Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Soil-Grapevine Interactions: Insight From Verdicchio In The Marche Wine Region, Italy, Megan Luna Barlow

Theses and Dissertations

Verdicchio is a white grape varietal notably grown in the Marche wine region of east-central Italy within two Denominazione Origine Controllata (DOCs); Castelli di Jesi and Matelica, located less than 50 km apart. Jesi lies in the Apennine foothills near the coast of the Adriatic Sea and produces a smooth wine noted with apple-pear undertones and crisp, clean acidity. Conversely, Matelica is located in a synclinal valley of a fold-and-thrust belt and produces stronger wine with penetrating floral aromas and bold acidity. While macro-climatic variations do exist between DOCs, this research focuses on geological variations, specifically variations in soil composition, …

Integration Of Scale-Themed Instruction Across The General Chemistry Curriculum And Selected In-Depth Studies, Jaclyn Trate

Theses and Dissertations

In 1982, in response to a growing demand for a scientifically literate population, two organizations, the AAAS and NCISE published reports that proposed using themes to bridge scientific disciplines1,2. The NCISE report identified “9 explanatory concepts” which included organization, cause and effect, systems, scale, models, change, structure or function, discontinuous and continuous properties, and diversity. The AAAS report, as part of Project 2061, identified 4 themes that define science literacy which included systems, models, constancy and change, and scale. In 1993, the AAAS released the Benchmarks for Science Literacy3 which outlined what all students should know or be able to …

Investigation Of Tribochemical Reactions Using The Model System Of Methyl Thiolate On Copper Foil In Ultrahigh Vacuum And Ab-Initio Calculations, Heather Loren Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Advancement in the understanding of tribochemical systems suffers from several obstacles that hinder the progress in advancing an understanding of the fundamental processes involved in the evolution of friction and wear. Characterizing ephemeral chemical states within a buried interface is an experimental challenge and work in this dissertation uses a model system, methyl thiolate on copper foil, that undergoes tribo-activated decomposition to investigate the rate of change of the chemical components in the interface. The elementary steps in the tribochemical reaction were identified and consist of a shear-induced decomposition of methyl thiolate species to produce gas-phase hydrocarbons and form surface …

Star Formation Density And Galactic Outflows At Z~2, Matthew Coon

Theses and Dissertations

Galactic-scale outflows of gas play a significant role in galaxy evolution. They push gas to larger radii, slowing the star formation rate near the center of the galaxy, and increasing it at larger radii. Eventually, these outflows can expel the gas from the galaxy, depositing metals into the intergalactic medium, and limiting star formation in the galaxy. Galaxies from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS) and 3D- Hubble Space Telescope (3D-HST) Survey were used in order to measure the velocities of galactic outflows from the KBSS spectra, and the grism spectra from the 3D- HST survey were used in order …

Design And Implementation Of A Multi-Port Solid State Transformer For Flexible Der Integration, Mohammad Rashidi

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional power system includes four major sections, bulk generation, transmission network, distribution network, and loads. The main converter in the conventional electric grid is the low-frequency passive transformer providing galvanic isolation and voltage regulation for various voltage zones. In this configuration, small-scale renewable energy resources are generally connected to the power system at low voltage zones or inside microgrids.

Recent developments in the design of power electronic elements with higher voltage and power ratings and medium/high frequency enable making use of solid state transformer at different voltage levels in the distribution system and microgrid design. In this work, the concept …

Enhanced Version Control For Unconventional Applications, Ahmed Saleh Shatnawi

Theses and Dissertations

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is widely used to store, retrieve, and share digital documents. Recently, a form of Version Control System has been applied to the language, resulting in Version-Aware XML allowing for enhanced portability and scalability. While Version Control Systems are able to keep track of changes made to documents, we think that there is untapped potential in the technology. In this dissertation, we present novel ways of using Version Control System to enhance the security and performance of existing applications. We present a framework to maintain integrity in offline XML documents and provide non-repudiation security features that …

A Public Humanity: The Application Of Isotopic Analysis To The Intersection Between Body And Law At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Shannon Kate Freire

Theses and Dissertations

The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery is an umbrella term used to describe the four cemeteries that were used by Milwaukee County from 1878 through 1974 for the burial of the indigent, unclaimed, institutionalized, and anatomized. Three of these cemeteries remain undisturbed. The primary focus of this research is the twice-excavated Cemetery II (Wisconsin Burial Site 47BMI0076), in use between 1882 and 1925. Archaeological excavations in 1991-1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from this cemetery location.

