Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Purification Of Sodium Sulfate By Crystallization, Perla Teresita Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Sodium sulfate can be recovered from a dilute solution by concentrating it by conventional water treatment techniques like reverse osmosis and electrodialysis; however, those processes also concentrate impurities like arsenic. The sodium sulfate would have commercial use if it can be recovered in an arsenic-free form. This study demonstrated that sodium sulfate could be separated from impurities using slow cooling crystallization in a novel apparatus developed and designed during the experimentation. This device is called a heat exchanger crystallizer and allows slow cooling crystallization in order to grow pure crystals of sodium sulfate decahydrate. Crystals grown in the heat exchanger …

Evaluation Of Emission Control Strategies To Reduce Ozone Pollution In The Paso Del Norte Region Using A Photochemical Air Quality Modeling System, Victor Hugo Valenzuela

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Air pollution emissions control strategies to reduce ozone precursor pollutants are analyzed by applying a photochemical modeling system. Simulations of air quality conditions during an ozone episode which occurred in June, 2006 are undertaken by increasing or reducing area source emissions in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Two air pollutants are primary drivers in the formation of tropospheric ozone. Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) undergo multiple chemical reactions under favorable meteorological conditions to form ozone, which is a secondary pollutant that irritates respiratory systems in sensitive individuals especially the elderly and young children.

The U.S. Environmental Protection …

Decision Making Under Interval Uncertainty (And Beyond), Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To make a decision, we must find out the user's preference, and help the user select an alternative which is the best -- according to these preferences. Traditional utility-based decision theory is based on a simplifying assumption that for each two alternatives, a user can always meaningfully decide which of them is preferable. In reality, often, when the alternatives are close, the user is often unable to select one of these alternatives. In this chapter, we show how we can extend the utility-based decision theory to such realistic (interval) cases.

Metrological Self-Assurance Of Data Processing Software, Vladik Kreinovich, Leonid Reznik, Konstantin K. Semenov, Gennady N. Solopchenko

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The metrological self-assurance for data processing software is discussed. The way to achieve this property for software is presented.

F-Transform In View Of Trend Extraction, Irina Perfilieva, Vladik Kreinovich, Vilém Novák

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the analysis of time series, it is important to decompose the original values into trend, cycle, seasonal component, and noise. In this paper, we provide a theoretical justification of the fact that the F-transform can be used for this purpose. We formulate "natural" requirements on the trend extraction procedure and then show that the inverse F-transform fulfils all of them.

Zadeh's Vision Of Going From Fuzzy To Computing With Words: From The Idea's Origin To Current Successes To Remaining Challenges, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

No abstract provided.

Should Voting Be Mandatory? Democratic Decision Making From The Economic Viewpoint, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Boakun Li

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many decisions are made by voting. At first glance, the more people participate in the voting process, the more democratic -- and hence, better -- the decision. In this spirit, to encourage everyone's participation, several countries make voting mandatory. But does mandatory voting really make decisions better for the society? In this paper, we show that from the viewpoint of decision making theory, it is better to allow undecided voters not to participate in the voting process. We also show that the voting process would be even better -- for the society as a whole -- if we allow partial …

Thirty-Two Sample Audio Search Tasks, Nigel G. Ward, Steven D. Werner

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Searching in audio archives is potentially very useful, and good evaluations can guide development to realize that promise. However most current evaluation programs are technology-centric, rather than user-oriented and task-centric. This paper examines current and potential audio search needs and scenarios, and presents a sample set of thirty-two diverse audio search tasks to support more realistic evaluations.

Ubiquity Of Data And Model Fusion: From Geophysics And Environmental Sciences To Estimating Individual Risk During An Epidemic, Omar Ochoa, Aline Jaimes, Christian Servin, Craig Tweedie, Aaron Velasco, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we need to combine the results of measuring a local value of a certain quantity with results of measuring average values of this same quantity. For example, in geosciences, we need to combine the seismic models (which describe density at different locations and depths) with gravity models which describe density averaged over certain regions. Similarly, in estimating the risk of an epidemic to an individual, we need to combine probabilities describe the risk to people of the corresponding age group, to people of the corresponding geographical region, etc. In this paper, we provide general techniques for …

