method. For neutral temporal stability boundary, we find, in particular, two new spatial modes of instability under certain conditions. One …


Algorithmic Temperature 1 Self-Assembly, Yunhui Fu Jul 2010

Algorithmic Temperature 1 Self-Assembly, Yunhui Fu

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

We investigate the power of the Wang tile self-assembly model at temperature 1, a threshold value that permits attachment between any two tiles that share even a single bond. When restricted to deterministic assembly in the plane, no temperature 1 assembly system has been shown to build a shape with a tile complexity smaller than the diameter of the shape. Our work shows a sharp contrast in achievable tile complexity at temperature 1 if either growth into the third dimension or a small probability of error are permitted. Motivated by applications in nanotechnology and molecular computing, and the plausibility of …


Duffing-Van Der Pol Type Oscillator, Guangyue Gao Jul 2010

Duffing-Van Der Pol Type Oscillator, Guangyue Gao

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The nonlinear Duffing-van der Pol oscillator system is studied by means of the Lie symmetry reduction method and the Preller-Singer method. With the particular case of coefficients, this system has physical relevance as a simple model in certain flow-induced structural vibration problems. Under certain parametric conditions, we are concerned with the first integrals of the Duffing-van der Pol oscillator system. After making a series of variable transformations, we apply the Preller-Singer method and the Lie symmetry reduction method to obtain the first integrals of the simplified equations without complicated calculations.


Soliton Solutions To Integrable Equations, Haiqi Wang Jul 2010

Soliton Solutions To Integrable Equations, Haiqi Wang

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In recent years, integrable systems and soliton theory play an important role in the study of nonlinear water wave equations. In this thesis, we will focus on the procedure of how to get soliton solutions for integrable equations. The fundamental idea is to use the traveling wave setting to convert a partial differential equation to an ordinary differential equation and to solve ordinary differential equations yields soliton solutions for the integrable equations under certain boundary conditions at both negative and positive infinities. In our work, we will consider five integrable equations and present their solitons solutions, one of which will …


A Proposal For The Mechanism Of The Iron-Ascorbate, Fenton, And Hydroxyl Radical-Quenching Series, Jonathan Velasco May 2010

A Proposal For The Mechanism Of The Iron-Ascorbate, Fenton, And Hydroxyl Radical-Quenching Series, Jonathan Velasco

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The Fenton reaction between [Fe(II)] and [HOOH] is observed in the presence of ascorbic acid, [AscH-], during [Fe(III)] and HO• reduction; this is done as part of consecutive redox reactions between [Fe(III)] and [Fe(II)]. As a result, the rate orders with respect to [Fe(III)], ascorbic acid, and [HOOH] are of (approximately) 2nd, 1st, and 4 th order, respectively. However, the rate constants for each reaction in this study show patterns when measured against solution pH; empirically, reactions proceed faster at smaller pH and vice versa.


Identification Of Phosphatases Involved In E2f-Associated Apoptosis, Liza D. Morales Smith May 2010

Identification Of Phosphatases Involved In E2f-Associated Apoptosis, Liza D. Morales Smith

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Retinoblastoma (Rb) is a tumor suppressor protein that controls a critical checkpoint between the G1 phase and the S phase of the cell cycle. Rb is able to suppress cell proliferation by binding to the E2F family of transcription factors, inhibiting its ability to activate transcription of genes necessary for cell cycle progression. Mutations in proteins involved with the Rb/E2F pathway can result in hyper-proliferative cells that overtime can acquire and accumulate additional mutations, which could lead to tumorigenesis. To prevent hyper-proliferation, aberrant cells can be eliminated through apoptosis. E2F can induce apoptosis through two pathways: through transactivation of the …


Parameterized Algorithm For 3-Sat, Yi Gao May 2010

Parameterized Algorithm For 3-Sat, Yi Gao

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The SAT problem is the classical NP-complete problem. In the past, many methods have been proposed for solving this problem. We investigated a new method for 3-SAT problem, which is a fixed parameterized algorithm proposed in this paper first. This method uses a fixed parameter k, where k is the number of true values in an assignment for checking whether the formula is satisfied or not. The complexity of our algorithm is O(3k ), which is exponentially independent of the number of variables. Theoretical analysis shows that when k is small, this method has smaller search space and higher speed.


A Synthetic Approach Toward Novel Β-Lactams, Mohamed Hashim May 2010

A Synthetic Approach Toward Novel Β-Lactams, Mohamed Hashim

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

β-lactam antibiotics which is a class by itself, covers a wide range of antibiotics that includes penicillin, penicillin derivatives, cephalosporins, carbapenems, and any antibiotic agent that contains a 2-azetidinone ring.[2] In recent past research it has been established that β-lactams show therapeutic and anticancer activity with low toxicity. [2] It has also been reported by our lab that N-chrysenyl and N-phenanthrenyl 3-acetoxy-4-aryl-2- azetidinone can exhibit potent selective anticancer activity towards prostate, colon, pancreatic cancer and leukemia at low concentrations, all of this was revealed by means of a structure activity study. [2] The goal of our research is the synthesis …


Genotyping Of Tgif Polymorphisms Associated With Schizophrenia And Psychosis, George Vera Jr. May 2010

Genotyping Of Tgif Polymorphisms Associated With Schizophrenia And Psychosis, George Vera Jr.

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Polymorphisms in Transforming Growth β-Induced Factor (TGIF) have been found to contribute to the risk of development of psychosis and related disorders. Identifying the genes responsible for causing schizophrenia and psychosis will allow for treatment at an earlier stage of development, saving the patient problems, time, and money. The purpose of this experiment is to determine the haplotype of DNA samples obtained from earlier experiments. The DNA samples were collected from people with schizophrenia in Costa Rica, Southern Texas, and Northern Mexico. The samples were tested using 5 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and amplified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Haplotypes …


Dna Staged Self-Assembly At Temperature 1, Nicholas H. Guiterrez May 2010

Dna Staged Self-Assembly At Temperature 1, Nicholas H. Guiterrez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

We introduce alternate temperature 1 self-assembly constructions of an n x n square by efficiently utilizing bins and stages to achieve desirable results. These bins are able to contain a variety of tiles or supertiles, which are then mixed together in a pre-determined sequence of distinct stages. The basic 2D tile assembly model at temperature 1 uses 2n-1 tile types to construct a square. The model only utilizes one bin and occurs all in one stage. We will demonstrate how the use of bins and stages will allow for the construction of these squares more efficiently.


Trace Analysis Of Volatile Organic Compounds In The Water Of The Arroyo Colorado And The Lower Laguna Madre Utilizing E.P.A.Sw846 Method 8260, Humberto Valdez May 2010

Trace Analysis Of Volatile Organic Compounds In The Water Of The Arroyo Colorado And The Lower Laguna Madre Utilizing E.P.A.Sw846 Method 8260, Humberto Valdez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) can cause a major environmental concern since they create a hazard to public health and the environment. This study focused on determining concentration of VOCs in Arroyo Colorado waters and the Lower Laguna Madre (LLM) utilizing GC/MS. Little is known on the concentration and composition of VOCs. Toluene was the most common VOC. Concentrations ranged from 0.0010 mg/L to 0.0039 mg/L. Analysis of a sediment pore water sample collected near the mouth of the Arroyo Colorado also detected toluene (0.0023 mg/L). This study showed that VOCs were concentrated near the county boat launch and somewhat downstream. …