In Wisconsin, legislative efforts to govern indigent burial and dissection mediated competing aspirations between medical education and …

God's Number In The Simultaneously-Possible Turn Metric, Andrew James Gould

Theses and Dissertations

In 2010 it was found that God’s number is 20 in the face turn metric. That is, if the Rubik’s cube hasn’t been disassembled, it can always be solved in 20 twists or fewer, but sometimes requires 20 twists. However, the face turn metric only allows one face to be turned at a time for a total of 18 generators, or 18 possible twists at any time. This dissertation allows opposing, parallel faces to be twisted independent amounts at the same time and still get counted as 1 twist for a total of 45 generators. A new optimal-solving program was …

Threshold Free Detection Of Elliptical Landmarks Using Machine Learning, Lifan Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Elliptical shape detection is widely used in practical applications. Nearly all classical ellipse detection algorithms require some form of threshold, which can be a major cause of detection failure, especially in the challenging case of Moire Phase Tracking (MPT) target images. To meet the challenge, a threshold free detection algorithm for elliptical landmarks is proposed in this thesis. The proposed Aligned Gradient and Unaligned Gradient (AGUG) algorithm is a Support Vector Machine (SVM)-based classification algorithm, original features are extracted from the gradient information corresponding to the sampled pixels. with proper selection of features, the proposed algorithm has a high accuracy …

Short Synthesis And Biological Evaluation Of 5-Chloro-7-Benzoyl 2,3-Dihydrobenzo[B]Furan -3-Carboxylic Acid(Brl-37959) And Its Analogs., Shamsul Arefin Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

The synthesis of BRL-37959 has previously been reported. As an NSAID, the compound was tested for and found that it had very low gastric irritancy. Commercially available NSAIDs are non-selective COX inhibitors that enhance the risk of gastric, duodenal mucosal injury or erosions and ulcer problems as well as lead to nephrotoxicity. The COX-2 selective inhibitor Celecoxib (Celebrex) increases the risk of serious cardiovascular (CV) thrombotic events, myocardial infarction and stroke as well as increased nephrotoxicity. COX inhibitors are active against inflammation, pain, fever and different types of cancers. Considering the enormous potential benefits and side effects of non-selective COX …

Development Of Pre-Clinical Assays Based On Tandem Mass Spectrometry To Investigate Gabaa Receptor Modulators, Margaret Laurel Guthrie

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-CLINICAL ASSAYS BASED ON TANDEM MASS SPECTROMETRY TO INVESTIGATE GABAA RECEPTOR MODULATORS

by

Margaret L. Guthrie

The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, 2017

Under the Supervision of Professor Alexander (Leggy) Arnold

Drugs are compounds that interact with a biological system to produce a specific biological response. The goal of drug discovery is to design and synthesize a pharmaceutical agent that will produce a desired biological effect. However, the in-vivo effects of a drug molecule cannot be predicted without a variety of test results prior to human clinical trials. In order to designate any drug compound as a …

Improving Version-Aware Word Documents, Alexandre Gustavo Valenca De Azevedo Filho

Theses and Dissertations

Coakley~\textit{et al.} described how they developed Version Aware Word Documents, which is an enhanced document representation that includes a detailed version history that is self-contained and portable. However, they were not able to adopt the unique-ID-based techniques that have been shown to support efficient merging and differencing algorithms.

This thesis describes how it is possible to adapt existing features of MS Word's OOXML representation to provide a system of unique element IDs suitable for those algorithms. This requires taking over Word's Revision Save ID (RSID) system and also defining procedures for specifying ID values for elements that do not support …

Real-Time, Selective Detection Of Heavy Metal Ions In Water Using 2d Nanomaterials-Based Field-Effect Transistors, Guihua Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

Excessive intake of heavy metals damages the central nervous system and causes brain and blood disorders in mammals. Heavy metal contamination is commonly associated with exposure to mercury, lead, arsenic, and cadmium (arsenic is a metalloid, but classified as a heavy metal). Traditional methods to detect heavy metal ions include graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy (GFAAS), inductively-coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), and inductively-coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS). Recently, many new methods have been proposed to detect heavy metal ions, including atomic absorption spectrometry, fluorescent sensors, colorimetric sensors, electrochemical sensors, X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, ultrasensitive dynamic light scatting assays, …