Interval Uncertainty As The Basis For A General Description Of Uncertainty: A Position Paper, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Uncertainty is ubiquitous. Depending on what information we have, we get different types of uncertainty. For each type of uncertainty, techniques have been developed for efficient representation and processing of this uncertainty. However, the plethora of different uncertainty techniques is often confusing for practitioners. The situation is especially difficult in frequent situations when we need to gauge the uncertainty of the result of complex multi-stage data processing, and different data inputs are known with different types of uncertainty. To avoid this problem, it is necessary to develop and implement a general approach to representing and processing different types of uncertainty. …

How To Define Relative Approximation Error Of An Interval Estimate: A Proposal, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The traditional definition of a relative approximation error of an estimate X as the ratio |X - x|/|x| does not work when the actual value x is 0. To avoid this problem, we propose a new definition |X - x|/|X|. We show how this definition can be naturally extended to the case when instead of a numerical estimate X, we have an interval estimate [x], i.e., an interval that is guaranteed to contain the actual (unknown) value x.

If Energy Is Not Preserved, Then Planck's Constant Is No Longer A Constant: A Theorem, Vladik Kreinovich, Andres Ortiz

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For any physical theory, to experimentally check its validity, we need to formulate an alternative theory and check whether the experimental results are consistent with the original theory or with an alternative theory. In particular, to check whether energy is preserved, it is necessary to formulate an alternative theory in which energy is not preserved. Formulating such a theory is not an easy task in quantum physics, where the usual Schroedinger equation implicitly assumes the existence of an energy (Hamiltonian) operator whose value is preserved. In this paper, we show that the only way to get a consistent quantum theory …

Towards Unique Physically Meaningful Definitions Of Random And Typical Objects, Luc Longpre, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To distinguish between random and non-random sequence, Kolmogorov and Martin-Lof proposed a new definition of randomness, according to which an object (e.g., a sequence of 0s and 1s) if random if it satisfies all probability laws, i.e., in more precise terms, if it does not belong to any definable set of probability measure 0. This definition reflect the usual physicists' idea that events with probability 0 cannot happen. Physicists -- especially in statistical physics -- often claim a stronger statement: that events with a very small probability cannot happen either. A modification of Kolmogorov-Martin-Lof's (KLM) definition has been proposed to …

Why Clayton And Gumbel Copulas: A Symmetry-Based Explanation, Vladik Kreinovich, Hung T. Nguyen, Songsak Sriboonchitta

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In econometrics, many distributions are non-Gaussian. To describe dependence between non-Gaussian variables, it is usually not sufficient to provide their correlation: it is desirable to also know the corresponding copula. There are many different families of copulas; which family shall we use? In many econometric applications, two families of copulas have been most efficient: the Clayton and the Gumbel copulas. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical efficiency, by showing that these copulas naturally follow from reasonable symmetry assumptions. This symmetry justification also allows us to provide recommendations about which families of copulas we should use …

Orders On Intervals Over Partially Ordered Sets: Extending Allen's Algebra And Interval Graph Results, Francisco Zapata, Vladik Kreinovich, Cliff Joslyn, Emilie Hogan

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To make a decision, we need to compare the values of quantities. In many practical situations, we know the values with interval uncertainty. In such situations, we need to compare intervals. Allen's algebra describes all possible relations between intervals on the real line which are generated by the ordering of endpoints; ordering relations between such intervals have also been well studied. In this paper, we extend this description to intervals in an arbitrary partially ordered set (poset). In particular, we explicitly describe ordering relations between intervals that generalize relation between points. As auxiliary results, we provide a logical interpretation of …

Possible And Necessary Orders, Equivalences, Etc.: From Modal Logic To Modal Mathematics, Francisco Zapata, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In practice, we are often interested in order relations (e.g., when we describe preferences) or equivalence relations (e.g., when we describe clustering). Often, we do not have a complete information about the corresponding relation; as a result, we have several relations consistent with our knowledge. In such situations, it is desirable to know which elements a and b are possibly connected by the relation and which are necessarily connected by this relation. In this paper, we provide a full description of all such possible and necessary orders and equivalence relations. For example, possible orders are exactly reflexive relations, while necessary …

In Applications, A Rigorous Proof Is Not Enough: It Is Also Important To Have An Intuitive Understanding, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