Utilizing Consumer Health Posts For Pharmacovigilance: Identifying Underlying Factors Associated With Patients’ Attitudes Towards Antidepressants, Maryam Zolnoori

Theses and Dissertations

Non-adherence to antidepressants is a major obstacle to antidepressants therapeutic benefits, resulting in increased risk of relapse, emergency visits, and significant burden on individuals and the healthcare system. Several studies showed that non-adherence is weakly associated with personal and clinical variables, but strongly associated with patients’ beliefs and attitudes towards medications. The traditional methods for identifying the key dimensions of patients’ attitudes towards antidepressants are associated with some methodological limitations, such as concern about confidentiality of personal information. In this study, attempts have been made to address the limitations by utilizing patients’ self report experiences in online healthcare forums to …

Nonlocal Electrostatics In Spherical Geometries, Andrew Bolanowski

Theses and Dissertations

Nonlocal continuum electrostatic models have been used numerically in protein simulations, but analytic solutions have been absent. In this paper, two modified nonlocal continuum electrostatic models, the Lorentzian Model and a Linear Poisson-Boltzmann Model, are presented for a monatomic ion treated as a dielectric continuum ball. These models are then solved analytically using a system of differential equations for the charge distributed within the ion ball. This is done in more detail for a point charge and a charge distributed within a smaller ball. As the solutions are a series, their convergence is verified and criteria for improved convergence is …

Splittings Of Relatively Hyperbolic Groups And Classifications Of 1-Dimensional Boundaries, Matthew Haulmark

Theses and Dissertations

In the first part of this dissertation, we show that the existence of non-parabolic local cut point in the relative (or Bowditch) boundary, $\relbndry$, of a relatively hyperbolic group $(\Gamma,\bbp)$ implies that $\Gamma$ splits over a $2$-ended subgroup. As a consequence we classify the homeomorphism type of the Bowditch boundary for the special case when the Bowditch boundary $\relbndry$ is one-dimensional and has no global cut points.

In the second part of this dissertation, We study local cut points in the boundary of CAT(0) groups with isolated flats. In particular the relationship between local cut points in $\bndry X$ and …

Social Network Analysis On Wisconsin Archival Facebook Community, Jennifer Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how Wisconsin archives are using Facebook (Wisconson archives Facebook community, WAFC). Few archive studies use quantitative measurements to draw conclusions from social media application use. Quantitative data is needed in order to identify the various ways that social media is being used in an archive. Without the data behind the assumptions, it is impossible to improve service and outreach to the archive users. This study proposed a mixed methods approach to aid in the process, using social network analysis, inferential statistics and thematic analysis. This study measured the effects of implementation of …

A Hemimysis Driven Novel Ecosystem At A Modified Boulder Breakwall, Eric John Geisthardt

Theses and Dissertations

The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is mandated to maintain and repair aging breakwall structures in all commercial ports on the Great Lakes. In May of 2014, the construction of Milwaukee Harbor USACE “green” breakwall (GBW) reconciliation created complex rocky aquatic habitat by depositing cobble-sized stone as a veneer over standard 6-10 ton boulders, thus creating “control” (boulder) and “treatment” (cobble) habitats. The breakwall is home to a prolific population of Hemimysis anomala, the introduced Ponto-Caspian mysid, which is significantly more abundant on cobble versus boulders (p<0.05, using a novel trap for Hemimysis). Fish and forage communities were sampled in 2015 and 2016 using a combination of experimental and micromesh gill nets, night scuba diving surveys, and a novel Hemimysis trap. This nearshore lithophilic mysid appears to provide a significant new seasonal food resource in the Milwaukee Harbor for pelagic prey fishes during inshore spawning migrations and upwelling events. Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax) fed heavily on Hemimysis with some individuals consuming hundreds of mysids. Night scuba diving surveys and gill netting confirmed that rainbow smelt preferred to forage on the cobble section (p<0.05), and also consumed more Hemimysis there than they did at the control breakwall site (p<0.05). Hemimysis were also the primary food item consumed by nearshore game fishes such as YOY yellow perch (Perca flavescens), YOY largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), and juvenile rock bass (Ambloplites rupestris) caught at the breakwall. This study provides the first documented evidence that where abundant in the Laurentian Great Lakes, Hemimysis do have the ability to significantly impact local food webs and drive the feeding ecology of both pelagic transient and nearshore resident fishes.