From a purely mathematical viewpoint, once a statement is rigorously proven, it should be accepted as true. Surprisingly, in applications, users are often reluctant to accept a rigorously proven statement until the proof is supplemented by its intuitive explanation. In this paper, we show that this seemingly unreasonable reluctance makes perfect sense: the proven statement is about the mathematical model which is an approximation to the actual system; an intuitive explanation provides some confidence that the statement holds not only for the model, but also for systems approximately equal to this model -- in particular, for the actual system of …

From Unbiased Numerical Estimates To Unbiased Interval Estimates, Baokun Li, Gang Xiang, Vladik Kreinovich, Panagios Moscopoulos

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the main objectives of statistics is to estimate the parameters of a probability distribution based on a sample taken from this distribution. Of course, since the sample is finite, the estimate X is, in general, different from the actual value x of the corresponding parameter. What we can require is that the corresponding estimate is unbiased, i.e., that the mean value of the difference X - x is equal to 0: E[X] = x. In some problems, unbiased estimates are not possible. We show that in some such problems, it is possible to have interval unbiased estimates, i.e., …

Kansei Engineering: Towards Optimal Set Of Designs, Van-Nam Huynh, Octavio Lerma, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many engineering situations, we need to take into account subjective user preferences; taking such preference into account is known as {\em Kansei Engineering}. In this paper, we formulate the problem of selecting optimal set of designs in Kansei engineering as a mathematical optimization problem, and we provide an explicit solution to this optimization problem.

How To Define Mean, Variance, Etc., For Heavy-Tailed Distributions: A Fractal-Motivated Approach, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we encounter heavy-tailed distributions for which the variance -- and even sometimes the mean -- are infinite. We propose a fractal-motivated approach that enables us to gauge the mean and variance of such distributions.

In Quantum Physics, Free Will Leads To Nonconservation Of Energy, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Modern physical theories are deterministic in the sense that once we know the current state of the world, we can, in principle, predict all the future states. This was true for classical (pre-quantum) theories, this is true for modern quantum physics. On the other hand, we all know that we can make decision that change the state of the world -- even if, for most of us, a little bit. This intuitive idea of free will permeates all our life, all our activities -- and it seems to contradict the determinism of modern physics. It is therefore desirable to incorporate …

Novel Acceptor Materials For Solar Cells, Diana M. Brus, Marta Izquierdo, Luis Echegoyen

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

In recent years organic photovoltaics, OPVs, have gained an increasing amount of attention for their potential use as low-cost solar energy conversion devices. The interest in solar cells using fullerenes as an acceptor component has been rapidly growing in the last years.

The research on the origin of the open circuit voltage of bulk heterojunction solar cells containing a polymer and a mono-substituted fullerene are attracting extensive academic interest. To date, a vast majority of the efficient devices reported use the regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) polymer and PCBM-C₆₀ (Phenyl-C₆₁-Butyric Acid Methyl Ester) respectively as electron-donor and electron acceptor …

Transition States Of Dbt Molecule At The Mos2/Co9s8 Interface: First Principles, Svetlana Gelpi, Alvaro S. Laham, Gilles Berhault, Brenda Torres, Russel R. Chianelli, Manuel Ramos *

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Sulfur removal in crude oil, is one of most important application when designing catalytic material to target hydrodesulphurization reactions. This particular study comprehends the quantum computational calculations for the transitional states during the HDS reaction in the molecular model of MoS₂/Co₉S₈, which is a theoretical molecular model to describe the synergic contact between both crystallographic structures. Results produced using the exchange correlation Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof(PBE) functional indicate the existence of endothermic and exothermic transitions during the attachment of DBT molecules. In addition, it proves that promotion (addition of Co, Ni) provokes the electronic configuration of electron …

Mitigating Ros Induced Neurodegenerative Pathogenesis Through Polyphenolic Phytochemicals, Brittany N. Talamantes, Parijat Kabiraj, Mahesh Naryan

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The United States accounts for 16% of all Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cases. The margin of elderly population increasing, due to the baby boomer generation, also contributes greatly to the increase in neurodegenerative diseases. This rise in neurodegenerative disease highlights the importance of research and its potential ability to alleviate financial health burdens as well creating protection for younger generations. Cell lines, PC12 and SHSY-5Y chosen as Parkinsonian and Alzheimer’s models because of their ability to release dopamine were treated with the phytochemical ellagic acid, and analyzed to view its protective capabilities against reactive oxidative stress (ROS). ROS was induced by …