Making Substitutions Explicit In Sasylf, Michael David Ariotti

Theses and Dissertations

SASyLF is an interactive proof assistant whose goal is to teach: about type systems,

language meta-theory, and writing proofs in general. This software tool stores user-specified

languages and logics in the dependently-typed LF, and its internal proof structure closely

resembles M2+ . This thesis describes a new usability feature of SASyLF, “where” clauses,

which make explicit previously hidden substitutions that arise through constructs in the proof

code, primarily case analyses. An overview of SASyLF and logical frameworks is given, with

motivating examples. The requirements for “where” clauses are discussed, including a formal

definition of correctness. The feature’s implementation in SASyLF …

Robust Latent Ability Estimation Based On Item Response Information And Model Fit, Hotaka Maeda

Theses and Dissertations

Aberrant testing behaviors may result in inaccurate person trait estimation. To counter its effects, a new robust ability estimation procedure called downweighting of aberrant responses estimation (DARE) is developed. This procedure downweights both uninformative items and model-misfitting response patterns. The purpose of this study is to present DARE and to evaluate its performance against other robust methods, including biweight (Mislevy & Bock, 1982) and biweight-MAP (BMAP; Maeda & Zhang, 2017b). The traditional maximum likelihood (MLE) and maximum a-posteriori (MAP) methods are also included as baseline methods. A Monte Carlo simulation is conducted with the design variables being test length, type …

Optimal Warranty Period For Free-Replacement Policy Of Agm Batteries, Jennifer Paola Garantiva Poveda

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study is to analyze the suitability of the age-based warranty model and a millage based warranty model for absorbent glass mat batteries (AGM) for the automobile industry. The battery life expectancy can be assessed and described by a combination of different terms such as: state of health (SOH), deep of discharge (DOD), state of energy (SOE) and state of charge (SOC). However, using actual data from the field, the implementation of reliability engineering and statistical modeling we aim to calculate optimal limits for warranty policies that minimize warranty costs. The outcomes of this research will enable …

Interaction With Nitric Oxide Of The Nitrosomonas Europaea Tetraheme Protein Cytochrome C554, And Two Of Its Variants, In Increasingly Reducing Environments, Jennifer M. Mcgarry

Theses and Dissertations

A re-investigation of the interaction with NO of the small tetraheme protein cytochrome c554 (C554) from Nitrosomonas europaea has shown that the 5-coordinate heme II of the 2-electron or 4-electron reduced protein will nitrosylate reversibly. The nitrosylation process was found to be first order in C554, first-order in NO, and second-order overall. The rate constant for NO binding to the heme was determined to be 3000 ± 140 M-1s-1, while the rate constant for dissociation was 0.034 ± 0.009 s-1; the degree of protein reduction does not appear to significantly influence the nitrosylation rate. In contrast to a previous report, …

Part – I: Development Of A Two-Step Regiospecific Synthetic Route For Multigram Scale Synthesis Of Β-Carboline Analogs For Studies In Primates As Anti-Alcohol Agents,Part – Ii: Design And Synthesis Of Novel Antimicrobials For The Treatment Of Drug Resistant Bacterial Infections Part – Iii: A Novel Synthetic Method For The Synthesis Of The Key Quinine Metabolite (3s)-3-Hydroxyquinine, Veera Venkata Naga Phani Babu Tiruveedhula

Theses and Dissertations

PART – I

Development of a Two-Step Regiospecifc Synthetic Route for Multigram-Scale Synthesis of β-Carboline Analogs for Studies in Primates as Anti-Alcohol Agents

β-Carboline and their derivatives are important structural motifs in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry because of their novel biological activity, especially in regard to the reduction of alcohol self-administration [binge drinking (BD)], a major problem increasing day by day in modern society. This anti-alcohol effect is proposed to be due to the activity of ligands at the benzodiazepine site of the GABAA receptor in the central nervous system acting as antagonists at the α1 subunit. The past …