Chaperonin Mediated Refolding Of The Green Fluorescent Protein, Danielle Y. Martinez, Ricardo A. Bernal, Timothy P. Brown

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

In order to prevent misfolded proteins from aggregating and becoming insoluble, we are developing a chaperonin-mediated protein refolding assay that makes use of an easily traceable protein. Chaperonins function by providing a protective enclosed chamber for a protein to fold without interference from cellular component with the cytoplasm. To our knowledge, the inner workings of the chaperonin and its facilitation of protein folding are complicated but can be traced by monitoring ATP. Tracing this reaction, however, requires that the product of hydrolysis (inorganic phosphate) react with a second substrate to produce a product that can be observed by absorption of …

Highly Sensitive, Multiplexed, Point Of Care Diagnosis Of Meningitis Through Microfluidics, Isaac Torres, Xiujun J. Li, Gabriel Scott

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Bacterial meningitis is a severe bacterial infection that can become fatal within 24 hours of symptom onset. The most common detection methods include gram stain and cell culture, which are either not reliable, time-consuming or require expensive equipment and trained personnel. In a third world setting, having a reliable and low-cost diagnostic tool for detection of meningitis is therefore crucial. Our project then, is to allow for integrated DNA amplification, and easy to read colorimetric indicators in one PDMS/paper hybrid microfluidic device. The amplification will be done through loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), which is a novel approach to DNA amplification …

Assessing Readability Of College-Level Statistics Textbooks: A Quantitative Lexical And Grammatical Analysis, Ariel I. Gonzalez, Amy E. Wagler, Lawrence M. Lesser

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

This research was conceived because of the need to create and identify college level statistics textbooks (or other instructional materials)) that are written in a manner that is less intimidating and easier to read and understand for students, including English language learners. We selected a representative set of current editions of 15-20 well-known statistics textbooks (that varied in their incorporation of reform or literacy approaches) to assess and compare aspects and levels of readability. We then chose two topics for a manageable focus: measures of center and line of fit. The parts of the textbooks corresponding to these topics were …

Uniaxial Cold Pressing Of Chalcogen-Metal Compounds For Thermoelectrical Applications, Kevin A. Matos, Hugo López, Manuel Antonio Ramos, Russell Chianelli

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Uniaxial cold pressing to increase the density in powders seems to be a low cost and efficient route. The aim of this study is to achieve high density by making pellets of chalcogenides compounds without using binders that can cause alteration of the material’s thermoelectric properties. These properties are Seebeck voltage, Thermal conductivity and Electrical conductivity. The characteristics of thermoelectric activity can be measured by using a Z-meter instrument. Here, we present data for two samples as pelletized at room temperature and controlled atmosphere, using two sets of loads (force) of 4 and 7 metric-tons. The maximum densification attained with …

Synthesis Of Methylene Γ-Lactones Using Carbon Dioxide, Bryan P. Ferrell, Shizue Mito, Giber Martinez, Intesar El-Feitouri

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Many industrial processes generate the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, as a byproduct. Carbon dioxide can be captured and recycled by using it in organic synthesis to prepare beneficial compounds. The goal of this project is to develop a new method of synthesizing methylene γ-lactones using CO₂-metal complexes. Many gamma lactones are biologically active, and their synthesis is of importance to pharmaceutical and other industries. Allenes can react with a transition metal-CO₂ complex. It is proposed that a titanium metal complex prepared with an aldehyde will bind to an allene, and a seven-membered ring forms as CO_{2 …}

Synthesis Of Peptide Thioesters Without Loss Of Chiral Integrity, Renato A. Sousa, Andrew Pardo, Katja Michael

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The chemical synthesis of polypeptides can be accomplished with a technique called Native Chemical Ligation (NCL), which requires two peptides, one with a C-terminal thioester and another one with an N-terminal cysteine. Conventional peptide thioester syntheses require coupling in the presence of organic bases, which can cause a serious epimerization problem, and consequently purification difficulties, as well as low reaction yields of the desired stereoisomer. There is a great need for alternative methods that avoid or minimize epimerization and preserve the chiral integrity of the C-terminal amino acid. The goal of this research is to demonstrate that a photochemical base-free …