Unsupervised Biomedical Named Entity Recognition, Omid Ghiasvand

Theses and Dissertations

Named entity recognition (NER) from text is an important task for several applications, including in the biomedical domain. Supervised machine learning based systems have been the most successful on NER task, however, they require correct annotations in large quantities for training. Annotating text manually is very labor intensive and also needs domain expertise. The purpose of this research is to reduce human annotation effort and to decrease cost of annotation for building NER systems in the biomedical domain. The method developed in this work is based on leveraging the availability of resources like UMLS (Unified Medical Language System), that contain …

Exponential Integrator Methods For Nonlinear Fractional Reaction-Diffusion Models, Olaniyi Samuel Iyiola

Theses and Dissertations

Nonlocality and spatial heterogeneity of many practical systems have made fractional differential equations very useful tools in Science and Engineering. However, solving these type of models is computationally demanding. In this work, we propose an exponential integrator method for nonlinear fractional reaction-diffusion equations. This scheme is based on using a real distinct poles discretization for the underlying matrix exponentials. Due to these real distinct poles, the algorithm could be easily implemented in parallel to take advantage of multiple processors for increased computational efficiency. The method is established to be second-order convergent; and proven to be robust for problems involving non-smooth/mismatched …

Difference Structures From Time-Resolved Saxs/Waxs, Prakash Nepal

Theses and Dissertations

It has been thought that there is not enough information to recover a solution to the problem of inverting time-resolved Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) / Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) difference data. In this context, this study presents a new idea by extending the concept of “difference Fourier method” which aims to overcome the above limitation in the idealized case of simulated data.

If the structural changes in a typical time-resolved studies are generally confined to a relatively localized region, they can be found from difference SAXS/WAXS curves and knowledge of the atomic coordinates of one of the states. …

Extensions Of Enveloping Algebras Via Anti-Cocommutative Elements, Daniel Owen Yee

Theses and Dissertations

We know that given a connected Hopf algebra H, the universal enveloping algebra

U(P(H)) embeds in H as a Hopf subalgebra. Depending on P(H), we show that

there may be another enveloping algebra (not as a Hopf subalgebra) within H by

using anti-cocommutative elements. Thus, this is an extension of enveloping

algebras with regards to the Hopf structure. We also use these discoveries to apply

to global dimension, and finish with antipode behavior and future research projects.

Using Ams To Help Interpret Glaciogenic Deposits Of The Late Paleozoic Ice Age In The Paraná Basin, Brazil, James Anthony Amato

Theses and Dissertations

The term ‘diamictite’ is used as a lithologic descriptive term without assigning a particular origin to a rock unit as either glacial deposits (till), proglacial, glacially influenced deposits (resulting from meltwater plumes and ice rafted debris), or mass transport deposits (glacial or non-glacial related). While in some cases, it is possible to delineate between the origins of diamictites, in other instances, weathering and lack of exposures make it difficult to determine. In general, the occurrence of diamictites within the Gondwana succession has been traditionally used to indicate the occurrence of subglacial deposition despite the potential occurrence of other depositional modes. …

Biomedical Applications Of Mid-Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging And Multivariate Data Analysis: Contribution To The Understanding Of Diabetes Pathogenesis, Ebrahim Aboualizadeh

Theses and Dissertations

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a microvascular complication of diabetes and a leading cause of adult vision loss. Although a great deal of progress has been made in ophthalmological examinations and clinical approaches to detect the signs of retinopathy in patients with diabetes, there still remain outstanding questions regarding the molecular and biochemical changes involved. To discover the biochemical mechanisms underlying the development and progression of changes in the retina as a result of diabetes, a more comprehensive understanding of the bio-molecular processes, in individual retinal cells subjected to hyperglycemia, is required. Animal models provide a suitable resource for temporal detection …

Bayesian Methods And Machine Learning For Processing Text And Image Data, Yingying Gu

Theses and Dissertations

Classification/clustering is an important class of unstructured data processing problems. The classification (supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised) aims to discover the clusters and group the similar data into categories for information organization and knowledge discovery. My work focuses on using the Bayesian methods and machine learning techniques to classify the free-text and image data, and address how to overcome the limitations of the traditional methods. The Bayesian approach provides a way to allow using more variations(numerical or categorical), and estimate the probabilities instead of explicit rules, which will benefit in the ambiguous cases. The MAP(maximum a posterior) estimation is used to …